The Dead Man

Chapter Thirty-six

Frank Gentry materialized in my doorway, his gray suit coat buttoned, his navy and red regimental striped necktie cinched tight and straight against a white, buttoned down shirt. The clock on my desk read five after eleven. I was tempted to stand and salute but waved him to a chair instead.

"Did you find the report I left in your desk?"

"Yeah, thanks. It's a good start, but I need more detail. Can you go deeper and tell me which subfiles each of these people accessed and when?"

"Sure. Are you interested in any specific files?"

"I am. There are videos of the research subjects talking about their dreams. I want to know who accessed the videos for Regina Blair, Tom Delaney, and Walter Enoch."

"Not a problem. You have the report handy? I want to double-check something."

I had tucked the report back into the envelope and put it back in the drawer. I took it out and handed it to him. He studied the envelope, frowning as he turned it over and tapped it against his hand and then got up and closed my office door.

"That's not my envelope. I always write my initials in small letters in the bottom right-hand corner. Habit I got into when I was in the service. My initials aren't on this one. No wonder everyone thinks that little son-of-abitch Leonard killed that girl."

I raised my hand. "What do you mean that everyone thinks Leonard killed that girl?"

"That's the chatter. I'm amazed he hasn't been arrested yet the way people are talking. He saw me go in your office earlier this morning. I closed the door because I didn't like him watching what I was doing. After I left, he must have gone snooping, found the report, and then put it in a new envelope so it would look like it hadn't been opened. No way you would have known the difference."

He handed me the envelope as Detective Carter threw my door open, breathing hard.

"Where's your assistant, Leonard Nagel?"

I looked past him at Leonard's empty desk and came out of my chair. "He was right there a minute ago."

Carter lifted the two-way on his jacket collar to his chin. "Attention all personnel. Lock this building down. No one goes in or out. Find Leonard Nagel," he paused, looking at me.

"White male, dark brown hair, five-ten, hundred eighty pounds," I recited, Carter nodding and repeating the description, looking at me again.

"Approach with caution," I said.

Carter added the rest and clicked off the radio. Half a dozen uniformed cops had gathered outside my office. Sanchez squeezed through the crowd.

"We've checked the entire floor, bathrooms, offices, and closets," he said to Carter. "Caught one guy with his pants down but it wasn't Nagel. We're taking it floor by floor. I radioed for a search dog. We'll flush him out of whatever spider hole he's hiding in."

Milo Harper was next, the cops peeling back to make way for him. "What's happening?"

"Milo Harper, say hello to Detective Carter, KCPD homicide," I said. "They want to talk to Leonard Nagel. He was here a minute ago, but now he's gone."

"I told you we should have fired him this morning," Harper said to me.

"Fired him? Why?" Carter asked.

"We found out he was hacking into confidential files on our network," Harper said. "Jack said we should hold on to him until we knew how he got past our system security."

"I'm glad you didn't fire him," Carter said. "Otherwise, he could be on his way out of town by now instead of bottled up inside this building."

"You think he had something to do with Anne's murder?" Harper asked.

"We want to ask him some questions," Carter said.

"About what?"

Carter flipped the question onto Harper. "We understand that the murder victim, Ms. Kendall, filed a sexual harassment complaint against Leonard Nagel. What do you know about that?"

Harper winced, hit by another dropped shoe. "Not a goddamn thing."

"She left it on Connie Nichols desk last night, just before she left," I said. "Connie told me that she didn't see it until this morning. She also told me that another employee filed a complaint against him last year but dropped it when her husband was transferred. She's making copies of everything for the police."

"I just came from her office," Carter said. "What do you know about the earlier complaint?" he asked Harper.

Harper hesitated, blinking as the scope of his ignorance came into focus. "Nothing. My sister handles those things." He took a deep breath. "Is there anything else I should know?"

"Do you do background checks before you hire people?" Carter asked.

"I don't know but I assume you're about to tell me why we should," Harper said.

"I am," Carter said. "When we found out about the complaint against Leonard, we ran his name through the computer. He was charged with date rape in Colorado a few years ago but pled out to a lesser charge. Part of the plea deal was that he had to register as a sex offender, which he did in Colorado, except he didn't register when he moved to Kansas City. Happens more often than we'd like to admit."

Harper's face went slack, his mouth hinged wide, then bounced back. "How can I help you find him?"

"We've got people waiting at the elevators on every floor and at all of the exits," Carter. "And, we've got teams sweeping the stairs and each floor. If he pops open a ceiling tile and gets in the vent system, can he find a way out we don't know about?"

"The best he could do is hide but he can't go floor to floor. The only way he could do that is in the trash chute. It's big enough and there are handholds all the way down for access in case something gets stuck or the chute needs to be repaired."

"Where do we find the chute?"

"There's an interior corridor on each floor. That's how you get to the bathrooms, the break room, the stairs, and the freight elevator. The trash chute runs parallel to the freight elevator."

"Where does it bottom out?" Carter asked.

"At the loading dock on the ground floor. The trash is collected in a Dumpster and wheeled out for pickup."

"When is the trash picked up?" Carter asked.

"That much I do know," Harper said, looking at his watch. "Every Tuesday, about now."