Joel Goldman - The Dead Man

"Okay, if you hear from her, tell her to call me."

"Will do. Is everything all right?"

"Not hardly. Did you see this morning's paper?"

"Yeah, but after you bit my head off, I didn't think it was a good idea to bring it up."

I took a deep breath, trying to talk, my vocal cords too tangled to get the words out. I stopped walking and took more deep breaths. "Hang on," I managed as I waited for my throat muscles to relax, trying again, my words still choppy. "The police can't find Corliss. And, Maggie Brennan and their two research assistants are also missing."

"That is very bad, Jack. It sounds like Corliss has gone totally off the rails. What are you going to do?"

"Find them."

"How can I help?"

I punched out the words in spurts, like bursts of Morse code. "There's a retired Johnson County sheriff's deputy named Tom Goodell. He probably lives in Olathe. I need a phone number and an address."

"Piece of cake."

My car was parked in the driveway when I got home. I shoved past the door, stamping the snow off my boots.

"Lucy! Where are you?" I called out, my speech restored to a steady cadence.

She didn't answer but the dogs did. They came flying down the stairs, jumping on my legs, circling and racing back upstairs as I headed for my bedroom. The cream-colored carpet was crosscut with wet dog tracks and boot prints filled with dirt, salt, and specks of fine gravel, the trail going up the stairs, into my bedroom, back out, and down the hall to Lucy's, the mess renewing the suspicions I had when I realized she'd searched my room a week ago.

"There you are," Lucy said from the bottom of the stairs.

I looked over the rail. She was in her stocking feet, carrying a vacuum cleaner. I was on edge, trying to rein myself in and not doing a very good job of it.

"What were you doing in my bedroom?"

She came upstairs, set the vacuum cleaner down in the hall, uncoiled the cord, and plugged it in. "Trying to catch your damn dogs so I could dry their feet off before they tracked up the whole house, but they're faster than me so all three of us left our tracks."

She didn't look away, her sharp tone telling me she didn't care for mine, letting me know that I was pushing her buttons. I gave her a disbelieving look, eyebrow raised, jaw set.

"What? You think I was snooping around in your room? Give me a break. You want to clean up the mess, be my guest," she said, throwing up her hands.

"Where have you been?"

"You know where I've been. I spent the night at Simon's."

"I meant this morning. Where were you this morning?"

"I got some breakfast and went to the grocery store."

"I told you last night that I needed my car today. Why didn't you answer your phone or call me back?"

Her face reddened as she crossed her arms over her chest and turned her back to me, her shoulders rising and falling. She stood like that for a moment and then faced me, her hands on her hips, her even color restored.

"Jack, you kind of remind me of my dad and I get the feeling I remind you a little bit of your daughter. But that's not who we are, either one of us. I'm sorry I didn't get the car back to you any sooner but you can't run my life or chew me out when I come home too late or don't answer the phone every time you call. Look at us. We're a couple of beat-up people who could get through the day a little easier if we cut each other some slack."

I didn't know what to say, even though I knew she was right. I was cranked up; raw, and worried with none of the control she was using to back away from a fight I was starting.

"Where are my car keys?"

She handed them to me and I went into my bedroom, opened the closet, and took down my gun case. I clipped the holster to my belt in the small of my back and was sliding my Glock into place when Lucy appeared in the doorway.

"What in the world are you doing?" she asked.

"I made a promise to Maggie Brennan that I wouldn't let anything happen to her. The police can't find her or Corliss or their research assistants."

"And you can? You know something they don't know?"

I pulled my jacket on. It was cut below the waist, covering my gun as long as I didn't try to touch my toes.

"I know what I'm doing," I said, my knees buckling, twisting me to the side as I held on to the closet door.

"Knowing is only half the battle, G.I. Joe. You sure you can handle the other half? When you're done doing the Twist, maybe you can show me the Mashed Potato."

I sat on the edge of my bed. "I'm fine. I just need a breather."

She came over to me and put her hands on my shoulders. "Give me the car keys, Jack."

I looked up at her. "Why?"

"You need a driver. It's bad enough that you're probably going to shoot yourself. I don't need you wrecking the car while you're at it. I'd hate to have to buy my own ride."

"We're all dressed up with no place to go," Lucy said. "We've got to work this thing before we go running off half-cocked to nowhere." She took my arm, pulling me off the bed. "Let's go. Downstairs."

I threw my coat on the sofa as she paced around the living den, studying the Post-its on the walls. My muscles quit twitching as I watched her think. She was right about us. We were both beat up, too many of our wounds self-inflicted. We needed more than a little slack from one another. We needed a hand up and she'd given me hers.

"Okay," she said, stopping in the middle of the room. "What do we know that we didn't know yesterday?"

"Start with the article in today's paper."

I handed it to her, giving her time to read it, then told her about my conversation with Rachel Firestone.

She tucked the paper under her arm, took another lap around the living den, stopping across from me.

"Working theory-Corliss is responsible for the disappearance of Maggie, Janet, and Gary. Worst case- they're dead. Best case-they will be soon if we don't find them."

"Agreed," I said.

"It's pretty tough to snatch three people all at once," she said. "Especially when two of them are young and could put up a fight, like the research assistants."

"Even if Corliss had a gun, he's got to put them in a car and drive somewhere. He can't do that and watch them at the same time. If he lets one of them drive, he's still got control problems."

"He could tie them up, duct tape them, but that's the kind of thing people in other cars would notice-three people all bundled up and gagged. You can get one, maybe two people in the trunk, but three's a crowd."

"So, he grabs them one at a time," I said.

"Possible, but not likely. Janet and Gary were probably together. Two people are easier to handle than three, but not that much easier. Makes it more likely that he talked them into meeting him somewhere they were familiar with, someplace that wouldn't raise any red flags."

"Could have gone down that way."

"What else makes sense?" she asked.

"He takes them out separately. Kills them where he finds them."

"The most likely place he would have found them is where they live which means the cops would have found their bodies by now," Lucy said. "Besides, that's too spontaneous and Corliss is a planner. Look at how much trouble he went to with Walter Enoch and Tom Delaney, taking the videos where they lived and then going back to kill them. And what about the way he staged Anne Kendall's body?"

"You're right," I said. "Anne came to him about the dream project last Wednesday and she was killed the following Monday. Maggie and I left the institute at the same time on Tuesday. If Janet and Gary were gone by then, I think she would have mentioned it."

"So, he doesn't grab them. He invites them."

"More like he gives them an order. He's their boss."

"He's Janet and Gary's boss, not Maggie's."