Sweepers

by P. T. Deutermann

  The basement smelled faintly of chemicals, and she saw traces of what she’assumed was fingerprint powder here and there around the room. While Karen waited on the next to the last step, the admiral stepped around the chalk outlin e at the bottom of the stairs. He appeared to be trying not to look at it. The outline did not appear Karen to be to . large enough h to contain a human. But she remembered how Frank had looked in the CCU, his sleek lobbyist figure shrunken into the metal bed, nested among all those ominous tubes and hoses, as if to make himself small for the dangerous journey that was coming. There was an empty green plastic laundry basket parked on one end of the couch. Next to the basket, there was a pile of clothes in a tagged clear plastic bag. A second, smaller plastic bag held a pair of slippers.

  Sherman walked over to the couch and examined the bags.

  “This really doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said finally.

  “Are those her slippers?” Karen asked, pointing to the second bag.

  Tag looked at the other bag, then looked harder. Then he swore.

  “What?” Karen asked.

  She hated those slippers. She never wore those slip lxrs. I I

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, damn it. I bought them for her. Christmas present, two years ago.

  They were too big, wrong style, wrong all the way around.

  Even the soles were too slippery for the carpet in this house. She made a joke out of it to protect my feelings, but it was one of things, before we really knew each other, just a dumb present. But the thing is, she never wore them. If they found her wearing those slippers, something’s way out of whack with this picture.”

  Karen followed the admiral out of the house ten minutes later. She had decided to wait in her car while the admiral went in to talk to Mrs.

  Klein. She was disturbed by what he had said in the basement and was beginning to wonder about what was going on. He had shaken off his funk after finding the slippers and gone through the house like a man possessed, leaving her standing in hallways while he went through each room on all three floors, turning on every light in the house. He didn’t say anything the whole time, but she could hear him muttering occasionally under his breath, He was obviously thinking what she was thinking, and what the detective was probably thinking: The “accident” might have been staged. Except the detective would certainly not know about the slippers. The admiral would have to tell them about that. So what had twitched their antennae? The fall itselp Those stairs were steep, although well lighted, carpeted, and with railings on both sides.

  One could certainly trip or stumble, even with an armful of laundry. But she should have been able to grab something on the way down’ Karen also wondered about the admiral’s distracted look when he had arrived this evening. He looked far less confident and commanding than he had seemed in the conference room this morning. It was as if he had come here tonight preoccupied with something over and above the weight of this somber visit. But it probably was just the emotional stress of returning to the place where his loverhis ex-‘lover, she reminded herself-had died. She could re-. late: The hotel lobby where Frank had been stricken was not a place she would ever go again.

  He came out of Mrs. Klein’s town house after ten minutes, walked over to his car, and stood next to the driver’s window, putting both hands -on top of the car. She got out and walked back to his car. She waited while he gathered his thoughts’ “Now I don’t know what to do,” he said finally.

  “Mcnair apparently picked up on the bit about the laundry.

  And Dottie says she was wearing those slippers, or that they were down there at the foot of the stairs. I guess there’s probably a logical explanation for all that, but I can’t put it together. Do you suppose these are the forensic ambiguities Mcnair was talking about?”

  Karen shook her head. “They couldn’t know about the slippers. The laundry, maybe.”

  “Right.-But laundry isn’t really forensics. And my fingerprints will be all over that house.”

  “Which is perfectly logical, given your past association with Ms. “Yeah.

  But there must be something else.”

  She decided this would be a good time to remind him.

  “Sir, as I told you, Admiral Carpenter has asked that I follow up on their investigation. Perhaps I can find out what the rest of those forensic ambiguities are.”

  “And tell them about the slippers?” he asked, looking sideways at her.

  “Well, yes, sir, I think we should. Oh, you think they’ll attach significance to the fact that you came here tonight?”

  “They just might.”

  She shook her head. From her perspective, it was a perfectly normal thing for an ex-lover to do. “I disagree, sir,” she said. “But I do think they ought to hear about the slippers from you, or from you via me. If they think this is a murder, they’ll be back to see Mrs. Klein anyway.”

  “And find out I was here, and maybe what we talked about.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. See what you can find out tomorrow, and please keep me informed. Now I’m going home. I’ve had a long day with a depressing ending. No offense intended, Commander.”

  She tried to smile, but there was that bleak look in his face again.

  Still waters, she thought. Be careful. You know nothing about this man.

  But then he gave her a sudden, almost intuitive look that said, I know what you’re thinking, and then he did smile. It transformed his face, revealing an unexpected charm. “Thanks for coming tonight, Commander. I mean that. Call me when you have something.”

  “Yes, sir. Good night.”

  She smiled to herself as she started up her car. “Call me when you have something,” he’d said. It was almost amusing, how he just assumed she was working for him. Admirals did that, she had noticed: They automatically assumed that everyone in the room was acting in support of the Great . Man at the head of the table. She would call the police first thing in the morning and see if she could arrange another meeting with Mcnair. As she drove away, she glanced back at the Walsh house, and she realized Sherman had left all the lights on. The windows blazed out at the’ dark street as if to defy the lingering presence of death inside.

  WEDNESDAY At 10: 15 on Wednesday morning, Karen Lawrence met with Detective Mcnair in Fairfax. He offered her coffee, but she declined; they sat down in his office. “So, Commander Lawrence. What can we do for you?”

  “As I said when I called, Detective, I’m working for Admiral Carpenter.

  He asked me to act as liaison between you and your efforts to solve the Walsh, um, situation and Navy headquarters.”

  Mcnair kept a neutral expression on his face. “And the reason for establishing this liaison, Commander?”

  Karen looked right at him. “To be perfectly frank, Detective, I think Admiral Carpenter wants to know right away if Admiral Sherman becomes a suspect in a murder case.”

  “I see,” Mcnair said with the hint of a smile now. “Forgive me, when someone says they’re being Perfectly frank, I usually expect quite the opposite. So you are not working for Admiral Sherman, then?”

  “No. I work for the JAG, Admiral Carpenter.” ‘5Tell me, that insignia on your sleeves means you’re a lawyer, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, if this Admiral Sherman tells you something in confidence, is that privileged information? You know, lawyer client privilege and all that?”

  No. I’m not representing Admiral Sherman in the lawyer-client sense. I’m not operating ‘of counsel.’ I’m operating as a staff officer on the Navy headquarters staff.” Okay,” Mcnair said. “When you called this morning went in to see Lieutenant Bettino. He’s the boss of the Homicide Section. I explained about this liaison proposition, and he said he could understand the politics of it. But he needed to know what you were. If you were Sherman’s lawyer, then we wouldn’t talk to you, of course, until we either charged him or gave it up for Lent. But, secondly, he di
dn’t feel we needed a whole lot of help with this case as things stand.

  “Are you saying you would prefer there not be a parallel Navy investigation?”

  “Yes I guess I am. I mean, of course the Navy can run any, kind of investigation it wants on any of its personnel.

  You’ve got jurisdiction over naval personnel. But we’d prefer that any such investigation or related ‘activities not interfere with anything we might have going down in our jurisdiction.”

  Karen understood the implied warning immediately and moved to put his concerns to rest. “First, we wouldn’t think of interfering with your investigation, Detective. And, second, since Ms. Walsh died in Fairfax County and not aboard a naval installation, our position is that you have exclusive jurisdiction. Besides, we’re not conducting an investigation.

  I’m here to-“

  “Yeah, I know,” he interrupted, sitting back in his chair.

  “To establish liaison. So, let’s stop beating around the bushes here.

  You know we’re not going to reveal every little detail of what we’re working here with this case. But what I hear you saying is that you’d like a little heads-up, we decide to make Sherman for the perpetrator.

  Is that about it?”

  Karen decided this was the time to show him that they wanted a little more than that. “Not exactly,” she said. “We might be more useful than that. Let me fill you in on something. She told him about going to Elizabeth’s town house the night before with Admiral Sherman. He nodded slowly keeping his face a blank while she talked, taking it all in but mask. He was indeed a pro, Karen thought, but she did get a reaction when she told him about the slippers. He reached for his notebook and wrotd something down. He appeared to think for a moment when she was finished. “Lemme ask you,” he said. “Did Sherman authorize you to tell us this?”

  ““Authorize’? Wrong word. I told him that the police ought to know about this, and he agreed.”

  “Why did you go with Sherman last night?” he asked.

  “He asked me to. Personally, I think he thought it would look better if he had someone with him. There were no indications that the house Was a crime scene when we got there. That’s not a problem, is it?”

  “Nope,” he replied. “Did he appear to key on anything else when he went through the place?”

  Karen shook her head. “No. He went through the entire house, but I don’t think he was looking for anything specific. He appeared to be, I don’t know, trying to exorcise the place in a way. He turned on all the lights went into all the rooms. I had the impression that he suspects something’s not right with the picture, but he also realizes that if he yells murder, he’s the only guy you’re looking at. I think the man feels he’s in a box.”

  Mcnair thought about that for a moment. Then he looked back up at Karen.

  “Do you think he’s clean?” he asked.

  “Yes, I do,” Karen replied immediately. “Absent any physical evidence to the contrary. Based on what you said about the time of death-early evening, Friday-he was either in the Pentagon or at that restaurant. Did that check out, by the way?”

  He looked at her for a moment, as if gauging whether or not he should answer the question she had just casually slipped in.

  “The restaurant, yes,” he said grudgingly. “Like he said, he’s a regular. They remembered him being there. We haven’t talked to his office yet.”

  Perhaps I can help with that.” She handed over one of her cards, with Sherman’s deputy’s name and number written on the back. He slipped the card into a pocket in-his notebook and then sat back, looking at her again, a speculative expression on his face. Karen waited. Mcnair appeared to be one of those cops who could be perfectly polite, even solicitous in his approach to people, but who still exuded the stoniness born of dealing with murder and murderers. Finally, he nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let me try this again, see if I get it right this time. You will stay close to this Sherman guy while we’re working this thing. You’ll pass along to us any information of interest that develops. In return, we will keep you informed as to how our investigation’s shaping up. You want advance notice if we decide to move against Sherman, but you also want us to get off him just as soon as we feel there’s no case to be made. How’s that?”

  Karen gave him her brightest smile. “Admiral Carpenter has told me to ensure that your investigation is fully facilitated by the Navy, one way or the other.”

  He nodded again. Karen almost thought he was going to offer his hand so they could shake on it, but he didn’t. He surprised her with another question instead.

  “Tell me something, Commander. Does this guy Sherman think you’re on his side on this?”

  Karen felt the slightest tinge of a flush start around her throat.

  “Admiral Sherman wants to clear this up as quickly as we do, Detective,” she replied.

  He nodded again, the ghost of a smile on his face.

  “Damn,” he said. “And I thought we cops were the masters of evasion.”

  Karen struggled to maintain her composure as he continued to stare at her. He had understood the setup only too well. Then he got up, signifying they were done. He handed her one of his own cards. She realized that he was almost an inch shorter than she was, but bigger than she remembered. Indeterminate age, maybe late thirties. Metallic gray eyes. An iciness back in there. A basically hard face under all that professional courtesy.

  “We’ll be in touch, Commander,” he was saying. “Anything comes up you think is useful, there’s the number.”

  “Thank you, Detective,” she said. “I guess I do have one more question: As things stand now, do you think Admiral Sherman murdered his exgirlfriend?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Hard to tell just now, Commander. I’m not sure what the slippers signify, if anything. But we’ll sure let you know if that’s what we conclude. “

  “Now who’s the master of evasion?” she said, but he only smiled politely and escorted her back out to the reception area.

  Karen tried to shrug off the Judas feeling as she drove back into town.

  Sherman was a flag officer. He didn’t get to be a flag officer without knowing how the system worked. He had to suspect at least that Carpenter would be working his agenda, which would not necessarily parallel Sherown man’s best interests. As the JAG, Carpenter would have his eye on protecting the Navy. And she was not, in fact, his lawyer. So legally speaking, there were no confidentiality aspects to their conversations.

  So there really wasn’t a problem here, right? Right. So why did she feel she was betraying the man?

  She mentally reevaluated her tasking: gain Sherman’s confidence, tell him that she had a line into the cops and that she would alert him to anything shaking from those quarters. In return, he would tell her-what, if anything? Well, like going to Elizabeth Walsh’s house last night, where the slipper business had come up. She sighed as she drove down Route 50 toward the Beltway.

  Time for a workout. She would call Sherman’s office from the athletic club to see when he had a hole in his schedule after lunch. Then the hard part: She would have to back-brief Carpenter and talk to von Renselshe hadn’t spoken to him yet today.

  Ten minutes after one o’clock, Karen entered the OP-32 outer office, with a salad plate in hand. The yeoman got up and knocked on Sherman’s inner office door, stuck his head in, and then held the door open for her. Sherman was finishing a sandwich at a small conference table. His office was similar to Admiral Carpenter’s but smaller and with less prestigious furniture. He did not get up, just waved her over to the table.

  “So, how did it go out there with the Polizei?”

  She took a moment to summon her thoughts while she unwrapped her plastic fork and opened a carton of milk. She took a bite of salad.

  “Well,” she said, “it was pretty short. I told him about your visit to Ms. Walsh’s house, and the slippers-that she would not have been wearing those slippers.”

 
“And?”

  “Mcnair didn’t really react one way or the other, but he did make a note of it.”

  “Did he seem to care that I had gone there?”

  “No, sir. They’re apparently not treating her house as a crime scene. In a way, it’s kind of strange what they’re doing—or not doing, I mean.

  The slippers, the laundry, the basket: All of that would have been held in a lab somewhere if this was a homicide investigation. And their would have been police seals on the house. Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything going on. Or if there is, Mcnair didn’t reveal it.”

  “You’re probably right,” he said. “Did you get any hint of what those forensic ambiguities were?”

  . “No, sir. But I’m almost beginning to think that that term is a euphemism for somebody’s hunch.”

  He nodded thoughtfully and finished his sandwich. Crumpling up the’paper plate, he leaned back in his chair. “Do they understand that I’m a little reluctant to be Freddy Forthcoming as long as they’re acting as if I’m possibly a suspect of some kind?”

  “Yes, sir. But, Admiral, I don’t think you are a real suspect.

  “Then why won’t they just say so? The longer they keep this up, the bigger my political problem in Opnav becomes.”

  “Cops don’t work that way, Admiral. They don’t tell outsiders anything they don’t have to. Besides, the converse is true: If you were a viable suspect, they would be acting altogether differently.”

  H’ nodded again and looked away for a moment, e as if making a decision.

  “I need to tell you something,” he said.

  “But it has to remain in confidence for now, vis-A-vis the cops at least. Are you okay with that?”

  She thought fast. Here it was: the confidentiality issue.

  From the cops, he’d said. Did that mean from Carpenter, too? She stalled for time by miming that her mouth was full.