Joel Goldman - The Dead Man

McNair wiped sauce off his chin. "That's cause there weren't any other witnesses."

"No one heard a gunshot?"

"Uniforms knocked on some doors. Nobody heard nothing."

"What about Delaney's family? Had he threatened suicide before? Was he depressed?"

"His parents said he'd been treated for depression since he got back from his tours of duty in Iraq. I watched that goofy video he made for Harper's people. All the guy talked about was killing himself. Finally got around to doing it."

"Any chance it wasn't suicide?"

"What you mean? You think someone killed him?"

I gave him my take. "Any reason someone would have wanted to kill him?"

McNair shrugged. "Delaney was a newspaper distributor for the Kansas City Star which meant he worked middle of the night until mid-morning. Only people mad at him are the ones who didn't get their paper on time. Who's gonna want to kill him? Look," he said, hunching over his desk, "the guy offed himself. That's what the coroner's report says. That's what he dreamed of doing. End of story."

"What about Regina Blair?"

"Dizzy bitch. She's the goddamn architect on this building, which includes the parking garage, and she's scared of heights. So what's she doing standing on the edge three stories up, especially when the concrete was slippery as goose shit. You tell me that? OSHA fined her firm a thousand bucks for not putting up barriers, like it was their fault she was an idiot. Load of crap, you ask me."

"Any chance hers wasn't an accident?"

"Not unless she jumped and she didn't leave a note."

"Neither did Delaney. There are no witness statements in her file either. Did your uniforms bother to knock on any doors on this one?"

McNair swept the remains of the ribs into his wastebasket and turned the volume down on his radio. He stood, planted his palms on his desk, and hung his head, smiling the thin, tight-lipped smile of the trod upon, then turned on me.

"Listen, hotshot, these weren't my cases. I got them when Jason Bolt called the chief and told him to reopen the cases or get sued. The chief promised he'd have someone take another look so I took another look and I didn't see anything new because there wasn't anything new to see."

"You didn't think it unusual that Delaney and Blair both died the exact same way they dreamed they would within a month of one another and that both were participants in this dream project?"

"What? Bolt wants to collect from your boss on these cases and you want to turn them into murder so he don't have to pay? The hell with both of you! Those two had death wishes and they made their wishes come true. You tell me what you would do if you were in my shoes, someone tells you a cockamamie story like that."

"I think I'd ask some more questions, knock on some more doors, and do the job right."

McNair straightened, yanking his pants over his belly.

"I showed you these files as a professional courtesy and all you can do is bust my chops. Delaney was depressed and shot himself. Blair was stupid and fell off the edge of a concrete slab three stories up where she had no business being on account of there was no safety barrier and she was afraid of heights. That's not just me talking. That's what the prosecuting attorney and the coroner said. You want to turn that into murder, be my guest but do it on your time. Now get the fuck out of here!"

My ex-wife, Joy, divorced me after twenty-eight years of marriage. I didn't blame her. When our young son, Kevin, was murdered, she anesthetized her pain with booze and I buried mine with work, each of us blaming the other for our daughter Wendy's problems. Twenty-plus years after Kevin died, she came out of her fog and realized that it was time for both of us to move on. I didn't argue. We'd done enough of that.

Some people keep the war going after they split up. Joy and I went the other way. At first, she blamed me for what happened to Wendy, but in time she let that go too, shouldering more of the responsibility than was right. We had what I called an easy peace, both of us reconciled to what we had had and what we had lost.

I met Kate Scranton while I was married, lying to myself that my crush on her was merely the admiration of one professional for another. She was a forensic psychologist and jury consultant, blessed or cursed depending on the moment, with a unique ability to diagnose involuntary microfacial expressions that she claimed were the true windows into our hearts, minds, and souls. Together with her father, Henry, and ex-husband, Alan, both also psychologists, she had built a successful jury consulting practice, reading jurors with uncanny accuracy.

I justified our long lunches as networking, denying Joy's allegations that I was cheating even though our marriage had been dead by any definition of intimacy for a long time. I didn't know what an emotional affair was until Wendy called me on it.

Kate gave me a second chance after the divorce. She was ten years younger, a difference that peeled years off me without aging her. Tall and slender with shimmering black hair and blue eyes to get lost in, she had the sleek, confident beauty that caught other men's stares but stopped my heart. That she wanted me was an enduring mystery I didn't try to solve.

Reality chilled our fantasy of love lost and found. There were reasons we were both divorced. She could be unyielding and just because my body did contortions didn't mean that I was flexible. She could read me when I didn't want to be read and, more to the point, she couldn't help it.

Her teenage son, Brian, was struggling to find his place in a world of divided loyalties where I was one more competitor for his mother's affection. Alan wanted her back and Henry was rooting for him. She didn't want to leave their firm, didn't want to encourage Alan, and didn't want to alienate him for fear of how that would affect Brian. Both told her I was a bad bet.

She said that I cared too much whether people thought my movement disorder was real or bad enough to cost me my career since I didn't shake all the time or whether people thought it was all in my head, making me a crazy freak instead of just a freak. I worried that my world was too small for her, that she would come to resent that I couldn't do all the things that she was used to doing and enjoyed, the travel, the nights out at the theater, the symphony, or the ball park. We weren't there yet, she said, and besides, it was her life and that decision was up to her.

We navigated our way around these land mines, stepping on a few, staying together because what we had was so much better than what we'd come from and we knew too well what it was like to be alone, both of us struggling with being in love.

Kate had been on the road the last few weeks pitching prospective corporate clients, so busy we'd not seen each other or said more than good night or good morning over the phone. I was glad to see her when she picked me up for dinner at seven Saturday evening. I preferred not to drive at night when I was more likely to spasm and contort my way into a plaintiff's lawyer's payday.

"I made a reservation at Axios," she said when I got in her car.

"That place off of Fifty-fifth and Brookside?"

"Yes. It's French. Fine dining encourages two things we haven't had enough of lately-quiet conversation and intimacy."

"We can talk all you want but they better have a hell of a dessert menu because I prefer my intimacy served at your place or mine."

"Brian is with his father this weekend so you might get lucky if you clean your plate."

We sipped the wine, lingered through dinner, and talked. It was quiet and intimate. I led off, telling her about Lucy Trent, Ammara Iverson, and the envelope from Wendy.

"What do you think was in the envelope?" she asked.