The Dead Man

Chapter Twenty-one

Corliss's office was in the middle of the floor across from a maze of cubicles that occupied a third of the interior space. Down the hall from his office, away from the elevators, was the entrance to a break room. That's where Janet and Gary were standing when I left Corliss's office. She was lecturing him, her back stiff against the wall, punctuating with her hands, chopping and circling the air, bouncing fingers off his chest. Gary stood at her side, nodding while looking at me.

Janet was full-figured and short enough that she had to look up to make eye contact with Gary as she brushed her shoulder length auburn hair to one side and then poked him to get his undivided attention. He was big and soft, a few strands of his finger-combed, tousled brown hair hanging down his forehead, his cheeks and chin flecked with a patchy scruff.

He broke her rhythm, tilting his head at me. She spun my way, peeled off the wall, and grabbed his hand. They walked past the break room and into an office, closing the door.

I couldn't tell whether they were waiting for me or avoiding me. Either way, I wanted to talk with them. Corliss hadn't wasted any of his charm on them. Some people who are embarrassed by their bosses in front of others are reluctant to trash them behind their back, too afraid their rant will get back to their boss; others can't wait for the chance.

I knocked and opened the door. It was a cramped, windowless office, two desks pushed together, a crowded bookshelf on one wall, file cabinets against another, journals stacked on top of the cabinets, room carved out for a framed photograph of the two of them, Janet in a wedding dress, Gary in a tux. They were sitting at their desks, silent, their faces tense and expectant.

"I didn't get a chance to introduce myself before," I said, letting the door swing closed. "I'm Jack Davis."

Gary looked at Janet, nominating her. "I'm Janet," she said. "He's Gary."

One wall was papered with their undergraduate diplomas from Indiana and master's degrees in psychology from Wisconsin. The dates on the sheepskins put them in their mid-to-late twenties.

"You're Casey and he's Kaufman," I said, reading their last names. "Married too," I added, pointing to the photograph.

"Married too," she said.

"Kids?"

"No kids, dogs, cats, or birds. Just us," she said.

"I'm new here," I said. "Just trying to get to know people. Matter of fact, today is my first day. What's it like working here?"

Janet let out a sigh, raising her eyebrows, passing the question to Gary.

"Depends on whom you work for and what you do," he said. "We're researchers. We stick to our project and don't really have much to do with any of the other stuff that goes on."

"You guys work for Anthony Corliss and Maggie Brennan. How's that?"

Gary shrugged. "Maggie's okay."

"She gives me the creeps," Janet said. "She wears that same gray coat and scarf every damn day, hot or cold, rain or shine, it's like a shroud. The woman is in serious need of some color in her life."

"What do you do?" Gary asked.

"My title is director of security."

"What is that?" Janet said. "You're like Homeland Security? Are we going to have to pass through metal detectors and put our liquids in three-ounce containers?"

"Not unless we turn this place into an airport."

"What then?" Janet asked, giving me a microscopic look, daring me to be straight with her.

"Depends on the situation. Could be something as simple as making sure the institute's intellectual property is protected. And, it could be more complicated, like making certain that no one who volunteers to participate in an institute research project gets hurt."

"Like Tom Delaney and Regina Blair," Gary said.

I nodded. "Like them."

Janet slammed her palm on her desk, glaring at Gary. "I told you we shouldn't have come here."

He threw his arms up. "Like we had another choice."

"What am I missing?" I asked. "Were you drafted or did you enlist?"

Gary answered. "You have any idea how hard it is to get into a decent graduate PhD program in psychology? Let me tell you. It's harder to get in to than law school, medical school, or business school. The numbers will make you faint. Plus, you apply to work with a specific professor as much as the university. We were lucky. Corliss took both of us to work in his lab at Wisconsin. The odds against that happening were astronomical."

"And then he left Wisconsin to work here," I said.

"Exactly," Janet said. "And we were screwed. We'd finished our master's but we still had another three years for our doctorates."

"Couldn't you have stayed and worked in another lab or transferred to another school?"

"Not after what happened."

I waited for one of them to volunteer the details, letting the uneasy silence ask the question. Gary filled the void.

"We were doing the same kind of research at Wisconsin as we're doing here, running the same kind of subjects, doing the lucid dreaming training. All the subjects were undergrads. They did it for extra credit. One of the volunteers, a girl, drowned in Lake Mendota. Her parents claimed she committed suicide and sued the university, said we should have known she was suicidal and referred her for treatment. The university wrote a big, fat check to her parents and shut down Corliss's lab."

"Where's Lake Mendota?"

"Not far from Madison, where the university is."

"Did she leave a note?"

Janet answered. "No. No note."

"You said you used the same protocols at Wisconsin as you do here. Did that include videotaping subjects about their dreams?" They both gave me sharp, questioning looks. "Anthony Corliss told me about the videos," I said, hoping that would satisfy them.

Gary leaned back in his chair, hands in his lap. "Yeah."

"Tell me about the girl's dream. Did she dream about drowning?"

Janet looked at Gary, nodding. "Yeah, she did. That really freaked us out," he said.

"Afterward, nobody at Wisconsin wanted anything to do with us and no other schools would touch us, even though Gary and I had nothing to do with what happened. We weren't named in the lawsuit, only Corliss was. On top of everything else, her parents claimed Corliss was screwing their daughter," Janet said.

"That part was bullshit and you know it!" Gary said. "There was never any proof."

She crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes flaring and then turned toward me. "We owed over a hundred thousand in student loans, our lab was gone, and we couldn't get a job selling shoes. Corliss got a good deal to come here that included bringing us along."

"Well, the good deal may not be so good," I said. "Delaney's and Blair's families are suing the institute, Milo Harper, and your bosses, Dr. Corliss and Dr. Brennan."

"Oh, crap!" Janet said.

"I'm afraid there's more," I said. "You guys are getting sued too."

"Us!" Gary said, slamming his fist against the wall. "What the fuck did we do?"

"We came here," Janet said.

"Well, maybe we'll all get lucky and the lawyer who's suing us will die too," Gary said.

Janet sat upright. "Christ, Gary! Don't say that."

"Why not?" he said. "We're all going to die. What difference does it make if a few people here and there go ahead of schedule?"

"Two people are dead already. That's enough," Janet said.

"Three," I said. "Another one of your volunteers, Walter Enoch, is the third." Janet's chin dropped, her hands gripping the edge of her desk. "I gather you don't read the paper or watch TV."

"We don't own a TV," Gary said.

"And, nobody reads the paper anymore. Everything is on the Web," Janet said. "What happened?"

"He was murdered. Died just the way he dreamed he would."

Gary didn't say a word. Janet put her head on her desk.

"Shit," she said. "We are so totally screwed."