The Dead Man

by Joel Goldman

"That was some RSVP. But I'm glad Edie and I are not accomplices."

  "Your conscience is clear."

  She laughed. "A reporter with a deadline doesn't have a conscience. What happened back there?"

  "I told you that I'd give you the story when it's over and it isn't over."

  "And I just saved your ass. That's a deal changer."

  "For you, not for me. If you've got a problem with that, pull over and we'll get out."

  Edie slowed, swinging the wheel to the curb.

  "It's okay, Edie," Rachel said. "He's stubborn enough to get out and then all I'll have is a story I can tell but can't write."

  "Thanks," I said.

  "Don't mention it because I won't. Not in the paper, anyway. Makes me part of the story and that's no good."

  My cell phone rang. Caller ID said it was Quincy Carter.

  "Don't answer it. Turn it off," Lucy said. "They can triangulate our location using cell towers."

  I shook my head. "I've got enough problems without making Carter chase me."

  I flipped the phone open.

  "Hey, Carter."

  "Man, you are a colossal pain in the ass, you know that!"

  "What are you going to do? Taser me again?"

  "If McNair doesn't get to you first, only he's gonna shoot you."

  "I'll take those odds. He'll probably pull the wrong gun out of his pants."

  "Remember you said that. He just had your car towed. I'm asking you the only way I know how, stay out of this. Let me handle Frank Gentry."

  Killers, especially serial killers, don't look or act alike. They're the Cub Scout leader who bound, tortured, and killed his victims, the computer programmer who lived down the street until he snatched my son, and the crazy-eyed loner who strangled and gutted the neighbor's cat, bad seeds from worse homes with broken brains and disarming smiles. Knowing all that, I couldn't see Frank Gentry on the list and felt bad that I'd put him on it.

  "That's a promise I can make," I said and hung up.

  "Where to?" Rachel asked.

  I gave her Simon's address. She nodded at Edie and we left it at that.

  It was past five when Rachel dropped us off at Simon's brick and limestone ranch house. The driveway and walk had been shoveled but the clean concrete would be a faint memory if the front that was moving in brought more snow. A low, gray cloud layer was pushing dusk into nightfall, the wind picking up.

  "Nice job," I told Lucy. "If nothing else works out, you can buy your own shovel and go into business."

  She poked me in the arm. "It's good exercise."

  Simon opened the door and Lucy swallowed him with a hug. Simon eased her arms down to her side; his eyes and mouth wide open as he looked at me over her shoulder, his expression saying how about that. I answered with a nod and smile that said good for you but I'll break both your legs above the knee if you break her heart.

  "What's the latest?" he asked, leading us into the bedroom at the front of the house that he'd converted into an office.

  I dropped into a chair and told him what we knew, ending with Frank Gentry.

  "You really think it could be Gentry?" Lucy asked. "He looked as ordinary as mayonnaise to me. Came to work in a shirt and tie. How do you kill all those people and keep it together like that?"

  "I had one case where the killer dumped the victim in the bathtub, poured bleach on the body and then had sex with his girlfriend on the bathroom floor. Coming to work like nothing happened is easy for someone like that but I don't think Gentry is the killer."

  "Why not?" she asked.

  "Unless we find out that Corliss dreamt he'd be slaughtered on the steps of an art gallery, his murder breaks the killer's pattern of mimicking the victims' nightmares. Corliss was killed for a different reason. Plus, judging from the extensive stab wounds, the killer was out of control. We saw Gentry today. He didn't look like someone who'd gone over the edge."

  "Meaning," Lucy said, "the killer stays on the spree until it's over."

  "You ask me," Simon said, "things don't look good for Maggie Brennan and the research assistants if they haven't turned up by now."

  "I know. That's what worries me. Carter will spend the rest of the night questioning Gentry and the longer this goes, the more likely it is that all we will find is bodies."

  "We've been looking for a place the killer could convince Maggie and the others to go without a fight," Lucy said. "But Corliss was the only victim we found at the art gallery. Maybe the killer is picking them off one at a time, finding a place each of them is willing to go."

  "Makes sense," I said. "We don't know enough about Janet Casey and Gary Kaufman to know where to look but there's one person who might be able to help us with Maggie Brennan."

  "Tom Goodell," Simon said. "And I found him."

  "Where is he?"

  "Living with his son, like you thought. They're in Olathe."

  Chapter Sixty-five

  "Olathe is one of the fastest growing cities in the country," Simon said.

  "Really," Lucy answered. "Gee, that's fascinating. You know any more cool stuff like that?"

  He was driving, Lucy in front, both of them giggling, slapping each other on the arm, drunk on love. It took something that strong to beat back the fear of being too late again. I envied them.

  I was in the back, stretched out across the seat, my arm over my eyes. I had been riding the troughs all day, shaking and contorting, brain fog rolling in and out. The thirty-minute car ride was a chance to rest and buy time.

  "Does Goodell know why we're coming to see him?" I asked.

  "I told him you wanted to talk to him about a cold case. He asked which one. I told him the one about Maggie Brennan."

  "What did he say?"

  "He said it's about time."

  ***

  Tom Goodell had the collapsed build of a tall, once powerful man; his shoulders still broad but rounded, his neck thick but stooped, his chest wide, his belly overflowing his belt. His cheeks were pinwheeled with red spider veins, his hands were age-spotted, and his fingers were gnarled with arthritis but his gaze was sharp and clear when he looked me in the eye.

  "Missed you at lunch yesterday," he said.

  "Got tied up, sorry."

  "Well, come on in."

  He led us into the den where there was a fire burning and a television on. A small boy, maybe ten, was sprawled on the floor near the fire, staring at the TV. He motioned us to a couch across from the fireplace.

  "Hit it, junior," Goodell said to the boy. "Upstairs and get your homework done before your daddy comes home and kicks both our asses."

  "Both our asses, Grandpa?"

  "You bet, junior. Yours for not getting your homework done and mine for not making you." The boy scrambled to his feet and headed for the stairs. "Hey, boy! Aren't you forgetting something?"

  The boy blushed and smiled, trotted over to Goodell who bent down, offering a rough whiskered cheek for the boy to kiss, hugging the boy and brushing the boy's hair with his hand, the boy returning the gesture, tugging on Goodell's thin white hair, both of them laughing. Goodell waited until the boy was gone.

  "Okay, then," he said, settling into his recliner. "Let's talk murder."

  "It's a long story," I began.

  "You see that," Goodell said, interrupting and pointing to the television. "That thing's on the whole goddamn day. Keeps me company when the kid's in school and my son's on the job, now that he and his wife are split up. I favor MSNBC over those morons at Fox but I've been mostly watching the local news this week."

  "That so?"

  "It is so. And you see that," he said, pointing to a police scanner sitting on an end table next to the couch. "I'm not one of those old cops who sits around waiting for a heart attack or the balls to stick a gun in my mouth." He sat up in his chair and leaned toward me, speaking slowly. "I pay attention."

  "Then you know about the murders," I said.

  "You want me to recite their names for you? Your friend there said
you wanted to talk about Maggie Brennan. Well, then, let's get to it."

  "A woman named Maggie Brennan works at the Harper Institute. The murder victims were involved with the project she's working on. I need to know whether she's the same Maggie Brennan as the one in your cold case."

  "Why?" he asked, narrowing his eyes, bearing down on me.

  "She's missing. I'm hoping you can help me find her."

  He leaned back in his recliner, clasping his hands across his belly. "They're one and the same."

  "What makes you so certain?"

  "Unsolved case like that doesn't leave you. Not ever. You know that. She was the only survivor. I took an interest, kept up with her as much as I could. Lost track of her for a long time but I found her again when she moved back here."

  "Have you been in touch with her?" Lucy asked.

  "Just who are you, missy?"

  "I'm Lucy Trent."

  "What's your interest in this?"

  "I'm helping Jack."

  "You know what you're doing?"

  "I was a cop for five years."

  He snorted. "Another ex-cop. Well, I guess we all used to be something else. And, no, I haven't talked to her and don't plan on it."

  "Why not?" she asked.

  "You ask me that question again when you find her. Her parents, Sam and Gretchen Brennan, owned a place near Spring Hill, that's about twenty miles or so from here. It wasn't much, a few hundred acres. Sam's brother, Charlie, owned a place west of theirs, twice as big. The brothers inherited the land from their parents. Charlie was the favored son so he got the bigger spread. Caused all kind of problems between them but Charlie said they'd patched things up and we never did find anybody who could prove otherwise.

  "It was wintertime, fifty years ago this month. Early one morning, old Charlie, he goes over to Sam and Gretchen's place. He said he and Sam were fixin' to work on some fence they shared, get it ready for spring.

  "Charlie pulls up in Sam's yard and knocks on the door but he don't get an answer. He tries the door and it's unlocked which wasn't unusual in those days. Folks didn't have so much to be afraid of like they do now. He goes in the house and calls out a hello and he still don't get an answer. So, he goes looking upstairs and he finds Sam and Gretchen lying in bed, cut to pieces and bloody as all hell. Well, the sight of them damn near drives him crazy. He climbs in the bed, puts his arms around them and starts screaming.

  "After he calms down a bit, he goes looking for Maggie. Ten years old, she was. Same age as my grandson. He finds her hiding in the bushes outside the house wearing a little slip of a nightgown and near froze to death. That's when he calls the sheriff's dispatcher, crying and crazy, hollerin' that Sam and Gretchen are dead and he's got Maggie. He hangs up before the dispatcher can get anything else out of him. The sheriff, Ed Beedles, he hightails it out to Spring Hill and I'm right behind him. I was Ed's deputy. Been on the job ten years by then but I swear to Jesus I never seen anything like what I saw that morning."

  Chapter Sixty-six

  "We had a big snow the night before and it was hell getting to Sam's place. Some of the county roads in those days weren't much more than a dirt track.

  "By the time I got there, Charlie and Maggie were in the front yard, both of them covered in blood. They looked like something out of one of those slasher movies. Ed's out of his car, walking right up to Charlie, sticking his shotgun in Charlie's face, telling Charlie to let Maggie go only Charlie holds onto her like she's a hostage. I roll my window down, throw my car door open, and get a bead on Charlie. I holler to Ed, are we okay here, Sheriff, and Ed, he asks Charlie are we okay and Charlie says yeah and it's all over. He lets Maggie go and I stay with him until another deputy come and then I went into the house.

  "I find Ed in Sam and Gretchen's bedroom, just staring at their bodies. They were a mess. Coroner said each of them was stabbed more than twenty-five times. Ed, he kept saying over and over, what kind of person does a thing like this and I kept answering Lord only knows."

  Lucy asked, "Why do you think the killer spared Maggie?"

  "Don't know that he meant to. Maggie was in her bedroom. She had a balcony with double-wide French doors. She said when the killer came for her, she jumped off the balcony and ran and hid in the fields."

  "Jumped?" Lucy asked. "How far down was it?"

  "Two stories," Goodell said, whistling softly. "Two stories onto hard froze ground, barefoot, and in her nightgown. Sprained her ankle and kept on running. Haven't heard anything like it before or since."

  Lucy shook her head. "Doesn't seem possible."

  "No, it don't. No, it don't. We never did catch the killer, never even came close. This all happened right after the Clutter family got murdered out near Holcomb. Sheriff Beedles drove out to Garden City to talk to Smith and Hickock after they was captured but there was nothing to link them to the Brennan case."

  "Did Charlie's story stand up?" Lucy asked.

  "Sure did. He always told the same story and he passed the polygraph."

  "What about the physical evidence? Did that match up to Charlie's story?" she asked.

  "Well, you got to remember it was 1959 and we were a small operation back then. We didn't know CSI from ABC. There was a blood trail from Sam and Gretchen's bedroom into Maggie's room, led right up to the balcony. Maggie said the killer had hold of her, but his hands were so bloody she was able to squirm her way out. That's when she jumped."

  "What about the murder weapon?" Lucy asked.

  "Coroner said it was probably a hunting knife and Sam, he was a hunter. Charlie said Sam had a hunting knife but we went through Sam's things and never did find it. Could have been the murder weapon but we don't know for sure."

  "Did Charlie take Maggie in?" Lucy asked.

  "Nope. He shipped her off to his sister in California. Charlie sold Sam's place and sent his sister the money. The next day, Charlie drove his truck off the road and into a culvert and was killed. We ruled it an accident but I don't know it wasn't on purpose. He was never right again after what happened."

  "How did Maggie handle it?" Lucy asked.

  "'Course I only seen her a few times after that morning before she went to California. That day, she didn't say much except for what happened. She didn't even cry. I took her to the hospital, had her checked out. The doctor said she was in too much shock to cry. Still, I thought it was a mighty odd thing for a child to go through something like that and never shed a tear. The whole time the doctor talked to her, she just picked the dried blood off her fingernails like it was old paint."

  "Sounds like she was one strong little girl," Lucy said.

  Goodell looked at her sharply, hesitating. "She was all of that. Squeezed my hand like she was full grown when I walked her into the emergency room."

  "You said you've kept up with her," I said. "How did you know she was at the Harper Institute?"

  "It was in the Kansas City paper. They run a business section on Tuesdays with announcements of new people being hired."

  "The police have been to her home and she wasn't there. Any idea where we might find her," I asked.

  He nodded. "Her parents' place. I used to check the county records from time to time, just to see what happened to it, see if anybody would buy a place with that many ghosts. Maggie bought it right after she moved back. That's how I knew for sure it was her."

  "She told me that she lived in the country," I said.

  "She told you right. She bought her uncle Charlie's old place too. That's where she lived."

  "We need the address for Sam Brennan's farm," I said.

  "I expect you do," he said, pushing himself to his feet. "Be right back."

  He disappeared down a hall and came back carrying the sagging cardboard box he'd brought to lunch the day he presented his case. He put the box on the coffee table, lifting out a three-ring binder.

  "Murder book," he said, handing it to me. "You'll find everything you need in there. Best you take a look at it."

  I spre
ad the binder open, leafing through the pages. The crime scene photos were faded, more gray than black and white, though the close-ups of Sam and Gretchen's multiple stab wounds stood out in stark relief. The passage of fifty years hadn't diminished the photographs' power.

  There were more photographs showing each room in the house and the black spots on the upstairs hallway tracing the blood trail to its endpoint on Maggie's balcony. The coroner's report gave a dry recitation of the cause of death. Charlie Brennan's handwritten statement matched Tom Goodell's memory.

  And, there were newspaper articles from the Kansas City Star. The headline of the first read "Parents Murdered, Child Escapes Killer." The story was wrapped around a split-screen photograph; one-half showing the exterior of the farmhouse, the other half a picture of Maggie surrounded by dolls and scattered gift wrap beneath a banner that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I read the opening paragraph in the article.

  Early yesterday morning, Charlie Brennan discovered the mutilated bodies of his brother, Sam Brennan, and sister-in-law, Gretchen, in the Brennans' farmhouse in rural Johnson County, Kansas, five miles west of Spring Hill. He also reported finding the Brennans' ten-year-old daughter, Maggie, in the bushes beneath a second-floor balcony. Sheriff Ed Beedles said there was no evidence of a struggle, suggesting that the Brennans were killed in their sleep. He declined to provide further details, citing the need to keep the investigation confidential until a suspect was apprehended. "The Brennan farmhouse is a quarter mile from the nearest road. People who live in isolated areas without any nearby neighbors have to be especially vigilant to protect themselves from criminals," Sheriff Beedles said, noting that the Brennans had left their house unlocked.

  A second article a week later highlighted the sheriff's frustration at the lack of any leads and quoted his plea to the public for information that could lead to the capture and conviction of whomever was responsible. The last article, written on the fifth anniversary of the murders, quoted Sheriff Beedles's successor, Tom Goodell, who said that the investigation was still open though authorities had no suspects or hopes of identifying one. The article also quoted Maggie's aunt, Adele Jensen, who declined the reporter's request to interview Maggie, saying that Maggie was a normal teenager except for her recurrent nightmare that she would die the same way as had her parents.