The Dead Man (2 page)

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Authors: Joel Goldman

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Suspense, #Fiction / Thrillers

BOOK: The Dead Man
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"Bad luck, but what's that got to do with Harper and his institute?"
"Hopefully nothing, but the families have hired a lawyer named Jason Bolt who has sent Milo the proverbial get-out-your-checkbook-or-prepare-to-die letter. He wants someone to take another look. I suggested you."
I'd heard of Bolt. He'd made a fortune taking down corporations for everything from defective products to defrauding shareholders. He was one of a handful of lawyers who could force a settlement on the strength of his reputation.
"A billionaire takes your advice?"
Simon laughed. "I was the one who told him to quit school."
"What else did he tell you? Why does Bolt think these deaths could be tied to the institute?"
"I'm Milo's friend, not his priest. He doesn't tell me everything. He asked me for a name and I gave him yours."
"You know him. What's your sense of this?"
"Milo is a passionate guy. He loves the institute. The look in his eyes, the way he talks about it, you'd think it was his child, like the walls were papered with his DNA. When he called me, he sounded like a parent whose kid had gone missing."
I knew that fear, how it leeches into your bones, like poison with an eternal half-life. But the Harper Institute of the Mind didn't have dimples, skinned knees, or a smile that could light up a room and break your heart at the same time. It was bricks, mortar, and money.
"Is he married? Does he have kids?"
"Neither. He's married to the job. His first kid was the business he built and sold. Now he has the institute. It's not an accident that the abbreviation for Harper Institute of the Mind is HIM."
My doctor told me that the only way I could control the shakes was to change my lifestyle, to slow down. That was fourteen months ago and I still hadn't found the sweet spot between alive and dead. The work Simon sent me tilted the scale toward alive but sometimes it's better to let the scale swing the other way. Rich people who substitute the things they build, create, and run for the relationships they never had can be more irrational than any overprotective parent.
"I think I'll pass."
"Why? Because of Kate Scranton? Give me a break. I was there for your last fight. I'm surprised there were any survivors."
I laughed. "We're a work in progress. I'm having dinner with her tomorrow night. The problem is that she sees things in me that I don't always want her to see."
"The micro-expressions that she claims give away your secrets?"
"Yeah. It's how her brain is wired. Sometimes I don't handle it very well but I still respect her judgment. Plus, rich guys like Harper who think they can buy people the same way they buy buildings can get crazy when things don't go their way and I don't do crazy."
"At least talk to him. I told him that you would call him tonight. All you have to do is check out this dream project and he'll take it from there."
"I load the gun and he pulls the trigger."
"Just like when you were at the FBI and the U.S. attorney made the call. Why the attack of middle-age angst? You've spent your whole life going after bad guys."
"I always knew whose side I was on and I was a lot better at figuring out the truth. Those lines aren't as bright when a billionaire draws them."
"There was a philosopher who claimed that it was impossible to determine whether some things are true or false. He proved it by saying that all men are liars. If he was telling the truth, then he was a liar."
"Yeah, but that doesn't make not knowing any easier."
Simon took a breath, leaning toward me. "This isn't about Wendy."
Wendy was my daughter. She died early last year, twenty-plus years after her brother Kevin was murdered by a sex offender masquerading as a trustworthy neighbor. Every FBI agent in the Kansas City office attended the funeral, some out of respect, others because Wendy had been a fugitive, the last suspected member of a drug ring I'd helped take down before the Bureau kicked me to the curb, the only loose end being five million dollars that had disappeared into the ether. They were convinced she stole the money.
I never stopped thinking about her, wistful memories sometimes crossing into haunting flashbacks so real they stopped me in my tracks or dreams too vivid for sleep. A snatch of conversation, a familiar fragrance, even a sad-eyed junkie could put me back with her, replaying the moment, hoping for a different ending.
"I know that."
"Then talk to him. That's all I'm asking."
Simon had been good to me. I owed him that much. "Okay."
"Great." He leaned back in his chair. "So, how you doing with the . . ."
"Shaking? Every day is an adventure."
"How about that group of retired cops you told me about? You still get together with them?"
"We have lunch once a month. Somebody presents a case. Maybe one that was never solved or one where maybe the wrong guy took the fall. We play cop again, trying to put it together."
"Any cold cases get solved that way?"
"No, but a lot of beer gets put away so everyone goes home feeling good about that."
My cell phone rang, the caller ID reading
Private
. I flipped the phone open.
"Hello?"
"Mr. Davis, this is Milo Harper."
"Hang on a second." I covered the phone. "It's your roommate. I thought he was waiting for my call."
"I forgot to tell you. He's a little impatient. I gave him your number."
Simon headed for the door. I put the phone back to my ear.
"Call me Jack."
"For now, I'll call you late. I've been waiting to hear from you."
I gritted my teeth. I'd promised Simon I would talk to Harper. I didn't promise to be nice. "Simon just finished telling me about your situation."
"Fine. I'll meet you for dinner at McCormick and Schmick at seven-thirty and don't be late."
Chapter Four

 

Milo Harper was waiting for me in a booth, juggling screens on his Mac laptop while talking into a wireless headset, one hand darting in and out of an open briefcase on the seat, glancing at papers, jotting notes in a pocket-size journal. He motioned me into the booth, not breaking his multitasking stride. I slid in across from him, reached over the table, and closed his laptop. He clicked off his headset, scanning me with penetrating, dark eyes that didn't miss, the corner of his mouth twitching with what passed as a smile.
"That's called confirmation bias. What you did, closing my laptop. As predictable as the rising sun."
"You're clairvoyant?"
"Not necessary if you know how the mind works. My phone call primed you to dislike me. You didn't want to come here, especially on a miserable night like this, but you came anyway, probably out of a sense of obligation to Simon. Instead of greeting you at the door like the hero he makes you out to be, I'm sitting here making good use of my time. But you see that as further proof that I'm a rude jerk. That's confirmation bias."
"It wasn't just the phone call."
"What else?"
"Kate Scranton sends her regards."
Harper straightened. He still had the wavy hair and square chin. If he still had the pecs they were hidden under a bulky sweater. He was near my height, six feet, though thinner with a long angular face washed out with an indoor pallor earned from a lifetime spent in front of a computer screen. He hadn't shaved for a few days. The salt and pepper growth that gave actors a patina of cool clung to his sallow cheeks, aging him.
"Interesting. A woman who turns down my job offer trumps a man who thinks the only thing you're missing is a cape and a red S on your chest."
I leaned back against the booth. "I'm here but that doesn't mean that Kate's wrong or that Simon is right."
"No, it doesn't. And, I didn't believe Simon anyway." He pointed to a menu. "You want to order?"
I shook my head. "I'm not staying. Tell me about your problem. I'll tell you if I'm interested."
Our server appeared, asking for our order and his tip with a smile, not saying a word. Harper laid his menu on the table, traced his finger down the selections, stopping at the lobster, raised his eyebrows at me, giving me another chance. I shook my head, Harper shrugged at the waiter and the waiter shrugged back, closing the curtain on our pantomime with another smile before leaving.
"Three people, three brains, not a word spoken, a million . . ."
I raised my hand. "I get it. A brain is a terrible thing to waste."
Harper grinned. "I can't help it. The human brain is the greatest evolutionary achievement and the mind, which is what the brain does, goes it one better. Spend some time with me and you'll learn to appreciate the mental organs. We study everything from basic brain anatomy, structure, and chemistry to behavioral disorders, genetic disorders, and anything else having to do with how the brain and the mind work and don't work. Most places that do brain research focus on one or two things. I'm trying to do it all because it's all connected, one neural miracle."
"Including dreams," I said.
"Including dreams and memory. I've got PhDs like Anthony Corliss who specialize in something called lucid dreaming. It's a way of recognizing when you are dreaming and then learning how to control your dreams."
"Can he make dreams come true?"
"Not yet, but he's trying. He's working with Maggie Brennan, another PhD, who's an expert on memory and posttraumatic stress disorder. The brain makes memories, decides which ones to keep and which ones to toss out. Memories, especially traumatic ones, get a workout in our dreams. We're researching whether people can learn to control their nightmares and manage their traumatic memories through lucid dreaming."
Maggie Brennan's name had the nagging familiarity of something I had heard, forgotten, and now wished I hadn't. It would come to me, probably in the middle of the night, waking me up, only to be forgotten again by morning.
"Simon told me that two people who've participated in the project have died."
"Tom Delaney shot himself and Regina Blair fell off the top ledge of a three-story parking deck that was under construction. Both had responded to an ad we placed for volunteers."
"What did they have to do?"
"Talk to us about their dreams. Fill out questionnaires. Spend a few nights sleeping in our lab wearing an electroencephalograph skullcap so we can monitor their brain activity while they're dreaming. Learn lucid dreaming techniques and participate in some additional lab studies, brain scans, and group discussions to measure how they respond."
"Doesn't sound too dangerous."
"It isn't, but this is America and when bad things happen, people hire lawyers. The Delaney and Blair families hired Jason Bolt. You ever hear of him?"
"I have. He carries some weight."
"A lot of weight. He calls himself Lightning Bolt."
I laughed. "Nobody does that! He hits that hard?"
"Worse. Lightning never strikes twice. Bolt does. He tagged me for eight figures a few years ago in a shareholder lawsuit. He called to tell me that he's going to sue me, the institute, Anthony Corliss, Maggie Brennan, and their two research assistants."
"What makes him think Delaney's and Blair's deaths have anything to do with the institute?"
"Volunteers are videotaped describing their dreams. Some of them are pretty graphic nightmares. Those are the ones our researchers are particularly interested in studying. Delaney's and Blair's dreams came true."
"How so?"
"Both of them died the way they dreamed they would. Bolt claims he has an expert witness who will testify that lucid dreaming breaks down inhibitions against dangerous behavior and causes people like Delaney and Blair to act out their nightmares."
"I assume the police investigated both deaths. What did they come up with?"
"Delaney was a suicide and Blair was an accident."
"Did the police know about the videotapes?"
"Not the first time around but Bolt stirred things up so they took another look. A detective named Paul McNair asked to see the tapes and we made them available."
I'd worked with McNair on a joint task force a few years ago. He was a clock watcher, putting in his time until retirement. Not someone who'd be anxious to turn an easy case into a tough one.
"What was McNair's take?"
"That Delaney killed himself and that Blair got too close to the edge and fell."
Chapter Five

 

I nodded, knowing how little use cops, including ones that weren't lazy, have for dreams when we can make our cases with smoking guns, DNA, and confessions. "Did Delaney leave a note?"
"No. McNair said that not everyone who commits suicide leaves a note."
"He's right. About twenty-five percent don't. What was Regina Blair doing on the parking deck?"
"She was an architect for the general contractor for the three-story garage and an adjacent office building. Both were under construction. The police said she was inspecting the top floor of the garage when she slipped and fell."
"Anyone see it happen?"
"Not according to Detective McNair. It happened early on a Sunday morning." He fished McNair's business card out of his briefcase and handed it to me. "He can tell you more about it than I can."
"Where do I fit in?"
"I need to know as much as I can about Delaney and Blair—anything that will help us prove we had nothing to do with their deaths."
"What do you know about them so far?"
"Delaney was thirty-two, lived alone, and was a newspaper distributor for the
Kansas City Star
. Got a Purple Heart doing two tours in Iraq with the National Guard. He was the oldest of three kids. He went to high school at Rockhurst."
"The private Catholic school?"
"Right. He cut a wide swath there. He played football and basketball and he was on the debate team. His parents have established a scholarship there in his honor. Bolt says they're going to contribute anything they get in the lawsuit to the scholarship fund."

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