The Dead Man (19 page)

"You ever get used to the shaking?" he asked me.

"By now, I feel like I've always been this way. My old life of going to work every day, chasing crooks, having a few pops with my squad, that was someone else. It doesn't seem real. This life does. Maybe that means I'm used to it."

"Well, I'm not. I'll never accept it and I'll never get used to it. I'm going to fight it all the way."

"I don't give advice, especially when I'm not asked, but I'll tell you this much. It's a lot harder to fight a secret war. I tried that. I was dumb enough to think that no one had noticed anything different about me. But people knew something was wrong. They were just afraid to ask. You can let people wonder and whisper or you can let them help you."

"I want to do this on my own terms."

"You may not get the chance. Same thing may be true for this investigation. Two FBI agents are downstairs right now interviewing Anthony Corliss about the murder of Walter Enoch."

His eyes exploded, wild again, as he smacked the arms of his chair with both hands.

"How could you let that happen? You should have told them to get lost unless they had a warrant. What the hell am I paying you for?"

My father had Alzheimer's. It changed his personality more than his memory; it made him volatile, hostile, and so nasty at the end that he had to be drugged so that he'd stop taking swings at his caregivers. I didn't know whether Harper's outburst was the residual effect of the morning's frustration or the beginning of something more insidious. The more aggressive my father got, the calmer I got, making it easier for him to hear me. It worked with him. I hoped it worked with Harper.

"They don't need a warrant to talk to someone. I know these guys. Their names are Kent and Dolan. If I ran interference for Corliss, they'd be back with a team of agents and cops and they'd spend the next two days carrying boxes out of here under the watchful eye of the media. You want to lose control of the situation, that's the best way to do it."

He took a deep breath, hugged himself, and apologized with a weak smile.

"You're right. You're right. Why do you think they're interested in Corliss?"

"For starters, he recruited Walter Enoch for the dream project and convinced him to take the video at Enoch's house which means that Corliss knew about the stolen mail and didn't turn Enoch in. On top of that, there were no signs of forced entry and that suggests that Enoch knew his killer well enough to let him in the house. Given the stolen mail, Enoch wasn't likely to let many people in his house. Corliss may have been the only one. Toss in what happened with the girl at Wisconsin and I'm not surprised that the FBI is real interested in talking to him."

"You're saying they think Corliss killed Walter Enoch?"

"I'm saying they've got good reasons to talk to him and we've got no good reasons to make their job any harder."

"Do you think he did it?"

"I think I'd be doing what Kent and Dolan are doing."

Harper settled back in his chair, looking past me, digesting what I had told him.

"Do you think Corliss had anything to do with what happened to Tom Delaney and Regina Blair?"

"There's too much we don't know to answer that question."

"Like what?"

"Like why you, your sister, and my assistant were logging onto the dream project files like it was your home page."

He laughed. "We're all suspects, is that it?"

"I don't have any suspects but I do have a lot of questions."

"It's how I keep tabs on my projects. I don't have time to meet with everyone as often as I'd like and the project directors don't keep the hours I do."

"Makes sense. Leonard wasn't authorized to have access to the dream project files. Frank Gentry is figuring out how he did it."

"Fire Leonard. Today. Now."

"I'd rather wait. I want to know how he did it and, since we know he's doing it, we can monitor him. We'll learn a lot more than if we kick his ass out of here. What about your sister? Why would she be poking around in these files?"

"Let's ask her," he said, picking up his phone.

The door to his office flew open as he dialed. It was Sherry, her arms clamped at her sides, her hands balled into fists, her mouth trembling.

"Nancy Klemp called me from the front desk. One of the maintenance people found a body stuffed in a utility closet in the sub-basement."

The institute had two sets of elevators. One serviced the floors above the lobby. The other was for the parking garage and the basement levels beneath the garage. There were no surveillance cameras in the elevators and I hadn't seen any on the floors except for the one behind the front desk in the lobby. I didn't know about the parking garage.

"What kind of surveillance do you have in the building?" I asked Milo and Sherry as we got on the elevator on the eighth floor.

"There's the camera at the front desk and we also have cameras on each level of the parking garage and inside the elevator lobbies at each level of the garage," Milo said.

"What about the basement levels?"

"None."

"Does anyone monitor the garage cameras in real time?"

"No," Milo said.

"Why not?"

Sherry answered. "It wasn't necessary. A key card is required for garage access. We trust the people who work for us."

"Then why have the cameras in the first place?"

"In case something happens," she said.

"How long do you keep the video?"

She swallowed hard. "The cameras record over the previous day's video beginning at midnight."

"Who figured out that system?" I asked.

"I did," Sherry said. "It was the most cost-effective way to do it. This is a research institute, not a police state."

"It's also a security system without any security. If something is caught on camera, it's gone before anyone knows it happened," I said. "What about the key cards? Is a record kept of the dates and times people go in and out of the garage?"

Milo looked at Sherry, waiting for her to answer. When she didn't, we both knew how deep the shit we were in was getting.

"Well?" Milo asked her.

Sherry crossed her arms, shooting daggers at her brother. "We used to keep those records. Frank Gentry sent me daily reports with all kinds of crap, including that. I had too much paperwork to get through and I couldn't get anything done. I finally told him to quit sending it to me. He asked me what to do with it and I told him to get rid of it at the end of every day. He said there's no point in tracking it if we're just going to get rid of it so I told him to quit tracking it."

Milo stared at her like he was seeing her for the first time. She ignored him, her arms folded across her chest, her jaw clamped, and her eyes fixed on the descending floor numbers on the elevator display. I let it ride. She'd been in over her head and neither of them knew it. Making them both feel worse wouldn't make me feel any better.

The maintenance man was waiting for us when we got off the elevator in the sub-basement. He was Hispanic, bony, and older than me with close-cut silver hair and a matching moustache. An institute ID identifying him as Carlos Morales was clipped to a shirt pocket that held a pack of cigarettes, his hand involuntarily reaching for a smoke he couldn't have.

"This way, Mr. Harper," he said.

We followed him through a warren of concrete hallways painted white and marked by overhead pipes interspersed with pale florescent tubes, giving the subterranean space a dispassionate chill. We passed equipment and storage rooms until we reached the utility closet in a corner of the basement.

Nancy Klemp was standing in front of the open door, her face a quiet mask, her eyes unfocused and brimming. Carlos hung back as I shouldered past Milo and Sherry.

"Stay back. No one goes inside the closet."

Nancy nodded and stepped away, giving me a clear view of the body. It was Anne from HR.

The closet was wide and deep, at least six feet to the back wall where her nude body was propped up, her knees bent and legs splayed open, a broken shaft of wood stuck in her vagina, dried blood staining her inner thighs and the floor. Her head hung to one side, resting on her shoulder, eyes open, purple bruises ringing her neck. Her clothes were folded on the floor, her purse and shoes on top like paperweights.

I didn't see the ID badge and gold chain she was wearing around her neck when she gave me the set of new employee forms to fill out the day before. I doubted that the chain was sturdy enough for the killer to have strangled her with it, though he could have taken it if he was afraid it might have captured his DNA.

Her hands were at her sides. The ring finger on her left hand was missing, a bloody pair of wire cutters lying next to her. A bank of electrical boxes was mounted in the middle of the closet wall to my left. A tool chest sat beneath the boxes, one of the drawers open.

I turned to the others. "Nancy, have you called the police?"

"No. I called Ms. Fritzshall soon as Carlos called me. Then I came down here."

"I'm glad you did but I need you to go upstairs and call the police. I'll stay until they get here."

"I knew her," Nancy said. "She was a good girl. Real good. She was supposed to get married in June. Her boyfriend used to work here. I watched them dance at the Christmas party."

I put my arm around her. "I'm so sorry."

"Yes, sir." She hurried away, wiping her eyes.

"Carlos, when did you find the body?"

"Not more than fifteen minutes ago. I came down here to get some tools. I opened the door and there she was. Man, I couldn't believe it."

"Did you go in the closet?"

"No. I was too scared."

"Did you touch anything? Did you touch her?"

He was a small man, a lifetime of hard work written in the lines worn into his leathered face. He filled his chest and rolled his shoulders back, daring me to insult him with another question.

"I would never do such a thing."

"That's good to know. Wait back at the elevator for the police. Show them the way."

"I didn't touch her," he said, his dark eyes burning. "I wouldn't. I've got a wife and two daughters."

"I didn't mean anything by it," I told him.

"I'll tell the cops the same thing," he said, marching off, his back stiff, his head high.

"What about the FBI agents?" Milo asked. "Shouldn't we get them down here?"

"Not their jurisdiction," I said. "This looks like a sexual assault and murder. Kansas City PD will handle it."

"What FBI agents?" Sherry asked. "There are FBI agents in the building and nobody bothered to tell me?"

"There's a dead body in the closet," I said. "That trumps the FBI agents."

"They're talking to Anthony Corliss about Walter Enoch's murder," Milo said. "They think he might have had something to do with it because Enoch let him in the house to take the dream video."

"Milo," Sherry said, her hands on her hips, "you can't leave me out of the loop like this. Things are getting out of control and if you think you can handle this without me, you're out of your mind."

"I wasn't leaving you out of anything but after the way you mangled our security, that may have to change," he told her. "I'll be in my office," he said to me. "Anything I can do to help?"

"Yeah. Have HR pull Anne's file and put it on my desk."

"Done."

"What about me?" Sherry asked. "What am I supposed to do?"

"I don't care," Milo told her. "Just don't screw it up."

Crime scenes are like people. Some are a confused, chaotic mess, tormented by misplaced passion or uncontrolled rage. Others are organized and well ordered with little left behind that would lead to the offender's capture and conviction. And some, like this one, are staged to give the dead man a voice that screams look what I did and there's nothing you can do about it.

An autopsy would reveal the time and manner of Anne's death, though several things were likely. The bruising around her neck was evidence that she'd been strangled. The sexual assault could have occurred before or after she was dead, or both. The killer may have raped her with the piece of wood because he was impotent or because he didn't want to leave his semen.

The killer probably worked at the institute now or in the past since someone else would not have been familiar with the sub-basement. He probably knew Anne, or at least had seen her and singled her out, though she may not have known him. Several hundred people worked at the institute, enough that he could have stalked her without her ever having a hint that he existed until their one and only encounter. However, it would have been easier for him to get her onto an elevator headed for the sub-basement if she knew him and wasn't afraid of him.

Most murder victims know their killers, spouses and partners most likely to kill the ones they love. Anne's fiancé had worked at the institute and would need a tight alibi.

I thought of all those possibilities as I studied the scene from outside the closet. The other scenario I had to concede was that a serial killer was working his way through the ranks of people affiliated with the institute. A pattern was beginning to emerge.

Regina Blair had been first, pushed off a ledge, maybe even on an impulse. Tom Delaney was next, the killer becoming more proactive, staging a suicide, ratcheting up the violence with Delaney's gun. Walter Enoch's murder had been more intimate—a hand pressed over Enoch's nose and mouth, squeezing the life out of him in a careless effort to disguise the homicide as something else.

It was a pattern marked by the increased violence and boldness of Anne's murder. The careful staging of her body meant that the killer was in control of the moment of death but the pattern meant the opposite. The killer was losing control, taking less time between victims while becoming less clever and more savage. If I was right, Anne was the latest, not the last, victim.