The Dead Man

Chapter Thirty-two

I could keep some parts of my investigation from Milo Harper but I couldn't let him be blindsided by the FBI. His door was open. He was standing behind his desk, rifling through papers, opening and slamming shut drawers, his hair disheveled, his eyes wild. I knocked and waited.

He looked up, stared, and squinted as if to bring my face into focus, tapping one hand against his thigh. "What?"

"We need to talk."

He waved me in. "Sure, sure."

He pursed his lips, squinted some more, and pounded his fist on his desk. "Damn it! I can't remember your fucking name!"

People walking by his office slowed, rubber-necking like they were passing an accident on the freeway. I closed the door and met him at his desk.

"It's Jack Davis. I'm the director of security."

"I know what you do. I hired you for Christ's sake, but I lost your name. Frustrates the living daylights out of me. Same with this mess," he said, pointing to the papers scattered on his desk. "I write myself notes in a little spiral notebook-reminders of what I'm supposed to do, who I had lunch with today and who I'm having breakfast with tomorrow. I used to keep that stuff on my iPhone but I was making so many notes, it was just easier to write them down. I came in this morning and I can't find the damn spiral. I don't know what I did with it."

I looked around his office. The spiral pad was sticking out from under a pile of papers that had fallen to the floor under his desk. I picked it up and handed it to him.

"This what you're looking for?"

He took the pad and let out a deep sigh, patting it against the palm of his hand. "Thanks. This is a thin reed to hold onto. Have a seat."

It was the first time I'd seen any indication that he had early stage Alzheimer's. I understood his frustration and anxiety. They were side effects of losing control, knowing that his inability to remember my name or the things he wrote on the pad or what he'd done with it weren't minor outbreaks of the benign dementia called Can't Remember Shit. They were steps on the downhill slide and there was no getting back to the top of the hill.

"You ever get used to the shaking?" he asked me.

"By now, I feel like I've always been this way. My old life of going to work every day, chasing crooks, having a few pops with my squad, that was someone else. It doesn't seem real. This life does. Maybe that means I'm used to it."

"Well, I'm not. I'll never accept it and I'll never get used to it. I'm going to fight it all the way."

"I don't give advice, especially when I'm not asked, but I'll tell you this much. It's a lot harder to fight a secret war. I tried that. I was dumb enough to think that no one had noticed anything different about me. But people knew something was wrong. They were just afraid to ask. You can let people wonder and whisper or you can let them help you."

"I want to do this on my own terms."

"You may not get the chance. Same thing may be true for this investigation. Two FBI agents are downstairs right now interviewing Anthony Corliss about the murder of Walter Enoch."

His eyes exploded, wild again, as he smacked the arms of his chair with both hands.

"How could you let that happen? You should have told them to get lost unless they had a warrant. What the hell am I paying you for?"

My father had Alzheimer's. It changed his personality more than his memory; it made him volatile, hostile, and so nasty at the end that he had to be drugged so that he'd stop taking swings at his caregivers. I didn't know whether Harper's outburst was the residual effect of the morning's frustration or the beginning of something more insidious. The more aggressive my father got, the calmer I got, making it easier for him to hear me. It worked with him. I hoped it worked with Harper.

"They don't need a warrant to talk to someone. I know these guys. Their names are Kent and Dolan. If I ran interference for Corliss, they'd be back with a team of agents and cops and they'd spend the next two days carrying boxes out of here under the watchful eye of the media. You want to lose control of the situation, that's the best way to do it."

He took a deep breath, hugged himself, and apologized with a weak smile.

"You're right. You're right. Why do you think they're interested in Corliss?"

"For starters, he recruited Walter Enoch for the dream project and convinced him to take the video at Enoch's house which means that Corliss knew about the stolen mail and didn't turn Enoch in. On top of that, there were no signs of forced entry and that suggests that Enoch knew his killer well enough to let him in the house. Given the stolen mail, Enoch wasn't likely to let many people in his house. Corliss may have been the only one. Toss in what happened with the girl at Wisconsin and I'm not surprised that the FBI is real interested in talking to him."

"You're saying they think Corliss killed Walter Enoch?"

"I'm saying they've got good reasons to talk to him and we've got no good reasons to make their job any harder."

"Do you think he did it?"

"I think I'd be doing what Kent and Dolan are doing."

Harper settled back in his chair, looking past me, digesting what I had told him.

"Do you think Corliss had anything to do with what happened to Tom Delaney and Regina Blair?"

"There's too much we don't know to answer that question."

"Like what?"

"Like why you, your sister, and my assistant were logging onto the dream project files like it was your home page."

He laughed. "We're all suspects, is that it?"

"I don't have any suspects but I do have a lot of questions."

"It's how I keep tabs on my projects. I don't have time to meet with everyone as often as I'd like and the project directors don't keep the hours I do."

"Makes sense. Leonard wasn't authorized to have access to the dream project files. Frank Gentry is figuring out how he did it."

"Fire Leonard. Today. Now."

"I'd rather wait. I want to know how he did it and, since we know he's doing it, we can monitor him. We'll learn a lot more than if we kick his ass out of here. What about your sister? Why would she be poking around in these files?"

"Let's ask her," he said, picking up his phone.

The door to his office flew open as he dialed. It was Sherry, her arms clamped at her sides, her hands balled into fists, her mouth trembling.

"Nancy Klemp called me from the front desk. One of the maintenance people found a body stuffed in a utility closet in the sub-basement."