Joel Goldman - The Dead Man

"One weird thing," Simon said. "She asked what kind of trouble Kaufman was in and I asked her what made her think he was in trouble and she says mine was the second call she'd gotten about him. The first one was from a policeman but she couldn't remember his name or where he was calling from."

"I'm betting it was Quincy Carter. How about Tom Goodell? Any luck tracking him down?"

"That's not as easy I thought it'd be. He's not on the grid. No address, no utilities, no credit cards."

"He's an old guy, probably in his eighties and not in the best health. I remember him saying that his son is a cop. Works in Lenexa or maybe in Leawood. Could be he's living with his son. Check it out."

"I'm on it," he said, hanging up.

Carter opened the door and slid in beside me. "Next time, I'll take your call."

"Wouldn't have mattered. We were both late."

"The coroner will figure the time of death but I'm betting Corliss has been dead at least twelve hours."

"Maybe longer than that," I said. "There were no tracks in the snow on the sidewalk or on the steps. The snow probably covered the killer's footprints and it stopped snowing during the night."

"No tracks in front but there's a door in the back. Leads into an alley. We found footprints and tire tracks."

"I guess I'm rusty. I should have sent Lucy around to the back and taken the front myself."

"No. You should have stayed out of it," Carter said. "Like I told you. And I should have known you wouldn't. Would have been better if I had arrested you when I had the chance."

"Don't feel bad. I found a body for you."

"But no killer. Thanks a lot. I've got to admit that Corliss looked like the right guy especially after I got an earful from that lawyer, Jason Bolt."

"He tell you about the coed at the University of Wisconsin?" I asked.

"You too, huh. Even had the lawyer from up there call me. So, I talked to the detective who investigated that girl's death. Said it was accidental or suicide. No evidence it was a homicide."

"Everyone we look at in this case has dirt on them, but not killer dirt."

"Including your boss. Bolt also told me about Peggy Murray, tried to convince me that Milo Harper murdered her. We ran the traps on that one too. Another accident."

"Bolt's doing what lawyers do. Stir up a lot of shit, hope enough of it sticks to turn into money."

"Harper's problem, not mine. I didn't buy him or Leonard Nagel as killers and I started falling out of love with Corliss when we had a handwriting expert examine the list with the victims' initials on it that you found in his desk. Preliminary analysis says it's not Corliss's handwriting. We're trying to match it with handwriting samples from other people at the institute but that will take time."

"Maybe the killer wrote it and planted it in Corliss's desk, same as he planted Anne Kendall's ID badge in Leonard Nagel's desk."

"Or maybe Corliss found it and knew who the killer was, which got him carved up. Tell me how you tripped to the gallery."

I ran through it for him. He took notes on a spiral pad, stuffing the pad in his shirt pocket when I finished.

"So Kaufman is in the mix."

"Not just because he had the key to the gallery. He was busted for strangling and mutilating a cat when he was a teenager. That shit is like an advanced placement class in serial killer school."

He looked at me, eyes wide. "I don't want to know how you know about Kaufman's juvenile record."

"Then don't ask. How did you find out about it?"

Carter smiled. "You think I'm sitting on my ass waiting for you to call me? I'm like Santa Claus. I've got a list and I'm checking it twice."

"What's your take on Kaufman?"

He shrugged. "Could be him but the cat story doesn't do it for me."

"Why not?"

"It may not have happened."

"What do you mean? A friend of mine you don't want to know about talked to the woman that owned the cat. He got the story from her."

"And I talked to the prosecutor's office in Las Cruces. Had them dig out the file. The woman was a drunk then and she's still a drunk. When Kaufman was a kid he liked to chase her cat. Then, one day the cat disappeared. Except for one of the paws that turned up in the woman's mailbox."

"So, no strangled, gutted cat."

"Right. Kaufman denied having anything to do with the cat but he had a nickel bag of marijuana in his pocket when he was picked up. He pled to a misdemeanor possession charge and the animal cruelty count was dropped for lack of evidence. After that, he stayed out of trouble."

I sighed. "I don't get it. Leonard Nagel is a registered sex offender only maybe he got a bum deal. Anthony Corliss was run out of the University of Wisconsin on a sexual harassment charge where the victim ends up dead and, depending on whose lawyer you talk to, he may have gotten hosed. And Gary Kaufman was a teenage psychopath except there's no proof of that."

"Like you said, every one of these people was dirty."

I took a deep breath. "Okay, let's look at it another way. The killer planted evidence in Leonard Nagel's desk to implicate him in Anne Kendall's murder and may have done the same thing with the list of initials in Corliss's desk. For that matter, the killer could have arranged for Gary Kaufman to pick up the key to the gallery to make certain we'd focus on him."

"So, the killer is leading us around by the nose, getting us to chase the wrong guys."

"Not just any wrong guys. Each of them had something in their background that would make us suspicious even if it didn't hold up when we took a close look at it."

"Maybe that was the point," Carter said. "It's a classic misdirection play. Keep you and me running in a dozen different directions."

"And the longer we do that, the worse the odds are that we find Maggie Brennan, Janet Casey, and Gary Kaufman alive."

Carter nodded. "It's like after a tornado. You start out looking for survivors but at some point it's all about finding the bodies."

"The killer had to know what baggage Leonard and Corliss and Kaufman were carrying."

"I know you've only been at the institute a few days but who had access to that kind of information?"

"Milo Harper knew about Corliss and he might have known about the first sexual harassment complaint against Leonard and he knew what was in the victims' dream project files but there's no way he could have known about Anne Kendall's sexual harassment complaint or Kaufman's juvenile record."

"The description of her nightmare Anne Kendall wrote for Corliss was about being sexually abused. Stands to reason she might have also told him about Leonard Nagel coming on to her. And Kaufman would have had to explain his juvenile record to get into the grad program at Wisconsin with Corliss."

"That puts some but not all of the information in Corliss's head and he's dead. We're looking for someone who knew all of it."

"One way or another," Carter said, "everything was available to someone willing to dig for it. Your anonymous friend found out about Kaufman. The sexual harassment charges against Leonard were on the office grapevine and the criminal case against him in Colorado was public record, same as the Wisconsin lawsuit against Corliss. Plus, we know that Leonard hacked into the dream project files, which means the killer could have done the same thing to learn about the victims' nightmares. Who at the institute has the skill set to do all that?"

I shook my head, not able to get my mind around what I was about to say. "There's only one person. His name is Frank Gentry. He's head of the IT department."

"You know if he's at work today?"

"He was there a while ago."

"Let's hope he hasn't gone home early."

"I'll go with you," I said.

Carter laughed. "I don't think so. You wait here. I'm going to have someone drive you to police headquarters so you can give your statement."