The Dead Man

by Joel Goldman

  "Except for one thing," I said. "Instead of helping his subjects reframe their nightmares, he may be helping to turn them into reality."

  "Why would he do that?" Lucy asked.

  "It's the rule of unintended consequences. It's not what he's trying to do but it's what happens," I said, repeating Maggie Brennan's explanation that lucid dreaming may help people overcome their inhibitions, causing them to do things they would otherwise never do.

  "Do we know if anyone else is doing this kind of research?" Kate asked. "Maybe they've had similar experiences."

  "I don't know about that, but this has happened before with Corliss," I said, telling them about the girl at Wisconsin who drowned.

  "If Milo Harper knew about that, how could he have hired Corliss?" Kate asked.

  "Corliss told him all about it and Harper's lawyers talked to the lawyers for Corliss and the university. They say Corliss got hosed."

  "Of course that's what they would say," Kate said. "They didn't talk to the lawyer for the girl's family. They made their mind up after hearing only one side of the story. Harper wanted to hire Corliss. His lawyers knew that and they made sure their client got what he wanted."

  "You don't know that," I said.

  "I know Harper and I know lawyers. That's enough for me," she said.

  "I'm a software guy," Simon said. "I can program a computer but I don't believe you can program someone to kill themselves. Besides, you said the mailman was murdered."

  "Jack, Simon's right," Kate said, "and assuming you are not a mad dog killer and thief and that Anthony Corliss and Milo Harper aren't crazy, what's going on?"

  "Let me take a crack at it," Simon said. "The way I see it, there are a few possibilities. First, Delaney and Blair weren't murdered but Enoch was, making for one crime. Second, Delaney and or Blair were murdered, making for two or three crimes that are potentially connected. Third, all three were murdered, which, given their participation in the dream project, increases the likelihood the murders are connected."

  "Which is a nice way of saying that they were committed by the same person. And, if they were, the killer may not be finished," Lucy said.

  "Are you talking about a serial killer?" Kate asked.

  "It's possible," Lucy said. "By definition, a serial killer has at least three victims and they usually share things in common. These victims were all volunteers in the dream project. And, they died—or were killed—over a short span of time with a shorter time between the second and third murders than the first and second, which is typical of a serial killer on a spree."

  "What's the timeline?" Simon asked.

  "Blair died on December tenth, Delaney on January ninth, and Enoch died last week on the twenty-third. The interval between Delaney and Blair was thirty days. It was fourteen between Blair and Enoch. If I'm right, another victim will turn up in the next few days."

  "So the killer must be someone involved in the dream project," Kate said.

  "Whoa. Slow down, CSI," I said. Though I'd raised the same prospect with Maggie Brennan, I didn't want my makeshift team running wild. "We're a long way from profiling a serial killer. They usually commit ritualized murders with a heavy sexual component. The murders look alike from how the victims were killed, to the letters spelled with words cut out of magazines and sent to the local newspaper. Apart from Delaney's, Blair's, and Enoch's participation in the dream project, we don't have any of that here. Plus, a serial killer doesn't account for Wendy's envelope."

  "The thing about the letters to the newspaper," Kate said, "that's just an example, right. You don't mean every serial killer does that."

  "No," I said. "My point is that serial killers operate in a pattern. They keep body parts as souvenirs. They like to taunt the police, maybe even insert themselves in the investigation because they think they're too clever to be caught. There's no evidence of a sexual component in any of these deaths. None of the bodies was mutilated and there have been no communications from the killer."

  "It's not like baking a cake. Just because it doesn't fit the pattern so far, you can't rule it out," Lucy said.

  "Agreed," I said. "But that doesn't mean we only focus on single white men in their twenties and thirties who live alone and are sexually dysfunctional."

  "And who set fires, abused animals, and wet their beds when they were kids," Simon added. "Hey, I watch TV too."

  I sighed. "Try more Food Network and less Law and Order."

  "What do you want us to do?" Kate asked.

  "Help me fill in the blanks. There are two hundred and fifty volunteers in the dream project. Each of them was videotaped describing their dreams. I want you to take a look at the videos and tell me if anyone jumps out at you on the secret psycho scale. I'll give you my ID and password for the institute's computer system."

  "Two hundred and fifty videos. Sure thing. Let me call the office and tell them I'm quitting my job."

  "Don't tell them that. Tell them you just got a huge piece of work at a premium rate. My budget is unlim

  ited."

  Her smile lit up her face. "That I can tell them."

  "Simon, I want you to run background checks on the volunteers and the staff that had access to the dream project files. I'll know tomorrow which ones actually got into the files. Let's see who's had a restraining order entered against them, who's been arrested, and who's late on their mortgage."

  "How soon do you want all this?" Simon asked.

  "Now would be just fine. Is that a problem?"

  "Were you serious about the unlimited budget?"

  "Milo said I could spend whatever it takes."

  "In that case, now is not a problem. It's impossible, but it isn't a problem."

  "What Kate and Simon are going to do may not be enough," Lucy said. "A lot of serial killers are charming people like Ted Bundy or the BTK killer in Wichita. That guy was active in his church and was a Cub Scout leader."

  "Look," I said, "we aren't going to make the same mistake Dolan and Kent made and assume we know anything until we can prove it. Why would a serial killer take whatever was in Wendy's envelope?"

  "One reason," Lucy said. "The killer was picking his next victim."

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  "I don't buy that," I said. "It's too random. It doesn't fit the pattern."

  "Don't underestimate the rules of randomness," Simon said.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "He's talking about the world," Kate said. "We like it orderly but it's mostly disorderly."

  "From coin tosses to baseball to the stock market, the world is random," Simon said. "Hitters and stock pickers have hot streaks but over time, they regress to the mean. In the end, randomness rules."

  "What's that got to do with murder?" Lucy asked.

  "Everything," Kate said. "Einstein said it is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of a complex of phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth. We're looking for an explanation that accounts for everything we know but if we limit ourselves to what's most obvious or most likely, there's a good chance we'll be wrong."

  "Maybe so, but the direct visible truth is what I know. There are facts in common, that's it. Even if they added up to a pattern, I don't fit into it. I'm not a participant in the dream project."

  "You are as connected to the Harper Institute as Delaney, Blair, and Enoch were, maybe more."

  "If you widen the net that much you make every institute employee a potential victim, which doesn't tell you anything," I said.

  "It's just as dangerous to make up your mind too soon that the case is one thing as it is to decide that it isn't something else," Lucy said.

  "She's right," Kate said. "It's called the Endowment Effect. People attach more value to the things they own just because they own them whether they're coffee mugs or opinions. That's why we overvalue our houses so much we can't sell them and it's why we have such a difficult time changing our minds."

  "Okay, I won't argue with
that," I said. "I'll keep an open mind but I still don't buy that a killer has put my name on a list. Let's get to work."

  Simon and Kate took over the dining room and Lucy and I went back to our poster art. She took the floor and I settled into the recliner.

  "Take me on the dead man tour," I told her. "How'd you get into Enoch's house?"

  "The back door. Flimsy lock. I have a set of picks."

  "Possession of burglary tools," I joked.

  "To be a crime, the tools have to be used to enter an occupied structure for the purpose of committing an offense therein. Enoch's house was not occupied and my motives were pure," she said, sticking her tongue out at me.

  "All charges are dropped. What did you find?"

  "Not that much, to tell you the truth. There were no signs of forced entry, which suggests that Enoch knew his killer."

  "With all the stolen mail sitting around his house, he wasn't going to let a stranger in. It had to be someone he trusted."

  "Or someone who forced his way in once Enoch opened the door. Easy enough if the killer had a gun."

  "Could be the same person either way. Enoch may have known the killer well enough to open the door but not let him in. That's when the killer pulls a gun. Best bet is that Enoch knew the killer. What else?"

  "Not much. The feds had emptied the place except for his clothes and furniture and there wasn't much of that. I checked the drawers and I went through his clothes but I didn't find anything helpful. When we were there the other night, it was like walking around in a giant storage closet jammed with junk. Today, you could hear echoes. He didn't have any pictures of family, friends, or dogs and cats. His television didn't work. He didn't have any books, magazines, or newspapers. This guy didn't just live alone. He was all alone."

  "You took pictures?"

  "With my digital camera. You want to see them now or later?"

  "Later. Did you break into Delaney's apartment too?"

  "Nope. I told the manager I was looking for a place to live. I had her show me empty units until we got to his. When I told her I was interested in that one, she told me that the last tenant had killed himself in the apartment. I told her I wanted to spend some time in the apartment by myself to see if that creeped me out so she left me there."

  "Any luck?"

  "Nada. I went over every inch of the place looking for a bullet hole the crime scene techs may have missed."

  "You picked up on the missing bullet they couldn't account for."

  "Hard to miss that when I read the incident report. It could be the key to everything else. The angle of the entry wound, the whole gun in the right hand and wound in the left temple, all of that bothered me. I figure the shooter popped him, then put the gun in Delaney's hand and fired a second time so Delaney would have powder burns on his gun hand."

  "But you didn't find another bullet or bullet hole."

  She shook her head. "Just like Enoch's house. It had been sanitized by the time I got there."

  "The gun was a Beretta 92f loaded with jacketed .9mm rounds. A thick book would stop one of those rounds before it got to the last page. The scene photographs show some bookshelves. We need to find someone who was in the apartment while Delaney was alive and can look at those pics and tell us if any books are missing."

  "What are the odds of that?"

  "Zero if we don't try."

  "I can go back there tonight and knock on some doors. Better chance that I'll find people at home now than during the day."

  "Run me through the Blair scene first."

  "She was found in an alley between a garage and office building, both of which are connected by covered walkways at each floor level. If she was pushed, the killer could have come from any floor of the building or the garage."

  "You find anything that suggests she was pushed?"

  "Maybe," Lucy said, putting a blank Post-it poster on the wall. "It's a simple physics problem." She drew a two-dimensional sketch of the profile of the parking garage and the alley, using a stick figure to represent Regina Blair. "Initial velocity is everything. If Regina slips or intentionally steps off the parking deck, her initial velocity is relatively low. She'll probably drop almost straight down. Depending on how she responds to falling, she could even land feet first," she said, drawing an X to mark the impact near the base of the parking deck.

  "What if she's pushed?"

  "Her initial velocity will depend on how hard she was pushed and where on her body the push was applied. If she was hit fairly hard, say between the shoulder blades, her initial velocity would carry her farther out from the deck and she'd follow a nice parabolic curve to the bottom, something like this," she said, drawing a curve out from the deck and down to the midpoint of the alley. "And if she was pushed, there's a good chance she was startled and would have been swinging her arms and legs in midair, which could widen out the curve, carry her farther across the alley."

  I picked up the incident report and studied the diagram of the scene. "Regina's body was found ten feet from the base of the parking deck. The sketch shows her lying at roughly a forty-five degree angle to the deck."

  "I'd say that's consistent with her being pushed," Lucy said.

  "Except we don't know if the homeless guy who found her moved the body. It's also possible that she didn't die on impact, managed somehow to stand up and then fell over and died."

  "That doesn't work with her injuries. She had massive head wounds. You don't get that falling over. You get

  that falling three stories and landing on your head."

  "What did you get in physics?"

  "An A," she said, smiling.

  "Well, I got a C but I agree with you. It looks like Regina was pushed. Were there any security cameras in place?"

  "None. Probably will be once the construction is finished but not before."

  "Were the entrances from the garage to the building locked?"

  "No, but I was there during working hours. The construction crew was still on the job."

  "More people to talk to. Find out if anyone saw someone."

  "Delaney's neighbors tonight, construction crew tomorrow. Don't wait up," she said, grabbing her coat and my car keys.

  "Where's she going?" Simon asked from the dining room when Lucy left.

  "Delaney's apartment building. Looking for witnesses. How are you guys doing?"

  Simon and Kate exchanged glances, each waiting for the other to take the lead. Simon raised his hands, palms out, in a you-first protest.

  "I found a log of the videos," Kate said. "They range anywhere from five to twenty minutes. Best guess is that they average around ten. Setting aside the Delaney, Blair, and Enoch videos, that leaves two hundred forty-seven videos times ten minutes which equals twenty-four hundred and seventy minutes which is a little over forty-one hours of viewing time. And that doesn't allow any time for replay, slow-motion, frame-by-frame analysis, or just plain thinking."

  "It's the same story with the background checks," Simon said. Entering the search requests for all those people, plus any of the staff you toss into the mix, will take me a few days. Then I have to match the hits to the volunteers, make certain I've got the right person. If something interesting turns up in the first cut, I have to dig deeper. Until I know what I've got, there's no way to predict how long this will take."

  "Then," Kate said, "we've to cross-reference the videos to the background checks, see if there are any videos we need to revisit based on the background checks or vice versa."

  "And your point is?" I asked.

  "Unless you can narrow this down, we need help," Kate said. "A lot of help."

  I shrugged. "So get the help. Milo will pay for it."

  "I'm a one-man band," Simon said. "I don't have minions at my disposal. Plus, we're dealing with confidential information and a murder investigation. I can't just call a temp agency and tell them to send over ten people who won't ask questions and who will keep their mouths shut."

  "What about you?" I asked Kat
e.

  "My father taught me how to read microfacial expressions. Alan isn't bad at it but he's not as good as Dad and I are. They're the only ones I'd trust with this."

  "Henry and Alan? Your ex-husband wants to drop the ex and your father wants to give away the bride. On top of that, they hate me. That's who you want me to hire?"

  "They only hate you because they think you almost got me killed," she said.

  I didn't blame them. I'd let Kate push her way into Wendy's case and she had almost gotten killed. She had given up trying to convince her father and Alan that it was her fault, not mine, but people hold on the hardest to the beliefs that get them through the night. Now I was asking for her help again and she wanted to ask them for theirs.

  "You think they'd be willing to help?"

  "Our cash flow is tighter than last year's pants. If we don't take this work, we could all be looking for jobs. And, we've got half a dozen staff people whose families are counting on their paychecks and health insurance. Simon can keep them busy. Dad and Alan will do it for the employees if nothing else."

  I looked at my watch. It was nine o'clock. "Do they work nights?"

  "For premium rates?" they asked in unison.

  "Ultra premium."

  "I'll meet you at your office in an hour," Simon said to Kate.

  He packed his laptops, leaving one for me, and left. Kate took her time. I stood behind her, rubbing her shoulders. She leaned into me and I wrapped my arms around her waist. She turned, hugging me, lifting her face to mine, kissing me. I started to shake, my head sliding down her neck to her shoulder, her grip tightening as my knees weakened.

  "I can stay. I brought my toothbrush," she said.

  "I'm fine. Besides, you have to get things up and running at your office."

  "Okay, but I'm leaving my toothbrush here."

  "Good. At least I'll have something to cuddle with."

  "Roxy and Ruby will be jealous."

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  There were times when I knew that the job could get me killed, when the people on the other side of the door might be high enough, stupid enough, or scared enough to shoot instead of surrender, or when the creep I helped send away might try to make good on his threat to get even when he got out. Those risks came with the territory, like living in Kansas City where the blaring of tornado sirens was a rite of spring sending throngs of people outside with their video cameras searching the sky for twisters instead of taking shelter in the basement.