by Warren Adler
"Probably. She was a passionate woman. Sensuality was important to her."
"And to you."
"Yes. To me as well."
"Did she ever hint to you that she was having another affair?"
He shook his head. "That would have been the end."
"A jealous lover, are you?"
"Color it cautious, both physically and emotionally. I may be reckless, but that could border on self-destruction. Bad enough that the husband knew."
"And you?"
He lifted his eyes, then narrowed them, as he watched her. A brief flash of anger roared across his face, then disappeared, like someone passing through the shadow.
"Actually, you could say I was faithful to her." He paused, then smiled as if he had suddenly thought of some hilarious joke. "A married man must always be faithful to his mistress," he said. This bit of wisdom was delivered as a clever bon mot. She did not react except to shift her focus to another essential subject.
"And you're certain your wife did not know, know for certain?"
She knew she was going over old ground. Jealousy, after all, was primarily a woman's motive. Crime statistics backed that up. She tried to recall Nell Langford's expression as she observed her husband dancing with Helga Kessel. Did she know? she had asked Monte. Did she really know?
"I'm not an angel, Fiona. But I love my family. Nell knows that. She is a very traditional woman. The fact is that, despite my ... my unfaithfulness, I avoid ... in the way I conduct my family life, giving her the slightest cause for insecurity."
Translated, this self-deluding explanation equated with something Bunkie had said about Sam Langford having enough to go around.
"Frankly," the Senator snapped, "I resent your bringing Mrs. Langford into it."
"Just doing my job," Fiona said. She felt herself breaking out from his control. "Motive is everything in my business."
"Jesus, Fiona," the Senator erupted. "Not Nell."
"Sometimes men are damned fools," she pressed. "You don't expect that I'd believe that she never suspected, never questioned you, never even raised the issue. Surely there were signs."
"I did my homework," he snapped, raising the curtain slightly on his cynicism. He was a past master at deception, an expert at dissimulation, a practitioner of the sugar-coated lie.
"Senator, up to now, I've been grateful for your candor," she said pointedly, watching him squirm.
"No way," he said. "Not Nell."
"It has its logic. The jealous wife...?"
"She did not know," he said emphatically. "We saw each other only during the day. We were discreet to a fault."
"Farrington saw to that."
"Impeccably."
"Are you saying that Mrs. Langford never questioned you?"
"Only in a general way," he admitted, apparently not willing to defend the obvious.
"Because she knew the kind of man she had married," Fiona pressed.
"My marriage is sacrosanct. It is my oasis and Nell is fully aware of it."
"The deal was never to bring it home."
"I don't like this," the Senator said. He stood up and paced the room. "I definitely do not like this." He stopped suddenly and turned. "You've got to keep her out of it." He was trying to appear firm, but she could tell he was pleading. "We can't do this to her. She's an innocent party. I know her. She's not capable of anything like that."
"Like what?" Fiona asked, waiting for some inadvertent revelation.
"Like murder."
She had been careful not to mention the method by which Helga had been killed. Often murderers have confessed based on being tripped up by information that only they could have known. If the Senator had mentioned strangulation, the ball game would have been over.
"You'd be surprised how many unlikely candidates have risen to the occasion."
"I really should resent that," he said angrily.
Figuratively, she pointed both barrels at him now. It was time to spin a familiar scenario.
"Senator," she began. "A woman marries a philanderer, she worries, looks for signs, observes. Betrayal is a very powerful force. You told me yourself she was ... traditional. Therefore, she had to be ... finessed. Lied to, if you will. Surely there are signs, material clues. A scent. A makeup stain." She paused as if taking aim. "Sexual fatigue."
He stood rooted to a spot in the center of the room, obviously trying to find a role that would fit the circumstances. Observing him in full view, she noted he was a well-made man, slender, graceful. He wore pants well and she could not resist imagining what women sometimes imagine when they study a man's lower body. Again, she slapped her figurative hand. Stop that.
Suddenly he shook his head.
"Frankly, I hadn't expected all this psychobabble." She watched him cross the room and fall heavily into his chair again. "You can overanalyze a thing to death. My wife, Fiona, accepts me as I am. I suppose you might say there is a compact between us. If she suspected, she never made it an issue. Our home life is tranquil. Nell is not ... well ... not like my first wife, who drove me crazy with her suspicions. But then, I was a little more blatant in those days. Who could blame her? We had a perfectly civilized divorce after years of a childless marriage."
Again, he was trying to shift the subject.
"Do you know where Nell was that night?"
"You're still on that, are you?" No longer master of the agenda, he was exceedingly uncomfortable. "I presume she was home with the kids. As Bunkie must have told you, I was out with him and others." He became reflective for a moment. "You have to talk with her, don't you?" He looked as if he were in pain.
"It's a base that has to be touched," she told him. Now that she had the upper hand, she supposed she could be magnanimous. "Everything is in the execution."
"Nell couldn't," he said, pleading.
"Believe me, Senator, there are ways to be circumspect. I promise you..." She trailed off, not willing to commit in words. Of course, she would avoid revealing his dirty little secrets. Unless it was absolutely necessary. Which she hoped it wouldn't be.
"All right," he said suddenly. "I can understand your asking about Nell. Frankly, I have to admit I was a bit nonplussed to learn that the Ambassador knew of the affair. But that implies that he might have had a fling himself with some lady who might have had her own reasons for eliminating Helga."
He seemed to want to continue, but stopped abruptly, perhaps regretting his outburst. But it did reveal the cutting edge of his desperation, which lay just beneath the surface. Surely, it was a possibility that had already been gone over with Bunkie in the first flush of damage-control. It was, of course, a lot weaker than the Nell scenario. And far less volatile.
"In this business, Senator, we peek under every rock," she said.
"Look," he shrugged. "It hasn't been easy. Telling you all this. Fact is ... it's a gamble. I admit I'm guilty of something, but not that—not murder. And I doubt that the others, Bunkie, Nell, even Monte, could ever..." He paused. "...Ever. These are good people. We are talking here of taking a human life." He seemed to be slipping into morbidity. "To destroy our lives on nothing more than the flimsiest of evidence..." His voice trailed off.
"I told you, Senator. I fully understand the consequences for you. I'll do my best. Keep the circle as small as possible."
"Sure," he said, with obvious hesitation.
She stood up. More than an hour had passed.
"I may have more questions," she said.
"I'm sure you will." He stood up, took her hand, held it. "In a way, you might say we're innocent victims." He smiled, dimples popping.
"Innocent is a loaded word, Senator."
"You know what I mean."
He continued to hold her hand, and she made no effort to remove hers.
"We're political people," he said. Up close his blue eyes shone bright, penetrating. For a moment, they monopolized her and she felt the strange thrill of his total attention. "Be gentle."
He had continued to hold her hand. T
hen, lifting his other one, he enveloped hers. His flesh felt warm as he applied a light pressure. He knew his power over women.
Then he said something that confounded her, offering a crude but compelling image that seemed to reach for a level she was not prepared to confront.
"You have my balls in your hands, Fiona."
Only then did he release her as she turned and, hot-faced and ashamed, strode toward the door.
14
THERE WAS no avoiding it. She and Cates would have to be prepared to face the eggplant. He would insist on being "apprahzed" and what he was being "apprahzed" about had better pass muster, which meant that if they were planning any editing it had better be constructed with great care.
By the time she got back to the squad room, the Helga story was in orbit. The radio stations were playing it big, complete with inflammatory words like "beauty," "nude body," and "disgorged from a shallow grave." There was also some hint of foreign intrigue. Ambassador Kessel was described as a "potentially important Austrian leader with a brilliant political future," and she assumed that he, too, would be scrambling to protect his public image.
The eggplant was liberally quoted in the initial stories. He would be loving it and looking forward to his appearances on national and international television. To his credit, he was extremely articulate and clever when facing the media. Wisely, and accurately, he had pointed out that "so far" no motive for the murder had been uncovered. Tomorrow's Washington Post and surely major newspapers throughout the world would carry the story on their front pages.
So far Senator Langford was not mentioned in any of the radio stories, nor was there any hint of a romantic attachment, a "secret affair" between him and the deceased. It was, in fact, too early for such a report to emerge. One could be assured, however, that the members of the Fourth Estate were on the case, scrambling for scraps to give the story more "spin."
Cates had said he would be back in a couple of hours. She looked at her watch. A couple of hours had already passed.
Her interview with Langford had left her unsettled for reasons beyond the case itself. It would not be easy to sort it out in her mind. Confronting one's own vulnerability was always a shock, but the fact was that she had been moved by the Senator. Alone in her thoughts, she challenged the euphemism and, after finally surrendering, defined it for what it was ... a sexual turn-on. All the physical signs were present and it annoyed her.
Was it something self-motivating, emanating from deep inside of herself? Or a deliberate act of subtle manipulation on his part? She wondered. The man knew he had that ability. It had, apparently, been validated again and again. He had as much as admitted it. And if he did have that power, he had no right to use it on her, a professional homicide detective in pursuit of a criminal. It was, of course, an absurd concept on her part, like blaming the bartender for giving the drink to the alcoholic. Cease and desist, she begged herself, gathering her concentration, flogging herself forward into the maze of investigatory details concerning Helga Kessel.
Calling Dr. Benton, she got a confirmation of how the woman had died. Strangulation, garroted by a soft object of textile construction. Bits of thread discovered around the victim's neck had been sent to the lab. From the marks on her flesh, Dr. Benton had indicated that she had been taken from behind.
"No other signs of violence?" she asked.
"None," he replied. "She was an excellent specimen, in good health. No pregnancy. No evidence of rape. No trace of sperm. A simple case of strangulation."
"What about time frame?" She had been making assumptions based more on experience than science.
"From the contents of the stomach, I'd say she died in midmorning, before lunch." She never questioned Dr. Benton's accuracy. Only when there were doubts in his own mind did he offer multiple possibilities. She trusted him implicitly. It was a relief to know that she had not been far off. Killed in the morning. Buried at dark.
"Were there any signs that she might have been killed elsewhere, then transported to the scene of her burial?"
"I can offer an educated guess," Dr. Benton said, and when she did not respond, he continued. "The killer would have had to be extremely careful in his method of transportation. I'd say she was killed very close to where she was buried. Stripped at the site."
It occurred to her suddenly that she might have been too cursory in her eyeball inspection of the body. She remembered that she had observed Helga's jewelry at Mount Vernon the other evening. The emerald necklace and large diamond bracelet and rings. This was, she speculated, a woman with a European's appreciation for jewelry, the real thing. She thought suddenly of Betty Taylor's barely visible ankle bracelet, a wide leap, to be sure. But the comparison was inescapable. She let it simmer for the moment.
"Nothing foreign on the body? No adornments? Jewelry? Gold geegaws?"
"Only the gold crowns on her teeth. Two of those. She did have pierced ears, but no earrings."
As he spoke, another detail leaped into her mind.
"What about a marriage ring?" she asked.
She waited through a long pause.
"Fiona, my dear, I must be slipping. She wasn't wearing any. Nor any rings."
She was assailed suddenly by new scenarios, like new tributaries branching out from a river's strong flow.
"Forensically speaking," Fiona said. It was her usual qualifier when delving into the nether-nether world of the nagging hunch. She knew he would be bracing himself mentally. "Does it read like the other—the old bones?"
"Both strangled. A similar method. But there's no way of telling for sure what material was employed on the older victim. Could have been something made of textile. Could have been a rope. Or bare hands."
"I was looking for a signature."
"I know."
"They were both buried in backyards."
"We were talking forensics," Dr. Benton said with some amusement, "and death by strangulation is a rather common method employed to murder females."
"True ... nevertheless..."
"Thirteen years is a long time between murders," Dr. Benton cautioned in a fatherly way. Often, he played the devil's advocate when Fiona put her imagination into play.
"Murders that we know of," Fiona countered.
"A serial killer?"
"With either a long delayed fuse or we have merely uncovered two bodies in the sequence."
"A theory not to be overlooked," Dr. Benton lectured. "I'd give it middling priority as a viable possibility. The signature, method of causing death and body disposal, is more circumstantial than scientific. Fill in the sequence and your theory would rush to the top of the list."
"Calls for a coffee klatch," Fiona said. Often, they spent long hours together in Dr. Benton's living room, amid the memorial mementos of his beloved, long-departed wife, theorizing, exploring possibilities, unraveling mysteries, challenging each other in an affectionate and loving game of cat and mouse. It was always an exhilarating experience. Dr. Benton's scientific mind bore witness as a surrogate for the victim. "I speak for the dead, who cannot speak for themselves," he said often.
Her conversation with Dr. Benton, aside from opening up a random serial-killer theory, had also sparked another idea, triggered by her memory of Helga's obvious fondness for expensive jewelry. She had to talk with Ambassador Kessel, but when she picked up the phone, she hung up quickly. No telephones.
Odd, she thought, how quickly she was falling into the mind-set of Washington's movers and shakers in the age of high-tech. Telephone paranoia was now an endemic political disease. She understood the logic, of course, but it had never loomed so menacing in her mind. Was it a given that all embassies, friend or foe, were under surveillance by our intelligence services? She thought of the opportunities for blackmail if, for example, a foreign power or even a domestic intelligence service had the goods on a powerful American politician or even a sitting President. The idea was chilling. She decided to see Ambassador Kessel in person.
SHE FOUND h
im in the study of the official residence. His mood was somber. She had had difficulty getting through the barrier of an officious young aide apparently assigned by the Ambassador to screen all calls and prevent all visitations.
"I'm sorry," he said when she came in. "I'm afraid it's shaken me up very badly." He appeared to be genuinely grieving and upset. "She mattered a great deal to me." His superior air of containment seemed to have disintegrated. Everything about him seemed to have changed. His usually impeccable grooming had given way to sloppiness. His clothes were badly creased and he sat slumped in a chair, as if his bones had turned to jelly. His face was red and puffy and he had undoubtedly been crying.
"Why would anyone have killed my beauty?" he said, his voice breaking. Beside him was a brandy bottle and a half-filled glass of amber liquid. He reached for it, lifted it to his lips and sipped. "Devastating. Absolutely devastating."
His reaction struck her as incongruous. His stated value system in connection with his marriage could not foreshadow his present condition. Not to Fiona, who, despite her occupation and experiences, still cherished the idea of the old verities.
"Everything hinges on motivation," she said, taking a seat on the couch opposite. "I need to know something."
He lifted his head and studied her, waiting for her to continue.
"Did she wear a marriage ring?" she asked.
He looked at her strangely, his head cocked in a pose of curiosity. Apparently an open marriage did not mean that the traditional symbols and rituals of the institution had been totally abandoned.
"Of course," he said. His gaze roamed the room. There were numerous pictures displayed of him and his wife with prominent celebrities. She noted that where Helga's left hand showed, the engagement and wedding rings were quite visible. Also other pieces of jewelry, depending on whether the pictures were taken during the day or evening.
Reaching out, he picked up one from a forest of pictures on the table beside him and held it close to Fiona. It showed him and Helga with the Vice-President, a more-or-less candid shot taken at a luncheon. Helga looked particularly lovely, but then her high cheekbones and lean graceful body, always exquisitely groomed, made her exceedingly photogenic. He pointed to the finger of her left hand and explained, "Note that her engagement ring is worn above her marriage ring. Her wedding ring was diamonds and platinum and the engagement ring is a flawless diamond stone of five carats."
