don't know why you won't tell me about the FBI but I gather you've got something else at stake, something personal. I could get anyone I want to do this job but I like having someone with a lot on the line. I'll stay out of your way but I want results or I will get someone else.'
'What if you don't like the results?'
'That's tomorrow's problem. The question is whether you can do this today.'
More than the shaking or the brain fog, I resented that my condition compromised my choices, forcing me to accept weakness as normal, walking away instead of pushing on as unavoidable. If I was going to give in, I might just as well quit. The FBI forced me to do that and the bitter taste hadn't gone away.
Simon Alexander was wrong when he told me that this would be an easy gig, a job I could do on my own schedule, and I was right when I told Milo Harper that something like this doesn't want to be controlled. Neither mattered now. What mattered was whether I was going to answer the bell or pack it in, taking the rest of the day off because I felt like I'd gone ten rounds or rattle Anthony Corliss's cage, knowing that the surest way to chill an investigation was to wait until it was convenient for me.
'It's no hill for a climber,' I told him.
Chapter Twenty
The personnel directory Leonard gave me listed Anthony Corliss's office on the fourth floor and Maggie Brennan's on the third. I tried Corliss first. He answered on the first knock.
'Door's unlocked.'
The lights were turned off, the blinds drawn, the only illumination coming from a desk lamp and a flat panel television mounted on one wall. Corliss was leaning back in his chair, feet on his desk.
Two people, a woman and a man, their backs to me, occupied chairs in front of his desk. I stepped to one side, giving me a view of their profiles. Both looked to be in their midtwenties, the guy wandering from the screen to his iPhone to the books on the wall. The woman leaned forward, arms across her middle, eyes narrowed on the television, a legal pad in her lap filled with notes.
I recognized Maggie Brennan from the photograph in her bio. She was sitting on a small sofa and turned toward me, her brows rising, her eyes flaring like I'd snuck up on her in the dark. She shifted her weight, giving me her back and facing the screen.
Corliss held a finger to his mouth, telling me not to speak. They were wrapped in the shadows, watching the television.
I put Corliss in his early forties, enough mileage in the wrinkles and folds on his face to separate him from his youth but not enough that it was all in his rearview mirror. Though he was Milo Harper's contemporary, he had an easy energy about him in contrast to Milo's urgency, the difference no doubt owing to the distance on their horizons. His sandy brown hair was cut short, framing a full face. He was shorter than me, creeping past stocky with a black sweatshirt bunching over his belly.
He'd frozen the image on the television when I opened the door, now waving the remote at the screen where a young man, maybe twenty, sat in a chair, the camera in tight, his face locked in a blank stare, the soul patch beneath his chin more like a mud smear. Corliss clicked the remote and the image jerked to life. The man rocked back and forth, palms on his knees, then squared up to the camera.
'Go on,' an off-camera female voice said, the tone anxious and encouraging. The young woman with the legal pad was mouthing the words that I assumed were hers.
'Man it was crazy. Scared the shit out of me,' the man on the screen said. 'I had to get home but it didn't matter which way I went, it was wrong. The streets didn't go where they were supposed to go and then the road disappeared and I was falling.'
'What happened next, Quentin?'
'I stopped falling but I never hit the ground. Then I was running, trying to get to class to take a final but it was too late and I flunked out of school. I tried to find the professor, but this giant snake jumped up and the next thing I knew I was sucking my own dick. That's when I woke up,' he said, biting his lip to stop from laughing.
'Thanks, Quentin, that's all for today,' the woman's voice said and the screen went blank.
'Janet,' Corliss said to the woman with the legal pad, 'you think that boy is for real?'
Corliss spoke with a soft Ozark twang though his good-old-boy manner stiffened Janet rather than put her at ease.
'His dream had some of the features we're looking for,' she said to her pad, not meeting his gaze.
'What do you think, Gary?' Corliss said, swinging his feet to the floor and his attention to the man sitting next to her.
Gary raised his head, glancing first at Janet then at Corliss like he'd been woken from a nap. 'I don't know. The guy seemed legit.'
'Children,' Corliss said, 'that boy is why you all got to do a better job screening these subjects before you sign them up. We're paying these people good money and I don't want to throw it away on some kid's jack-off fantasy. Now, get out of my office and find me some nightmares that are worth a damn.'
Janet and Gary nodded, rose, and brushed past me, Janet turning on the lights as they left. Maggie watched them leave. She sighed, folded her hands in her lap and looked at Corliss.
'I'm Jack Davis, new director of security for the institute.'
Corliss pointed to one of the empty chairs. 'Take a load off, Jack, and say hello to my partner in crime, Maggie Brennan. Milo said you'd be coming around to see us. What can we do for you?'
I ignored his offer. His chair was raised higher than either of the other chairs or the sofa, giving him the visual advantage of looking down on his guests, an edge I preferred to keep since I couldn't pee in the corner to let him know I was the new sheriff in town.
'Milo tell you why he hired me?'
'Yep. He said you're going to protect our intellectual property.'
'You have any that needs protecting?'
'Matter of fact, we don't. We do pure research, trying to get a handle on nightmares and posttraumatic stress disorder. We've got nothing to patent or trademark and the stuff we publish is copyrighted as soon as the ink is dry.'
'Well, then, is there anything else you think we should talk about?'
He leaned back in his chair, putting his feet on his desk again, his hands banded across his belly.
'Can't think what it would be.'
Cops categorize people caught up in a murder investigation as victims, witnesses, and suspects. The dead are known, while witnesses may be eager and helpful or scarce and reluctant.
Suspects are labeled as much by circumstance, bias, and behavior as the facts. Some liked to dance, flirting with the facts and playing hard to get, confident that they are too clever to be caught. Others liked to wrestle, flexing their muscles and taking their shots, certain they were too tough to be taken down.
Corliss knew I had accessed his project files and that whatever I'd seen had brought me to his door. That was enough to make him suspicious and wait for me to tell him why I was there rather than offer his conjecture. It didn't make him guilty of anything, but it did make him dance and I liked to make dancers wrestle.
'You know the funny thing about bullshit?' I asked him.
He gave me an ear-to-ear grin. 'I don't but I got a feeling you're gonna tell me.'
'Everyone thinks theirs doesn't stink.'
He laughed, but there was no joy in the sound. 'You are right about that. I'm guessing that you're catching my scent.'
'Like a feedlot on a hot day. Is your Nashville act for real?'
'I'm not the first one of my people to come down out of the hills but I am the only one with a PhD. They'd be proud of me too if they had any idea what it is I do.'
'Try explaining it to me.'
He put his feet on the floor and pulled up to his desk.
'Like a lot of science, it's easier to describe than it is to explain. Bad things happen to people all the time and,
