Blacklist (27 page)

CHAPTER 34

What Bill of Rights?

Bobby Mallory-Captain Mallory now-had been my dad’s protege on the force; my dad had been best man at his and Eileen’s wedding. If my mother had believed in godparents, Bobby would have been my godfather. But that didn’t bring a jolly twinkle to his pale eyes when he saw me. Nothing about my work makes him twinkle, but tonight he looked as grim as if I’d-well, helped a known terrorist escape.

I felt my knees weaken: Had he somehow learned that I’d taken Benjamin Sadawi to Father Lou’s? I was smart enough at least to keep my mouth shut as I found an empty chair.

I had time now to take in the rest of the crowd at the table. I knew some of the people, at least by sight, but four were complete strangers. The lanky woman with bags under her eyes next to me was a Cook County state’s attorney; we’d met in court several times. Of course I knew Bobby’s own longtime subordinate, my sometime friend Terry Finchley. Lieutenant Schorr had made the long trip in from Wheaton; he was glowering at me like a man who wished his deputies had shot me instead of Catherine Bayard. Stephanie Protheroe, sitting next to him, didn’t look at me. I also had occasionally worked with-or around-the FBI’s Derek Hatfield.

“Vicki,” Bobby said. “We’ve been waiting for you to surface. You have a lot of explaining to do, my girl. The superintendent asked me to head

Chicago’s task force on terrorism, and we seem to have a connection between a terrorist, suspected terrorist, who’s been living in Chicago, and the man you flushed last night in DuPage. All these busy people have been waiting to ask you questions, so let’s get going.”

Lieutenant Schorr and a man I didn’t recognize both started talking at once. “Just a minute,” I protested. “You busy people all know who I am: V I. Warshawski, Vicki only and solely to Captain Mallory. I’d like your names and affiliations.”

A highly polished specimen next to Derek Hatfield was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District. Along with Deputy Protheroe, Schorr had brought an assistant state’s attorney from DuPage with him-a man who looked like the U.S. attorney’s twin brother: young, white, thick brown hair perfectly combed. Everyone in the room had a sidekick but me. I wished I’d brought Peppy.

Mikes were set up on the table; a young woman in a Chicago PD uniform sat in a corner with sound equipment and earphones. The room and the sound system were as modern as anything I’d seen in the sheriff’s office last Sunday night; I hoped Schorr was impressed.

After the pause for civilities, Schorr and the U.S. attorney both jumped in again, Schorr wanting to know why I had fled before he questioned me, the attorney angry because the Feds had been hunting Benjamin Sadawi for four weeks-I’d been within centimeters of him without telling them.

“Benjamin Sadawi? Is that the boy who’s been a dishwasher at that fancy Gold Coast school?” I paused briefly, hoping they would stop picturing a big man in a head scarf and start seeing a skinny teenager. “I didn’t know I was within centimeters of him. Larchmont Hall was empty when I got there. Lieutenant Schorr’s men thought whoever was hiding in the attic jumped out a third-floor window when he-or she-heard me come in.”

“It didn’t make you suspicious when you found Arab-language books up in that attic?” Derek asked.

“The whole situation was so confusing that I didn’t know how to make sense of it.”

“You went upstairs, didn’t you?” the U.S. attorney asked. He and the DuPage attorney had been introduced as Jack and Orville, but they looked so much alike that I couldn’t remember which was which.

When I nodded, he said, “What did you think when you saw that some of the books were in Arabic?”

I wrinkled up my face, puzzled woman thinking. “There were a bunch of old kids’ books with Calvin Bayard’s name in the flyleaf. The house had belonged to the Drummond family-Geraldine Graham’s father-so I wondered why Mr. Bayard’s books were there. Then I saw the Arab-English dictionary and thought maybe Mr. Bayard was coming over in the middle of the night to study Arabic. I thought he might be translating his childhood books or something.”

“You couldn’t possibly have thought that!” Orville or Jack slapped the tabletop.

“No, you couldn’t have, Vicki,” Bobby spoke quietly, but sternly. “Tonight isn’t an occasion for joking. Since September 11, every law enforcement officer in this country has been stretched past the point of endurance. So give us straightforward answers to our questions.”

Terry Finchley suggested I start by explaining what I’d been doing in Larchmont in the first place. For what seemed to be the thousandth time, I went through my litany about Marcus Whitby’s death and his sister’s hiring me to investigate.

We paused while the woman in the corner changed disks in the machine and checked that it was recording. When she nodded at Terry, he continued. “You didn’t think that was police business? Dragging the pond?”

“I did. Completely. Just as I thought searching Marcus Whitby’s house was police business. But I couldn’t persuade your buddies in DuPage any more than I could persuade you. Since you all took a pass on the investigation, I went out to New Solway on behalf of the family.”

“And searched the pool,” the lanky woman from Cook County said. “And searched the pool,” I agreed.

“Find anything relevant?” Orville or Jack asked.

I spread my hands. “Hard to say. A lot of old china. Nothing that said who put Whitby into the pond. What I did find, though, was the golf cart that the murderer used to drive Mr. Whitby to the pond.”

That got their attention in a hurry. Although Jack or Orville poohpoohed the idea (we know he went there drunk to kill himself privately), Bobby spoke up, asking Lieutenant Schorr how Marc had gotten to the

estate: Had they checked the trains, the taxis, and so on? Schorr and Jack or Orville blustered in a way that proved they hadn’t done any digging into this problem. Bobby would have blasted a subordinate who’d been so slack; to Schorr, he only said quietly that he thought the question merited some research.

“What’s this about the golf cart, Vicki?”

I told him about finding the culvert this evening, and talking to the equipment supervisor. The Finch nodded and made a note. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. The police machinery was going to take over the laborintensive part of the inquiry.

“But this doesn’t make you a heroine,” Bobby warned me. “What did you do after you searched the pond yesterday? Break into the house?” “Bobby-Captain!” I protested, wounded.

Bobby glared at me and let Schorr take over the questions. We rehashed Geraldine Graham’s interest in her old home. We rehashed the fact that the kitchen door was open.

“You say,” Derek Hatfield put in. “I’ve worked with Warshawski before. She skirts the law; I’ve never proved it, but she’s not above breaking and entering.”

“This DuPage gorilla here-excuse me, this lieutenant-searched me. Thoroughly enough for a sexual misconduct claim. Ask him if he found any tools on me.”

“You were there alone for God knows how long,” Schorr shouted. “You had plenty of time to hide any picklocks.”

I raised my brows in exaggerated disbelief. “You didn’t search that mansion from top to bottom? And all the time thinking you had a terrorist cell hanging out there? On less evidence than an Arab-English dictionary, the government just took apart my home without a warrant.”

“This isn’t Comedy Central,” the U.S. attorney said. “Those of us at this table are trying to protect our country.”

“Well, I’ll sleep easier at night knowing you’ve inspected my bras,” I said bitterly. “What did Renee Bayard say about the books in the attic?”

“The Bayards and the Grahams are old friends. Ms. Bayard thinks her husband might have lent them to Mr. Darraugh Graham when Mr. Graham was a boy,” the DuPage attorney said. “Of course, with her

granddaughter in the hospital she was too distracted to give the matter serious attention.”

“So the Bill of Rights still operates for wealthy voters,” I said. “That’s reassuring. You do know why her granddaughter is in the hospital, right?” “Because of an unfortunate accident.” The DuPage attorney clipped off the words. “Why didn’t you wait in the house to answer Lieutenant Schorr’s questions last night? Jumping out the bathroom window-it makes us think you had some reason to run away to take such a risky exit.” “I would have preferred a door myself, but the lieutenant made the estate’s lawyer lock me in.”

“You could have waited until Schorr talked to you,” Jack or Orville persisted.

“I was tired-I’d been dragging the pond-it was freezing in the house. I wanted to get some sleep. When Schorr’s deputies shot Catherine Bayard, he was too busy to remember me. So I left.”

“But you didn’t go home.” The Cook County attorney spoke up. “No,” I agreed. “I believe a safe driver is one who knows when she’s too tired to control a vehicle. I checked into a motel.”

The lanky woman nodded: they’d cared enough to find the place I’d stayed. They clearly didn’t know I’d left my Mustang behind the shrubbery, or someone would have been all over me for that. The Cook County attorney pressed the attack. “You weren’t in the motel when the maid went in to clean at noon. What were you doing today between noon and eight o’clock?”

“Is there reason you need to know that?” I asked. “If there is, I’ll be happy to tell you, but I can’t imagine why my movements are of interest to Cook County or DuPage, or, most especially, the Department of Justice.”

“America is at war,” the U.S. attorney reiterated. “If you aided a terrorist in escaping, you can be charged with aiding our enemies.”

I suddenly felt very tired. I spread my hands on the table and studied my fingers while the silence grew.

“Well,” the U.S. attorney prodded.

“It’s not well,” I said. “None of it is well. We’re not at war, for one thing. Only Congress can declare war, which they haven’t done-unless it happened while we’ve been sitting here.”

“You know damn well what he means,” Derek said. “Do you think it’s a joke, what happened in New York, what our troops are doing in Afghanistan or the Persian Gulf?”

I looked up at him. “I think this is the most serious thing that has happened in my lifetime. Not just the Trade Center, but the fear we’ve unleashed on ourselves since, so we can say that the Bill of Rights doesn’t matter any more. My lover is in Afghanistan. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive, I haven’t heard from him in almost a week. If he’s dead, my heart will break, but if the Bill of Rights is dead my life, my faith in America, will break. If I had found a terrorist in the Larchmont mansion, I would have done my best to deliver him to you, Derek-and hoped you’d pay more attention to me than your colleagues in Minnesota or Arizona did to similar warnings. But I didn’t see any signs of a violent criminal. Did you? Were those Arabic books manuals on bombs, or did they contain diagrams of important U.S. targets? I assume you’re finding that out.”

I turned to the DuPage attorney. “Meanwhile, the net gain for the night was that Schorr’s Arab-hunting tigers shot a local teenager. I had nothing to do with that, and I don’t think my hanging around Larchmont while Schorr figured out what spin to put on that catastrophe would have been at all helpful.”

No one said anything for a minute or two. I shifted in my chair, stretching my neck and shoulders.

“We need to reopen the investigation into Whitby’s death. I don’t believe in coincidences, a suspect hiding in a house, a man dead outside the house, those two have to be connected.” Bobby spoke with the authority of his forty years on the force. He looked at the DuPage attorney. “Orville, can you get your pathologist to do a full autopsy, including a tox screen on Marcus Whitby?”

“We released the body to the family yesterday,” Orville said. “I’ll see if they’ve taken it back to Atlanta.”

Bobby rubbed his balding temples. “I hope to Christ they haven’t: I don’t want to deal with an exhumation. Or with one more jurisdiction than the three already involved.”

I didn’t reveal that Bryant Vishnikov had already started a private

autopsy: I was hoping Bryant could finish and give me the results before the law found out he had the body.

“We can expedite that if necessary,” the U.S. attorney said. “Meanwhile, what about Warshawski here? We never got an account of how she spent those missing hours. Is she capable of hiding a wanted man?”

“You searched my home,” I protested. “I’ll be glad to take you to my office if we’re done here. You can look in the trunk of my car.”

“We had someone at your office this afternoon,” Derek said. “And we’re checking with your friends.”

I tried to control the rising tide of fury in me. “Did you bastards help yourself to my Rolodex? Did you take files? Where the hell do you get off, harassing a citizen without probable cause.”

“We don’t need probable cause,” the U.S. attorney snapped. “We have you and a suspect both missing from the same house on the same night. Like the captain said, no coincidences here. You might have thought he was an innocent kid and given him a boost out the window with you. But now that you know he’s a wanted man, we expect you to cooperate.”

“I am cooperating,” I shouted, leaning across the table. “Vicki, watch yourself,” Bobby warned me.

I shut my eyes and took a breath, counting backward from ten in Italian as I exhaled. “I am cooperating,” I said in a calmer voice. “Now you guys give some back. What’s he done? How do we know he’s a terrorist? Tell me that and I’ll get more excited about your questions.”

Derek and the U.S. attorney exchanged glances; the attorney spoke. “He stayed on in this country without a visa, and without a sponsor, after his uncle died. He goes to an Uptown mosque where they preach some pretty radical rhetoric. And he went underground when we tried to bring him in for questioning.”

I asked him to expand on the radical rhetoric, or what they’d found in the room Benjamin had rented with a Pakistani family after his uncle died, but they refused to provide more detail: they knew what they knew.

“I see,” I said. Really, though, I didn’t see-anything. It didn’t sound like a catalog of evil, but I didn’t know what “radical rhetoric” covered. Death to Israel? Death to America? Death to abortion providers? Radical or patriotic, depending on your viewpoint. If Benji advocated all three, then I’d have to rethink covering up for him. But I’d wait for Father Lou to finish interrogating him before I turned him over to these guys. My own judgment might be at fault, but I sure didn’t trust any of the people at the table more.