Private Sector (7 page)

He gave her jaw a fierce jerk to the right and felt the distinctive snap of her neck. A choked groan exploded from her throat. Her body immediately sagged forward—if not dead, surely on

the way to dead. He pulled her backward and let her drop naturally onto the tarmac.

He closed her car door, relocked it, and threw the keys back into her purse. He withdrew a vial from his pocket, bent over for a few seconds, made a few minor adjustments to her body, retrieved her purse and briefcase, then calmly walked away. He had parked his car in South Parking, and he walked completely around the gargantuan building and departed without incident.

Too bad he’d had to improvise and leave such an understated calling card that way. He’d just have to make it up with number two, and he knew just how to do it.

CHAPTER SIX

T
HE TAILOR AT BROOKS BROTHERS HAD AN AVARICIOUS SMILE, WITH SEVEN suits and five sports coats with matching slacks slung on a back-room rack. Apparently there’s a standard array, like with military uniforms—a blue pinstripe, a gray pinstripe, a herringbone, and so on. Black and brown shoes, belts to match, twenty shirts, and three pairs of suspenders I wouldn’t be caught dead in. It began, however, with an idiot’s tutorial regarding which shirts and slacks and ties matched which coats and suits, and why did I suspect Barry had a hand in that? Twenty minutes of being pinned and chalked later, I told the tailor to hold the alterations for two days, without mentioning my wishy-washiness about the ethical propriety of taking $30, 000 in fine clothes for only a few days’ work.

But, actually, I wasn’t ambivalent.

Having a few hours to kill, I wandered back to the firm and noodled through their manuals. The Army also has manuals, but primarily to explain things like how to point a directional claymore mine so it craps death and destruction on the other guy, instead of spoiling your day, or how to frantically clear a jammed M16 automatic rifle while badasses are storming your position. The subject matter possesses a certain, shall we say, puissance, that moves you to ignore the drollness, read carefully, and remember the tiniest details. But you have to wonder about a firm that hires the best and brightest from the nation’s top law schools, and then feels the need to explain in tedious detail how to prepare a business letter, and under which conditions it’s ethical to bill a client, and under which it’s most definitely not.

There was, in fact, an espresso machine on my floor, one of those souped-up models you find in glitzy restaurants, with copper tubing, and pressurized nodules, and thingees you turn and doo-dads you push, and geez—what if I jabbed the wrong damned button and the whole f-ing building exploded? To be safe, I coaxed a passing secretary into fixing me a cup, and then wandered to the library. It was about 8:00 P.M. Some thirty associates were hunched over texts or scrounging through the stacks for some obscure ruling or other. This wasn’t the late shift. Everybody looked tired and glum. This place really sucked.

They were mostly young and attractive, late twenties, early thirties, hungry, ambitious, and what they all needed was to go out, get drunk, get laid, and get a life.

But one should always follow one’s own advice, so I departed at 8:30, affording myself a leisurely thirty minutes to get to the Pentagon. So there I am, driving happily through the streets of D. C. in my shiny Jaguar sedan, radio blaring, hopeful, horny, eager, and I guess a little too preoccupied, because suddenly there’s this swirling blue light behind me. I did not need this nonsense.

And so we had to go through the whole rigmarole—eight minutes waiting for the cop to run my plates, five minutes explaining why the car was not registered in my name, two minutes playing lawyer and trying to talk my way out of the speeding ticket, then ten more minutes completing the basic transaction. Miss Morrow, incidentally, was raised well, the type who always brings expensive wines to a dinner, never misses a thank-you note, and is punctual to a fault. I glanced at my watch—Ooops . . . Miss Right was about to become Miss Rightly Pissed Off.

I raced into the Pentagon’s North Parking lot at 9:26. I saw a wash of blue and red lights. I was not really in the mood to see another cop, so I parked and began strolling toward the sidewalk that leads up to the towering guardian of Western civilization. Radios were crackling. Uniformed flatfoots were copying license numbers off cars. I counted three police cars, two unmarked cars, and a gaggle of cops clustered around a gray Nissan Maxima.

Eventually I picked out an Army uniform on a corpse that I assumed was some flabby colonel who’d just left the Pentagon Athletic Club. He’d ignored that gut overhang for years, and with that gung-ho gusto military men are so widely admired for, overtorqued his artery-hardened ticker. It was fairly common. In fact, maybe this was why the cemetery was across the road. Convenient for everybody, right?

A Pentagon security agent edged toward me, waving his arms. “Police investigation.”

“Sorry.” Still, I tried to snatch a closer peek at the corpse on the off chance it was Clapper. Maybe God had answered my prayers and slammed a lightning bolt up his ass. But maybe not. I had made it quite clear that I wanted to witness this heavenly feat.

My thoughts were disturbed by an ambulance hauling at high speed down the road toward the parking lot. I was walking past a young detective chattering into his radio: “—Caucasian female, approximately thirty years old, in an Army uniform. The name on her nametag is Morrow. That’s M-O-R-R . . .”

I stopped walking. I stopped thinking. I froze.

The detective glared at me and said, “Keep moving, sir.”

“You said Morrow, right?”

“Please, keep moving.”

Feeling suddenly frantic, I said, “Not Lisa Morrow?”

He tossed the microphone back inside the car and walked warily toward me. “You know her?”

“Aren’t you listening? If it’s Lisa Morrow, I know her. I talked to her a few hours ago.”

He waved at two uniformed cops, who rushed over. He whispered something to them and said to me, “Please remain here. I’ll be right back.”

The pair of cops repositioned themselves beside me, while the detective jogged over to the gaggle by the Maxima. He approached an older, much heavier detective, they conferred briefly, and then both men headed toward me. The older detective was black, with a heavy, puffy face and washed-out, bloodshot eyes that regarded me curiously.

He hesitated a moment, then said, “I’m Lieutenant Martin, Alexandria Police.” He then added, “Detective Williams says you might know the victim.”

My eyes were fixed on the gray car. “Yes. Maybe.”

He and Williams exchanged looks. Martin said to me, “The only identification we’ve found is her nametag. If the victim had a purse, it was stolen. It could save us hours. You mind?”

I did mind. I wanted to cling to the faint possibility that it wasn’t her, that this was a really uncanny coincidence, that any second Lisa would come bounding down the walkway with her gorgeous smile and she’d take my arm and off we’d go.

Instead, he took my arm and guided me. When we were fifty feet away I noticed her blond hair . . . then her slender body curled up on the tarmac, her arms flung sideways like she’d crashed down, legs splayed at an odd angle, as though they had simply buckled beneath her.

Her green eyes were locked open and she was staring up at me. I fought an impulse to take a knee and hold her. Shock and pain were etched on her lips. Her body lay on its left side and she was looking over her right shoulder at an impossible angle.

I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t. Martin’s eyes also were fixed on her face. He asked me, “That her?”

I nodded.

He led me away as two uniformed cops started stringing yellow crime scene tape around the car and Lisa’s body, and the ambulance crew began breaking out a stretcher. One detective was slipping plastic Baggies over Lisa’s hands, another speaking dispassionately into a microphone, recording his initial impressions.

We ended up beside Lieutenant Martin’s unmarked car. He allowed me a respectful moment before he asked, “Her full name, please?”

“Captain Lisa Morrow.”

“How do you know her?”

“We’re JAG officers. We worked together.”

“As friends or associates?”

I stared at him.

He said, “I’m sorry.” He was the decent type, and allowed another moment to pass, then added, “Williams said you talked to her a few hours ago.”

I nodded. “I’ve just been assigned to the office where Lisa spent the past year. We were going to compare notes.”

“At this hour?”

“She was working late.”

His next question was interrupted by a dark Crown Victoria that raced down the aisle and screeched to a halt beside us. Two guys in cheap suits leaped out, flashing their tin. One pounced in our direction and yelled, “What the fuck’s going on here?”

Martin approached the guy acting like an asshole and said, “I’m Lieutenant Phil Martin of the Alexandria Police. We got the call about a body.”

From their short hair, bad suits, and worse manners, it struck me the new arrivals were from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or CID, the military equivalent of detectives.

“Spell federal territory, asshole,” the older agent said to Martin. He waved impatiently at the other CID agent to go over to Lisa’s body, presumably to inflict the same treatment on the cops over there.

Martin said to him, “I didn’t catch your name.”

“I didn’t give you my fuckin’ name. Your assholes are fucking up my crime scene.”

Appearing quite annoyed, Martin replied, “I was the one who called your night shift at Fort Myer and asked them to dispatch some people.”

The object of his annoyance was a runt—ugly, nasty-looking face, big hooked proboscis, fat lips, small, tight eyes, and an olive complexion marred by acne scars. He was not a likable-looking sort, nor did he appear to be the likable-type. At that instant in fact, his forefinger was positioned an inch from Martin’s nose and he was demanding, “That right? If you knew we was coming, why are your assholes collectin’ my evidence?”

I’d had enough. Lisa Morrow lay dead on the tarmac and this guy’s playing territorial prick. I stepped between them, faced the CID agent, and ordered, “Identify yourself.”

He backed off a step. “Chief Warrant Spinelli.” But he swiftly recovered his lack of manners and said, “And your rank don’t mean shit to me. Get in my way and I’ll charge you with obstructin’ a criminal investigation.”

Okay, fine. I needed someone to be angry with, and he’d do nicely. I reminded him, very coldly, “Mr. Spinelli, is it not proper military etiquette for junior officers to salute their seniors?”

Well, his eyes narrowed, but his hand did slowly crawl through the air to his forehead. For about five seconds I let him keep it there before I returned it. Power is a funny thing—one minute you have it, and the next, a bigger dog comes loping into the neigh-borhood and craps on your favorite lawns.

“Lieutenant, how were you notified?” I asked Martin, who was barely concealing a smile.

“Somebody called 911 from a cell phone. It was transferred to my station.”

“Do you know who?”

“No. They apparently didn’t want to be involved.”

“And what time did you notify the military police about Captain Morrow’s body?”

“Right after the call. Nearly thirty minutes ago.”

I let that revelation hang for a moment before I said to Spinelli, “Fort Myer is only five minutes away.”

“I came when I got the call. It’s none of your business, Major.”

Back to Martin, I said, “Lieutenant, I’d like to express the heart-felt appreciation of the Armed Forces. Mr. Spinelli was tardy, and this kind of cooperation shows your professionalism.” To Spinelli I added, “You will now try to act equally professional. You will conduct a proper handoff of evidence and responsibilities. You will handle this task with courtesy and grace. Have I made myself clear?”

Lieutenant Martin tipped his head and left to inform his people.

My eyes stayed on Spinelli. I informed him, “The victim is Captain Lisa Morrow, a personal friend. So listen closely, because I will only say this once—mess up this investigation, Spinelli, and I will fuck up your life. This is not an idle threat.”

“You know the victim?”

“What did I just say?”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you a witness?”

“No. I overheard one of them mention her name and I offered to identify her.”

“Ain’t that a fuckin’ coincidence.” His eyes shifted in the direction of Lisa’s corpse. “What happened?”

“She was murdered.”

“How do you know?”

“Because unlike you, I saw her body. Her head is twisted at an impossible angle. Somebody snapped her neck.”

“Uh-huh.” He turned back and studied me. “Wait here. Don’t even think of leavin’.”

I leaned up against a car. It had been an unseasonably tepid December filled with clammy, rainy days and dull gray skies. But the warm snap had broken the day before; the night was cold and beautiful, a full moon, a star-filled sky, and I stared up at the heavens and cursed.

Guilt. The circumstances were irrelevant; the guilt was unavoidable and overwhelming. Had I arrived on time, I’d be sitting with Lisa in a cozy bar swapping drinks and laughs and stories. I wondered if she was standing around and waiting when it happened. I wondered how it would’ve turned out had I come twenty minutes earlier.

Spinelli’s voice echoed through the night, hazing and bullying the local cops. Martin’s people began leaving as more and more MPs began showing up, establishing a cordon around the crime scene, and proceeding through the paces of cataloging a murder. I felt as though I had just swallowed broken glass. A woman of extraordinary talent and great beauty had been left dead on the wet pavement like a piece of crumpled garbage.

I thought of Lisa’s face, yet for some reason I could not recall her as I always knew her, as I wanted to remember her: happy, smiling, lively, and self-assured. Her death mask was inside my head, and I could not drive it out. The eyes, they say, are the windows into the soul. I believe this to be true, and, in fact, the feature that had struck me most profoundly the first time we met were her eyes, a very deep, nearly unnatural green. They were striking eyes, and I had observed on many occasions the powerful effect they had on men, women, and often, to my chagrin, on juries.