The Dead Man

Chapter Thirty-one

We reveal ourselves in many ways, denying, confessing, and rationalizing our faults while exaggerating or diminishing our glories. We embrace and chase those we love and covet, rejecting and denouncing others that threaten us. Our involuntary blinks, nods, winks, grimaces, and squints may flesh out our hidden selves, but nothing says more about us than what we do in the moments that test us, whether it's the hungry, homeless man with his hand out or that which tempts us when no one except God is looking and we aren't convinced He's on duty.

Lucy's question about the money revealed her needs rather than her faults. She had already told me what she'd done, what it had cost her, and how afraid she was of what she might do the next time. Now she was reminding me that she needed backup as much as I did. I hoped I would be kick-ass in the clutch for her.

"Morning," Leonard said. "Frank Gentry was up here looking for you. He waited in your office for a while but he gave up."

"Great. Call him. Tell him I'm here now. I need to talk to him right away."

"No good. He said he'd be tied up in an IT staff meeting until at least eleven and don't ask me to interrupt him."

"Why not?"

"He was in the Special Forces. When those guys give you an order, you don't argue. They'll break your legs just to hear the sound it makes. Me, I'm a conscientious objector."

"To the military?"

"To pain, especially mine."

"Fair enough."

The message light on my phone was blinking. It was a message from Gentry telling me that he'd left the report I'd asked for in the top left-hand drawer of my desk. I found the report in an envelope stamped confidential. It contained the list of staff people who had accessed the dream project files. Gentry had been thorough, alphabetizing the names and including columns identifying each person's position at the institute, their contact information, and the dates on which they had accessed the files. There were thirteen names on the list, including mine.

The least surprising names were Anthony Corliss, Maggie Brennan, and their research assistants, Janet Casey and Gary Kaufman. Four of the people on the list were identified as directors of other projects. I had no idea how their work related to the dream project but added that question to my to-do list. Gentry had included his name since he had accessed the files at my request, his access occurring last night.

The remaining names-Milo Harper, Sherry Fritzshall, and Leonard Nagel-registered on a scale somewhere between interesting and baffling. It took a moment for me to realize that Leonard Nagel was my Leonard. Gentry identified his title as administrative assistant to director of security, adding a footnote that Leonard's access was not authorized and that Gentry was continuing to investigate how he had breached the system security. All three were regular visitors, having accessed the dream project files before and after the deaths of Delaney, Blair, and Enoch.

Leonard's desk was across from my open office door. I watched him as he worked, tapping his Bluetooth earpiece as calls came in, flexing his irrepressible grin. He shuffled papers and scrolled through screens on his computer monitor, a combination pep squad leader and perpetual motion machine. He glanced my way, saw me watching, winked, and went back to work.

I called Simon, gave him all twelve names, and told him to make those background checks a top priority.

"Including Milo and Sherry?" he asked.

"Including them. Nobody gets a pass."

"You going to tell Milo that you're investigating him?"

"Depends on what you come up with. I know he's your buddy. I need to know if you can do this."

Simon hesitated. He was a loyal and devoted friend and I was putting him between those conflicting demands.

"I don't like it," he said.

"What do you think Milo would tell you to do?"

This time, Simon didn't hesitate. "Whatever it takes."

"Those are the words the man lives by."

"Milo's a celebrity. Sherry gets some press but not nearly as much as he does. There will be a ton of stuff on both of them. This will take awhile."

"Focus on what's not in People magazine. And don't forget about Leonard. He's my assistant. The dream project files are password protected and he wasn't supposed to have the password. Find out if he's a got a track record of snooping or peeping."

I got to Anthony Corliss's office the same time he did. He was wearing a waist-cut down jacket, jeans, and hiking boots damp from the snow. His cheeks were red, his hair matted against his scalp. He was holding a knit cap and scarf in one hand and a backpack in the other.

"Hey," he said. "Back for more?"

"Just a few questions."

"Damn, I'm sweating like a stuck pig," he said as he unlocked the door. "Walked to work. Seemed like a good idea at the time and it's either exercise or die. I hate exercise but I'm not ready to die."

"Where do you live?"

"Over in Crestwood, a couple of miles from here. Not a bad walk on a nice day but it was a bitch in this cold."

I followed him into his office. He hung his coat, cap, and scarf on a hook on the back of his door, tossed the backpack on the couch, and dropped into his desk chair. I sat in a chair across from him.

"That's a little north of me. I'm in Brookside."

"Well, then, I guess we're neighbors. That mean we're gonna be friends?" he asked, leaning back in his chair, flashing a smile.

"No reason we can't be. I need you to educate me."

"About what?"

"For starters, the girl at Wisconsin who drowned."

His smile vanished. "You were a cop, right?"

"FBI."

"Like I said, a cop. You ever make a mistake? Arrest the wrong man? Ruin someone's life, maybe send them to death row?"

"I did my best and trusted the system to get things right."

"Well, bully for you, brother, because the system sucks. I had nothing to do with that girl's death. The university didn't ask my permission to settle that lawsuit. They gave away their money and my reputation. Now you want to talk about the dream project, I've got time. You want to dredge up what happened at Wisconsin and I'm busy."

Ask any con on a cell block and he'll tell you he's innocent, that his lawyer screwed up his case or that the guy in the next cell confessed that he did it. Ask anyone who's ever paid big bucks to settle a lawsuit and they'll point you to the fine print that says the settlement is not an admission of liability, which liability is expressly denied, thank you very much, adding that they settled so that everyone could get on with their lives.

Then there are the people who do terrible, inexplicable things and convince themselves they didn't because that's the only way they can look in the mirror. Mixed in with all of them are the ones who are innocent and blameless. Picking those hapless ones out of the crowd is dicey at best. I hadn't made up my mind about Corliss.

"Walk me through the process your volunteers go through from how they are recruited until you're done with them."

"It's pretty simple. We're not like research programs at universities. When I was teaching at Wisconsin, we got all the volunteers we needed from students who wanted extra credit for participating in psychology studies. They worked for free. Here, we have to pay people, just like the drug companies doing trials. We put ads in the local papers, things like that. They fill out a questionnaire, we do the brain scans, the EEGs, we make the video where they tell us about their dreams, and we teach them about lucid dreaming. That's the quick and dirty."

"How much do you pay?"

"Couple hundred bucks. Not enough to give up their day jobs. It's more to get their attention. The real hook is the chance to get past their nightmares. That's what these people are looking for. Some of them are flat out scared to go to sleep."

"You recruit many people on your own, like you did Walter Enoch?"

"Walter was the exception. He was too good a candidate to pass up."

"Tell me about the videos. How does that work?"

"We got a room here we use. My research assistants shoot most of them."

"What about Maggie Brennan? Does she take any of the videos?"

He shook his head. "Maggie isn't what you'd call a people person. Getting subjects to open up about their nightmares isn't in her skill set. She can read an fMRI or an EEG like nobody's business, tell you what part of the brain is lighting up and why, but that's where it begins and ends for her."

"And you?"

He laughed. "I am a psychologist. If I didn't like people, I'd have to find another line of work."

"How many volunteers have you videoed?"

"Not more than a few. I fill in if the research assistants aren't available or if they think the subject is particularly interesting."

"Like with Walter Enoch?"

"He was a mess, wasn't he? Can you imagine going through life with a face like that? People are afraid to look at you or can't stop staring. What a burden. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying he's better off dead. People can adapt to all kinds of things. But he wasn't exactly living the good life."

"Can I get a look at the room where you and Walter made the video?"

"Didn't do it here. Walter was real shy. Hard to blame him. It took me forever to talk him into volunteering. He didn't want to come down here, so I said we could do it at his house and he said okay."

"I watched his video last night."

"You always go to this much trouble just to trip someone up? If you watched that video you knew where it was made."

"And I knew you lied to me yesterday when you acted like you didn't know that Enoch had stolen all that mail. You want to be friends? Friends don't lie to friends."

"Course they do, all the time. Hell, lying is one of the necessities of friendship. Your friend asks how do I look and you say great even if you'd never leave the house looking like that. That's what friends are for. I promised Walter I wouldn't turn him in. That was the only way he'd talk to me. Maybe that was a mistake. If it was, I wasn't going to give myself up to you on our first date. I didn't know you from Adam when you walked in that door or what you were after."

"I think you had a pretty good idea what I was after. The alert software on your computer told you that I had accessed your files."

Corliss flattened his palms on his desk, looking first at the floor then at me. "You do your homework. I'll give you that."

"Why did Enoch agree to do the video at his house? Having company would have been the last thing he wanted. It would have been safer to do the video at your house or the institute."

"Doing it at his house was my idea. I wanted to know more about him. Best way was to see where he lived. Took me a while, but he finally trusted me enough to let me in. That was a big step for him."

"How many times were you in Enoch's house?"

He sat back in his chair, arms crossed. "Just the one time. When we made the video."

"Did you take anything from the house?"

"No. Why would I do that?"

His phone rang. He answered and listened, his face turning pale. "Okay," he said and hung up. "Two FBI agents named Kent and Dolan are here. I wonder why they want to talk to me."

I decided to let Kent and Dolan tell him, not wanting to step on their interrogation. He would tell them about our conversations and I didn't want to give them any more ammunition for obstruction of justice or witness tampering charges.

"Don't worry," I said. "You look great."