The Dead Man (28 page)

"A couple of billion dollars complicates life. It will take a while to unwind everything, figure out what to keep or get rid of, and who's going to manage it. Sherry screwed up the institute's building security but she's good at straightening things out and she's all the family I have. I need her so I had to tell her. So," he said with a weak smile, "what can I do for you?"

We jump into the middle of other people's lives, expecting them to be waiting for us, surprised when they're too busy with their own problems to make time and space for ours. In a more perfect world, this would be a time to leave Harper alone but that wasn't the world we lived in.

"I ran into Jason Bolt yesterday. He was parked out in front looking at the real estate like he was getting ready to take over the title."

"What did he want?"

"He said he was sending you a settlement offer on Delaney and Blair that would only be on the table until the end of the week."

Harper laughed. "I give ultimatums. I don't take them."

"Bolt knows about what happened with Corliss at Wisconsin and he said to remind you what happened the last time you took him on and to tell you that he knows about Peggy Murray. He thinks that will motivate you to settle in a hurry."

Harper laughed again, shaking his head. "Peggy Murray! Damn. You know what's funny about Alzheimer's? The old memories last the longest. Some stuff is just too hard to forget."

"I know about her too."

He straightened, hands on his desk. "Bolt told you?"

"No. Simon did. He's one of the people I hired to help me. I told him to do a background check on you. He printed out the story on Jamie Del Muro's blog."

His eyes widened. "You hired Simon Alexander to investigate me? Why would you do that?"

"I had him run background checks on anyone that had a connection to Delaney, Blair, and Enoch. You're on that list."

"For Bolt's lawsuit," he nodded. "That's what Bolt will do. I guess it makes sense for you to know what Bolt knows."

"I didn't do it because of the lawsuit."

"Then why do it?"

"Delaney, Blair, and Enoch were dead. Anne Kendall was the fourth and Leonard Nagel makes five. I want to know why."

Harper rocked back in his chair, my meaning registering with him. "Everyone is still a suspect, is that it? Including me? Jamie Del Muro is a lunatic."

"Then why haven't you sued her for libel and slander and shut her Web site down and taken every penny she has?"

"I wanted to but my lawyers talked me out of it. All that would do is draw more attention to her. She'd like nothing better than for me to sue her. I'm a public figure which means people can say practically whatever they want about me. Besides, she's not the only one who takes shots at me. Like the song says, money can't buy me love. If I sued everyone who made up shit about me, that's all I'd ever do. Jason Bolt will have to do better than that to bring me to the table. You should be digging up dirt on Delaney and Blair, not me. What have you found out about them?"

"Delaney was murdered. Blair almost certainly was too. Probably by the same person who also killed Walter Enoch and Anne Kendall."

He smiled. "Great! Then I'm off the hook and Jason Bolt can pound sand."

Harper had a singularly egocentric outlook, more concerned about Jason Bolt's lawsuit than the likelihood that a serial killer was working his way through the institute.

"Why did you access Delaney's, Blair's, and Enoch's files in the dream project?"

"I told you. That's how I keep track of the research projects."

"There were two hundred and fifty volunteers in that project. You picked the three that were murdered and you looked at their files before and after they were killed. How does that happen?"

He rose, coming around to my side of the desk, getting in my face. "How do you think it happens?"

"You tell me. Was it an accident like Peggy Murray's bicycle running off the road after she designed your Web site or a coincidence like Kate Scranton's practice going under after she turned you down?"

"So that's what this is about? Kate Scranton?"

"It's about a lot of things. She's one of them."

"I hope you're sleeping with her. Otherwise, you're blowing the job of a lifetime for nothing."

"And you're blowing the chance to convince me I should take you off my list of suspects. I'd say that gives you more to worry about than me."

"Me? A murderer? First Peggy Murray and now four more people. I'd have to be one of the all-time great serial killers."

"More like one of the ordinary ones. You have to at least get into double figures to be one of the great ones. Serial killers sometimes go years between binges. It will be easy enough to find out if there were any other unsolved murders around Palo Alto around the same time Peggy died."

He took a step back, squinting at me. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"You're about to find out how serious."

He put his hands up and then wiped his mouth with one, holding me at bay with the other.

"Okay, okay. Peggy first. We worked on the Web site together. It's hard to say who came up with what. We were kids. We didn't know the first thing about intellectual property rights or anything else. Later, when the company took off, I made a deal with her parents, giving them stock for Peggy's contribution to the Web site. They had lawyers and I had lawyers. It was an arm's length deal."

"And what about Peggy's bike accident?"

He stuffed his hands in his pants pockets and circled the room, stopping at the windows overlooking Brush Creek, turning back to me, his voice soft, his throat full.

"We'd been out riding all day. Peggy was as competitive as I was, maybe more, always trying to beat me. Didn't matter if it was about getting the better grade or getting to the bottom of the hill first. She took off down this long steep hill, really kicking it. There was a blind curve at the bottom, no guardrail, and a long drop. It was the first time we'd been on that stretch, so we didn't know. I was drafting behind her. We hit some loose gravel and spun out and both of us lost control. I laid my bike down but she flew off the road. She broke her neck and I got a bad case of road rash."

His narrative matched the police report Jamie Del Muro had posted on her blog. I studied him, looking for the practiced recitation of someone expecting to be accused only to be betrayed by a liar's tics and twitches, seeing instead a face grimacing with pain, gone pale from a memory relived.

"I think about her everyday," he said, his voice a whisper, his eyes wet. "And I have nightmares about the accident two or three times a week. That's why I funded the dream project."

"Maggie Brennan says you threatened to cut off the funding if she and Corliss couldn't prove that people could learn to control their nightmares with lucid dreaming."

"The institute is a not-for-profit but that doesn't mean I'm in business to lose money. I'm rich but not rich enough to fund projects that don't produce results."

"How's the dream project doing?"

"Not great. I tried the lucid dreaming techniques and they didn't help. I met with Corliss at the end of November. I told him he had three months to produce results or I was going to pull the plug. That's why I looked at those videos. I wanted to see whether he was making progress."

"Why Delaney's, Blair's, and Enoch's videos? Why not any of the others?"

"I didn't pick them. I told Corliss I wanted to see some representative videos. Those were the ones he suggested. He said they were a good cross-section of different types of nightmares. After they died, I went back and looked at their videos again."

"Why?"

"For the same reason I built this place—to try to make sense of things. Look at what happened to Delaney, Blair, and Enoch and then what happened to Anne Kendall and Leonard Nagel. None of that makes sense. I don't suppose it ever will no matter how much money I spend."

I gripped the back of a chair to steady myself as a burst of shakes ripped through me, hinging me at the waist, dropping my chin to my chest. I managed my symptoms by staying in a comfort zone of modest and moderated activity. I'd been out of that zone for six days, taking a pounding that would grind me into the ground if I didn't back off soon. I took a long breath as the tremors passed, righting myself as Harper watched.

"And look what's happening to you," Harper said. "I don't know how you do it."

I wouldn't let Harper lump me together with murder victims. I wasn't dead and my movement disorder wouldn't kill me. And I wouldn't let his attempt at sympathy throw me off track.

"What about Kate Scranton's business?" I asked, one arm wrapped around my middle, one hand still gripping the chair, the words stacking up in my throat before stuttering out. "Is that just another one of those things that doesn't make sense?"

He went back to his chair, slumping then sitting up. "I'm a lot of things, Jack. Some I'm proud of and some I'm not. I'm smart, I'm lucky, and I'm a lousy loser. To be honest about it, I wanted Kate for more than her mind. She said no. I'm not used to rejection and I don't take it well. I admit it was a petty thing to do but I made a few phone calls, figured she might have second thoughts if she had fewer options. It was easy. I could fix it just as easily. You tell her that."

I took another deep breath, straightening and steadying myself, letting go the chair. "I'll let you tell Jason Bolt. I think he just got a new client."

He waved a hand, dismissing the prospect. "It's only money. Besides, by the time her case goes to trial, I'll be too far gone to know or care."

"For a lucky guy like you, that may be the best piece of luck you ever have. One last thing."

"What's that?"

"I quit."

He shook his head. "I doubt that. You're not the type even if you go off my payroll. You won't quit until it's over. That's why I hired you in the first place."

Sherry Fritzshall was waiting outside Harper's office, leaning against the wall. Her eyes were puffy, her mascara reduced to black smudges. She walked away and motioned me to follow her, waiting until we'd rounded a corner before she stopped and handed me her business card.

"Give this to Kate Scranton. Tell her to call me next week and we'll work something out and we won't need lawyers to do it. I only met her once but I liked her. Tell her I'm sorry about what happened."

"You can make that happen?"

"Milo agreed to give me power of attorney. By the end of the week, I'll be able to make anything happen."

"What happened to doing whatever it takes?"

She folded her arms across her chest, shuddering. "Sometimes it takes too much. After all this, after poor Anne and the others, after finding out what my brother did to Kate Scranton and how he kept his condition from me, sometimes it just takes too much."

"You surprise me."

She smiled, her face still sad. "I told you not to underestimate me. I hope I haven't underestimated you."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not accepting your resignation."

I was still employed, the building was empty, and I had a key card that opened every door in the place. The retired cops lunch started in a little over an hour. I could be late as long as I got there before Tom Goodell left.

Everything that I had learned pointed to Anthony Corliss. Both Walter Enoch and Tom Delaney had let him in their homes, making it likely they would have let him in a second time when he killed them.

Harper had threatened to cut off Corliss's funding if he didn't produce results, taking me back to my earlier speculation that Corliss might have killed Delaney, Blair, and Enoch in a twisted effort to use their deaths as proof that his lucid dreaming methods worked. Suggesting to Harper that he watch their videos fit with that scenario even if nothing else about it made sense, as if serial killers were models of rational thinking.

Corliss may have expected to get away with those murders or he may have been playing a game with the police, upping the stakes with Anne Kendall's murder, as Lucy had theorized, Anne's murder the only one that fit the rape-torture-murder stereotype that had made serial killers so feared and so famous. That Corliss's pattern didn't fit the serial killer stereotype reminded me of Maggie Brennan's caution not to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable.

I took the elevator to Corliss's floor, making a quick and careful circuit. The ceiling florescents were off, the only illumination from faint wall fixtures that cast more shadows than light. Doors to private offices were closed, cubicles empty, no printers, faxes, or copiers humming in the background, no classic rock battling country music from desktop radios, no hallway chatter about last night or next weekend. I knocked on Corliss's door, listening for any sounds from the other side, waiting long enough for him to answer. It was locked. I waved my key card across the sensor, hearing the lock release and opened the door.

Though I didn't need probable cause and a warrant to search Corliss's office, I didn't want to toss it like Kent and Dolan had done when they searched my house. If Corliss were the killer, he'd be alert to anything that was out of place or out of order and I wanted him to keep thinking he was smarter than everyone else. I studied the room, taking note of how his books were arranged on their shelves, how close his chair was pushed in against his desk, how three black pens were scattered at random across the desk while two highlighters, one yellow and one orange, were aligned side-by-side.

I started with the desk, working my way through the three drawers on the right, finding nothing of interest. I slid the desk chair out of my way and opened the pencil drawer in the center of the desk. It was a junk drawer, crammed with pens, Post-it pads, paper clips, rubber bands, and loose change. I massaged the mess, finding a small, single sheet torn from a notepad, folded in half and buried under a tin of peppermint Altoids. I spread it open on the desk reading a handwritten list of initials: RB, TD, WE, AK, the initials too easily translated as Regina Blair, Tom Delaney, Walter Enoch, and Anne Kendall. It was a dead man's list.