by Joel Goldman
"That's what airplanes are for."
We left it at that until she dropped me off, saying she had to go home and pack. Lucy was waiting inside with Roxy and Ruby who jumped me like they had just gotten out of solitary confinement. I sat on the floor, letting the dogs smother me. Ruby planted her front paws on my chest, demanding to know where I'd been while Roxy ducked under her chin, knocking Ruby from her perch as she curled up in my lap, the two of them starting over, jockeying for position, settling between my legs, their front paws draped over my thighs, their chins on my knees.
"It's good to be loved," Lucy said.
"Amen to that."
Chapter Fifty-five
The weatherman was right. The sleet turned to ice and the ice to snow and there was nothing to be done except to watch it come down. Ice slapped against the windows, encased tree limbs, and carpeted the ground, the perfect undercoat for the snow-fat, wet, lazy flakes tossed on the wind, piling, drifting, and blowing. The storm blanketed the region, branches and power lines snapping north and south of the Missouri River; roads and schools closed east and west of the state line. Local television gave wall-to-wall coverage with live reports from all the places we were warned not to go, headlights streaming in the background proof that some people couldn't take a hint.
I was one of them. Not that I left the house. Lucy and I were sitting on the sofa in the living den. She grinned and stuck the car key in her jean pocket, daring me to try getting it out. It was Quincy Carter's hint that I couldn't take, the weather and Lucy's protective instincts keeping me homebound for the night.
In that moment, she reminded me of Joy, not Wendy, and of a time when going after the key would have been worth the effort. I hadn't thought of Joy like that for quite a while, flashes of our early years welling up when she had shown more spunk and steel than any woman I had ever known, filling me with longing for past lives. I didn't know what triggered those memories, whether it was Joy's phone call or Lucy's mischievous smile or Kate telling me she was leaving, but they blossomed into a fleeting daydream that I was standing in a circular room surrounded by closed doors uncertain what was behind each: happiness or sorrow, the future or the past, the lady or the tiger.
"Hey," Lucy said, waving her hands a few inches from my face. "Anybody home?"
I blinked and laughed. "Just me."
"Well, don't even think about going out in this weather."
"Not a problem. I'm all in and all done."
"For tonight. Tomorrow will be a better day. You know what I think," she said, taking my hand. "I think our timing is good."
"Me too."
Her cell phone rang, her face lighting up at the name on caller ID. She jumped off the sofa, turning her back to me.
"Hey, you," she said, walking toward the kitchen.
"Tell lover boy I said hello."
She gave me the finger over her shoulder and kept walking as my cell phone rang.
"Jack, it's me," Joy said. "Is this a bad time? You were right about the weather."
I leaned into the soft cushions of the sofa, surprised at how glad I was to hear her voice. "No, this is a good time. We're really getting hammered."
"Every flight to Kansas City has been canceled. At this point, I don't know if the airline can even get me on a flight tomorrow. I may not make it back until Friday. I hope you don't mind keeping Roxy," she said, the strain in her voice apparent.
"Don't worry about it. Are you okay?"
She hesitated. "Yeah, it's just that I'd really like to get out of here. I'll tell you about it when I get home. Give the dogs a hug for me," she said and hung up.
I didn't believe her but the right to pry and push was one of the things I gave up in our divorce settlement. Lucy came out of the kitchen, took the stairs two at a time, and was back down a few moments later, wearing a parka with her backpack on her shoulder.
"Don't tell me you're going out in this weather?"
"Simon says it's not that bad and he doesn't live far from here. Besides, you aren't going anywhere."
She opened the front door, a mini-snow flurry whistling inside.
"I'll need the car in the morning."
"Sure, sure," she said, shoving the door closed behind her.
Roxy and Ruby were curled back-to-back on an easy chair. They lifted their heads, stretched, and yawned, jumping to the floor and trotting into the kitchen. I followed them. They ignored me, marching single file out the doggie door.
I made a pot of decaf and sat at the kitchen table. Simon's banker box was on the floor. I pulled his file on Anthony Corliss, poured a cup, and broke my promise to Quincy Carter.
Simon had found newspaper coverage about the girl at the University of Wisconsin. Her name was Kimberly Stevens. The article matched the details Janet Casey and Gary Kaufman had given me. Kimberly had been a sophomore. She volunteered for the dream project to get extra credit in her introductory psychology class. She drowned in Lake Mendota. Her parents sued the university and Corliss. The university settled the case, emphasizing that it was not admitting liability. The family's attorney, Eric Abelson, said the family was satisfied with the outcome of the case, though no amount of money could compensate them for their loss.
Kate had criticized Harper's lawyers for only talking with the lawyers for the university and for Corliss and not talking to the family's lawyer. I searched Abelson's name on Google, finding his Web site which boasted that he was available 24-7. It was almost ten o'clock. He answered on the third ring and listened while I explained that I was calling because of the similarity between his case and the one Jason Bolt was going to file.
"You know I've already spoken to Bolt," he said.
"Bolt told me he knows about your case so I assumed he'd talked to you."
"And you should also know that I sent him a copy of my file and I told him I'd do anything I could to help him."
"I know whose side you're on."
"Then why do you think I'm going to help you?"
"Because I'm trying to figure out whose side I'm on."
I listened to dead air while Abelson calculated his response. "You said you were working for Milo Harper. Are you still on his payroll?"
"I am."
"And Bolt is getting ready to sue your boss?"
"I know that."
"And you don't know whose side you're on?"
"It's complicated."
Another pause. "Are you recording this conversation?"
"No. Why would I?"
"Because I don't know what kind of crap you're trying to pull but this smells like a setup."
"It isn't."
"If you're lying to me and a tape of this call just happens to turn up, you and I are going to have some serious shit to sort out, you got that?"
"Understood. I'm not recording our conversation."
"I'll tell you what. How about I record it?"
"Fine by me."
"You're serious?"
"It's late, I'm beat, and I'd like to get past this bullshit so if it will make you feel better to record the call, hook us up," I said, my last words coming out in a tumble.
"What's the matter with your voice?"
"I have a movement disorder that makes me stutter sometimes and, like I said, it's late and I'm beat."
Another pause. "I just ran your name through Google. Are you the Jack Davis who used to be with the FBI?"
He'd been stalling while he ran a background check on me. "Yeah."
"Damn. Hang on. I'm reading the article in the Kansas City Star about the woman who was murdered at the Harper Institute. Is that what this is about?"
"Yes."
"The newspaper says this guy Leonard Nagel, the one who was hit by a car and killed when he ran from the scene, did it. What's all that got to do with Corliss?"
"The newspaper got it wrong."
"Where's Corliss?"
"I don't know. The police are looking for him. So am I."
"You think he may be the killer?"
"
Right now, he's the leader in the clubhouse."
"In that case, how can I help you nail the son of a bitch?"
Chapter Fifty-six
"Tell me the truth about your case."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I don't want to hear your opening statement to the jury or the payday speech you made to the university. I don't want to know the opinions of the whores you hired as expert witnesses. They've been paid and so have you. This isn't about Bolt's case and it isn't about money. It's about a murderer, probably a serial killer that's still on the street. I don't care whether you and Bolt have got a hard-on for Corliss. I care whether he's guilty. If he is, I'll do everything I can to take him down. If he isn't, I don't want to get it wrong."
"I was a prosecutor before I went into private practice and I still do a fair share of criminal work. I know the difference between proving a civil case by a preponderance of the evidence and a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt. I could have won my case against the university seven times out of ten but I couldn't have gotten an indictment against Corliss."
"Break it down for me."
"Kimberly Stevens was an emotional train wreck. She didn't belong in school, let alone as a volunteer in Corliss's dream project. That should have been obvious to Corliss. Instead of referring her for treatment, he took advantage of her."
"You could prove they were having an affair?"
"Her roommate says they were. She says Corliss cut it off and that's when Kimberly killed herself."
"Was there any other evidence of the affair? E-mails, phone records, that sort of thing?"
"She sent him some pretty torrid e-mails but he was smart enough not to respond. If he wasn't screwing her, the e-mails were enough proof that he should have informed the university and recommended that she get therapy. Either way, the e-mails made my case."
"Then why do you say you only had a seventy percent chance of winning?"
"Because any plaintiff's lawyer who tells you he's got a better shot than that in any case is a liar. You can prepare all you want but something unexpected always happens during trial and juries are unpredictable."
"Why no criminal case?"
"Kimberly drove to Lake Mendota by herself the night she died. She went for a swim and never came back. No one saw her go in the water. My experts called it a suicide but-and here I'm giving you the unvarnished truth-we'll never know for sure. It could have been an accident."
"Where was Corliss that night?"
"I don't know."
"How could you not know? That would be the first thing I would have asked him."
"Give me some credit. I didn't get to ask him that or anything else. The university agreed to settle on the morning I was supposed to take his deposition."
"Corliss told me that he didn't want to settle, that the university made him. What do you know about that?"
"That's bullshit. Corliss was covered by the university's insurance policy. The insurance company had to provide him with a defense, hire a lawyer to represent him, the whole shot. Except the insurance policy didn't cover my claim for punitive damages so Corliss hired a good friend of mine to represent him on that claim. After the case was over, she told me that the university and the insurance company wanted to go to trial but that Corliss was scared shitless about giving his deposition. I had made a settlement demand within the insurance company's policy limits, which meant they could settle the case and get Corliss off the hook for punitive damages. She threatened to sue them for bad faith for exposing Corliss to a judgment for punitive damages if they didn't settle, so they caved."
Abelson's information was like everything else in this case, filling some of the gaps while leaving the most important questions unanswered. Corliss was drowning in circumstantial evidence but there were enough holes in the case against him for any decent defense lawyer to exploit. There were multiple explanations for the incriminating evidence and nothing to place him at any of the crime scenes. If the prosecutor was as conservative as Quincy Carter claimed, he would run from the case, saying it was all shadows and no substance unless Carter or I could come up with something more solid.
"There had to have been a reason Corliss was so afraid to give his deposition. Maybe he was worried that you'd find out something he wanted to keep secret or that you had figured out his secret and were going to drop it on him in the deposition. You checked me out while we were on the phone. You must have done more than that with Corliss. What did you have on him?"
"I hired an investigator who worked backward from the time Corliss came to Wisconsin to the day he was born. He didn't have a track record at the other universities where'd he worked or gone to school. Not so much as a student complaining about a grade. What are you looking for?"
"Four people who were participants in Corliss's dream project have been murdered in the last couple of months. Each of them died the way they dreamed they would die. I think the killer knew about their dreams and staged their murders to mimic their nightmares. Each of them had also been abused when they were kids and the killer may have chosen them because of their history of abuse."
"I handled a serial killer case when I was in the DA's office. I'd say you're looking for someone who was abused when he was a kid."
"More likely than not."
"One of my psychology experts who, by the way is an honest whore, told me to focus on why Corliss became a psychologist. He said that a lot of people are attracted to the field because they want to figure out why they or their family are so screwed up. In Corliss's case, it was both. Turns out his family was a dysfunctional mess and Corliss had his own issues."
"Like what?"
"Like his father beat him, his mother, and brothers and sisters until one day his mother didn't get up off the floor. The father went to jail and the kids went to foster care. Corliss knew all about vulnerable kids like Kimberly Stevens because he'd been one."
"I'd say that made your odds of winning your case a lot better than seventy percent."
"Close as you can get in this business to a sure thing, except nothing makes me more nervous than a sure thing. What's it do for you?"
"Makes me nervous."
Chapter Fifty-seven
The storm died during the night, dawn breaking with the roar of grinding chain saws and the rumble of pavement scraping snowplows. Sunlight flashed across the frozen landscape, rebounding with a blinding glare, ice and snow a convex mirror.
The house lost power during the night, the digital clock in my bedroom saying three A.M., trailing my watch by four hours, when two enterprising kids who lived down the street rang the doorbell at seven, handed me my newspaper, and offered to shovel the driveway and front walk for fifty bucks. They laughed when Roxy and Ruby christened the snow around their boots, one of them exclaiming awesome, dude, while the other took video with his cell phone and uploaded it to YouTube. I hired them because my car was nowhere in sight, meaning that Lucy was digging Simon out of the snow instead of me.
I flattened the Kansas City Star on the kitchen counter, the headline above the fold-"Police Suspect Serial Killer"-knocking me back. A color picture of paramedics wheeling Anne Kendall's black-bagged body out of the Harper Institute was bordered on the right by a vertical stack of thumbnail headshots of her, Walter Enoch, Tom Delaney, and Regina Blair and, on the left side, by another stack featuring Milo Harper, Sherry Fritzshall, Anthony Corliss, Leonard Nagel, and me.
Mine was the Bureau's official photo, what we called the yearbook pose, eyes and head straight on at the camera, half-serious, half-smiling, and no toothy-goofy grin. It was the same picture the Kansas City Star had used when a reporter named Rachel Firestone did the stories on Wendy and the drug ring. She hadn't pushed when I refused to give her an interview, investigating the same way she wrote-tough but fair.
Rachel had the byline on this story, detailing the murders of Anne Kendall and Walter Enoch without embellishment, knowing that the facts packed all the punch she needed. She rep
orted that the police had reopened their investigations into the deaths of Tom Delaney and Regina Blair, citing unnamed sources suggesting that they may have been the first two victims of a serial killer that also killed Enoch and Kendall. A police department spokesman called speculation about a serial killer premature but declined further comment, citing the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation.
Special Agent Manny Fernandez, media spokesman for the FBI's Kansas City Regional Office, said that the Bureau was cooperating with the police department in the Walter Enoch murder investigation while also pursuing leads about another case that were developed based on the stolen mail found at Enoch's house, saying that they were close to making an arrest. Agent Fernandez declined comment when asked if the suspect in that case may be connected to the murders.
Firestone ended her story by reporting that Jason Bolt was filing suit against the Harper Institute for the wrongful deaths of Delaney and Blair, quoting Bolt's allegations that the institute had been negligent in its hiring and supervision of Anthony Corliss and alleging that the dream project was reckless, dangerous, and irresponsible. Bolt was quoted saying that he had been retained by Anne Kendall's parents and would be filing a wrongful death case on their behalf within the next week and that he was trying to locate any surviving heirs of Walter Enoch to make certain their rights were also protected. Rachel gave Sherry Fritzshall the last word, Sherry denying Bolt's allegations and calling the deaths of the dream project participants a tragedy for them, their families, and the institute.
The story stretched onto page two where there were sidebars written by Rachel and boxed in a panel alongside the main story. The first was about Leonard Nagel's criminal record, the second about the lawsuit against Corliss and the University of Wisconsin over Kimberly Stevens's death, and the third announced that Milo Harper had taken a leave of absence from the institute for personal reasons and that Sherry Fritzshall had replaced him as president. Sherry was quoted as saying that these changes had been planned for some time and were unrelated to the deaths of the dream project participants.