Joel Goldman - The Dead Man

She stood, her back stiff, the veins on her neck taut. "I'll bring the copies right back."

"That would be great. The police will want to have a look at Anne's desk so make sure no one goes near it."

"I'll take care of that. How long will it be before the police arrest Leonard?"

"If and when the police arrest anybody is up to the police. Our job is to let them do their job. It will be up to the court and a jury to decide whether Leonard or anyone else is guilty of anything. Jumping the gun could ruin his life if he's innocent."

Connie grabbed the handle to my door, leveling me with a hard-eyed glare. "I hope they cut his balls off and feed them to him before they execute him."

I followed her into the hall where she blew past Leonard. He waited until she was out of earshot.

"Did I tell you or did I tell you?" he asked, his be-mybuddy grin back in place, a thin sheen of sweat percolating across his forehead.

"You sure did."

"She say anything about me?"

I didn't want to spook Leonard before McNair and Carter could talk to him. I hadn't wanted to lie to Connie Nichols but I had no compunctions about deceiving him.

"Not a word."

"Good to know. It's just that she's got her favorites and I'm not one of them."

"I wouldn't worry about it. If she doesn't like you, it's probably because of the geography. You're up here on the eighth floor with the top brass and she's downstairs, probably stuck in a cubicle she wishes had windows and walls. Nothing you can do about that so don't let it get to you. Besides, you work for me, not her."

He rose and offered me a fist tap, his grin splitting his face into northern and southern hemispheres. "You got that right, boss!"

I sat at my desk chair, comparing Leonard to Michael Lacey. Their profiles were different: Lacey's long on probabilities and short on facts; Leonard's easier to plug in to what I'd seen in the basement. He'd snooped in the dream project files, made unwanted advances to Anne and threatened her. And, he had a track record.

That was reason enough to put Leonard on the short list for Anne Kendall's murder and to check for any connections between him and Regina Blair. But his profile didn't put him in the ballpark with Tom Delaney and Walter Enoch. Looking for a unified theory, one that captured all the victims with a single killer could be a mistake, a cop's version of looking for love in all the wrong places.

Frank Gentry materialized in my doorway, his gray suit coat buttoned, his navy and red regimental striped necktie cinched tight and straight against a white, buttoned down shirt. The clock on my desk read five after eleven. I was tempted to stand and salute but waved him to a chair instead.

"Did you find the report I left in your desk?"

"Yeah, thanks. It's a good start, but I need more detail. Can you go deeper and tell me which subfiles each of these people accessed and when?"

"Sure. Are you interested in any specific files?"

"I am. There are videos of the research subjects talking about their dreams. I want to know who accessed the videos for Regina Blair, Tom Delaney, and Walter Enoch."

"Not a problem. You have the report handy? I want to double-check something."

I had tucked the report back into the envelope and put it back in the drawer. I took it out and handed it to him. He studied the envelope, frowning as he turned it over and tapped it against his hand and then got up and closed my office door.

"That's not my envelope. I always write my initials in small letters in the bottom right-hand corner. Habit I got into when I was in the service. My initials aren't on this one. No wonder everyone thinks that little son-of-abitch Leonard killed that girl."

I raised my hand. "What do you mean that everyone thinks Leonard killed that girl?"

"That's the chatter. I'm amazed he hasn't been arrested yet the way people are talking. He saw me go in your office earlier this morning. I closed the door because I didn't like him watching what I was doing. After I left, he must have gone snooping, found the report, and then put it in a new envelope so it would look like it hadn't been opened. No way you would have known the difference."

He handed me the envelope as Detective Carter threw my door open, breathing hard.

"Where's your assistant, Leonard Nagel?"

I looked past him at Leonard's empty desk and came out of my chair. "He was right there a minute ago."

Carter lifted the two-way on his jacket collar to his chin. "Attention all personnel. Lock this building down. No one goes in or out. Find Leonard Nagel," he paused, looking at me.

"White male, dark brown hair, five-ten, hundred eighty pounds," I recited, Carter nodding and repeating the description, looking at me again.

"Approach with caution," I said.

Carter added the rest and clicked off the radio. Half a dozen uniformed cops had gathered outside my office. Sanchez squeezed through the crowd.

"We've checked the entire floor, bathrooms, offices, and closets," he said to Carter. "Caught one guy with his pants down but it wasn't Nagel. We're taking it floor by floor. I radioed for a search dog. We'll flush him out of whatever spider hole he's hiding in."

Milo Harper was next, the cops peeling back to make way for him. "What's happening?"

"Milo Harper, say hello to Detective Carter, KCPD homicide," I said. "They want to talk to Leonard Nagel. He was here a minute ago, but now he's gone."

"I told you we should have fired him this morning," Harper said to me.

"Fired him? Why?" Carter asked.

"We found out he was hacking into confidential files on our network," Harper said. "Jack said we should hold on to him until we knew how he got past our system security."

"I'm glad you didn't fire him," Carter said. "Otherwise, he could be on his way out of town by now instead of bottled up inside this building."

"You think he had something to do with Anne's murder?" Harper asked.

"We want to ask him some questions," Carter said.

"About what?"

Carter flipped the question onto Harper. "We understand that the murder victim, Ms. Kendall, filed a sexual harassment complaint against Leonard Nagel. What do you know about that?"

Harper winced, hit by another dropped shoe. "Not a goddamn thing."

"She left it on Connie Nichols desk last night, just before she left," I said. "Connie told me that she didn't see it until this morning. She also told me that another employee filed a complaint against him last year but dropped it when her husband was transferred. She's making copies of everything for the police."

"I just came from her office," Carter said. "What do you know about the earlier complaint?" he asked Harper.

Harper hesitated, blinking as the scope of his ignorance came into focus. "Nothing. My sister handles those things." He took a deep breath. "Is there anything else I should know?"

"Do you do background checks before you hire people?" Carter asked.

"I don't know but I assume you're about to tell me why we should," Harper said.

"I am," Carter said. "When we found out about the complaint against Leonard, we ran his name through the computer. He was charged with date rape in Colorado a few years ago but pled out to a lesser charge. Part of the plea deal was that he had to register as a sex offender, which he did in Colorado, except he didn't register when he moved to Kansas City. Happens more often than we'd like to admit."

Harper's face went slack, his mouth hinged wide, then bounced back. "How can I help you find him?"

"We've got people waiting at the elevators on every floor and at all of the exits," Carter. "And, we've got teams sweeping the stairs and each floor. If he pops open a ceiling tile and gets in the vent system, can he find a way out we don't know about?"