The Dead Man

Chapter Sixty-three

"What do you mean? A friend of mine you don't want to know about talked to the woman that owned the cat. He got the story from her."

"And I talked to the prosecutor's office in Las Cruces. Had them dig out the file. The woman was a drunk then and she's still a drunk. When Kaufman was a kid he liked to chase her cat. Then, one day the cat disappeared. Except for one of the paws that turned up in the woman's mailbox."

"So, no strangled, gutted cat."

"Right. Kaufman denied having anything to do with the cat but he had a nickel bag of marijuana in his pocket when he was picked up. He pled to a misdemeanor possession charge and the animal cruelty count was dropped for lack of evidence. After that, he stayed out of trouble."

I sighed. "I don't get it. Leonard Nagel is a registered sex offender only maybe he got a bum deal. Anthony Corliss was run out of the University of Wisconsin on a sexual harassment charge where the victim ends up dead and, depending on whose lawyer you talk to, he may have gotten hosed. And Gary Kaufman was a teenage psychopath except there's no proof of that."

"Like you said, every one of these people was dirty."

I took a deep breath. "Okay, let's look at it another way. The killer planted evidence in Leonard Nagel's desk to implicate him in Anne Kendall's murder and may have done the same thing with the list of initials in Corliss's desk. For that matter, the killer could have arranged for Gary Kaufman to pick up the key to the gallery to make certain we'd focus on him."

"So, the killer is leading us around by the nose, getting us to chase the wrong guys."

"Not just any wrong guys. Each of them had something in their background that would make us suspicious even if it didn't hold up when we took a close look at it."

"Maybe that was the point," Carter said. "It's a classic misdirection play. Keep you and me running in a dozen different directions."

"And the longer we do that, the worse the odds are that we find Maggie Brennan, Janet Casey, and Gary Kaufman alive."

Carter nodded. "It's like after a tornado. You start out looking for survivors but at some point it's all about finding the bodies."

"The killer had to know what baggage Leonard and Corliss and Kaufman were carrying."

"I know you've only been at the institute a few days but who had access to that kind of information?"

"Milo Harper knew about Corliss and he might have known about the first sexual harassment complaint against Leonard and he knew what was in the victims' dream project files but there's no way he could have known about Anne Kendall's sexual harassment complaint or Kaufman's juvenile record."

"The description of her nightmare Anne Kendall wrote for Corliss was about being sexually abused. Stands to reason she might have also told him about Leonard Nagel coming on to her. And Kaufman would have had to explain his juvenile record to get into the grad program at Wisconsin with Corliss."

"That puts some but not all of the information in Corliss's head and he's dead. We're looking for someone who knew all of it."

"One way or another," Carter said, "everything was available to someone willing to dig for it. Your anonymous friend found out about Kaufman. The sexual harassment charges against Leonard were on the office grapevine and the criminal case against him in Colorado was public record, same as the Wisconsin lawsuit against Corliss. Plus, we know that Leonard hacked into the dream project files, which means the killer could have done the same thing to learn about the victims' nightmares. Who at the institute has the skill set to do all that?"

I shook my head, not able to get my mind around what I was about to say. "There's only one person. His name is Frank Gentry. He's head of the IT department."

"You know if he's at work today?"

"He was there a while ago."

"Let's hope he hasn't gone home early."

"I'll go with you," I said.

Carter laughed. "I don't think so. You wait here. I'm going to have someone drive you to police headquarters so you can give your statement."

"I already told you what I know."

"Yes, you did. But you didn't write it down and you know we have to have it in writing."

"I can do that tomorrow."

"No. I don't want to take a chance that you might forget something. I want you to cover every detail, make it as specific as you can. Take all the time in the world. Be sure you get it right."

"If you want me out of your hair that badly, why don't you just arrest me?"

"Too much paperwork. What I'd like to do is Taser you again but I'll settle for you and Lucy spending the rest of the day with a pad of paper and a pen and bad coffee. Sit tight and I'll find your driver."

I waited until Carter was inside the gallery and then got out of the squad car. I stepped between two sawhorses, putting the front row of spectators between the yellow tape and me, walking the perimeter until I found Lucy sitting alone in the backseat of Carter's unmarked. She turned my way and I signaled her to follow me. A moment later, we had threaded our way through the crowd to the north side of Twentieth.

We walked west toward my car as two cops pulled alongside it and stopped, boxing it in. We ducked behind a van parked at the curb as the cop in the passenger seat got out and scanned the crowd, talking into the radio pinned to his shirt. The driver left him there, leaning against the car.

"What the hell is going on?" Lucy asked.

"Carter wants us to give our statements."

"I know. That's what the detective who questioned me said."

"Yeah, but Carter will make sure it takes the rest of the day and night to get it done."

"He wants us off the street."

"As long as he can get away with it," I said. "Which may be too long for Maggie Brennan and the others. The killer has been sending us down one blind alley after another and I may have just sent Carter down another one."

"What now? We're not getting near your car with that cop on top of it."

A city bus westbound on Twentieth rolled toward us, blocking the cop's view.

"I hope you've got exact change," I said.

We walked alongside the bus until it stopped near the intersection with Oak. The doors opened and a stream of people descended. I looked back to the east. The cop who'd been guarding my car was coming our way. We weren't fugitives but he could hold us long enough for Carter to decide that we were material witnesses and take us in.

A black SUV with tinted windows cut in front of the bus. Rachel Firestone rolled down the passenger window and leaned out.

"Need a ride?"

"As far as you're going," I said, climbing into the backseat with Lucy.

A woman with swimmer's shoulders and close cut brown hair was behind the wheel, her deep brown eyes studying us in the rearview mirror.

"Where to?" the woman asked.

"Just drive," Rachel said.