The Dead Man

Chapter Fifty-eight

I declined Rachel's offer of a ride, using the rest of my walk to think about the bait she'd thrown at my feet.

News stories, like murder cases, are organic, living creatures that grow arms and legs and reproduce. Random chance, chaos, the rule of unintended consequences, and the probability that we are all within six degrees of separation of one another combine to spawn new stories and new cases, the pregnant sometimes the last to know they're with child.

Rachel began with the murders and stumbled onto a parallel track about me, following the road map the FBI had laid out for her. She wanted information about both stories and so did I, but trading for it was tricky, particularly when one party wants to go public and the other wants to stay private, when a good deal may be measured more by what you didn't give up than by what you got.

I crossed Brookside Boulevard. and walked a block south to the cafe. Rachel's SUV was parked on the street, tilted to port, the starboard wheels resting on a snow berm built by the city's plows. The aroma of fresh ground coffee picked me up before I hit the door.

The Roasterie is Kansas City's homegrown coffee company. The owner started roasting coffee beans in the basement of his house in Brookside. When he outgrew the basement he moved to the city's west side, later opening the cafe in his old neighborhood. It's as good a place for a cup of coffee as there is, embracing Brookside's laid-back ambience with overstuffed chairs, soft light, and easy music.

Rachel was waiting at a table in a corner near the door, two steaming mugs in front of her. I took the seat across from her, my back to the wall.

"Coffee tastes better in a mug than in a paper cup," she said. "And these mugs feel great in your hand. Your cup is unleaded."

"Good guess."

"It wasn't a guess. I researched your movement disorder when I wrote the stories last year. Caffeine is not your friend."

I took two dollars from my wallet and laid them on the table, raised the cup, and took a sip. "Thanks."

She'd engineered this meeting so I let her take the lead, not wanting to appear too anxious to make a deal, preferring to let her set the floor in our negotiations by going first.

"You read my story?"

"All of it."

"At least admit that we used a decent picture of you," she said.

"I didn't know you had more than one to choose from."

"We have others," she said, setting her cup on the table. "From Wendy's funeral."

"Thanks for not using one of those."

"You're welcome. What did you think?"

"You covered a lot of territory."

"Did I get it right?"

"Too late to worry about that now."

"It's never too late. There's always tomorrow's paper. This story has legs, a lot of them."

"You're good at what you do. You'll get it all by the time it's over."

"I could use your help," she said, leaning back in her chair, twisting the diamond ring on her left hand.

"Getting married?"

She smiled, her eyes flickering with doubt. "Next month, in California. It's what my girlfriend wants."

"That's not exactly an enthusiastic endorsement of the institution of marriage."

She dipped her chin, nodded, and gave her ring another twirl. "Let's just say I have an easier time committing to my work."

"Trust me, it may be harder to commit to the people you love but the fringe benefits are a lot better than the ones you get on the job."

"Voice of experience?"

"Yeah, all of it hard."

"Like what happened to your daughter?"

"Like what happened to her."

She sighed, hunching over the table. "I know you're right but this is such a screwy business, I don't know whether I can't let go of it or whether it can't let go of me. I start out writing a story about the murder of Anne Kendall and the next thing I know there's a serial killer on the loose and my FBI source is whispering in my ear about you and your daughter and this crazy mailman who stole everyone's mail. How does that happen?"

"They're using you."

"No shit, Sherlock. They can use me till they use me up as long as there's a story worth writing."

"So, you'd do the same thing to me, use me till you use me up?"

She grinned, cocked her head to one side, resting her chin on clasped hands. "Only in a good way."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

She planted her hands on the table. "Look, everything I wrote about you last year was straight and true. I didn't use your daughter to make you look guilty or your movement disorder to make you look pathetic. Now you're in the middle of a serial killer story and the one with the mailman. No way I can leave that alone. Neither can the cable networks. I got calls last night from Fox and MSNBC asking me to appear on their morning news shows today."

"You're hitting the big time."

"Right. You're about to be diced, dissected, profiled, and psychoanalyzed by people who think news is a carnival sideshow. So talk to me. Make sure I get it right. Make sure your side of the story gets out there."

"You're all feeding the same beast. They'll gnaw on this story for a day or two until they find fresh meat somewhere else."

"Maybe, but you and I are joined at the hip on this one. I'll be there when the arrests are made and when the jury comes back. I'll write the follow-up stories about the victims and their families and I'll do the where-is-Jack-Davis-now piece in five years. I'm not going away."

"What do you know about the murders that you left out of today's paper?"

"If I tell you, are you going to play fair or take advantage of me?"

"I doubt that I would get very far trying to do that."

"For an ex-cop, you give good flatter. Talk to me and I'll talk to you."

"On or off the record?"

"On."

"No good."

"Okay, off the record. You'll be a source close to the investigation."

"Sorry. Here's my deal. You talk to me now and I'll give you an exclusive when it's all in and all done. Take it or leave it."

"That's not much of a deal. From what I hear, you could be dead or in jail by then. A dead man gives a lousy interview and a defendant can't get past his own lawyer to talk to the press."

She'd given more in that answer than I'd given. "Who wants me dead and who wants me in jail?"

"Ahhh," she said. "I've got your attention, at last. Okay, consider this my good faith offer. Quincy Carter and I go way back. He likes you but thinks you're in way over your head because of your movement disorder. He's afraid you didn't learn your lesson when you got zapped trying to break into Anthony Corliss's house and that you're going to keep going after Corliss even though he warned you to stay out of it, so he's cutting you out of the loop. I wouldn't count on him returning your calls. He doesn't want your blood on his hands."

I nodded, glad to know that Carter saw Corliss the way I did. "That's the dead part. What about the jail part?"

"My sources at the FBI aren't as good but I'm getting a pretty strong vibe that they think you're hooked into the money your daughter stole from the drug ring. I put it to their spokesman, Manny Fernandez, straight up and he denied it with a wink and a nod, which for those Bureau guys is like Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah's couch telling the world he's in love."

"Carter knows more about the murders than I do and I don't know what happened to the money so what could I possibly tell you?"

"A lot. Like what's going on at the Harper Institute? Why did Milo Harper step down? How did two whack jobs like Leonard Nagel and Anthony Corliss get hired there? For that matter, how did you get hired?"

"I can't help you with any of that. I agreed to do a job, not sell newspapers."

I drained my cup and stood.

"Where are you going? What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I've still got a job. I'm going to the institute."

"If you're hoping that Corliss decided to come to work today and is sitting behind his desk, waiting for you so he can confess, you're going to be disappointed. He isn't there."

"How do you know that?"

"I checked. He's not at home either. And I talked to Carter. He says Corliss is in the wind."

"Thanks."

"One other thing," she said, grabbing my wrist. "Carter can't find Maggie Brennan, Janet Casey, or Gary Kaufman. They're all gone, so talk to me."

I held on to the edge of the table, steadying myself as a burst of tremors rattled through me. "When it's over."