Body of Evidence (5 page)

"What does this have to do with her contract dispute?"

Mark answered wryly, "Harper may be a sucker for a hero-worshiping young lady, but he's a cagey bastard. Before he got her published, he forced her to sign a contract prohibiting her from ever writing a word about him or anything relating to him as long as he and his sister are alive. Harper's only in his mid-fifties, his sister a few years older. Basically, the contract trussed Beryl for life, preventing her from writing her memoirs because how could she do that and leave out Harper?"

"Maybe she could," I replied, "but minus Harper, the book wouldn't sell."

"Exactly."

"Why did she resort to pen names? Was this part of her agreement with Harper?"

"I think so. My guess is he wanted Beryl to remain his secret. He granted her literary success but wanted her locked away from the world. The name Beryl Madison's not exactly well known, even though her novels have been financially successful."

"Am I to assume she was on the verge of violating this contract, and that's why she sought out Orndorff & Berger?"

He sipped his drink. "Let me remind you that she wasn't my client. So I don't know all of the details. But my impression is that she was burned out, wanted to write something of significance. And this is the part that you probably already know about. Apparently she was having problems, somebody was threatening her, harassing her ..."

"When?"

"Last winter, about the time I met her at lunch. I guess it was late February."

"Go on," I said, intrigued.

"She had no idea who was threatening her. Whether this began before she decided to write what she was currently working on or afterward, I can't say with certainty."

"How was she going to get away with violating her contract?"

"I'm not sure she would have, not entirely," Mark replied. "But the direction Sparacino was going was to inform Harper he had a choice. He could cooperate, and the finished product would be fairly harmless--in other words, Harper would have limited powers of censorship. Or else he could be a son of a bitch and Sparacino would give the newspapers, 'Sixty Minutes,' a crack at it. Harper was in a bind. Sure, he could sue Beryl, but she didn't have that much cash, a drop in the bucket compared to what he's worth. A suit would only make everybody run out to buy Beryl's book. Harper really couldn't win."

"Couldn't he have gotten an injunction to stop the publication?" I asked.

"More publicity. And to halt the presses would have run him into the millions."

"Now she's dead."

I watched my cigarette smoldering in the ashtray. "The book isn't finished, I presume. Harper doesn't have any worries. Is this what you're getting at, Mark? That Harper may be involved in her murder?"

"I'm just giving you the background," he said.

Those clear eyes were looking into mine. Sometimes they could be so incredibly unreachable, I remembered uncomfortably.

"What do you think?" he was asking.

I did not say what I really thought, which was that it struck me as very strange that Mark was telling me all this. It did not matter that Beryl was not his client. He was familiar with the canons of legal ethics, which make it quite clear that the knowledge of one member of a firm is imputed to all its members. He was just a shade away from impropriety, and this was as out of character for the scrupulous Mark James I remembered as if he had shown up at my house sporting a tattoo.

"I think you'd better have a talk with Marino, the head of the investigation," I replied. "Or else I'd better tell him what you just told me. In either event, he'll be looking up your firm, asking questions."

"Fine. I don't have a problem with that."

We fell silent for a moment.

"What was she like?" I asked, clearing my throat.

"As I said, I met her only once. But she was memorable. Dynamic, witty, attractive, dressed in white. A fabulous winter-white suit. I'd also describe her as rather distant. She kept a lot of secrets. There was a depth to her no one was ever going to reach. And she drank a lot, at least she did that day at lunch--had three cocktails, which struck me as rather excessive considering it was the middle of the day. It may not have been in character, though. She was nervous, upset, tense. Her reason for coming to Orndorff & Berger wasn't a happy one. I'm sure all this business about Harper had to be upsetting her."

"What did she drink?"

"Pardon?"

"The three cocktails. What were they?"asked.

He frowned, staring off across the kitchen. "Hell, I don't know, Kay. What difference does it make?"

"I'm not sure it makes a difference," I said, recalling her liquor cabinet. "Did she talk about the threats she'd been getting? In your presence, I mean?"

"Yes. And Sparacino's mentioned them. All I know is she started receiving phone calls that were very specific in nature. Always the same voice, wasn't somebody she knew, or at least this is what she said. There were other strange events. I can't remember the details--it was a long time ago."

"Was she keeping a record of these events?"asked.

"I don't know."

"And she had no idea who was doing this or why?"

"That's the impression she gave." He scooted back his chair. It was getting close to midnight.As I led him to the front door, something suddenly occurred to me.

"Sparacino," I said. "What's his first name?"

"Robert," he replied.

"He doesn't go by the initial M, does he?"

"No," he said, looking curiously at me.

There was a tense pause.

"Drive carefully."

"Good night, Kay," he said, hesitating.

Maybe it was my imagination, but for an instant I thought he was going to kiss me. Then he walked briskly down the steps, and I was back inside my house when I heard him drive off.

The following morning was typically frantic. Fielding informed us in staff meeting that we had five autopsies, including a "floater," or decomposed body from the river, a prospect that never failed to make everybody groan. Richmond had sent in its two latest shootings, one of which I managed to post before dashing off to the John Marshall Court House to testify in another homicidal shooting, and afterwards to the Medical College to have lunch with one of my student advisees. All the while, I was working hard at pushing Mark's visit completely from my mind. The more I tried not to think about him, the more I thought about him. He was cautious. He was stubborn. It was out of character for him to contact me after more than a decade of silence.

It wasn't until early afternoon that I gave in and called Marino.

"Was just about to ring you up," he launched in before I had barely said two words. "On my way out. Can you meet at Benton's office in an hour, hour and a half?"

"What's this about?" I hadn't even told him why I was calling.

"Got my hands on Beryl's reports. Thought you'd wanna be there."

He hung up as he always did, without saying good-bye.

At the appointed time, I drove along East Grace Street and parked in the first metered space I could find within a reasonable walk of my destination. The modem ten-story office building was a lighthouse watching over a depressing shore of junk shops parading as antique stores and small ethnic restaurants whose "specials" weren't. Street people drifted along cracked sidewalks.

Identifying myself at the guard station inside the lobby, I took the elevator to the fifth floor. At the end of the hall was an unmarked wooden door. The location of Richmond's FBI field office was one of the city's best-kept secrets, its presence as unannounced and unobtrusive as its plainclothes agents. A young man sitting behind a counter that stretched halfway across the back wall glanced at me as he talked on the phone. Placing his hand over the mouthpiece, he raised his eyebrows in a "May I help you?" expression. I explained my reason for being here, and he invited me to take a seat.

The lobby was small and decidedly male, with furniture upholstered in sturdy dark-blue leather, the coffee table stacked with various sports magazines. On paneled walls were a rogue's gallery of past directors of the FBI, service awards, and a brass plaque engraved with the names of agents who had died in action. The outer door opened occasionally, and tall, fit men in somber suits and sunglasses passed through without a glance in my direction.

Benton Wesley could be as Prussian as the rest of them, but over the years he had won my respect. Beneath his Bureau boilerplate was a human being worth knowing. He was brisk and energetic, even when he was sitting, and he was typically dapper in his dark suit trousers and starched white shirt. His necktie was fashionably narrow and perfectly knotted, the black holster on his belt lonely for its ten-millimeter, which he almost never wore indoors. I hadn't seen Wesley in a while and he hadn't changed. He was fit and handsome in a hard way, with premature silver-gray hair that never failed to surprise me.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Kay," he said, smiling.

His handshake was reassuringly firm and absent of any hint of macho. The grip of some cops and lawyers I know are a thirty-pound squeeze on a three-pound trigger that damn near breaks my fingers.

"Marino's here," Wesley added. "I needed to go over a few more things with him before we brought you in."

He held the door and I followed him down an empty hallway. Steering me inside his small office, he left to get coffee.

"The computer finally came up last night," Marino said. He was leaning back comfortably in his chair and examining a .357 revolver that looked brand new.

"Computer? What computer?" Had I forgotten my cigarettes? No. On the bottom of my purse again.

"At HQ. Goes down all the friggin' time. Anyway, I finally got hard copies of those offense reports. Interesting. Least I think so."

"Beryl's?" I asked.

"You got it."

He set the handgun on Wesley's desk, adding, "Nice piece. The lucky bastard won it as a door prize at the police chiefs' convention in Tampa last week. Me, I can't even win two bucks in the lottery."

My attention drifted. Wesley's desk was cluttered with telephone messages, reports, videotapes, and thick Manila envelopes containing details and photographs, I assumed, of various crimes police jurisdictions had brought to his attention. Behind panes of glass in the bookcase against one wall were macabre weapons--a sword, brass knuckles, a zip gun, an African spear--trophies from the hunt, gifts from grateful proteges. An outdated photograph showed William Webster shaking hands with Wesley before a backdrop of a Marine Corp helicopter at Quantico. There wasn't the faintest hint Wesley had a wife and three kids. FBI agents, like most cops, jealously guard their personal lives from the world, especially if they have gotten close enough to evil to feel its horror. Wesley was a suspect profiler. He knew what it was to review photographs of unthinkable slaughter and then visit penitentiaries and stare the Charles Mansons, the Ted Bundys, straight in the eye.

Wesley was back with two Styrofoam cups of coffee, one for Marino, one for me. Wesley always remembered I drink my coffee black and need an ashtray within easy reach.

Marino collected a thin stack of photocopied police reports from his lap and began to go through them.

"For starters," he said, "there's only three of 'em. Three reports we got a record of. The first one's dated March eleventh, nine-thirty on a Monday morning. Beryl Madison dialed 911 the night before and requested that an officer come to her house to take a complaint. The call, unsurprisingly, was given a low priority because the street was hopping. A uniform man didn't swing by until the next morning, uh, Jim Reed, been with the department about five years."

He glanced up at me.

I shook my head. I didn't know Reed.

Marino began skimming the report. "Reed reported the complainant, Beryl Madison, was very agitated and stating she'd received a phone call of a threatening nature at eight-fifteen the night before--Sunday night. During this phone call, a voice she identified as male, and possibly white, said the following: 'Bet you've been missing me, Beryl. But I'm always watching over you even though you can't see me. I see you. You can run but you can't hide.' The complainant went on to report that this caller stated he'd observed Miss Madison buying a newspaper in front of a Seven-Eleven earlier that morning. The subject described what she'd been wearing, 'a red warm-up suit and no bra.' She confirmed she did drive to the Seven-Eleven on Rosemount Avenue at approximately ten o'clock Sunday morning, and that she was dressed in the described fashion. She parked in front of the Seven-Eleven and bought a Washington Post from a vending machine and didn't go inside the store or notice anybody in the area. She was upset the caller knew these details and stated he must be following her. When asked if she was aware of anybody following her at any time, she stated she was not."

Marino turned to the second page, the confidential section of the report, and resumed: "Reed reports here Miss Madison was reluctant to divulge specific details pertaining to the actual threat communicated by the caller. When questioned at length, she finally stated the caller became 'obscene' and said when he imagined what she looked like with her clothes off it made him want to 'kill' her. At this point, Miss Madison hung up the phone, she said."