The Witch of Watergate Read online

  “You call us the murder capital of the United States and you keep kicking the Mayor, you undermine confidence in our city institutions.” He was repeating the message, burning it in.

  Barker studied him. His grin came on slowly, cracking the wrinkles of his leathery face.

  “We’ll do our part, Captain,” Barker said.

  “And we, ours,” the Eggplant added. He stood up and extended his hand. Barker took it. They shook warmly. Male bonding achieved. From a box on his desk, Barker took out a card and wrote on the back of it.

  “My home number,” he said. “Anytime you need me.”

  The Eggplant took out his card and wrote his home number on the back.

  “Likewise,” he said, handing Barker his card.

  “Guess you don’t need mine,” Fiona piped. Barker smiled and put out his hand. His flesh was warm, his grip strong.

  “I’m glad you’re on this case, FitzGerald,” he said. “The Chief’s got my number.”

  “Yes, he has,” Fiona said. Then to herself, Yes, he has.

  7

  “WOULDN’T TRUST THAT bastard as far as I can throw this desk,” the Mayor said, hitting the desk with the heel of his hand. The mere mention of the name Harry Barker had set him off, although he had listened patiently through the Eggplant’s explanation.

  Fiona sat beside him as he spoke, aware of her role. Once again she was to bear witness. She had been with him through the Barker discussion. It was now necessary for her to witness the Mayor’s reaction.

  The Eggplant was, of course, playing politics, forcing the circumstances to be seen his way, compelling both the Mayor and Barker, because of Fiona’s validating presence, to be aware that what was being said was no old-boy back-door deal.

  “Everybody has an axe to grind,” the Eggplant said, as part of his summation. “Barker doesn’t want it to look as if his people went too far on the one hand. And he doesn’t want his people to be frightened into pulling their punches on the other. He’s one shrewd bastard, I’ll give him that.”

  “If he thinks he can control this investigation he’s got another guess coming,” the Mayor said. He looked fatigued and drawn. His shirt collar was too big for his neck, a measure of his weight loss, and his hair had whitened in the past six months.

  The man was beleaguered and looked it. The cocky playboy attitude had given way to the worried, embattled politician fighting for his political life. Some of his closest advisors had been caught with their hands in the till. He was rumored to have numerous mistresses on the city payroll, and although no one had accused him of financial corruption, he was a sitting duck for such allegations, especially by a frenzied press encouraged in their investigative zeal by the wave of murders, the emergence of gangs and the growing drug trade.

  “He’s smart enough to know that he can’t manipulate the investigation,” the Eggplant explained. “All he wants is to be in the loop, to have input in the way the case is presented.”

  “And what’s the trade-off for us to cooperate with him?”

  “I had the impression that he wasn’t going to pile on that murder-capital-of-the-United-States shit.” He paused, exchanged a glance with Fiona, then continued. “I also had the impression that he was going to let up on you.”

  “Fat chance. He wants me to resign. That’s what’s behind it all. The bastard is after me because I don’t play ball with the establishment.”

  This was only marginally true. In his youth, the Mayor had been on the cutting edge of the civil rights movement, one of its more militant figures. He had come a long way from that point. The fact was that he was very much part of the establishment, which also had a mandate—to maintain the public order and community standards of ethical conduct. Unfortunately, the Mayor, by virtue of his office, could be faulted on both counts. Worse, he had fallen into the trap of every politician on the defensive: blame everybody but yourself, especially the media.

  “They want to make it look as if a black Mayor can’t run a city,” the Mayor muttered. Fiona understood that attitude, sympathized with it, didn’t agree, but had learned never to argue the issue.

  “I think I made the point that the heat the paper was generating was counterproductive. It was my impression he understood what I was talking about and was willing to back off.” He turned toward Fiona, who was expected to validate this impression. She complied.

  “Seems that way. Especially since he wants something from us,” Fiona said.

  “Remains to be seen,” the Mayor grumbled. “I’ll accept the responsibility for running this city. But I resent being blamed for the gangs, the dope, the murders, the corruption around me. You can’t run a city as if you were the Gestapo. The whole country is in trouble. Society is in trouble.” He seemed to be starting to make a speech, recognized it, then stopped himself.

  “Pamela Dearborn was one miserable bitch,” the Mayor said. “When she got her hooks into you, you were dead meat. If you think about it, I guess I’m lucky. She never got around to me.” He chuckled. “Nobody is going to shed too many tears over that lady.”

  “For us, that’s not the issue, your Honor. If we rule out suicide we’ve got us a killer to find.”

  The Mayor swiveled back in his chair and made a cathedral out of his fingers.

  “In that case, I hope it’s connected to the work she did in blowing up people’s lives,” the Mayor said. “Sure Harry Barker doesn’t want to see that. Make his rag look like a murder weapon. Piss people off. I can see his point. Somebody sending him a message to lay off.” He paused and sat upright in the chair. “Got any ideas, Captain?”

  “Some. Problem is we’re so thin we can only spare two detectives.” He looked toward Fiona.

  “It won’t be easy,” Fiona said, reinforcing the pitch.

  The Mayor seemed to be looking for something on his desk. He dug into a pile of file folders, slipped one out of the pile and opened it.

  “You know how many cops we had in 1972?” They remained silent. They both knew the question was rhetorical. “Fifty-one hundred officers. You know what we got now? Under four thousand. You know what the police share of the budget was in 1972? Twelve percent. You know what it is now? Half that.”

  The Eggplant shot her a glance that told her not to respond. There was one statistic that neither of them wanted brought up. The homicide solution rate of their department was once roughly 75 percent, three out of four murders solved. It was now, this year alone, only 20 percent, only one out of five.

  Sure, Fiona knew, the low percentage could be rationalized by pointing to the growing drug epidemic and gang wars. But the percentages were still ghastly and reflected on their competence.

  “We’ll do the best we can with what we have, your Honor,” the Eggplant said. He looked toward her with an apologetic air. Just being political, his eyes told her.

  Brown-noser, she answered.

  8

  DR. BENTON LOOKED tired and drawn. As Chief Medical Examiner, his department was literally working round the clock to accommodate the huge influx of bodies being produced in the murder capital of the United States.

  Fiona watched him standing in front of a zinc basin, washing up, while yet another body was being transferred from a gurney to a work station. The smell of disinfectant tingled her nostrils.

  “Seems like months since we had one of our little chats, Fiona,” Dr. Benton sighed. He was her closest friend in the department, wise and cultured and full of sage advice. Often, she had sat with him in the scrupulously cared-for sitting room of his small house in Northeast Washington where he had lived for more than twenty-five years with his late beloved wife.

  Amid the shrine of silver-framed photographs that constituted a record of his memories of her, Dr. Benton could always be relied upon to help Fiona through the crisis of the moment, giving her the insight and perception to, as she often put it to herself, “blunder on.”

  “We are encountering a new phenomenon, Fiona,” Dr. Benton said, tearing off a slice
of absorbent paper from a roll on the wall and wiping his hands clean. She knew better than to interrupt his train of thought. “The automatic weapon is changing the parameters of a pathologist’s time.”

  The idea seemed both obscure and oblique, but she knew that he would shortly reveal its logic. “Used to be that death by gunshot would involve a single entry. One bullet. Maybe two. Sometimes three, but that was rare. They come here now with an average of eight or nine. This morning I counted one poor devil with a dozen. Takes only one to kill. Imagine the waste in energy, metal and, above all, the pathologist’s time. We must probe for each bullet. Because of the speed of the weapon, the killer’s time is not impinged. Only us, the poor overworked pathologist. I estimate that it has increased the average time of an autopsy by twenty-five percent.” He offered a wry chuckle and shook his head.

  “On the other hand, the value of human life has decreased by an even greater percent.” He turned and studied Fiona with his startling blue eyes, a legacy of his Louisiana forebears, the white parts now laced with lightning streaks of red.

  “Are there no limits to your scientific objectivity?” Fiona chided, knowing better.

  “It does keep one sane,” Dr. Benton sighed. When he was tired like this, he often took refuge in philosophical concepts, avoiding the clichés of contemplating human waste and folly. He looked at the naked corpse of a young black man lying on the table. “Rule one for a department medical examiner. Never get involved in a corpse’s emotional history.”

  “In my side of the business, it’s hard to avoid,” Fiona said. Dr. Benton showed a wry smile.

  “Case in point,” he said. “Your Dearborn lady. She seemed to have engendered a great deal of federal interest as well.”

  “They were here during the autopsy?”

  “No. But they want the report faxed over immediately.”

  Dr. Benton started to pull white latex gloves over his hands. “She was a forty-three-year-old female in excellent health. Mostly what one would expect. Sparing you all the technical details, she did, indeed, die by the noose.” He had lowered his voice, illustrating his conspiratorial alliance.

  “Not before?” Fiona asked.

  “Before what?”

  His question took her by surprise.

  “For us, the issue is murder or suicide.” He knew that, of course. Sometimes he teased her this way, especially when he had concocted some theories of his own. “You’re saying then that she died by no other means than hanging.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said she died by the noose.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought you said.” She paused and noted a mischievous air about him. “Is this a riddle?” she asked.

  “Yes, I suppose it does sound that way.” He smiled benignly and patted her cheek with his gloved hand. “I wish we had more time to work it out together.” He looked at the body on the table. “But duty calls.” He expelled a long breath, then turned back to look at her. “Again sparing you the technical jargon. You’ll see it in the report. Actually, from what I can see, the moment of death came when she went over the side. But she was dying when she got there.”

  Fiona was getting the picture now, creating a scenario in her mind as Dr. Benton spoke.

  “The physical evidence, faint abrasions on the back and buttocks, the location of the abrasions on the neck, finding wisps of carpet in her hair, her dressing gown and the backs of her heels. We’ve sent it to the lab, but I’ve seen enough to be certain.”

  “That she was dragged across the carpet,” Fiona interjected.

  “By the rope. With the noose around her neck,” Dr. Benton said. “A theory, of course. But the evidence is strong. The noose was slipped over her head from behind, as if she were sitting in a chair. It was pulled taut. The woman fell backward. She was then dragged some distance . . .”

  “. . . And eased over the terrace wall to complete the process, made to look like death by hanging.”

  “Exactly. There were also grains of soil on the back of her heels.”

  “The turned-over evergreens. She was dragged along the terrace as well.”

  He clapped his rubber-gloved hands together and bowed in acknowledgement.

  “So much for suicide,” Dr. Benton said.

  “A good try, though,” Fiona said. The murderer had probably worked things out to the letter. “Hadn’t banked on the intrepid Dr. Benton.”

  “Or believed all the media perception that the Washington Police Department was incompetent or too overworked to figure things out,” Dr. Benton said.

  “Makes the juices run,” Fiona said. Nothing like an outside attack to bond people together. She remembered yesterday’s “negotiation” in Harry Barker’s office, where the Eggplant had risen to heights not thought possible.

  “Captain Greene should be ecstatic. He gets a high-profile case to take the pressure off.”

  “I better tell him,” Fiona said. “He was kind of hoping it would be murder.”

  “And you, Fi?”

  “It is our business, Dr. Benton. Only the knife cuts both ways. Now we’ve got to get our man. There’s a great deal riding on it, a great deal.”

  “I would say so. I was an avid reader of Polly Dearborn. Unfortunately, I’ve been too busy over the last few days to read anything beyond medical evidence.”

  Something had begun to nag at her, something that Dr. Benton had said. Her mind raced to find the source. Then it came to her.

  “You said mostly, Dr. Benton. You said ‘mostly what one would expect.’ ”

  Dr. Benton tapped the table with a gloved finger.

  “Yes. Of course. I did say that. Keep me on my toes, Fi. Not as young as I used to be.” Fiona waited for his thought to resurface. “Yes, I remember now. It was most unusual.”

  “What was?”

  “The woman’s hymen. It was still intact.”

  9

  FIONA WAS UP at five-thirty. She had stood in the open entrance to her house in her nightgown, waiting for the Post delivery boy.

  “Up early,” he said, handing her the paper and ogling her body through the translucent nightgown. She slammed the door, opened the newspaper and sat down on the stairs to read.

  There it was, the stuff of books and movies. She quickly read the two major headlines on the front page. They had carried the Dearborn murder and the Downey suicide as separate stories, a not-so-subtle attempt to keep the connection separate.

  Both stories were written with an eye toward scrupulous neutrality, designed to discourage the reader from making rash speculations, an impossible task. Barker was leaving it to others to draw conclusions.

  Speculation, however, was inescapable. There was absolutely no way to read the stories without forming a theory or an assumption that connected the two tragedies. Indeed, one only had to read the third installment of the Downey piece to draw conclusions.

  They had begun it on page three and jumped it to the front page of the Style section. The evidence of Barker’s editing was easily apparent, probably shortening the story by half. There was no mention of the cult trial testimony, although there was more on Downey’s hiding assets from his wife in their divorce battle and some background on Robert Downey, his son.

  In fact, the stories provided something for everyone to chew on—media bashers, police lovers or haters, armchair detectives, mystery novelists with hyperactive imaginations, Fed gumshoes, whether they were CIA, DIA, FBI, NSA or whatever other initials were appropriate to describe those involved in the intelligence community.

  The Eggplant was also quoted in the story. Polly Dearborn was murdered, he had announced. “We are following up numerous leads.” They had printed his picture on the jump page.

  Fiona did not begrudge him the glory. It was a respite from the drumbeat of death he got each morning. Last night there had been six more gang murders. Fiona noted that Barker had kept his word on this as well. The story was buried in the back of the local section, told straight, without hysteria or innuendo. The
re was not a word about the Mayor in any of the stories or in the editorial.

  The Eggplant called her at six.

  “Looks like we’re in it up to our eyeballs,” Fiona said.

  “Kept his word. That’s the important part,” the Eggplant said. “He buried the murders. No more murder capital of the United States. No more Mayor-bashing.”

  “Not today anyway,” Fiona said.

  “It’s a biggie. The Mayor has given us carte blanche. You and Evans have now got to find me that killer.”

  “Evans?” She had forgotten. “Yes, of course.” She had been on the verge once again to request Cates. Again, she had reconsidered, but for different reasons. Charleen Evans knew computers, an absolutely essential ingredient in this case.

  She called Evans’ number and got no answer after numerous rings. That was odd, since all homicide cops were supposed to have answering machines.

  Fiona dressed quickly and drove to Charleen’s apartment in Southwest Washington. However she felt about the woman, Fiona could not conceive her to be irresponsible. She was too tightly wound, too proud, too controlled to show weakness.

  When she didn’t come to the door at the first ring, she kept her finger on the buzzer. Then she noted that the Post was still on the doorstep. She picked it up and resumed her attention to the buzzer.

  After a few minutes, she heard movement and had the sensation of someone peering at her through the peephole, then the door swung open.

  A bleary-eyed Charleen Evans stood in the doorway in a flannel nightgown. “I was dead,” Evans said.

  “We got to get us a killer, Evans. The world is watching.”

  She carried in the Post. Evans looked at her briefly, then, leaving the door open, dashed inside the apartment and disappeared. Fiona came in and shut the door behind her. She heard a shower running from somewhere inside the apartment.

  She stood for a moment in the center of the living room contemplating the surroundings. The room was as neat and orderly as anyplace she had ever been. There was a couch, chairs, family pictures in shiny frames, an oriental rug of intricate design, an abstract painting on one wall.