The Dead Man (15 page)

Her cop logic was sound enough to make me shake. I'd made the mistake of acting like an innocent man, which was the surest way to arouse suspicion. Lucy pressed me again.

"Do they have any proof that you know where the money is or what was in the envelope or that you killed Walter Enoch?"

"Not until they get a look at my laptop. Enoch volunteered for the Harper Institute's dream project. They made a videotape of him describing a nightmare in which he suffocated to death, which happens to be how he died, with an assist from the killer. I found the video today in the dream project computer files and copied it to my flash drive. I had just finished loading it on my laptop when they rang the doorbell. Once they find the video, they'll go nuts."

"Why? You can explain why you had the video and when you got it. The timing has nothing to do with Enoch's murder."

"But the fact that I have it fits with their larger narrative."

"Oh, shit! That isn't all they'll find on your laptop. I e-mailed you the pictures I took of Enoch and his house with my cell phone. They'll love my explanation of that."

I'd seen the pictures. They were no use to me but Dolan and Kent would treat them as further proof that I was guilty of crimes ranging from conspiracy to murder no matter how I explained them. They were the kind of cops that shoved the facts into their theories no matter how square the pegs or how round the holes.

"The video and the pictures are enough to make them keep coming after me. When they see that you e-mailed the photographs to me, you'll be in the soup too."

"So let them keep coming. You're innocent."

"Lucy, you were a cop. You know how guys like Kent and Dolan think. They've already convicted me. Being right matters more to them than the truth."

Frank Gentry called, confirming that he'd deleted Anthony Corliss's alert software and installed it on the desktop computer in my office and that no one else was using the software. I caught Simon while he was still at his office, telling him to bring an additional laptop for me.

Lucy left and came back carrying pads of poster-sized Post-its and a fistful of markers in a rainbow of colors. Her cheeks were red from the cold and her eyes were dancing and bright, fueled by our chase of the dead man.

She stripped the living den walls, papering the empty spaces with blank Post-its. I needed to rest so I sat in the recliner watching her work, genuflecting with intermittent spasms.

"I learned under a great homicide detective," Lucy said. "She taught me that the best way to put a case together is to visualize it. Put it on the walls, let the facts paint the picture."

"I do it the same way. Put each case on a separate wall. Start with what we know about each of the victims and how they died. Then we'll fill in what you saw at each of the scenes. We'll also have to keep track of witnesses, evidence, and questions we need answered, plus links between the cases."

She turned toward me, hands on her hips. "Gee, great ideas. I never would have thought of any of that."

We mirrored each other's grins, both glad to be back in the hunt, realizing how much we had missed it.

"Okay, okay. I get it," I said, the words staggering out of my mouth like drunks leaving a bar at closing time. My neck arched and stretched, shoving my head upward and back, raising my chin like the open end of a drawbridge and locking me in the pose until the spasm passed. "I guess this isn't your first time."

"No. But it's my first time in a while, same for you. We need to check each other's work. Shake the rust off."

"Might as well. I'm shaking everything else."

She stood over my chair, looking at me with soft, sad eyes and laughed, giving me a quick hug. "You are something, you know that. Tell you what. I'll write. You edit."

"Works for me," I told Lucy.

She made her way around the room, using different color markers for different topics: black for victims, blue for witnesses, green for evidence, red for the crime scene, though she labeled it THE DEAD MAN in all caps, winking at me over her shoulder as she wrote. Her handwriting was hurried, her shoulder and neck muscles bundled and flexed as she worked.

She didn't look like Wendy. She was taller and her hair was shorter and darker. She was cocky while Wendy was leery. In spite of their differences, I sensed in her the same urgency about life Wendy had shown, as if they knew that they'd closed more doors than they'd opened and that they were running out of doors. There were no words for how much I missed my daughter. There were only memories Lucy was bringing to life, making me realize that this could be the land of second chances for both of us.

Kate rang the doorbell while Lucy was still hanging the new wallpaper. When I introduced them, Lucy leaned into Kate, whispering something in her ear that made them both giggle like schoolgirls, look at me, and laugh again.

"What?" I demanded.

"Oh, nothing," Kate said.

She was holding two bags of carryout from Bo Ling's. She handed one bag to Lucy as they locked arms and headed for the kitchen.

When Simon arrived a few minutes later, he stared at Lucy's handiwork, then looked at me, his mouth open.

"Everything will be illuminated," I said. "After we eat."

I spread out dinner in the kitchen while Simon set up an office in the dining room. The dogs, exhausted from the parade of people, slept under the kitchen table, waking long enough to scavenge for crumbs. When we finished our fortune cookies, I laid everything out for Kate and Simon.

Simon pushed back from the table, his eyebrows raised. "Lucid dreaming sounds like junk science to me."

"Maybe, maybe not," Kate said. "The work I do is all about what's going on beneath the surface. Dreams are part of that so I stay current with the research, which is all over the place. Freud thought dreams were the way we fulfilled our forbidden aggressive and sexual wishes. Later, people thought that dreams were the cognitive echoes of our efforts to work out conflicting emotions. Now some researchers will tell you that dreams are just epiphenomena."

"Translation, please," Simon said.

"Sorry," Kate said. "They think that dreams don't mean anything at all, that dreams are just the mind's attempt to make sense of random neural firings while the body restores itself during sleep."

"So, dreams are noise the brain makes while it's doing its homework?" Lucy asked.

"That's exactly how one researcher at Harvard explains it. But there's other research that suggests that dreams are a training ground where people rehearse survival behaviors. I read a report by one psychologist who said he helped a patient reframe his nightmare by rehearsing alternatives to the most frightening part while he was awake. Eventually, the nightmare went away. That doesn't sound so different from what Anthony Corliss is trying to do."

"Except for one thing," I said. "Instead of helping his subjects reframe their nightmares, he may be helping to turn them into reality."

"Why would he do that?" Lucy asked.

"It's the rule of unintended consequences. It's not what he's trying to do but it's what happens," I said, repeating Maggie Brennan's explanation that lucid dreaming may help people overcome their inhibitions, causing them to do things they would otherwise never do.

"Do we know if anyone else is doing this kind of research?" Kate asked. "Maybe they've had similar experiences."

"I don't know about that, but this has happened before with Corliss," I said, telling them about the girl at Wisconsin who drowned.

"If Milo Harper knew about that, how could he have hired Corliss?" Kate asked.

"Corliss told him all about it and Harper's lawyers talked to the lawyers for Corliss and the university. They say Corliss got hosed."

"Of course that's what they would say," Kate said. "They didn't talk to the lawyer for the girl's family. They made their mind up after hearing only one side of the story. Harper wanted to hire Corliss. His lawyers knew that and they made sure their client got what he wanted."

"You don't know that," I said.

"I know Harper and I know lawyers. That's enough for me," she said.

"I'm a software guy," Simon said. "I can program a computer but I don't believe you can program someone to kill themselves. Besides, you said the mailman was murdered."

"Jack, Simon's right," Kate said, "and assuming you are not a mad dog killer and thief and that Anthony Corliss and Milo Harper aren't crazy, what's going on?"

"Let me take a crack at it," Simon said. "The way I see it, there are a few possibilities. First, Delaney and Blair weren't murdered but Enoch was, making for one crime. Second, Delaney and or Blair were murdered, making for two or three crimes that are potentially connected. Third, all three were murdered, which, given their participation in the dream project, increases the likelihood the murders are connected."

"Which is a nice way of saying that they were committed by the same person. And, if they were, the killer may not be finished," Lucy said.

"Are you talking about a serial killer?" Kate asked.

"It's possible," Lucy said. "By definition, a serial killer has at least three victims and they usually share things in common. These victims were all volunteers in the dream project. And, they died—or were killed—over a short span of time with a shorter time between the second and third murders than the first and second, which is typical of a serial killer on a spree."

"What's the timeline?" Simon asked.

"Blair died on December tenth, Delaney on January ninth, and Enoch died last week on the twenty-third. The interval between Delaney and Blair was thirty days. It was fourteen between Blair and Enoch. If I'm right, another victim will turn up in the next few days."

"So the killer must be someone involved in the dream project," Kate said.

"Whoa. Slow down, CSI," I said. Though I'd raised the same prospect with Maggie Brennan, I didn't want my makeshift team running wild. "We're a long way from profiling a serial killer. They usually commit ritualized murders with a heavy sexual component. The murders look alike from how the victims were killed, to the letters spelled with words cut out of magazines and sent to the local newspaper. Apart from Delaney's, Blair's, and Enoch's participation in the dream project, we don't have any of that here. Plus, a serial killer doesn't account for Wendy's envelope."

"The thing about the letters to the newspaper," Kate said, "that's just an example, right. You don't mean every serial killer does that."

"No," I said. "My point is that serial killers operate in a pattern. They keep body parts as souvenirs. They like to taunt the police, maybe even insert themselves in the investigation because they think they're too clever to be caught. There's no evidence of a sexual component in any of these deaths. None of the bodies was mutilated and there have been no communications from the killer."

"It's not like baking a cake. Just because it doesn't fit the pattern so far, you can't rule it out," Lucy said.

"Agreed," I said. "But that doesn't mean we only focus on single white men in their twenties and thirties who live alone and are sexually dysfunctional."

"And who set fires, abused animals, and wet their beds when they were kids," Simon added. "Hey, I watch TV too."

I sighed. "Try more Food Network and less
Law and Order
."

"What do you want us to do?" Kate asked.

"Help me fill in the blanks. There are two hundred and fifty volunteers in the dream project. Each of them was videotaped describing their dreams. I want you to take a look at the videos and tell me if anyone jumps out at you on the secret psycho scale. I'll give you my ID and password for the institute's computer system."

"Two hundred and fifty videos. Sure thing. Let me call the office and tell them I'm quitting my job."

"Don't tell them that. Tell them you just got a huge piece of work at a premium rate. My budget is unlim

ited."

Her smile lit up her face. "That I can tell them."

"Simon, I want you to run background checks on the volunteers and the staff that had access to the dream project files. I'll know tomorrow which ones actually got into the files. Let's see who's had a restraining order entered against them, who's been arrested, and who's late on their mortgage."

"How soon do you want all this?" Simon asked.

"Now would be just fine. Is that a problem?"

"Were you serious about the unlimited budget?"

"Milo said I could spend whatever it takes."

"In that case, now is not a problem. It's impossible, but it isn't a problem."

"What Kate and Simon are going to do may not be enough," Lucy said. "A lot of serial killers are charming people like Ted Bundy or the BTK killer in Wichita. That guy was active in his church and was a Cub Scout leader."