Capitol Murder

by William Bernhardt

  “Objection!” Padolino shouted.

  Judge Herndon looked down sternly from the bench. “Mr. Kincaid, you will govern your conduct in accordance with the rules of decorum promulgated by this court. That kind of behavior might be acceptable in-” It was impossible to miss the note of derision in his voice. “-Oooo-kla-homa, but I will not tolerate it in my courtroom. Are we clear on that?”

  “Yes, sir. My apologies.” Jerk. He turned back to the witness. “The fact remains. You can’t explain the puncture mark.”

  “As I said, the knife might’ve nicked the vein-”

  “Come on, Doctor. Isn’t it far more likely that the vein was penetrated by something smaller than a great big chopping knife?”

  “There’s no evidence that another weapon was used on the woman.”

  “Sure, not now. Not after she’s been ripped to shreds. But isn’t it possible that there was evidence of another weapon before? Evidence that was obliterated by the slashing of her neck?”

  “Your honor,” Padolino said, “I must protest. This is idle speculation.”

  “An expert witness is allowed to offer an opinion, based upon his expertise,” Herndon answered. Ben was glad to see the judge wasn’t the sort to hold a grudge. “I’ll allow it.”

  “All you have,” Bukowsky insisted, “is a tiny, easily dismissed puncture wound-”

  “Is that all I have?” Ben flipped through a few more pages in the report. “I read on page twenty-six that there was a cut on her trachea.”

  “Now, that could easily have been made by the knife.”

  “Yes, it could have. But my medical experts tell me that if her trachea had been cut with a knife while she was still alive, she would’ve aspirated blood.” Now it was Ben’s turn to lean forward. “Isn’t that correct, Doctor?”

  The doctor fell silent.

  “I didn’t quite get your response, Dr. Bukowsky. If her trachea had been cut while she was still alive, wouldn’t she have aspirated blood?”

  “It’s… possible.”

  “Possible? It’s a medical certainty! But she didn’t aspirate blood, did she? Were there any traces of blood in her lungs?”

  “No,” the doctor said succinctly.

  “And that means-” Ben paused, making sure everyone was with him. “At the time this woman was slashed on the throat, she was already dead or dying.”

  Bukowsky clearly was not prepared for this line of reasoning. “But-why would anyone cut her if she was already dead or dying?”

  “To disguise the real manner in which she was killed, of course. Whatever it was that caused that puncture. The murderer obliterated the killing wound.”

  “I can’t agree with that conclusion.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Your honor,” Padolino began.

  Ben continued unabated. “Whether you agree or not, Doctor-you can’t rule the possibility out, can you? It is an explanation consistent with the medical evidence. Right?”

  His lips pursed. His tongue slowed. “I suppose it is… possible. But-”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear. Thank you for your candor, Doctor. No more questions.”

  After several failed attempts, Loving finally managed to get her on the phone.

  “Lucille?”

  “Well, hello there, sugah. Didn’t expect to hear from you again so soon. But I can’t say that I mind. You wanna come-”

  “It’s about Amber.”

  Her voice took on an instantly sober tone. “Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t get to her.”

  Lucille didn’t hesitate. “What do you need me to do?”

  Loving gave her the address. “We’ll meet you out front. And Lucille?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t dress like you normally would. You gotta wear black-like the stuff Amber liked the last few times you saw her. And it needs to be kinda… trashy.”

  “Trashy poor, or trashy I-want-you-inside-my-pants-right-now?”

  “Uhh… the latter, I think.”

  “Can do, sugah. Be there in an hour.” She rang off.

  Loving tucked his cell phone into his jacket pocket.

  “What was all that about?” Daily asked. “Who was that?”

  Loving allowed himself a small smile. “Our ticket inside.”

  11

  A fter the coroner finished testifying, Padolino filled the day with brief, legally important but essentially uninteresting testimony, and Ben knew why. He wanted the jury fresh when he delivered his big wham-bam slammer. He’d been building up to it since jury selection-before, actually.

  The video. Ben unsuccessfully had tried every motion imaginable to get it suppressed. There was no way to convince the judge that it wasn’t relevant-since it so clearly was. To be sure, all but two of the jurors admitted that they had already seen the video-at least the somewhat expurgated televised version-and Ben very much suspected the other two had as well but didn’t want to admit it because they feared it would get them booted. Didn’t matter. To see some lascivious video on television about famous people you don’t know is an event perhaps worthy of comment, but hardly a life-changing event. To see that same video in a court of law, with one of the featured players sitting right before you and the other one dead, is an entirely different matter.

  Doing his time-filling belt-and-suspenders routine, Padolino called a barrage of technical experts: two hair techs, a fiber fiend, and a fingerprint specialist. They had all analyzed trace evidence in the hideaway and told the jury the same thing-Veronica Cooper had been killed there, and Todd Glancy had been present, probably on several occasions. Christina handled the crosses and did a fine job; Ben knew from experience that there was nothing on earth harder than crossing an expert. Just when you had them trapped, they hauled out some scientific gobbledygook and slithered to safety. Better to leave the jury confused than admit defeat. Christina kept them all on a short leash, but the only thing she couldn’t do was change the undisputed facts. A clear picture emerged: Glancy arranged a meeting with Cooper in his hideaway to talk about the newly erupted scandal, maybe to pay her off, maybe to buy her silence some other way. When it didn’t work, he killed her. Then he washed up and went back to work. The whole thing could’ve been done in fifteen minutes.

  Glancy’s only hope was his alibi. He had been at that committee meeting at the time the coroner claimed the murder occurred. As long as the alibi held, as long as the prosecution couldn’t establish Opportunity, they still got game. But if they lost that, no amount of defense fancy footwork could bail them out.

  Padolino called Everett Scott to the witness stand. As the jury soon learned, he was an off-air reporter for C-SPAN and had been for almost eight years.

  “Mr. Scott, how did the videotape that has been entered into evidence as Prosecution Exhibit Twenty-three come into your possession?”

  “It arrived in the mail.”

  “Did you have to sign for it?”

  “No. It just showed up in my box with the bills and the advertising flyers.” Scott was a thin man with glasses, long gangly arms, and brownish hair that he combed straight back from his face. A bit of a nebbish, really, Ben thought. But he hadn’t expected a C-SPAN reporter to come off like Tom Cruise.

  “Did the envelope bear a return address?”

  “It did not.”

  “Was there a postmark?”

  He hesitated before answering. “It had a DC postmark.”

  “An informant, perhaps?”

  Scott did not reply.

  “Mr. Scott,” Padolino continued, “do you know who sent you the videotape?”

  Again the hesitation. “I… do not know for certain who sent me the tape, no.”

  “But you have some thoughts about who might have sent it?”

  “Objection,” Ben said. “Calls for speculation.”

  Judge Herndon batted his pencil on his desk. “Well, I suppose that depends on the amount of evidence the witness has in support of his th
eory.” He swiveled around to face Scott. “How sure are you that you know who sent it?”

  Scott swallowed. “Your honor, I must respectfully decline to answer that question, or any other questions of that nature.”

  “You’re pleading the Fifth?”

  “I’m pleading a journalist’s First Amendment right to refuse to identify his sources.”

  “That right, as I’m sure you know, is not one always recognized by the courts.”

  “I do know that.” Scott pressed his hands together, wringing them. “But I won’t reveal my sources.”

  “But if you’re not certain-”

  “Guessing would be even worse. I would be reduced to identifying numerous potential sources and contacts at the U.S. Senate, which would make it impossible for me to continue to do my job.”

  Undoubtedly true, Ben thought, in this era in which journalists ran with stories obtained from unnamed sources or insiders who “did not wish to be identified.” Scott would lose more than just his sources if he named one. He’d become a pariah in the journalistic community.

  Herndon leaned back and stared at the witness. “You’re not going to back off, are you?”

  “No, sir. I am not.”

  “Very well.” He turned back to Padolino. “Move on to something else, Mr. Prosecutor.” He paused. “I’ll decide later whether to impose sanctions for contempt.”

  Padolino nodded and shuffled on to his next index card. “Did you take any actions to verify the accuracy of the tape?”

  “I certainly did,” Scott replied. “I would never recommend airing something like that unless I knew it was genuine.”

  “Please tell the jury what you did.”

  “We have our own voice analyzer in the C-SPAN office building. So I drummed up some old footage of Senator Glancy giving a speech, then compared the voice print with that of the man speaking in the videotape.”

  “And the result?”

  “They matched. Perfectly. There was no doubt that Senator Glancy was the man in the tape. And by slowing the tape down frame by frame, we were able to capture a full-face photo of the woman whom he was with. With that photo,” Scott continued, “we were able to confirm that his, um, companion was Veronica Cooper, an intern working in Glancy’s office. At that point, the newsworthiness of the video was unquestionable.”

  “And did it bother you that you didn’t know who had sent you the tape?”

  Scott shrugged his shoulders slightly. “I would’ve rather known my source, but I’d confirmed that it was accurate information. So regardless of who the whistle-blower was, I realized the American people had a right to know about this… questionable conduct by an elected official.”

  “Indeed they do.” Padolino looked up toward the bench. “Your honor, with your permission, may we lower the lights? It’s time to show the video.”

  It seemed to take forever. Loving sat at the bar, nursing a 7Up, waiting as patiently as possible. A woman much older than he was sat on a stool behind him in between two girlfriends, all of them decked out in black.

  “I was okay when Mark got the tongue stud,” the woman was saying. Loving tried to block her voice out, but she had become his personal mosquito who wouldn’t be swatted. “And then he got the navel stud, the nipple ring. I put up with it. But when he had his thing pierced-I mean, that’s just gross.”

  “Why are you so uppity?” one of her friends said. “You had your boobs done.”

  “I did not have my boobs done.”

  “Oh, you so did.”

  “If I had my boobs done, I would’ve had ’em done a hell of a lot better than this.”

  “I liked Mark,” the other friend said. “He was cute. Kinda like John Cusack, except fatter.”

  “And with a stud in his thing. I’m pretty sure John Cusack doesn’t have that.”

  “And how would you know?”

  Dear God, Loving thought, his eyes toward the heavens, I know I’ve done some evil deeds in my time, but surely never anything bad enough to deserve this. Where is she?

  A high-pitched voice sang into his ear, “Here I come to save the day-y-y-y-y-y!”

  Loving whirled around. Lucille.

  “Will this do?” she said, patting the back of her head and shaking her hips in her best Mae West imitation.

  “I kinda think so,” Loving answered. She was decked out in black-black fishnet, mostly, with a leather skirt and strapless top. As if her hair weren’t red enough already, she’d put on a big Lillie Langtry-style wig. She was wearing makeup twice as heavy as before, dark black lipstick and eyeliner. Some kind of glitter was streaked through her hair, and the black hip boots were a nice touch. She was an ample girl, perhaps not a born beauty, but she knew how to work it. And that was what they needed at the moment. “Man would have to be made of stone to say no to that.”

  “Still the flatterer.” She tweaked Loving’s cheek. “Shall we go for it?”

  Loving showed her the way to the stairway leading up to the private room. The two guards posted outside were new, not the two who had booted him and Daily out on their first attempt, which was good. It would make this a little easier.

  Lucille began sashaying up the stairs, shaking her hips, allowing her already too-short skirt to creep up with every step. Loving and Daily stayed a few steps behind. As before, as soon as they neared the top, the two guards converged in front of the door.

  “Gotta have an invitation,” the guard on the right said.

  “He’s expecting me,” she said, following Loving’s coaching.

  The guard gave her the once-over and shrugged. “I don’t remember seeing you around before.”

  “Trust me, sugah. I don’t get dolled up like this for my own amusement. I’m one of the Chosen.”

  Apparently she fit the mold. He tilted his head toward Loving and Daily. “What about those two?”

  “They come with me.”

  “I don’t think so. Not his type.”

  “He’ll like what they brought him.”

  “And what would that be?”

  She singsonged her reply. “A little pick-me-up. Might be enough for you, too. Par-tay time.”

  The guard’s eyes narrowed slightly. He turned to his partner. “I don’t know about this.”

  Lucille brushed her hand down his chest, stopping just below his belt. “Play your cards right, sweetcakes, and I might have a little something for you, too.”

  He frowned, shrugged, then stood to the side.

  Lucille opened the door. Loving and Daily followed in behind her.

  They were inside.

  At least Ben managed to thwart Padolino’s plan to haul in a big-screen TV. He was still certain the jurors had all seen the video before, but no one outside the legal system and the C-SPAN offices had seen it like this-with no deletions from the sound track, without the pixilated blurring of Veronica Cooper’s bared breasts or Senator Glancy’s insistent genitalia. It was almost like a scene out of A Clockwork Orange; the entire room was forced to watch a porn video that was not the least bit sexy, but thoroughly repulsive. When they reached the part where Veronica began making the hideous gagging noises, Ben thought several of the jurors were going to be sick.

  The reaction from the gallery was worse. When it was over, Marie Glancy rose to her feet and ran out of the courtroom, her hand covering her mouth. Ben couldn’t fault her for being upset. But showing the jury that she was upset effectively undid what little may have been accomplished by positioning her behind her husband, creating a show of support that all sixteen jurors now knew was a huge lie. Her hasty exit from her husband’s side could be more damaging to their case than the tape itself.

  After the proceedings adjourned, Marshall Bressler led the defense team out of the courtroom, wheeling his chair with a fierce intensity. “You’re not going to cross?”

  Ben shook his head. “No point. The reporter knows nothing I want the jury to hear. Best to get the damn tape out of their minds as soon as possible and move on to so
mething else.”

  “Probably a smart move,” Bressler muttered. “That man has had it in for Todd for years.”

  “Who?” Ben asked. “Padolino?”

  “No. The reporter. Scott.” He shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “Goes back to when Scott was covering the committee Todd chaired when the Democrats were in power and they were considering that health insurance bill. About seven years ago. You remember the one. Would’ve guaranteed coverage nationwide for anyone in need, mandatory coverage of controversial therapies for terminally ill patients. Scott’s a bleeding-heart liberal and he really wanted it passed. But Todd buried it in committee-it was an election year and he felt he had no choice. Scott’s been biding his time ever since, waiting for a chance to get back at Todd. Hell, he probably made that tape himself.”

  Ben’s brow furrowed. He knew that Bressler was inveterately loyal to his senator, but this was sounding a little paranoid-more like one of Loving’s conspiracy theories than anything that could really happen. “Big risk to take just to smear a senator.”

  “Compared to what? The push-polls Lee Atwater orchestrated to plant the rumor that John McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually a bastard he sired in Vietnam? The out-of-state thugs Tom DeLay imported into Florida to screw up the 2000 recount? The forged letter Nixon’s people used to push Muskie out of the race? You’re not in Oklahoma anymore, kiddo. This is the big time. People here play for keeps.”

  “Hey, Kincaid!”

  Ben saw the fist hurtling toward his face and jumped back just in time. His assailant tumbled forward, knocking Ben backward. Ben tried to scramble to his feet, but the man came at him again, this time landing a punch square in his stomach. Pain radiated through Ben’s body. He tried to defend himself, but he was already wobbling and the sudden movement made him lose his balance. He tumbled back onto the floor, landing hard on the seat of his borrowed trousers.

  “Defend this, asshole.” The attacker reared back to deliver a swift kick to Ben’s ribs, but before he had a chance, he was knocked to the ground-by Marshall Bressler’s wheelchair. The man flew forward and hit the hard marble floor face-first. He groaned, unsuccessfully trying to push himself to his knees. A few moments later, two security officers arrived at the scene and grabbed him, cuffing his hands behind his back.