Murder in the Supreme Court (Capital Crimes Series Book 3)

by Margaret Truman

  “Is there anything else, Mr. President?”

  “This Sutherland matter, Jonathan. Where does it stand?”

  “I just don’t know. All we can do is to cooperate fully with the investigative agencies assigned to the case—”

  “I don’t like what I’ve heard about it.”

  “Such as, Mr. President?”

  “The bastard’s success in compromising people before he was killed.”

  “That was unfortunate, as we all know. I certainly was never in favor of accepting him as one of my clerks to begin with.”

  “Then why did you?”

  Poulson winced against the question. The President knew why he had, and to ask the question was provocative. Still, Poulson felt compelled to answer. “As you know, his father was instrumental in that decision. Besides, no matter what Clarence Sutherland was personally, he was a brilliant young man. I don’t think there’s ever been a clerk here, during my term, with his skill at writing briefs. But of course if I had known about his other side…”

  “Hindsight is a waste of time, Jonathan. I just wish you had been a little quicker to see what was happening beneath your eyes, in your own chambers. By the time you did, and reported it to me, the barn door had been open one hell of a long time.”

  “It seems to me, sir, that—”

  “There are serious questions of governmental operations and even national security involved up in this mess, damn it.” His face reddened. “Our highest intelligence echelons may have been compromised, at least potentially, by his actions, as has this very office. I had a briefing this morning by the CIA, and the threat of his knowledge… through his father… is a real one.”

  He suddenly stood and smiled, came around the desk and slapped Poulson on the back. It was all there again, the infectious grin, the warmth, the sense of being your best friend. “Let’s keep on top of it, Jonathan, really on top of it.”

  “Of course. Thank you, Mr. President.”

  “Thank you, Jonathan. Please give my best to Mrs. Poulson.”

  “I certainly will, sir, and the same to the First Lady.”

  Poulson retraced his steps through the steam tunnel to the Treasury Building, where his car was waiting. “The Court, sir?” asked the driver.

  “No, home, please. I’m tired, very tired.” He leaned back and closed his eyes, his shirt clammy and cold against his skin.

  ***

  Vera Jones knocked on Dr. Chester Sutherland’s office door. He told her to enter. He was with a patient, a high-level administrator in the Department of Agriculture. “I’m sorry to disturb you, doctor, but Mr. L. is on the phone. He says it’s urgent.”

  Sutherland looked at his patient, said, “Excuse me, please.” He went through the door at the rear of his office and picked up a phone on which there were three buttons, one of which was lighted. “Hello, Mr. L.,” he said.

  “Hello, Dr. Sutherland. There’s a meeting at ten tomorrow morning.”

  “Of course, I’ll be there. Thank you for calling.”

  The man who’d placed the call gently hung up his phone, left his office and walked down a long, carpeted corridor until reaching the Oval Office’s oak doors. He knocked, was told to enter.

  “The meeting is set, sir,” he said.

  “Thank you, Craig.”

  Craig departed. President Randolph Jorgens stood, scratched his belly through his shirt and ran his hand over a leather horse on his desk. “I need a vacation,” he said.

  CHAPTER 11

  Susanna Pinscher was with Matt Mitchell, her superior at the Justice Department. Large drops of rain splattered against the window in his office; a cold front had invaded the city from the north. It was three o’clock in the afternoon but was dark enough outside to be night.

  “Are you sure you don’t want some tea, Susanna,” Mitchell asked. “You’re soaked. You’ll catch pneumonia.”

  “Okay, some tea.”

  “And put this on.” He dropped a beige wool cardigan sweater in her lap as he passed. “I keep it around for when I get all wet. Which is too much of the time.” Brief smile.

  She draped the sweater over her shoulders and shivered. She’d gotten caught in the storm while walking back from a meeting in Chief Justice Poulson’s chambers. She’d used an underground tunnel as far as it extended down Constitution Avenue, but was exposed the rest of the way.

  Mitchell returned carrying a steaming cup of tea. He handed it to her, looked down at her feet and said, “You’re making puddles on my floor.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  He laughed. “Puddles beat waves.”

  The hot cup felt good in her hands. She inhaled the tea’s aroma, sipped it.

  “So, Susanna, how did it go with Poulson?”

  “He’s pleasant enough, seems anxious to cooperate. The only sticky point is where the interrogations should be conducted.”

  “I take it he doesn’t want them held in the Court.”

  “He feels the Court has been violated enough and questions why follow-up investigations can’t be held outside the building.”

  “He has a point. The first thing Poulson did after becoming Chief was to slap an even tighter lid on everything that happens inside the Court. Any clerk who’s even seen talking to a reporter is fired, no excuses, no explanations. They can’t even say no comment. Opening up the Court to a full-scale MPD investigation is like inviting every reporter in town to a public meeting. Cops are biologically incapable of keeping their mouths shut.”

  “Matt, I realize the Supreme Court is a special place, but a murder happened there. My training has always said that you investigate where the crime occurred.”

  “This is different, Susanna. In the first place, we don’t get involved in murders very often. In the second place, the MPD has already interviewed everyone in the Court and did it inside the building. The place has been gone over with the old fine-toothed comb, and if the President decides to go ahead with appointing a special prosecutor, there’ll be that much more disruption to the Court’s activities.” He sat on the edge of his desk. “There’s another aspect to all this, Susanna, and maybe you haven’t considered it. If a Supreme Court justice had been murdered it would make sense. The fact is that a clerk was killed, and if he’d been shot anyplace else other than the Supreme Court it would be just another routine MPD investigation.”

  “If.”

  “Okay, but the fact remains that there are more important considerations than Clarence Sutherland’s murder. There’s the law of the land to preside over. That’s the Court’s job, after all.”

  “What about if a murderer is sitting on the Supreme Court, presiding over the law of the land?”

  He started to respond, pulled back, shook his head, stood and went to the window. “Miserable day.” He turned and said to her, “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “That Clarence Sutherland’s murderer might be one of nine justices? I don’t like to believe it but it’s a real possibility, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Then who?”

  He returned to the desk and leaned close to her. “Susanna, you go around spouting theories like that and your days in this city, and on this job, are numbered.”

  She placed the empty teacup on the desk and closed the gap between them. “I thought the name of the game was to solve Sutherland’s murder, Matt, no matter where or what.”

  “That’s true, but let’s not go beyond Justice’s scope. We’re at least partly in this for show… I spoke with the assistant attorney general this morning and he—”

  “Show? I quit.”

  “Quit? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Like hell… not only am I told by my superior that my assignment is a kind of sham, I’m told that this big, wonderful Department of Justice that I broke my buns to join is in show business.”

  “Calm down.”

  “Then say something to help me.”

  “Keep working on the Sutherland case. Go after
it full steam ahead, but also please don’t lose perspective. There are other things that share parity with Sutherland’s death.”

  “I’ll try.” She handed him his sweater, picked up her water-soaked pumps and went to the door. “Matt,” she said, “I don’t mean to be a pain in the neck, I really don’t, but I have to feel that what I’m doing is important.”

  “It is. I was shorthanding the situation, Susanna. Ignore it.”

  She’d try.

  CHAPTER 12

  Susanna Pinscher and Martin Teller stood in the Grand Foyer of the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, one of three large theaters contained in the vast and sprawling arts complex. The performance of Cavalleria Rusticana was over and it was intermission.

  “Did you enjoy it?” Teller asked.

  “Very much.”

  “It’s some theater, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve been here before.”

  “To see an opera?”

  “No. Chinese acrobats. I had the same impression of the place then that I have tonight. It’s big, formal and sort of stuffy.”

  “Opera buffs seem to like it that way. Makes them feel elegant or something. But every time that chandelier dims I get goose bumps. How about a drink?”

  “It’s so crowded,” she said, pointing to a mob surrounding a small bar.

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I belong to the Golden Circle society.”

  “What in God’s name is that?”

  “A bunch of people who pay a thousand bucks a year for the privilege of not standing in line for a drink during intermission. You wouldn’t think a cop could manage it, but I wash my own socks and make out with the finer things.”

  “I’m impressed, socks or no socks.”

  They were served cognac in snifters. They clicked rims and he said, “Here’s to indulgence.”

  She smiled. “Tell me, Detective Teller, why does a man who spends his working days dealing with the low life lay out a thousand dollars a year to rub shoulders with opera buffs?”

  “You have it wrong.” He leaned close to her ear. “I can’t stand these people. The fact is that dealing with what I deal with every day makes me sort of crazy for a change. What I get out of opera is a beautiful change. Fantasy after eight hours of reality. Makes sense?”

  “It does.” She clicked her glass to his and drank.

  The second half of the evening, Pagliacci, was less inspiring than the first.

  “I believe they call this kind of writing verismo,” Teller said as they left the ornate red theater and headed for his car. “It means ‘realism’ but it doesn’t work as well as traditional opera. Puccini trumped all of them, including his fellow Italians.”

  “You’re a very interesting… man,” she said as they drove from the parking garage.

  “You were about to say character.”

  “No, I wasn’t, but I guess it would fit.”

  “I also get my shoes shined instead of doing them myself, and I send my laundry out.”

  “A typical bachelor.”

  “Typical?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I enjoyed tonight. Very much. Thank you.”

  “Where to now?”

  “Home.”

  “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Feel like singing?”

  “After hearing those wonderful voices?”

  “They weren’t so great. I have V-discs that are better.”

  “I wouldn’t know from better, I’m afraid. Damn little opera in my upbringing.”

  “Ditto. I got the taste for it late in life… Look, I know a nice place in Georgetown. A bunch of crazies hang out there but they’re basically nice people, just like to sit around and drink and sing. The owner and I are friends. He plays the piano. He made a million in frozen French fries and then dumped the whole business to open a club. I don’t know whether you’d like the place or not but they serve steak sandwiches on garlic bread until closing, and sometimes the music is good and—”

  “Do they serve French fries?”

  “The best in D.C.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Instead of sitting at the piano bar, Teller took her to a corner far from the bandstand. They said little to each other as she observed the Saturday night crowd.

  “Well, what do you think?” he asked after their drinks and sandwich platters had been served.

  “I don’t know yet, I haven’t tasted it.”

  “I mean the place. Nice atmosphere, huh?”

  “Yes, it’s—”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s sort of sad, seeing people in a singles bar—”

  “Singles bar? This isn’t a singles bar. If it were I wouldn’t come here.”

  “Don’t be touchy. It’s just that I wish those women sitting around the piano bar were with someone…”

  “But that’s what’s nice about Club Julie, Susanna. It’s like a club, no hassles like in real singles bars. Women can come here and feel safe.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Funny, but it makes me think of Dr. Sutherland’s secretary… Vera Jones.”

  Teller sliced into his steak and took a bite. “Good. Don’t let it get cold.”

  “Do you think she’s ever been married?”

  “Vera Jones? Most people have been, although she does come off like one of those who hasn’t. But I don’t figure her for the singles’-bar scene. Not her style—”

  “What is her style?”

  “Quiet, a one-on-one type, maybe a twenty-year affair with a married man.”

  “Dr. Sutherland?”

  “Not likely, but you never know. I do think she’s loyal and discreet enough to be a twenty-year mistress, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Do you find her attractive?”

  “Yes, in a cold sort of way.”

  “Hidden passion, as they say in the purple romances?”

  “Could be.”

  “A legitimate suspect?”

  “Everybody is at this point.”

  “Including the nine justices?”

  “Including the nine justices. Do you know who interests me?”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  He grinned. “That court clerk, Laurie Rawls. She was at the funeral and bawled all through it. I figure there was more to her relationship with Sutherland than just a coworker.”

  “Cherchez la femme…”

  “Huh?”

  “Justice Childs’s advice to me. Look for the woman. Have you interviewed Laurie Rawls?”

  “One of my people did. Uneventful. She said she liked Clarence, enjoyed working with him. Her alibi is shaky, but so are a lot of other people’s.”

  “If you’d like, I’ll talk to her. She might open up to another woman.”

  “Could be. I understand she’s been temporarily assigned to the Chief Justice. She’d worked for the old man, Conover.”

  “I’ll call her Monday morning.”

  Julie, the owner, came to the table and asked Teller if he wanted to sing. Teller shook his head, but Susanna insisted. “I’ve never heard a singing detective before.”

  “You still won’t have,” he said as he went to the bandstand, and picked up a microphone while Julie played an introduction to “As Time Goes By.”

  “You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss,

  A sigh is just a sigh.

  The fundamental things apply, as time goes by.”

  He smiled at Susanna as he ventured into the second stanza. She nodded her approval and leaned her chair back against the wall, her thoughts divided between attention to his resonant voice and the thing that had led them to spend the evening together—Clarence Sutherland’s murder. She felt overwhelmed. The number of suspects and the complication of it having happened in the United States Supreme Court.

  The smell of garlic filled her nostrils, and chatter at adjoining tables deafened her. She closed her eyes against a pain that had started at the back of her neck and was now creeping up over her head and
toward her forehead. She opened her eyes and saw a blurry Martin Teller.

  “…the world will always welcome lovers,

  As time goes by.”

  He held the last note and Julie rolled off a rich chord. Applause, applause. Teller put the microphone on top of the piano and made his way to the table.

  “I warned you.”

  “It was terrific.”

  He sat down and looked at her closely. “You don’t look so good, do you feel sick?”

  “I… it’s a migraine coming on, damn it. I get them once in a while.”

  “I’m sorry. Let’s go, I’ll take you home.”

  “I’m sorry to ruin the evening.”

  They pulled up in front of her building. Teller put his hand on the ignition key but didn’t turn off the engine. “I’ll walk you in.”

  “No, please don’t. I’ll be fine. Thank you for a really wonderful evening.”

  “I just wish you felt better.” He turned, leaned close. “I’d like to kiss you.”

  “Well, then, Lieutenant, for God’s sake do it.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Temple Conover sat in his chambers wearing an old, loose, nubby gray sweater. He’d changed from black shoes to worn carpet slippers as soon as he arrived that morning. It was almost noon. He was to attend a luncheon at the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue, known as Washington’s “Embassy Row,” at which he was to receive a plaque from England’s equivalent of the American Bar Association for his years of “dedication to upholding the principles of freedom and justice.” Cecily would join him there, and after lunch she was to drive him to the airport for a flight to Dallas, where he would address the Texas Bar Association’s annual formal dinner.

  He turned to his typewriter and quickly wrote a memo to Chief Justice Poulson.

  Jonathan—Despite my consistent harping that we have too many clerks as it is, taking Miss Rawls from me at the peak time of cert petitions is intolerable. I know you lost Sutherland, but I’d appreciate your reconsideration of the transfer, as “temporary” as it might be. —Temple C.

  He called out the open door to his senior secretary, a heavy, middle-aged woman named Joan who’d been with him for six years. She stepped into his chambers.