The Dead Man

Chapter Fifty-nine

I didn't give Rachel a chance to offer me a ride, knowing I'd shake all the way home. If I kept moving, I hoped I could stay a step ahead of the tremors and find a way to keep the promise I'd made to Maggie Brennan that I would protect her.

I didn't think Corliss had decided to go on vacation, taking her and their research assistants along for the ride, and there was no other explanation for their simultaneous disappearances that didn't include a body count. The question was how Maggie, Janet, and Gary fit into Corliss's pattern.

Until now, I believed that he'd chosen his victims because of their shared history of abuse, maybe killing them as a way of killing himself, using their dreams as a template for murder. Maggie could fit that pattern if she was the same Maggie Brennan as in Tom Goodell's cold murder case.

I didn't know enough about Janet and Gary's background to place them in this matrix. They could have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, they and Maggie somehow figuring out that Corliss was the killer, perhaps confronting him and forcing him to take them out to protect himself. Or Corliss may have decided to include them in a last binge, making himself the final victim in a murder-suicide.

If Carter knew that Maggie Brennan was missing, that meant someone had been to wherever she lived. She had told me that she lived in the country, which translated to living outside the KCPD's jurisdiction. Carter would have asked the county sheriff's office to check on her while he did the same for Janet Casey and Gary Kaufman who I assumed lived in the city. Cops and deputy sheriffs would have knocked and, when no one answered, checked for signs of forced entry, then gone in themselves looking for dead bodies.

If Rachel Firestone knew that none of the missing had reported for work, Carter must have also sent a separate team to the institute to search their offices, the garage and the sub-basement. Nancy Klemp would have stalled the cops until she reached Sherry Fritzshall who would have handled it herself without calling me, glad for the chance to assert her new authority.

I checked my watch. It was close to nine. Carter had covered a lot of ground, no doubt working through the night. Rachel had been right behind him, plying him for information, double-checking his work before staking me out. There was no reason for me to plow the same ground. The best way to stop spinning your wheels is to go in a different direction. Tom Goodell was my best bet.

I called Lucy again. She didn't answer though Simon picked up when I tried his number.

"Where's Lucy? Why haven't you guys returned my calls?"

"Take it easy, Pop. Your little girl is a grown-up."

I must have sounded like an outraged father but I couldn't dial back the tone. I was as irritated with Lucy as I was frightened for Maggie Brennan, Janet Casey, and Gary Kaufman. And a week of high intensity shaking didn't help.

"She's not my little girl and if you call me Pop ever again, I'm going to kick your ass into another zip code. I told Lucy last night that I needed my car back this morning and she isn't answering her phone. Now where the hell is she?"

"Sorry, Jack. I was only kidding around. She left here at seven-thirty. I've been working out in my basement. Cell phone reception is lousy down there. I just came upstairs when you called."

"Okay, if you hear from her, tell her to call me."

"Will do. Is everything all right?"

"Not hardly. Did you see this morning's paper?"

"Yeah, but after you bit my head off, I didn't think it was a good idea to bring it up."

I took a deep breath, trying to talk, my vocal cords too tangled to get the words out. I stopped walking and took more deep breaths. "Hang on," I managed as I waited for my throat muscles to relax, trying again, my words still choppy. "The police can't find Corliss. And, Maggie Brennan and their two research assistants are also missing."

"That is very bad, Jack. It sounds like Corliss has gone totally off the rails. What are you going to do?"

"Find them."

"How can I help?"

I punched out the words in spurts, like bursts of Morse code. "There's a retired Johnson County sheriff's deputy named Tom Goodell. He probably lives in Olathe. I need a phone number and an address."

"Piece of cake."

My car was parked in the driveway when I got home. I shoved past the door, stamping the snow off my boots.

"Lucy! Where are you?" I called out, my speech restored to a steady cadence.

She didn't answer but the dogs did. They came flying down the stairs, jumping on my legs, circling and racing back upstairs as I headed for my bedroom. The cream-colored carpet was crosscut with wet dog tracks and boot prints filled with dirt, salt, and specks of fine gravel, the trail going up the stairs, into my bedroom, back out, and down the hall to Lucy's, the mess renewing the suspicions I had when I realized she'd searched my room a week ago.

"There you are," Lucy said from the bottom of the stairs.

I looked over the rail. She was in her stocking feet, carrying a vacuum cleaner. I was on edge, trying to rein myself in and not doing a very good job of it.

"What were you doing in my bedroom?"

She came upstairs, set the vacuum cleaner down in the hall, uncoiled the cord, and plugged it in. "Trying to catch your damn dogs so I could dry their feet off before they tracked up the whole house, but they're faster than me so all three of us left our tracks."

She didn't look away, her sharp tone telling me she didn't care for mine, letting me know that I was pushing her buttons. I gave her a disbelieving look, eyebrow raised, jaw set.

"What? You think I was snooping around in your room? Give me a break. You want to clean up the mess, be my guest," she said, throwing up her hands.

"Where have you been?"

"You know where I've been. I spent the night at Simon's."

"I meant this morning. Where were you this morning?"

"I got some breakfast and went to the grocery store."

"I told you last night that I needed my car today. Why didn't you answer your phone or call me back?"

Her face reddened as she crossed her arms over her chest and turned her back to me, her shoulders rising and falling. She stood like that for a moment and then faced me, her hands on her hips, her even color restored.

"Jack, you kind of remind me of my dad and I get the feeling I remind you a little bit of your daughter. But that's not who we are, either one of us. I'm sorry I didn't get the car back to you any sooner but you can't run my life or chew me out when I come home too late or don't answer the phone every time you call. Look at us. We're a couple of beat-up people who could get through the day a little easier if we cut each other some slack."

I didn't know what to say, even though I knew she was right. I was cranked up; raw, and worried with none of the control she was using to back away from a fight I was starting.

"Where are my car keys?"

She handed them to me and I went into my bedroom, opened the closet, and took down my gun case. I clipped the holster to my belt in the small of my back and was sliding my Glock into place when Lucy appeared in the doorway.

"What in the world are you doing?" she asked.

"I made a promise to Maggie Brennan that I wouldn't let anything happen to her. The police can't find her or Corliss or their research assistants."

"And you can? You know something they don't know?"

I pulled my jacket on. It was cut below the waist, covering my gun as long as I didn't try to touch my toes.

"I know what I'm doing," I said, my knees buckling, twisting me to the side as I held on to the closet door.

"Knowing is only half the battle, G.I. Joe. You sure you can handle the other half? When you're done doing the Twist, maybe you can show me the Mashed Potato."

I sat on the edge of my bed. "I'm fine. I just need a breather."

She came over to me and put her hands on my shoulders. "Give me the car keys, Jack."

I looked up at her. "Why?"

"You need a driver. It's bad enough that you're probably going to shoot yourself. I don't need you wrecking the car while you're at it. I'd hate to have to buy my own ride."