Capital Crimes (3 page)

“I wouldn’t put it past Freddie,” Will said. “And next week, I’m going to give a funeral oration for a man who did everything he could to destroy my political career and my reputation.”

“If Freddie kept files like that, who would have them?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Will said.

IN CHESTER, South Carolina, Elizabeth Johnson opened a desk drawer in the den of her home and took out a key. She went down the stairs to her basement and to a pile of boxes in a corner. She moved one, exposing a small filing cabinet, the kind that holds index cards. Tentatively, she inserted the key into the little cabinet and pulled open one of the four drawers. She switched on a light, illuminating a row of precisely filed cards, all of them labeled with the neatly printed names of some of the best-known, most powerful people in the country. Freddie had always been a splendid record keeper.

Elizabeth had meant to look through them, but instead, she stared at the cards as if they were a poisonous reptile. She closed the drawer, locked the cabinet, and went back upstairs. Instead of returning the key to the desk drawer, she went into her bedroom closet and pushed aside the clothes hanging there. She opened the wall safe that she had bought to keep the jewelry that Freddie had given her over the years, then she put the file cabinet key inside, closed the safe, and returned the clothes to their original position.

She would wait awhile, until the furor over Freddie’s death had died down, then she would burn all those index cards in her fireplace.

5

JAMES HELLER, back in his office at the Hoover Building, called a meeting of the half-dozen highest-ranking people at the FBI, all of them men.

“Gentlemen, I have some news for you,” Heller said, self-importantly. “Senator Frederick Wallace of South Carolina was murdered this morning.” He waited for a response.

“Yes, sir,” the deputy director for criminal investigations said. “It was On CNN a few minutes ago.”

Heller blinked. “But the president himself told me about it only a few minutes ago. He got it from the sheriff down there.” He somehow viewed this as a personal betrayal by CNN.

“Yes Sir,” the DDCI said.

“Bob,” Heller said, fixing the DDCI with his gaze. “I want you to call the agent in charge of the Columbia office on the phone right away and have him get some men over to Chester and talk to that sheriff.”

“I have already done so, sir,” the DDCI replied.

Heller blinked. “Oh.” He took a deep breath and tried to think. “As I’m sure you know, the murder of a federal official is a federal crime—”

“Yes, sir, I know that.”

“So we’re taking over this investigation. This small-town sheriff isn’t going to have the resources to properly investigate this killing.”

“I have already given those instructions to the AIC in Columbia,” the DDCI said. “The investigation is ours now.”

“Good. So, what do we know so far?”

“I spoke to Sheriff Stribling, and he tells me that Senator Wallace was shot through a kitchen window by a sniper, who was probably three hundred yards or more away, since the land around the cabin was cleared to that distance, affording no hiding place for a shooter. A single twenty-two-caliber bullet struck him in the left temple, killing him instantly.”

“Good, good. And what have our people turned up there?”

“Sir, Chester is more than an hour’s drive from Columbia. They would have left Columbia no more than fifteen minutes ago.”

“Do we have any suspects?”

“Sir, as you know Senator Wallace was a very popular man on the right wing of the Republican Party.”

“I didn’t know there was any other wing of the Republican Party.”

“Be that as it may, sir, the senator was very unpopular with almost everybody to the left of him. He was a very skillful obstructionist in the Senate, managing to block many pieces of legislation and judicial appointments, some of them sent up by Republican presidents. He had many enemies, and the first assessment of people with motive to kill him would run into the hundreds, perhaps thousands. By the time we eliminate everyone who could not have been in Chester, South Carolina, this morning, we may have pared the list to dozens.

“It’s possible that he was killed for political motives, but it’s just as possible that he was killed because of some personal grudge, by someone in his own hometown. We expect Sheriff Stribling to be valuable in that part of the investigation, so I’ve told our AIC to leave the sheriff in charge of the local investigation, liaising through one of our agents, who will be assigned to assist him.”

“So you’re telling me we don’t have a clue as to who killed him?”

“Sir, we’ve known about the murder for less than half an hour. It’s a bit early in the investigation to begin drawing conclusions.”

“Well, let me give you my take on this, Bob,” the director said.

“I’d very much like to hear that, sir,“ the DDCI replied without apparent irony.

“I think what we’ve got here is a vast left-wing conspiracy to eliminate a senator who has driven the left nuts for decades.”

“Sir, with respect, I don’t think we’ve had a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country since the forties, maybe as far back as when Stalin and Hitler signed a nonaggression pact, which caused a lot of American communists to leave the party.”

“Are you suggesting a communist conspiracy, Bob?”

“No, sir, I am not,” the DDCI said, rather desperately.

“So, you think it’s a vast
right-wing
conspiracy?”

“I have not formed that opinion or any other opinion, sir. I think we have to wait until we have some evidence upon which to base a judgment, and that may take days or weeks, assuming there is any evidence.”

“There’s always evidence, Bob,” the director said.

“Usually, sir.”

“We won’t have any trouble tracking down this sniper, I’m sure of that”

“Sir, may I point out how long it took to catch Eric Rudolph? And we got him only because a cop got lucky. A lone perpetrator, especially one with a support network, is a very difficult man to catch.”

“Yes. yes, Bob, I understand that, of course. But I hope you understand that we’re going to be under enormous pressure to come up with a suspect and make an arrest.”

“We’re always under pressure in a high-profile crime, sir. My people are accustomed to it.”

“Well, that’s good, Bob. Now, I’m calling a press conference this afternoon timed to make the national TV news shows this evening, announcing progress in the investigation, so you get down to Chester, South Carolina, right now and get me something to announce.”

“Sir, I think it would be a mistake to schedule a press conference when we don’t yet have anything to announce. We could make fools of ourselves.”

“Well, you just get yourself down to Chester and call me when you’re on the ground there, and we’ll figure out something for the press conference.”

“Yes, sir,” the DDCI said.

“Don’t sound so morose, Bob,” the director said. “We’re going to crack this one, you and I.”

“Yes, sir,” the DDCI said, even more morosely.

6

ROBERT KINNEY, the FBI’s deputy director for Criminal Investigations, looked out the window at the piney woods below him and searched for the airport. The airplane was an elderly Lear, and since Kinney was six feet five inches tall and weighed two hundred and sixty-five pounds, it was a tight fit for him.

The airplane suddenly banked left, and Kinney, to his relief, saw the Chester airport. It had three runways, in a triangular pattern, and one of them had Xs at either end, indicating that it was closed. The place looked like a World War II-era training airport, a great many of which dotted the American countryside. Before the airplane made its final turn, Kinney could see a single car parked on the parking ramp, and it had a big star on the door.

THE AIRPLANE taxied up to the ramp, and the copilot opened the door for Kinney, then carried his luggage down the air-stairs. A man in a business suit walked up and stuck out his hand. “Agent Kinney? I’m Ralph Emerson, AIC Columbia.”

“Afternoon, Ralph,” Kinney replied. “Call me Bob, please.” Kinney had served with a lot of agents in his twenty-seven years with the FBI and knew a lot more, but he had not met Emerson before. The man’s personnel file, however, had spoken well of him.

Emerson took Kinney’s luggage and stowed it in the open truck of the sheriff’s patrol car. “Bob, I’d like you to meet Sheriff Tom Stribling, of Chester County.”

Stribling, a wiry man in his fifties, pushed off the car where he had been leaning and stuck out his hand. “How you doin’?“ he said.

Kinney shook the hand and looked into the tanned face and bright blue eyes. “Good to meet you, Tom. We appreciate your help on this one.”

“And I appreciate yours,” Stribling said, glancing at Emerson. He didn’t sound as if he appreciated it. “You want to go out to the cabin or would you rather go to your hotel?”

“Let’s go out to the cabin,” Kinney said, getting into the front passenger seat of the car.

“How was your flight?” Emerson asked as they drove away.

“Awful,” Kinney replied. “That airplane is the size of a coffin.”

Stribling said nothing, just drove. After twenty minutes he turned left on a smaller paved road, then ten minutes later turned right on a dirt road. They came to a steel gate, which was open but guarded by a deputy. Stribling didn’t even slow down, just waved. The road led into the woods, and a couple of minutes later they were driving down the shore of a lake of about a hundred acres.

“The senator owned about four hundred acres here,” Stribling said, “including the whole lake and the cabin. It’s the only house on the lake.”

“He liked his privacy, I guess,” Kinney said. Kinney wondered what land cost in Chester County and how Senator Wallace could afford so much of it.

“I guess he did,” Stribling replied.

They drove around to the opposite side of the lake and through another steel gate, this one without a guard. Shortly, they pulled up in front of the cabin, which had yellow crime-scene tape strung from tree to tree, encircling the structure.

Kinney got out and looked the place over. “Nice,” he said. There were window boxes planted with geraniums on the front side of the house. Kinney walked around to the back and saw the shattered windowpane.

“I reckon the shooter stood over yonder, just in the woods,” Stribling said.

“You find any shell casings or footprints or other traces of him?” Kinney asked.

“No, sir,” Stribling said. “I got a couple of old bloodhounds we keep for when somebody busts out of the county camp, and we took ‘em out there a couple of hours ago. According to the dogs, our man zigzagged through the woods and came out in a little rest area on the main highway, about three-quarters of a mile away.“

“Any car tracks?”

“Nope, the rest area is paved. I talked to the State Patrol and got hold of the man who patrolled that stretch of road this morning. He had a look in the rest area about six-forty-five this morning, and there were no cars in it.”

Kinney nodded. “Can we take a look inside the cabin?”

“Sure,” the sheriff said, leading the way to the back door of the cabin.

Kinney looked at the spot where the body had been found and lined it up with the broken window, then he walked into the single bedroom. The place was attractively decorated, with photographs and watercolors on the walls. He went to the bed and turned back the bedspread. The sheets were clean and ironed. He looked in the closet and found some clothes that looked like they were the senator’s.

Kinney walked back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. Inside were some fresh vegetables that appeared home-grown, not being in supermarket bags, and a plate of fried chicken and some cooked vegetables, all sealed with clear plastic wrap.

“Ralph,” Kinney said to the agent, “will you give the sheriff and me a minute?”

“Sure,” Emerson replied and walked out the front door. “Tom, did Mrs. Wallace spend a lot of time here?”

“Nope,” the sheriff replied. “She never came down here at all that I know of. The senator liked to be alone out here.

“We both know that’s not true,” Kinney said.

“Do we?” Stribling asked.

“It’s pretty obvious that a woman spent a lot of time here,” Kinney said. “All the decorating looks feminine. And who fried that chicken and cooked those collards in the fridge? Come to that, who put freshly ironed sheets on the bed that the senator got out of this morning? And one more thing, who called this in, a passing stranger?”

The sheriff gazed out the window toward the lake. “Okay, Bob, I guess I’m going to have to tell you about this and trust your judgment on whether to pass it on to your people and the press.” He told Kinney about Elizabeth Johnson and the senator’s relationship with her.

“I see,” Kinney said. “Let’s go talk to Ms. Johnson.”

7

THE MEN WERE ADMITTED TO Elizabeth Johnson’s home and were invited to sit down in the living room. Kinney had left Emerson in the car.

Ms. Johnson was an attractive woman with cafe-au-lait skin and carefully coiffed hair, and she seemed puzzled by the visit. “What’s this about, Sheriff?” she asked.

“Mr. Kinney, here, is with the FBI in Washington, Elizabeth, and he’s investigating the death of Senator Wallace.”

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “Such a tragic thing.”

Stribling took a deep breath. “Mr. Kinney knows, Elizabeth. He just wants to talk to you about what happened this morning.”

Her shoulders sagged a bit, and she looked out the window. “Well, I guess this had to happen,” she said. “What do you want to know, Mr. Kinney?”

“How long had you and the senator been at the cabin on this occasion?” Kinney asked.

“Since yesterday afternoon around two,” she said.

“Did anyone call to see either of you while you were there? Were there any telephone calls?”

“No one came to the house, and there is no telephone in the cabin. The senator turns—turned off his cell phone when he was there, unless he wanted to make a call.”