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.'
Chapter Sixty
'We're all dressed up with no place to go,' Lucy said. 'We've got to work this thing before we go running off half-cocked to nowhere.' She took my arm, pulling me off the bed. 'Let's go. Downstairs.'
I threw my coat on the sofa as she paced around the living den, studying the Post-its on the walls. My muscles quit twitching as I watched her think. She was right about us. We were both beat up, too many of our wounds self-inflicted. We needed more than a little slack from one another. We needed a hand up and she'd given me hers.
'Okay,' she said, stopping in the middle of the room. 'What do we know that we didn't know yesterday?'
'Start with the article in today's paper.'
I handed it to her, giving her time to read it, then told her about my conversation with Rachel Firestone.
She tucked the paper under her arm, took another lap around the living den, stopping across from me.
'Working theory-Corliss is responsible for the disappearance of Maggie, Janet, and Gary. Worst case- they're dead. Best case-they will be soon if we don't find them.'
'Agreed,' I said.
'It's pretty tough to snatch three people all at once,' she said. 'Especially when two of them are young and could put up a fight, like the research assistants.'
'Even if Corliss had a gun, he's got to put them in a car and drive somewhere. He can't do that and watch them at the same time. If he lets one of them drive, he's still got control problems.'
'He could tie them up, duct tape them, but that's the kind of thing people in other cars would notice-three people all bundled up and gagged. You can get one, maybe two people in the trunk, but three's a crowd.'
'So, he grabs them one at a time,' I said.
'Possible, but not likely. Janet and Gary were probably together. Two people are easier to handle than three, but not that much easier. Makes it more likely that he talked them into meeting him somewhere they were familiar with, someplace that wouldn't raise any red flags.'
'Could have gone down that way.'
'What else makes sense?' she asked.
'He takes them out separately. Kills them where he finds them.'
'The most likely place he would have found them is where they live which means the cops would have found their bodies by now,' Lucy said. 'Besides, that's too spontaneous and Corliss is a planner. Look at how much trouble he went to with Walter Enoch and Tom Delaney, taking the videos where they lived and then going back to kill them. And what about the way he staged Anne Kendall's body?'
'You're right,' I said. 'Anne came to him about the dream project last Wednesday and she was killed the following Monday. Maggie and I left the institute at the same time on Tuesday. If Janet and Gary were gone by then, I think she would have mentioned it.'
'So, he doesn't grab them. He invites them.'
'More like he gives them an order. He's their boss.'
'He's Janet and Gary's boss, not Maggie's.'
'Then he invites her and orders the others,' I said.
'That would work. But where's the party?'
'Someplace private, no walk-in traffic.'
'Not one of their houses. The cops have been there,' Lucy said. 'Then where?'
'I don't know but I know where to look. Grab your coat. If Corliss persuaded Maggie, Janet, and Gary to meet him somewhere, there might be something in his office about that location, maybe a calendar entry or a handwritten note like the one with the victim's initials on it. '
The lobby was quiet, as if Tuesday's turmoil had taken place in another dimension of time and space. Nancy Klemp was on duty, nodding as we passed her desk, the starch in her back replaced with a defensive crouch across her shoulders, afraid and ready. Her comparison of the institute to the valley of the shadow of death had been prophetic.
I swiped my master key card across the lock sensor for Corliss's office and swung the door open. It had been stripped bare, desk drawers, file cabinets and bookshelves empty, and his computer gone. There was nothing left but the furniture. I picked up the phone on the desk and called Sherry Fritzshall's office.
'Where are you?' she asked.
'In Anthony Corliss's office. What happened to all of his stuff?'
'The police took it.'
'When?'
'This morning. What are you doing in his office?'
'My job. Were you here when they took everything?'
'Yes. They had a search warrant. There was nothing I could do.'
'Did the warrant cover anything else besides Corliss's office?'
'Yes. It included the offices of Maggie Brennan, Janet Casey, and Gary Kaufman. They took everything that wasn't nailed down.'
'Next time, call me.'
'If there's a next time, it will be too late to call you.'
We checked Maggie's office and the one Janet and Gary used to be certain no scraps had been left behind. A swarm of locusts couldn't have done a more thorough job stripping a field.
'What now?' Lucy asked.
'The IT department. If Corliss is like most of the rest of the world, he exists as much in cyberspace as he does on the ground. It's impossible to cover all those tracks.'
