Joel Goldman - The Dead Man

He nodded, processing the information without a visible reaction I could detect. I wished I had mastered Kate Scranton's talent for dissecting the involuntary facial flickers she claimed shined light on our true selves.

"What else?"

"You heard about the mailman who stole the mail?"

"Yeah. It was all over the news."

"Except for the part about him being a participant in the dream project."

His face remained flat while he absorbed the additional data as if an internal algorithm suppressed his emotions, keeping him focused on the problem, not the people. "How did you make the connection?"

"The mailman's name was Walter Enoch. I ran across it when I was searching for Delaney's and Blair's names on the list of project volunteers."

"The paper said he died of a heart attack."

"He had help."

Harper looked away for an instant, hiding his face, then came back to me, his eyes narrowed. "He was murdered? If you're right about Delaney, he's the second dream project volunteer to be killed. My God, what if Regina Blair's accident was staged too? How do you know about Enoch?"

"People I used to work with at the FBI told me this morning."

"Will they help us?"

"No."

"Then why would they tell you?"

"That's my business."

"Not as long as I'm paying you."

"You hired me, you didn't buy me. I'll tell you what I can when I can."

He stared at me, waiting for me to fold. When I didn't, he stood and reached for the phone on my desk. "Let's get Anthony Corliss and Maggie Brennan up here and find out what's going on with those files."

"Not so fast. I'd rather get to them on my schedule. No point in letting them know what we know until we're ready."

"Corliss's computer has software that tells him whenever anyone at the institute goes into his files. You were logged on to the system. Believe me, by now he knows that you were on and what you were looking at."

"Then I'll go see him. I don't want him to think he's been called to the principal's office."

"I'll go with you," he said making it a decree, not an offer.

I stood. "That's okay. I'd rather talk to him alone."

"Why? He'll know that you're going to tell me whatever he says."

"I can't help what he thinks. If you're there, it will change the dynamic. He'll be more concerned about you than me."

"He damned well better be more concerned about me than you. I sign his check and yours for that matter. Both of you work for me, something you keep overlooking."

His impassive facade gave way, his face coloring from pale to pink to red. Kate's belief that he was trying to ruin her business as revenge for her refusal to work for him didn't seem so far-fetched. I had warned him when we first talked about the job that he and I would get to this moment. There was no reason to duck it.

"Your sister tried to run me as soon as I walked through the front door. I don't know whether that was her idea or yours. When she couldn't, she ran to you. I get that. Now you have to decide what you want to give up and to who and what you want to keep to yourself because you're not going to run my investigation or me. I'll tell you when I've got something or when I need something. Until then, this stays between you and me so just sign my check or get someone else."

We measured one another across my desk; neither backing down until he conceded with a cracked grin.

"We've got the same problem, you and me," he said.

"What's that?"

"We're both losing the one thing we can't afford to lose-control. You over your body and me over my mind. I don't know why you won't tell me about the FBI but I gather you've got something else at stake, something personal. I could get anyone I want to do this job but I like having someone with a lot on the line. I'll stay out of your way but I want results or I will get someone else."

"What if you don't like the results?"

"That's tomorrow's problem. The question is whether you can do this today."

More than the shaking or the brain fog, I resented that my condition compromised my choices, forcing me to accept weakness as normal, walking away instead of pushing on as unavoidable. If I was going to give in, I might just as well quit. The FBI forced me to do that and the bitter taste hadn't gone away.

Simon Alexander was wrong when he told me that this would be an easy gig, a job I could do on my own schedule, and I was right when I told Milo Harper that something like this doesn't want to be controlled. Neither mattered now. What mattered was whether I was going to answer the bell or pack it in, taking the rest of the day off because I felt like I'd gone ten rounds or rattle Anthony Corliss's cage, knowing that the surest way to chill an investigation was to wait until it was convenient for me.

"It's no hill for a climber," I told him.

The personnel directory Leonard gave me listed Anthony Corliss's office on the fourth floor and Maggie Brennan's on the third. I tried Corliss first. He answered on the first knock.

"Door's unlocked."

The lights were turned off, the blinds drawn, the only illumination coming from a desk lamp and a flat panel television mounted on one wall. Corliss was leaning back in his chair, feet on his desk.

Two people, a woman and a man, their backs to me, occupied chairs in front of his desk. I stepped to one side, giving me a view of their profiles. Both looked to be in their midtwenties, the guy wandering from the screen to his iPhone to the books on the wall. The woman leaned forward, arms across her middle, eyes narrowed on the television, a legal pad in her lap filled with notes.

I recognized Maggie Brennan from the photograph in her bio. She was sitting on a small sofa and turned toward me, her brows rising, her eyes flaring like I'd snuck up on her in the dark. She shifted her weight, giving me her back and facing the screen.

Corliss held a finger to his mouth, telling me not to speak. They were wrapped in the shadows, watching the television.

I put Corliss in his early forties, enough mileage in the wrinkles and folds on his face to separate him from his youth but not enough that it was all in his rearview mirror. Though he was Milo Harper's contemporary, he had an easy energy about him in contrast to Milo's urgency, the difference no doubt owing to the distance on their horizons. His sandy brown hair was cut short, framing a full face. He was shorter than me, creeping past stocky with a black sweatshirt bunching over his belly.

He'd frozen the image on the television when I opened the door, now waving the remote at the screen where a young man, maybe twenty, sat in a chair, the camera in tight, his face locked in a blank stare, the soul patch beneath his chin more like a mud smear. Corliss clicked the remote and the image jerked to life. The man rocked back and forth, palms on his knees, then squared up to the camera.

"Go on," an off-camera female voice said, the tone anxious and encouraging. The young woman with the legal pad was mouthing the words that I assumed were hers.

"Man it was crazy. Scared the shit out of me," the man on the screen said. "I had to get home but it didn't matter which way I went, it was wrong. The streets didn't go where they were supposed to go and then the road disappeared and I was falling."

"What happened next, Quentin?"

"I stopped falling but I never hit the ground. Then I was running, trying to get to class to take a final but it was too late and I flunked out of school. I tried to find the professor, but this giant snake jumped up and the next thing I knew I was sucking my own dick. That's when I woke up," he said, biting his lip to stop from laughing.

"Thanks, Quentin, that's all for today," the woman's voice said and the screen went blank.

"Janet," Corliss said to the woman with the legal pad, "you think that boy is for real?"