FICTION

The Memory That Wasn’t There

Was he a killer?

“We have a strange one in Room 202.”

That got my attention. Most of our work in Thought Crime is boring. It’s worse than boring; it’s mind-numbing. Rarely do we get anything interesting. I’m jaded by the work; my partner Charlie is even more so. If she thought our guest in R-202 was strange, I wanted a peek. I said so.

“Peek, hell, you can have him,” answered Charlie. “I can’t find a thing. I’ll assign him to you right now.”

I closed the case I had been working through. It was effectively done anyway; there was enough memory evidence to convict. I was just piling some gravy on the meat and potatoes. The prosecutor would be more than happy with what I gave her.

I opened the case for Room 202. I read Charlie’s notes first.

R-202 writes fiction about torture and murder and has gained some fame. A Murder Squad automated document scan noticed a substantial similarity between his published stories and several unsolved cases. R-202 was brought in for an initial MemScan performed by an intern.

The intern found no evidence of intent or action. However, he flagged the case as suspicious because he, quote: “felt something wasn’t quite right”. The case landed in my inbox, and I performed…