Joel Goldman - The Dead Man

Ammara's sense of humor made this easier on our friendship but not a lot easier.

"I'm considering the option."

"Wait until we're done with you. I'll have a car there in ten minutes."

I didn't know when I would get back to the computer. Tom Delaney's and Regina Blair's video files were gone. I was certain that Anthony Corliss and Maggie Brennan would have an explanation for what happened to their files and that it might even be true.

Not willing to take a chance with Walter Enoch's file, I downloaded it to the desktop and again to the flash drive I carried on my key ring. My exercise in belt-andsuspenders backup reminded me that tics and obsessive-compulsive disorder sometimes ran together, which wasn't always a bad thing.

"Where you headed?" Leonard asked before I could clear his desk.

"Out."

He nodded, his grin locked in place as if a plastic surgeon had hit a nerve, leaving his face happily paralyzed.

"Out. Got it. Will you be back in time for your lunch with Sherry?"

I glanced at my watch. She was expecting me in an hour. "Tell her not to wait up."

"She'll be pissed, big time, if you don't show."

"Promises, promises."

Turnover was a fact of life in any FBI office. In the months I'd been gone, many of the agents I'd worked with had been reassigned to other parts of the country. Intergovernmental task forces staffed by FBI agents and personnel from other law enforcement agencies that worked out of the regional office had been shut down, restaffed, or replaced by other task forces, introducing another wave of new faces. Support staff had undergone normal attrition. All the personnel changes made the place feel foreign even if the walls were familiar.

Knowing that I couldn't go anywhere without an escort confirmed that I was an outsider.

The regional office sat on high ground on the southwest edge of downtown. Ammara led me to a conference room from which I could see the squiggly steel sculptures atop Bartle Hall and, east of them, the reflective glass walls of the Sprint Center where Garth Brooks had performed for eight straight nights when it opened. In between was the Power amp; Light entertainment district, the heart of Kansas City's revitalized downtown.

She introduced me to the people who had issued my invitation.

"James Kent and Everett Dolan, say hello to Jack Davis."

Hands were shaken, smiles exchanged, all of them cold. Everyone stood.

"Agents Kent and Dolan are from DC," Ammara explained. "They're following up on Wendy's case."

She didn't have to give me their resumes. I'd known guys like them. Kent and Dolan were lifers. Their hair was a gray brush cut, their guts were soft, and their eyes were hard. They were tailors, first cousins to the guys who followed behind the elephants at the circus, carrying shovels. Their job was to wrap up the loose ends the FBI couldn't stand to leave hanging, especially when the threads were wrapped around their own people.

"Sorry about your loss," Dolan said.

I nodded. "What can I do for you?"

"Have a seat."

"I'm good."

Kent tossed Wendy's envelope onto the table, the plastic evidence bag sliding across the smooth surface. "How many other letters did you receive from your daughter after she disappeared?"

"None. And I didn't receive this one either."

"But you did hear from her before she died." It was Dolan again.

I'd gone through this when Wendy disappeared and again after she died. These two were no better or worse than their predecessors but repetition hadn't dulled the ache.

"About three months after she disappeared, I got an e-mail from her. Out of the blue. It was one of those electronic birthday cards. I traced it back to a computer at the New York City Public Library. I went to New York and found her just after she overdosed. She died in my arms. You know all that because it's in the file and I'm betting you guys can read. So what do you want?"

"You talk to any of her friends when you were in New York?"

This time it was Kent. If I closed my eyes, I couldn't tell them apart.

"No. All I did was bring her home. I didn't know she had any friends. If she did, they didn't come to the funeral."

"She ever mention someone named Jessie Mercado?" Kent asked.

"She never mentioned anyone. She just died. That's all."

Dolan and Kent looked at each other, then at Ammara, then at me. Ammara broke the silence.

"We found Jessie Mercado's fingerprints on Wendy's envelope. She's a small-time drug dealer in New York. Turns out she and Wendy were friends."

"You know what good friends junkies and dealers are," Dolan said. He grinned, begging me to take the swing we both knew I wanted to take.

"Yeah. Kind of like you and Kent."

Dolan took a step toward me but Kent grabbed his arm. "You've got no call," he said to his partner. "And, neither do you," he said, letting me know which one was the good cop and which one was the bad cop.

I ignored both of them. "What did Jessie Mercado say about the envelope?" I asked Ammara.

"She said that Wendy used to crash at her place. A month or so ago, she was moving out and found the envelope and some of Wendy's personal effects while she was packing. She sold what she could and put the envelope in the mail. Thought she was doing you a favor. Said she never opened it and didn't know what was inside it. You remember that we gathered Wendy's DNA samples from her apartment?"

"Yeah. They match the saliva on the envelope?"

"All the way," Ammara said. "We got one decent print too. Jessie Mercado's story holds up."

"So we know how the letter got here," Kent said. "What we need is your help figuring out what was in it."

"How would I know what was in it?"

"Why do you suppose it was the one piece of stolen mail the dead mailman opened?" It was Dolan.

"Who says the mailman opened it?" I asked.

"You're saying someone else was there, opened the envelope, took whatever was inside and left it on the dead guy?" Kent asked.

"I'm saying you don't know what happened so until you do, don't act like you've got it figured out. How did Walter Enoch die?"

"The coroner says he had pretty bad asthma. Says his lungs went into spasm causing him to suffocate and have a heart attack," Dolan said.

"The coroner have any idea what caused the spasm?" I asked.

"Yeah," Dolan said. "Someone put their hand over his mouth and nose so he couldn't breathe. Enoch fought back hard enough that he broke his nose. Makes me think the killer was looking for whatever it was your daughter mailed to you."

"Which puts you right where you've been from the beginning," Dolan said

"Where's that?" I asked.

"In the middle," Dolan said. "Now, let me see you shake."

Wendy was ten. It had been a year since we'd lost Kevin. The death of a child is a tragedy but losing a child the way we lost Kevin was an unspeakable tragedy. So, to our everlasting sorrow, Joy and I didn't speak of it, especially around or to Wendy.

She carried the knowledge of her brother's abduction, abuse, and murder inside her until it began to erupt in ways large and small. She didn't eat or she ate too much. She cried too often or not at all. She lashed out at her teachers or she didn't speak. And she shook, trembling like she would come apart.

We made the rounds with pediatricians, psychologists, and psychiatrists, one assuring us that it would pass, another softly encouraging her to release her bottled emotions. Now, let me see you shake, he told her, but she refused to perform for him, claiming her pain as her own. I never loved her more than at that moment.

"You'll have to do better than that," I said.

"Don't let those guys get to you," Ammara said, as she drove me back to the institute.