The Dead Man (39 page)

"That's a poor excuse."

"I'm a scientist and scientists don't make excuses. We explain the physical world."

"By killing people? What were they to you? Lab rats?"

"Not in the way you imagine, but in my world, yes. The study of trauma will only take us so far in understanding the brain. The real lessons come in controlling and observing the moment of death. Most of my subjects were tortured and tormented long before I chose them."

"How did you choose them?"

"The ones who'd been traumatized when they were young produced the best nightmares. Milo Harper asked Anthony for some good examples and Anthony let me choose them. I put them to a better use than he would have with his silly lucid dreaming nonsense."

"So you killed them in the name of science?"

"You mock me, but, no. Not all. Some were in the name of necessity, like Anthony Corliss. He told me that Gary suspected I was the killer. Gary even made a list with Tom Delaney, Regina Blair, Walter Enoch, and Anne Kendall's initials and gave it to Anthony as if that was somehow proof. I assured Anthony that Gary was more likely the killer after what he'd done to that poor woman's cat. Anthony suggested the four of us meet at the Art Gallery to clear the air. I brought my gun, knife, duct tape, and rope. The rest, as they say, is commentary."

"How many others were there?"

"Let's just say that it's a statistically significant sample of the weak and pathetic." She raised her hands. "And this house is the biggest and best souvenir of them all. This is where it began and this is where it will end."

She turned and walked out to the end of the balcony, her hands on the waist high wooden rail.

"It's over. Come inside."

She ignored me, rising up and down on her toes as if readying to jump. I crossed the space between us, the shotgun under my right arm, and reached for her shoulder. She whirled around, holding a knife in her right hand that must have been laying on the top of the rail, hidden from me, driving it toward my chest in a short, powerful stroke.

I dropped the shotgun, grabbing her wrist with both hands, the blade slicing through my jacket, piercing my chest. She clawed my face with her left hand as my grip slid along her right arm, slick with blood. Spinning again, she broke the grip of one of my hands and pressed her back into me, jerking the knife downward toward my side, jamming it in my thigh. I held on to her wrist with one hand, forcing the knife out of my leg, using my knee to separate us and pushing my other hand against the small of her back, trying to pin her against the rail when the wood snapped and she plunged to the ground.

"Jack!" Lucy called, running from the barn.

I watched from the balcony as Lucy knelt next to her, rolling her onto her back, shining her flashlight on the hilt of the hunting knife sticking out of Maggie Brennan's lifeless chest.

I sat on the bed in Maggie Brennan's bedroom, reading and rereading Wendy's letter, holding the page to my face, hoping to catch a scent of her. I closed my eyes, trying to conjure her, summon her, or feel her. I didn't shake but I did ache. When I opened my eyes, Lucy was there. She clasped one corner of the letter between two fingers, read it, and put it with the other souvenirs.

"At least you know," she said.

"Yeah, and I'll tell you something. Knowing isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes, dreaming and hoping is better. Where's Goodell?"

"Standing guard over Maggie's body."

"He must feel pretty good, knowing he was right."

"Unless he's crying for joy, I don't think so."

"He's crying?"

"Buckets. Says it's all his fault she got away with it for so long."

"Getting it wrong or being too late are every cop's nightmares."

"That's more weight than any of us should have to carry. We do our job the best we can with the evidence we've got and let the chips fall."

"The weight comes with the job. If you can't carry it, you should get out. And you and I are out of it."

"The public side, maybe. But that's not all there is."

"You want to go private? Chase deadbeat dads and cheating wives?"

"There's more to it than that and you know it. Simon has enough work to keep both of us busy. He's only sent a little of it to you but there's more. Plus, Milo Harper and Sherry Fritzshall are connected to everyone in town. After the way we cracked this case, people will be standing in line to hire us."

"Look around, kiddo. This doesn't exactly qualify for the victory column."

"Wait till you see what I found in the barn."

"More souvenirs?"

"And lab journals. It was like she was conducting some grand experiment. Some excuse, huh?"

"Scientists don't make excuses."

"Think about it," she said. "That's all I'm saying. We didn't deal these cards but that doesn't mean we can't play them."

I got up, walked onto the balcony, looked at the rocky ground where Maggie's body lay. Lucy stood alongside me. The moon broke through the clouds as Tom Goodell raised his head toward us, moonbeams catching his tears. He ducked his head and turned away.

"Deal me out."

Sirens wailed in the near distance, flashing lights bobbing along the county road visible in the dark from the balcony. Quincy Carter, the Johnson County Sheriff's Department, and the FBI descended on the Brennan farm, not letting us go until close to dawn. I was unconscious the moment my head hit the pillow.

I sat up in bed, glancing at my watch. It was almost eleven. I'd been asleep five hours, not enough to clear the brain fog. I rubbed the dressings on my chest and thigh, feeling the stitches that a paramedic had used to close the wounds.

I tried to untangle Wendy's letter from my dream. Her letter said hold on to Monkey Girl; all that's left of me belongs to
her
. In my dream, she said all that's left of me belongs to
you
, the pronoun making the difference, giving new meaning to her letter.

Monkey Girl occupied its familiar perch on the shelf in my closet. I took it down, kneading its synthetic fur, probing until my finger slipped into a fold along the inseam of one leg, rubbing against an implanted narrow strip of Velcro. I ran my finger along the inside length of the leg, then squeezed and shook the toy without finding whatever had been attached to the Velcro. There were no other hidden pockets.

I was certain that Wendy had left something for me inside the stuffed animal, her letter and my dream the clues. Whatever she had hidden, it had to lead to the stolen money. There would have been no other reason for her cryptic message. My dream had parsed the letter for me.

I sat on my bed, my gut sick at the realization that Lucy had also read Wendy's letter and may have understood its meaning. I was sleeping so soundly I would not have heard her had she taken Monkey Girl, removed whatever Wendy had hidden, and put the stuffed animal back.

I had asked Wendy what she would do the next time she was tempted by an easy, big score and she had asked me what I would do with the money if I found it. They were the same question but our answers were different. I knew what I would do and she was scared of the choice she might make.

I pulled on my clothes and went looking for her. The house was empty and my car was gone. If the dogs knew where she was, they weren't talking. I started to call her cell phone when the doorbell rang. It was Kent and Dolan. I'd forgotten that my forty-eight hours were up.

"We've come for the monkey," Dolan said.

"Anyone else, Dolan, and that would be the dumbest thing they'd ever said."

"C'mon, Jack," Kent said. "We've seen the letter your daughter sent you. Ammara Iverson knew about the stuffed animal. She's the one that put it together."

"You're telling me that you got a judge to sign a search warrant for a stuffed monkey?"

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way," Kent said. "The harder you fight us, the harder we come at you."

He was right and I was buying time until I could find Lucy.

"Wait here."

I ran upstairs, coming back with Monkey Girl.

"You can look at it here. You want to take it with you, get a warrant. Until then, you've got my word I'll take good care of it. Deal?" Kent nodded and I handed it to him. "There's a pocket on the inseam of one of the legs. There's a piece of Velcro inside. I don't know if something was hidden there, but if there was, it's gone."

Kent handed it to Dolan and stared at me, deciding what to do next when his cell phone rang.

"Kent," he said, listening, the veins in his neck bulging. "You're shitting me! That is total bullshit! All right, all right! Here."

He handed me the phone, grabbed Monkey Girl from Dolan, and threw it on the floor, pulling Dolan to one side, whispering to him, flapping his arms like he was drowning. Dolan's face turned red and he tried to push past Kent who bodychecked him.

"You son-of-a-bitch!" Dolan screamed. "We'll get you for this if it's the last fucking thing we do!"

Kent dragged him into the kitchen. I walked into the living den where I could see them, holding Kent's phone to my ear.

"Hello," I said.

"Jack, it's Ammara. I hope you know what you're doing."

"At the moment, the only thing I'm doing is watching Kent and Dolan pitch a fit. It's a good show but I don't know what it has to do with me."

"Don't play with me, Jack. This is serious shit," she said.

"I'm not playing with you. I have no idea what you're talking about."

She hesitated. "Okay. Here it is. We got an anonymous tip this morning that two and a half million dollars each was wired into Kent's and Dolan's bank accounts. We checked it out and the money came from an account in the Caymans that was closed immediately after the transfer was made. We don't know whose account it was or how the transfer was made but we'll find out and when we do, you better hope you still don't know anything about it."

I looked out the front window as Lucy and Simon pulled into the driveway, Lucy in my car, Simon in his. They got out and waved to me. Simon pointed at the government sedan parked at the curb, his eyes asking the obvious question. I nodded and they high-fived, kissed, and drove away in Simon's car.

"Maybe they won the lottery," I told Ammara.

"That's the best you can do?"

Dolan was on his phone, his eyes popping out of his head, Kent pacing circles around him. Roxy and Ruby raced in through the doggie door, jumped up on them, and peed on their shoes.

"What can I tell you? Every dog has his day."

After Kent and Dolan left, I showered and shaved, went to the grocery store, and came home. A taxi pulled in the driveway behind me and Joy got out of the backseat. She was wearing jeans, a down vest over a turtleneck sweater, her hair tucked behind her head, the only color in her cheeks coming from the cold. The driver pulled her suitcase from the trunk. She paid him and he drove away. We looked at each other, my arms filled with grocery bags, hers hugging her chest.

We were married a long time before we got divorced, long enough to know when something was wrong. I saw it in her flushed-out features, her slumped shoulders. I tilted my head at the front door.

"Let's go inside."

The dogs swarmed her while I put the groceries away. She sat on the floor with them, offering no resistance. I took my coat off and joined her. The dogs exhausted themselves, curling into our laps. I took her hand.

"Tell me," I said.

She cleared her throat. "It's funny. All those years I spent running from doctor to doctor and nothing was wrong with me except that I was a drunk. When I finally quit drinking, I quit running. Then, a few months ago, I felt something in the shower. I decided it was nothing, just my imagination. But it got bigger and I got scared and so I went to a doctor here and she sent me to M. D. Anderson."

"What did they tell you?"

"I have breast cancer, probably stage three or four. They won't know for sure until they get the rest of the tests back."

I let out a long breath. "I'm sorry. Is it curable?"

"Treatable. That's the new mantra. Nobody promises a cure."

"When do you start?"

"Soon. Surgery first, then chemo and radiation." She looked at me, her eyes filled. "If I live long enough, I get new boobs."

She dipped her head to my shoulder and I cradled the back of her neck in my hand. My phone rang. It was Kate. I didn't answer.