The Dead Man

by Joel Goldman

  "You should probably take a look at this. She turned it in yesterday."

  It was a sexual harassment complaint.

  Leonard Nagel began asking me out in November. I told him that I was living with someone and that we were going to get married. He said he didn't care and that he would make me forget my boyfriend. He kept asking me out even though I told him to stop. Since then, he has continued to bother me and has made a number of graphic sexual references that are not welcome. I told him that if he didn't leave me alone, I would file a complaint against him for harassment. He laughed and said that it would be his word against mine and that I would be sorry if I did.

  "Who else knows about this?"

  "No one," she said, ducking her head, her cheeks red; a silent confession that this too had gone out on the inhouse wire. "She left it in an envelope on my desk last night. I was so busy when I came in this morning that I didn't open it until I heard what happened. Then Mr. Harper told me to bring Anne's file to your office. When I saw Leonard, I got so frightened, I started to shake."

  "Nothing wrong with a little shaking. Does Leonard have a track record for this sort of thing?"

  She nodded, taking a deep breath. "Another woman filed a complaint last year. Same story. Leonard came on to her. She told him to get lost and he wouldn't take no for an answer. She said he'd just show up out of nowhere and tell her what he wanted to do to her and how great it would be. She said she was scared to death of him."

  "What was Leonard's story?"

  "He denied everything. He said he complimentedher one time about a dress she was wearing and that was it."

  "How was her complaint resolved?"

  "She dropped it when her husband got transferred out of state. She said that she was just glad she'd never have to see Leonard again. I wanted to fire him but Mrs. Fritzshall said no because he could sue us since we had no proof."

  I knew from supervising my staff at the FBI that employees like Leonard could be fired without cause so long as the decision wasn't based on race, gender, religion, age, or sexual orientation. Connie could have canned him without explanation and he couldn't have done anything about it. Sherry had screwed the pooch on building security and personnel decisions. It was a good thing her brother had a lot of money. He would need it to clean up her messes.

  "The police will want a copy of Anne's file and the other woman's complaint. Make an extra copy for me. Do it yourself. I don't want anyone else seeing this stuff."

  She stood, her back stiff, the veins on her neck taut. "I'll bring the copies right back."

  "That would be great. The police will want to have a look at Anne's desk so make sure no one goes near it."

  "I'll take care of that. How long will it be before the police arrest Leonard?"

  "If and when the police arrest anybody is up to the police. Our job is to let them do their job. It will be up to the court and a jury to decide whether Leonard or anyone else is guilty of anything. Jumping the gun could ruin his life if he's innocent."

  Connie grabbed the handle to my door, leveling me with a hard-eyed glare. "I hope they cut his balls off and feed them to him before they execute him."

  I followed her into the hall where she blew past Leonard. He waited until she was out of earshot.

  "Did I tell you or did I tell you?" he asked, his be-mybuddy grin back in place, a thin sheen of sweat percolating across his forehead.

  "You sure did."

  "She say anything about me?"

  I didn't want to spook Leonard before McNair and Carter could talk to him. I hadn't wanted to lie to Connie Nichols but I had no compunctions about deceiving him.

  "Not a word."

  "Good to know. It's just that she's got her favorites and I'm not one of them."

  "I wouldn't worry about it. If she doesn't like you, it's probably because of the geography. You're up here on the eighth floor with the top brass and she's downstairs, probably stuck in a cubicle she wishes had windows and walls. Nothing you can do about that so don't let it get to you. Besides, you work for me, not her."

  He rose and offered me a fist tap, his grin splitting his face into northern and southern hemispheres. "You got that right, boss!"

  I sat at my desk chair, comparing Leonard to Michael Lacey. Their profiles were different: Lacey's long on probabilities and short on facts; Leonard's easier to plug in to what I'd seen in the basement. He'd snooped in the dream project files, made unwanted advances to Anne and threatened her. And, he had a track record.

  That was reason enough to put Leonard on the short list for Anne Kendall's murder and to check for any connections between him and Regina Blair. But his profile didn't put him in the ballpark with Tom Delaney and Walter Enoch. Looking for a unified theory, one that captured all the victims with a single killer could be a mistake, a cop's version of looking for love in all the wrong places.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Frank Gentry materialized in my doorway, his gray suit coat buttoned, his navy and red regimental striped necktie cinched tight and straight against a white, buttoned down shirt. The clock on my desk read five after eleven. I was tempted to stand and salute but waved him to a chair instead.

  "Did you find the report I left in your desk?"

  "Yeah, thanks. It's a good start, but I need more detail. Can you go deeper and tell me which subfiles each of these people accessed and when?"

  "Sure. Are you interested in any specific files?"

  "I am. There are videos of the research subjects talking about their dreams. I want to know who accessed the videos for Regina Blair, Tom Delaney, and Walter Enoch."

  "Not a problem. You have the report handy? I want to double-check something."

  I had tucked the report back into the envelope and put it back in the drawer. I took it out and handed it to him. He studied the envelope, frowning as he turned it over and tapped it against his hand and then got up and closed my office door.

  "That's not my envelope. I always write my initials in small letters in the bottom right-hand corner. Habit I got into when I was in the service. My initials aren't on this one. No wonder everyone thinks that little son-of-abitch Leonard killed that girl."

  I raised my hand. "What do you mean that everyone thinks Leonard killed that girl?"

  "That's the chatter. I'm amazed he hasn't been arrested yet the way people are talking. He saw me go in your office earlier this morning. I closed the door because I didn't like him watching what I was doing. After I left, he must have gone snooping, found the report, and then put it in a new envelope so it would look like it hadn't been opened. No way you would have known the difference."

  He handed me the envelope as Detective Carter threw my door open, breathing hard.

  "Where's your assistant, Leonard Nagel?"

  I looked past him at Leonard's empty desk and came out of my chair. "He was right there a minute ago."

  Carter lifted the two-way on his jacket collar to his chin. "Attention all personnel. Lock this building down. No one goes in or out. Find Leonard Nagel," he paused, looking at me.

  "White male, dark brown hair, five-ten, hundred eighty pounds," I recited, Carter nodding and repeating the description, looking at me again.

  "Approach with caution," I said.

  Carter added the rest and clicked off the radio. Half a dozen uniformed cops had gathered outside my office. Sanchez squeezed through the crowd.

  "We've checked the entire floor, bathrooms, offices, and closets," he said to Carter. "Caught one guy with his pants down but it wasn't Nagel. We're taking it floor by floor. I radioed for a search dog. We'll flush him out of whatever spider hole he's hiding in."

  Milo Harper was next, the cops peeling back to make way for him. "What's happening?"

  "Milo Harper, say hello to Detective Carter, KCPD homicide," I said. "They want to talk to Leonard Nagel. He was here a minute ago, but now he's gone."

  "I told you we should have fired him this morning," Harper said to me.

  "Fired him? W
hy?" Carter asked.

  "We found out he was hacking into confidential files on our network," Harper said. "Jack said we should hold on to him until we knew how he got past our system security."

  "I'm glad you didn't fire him," Carter said. "Otherwise, he could be on his way out of town by now instead of bottled up inside this building."

  "You think he had something to do with Anne's murder?" Harper asked.

  "We want to ask him some questions," Carter said.

  "About what?"

  Carter flipped the question onto Harper. "We understand that the murder victim, Ms. Kendall, filed a sexual harassment complaint against Leonard Nagel. What do you know about that?"

  Harper winced, hit by another dropped shoe. "Not a goddamn thing."

  "She left it on Connie Nichols desk last night, just before she left," I said. "Connie told me that she didn't see it until this morning. She also told me that another employee filed a complaint against him last year but dropped it when her husband was transferred. She's making copies of everything for the police."

  "I just came from her office," Carter said. "What do you know about the earlier complaint?" he asked Harper.

  Harper hesitated, blinking as the scope of his ignorance came into focus. "Nothing. My sister handles those things." He took a deep breath. "Is there anything else I should know?"

  "Do you do background checks before you hire people?" Carter asked.

  "I don't know but I assume you're about to tell me why we should," Harper said.

  "I am," Carter said. "When we found out about the complaint against Leonard, we ran his name through the computer. He was charged with date rape in Colorado a few years ago but pled out to a lesser charge. Part of the plea deal was that he had to register as a sex offender, which he did in Colorado, except he didn't register when he moved to Kansas City. Happens more often than we'd like to admit."

  Harper's face went slack, his mouth hinged wide, then bounced back. "How can I help you find him?"

  "We've got people waiting at the elevators on every floor and at all of the exits," Carter. "And, we've got teams sweeping the stairs and each floor. If he pops open a ceiling tile and gets in the vent system, can he find a way out we don't know about?"

  "The best he could do is hide but he can't go floor to floor. The only way he could do that is in the trash chute. It's big enough and there are handholds all the way down for access in case something gets stuck or the chute needs to be repaired."

  "Where do we find the chute?"

  "There's an interior corridor on each floor. That's how you get to the bathrooms, the break room, the stairs, and the freight elevator. The trash chute runs parallel to the freight elevator."

  "Where does it bottom out?" Carter asked.

  "At the loading dock on the ground floor. The trash is collected in a Dumpster and wheeled out for pickup."

  "When is the trash picked up?" Carter asked.

  "That much I do know," Harper said, looking at his watch. "Every Tuesday, about now."

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Harper and I caught up to Carter and Sanchez as they got on the elevator. I reached for the door as it was closing.

  "We've got it from here," Carter said.

  I let go and stepped back, slamming my hand against the wall. I'd spent the morning following procedure, playing the role of civilian bystander, my one concern to stay out of the way and not screw anything up and I was choking on the protocol.

  "I may not know half of what's going on inside these walls but this is my goddamn institute," Harper said, "and I'm sure as hell not going to sit on my ass and wait for the all clear to sound. My office, now."

  Carter was right and Harper was wrong but wrong felt a lot better than right. I followed him into his office where he stopped in front of a bookcase, pulling back the spine of a book that wasn't a book. The shelf parted in the middle, opening onto an elevator.

  We stepped on, Harper laughing. "It's good to be rich."

  "You convinced me."

  He punched the button for the ground floor and the car plummeted like an amusement park ride. Harper's face lit up. "They're taking the local. We're taking the express."

  "Where does this thing land?"

  "It goes to the garage where I park but it will stop on the ground level at the back of the loading dock."

  "Carter and Sanchez will get off at the lobby and then have to find their way to the dock. We'll be inside before they're on the ground."

  The prospect sobered Harper. "Should we be afraid of Leonard?"

  "He's running and people who run do stupid things. That makes them dangerous."

  "But you can take him, can't you? I mean he's younger, but you were an FBI agent, for Christ's sake."

  That was enough to make me look for the stop button on the elevator. Harper didn't know better but I did. He was one of the rich boys who kept score with their toys. The secret express elevator was one and I was another.

  "Carter was right. We should let the police handle this."

  Harper stared at me. "It's the shaking, isn't it? You're afraid we'll find Leonard and you'll come apart into a million little pieces. Well, you might and I might forget to do something that costs me millions of dollars. That's the road you and I are on but I'm not slowing down or getting off. What are you going to do?"

  I asked that question every day, wondering what I'd lost to my movement disorder and what I'd surrendered. That was the hard part of taking it easy, the balance I sought more of a deal with the devil, my soul for a steady gait, a quiet day for an empty life. Harper could afford to take chances because it was his money and that's all it was, money. I could put myself on the line, but I couldn't take him with me.

  "Go play in traffic," I said as the elevator stopped.

  The door opened and I swept my leg against the back of Harper's knees, lifting him off his feet and shoving him as he fell. He hit the floor, rolling against the rear of the elevator, banging his head, stunned and breathless. I pressed the button for the top floor and stepped out, the door closing behind me.

  The loading dock was a modest space, the twenty-foot ceiling making it appear larger than it was, the length of the walls matching the ceiling height. Surplus furniture was scattered along the wall to my left, the open door to the trash chute cut into the one on my right, overflowing garbage bags littered along the base of the wall.

  The Dumpster had been wheeled across the floor and parked against the entrance from the dock into the building. The door swung back into the dock, the Dumpster blocking Carter and Sanchez who were pounding and shouting from the other side.

  The overhead garage door, wide enough to accommodate two semis, was raised, icy air filling the dock. A uniformed officer lay crumpled outside the door, unconscious but breathing, the crowbar next to him and the lump on his head explanation enough.

  I jumped off the dock, slipped on a patch of ice and scrambled to my feet, catching a glimpse of Leonard beating a path through the snow up a hill rising to the east of the building. He was two hundred yards ahead and I was twenty-five years behind.

  "Leonard!"

  He threw me a look over his shoulder, stumbling, clawing against the snow with both hands and digging his way up the slope. An irregular line of pine trees ran along the crest of the hill. He grabbed a tree trunk, hoisting himself over the ridge as a news chopper zeroed in on us, the cameraman leaning out the open side.

  I ran after him, my street shoes no match for the snow, tumbling twice before I made it to the top of the hill. He was halfway down the other side, running and falling, jumping to his feet, hell bent for the northeast corner of the campus. I swallowed air and shouted.

  "Leonard! Stop!"

  Sirens and the chopper drowned out my voice, though I tried again as I sprinted after him.

  Volker Boulevard ran along the north side of the campus, Troost Avenue bordering on the east, both major thoroughfares. They were clogged with fast moving traffic now that the streets had been plow
ed, salt and sand grinding any lingering ice into the pavement, people in a hurry making up for lost time.

  Across the intersection, there was a wooded area on the right and the wide channel of Brush Creek on the left. Both would give him sparse cover though neither offered a way out. I was closing the gap between us but not fast enough.

  When he reached the intersection, he cut to his right, bolting onto Troost, dodging a car and a bus, horns screaming, the driver of a pickup slamming on his brakes, the truck skidding and fishtailing, the back end swatting Leonard like he was a pin ball. He cart wheeled through the air, limp and dead before he hit the pavement, spread-eagled on his back, cars rear-ending around his body in a chain-reaction collision.

  I weaved through the tangle of vehicles as people piled out, rubbing their necks and scratching their heads. I kneeled over him. His lifeless eyes were open, his mouth fixed in his signature grin.

  Wendy sent me an electronic birthday card a few months after she disappeared, signing it Monkey Girl, the nickname I'd given her when she was little. Simon traced it to a desktop computer in a reading room at the New York City Public Library at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. I was on a plane the next day, combing the library, staking out the adjacent Bryant Park, mingling with the crowds on 42nd Street and in Times Square and following the endless streams of people bubbling up from the subway or getting on and off buses.

  I found her three days later, staggering from an overdose on the sidewalk next to the park. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, people on their way home, rushing past her as if she wasn't there. I was coming down the library steps on 42nd, elevated enough that I could pick her out in the crowd when a kid on a skateboard sideswiped her, bouncing her off a guy in a suit who shoved her into a lamppost. She stumbled onto 42nd and collapsed, a taxi skidding to a stop inches from her head.

  I lifted her head into my lap, her glassy eyes struggling to focus, her voice weak and feathery.