The Dead Man (8 page)

"What kind of car are you looking to buy?"

She leaned into the sofa. "You don't give anything up, do you? I'm trying here. I really am, but you're not working with me."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying you need a place to live and I need your rent money. You need help and I'm willing and able but you won't give me a chance. We're stuck with each other. I'm trying to make lemonade out of this and you won't even admit we've got lemons."

"We may have problems, but they aren't the same ones. You can borrow my car on Monday after you drop me off at the institute."

The Harper Institute of the Mind sits on ten acres that was once home to a hospital. Harper tore the hospital down and built a 600,000-square foot facility for three hundred million dollars. It dominates the landscape, dwarfing any of the buildings on the nearby campus of the University of Missouri at Kansas City. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art stands in the near distance to the north, its closest architectural rival.

Lucy dropped me off in the circle entrance beneath a roof sheltering a courtyard and a fountain that had been turned off in deference to the freezing weather. I walked inside, stopping to admire a twenty-foot transparent sculpture of the human brain that hung suspended from the four-story ceiling. The surrounding circular walls were painted in varying shades of aquatic blues and greens, lighter colors ascending toward the ceiling, catching the natural light pouring through glass walls, creating an image of a vast sea.

On the far wall, etched beneath the institute's name, was a rhetorical question that joined the images of water and brain.
How Deep Is Your Ocean?
The metaphor made clear Milo Harper's vision of the institute. Understanding our minds required plumbing our depths. If the question was meant to be a guide to the perplexed, it was a success, inducing a sudden sensation that I was in over my head.

A stout, middle-aged woman wearing a name tag identifying her as Nancy Klemp sat behind a high round desk at the rear of the lobby, the elevators visible over her shoulder. Anyone wanting to go farther had to get past her. One of the best ways to secure a place like the institute is to staff the entrance with someone who will demand your firstborn male child as the price of admission. Nancy struck me as such a person. She wore a dark brown, nondenominational uniform that commanded attention without any obvious rank or authority. Her straight-backed, steely-eyed appraisal of me as I approached evoked all the authority she required. I liked her already.

"May I help you?"

"I'm Jack Davis. I work here but I don't know where. Today is my first day."

She picked up a phone and announced my presence to whoever answered.

"Ms. Fritzshall will be down in a moment."

"Thanks, Nancy. By the way, I'm the new director of security. I like the way you handle yourself."

If she was flattered, she kept it quiet. "I know who you are. Ms. Fritzshall told me to call her when you arrived."

"And who is Ms. Fritzshall?"

"Sherry Fritzshall. Vice president and general counsel," she said, her mouth twisting as if she'd swallowed sour milk.

"Mind if I ask, Nancy, how long have you been here?"

"Since we opened, two years ago."

"You're at this desk every day?"

"Eight in the morning until five in the afternoon. Every day."

"I'll bet someone in your job sees and hears a lot, more than most people realize."

She raised her eyebrows, uncertain of my intent. "I do my job. I pay attention."

"I have no doubt about that, Nancy, none at all. I look forward to working with you."

I reached across the desk and offered my hand. She hesitated for a moment and then took mine. Her grip was firm, her hand warm even though a smile was not part of her uniform.

"Yes, sir."

One of the six elevator doors opened. A woman emerged wearing a charcoal gray suit, her black hair pulled tight against her head, her fingers manipulating a Bluetooth earpiece. She shared Milo Harper's long, lean look, the resemblance most apparent in her sleek nose and intense, feverish eyes. She swept around Nancy's desk and looked me over like she was comparing my appearance to a wanted poster.

"Mr. Davis?"

"Still."

"Come with me."

I glanced at Nancy whose attention was fixed on something in the distance. I turned around, following her line of sight across the lobby, through the front doors, and onto the circle drive where Lucy stood, arms folded on the roof of the car. She nodded, got in, and drove away. Nancy looked at me for an explanation.

"My mom. She thinks it's my first day of school."

Nancy ducked her head, hiding a giggle. I really liked her.

As I followed Sherry Fritzshall toward the elevator, I heard Nancy mutter a fragment of the Twenty-third Psalm,
yea tho I walk in the valley of the shadow.

Riding in the elevator, Sherry Fritzshall welcomed me to the institute with a perfunctory recitation of its history while she fiddled with her earpiece, stamping her foot at its poor reception. She was a disinterested docent, making certain I knew that she had better things to do than escort me. Once we reached the eighth and highest floor, she deposited me in my office and promised to come back, saying it in such a way as to make it clear I wasn't to leave until she returned.

A young man dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt brought me a cup of coffee and said his name was Leonard and that he had been assigned to me, which was handy because his desk was right outside, and to let him know if I needed anything. He gave me a directory of institute personnel with office locations and telephone extensions and a sealed envelope that he said contained my user ID and password for the computer on my desk, making me promise to shred the contents after I memorized them.

Moments later, a young woman wearing wool slacks, a sweater set, and an institute ID badge hanging from a gold chain around her neck appeared at my door sporting a cheerful grin. She had piano player hands, her fingers long and delicate, a diamond engagement ring sparkling on her left hand.

"I'm Anne from HR," she said.

"That's some last name."

She giggled. "My last name is Kendall but everyone calls me Anne from HR."

I pointed to her engagement ring. "Looks like you won't be Kendall much longer."

Her smile vanished along with the light in her eyes as she made a fist with her left hand, burying the ring against her side. "Well, I guess I'll still be Anne from HR."

She gave me a stack of papers to fill out and instructions to return them to Leonard when I was finished. Filling out the forms, I got hung up on the question asking why I had left my previous employment. I had been forced out of the only job I ever wanted, told that the FBI would not take a chance on an agent who thought shaking was an aerobic exercise.

The diagnosis of my movement disorder is more description than explanation, the last neurologist I saw for yet another opinion apologizing that he couldn't help me. The shaking, muscle spasms, and contractions fit the tics diagnosis, he said. But, he added, the disconnected sensation in my head, a sort of visceral cognitive dissonance, brought on by fatigue and visual triggers, sometimes accompanied by weakness and loss of use of my legs, was not related to tics, was not some concurrent seizure disorder, and neither he nor anyone else could explain it. His only suggestion, made without enthusiasm, was a class of drugs known for their profound and sometimes irreversible side effects. When I declined, he said he understood and comforted me with the faint praise that I certainly was an interesting patient.

I couldn't argue with the FBI's decision to declare me physically unable to perform but that didn't make it any easier to accept. Not when the job was who I was. Not when I had chosen it over my wife and children only to lose them as well. Not when I rationalized those sacrifices in the name of the people I saved and served, especially those who'd been murdered whose silenced voices I had vowed to make heard.

The forms Anne from HR left me didn't have room for all of that. So, I scribbled my least favorite one-word answer:
retired
.

Since retiring, I'd done little more than wander, restless at being an otherwise healthy middle-aged man whose day consisted of roaming the aisles at the sporting goods store, taking in a matinee, or working out in the middle of the afternoon at 24-Hour Fitness, the youngest member of the cardiac rehab set, while the rest of the world worked. My one connection to my former life was the informal lunch group of retired cops. I stumbled whenever someone asked what I did; my confession to retirement sticking in my throat, grateful when the work Simon Alexander sent me changed my status to consultant. I took those jobs for the same reason I took the one Milo Harper offered. I only knew how to do one thing and I had to do as much of it as I could in order to breathe.

It didn't matter that those jobs reminded me why the Bureau had shown me the door. Or that they answered the questions Lucy had asked and I had refused to answer. Yes, I shake everyday but not all the time, more often than not giving no hint of my condition. And, yes I am scared to get behind the wheel when I'm vibrating and my head is fogged. I live each day like an acrobat on a high wire, always on the verge of losing control. I needed a safety net and, although Lucy volunteered, I wasn't convinced she would catch me when I fell.

Sitting behind my new desk, looking out my new window, watching the muddy water in Brush Creek meander through its channel across the street from the institute, I felt restored. I wasn't retired. I wasn't a consultant. I was an employee, for however short a time. I marveled at the curative power of work, the validation of being needed and the comforting structure of W-4's, group health insurance, and profit-sharing plans until Sherry Fritzshall knocked and interrupted my meditations.

"Here's your schedule," she said, handing me a sheet of paper.

It was a list of appointments with the institute's project directors. Sessions were scheduled in thirty-minute increments in a conference room on the eighth floor beginning at 9:30 A.M. Lunch was at noon with her in the institute's private dining room. The last meeting on the schedule was at 5:30 with Milo Harper.

"Whose idea was this?" I asked.

She tightened her jaw, holding back her first response. "Mr. Harper said you should speak to each of the project directors."

"Yeah, but whose idea was this?" I waved the sheet of paper at her.

"Mine. These people are quite busy. Scheduling your meetings was the most efficient way for you to meet with them."

I stood and handed the paper back to her. "I'm sure it is. Cancel the appointments."

Her face colored, either because she was angry with me or embarrassed at having to inform the staff that the new kid on the block had overruled her. I couldn't tell which and didn't care.

She brushed imaginary lint from her suit, the gesture calming her as she cleared her throat. "All of them? What about the one with Mr. Harper?"

"Especially that one."

Hands balled into hammerheads and jammed onto her hips, she fired back. "And our lunch?"

I cocked my head, gave her my most apologetic grin. "No, let's do lunch."

I escorted her to the door.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"For a walk. By myself."

Her cell phone rang and she turned away, taking the call. I left her in my office, waving to Leonard who jumped out of his chair.

"Hey, Mr. Davis! You can't go anywhere without this."

He handed me a Harper Institute of the Mind ID card threaded through a lanyard so I could wear it around my neck. My picture was pasted in the center. It was a headshot that included the shirt and tie I was wearing but no one had asked me to say cheese since I walked through the front door.

"It's a key card and an ID card," Leonard explained. Swipe it on the sensors to get access to the other floors. Mr. Harper said to make it a master. It opens every door in the whole place. Anne from HR forgot to give it to you. When she brought it back, you were busy so she left it with me."

"If she's Anne from HR, what's that make you, Leonard from the Eighth Floor?"

"It makes her hot and me horny."

"Steady, son. She's wearing an engagement ring."

"Yeah, but she's not wearing a wedding ring. Got to keep hope alive."

Anne had acted like she'd been sentenced to a hard forty when I mentioned her pending marriage, making me wonder whether Leonard's hope was built on inside information.

"Hope is good. So, who took my picture?"

"There's a video camera in the wall behind Nancy's desk in the lobby. HR freezes the frame and pulls it off to make the ID card. Saves having to stand you up against the wall for a photo shoot."

I had noticed the camera but not given it much thought. "Not bad. Who was in charge of security before I got here?"

"I was," Sherry said as she left my office. "See you at lunch."

I hadn't done any due diligence about my new employer either in my meeting with Harper or since then and it was showing. I hadn't considered whether I had taken someone's place and what impact that might have. All I had done was skim through the binder Harper gave me and piss off Detective McNair. None of that told me where the land mines were buried and I had just stepped on one.

Wendy was my best excuse for not focusing on my new job. I didn't think she had risen from the dead to confess to having stolen the drug ring's money because I hadn't stopped believing that she was innocent. I held onto the hope that if she was guilty of anything, it was of not being strong enough to contain her addiction, that her last couple of years of sobriety had given way to a final, fatal binge, making her vulnerable to the people behind the drug ring.