I just finished reading Memory Man, a novel by David Baldacci (published April, 2015). On page 35, a perp dressed in full camouflage shoots up a high school. I know it's fiction, and I don't mean to make light of Missy's terrible murder in any way, but there are some interesting similarities here. I thought a book report might help us think of new questions to ask about Missy's murder, so I wrote this one.
The story: Amos Decker is a former pro football player and retired police detective who works from his hotel room as a private investigator. Fifteen months ago, his wife, daughter, and brother-in-law were brutally murdered. The crime remains unsolved despite the perfect memory Decker was left with after a career-ending football injury 20 years earlier.
A man falsely confesses to killing Decker’s family, and at exactly the same time a mass shooting takes place at the local high school. Six students (all football players) a teacher (the assistant coach) and an administrator are killed; another teacher is critically injured. LE calls Decker in to help his former partner investigate the crime.
There is security video of a suspect walking the halls before the event. Exterior cameras were present but not functional.
>>>snips
“...it was a big guy in full camouflage gear. Face completely obstructed by a mask and a face shield.”
“Belts and suspenders,” commented Decker. “Methodical.”
“What else? Type of footwear?”
…”The video shot is from the waist up. No one we interviewed noticed his footwear. He was wearing gloves”…
“Concealment was important to him. He might have been afraid he would be recognized. You said big guy. How big?”
“Our video shot framed him with a poster hanging on the wall. We did some measurements. We’re looking at a guy at least six-two with very broad shoulders. Like yours. Strong. Definitely male. Over two hundred pounds.”
“So he walks all over the school and we only get one video shot of him?”
“Maybe he knew where the cameras were and avoided them. Maybe he’s been here before doing some recon for this massacre.”
“But in one instance he didn’t avoid the camera.”
“Why do you think? Inconsistency? Mistake?”
“Too early to tell, but if it was deliberate, we need to find out why.”
<<<snip
Fast forward to the end of the book: Camo-perp was a slender woman, five ten or eleven. She wore padding underneath the camo gear, and wedge-soled boots with three-inch heels (5'10" or 5'11" becomes 6'1" or 6'2"). She used a forgotten bomb shelter and tunnel to enter and exit the locked school unseen, and to navigate inside the school. (Is there a basement in the church? A sub-floor? A storm cellar?) She had stashed the camo-gear and weapons in the ceiling tiles of a storeroom (was the ceiling checked in the church kitchen?). Security video was used by LE to reconstruct the scene, but both the timeline and the suspect’s physical description were incorrect thanks to camo-perp’s pre-staging of cameras and valid but incorrect eyewitness reports..
Camo-perp murdered Decker’s family twenty years before the school shootings, and she kills several other people after that event. She utilizes several disguises –an old man with a dog, a waitress in a bar, a janitor. Nothing connects any of the murders to each other (except in camo-perp's mind), but she leaves clues for Decker until he understands them.
As a teenager with gender-identity issues, she had been gang-raped and beaten – by cops. She recovered from her injuries, but was left with perfect memory, just as Decker had been, and a hatred for LE. She met Decker at a memory rehab/research facility, where he decided to become LE.
Camo-perp did have an accomplice, a psychopath who ran a website “supporting” victims of police brutality and failed justice. He fished for, fostered and fanned camo-perp’s irrational need for revenge, and helped her commit her twenty-year long crime spree..
I've tried to report the major elements of the novel that are similar to Missy's murder, but it's a complicated, complex plot, and I probably didn't get them all.
Reading this novel really creeped me out. It's so like Missy's murder, it's uncanny.
What do ya'll think?
