by Warren Adler
“No matter what, he’ll get it by osmosis. Thinks he’s onto something, he never lets go.”
Izzy at the wheel weaved the car through traffic while she pondered the information—no identifying papers, a false moustache, glasses. She had marked everything as evidence and placed them in a plastic envelope but left the moustache untouched. By mutual consent, they held back on off-the-cuff theories, although Fiona was certain they both knew this was raw meat to a homicide detective, a mystery with lots of “whys?” In today’s world, Fiona speculated, who walks around without evidence of identity, even phony ones?
“We’ve got a live one, Izzy,” Fiona said. She did not wait for his reply and raised her hand before he could get a word out. “Don’t start. Not now.”
About an hour later, the prints came back with a positive identity. She knew why he had been familiar. She had been introduced to him at one of the Post’s events, although had never engaged him in conversation.
“Good God! Not Adam Burns,” Fiona said, stunned by the revelation.
“High profile,” Chief Hodges said, as Fiona and Izzy sat in front of his desk. He was already chewing heavily on an unlit Panatela. “The Feds will descend.”
“Adam Burns was an over-the-top anti-administration columnist, syndicated everywhere by the Post,” Fiona said. “Three times a week, he hammered away. Made Krauthammer look like a toady.”
“Never read him,” Izzy Silverman said, tipping his political leanings.
Chief Hodges sighed and smashed the Panatela into the ashtray.
“We are about to be sucked into the eye of the storm.”
“Is that good or bad?” Izzy asked.
“Both,” Hodges grunted.
“Everyone will jump to conclusions,” Fiona said. “Can’t you just hear the media chorus? Assassination! Surrogate killers! CIA! Like the Russians and the Arabs! Kill the messenger! Maybe… Mossad involvement! The floodgates will open. Conspiracy theories will abound. A rabid administration hater gets wasted. Worse, the man is in disguise with no documented identity on his person. What was his mission? Why? Mass hysteria will reign.”
“And the clincher—who benefits?” Izzy asked, offering the crucial question of motivation that dominates every homicide puzzle. “These days the opposition blames everything on the President, including natural disasters.”
“With Burns out of the way, the President benefits,” Hodges muttered, “ergo, many will summon up the obvious, depending of course, on their political persuasion.”
“Has legs,” Fiona said. “One heavy hitter against the dead man, maybe more to come. A time-honored solution to dispose of critics; historical precedents abound.”
“Not in America,” Izzy said. “Not the President. Come on.”
“Are you living on some other planet, Izzy?” Fiona asked. “Our politicos are playing blood-sport games, these days. No,” she said. “Not like in my old dad’s day.”
“I thought this was suicide or accident. No witnesses. What’s all this homicide bullshit?” Chief Hodges admonished, irritated by the way the conversation had gone.
“Just fleshing out possibilities, Chief,” Fiona said.
“Your imagination’s getting hyperactive again, woman,” Hodges said, his rebuke accelerating. She hoped he wouldn’t get into one of his rages.
“Might have been dead before he went over,” Fiona speculated.
“Doubtful. Why kill him twice?” Izzy asked.
“Cover-up,” Fiona suggested.
Chief Hodges smiled his sarcastic smile.
“We’re baking bread with horseshit, people,” he snickered. “People will rush to speculate and probably believe all of the above. Not our brief, people. So far all we got is squat but suicide or accident.”
“Not all, Chief. Fake moustache. Phony glasses,” Fiona pressed. Hodges showed his increasing irritation. “Prez hater in disguise is killed by moving train. No identification. Intriguing, right?”
“Doesn’t alter the facts—no witnesses, no crime.”
“The Talmud says two eyewitnesses are required to validate.”
“Now that’s really helpful, Silverman,” Hodges harrumphed, blowing air between his teeth and unwrapping another Panatela, soon to join the dead tobacco leaves in his no-ash ashtray.
Fiona knew his mind was racing now, contemplating possibilities. She deliberately intervened.
“We’ve got to control the action, Chief,” Fiona said, her imagination charging with ideas. She was weaned on politics and knew the turf well, although it was morphing into a more violent hate zone than she had ever observed.
When her father was alive, national politics was equally a battle royal between factions and parties, but there was little gut-wrenching hatred and brute animosity between partisan opponents. After business hours, mortal political enemies were able to socialize and maintain friendly, often life-bonding relationships. Not anymore. She had inherited her Democratic political leanings from her father, but she was determined to remain neutral in her job and keep an open mind on all issues. She was an investigator, and anything partisan was anathema to objectivity in her police work.
“It’s too obvious a motivation for murder,” Fiona said. “Not that there won’t be lots of theories and hate-filled assumptions. Nobody in his right mind would risk literally killing off the opposition, certainly not by presidential fiat. Besides, Burns was only one voice in a growing chorus. The White House is ground zero for bitching and moaning, everybody’s a target.”
“This guy Burns was armed to the teeth with animosity, and he dished it out three times a week,” Izzy interjected.
“Jumping to conclusions,” Hodges sighed, eyeing Izzy with his trademark look of ridicule. “Only an idiot would countenance such an obvious hit. Even the most naïve president would know that. This is not Russia or some dumb-assed third-world country. We don’t shoot our critics here.” He laughed. “Then again, maybe we should.”
“That won’t stop the media from asserting the possibility,” Izzy said.
“Once they get over their glee,” Hodges muttered.
Although they had, so far, rarely discussed politics, it seemed obvious that Izzy was a rabid supporter of the President. Speculating that her idea was based mostly on the grounds of his racial kinship, Fiona detested herself for the judgment.
From her long experience in Washington, she knew what the President was up against, and she understood that most of the political class was made up of ambitious people with different agendas and constituencies. If she was sometimes cynical about their motives, it did not mean that she disliked them as a group. They were insufferable, hypocritical, deceptive, vain, egotistical, charming, often counterintuitive, but they ran the show or acted as if they knew exactly what they were doing. Because of her father, she had a warm spot for the breed.
“No matter what,” Chief Hodges sighed, “we don’t deliver, they’ll come down on us as sycophants and stooges for the administration. We’re on the lowest rung of the feeding chain. Expect everyone from the Secret Service and all the initials to pounce for their own reasons, meaning the CIA, FBI, NSA, et cetera, et cetera.”
“It’s our jurisdiction, Chief,” Fiona said. “Not that such a trifling matter will hold down the Fed horde. We’ll just have to stay a step ahead.”
“If too many Feds show up, the media will charge confusion and cover-up,” Hodges said. “And somehow, expect the slime to flow over us. Nature of the beast.”
“Something like the lady doth protest too much,” Izzy said.
Fiona saw the point. People might think the Feds were overdoing it deliberately, covering up leads, obscuring tracks.
“Got a point, Silverman,” Hodges conceded. “But don’t fool yourself. We don’t have a strong immune system. Beware the Feds. They’ll be launching their slings and arrows. Brace yourselves. We don’t c
ome up with an airtight answer, the media will say we’re in on the cover-up.”
“Fuck the media,” Fiona snapped.
She thought suddenly of Larry and smiled. That was exactly what she had been doing for the past few months.
Chapter 3
As predicted, the story spread like a fast-moving forest fire. Internet stories were lurid and speculation rampant.
“Presidential Enemy Found Dead. Suicide or Murder?”
By the next day, Fiona felt certain, the story would gather more traction and dominate every medium. No print journalist or television personality could resist the temptation to speculate that an administration-inspired conspiracy might have been perpetrated. The suggestions were blatant. Administration defenders ridiculed the idea. The President remained silent. As had been expected, a “higher authority” was monitoring the Eggplant. And as always when such situations arose, his anger escalated, he became more secretive and less forthright with his superiors, doling out information in his own time.
Following procedure, Fiona had broken the news to Burns’ wife while Izzy covered the news media. Next-of-kin notification always took precedence in incidents like these. It was early evening by then.
Sally Burns was an attractive woman, early forties, with one teenage daughter living at home and the other a sophomore at Harvard. Although obviously stunned and in disbelief, she remained controlled throughout the process, as if she were used to restraint. This was a woman who was good at managing her façade. She did not break down when she identified her husband’s body, although the color had drained from her face and her lips trembled. A passive-aggressive type, Fiona decided. One of those cold, nose in-the-air, blonde goddesses that Fiona despised from her school days, Mrs. Burns was dressed in the uniform of her ilk: cashmere cardigan open over color-coordinated sweater with a string of pearls around her neck. Fiona had never met her before. She was a real estate broker with a prominent firm that dealt in upscale housing.
Fiona drove her back to the family home near Chevy Chase Circle, an early vintage brick colonial style house; low key, tastefully decorated, and upscale. Mrs. Burns’ teenage daughter Lisa, a tall, beautiful girl, her complexion ashen, eyes red and swollen, her blonde hair in disarray, fell into her mother’s arms as they entered.
“I’m sorry, baby. It’s so awful,” Mrs. Burns said soothingly, looking up at Fiona, almost apologetically, her hollow look emphasizing her helplessness.
“Daddy,” the daughter blurted, overwhelmed by her grief.
“I know, sweetheart. I know.”
“I want daddy.”
Leaning on her mother, crying uncontrollably, she was slowly guided upstairs.
Fiona roamed the living room and paneled den with ceiling-to-floor bookcases, noting that everything seemed in its place, expensive, comfortable, carefully chosen and coordinated, hardly an example of a rabble-rouser. There were plaques, awards, and generational family pictures of happy, athletic, successful people. This was not, Fiona decided, the home of a suicidal man. There were a number of awards also given to Mrs. Burns for her real estate sales efforts. She was apparently quite accomplished.
Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Burns came down, her pale face scrubbed and her hair neatly brushed. She had changed her clothes and was wearing an olive turtleneck and beige slacks. Fiona noted that the combination brought out the green tint of her hazel eyes.
“Lisa doted on her dad,” Mrs. Burns said, sucking in a deep breath. “She’s devastated. It’s all so terrible.” A tiny sob escaped her.
“It’s always harder on the children,” Fiona said, leaving out what from her own experience she had learned would be a temporary phase. Children on the whole recovered from the loss faster than a spouse.
Mrs. Burns slumped into a leather wing chair. When the telephone rang, she showed her annoyance, got up, disconnected it, and returned to her chair. The brief stab of anger seemed to steady her.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said with disgust. “All those sympathetic voices. Hypocrites! Most hated his politics. The whole thing is so awful.” She sighed and turned away. “I suppose it was to be expected.”
“What was expected?”
Sally Burns turned full face toward Fiona. Even in grief, she was a goddess. “Do you have any doubts, Detective?”
“We don’t deal in speculation,” Fiona said, impatient to begin the serious interrogation.
“Nor do I,” Sally Burns said, unable to control a quivering lip.
“Do I understand you rule out suicide?”
“No way,” Mrs. Burns said, expelling a deep sigh, obviously fighting to maintain control, as she played with her wedding ring with long, well-manicured fingers. For a long time she was silent, then as if satisfied that she had gained full control over herself, she nodded and spoke in a firm voice. “He would not….” Her nostrils flared as if she was fighting against anger now. She moved her head vigorously from side to side. “No, he would not take his own life.”
“You can never be sure, Mrs. Burns. Are there suicides in his family history?”
“Certainly not.” She hesitated for a moment as if she were mentally running down the family tree. “He comes from a long line of journalists and writers, all of whom lived to a ripe old age.”
“It’s a legitimate hereditary marker. It has to be asked,” Fiona said.
“Well, it doesn’t apply in this case.” Then she nodded as if agreeing with her inner voice. “Clearly it has all the fingerprints of this terrible administration. They are capable of anything. They wanted to silence my husband, and they’ve succeeded.”
“At this point, Mrs. Burns, it’s a leap,” Fiona said gently. She had not yet provided Mrs. Burns with the more intricate and baffling details, like the absence of any identification and the matter of the fake moustache and eyeglasses. Forensics had confirmed that his glasses had been store-bought and with the lowest degree of magnification.
“Who else would be responsible? This most self-righteous, venal, evil administration in history… my husband was its harshest critic. They eliminated the thorn in their side. They want to change our country, make it some socialist backwater. My husband saw it happening.” She let out a plaintive involuntary whine, and Fiona noted that she was now digging her nails into her palms. “My husband would not take his own life. No way. He was pushed in front of that train. I’d bet my own life on it.”
Fiona let her vent in her restrained manner, her voice steady and firmly emphatic. She was convinced she was stating the facts.
“You know how they do things. They can make it look like suicide. So where is his note? He adored the girls and me. He would never leave any of us in the lurch like this. Not without….” She swallowed, and despite her herculean effort at self-control, she teared up. She stared at Fiona. “Not without saying good-bye.”
“It happens, Mrs. Burns. Not all suicides leave a note.”
Fiona was instantly sorry she had put it that way. Then it occurred to her that he might have left a message on his wife’s computer.
“Have you checked your computer, Mrs. Burns? He might have sent you a note by e-mail.”
She shook her head vigorously.
“I checked,” she said. Fiona assumed that meant she had taken the time during her absence to open her e-mail. “My daughter’s as well. Nothing.”
“Are you certain? People often send suicide notes via email.”
“Will you stop using that word,” Mrs. Burns snapped between pursed lips. “It was not a suicide. Next thing you know, that will be the prevailing doctrine.”
“I apologize for the inference, Mrs. Burns. We haven’t declared it as such. It could have been a simple accident. We are in the initial phase of our investigation.”
“Investigation? Really? I doubt if you will find anything that ties it to them. They are very clever. They will go through the motio
ns, of course, but I have very low expectations about ever getting to the truth of his assassination.”
Fiona nodded, more for form’s sake. It would be futile to rebut her arguments. She chose, instead, to ignore the allegation.
“Did your husband show any signs of depression? Had his conduct or attitude changed in any way in the last few months?”
Mrs. Burns offered a dismissive smirk.
“Not at all. My husband enjoyed his work and his home. He loved his family. He took out his anger in his columns. He was an idealist. He believed in honesty and transparency, hence his criticism of the President. My husband was a wonderful, talented, articulate man.” She paused and grew thoughtful. “A fulfilled man, doing good work. His column, as you must know, was widely read and distributed through the Post syndicate. He turned down thousands for lectures and shunned the role of a talking head on television because he insisted on staying close to home. He would have rather spent his spare time with us.”
Fiona watched her signs of defensiveness or hesitation. She was, after all, a real estate broker, in itself a demanding, time-consuming job. “He was at the top of his game. This was not—I repeat—this was not a suicide.” Her eyes narrowed as she shot Fiona a glance of reproof. “Definitely without a doubt, he did not take his own life.”
Fiona had heard this all before numerous times when delivering the news of a suicide to a family member. Denial was a fairly standard reaction. But in this case, Fiona mused, the woman’s adamant denial matched her own speculation, although a conspiracy plot engineered by the President seemed a far more remote possibility.
“Did your husband ever discuss death threats?”
“Really, Detective,” Mrs. Burns said, with obvious indignation. “It went with the territory, along with fan mail, which he said always ran twenty-to-one in favor of his point of view. My husband got a kick out of the disgruntled ones. Oh, don’t think the White House didn’t send emissaries to shut him up, or at the very least, soften his stance. They didn’t know my husband. He gave them no quarter. And they have had their revenge.”
