The Dead Man (23 page)

"I'm in a dark place. It's not pitch black but almost. There are shadows and bits of light. I can't figure out where the light is coming from and everywhere I turn, I can't find anything to touch or hold on to. I start taking little steps with my hands in front of me. I'm trying to find my way out and my heart starts beating so fast I can't breathe. I'm sweating and I'm calling for help but I can't hear my own voice and no one answers. Then I start shaking and I feel cold and hot at the same time and then it's just light enough for me to see that I'm standing on a ledge looking down and there's no bottom, no end, and then I'm falling. I don't even know what made me fall but I can't stop and I scream all the way down."

She opened her eyes, tears streaming down her face as she shook. The camera closed in until her face filled the screen before going black.

It wasn't an unusual dream. I'd had dreams of being lost, of falling. Knowing her dream had come as true as any dream could made it feel real, infecting me with a fleeting sense of vertigo.

No one said anything as I downloaded Delaney's video. Corliss's voice provided the introductory narrative, the onscreen credits noting the date as December 22.

"Corliss told me that the research assistants are supposed to shoot the videos but he shot Walter Enoch's video and this one."

The camera was focused on Delaney. Like Enoch, he was sitting in the same chair where the police found his body, an entertainment center behind him, television in the middle, books lining shelves on either side.

"That's Delaney's place," Lucy said. "The entertainment center was still there when I was in the apartment."

"The videos were supposed to be done at the institute. Corliss said he took Enoch's video at the house because he wanted to know more about him. I wonder what his excuse is for taking Delaney's at his apartment."

"One thing is for sure," Lucy said, "both Enoch and Delaney would be more likely to let Corliss in if he'd been there once before and there was no sign of forcible entry at either place."

"And Kent and Dolan were interviewing Corliss about the Enoch case when Anne Kendall's body was found."

"Okay, okay," Carter said, "I'm paying attention."

I'd brought my copies of the incident reports on Delaney and Blair to the institute. I spread out the photos of Delaney's apartment the police had taken on my desk. Delaney's body had been found in a swivel chair, the chair turned with its back to the television. The photographs showed the body from a variety of angles as well as the rest of the room. Two of the photographs included the entertainment center. I froze the video image of the entertainment center and compared it to the photographs.

"Look at the shelf to the left of the television," I said. "In the video, the shelf is full. In the photographs, it's half empty. Something is missing."

"So what?" Carter said.

"So the killer could have shot Delaney, put the gun in his hand, and fired it again into a couple of books. Delaney ends up with powder burns on his hand. The bullet ends up in one of the books and the killer takes the books and the missing bullet with him."

Carter stepped back from the monitor. "That's what you want me to hang my hat on? No disrespect, Jack, but all that shaking you been doing must have scrambled your brain."

"What about the angle of entry of the bullet? You really think Delaney committed suicide by wrapping his arm around his head to shoot himself? That's crazy!"

"Committing suicide is just one of the crazy things crazy people do," Carter said. "I'm out of here."

"At least stay and watch the rest," I said.

"What for? I got enough nightmares of my own. I don't need nobody else's."

"Five minutes. That's all I'm asking. You said you need the overtime."

Carter let out a long breath. "You don't give up, do you, man?"

"Not yet."

I pushed the play button and the three of us watched, shoulder-to-shoulder. Corliss coaxed and coached Delaney through the preliminaries, Delaney agreeing to the videotaping, acknowledging that the video may be shown to others and that Delaney understood that this was for research purposes only and that no treatment was being given. Delaney showed no emotion throughout the exchange, his face flat, his voice flatter. Then Corliss steered the conversation to Delaney's nightmare.

CORLISS: How are you feeling, Tom?

DELANEY: Like shit.

CORLISS: Are you sleeping?

DELANEY: Some. Not much.

CORLISS: Why not?

DELANEY: I don't know.

CORLISS: What happens when you sleep?

DELANEY: I keep having the same dream.

CORLISS: Tell me about the dream.

DELANEY: I already told you when I signed up for the project.

CORLISS: I know you did. That's why I wanted to make this videotape. Your dream is important to the project.

DELANEY: Okay. I'm sitting right here. In this chair. I take my gun and put it up against my head, like this.

He lifted his shirt and pulled the Beretta from his waistband with his right hand and placed the barrel flush against his right temple.

CORLISS: But you don't pull the trigger in your dream. Why not?

DELANEY: 'Cause I'm a chicken-shit loser, that's why." CORLISS: It's okay, Tom. Put the gun away."

I paused the video, looking at Carter.

"You see what he did with the gun?" Lucy asked. "Right hand to right temple. No wrap around gymnastics."

"Yeah, I see it," Carter said.

"Still think I got a whole lot of nothing?" I asked Carter.

"I think you got enough for a third look. Give me your cell number." I wrote it out for him and he handed me his card. "E-mail address is on there. Shoot that video to me," he said and left.

"Had enough for one day?" Lucy asked.

"Two dead people are two more than my daily limit."

"I had to park a couple of blocks away. I'll get the car and meet you in the circle drive."

"I can walk, you know."

"I know. Makes me feel better if you let me get the car."

I'd learned that it helps some people to help me even if I didn't need the help, a gentle reminder that nothing happens to just one person.

"Fair enough. I'll meet you downstairs in ten minutes."

I watched the rest of Delaney's video. Corliss took him through the dream sequence several more times, but Delaney didn't change a detail. Each time, he pulled out his gun with his right hand, held it to his right temple, and stuck it back in his pants when Corliss told him to do so, Corliss never asking or checking whether the gun was loaded. The more they went through the motions, the more it began to look like they were rehearsing a one-act play though I doubted Delaney realized it would close on opening night.

I e-mailed Delaney's video to Carter, downloaded it to my flash drive, and packed the incident reports into the canvas satchel that passed as my briefcase. The rest of the institute's employees must have taken to heart Sherry's suggestion that everyone go home early because the halls were quiet and empty and one of the elevators opened the instant I pushed the call button. For the second day in a row, it stopped on the third floor and Maggie Brennan stepped on. She had replaced her gray scarf and gray coat with an identical version in black.

"It seems we're fated to make this trip together," she said.

"I could do worse."

She tilted her head at me. "I'm not so certain but thank you for the vote of confidence."

"You're welcome. New coat?"

She raised her arm. "I finally tired of the other one."

"Some day, huh? It's good that everyone gets tomorrow off."

She nodded. "A day of rest suits me. The police talked to me and I heard what happened with that young man. Do you think he killed that girl?"

"He had a reason to run. That could have been it."

"You don't sound convinced."

"Let's just say I'm agnostic on the subject," parroting her uncertainty about the dream project.

She smiled. "Are you teasing me?"

"A little. Truth is I like to take my time before accepting a quick and easy answer to something as hard to figure out as murder."

"Then you would have made a good scientist. I heard talk that the young man, what was his name?"

"Leonard Nagel."

"Yes. Leonard. I heard that he had been in trouble before."

"He had. He may have been guilty or he may just have been running from his past."

"The past is difficult to outrun. It chases us like the sound of the driven leaf."

"You've lost me."

"It's from Leviticus," she said, reciting the verse. "'As for those of you who survive, I will cast a faintness into their hearts in the land of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight. Fleeing as though from the sword, they shall fall though none pursues.'"

The elevator stopped on the ground floor and we stepped out.

"What does that have to do with Leonard?"

"He'd sinned and survived. That made him weaker, not stronger, afraid of the simplest and smallest things, like the sound of a driven leaf. Perhaps that's what drove him into that intersection."

"But he was pursued. I was chasing him."

"I've known many people like your Leonard. He wasn't running from you. He was running from himself and none of us wins that race."

Lucy had parked my car in the circle drive, the passenger window down. She waved as I passed through the doors of the institute, the last of the low-angled sun slicing through the trees, disappearing at my feet. The day, though at its end, had warmed, as winter days in Kansas City will do, turning snow to slush and stoking frozen bones with the promise that spring was around the corner no matter how far the bend in the road.

Gone were the squad cars, fire trucks, ambulances, news crews, and gawkers. Gone too were the frightened and anxious people who worked here, the loss of two of their own seeding their nightmares, leaving them rattled and relieved that they had survived the day. In their place was an empty after-hours quiet. The hum of homebound traffic hung in the air, a white noise reminder that loved ones will be home for dinner, the sun will set and rise, and we will begin again.

That faith in normalcy, that bedrock certainty that there are more good guys than bad, that hard-eyed survivor's optimism, gets us through the night and emboldens us to take on the day. It will allow Carlos Morales to one day go searching for tools in the sub-basement closet where Anne Kendall was murdered without imagining her violated body pressed against the wall and allow Connie Nichols to drive through the intersection where Leonard Nagel died without muttering under her breath that he got what he deserved and not caring whether he did.

Underlying all of that is our shared faith in justice— that whoever takes a life will be called to account by those who have sworn to take up that burden. I took that oath when I joined the FBI and though my badge had been taken from me, I couldn't set that burden down.

A black sedan cruised into the circle drive, stopping between Lucy and me, Ammara Iverson at the wheel, Dolan in the passenger seat, and Kent in the back. Dolan stepped out, opened the rear door, and thumb-jerked an invitation. Lucy jumped out of my car, stopping when I waved her off.

"It's okay," I told her as I unzipped my jacket and cradled my satchel under my arm.

I slid into the backseat, Dolan slamming the door like he wanted to throw away the key.

"We're double-dating? No wonder Dolan's so testy. He's jealous that you're in the back with me," I said to Kent.

"Do me a favor, don't start," Kent said. "I don't need you jamming him every time you open your mouth."

"And I don't need you guys popping up like the Pills-bury doughboy every time I turn around and riding my ass."

Kent let out a sigh. "Maybe we can work it out so we don't have to."

"Right. Next thing, Dolan will tell me he'll respect me in the morning and it's only a cold sore."

Dolan cursed and pivoted in his seat, ready to climb into the back. Ammara grabbed his arm before he could finish the turn and backed me off with a hot look.

"Let's take a walk, just you and me," Kent said, throwing his door open, climbing out of the car and cinching the belt on his trench coat.

We took it slow, following the circle drive toward the street. He rolled his shoulders and twisted his neck, getting loose, making it easier to say what he had to say, the words sticking.

"I'm not going to apologize for how we came at you," Kent said. "Take yourself and your daughter out of it, look at it the way you would have if you'd been us, and you would have done it the same way."

"I don't need an apology but I'd like to think I would have done it different."

"Oh, yeah. What would you have done?"

"Let it go. Wendy is dead and the rest of them are dead or in jail. I lost my daughter and my job. I don't give a crap about the money. Finding it won't change a damn thing for the Bureau or me. You want to work a cold case, find one that matters."

"Brass in DC doesn't see it that way, especially after this whole thing with the mailman. The way that touches you, forces our hand. We got no choice now and you know that."

I stopped and turned toward him. "Look, I don't know what was in the envelope Wendy sent me. I don't know where the money is and I didn't kill Walter Enoch. You tried bracing me downtown with the worst good cop, bad cop duet I've ever seen, though I got to admit that Dolan is born to the asshole role. Then you tried the soft soap with Ammara and now this, a mix of the high-low. What's next?"

Kent gave me a weak smile and gestured toward the street, keeping us moving. "Coroner makes Enoch's time of death sometime between ten o'clock Wednesday night and two o'clock Thursday morning. You got an alibi for that window?"