The Dead Man (10 page)

"Why do you suppose it was the one piece of stolen mail the dead mailman opened?" It was Dolan.

"Who says the mailman opened it?" I asked.

"You're saying someone else was there, opened the envelope, took whatever was inside and left it on the dead guy?" Kent asked.

"I'm saying you don't know what happened so until you do, don't act like you've got it figured out. How did Walter Enoch die?"

"The coroner says he had pretty bad asthma. Says his lungs went into spasm causing him to suffocate and have a heart attack," Dolan said.

"The coroner have any idea what caused the spasm?" I asked.

"Yeah," Dolan said. "Someone put their hand over his mouth and nose so he couldn't breathe. Enoch fought back hard enough that he broke his nose. Makes me think the killer was looking for whatever it was your daughter mailed to you."

"Which puts you right where you've been from the beginning," Dolan said

"Where's that?" I asked.

"In the middle," Dolan said. "Now, let me see you shake."

"You'll have to do better than that," I said.

"Don't let those guys get to you," Ammara said, as she drove me back to the institute.

"I hear you. They're just doing their job the only way they know how."

"Exactly my point," she said. "DC won't let this one go, you know that, Jack, especially when something like Wendy's envelope shows up. They're going to keep coming at you until they find that money."

We were stopped at a traffic light at Summit and Southwest Boulevard in the heart of the west side Hispanic neighborhood where Mexican restaurants and bakeries held sway.

I looked at her. "Why not let it go? Why not leave Wendy and me alone? It's not like they are going to return the money to the people who bought the drugs even if they do find it. They'll deposit it in the Treasury and the growth in the national debt will slow down for a nanosecond."

"You know why. It's the only way the Bureau can remove the stain. One of our people did this."

"Colby Hanson wasn't the only one."

"Yes, but he was the only one who was one of ours."

The light changed. We made our way south on Summit, snaking onto the Southwest Traffic Way.

"Not according to Dolan and Kent. They think I know what happened to the money. Hell, they probably want me for killing Walter Enoch."

Ammara dipped her chin and laid on the horn at a driver who shifted into our lane, though his car was two-lengths in front of ours.

"Assholes," she said, pounding on the steering wheel, refusing to look at me.

The other driver was alone, his offense imaginary and not warranting her outburst. The assholes she was cursing were Dolan and Kent, the message clear. I wasn't just in the middle. I was in their crosshairs.

As crazy as it was, it made more sense than my attempt to link Walter Enoch's murder to the deaths of Tom Delaney and Regina Blair. The police had investigated their deaths and found no evidence of homicide. The only thing the three of them had in common was their participation in the dream project, something they shared with two hundred and forty-seven other people.

My daughter had been in love with a rogue FBI agent who was involved in a drug ring. She disappeared when we took the operation down and later reached out to me in a way designed to keep her whereabouts secret. I found her, as she knew I would, though not in time. Every FBI agent I ever knew would believe that she told me what happened to the money before she died. If Wendy hadn't been my daughter, I would have joined the same church.

I wouldn't take the odds that Wendy had mailed me a confession and treasure map but neither would I bet against it. There were several possible explanations why her envelope was the one piece of stolen mail that was found opened. The seal was old and may have given way. Walter Enoch could have decided after all those years of hoarding the mail to start reading it and chose Wendy's as his first. I knew that neither of these was likely.

The most plausible explanation was also the simplest. Whoever opened that envelope knew where to find it and was willing to kill Walter Enoch to get it. Dolan and Kent had a long way to go to prove that I knew the envelope existed or that I knew that Enoch had stolen it. None of that mattered because they knew the one thing that mattered most of all. I was the only person they could think of who wanted to know what was inside it more than they did.

Ammara pulled up in front of the institute. Her shoulders were hunched over the wheel, her hands still strangling it. She knew the score as well as I did, her conclusions and mine no doubt the same. This morning's session had been well orchestrated, complete with her assignment as my return driver. She was the ultimate good cop, my friend and former colleague, the one who would soften me up with appeals to old times and reason. She was supposed to tell me to make it easy on myself and give Kent and Dolan what they wanted, even if it was my head. I liked that she couldn't bring herself to do it.

"It's okay," I told her. "I get it. You're just doing your job too. The difference between you and Kent and Dolan is that you don't like it. It's what gets those guys out of bed in the morning. Tell them that you gave it your best shot but that I'm the one who is an asshole. And tell them I don't know what happened to the money and I didn't kill Walter Enoch."

She nodded, staring through the windshield. "I'll tell them but it won't do any good."

"Sherry is waiting for you in the private dining room," Leonard said when I got back to my office.

I looked at my watch. It was one-fifteen. "Really?"

"Totally. It's on the other side of the elevator. Double door."

The dining room was actually several rooms fronted by a small lobby whose walls were paneled in teak and hung with important art. I knew the art was important because each piece was illuminated with a strategically placed light and accompanied by a brass plate announcing that it was on loan from the Milo Harper Collection of Contemporary Art. I studied one piece that was all wild color painted with wilder brush strokes and splattered with globs of black, deciding that I had a greater appreciation for the artistry of converting on third and long than for anything in Milo's collection.

A woman in a sleek-fitting green dress greeted me. Her porcelain makeup and high swept blond hair belonged on a runway.

"It's one of a kind," she said, pointing to the painting.

"Me too. I'm Jack Davis. Sherry Fritzshall is expecting me."

"Of course. Right this way."

I followed her down a corridor until we reached a door at the end of the hall. She knocked once, waited a beat, then held the door open, closing it behind me, sealing the windowless room like an air lock. More teak paneling, more important art, thick plush carpet, and padded walls made it a soundproof inner sanctum with a privileged intimacy that screamed I was lucky to be invited inside these walls.

Sherry was seated at a round table that was draped in ivory-colored linen, empty, food encrusted china and silver shoved to one side, reading from a stack of papers in front of her. She set the papers down, giving me a disappointed look as if I was her teenage son dragged home by the cops in the middle of the night.

"I'm sorry you missed lunch. It was salmon. The chef made a superb sauce."

I took a seat opposite her. "Something came up."

She chewed her lip, rearranged her papers. "Let me give you some advice. Don't underestimate me."

"I don't have an estimate of you."

"Oh, but you do. You think I don't know what I'm doing because I scheduled the meetings with the project directors without consulting you. And you think I resent that you took my place as director of security."

"Okay. I do have an estimate of you. Why am I wrong?"

"I have an MBA from Wharton and a JD from Harvard. I was Milo's chief operating officer before he sold his company. I know how to make things run efficiently."

"And I have a PhD from the FBI. We do security differently than they do at Harvard and Penn."

"Business and organizational management principles have universal application, including for security. There has to be a plan and a system to implement the plan and accountability for execution of the plan."

"All the business systems and management principles in the world won't do a bit of good if you don't have an advanced degree in crimes and criminals. Milo Harper knows that or he wouldn't have hired me."

"My brother is a romantic. He likes to dramatize everything from his perch thirty thousand feet above the rest of us. I operate on the ground where things happen, running this institute and protecting my brother."

"Protecting him from what?"

"From anyone and everything that might harm him."

"You can't do that. No one can."

"I'm his only family. No one will do a better job than I will."

"Which is reason enough for you to resent me."

"That's where you underestimate me. I grant that you have expertise that I lack. It's obvious that you lack what I have to offer, which is an encyclopedic knowledge of this place and my brother's complete trust. If Milo wants you to direct security, then direct it you shall, but you will not shut me out and you will not succeed without my help."

"Why do you think Milo hired me?"

She stiffened in her chair and straightened the papers in front of her. "He's afraid of Jason Bolt. We had to pay him off once before and he's worried we'll have to do it again."

"Have you read the police reports on Delaney and Blair?"

"Detective McNair showed them to my brother and me."

"That's not the same as reading them."

"I'm sure I did but I didn't memorize them," she said, shuffling her just straightened papers.

"Anything jump out at you in the Delaney report?"

She raised one eyebrow. "Apart from the fact that it was suicide?"

"Suicide is a conclusion, not a fact. That report is full of facts that support another conclusion—that Delaney was murdered. And if he was murdered in a way to make it look like his nightmare came true, I've got another conclusion for you. The killer may be someone who works for you and your brother. If I'm right, Jason Bolt is the least of your worries. Thanks for lunch."

I left Sherry picking her chin off the linen tablecloth. I'd tell her about the missing videos and Walter Enoch after I had a better idea where she fit in this universe.

I closed the door to my office, making it to my chair as the shakes claimed me. My back arched and my neck hyperextended over the top of the seat, giving me plenty of time to count the ceiling tiles if my eyes had been open. I gripped the armrests while my abs convulsed, crunching me forward then back, grunting like I was chasing Dante through the Inferno. The tremors eased, my choppy breath catching up and slowing down. I had made it through the day without shucking and jiving in front of Agents Dolan and Kent and, now, Sherry Fritzshall but I'd wound the spring so tight something had to give.

Leonard burst through my door. "What the hell was that? You okay?"

"Never better. I shake sometimes. That's all."

"Are you kidding me? You sounded like a remake of
Halloween
."

"I'll try to keep it down. I'm okay."

"Next time, give me some notice. I'll sell tickets."

People don't know whether to laugh, hide their eyes, or call 911 the first time they are exposed to my physical and vocal contortions; the more profound my outburst, the more intense their discomfort. Leonard's permasmile was upside down and his eyes were wide with concern that felt real. His joke harbored none of Agent Kent's malice. I returned his smile and waved him away.

"As long as I get ten percent of the gate."

"I'm cool with that," he said and left me alone.

In the old days, I would have spent the rest of the afternoon and evening knocking on doors, catching the project directors off guard, digging up what I could, stirring up the rest until I could sift it out. I wouldn't have started with Anthony Corliss and Maggie Brennan because I didn't want them to think I was focused on them. I would work my way around to them, letting word of my interrogations filter through the hallways, goosing the anxiety that might make them slip—if there was reason for them to slip.

These weren't the old days. I couldn't make it through a day with this much in-your-face face time without getting wobbly and I didn't want to take someone on when the brain fog was rolling in. It wasn't three o'clock and I was done, frustrated that I couldn't even keep banker's hours. Lucy was right. I needed help from someone who knew how to ask the right questions and could go the distance. I left her a message on her cell phone to come and get me.

My body settled and the synapses in my brain reopened for business while I waited, giving me time to make a mental to-do list. My ex-brothers and sisters in the FBI were building a murder case against me constructed out of fear and loathing. All I had to do to exonerate myself was give them the five million dollars they thought Wendy stole while convincing them that I'd known where the money was all along so they would believe that I had no reason to kill Walter Enoch. At least they wouldn't charge me with murder.