Joel Goldman - The Dead Man

"And who set fires, abused animals, and wet their beds when they were kids," Simon added. "Hey, I watch TV too."

I sighed. "Try more Food Network and less Law and Order ."

"What do you want us to do?" Kate asked.

"Help me fill in the blanks. There are two hundred and fifty volunteers in the dream project. Each of them was videotaped describing their dreams. I want you to take a look at the videos and tell me if anyone jumps out at you on the secret psycho scale. I'll give you my ID and password for the institute's computer system."

"Two hundred and fifty videos. Sure thing. Let me call the office and tell them I'm quitting my job."

"Don't tell them that. Tell them you just got a huge piece of work at a premium rate. My budget is unlim

ited."

Her smile lit up her face. "That I can tell them."

"Simon, I want you to run background checks on the volunteers and the staff that had access to the dream project files. I'll know tomorrow which ones actually got into the files. Let's see who's had a restraining order entered against them, who's been arrested, and who's late on their mortgage."

"How soon do you want all this?" Simon asked.

"Now would be just fine. Is that a problem?"

"Were you serious about the unlimited budget?"

"Milo said I could spend whatever it takes."

"In that case, now is not a problem. It's impossible, but it isn't a problem."

"What Kate and Simon are going to do may not be enough," Lucy said. "A lot of serial killers are charming people like Ted Bundy or the BTK killer in Wichita. That guy was active in his church and was a Cub Scout leader."

"Look," I said, "we aren't going to make the same mistake Dolan and Kent made and assume we know anything until we can prove it. Why would a serial killer take whatever was in Wendy's envelope?"

"One reason," Lucy said. "The killer was picking his next victim."

"I don't buy that," I said. "It's too random. It doesn't fit the pattern."

"Don't underestimate the rules of randomness," Simon said.

"What are you talking about?"

"He's talking about the world," Kate said. "We like it orderly but it's mostly disorderly."

"From coin tosses to baseball to the stock market, the world is random," Simon said. "Hitters and stock pickers have hot streaks but over time, they regress to the mean. In the end, randomness rules."

"What's that got to do with murder?" Lucy asked.

"Everything," Kate said. "Einstein said it is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of a complex of phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth. We're looking for an explanation that accounts for everything we know but if we limit ourselves to what's most obvious or most likely, there's a good chance we'll be wrong."

"Maybe so, but the direct visible truth is what I know. There are facts in common, that's it. Even if they added up to a pattern, I don't fit into it. I'm not a participant in the dream project."

"You are as connected to the Harper Institute as Delaney, Blair, and Enoch were, maybe more."

"If you widen the net that much you make every institute employee a potential victim, which doesn't tell you anything," I said.

"It's just as dangerous to make up your mind too soon that the case is one thing as it is to decide that it isn't something else," Lucy said.

"She's right," Kate said. "It's called the Endowment Effect. People attach more value to the things they own just because they own them whether they're coffee mugs or opinions. That's why we overvalue our houses so much we can't sell them and it's why we have such a difficult time changing our minds."

"Okay, I won't argue with that," I said. "I'll keep an open mind but I still don't buy that a killer has put my name on a list. Let's get to work."

Simon and Kate took over the dining room and Lucy and I went back to our poster art. She took the floor and I settled into the recliner.

"Take me on the dead man tour," I told her. "How'd you get into Enoch's house?"

"The back door. Flimsy lock. I have a set of picks."

"Possession of burglary tools," I joked.

"To be a crime, the tools have to be used to enter an occupied structure for the purpose of committing an offense therein. Enoch's house was not occupied and my motives were pure," she said, sticking her tongue out at me.

"All charges are dropped. What did you find?"

"Not that much, to tell you the truth. There were no signs of forced entry, which suggests that Enoch knew his killer."

"With all the stolen mail sitting around his house, he wasn't going to let a stranger in. It had to be someone he trusted."

"Or someone who forced his way in once Enoch opened the door. Easy enough if the killer had a gun."

"Could be the same person either way. Enoch may have known the killer well enough to open the door but not let him in. That's when the killer pulls a gun. Best bet is that Enoch knew the killer. What else?"

"Not much. The feds had emptied the place except for his clothes and furniture and there wasn't much of that. I checked the drawers and I went through his clothes but I didn't find anything helpful. When we were there the other night, it was like walking around in a giant storage closet jammed with junk. Today, you could hear echoes. He didn't have any pictures of family, friends, or dogs and cats. His television didn't work. He didn't have any books, magazines, or newspapers. This guy didn't just live alone. He was all alone."

"You took pictures?"

"With my digital camera. You want to see them now or later?"

"Later. Did you break into Delaney's apartment too?"

"Nope. I told the manager I was looking for a place to live. I had her show me empty units until we got to his. When I told her I was interested in that one, she told me that the last tenant had killed himself in the apartment. I told her I wanted to spend some time in the apartment by myself to see if that creeped me out so she left me there."

"Any luck?"

"Nada. I went over every inch of the place looking for a bullet hole the crime scene techs may have missed."

"You picked up on the missing bullet they couldn't account for."

"Hard to miss that when I read the incident report. It could be the key to everything else. The angle of the entry wound, the whole gun in the right hand and wound in the left temple, all of that bothered me. I figure the shooter popped him, then put the gun in Delaney's hand and fired a second time so Delaney would have powder burns on his gun hand."

"But you didn't find another bullet or bullet hole."

She shook her head. "Just like Enoch's house. It had been sanitized by the time I got there."

"The gun was a Beretta 92f loaded with jacketed.9mm rounds. A thick book would stop one of those rounds before it got to the last page. The scene photographs show some bookshelves. We need to find someone who was in the apartment while Delaney was alive and can look at those pics and tell us if any books are missing."

"What are the odds of that?"

"Zero if we don't try."

"I can go back there tonight and knock on some doors. Better chance that I'll find people at home now than during the day."

"Run me through the Blair scene first."

"She was found in an alley between a garage and office building, both of which are connected by covered walkways at each floor level. If she was pushed, the killer could have come from any floor of the building or the garage."

"You find anything that suggests she was pushed?"

"Maybe," Lucy said, putting a blank Post-it poster on the wall. "It's a simple physics problem." She drew a two-dimensional sketch of the profile of the parking garage and the alley, using a stick figure to represent Regina Blair. "Initial velocity is everything. If Regina slips or intentionally steps off the parking deck, her initial velocity is relatively low. She'll probably drop almost straight down. Depending on how she responds to falling, she could even land feet first," she said, drawing an X to mark the impact near the base of the parking deck.