Joel Goldman - The Dead Man

Kate had criticized Harper's lawyers for only talking with the lawyers for the university and for Corliss and not talking to the family's lawyer. I searched Abelson's name on Google, finding his Web site which boasted that he was available 24-7. It was almost ten o'clock. He answered on the third ring and listened while I explained that I was calling because of the similarity between his case and the one Jason Bolt was going to file.

"You know I've already spoken to Bolt," he said.

"Bolt told me he knows about your case so I assumed he'd talked to you."

"And you should also know that I sent him a copy of my file and I told him I'd do anything I could to help him."

"I know whose side you're on."

"Then why do you think I'm going to help you?"

"Because I'm trying to figure out whose side I'm on."

I listened to dead air while Abelson calculated his response. "You said you were working for Milo Harper. Are you still on his payroll?"

"I am."

"And Bolt is getting ready to sue your boss?"

"I know that."

"And you don't know whose side you're on?"

"It's complicated."

Another pause. "Are you recording this conversation?"

"No. Why would I?"

"Because I don't know what kind of crap you're trying to pull but this smells like a setup."

"It isn't."

"If you're lying to me and a tape of this call just happens to turn up, you and I are going to have some serious shit to sort out, you got that?"

"Understood. I'm not recording our conversation."

"I'll tell you what. How about I record it?"

"Fine by me."

"You're serious?"

"It's late, I'm beat, and I'd like to get past this bullshit so if it will make you feel better to record the call, hook us up," I said, my last words coming out in a tumble.

"What's the matter with your voice?"

"I have a movement disorder that makes me stutter sometimes and, like I said, it's late and I'm beat."

Another pause. "I just ran your name through Google. Are you the Jack Davis who used to be with the FBI?"

He'd been stalling while he ran a background check on me. "Yeah."

"Damn. Hang on. I'm reading the article in the Kansas City Star about the woman who was murdered at the Harper Institute. Is that what this is about?"

"Yes."

"The newspaper says this guy Leonard Nagel, the one who was hit by a car and killed when he ran from the scene, did it. What's all that got to do with Corliss?"

"The newspaper got it wrong."

"Where's Corliss?"

"I don't know. The police are looking for him. So am I."

"You think he may be the killer?"

"Right now, he's the leader in the clubhouse."

"In that case, how can I help you nail the son of a bitch?"

"Tell me the truth about your case."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I don't want to hear your opening statement to the jury or the payday speech you made to the university. I don't want to know the opinions of the whores you hired as expert witnesses. They've been paid and so have you. This isn't about Bolt's case and it isn't about money. It's about a murderer, probably a serial killer that's still on the street. I don't care whether you and Bolt have got a hard-on for Corliss. I care whether he's guilty. If he is, I'll do everything I can to take him down. If he isn't, I don't want to get it wrong."

"I was a prosecutor before I went into private practice and I still do a fair share of criminal work. I know the difference between proving a civil case by a preponderance of the evidence and a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt. I could have won my case against the university seven times out of ten but I couldn't have gotten an indictment against Corliss."

"Break it down for me."

"Kimberly Stevens was an emotional train wreck. She didn't belong in school, let alone as a volunteer in Corliss's dream project. That should have been obvious to Corliss. Instead of referring her for treatment, he took advantage of her."

"You could prove they were having an affair?"

"Her roommate says they were. She says Corliss cut it off and that's when Kimberly killed herself."

"Was there any other evidence of the affair? E-mails, phone records, that sort of thing?"

"She sent him some pretty torrid e-mails but he was smart enough not to respond. If he wasn't screwing her, the e-mails were enough proof that he should have informed the university and recommended that she get therapy. Either way, the e-mails made my case."

"Then why do you say you only had a seventy percent chance of winning?"

"Because any plaintiff's lawyer who tells you he's got a better shot than that in any case is a liar. You can prepare all you want but something unexpected always happens during trial and juries are unpredictable."

"Why no criminal case?"

"Kimberly drove to Lake Mendota by herself the night she died. She went for a swim and never came back. No one saw her go in the water. My experts called it a suicide but-and here I'm giving you the unvarnished truth-we'll never know for sure. It could have been an accident."

"Where was Corliss that night?"

"I don't know."

"How could you not know? That would be the first thing I would have asked him."

"Give me some credit. I didn't get to ask him that or anything else. The university agreed to settle on the morning I was supposed to take his deposition."

"Corliss told me that he didn't want to settle, that the university made him. What do you know about that?"

"That's bullshit. Corliss was covered by the university's insurance policy. The insurance company had to provide him with a defense, hire a lawyer to represent him, the whole shot. Except the insurance policy didn't cover my claim for punitive damages so Corliss hired a good friend of mine to represent him on that claim. After the case was over, she told me that the university and the insurance company wanted to go to trial but that Corliss was scared shitless about giving his deposition. I had made a settlement demand within the insurance company's policy limits, which meant they could settle the case and get Corliss off the hook for punitive damages. She threatened to sue them for bad faith for exposing Corliss to a judgment for punitive damages if they didn't settle, so they caved."

Abelson's information was like everything else in this case, filling some of the gaps while leaving the most important questions unanswered. Corliss was drowning in circumstantial evidence but there were enough holes in the case against him for any decent defense lawyer to exploit. There were multiple explanations for the incriminating evidence and nothing to place him at any of the crime scenes. If the prosecutor was as conservative as Quincy Carter claimed, he would run from the case, saying it was all shadows and no substance unless Carter or I could come up with something more solid.

"There had to have been a reason Corliss was so afraid to give his deposition. Maybe he was worried that you'd find out something he wanted to keep secret or that you had figured out his secret and were going to drop it on him in the deposition. You checked me out while we were on the phone. You must have done more than that with Corliss. What did you have on him?"

"I hired an investigator who worked backward from the time Corliss came to Wisconsin to the day he was born. He didn't have a track record at the other universities where'd he worked or gone to school. Not so much as a student complaining about a grade. What are you looking for?"

"Four people who were participants in Corliss's dream project have been murdered in the last couple of months. Each of them died the way they dreamed they would die. I think the killer knew about their dreams and staged their murders to mimic their nightmares. Each of them had also been abused when they were kids and the killer may have chosen them because of their history of abuse."