The Simple Truth (34 page)

“You believe someone took him there and killed him?”

“More to the point, someone took him from inside the Court to the park and killed him.”

Sara gaped.
“Meaning the killer was here?”

Fiske nodded.
“I don’t know if the person works here, but I believe he was physically present here last night.”

“What could Steven have seen that cost him his life?”

“I think he saw someone go into Mike’s office. Yesterday, Wright heard Chandler tell everyone that the office was off limits to
everyone.
Whoever went into Mike’s office might not have known that Wright was in
his
office. I assume you don’t broadcast when you’re working late.”

“Like last night, often we don’t even know until the last minute.”

“Right. So somebody goes into the office looking for something — ”

“Like what?”

“Who knows? Copies of the appeal that Mike took. Telephone messages, something on his computer.”

“But that’s an awfully big risk. There’s security here twenty-four hours a day.”

“Well, if the person knew the police were going to search the office thoroughly the next morning, he’d only have a limited amount of time to do it.”

“That makes sense.”

“So Wright hears something, or he’s finished his memo, he comes out, and runs right into whoever.”

“If your theory is correct, do you think Steven knew the person who killed him?”

Fiske took a deep breath and sat back.
“I think he had to. Otherwise he would’ve raised the alarm right away. And I saw Dellasandro lock the door to Mike’s office. There’s no sign of forced entry. The person had a key.”

“But someone must have seen something, then.”

“Not necessarily. If the killer is familiar with the layout of the Court, then he’d know ways to avoid being seen with Wright until they got out of the building.”

“So it might be somebody he trusted.”

Fiske looked at her.
“Like one of the justices?”

Sara stared back, horrified.
“I’ll accept a lot, but I can’t accept that.”
She had a sudden thought.
“Maybe it was McKenna? Steven would have trusted him, FBI and all.”

“How could McKenna be involved in this?”

“I don’t know. He’s the first one who occurred to me.”

“Because he’s not with the Court and he slugged me?”

Sara sighed.
“Probably.”
Then she remembered something and tore through the papers on her desk until she found it.
“I can tell you about what time Steven left.”
She picked up the memo Wright had left for her. Across the top of the memo was a date and time stamp. She flipped the papers around so Fiske could see it.

“The word-processing system automatically puts the date and time stamp on documents because we go through so many drafts. That way we can quickly tell what’s current or not.”

Fiske looked at the time stamp.
“This was printed out at one-fifteen this morning.”

“That’s right. Steven finished the memo, printed it out, put it on my desk and then presumably left.”

“And saw whatever he saw.”

Sara suddenly looked puzzled.
“Wait a minute. Something doesn’t make sense here. When a clerk works late, ordinarily what happens is one of the Court police officers will give the clerk a ride home, if you live nearby.”
She looked at Fiske.
“The police here are really good to us.”

“And at one-fifteen the metro’s not running, is it?”

“No. Besides that, Steven lived barely a five-minute car ride from here. He’s gotten rides home before.”

“So the chances are very good that Wright got a ride home from somebody at the Court?”

“Leaving here at one-fifteen in the morning, I’d say it was a really safe bet.”

“How about a cab, though? Maybe at that hour there weren’t enough guards to spare to take him home.”

Sara looked doubtful.
“I guess it’s possible.”

“If a police officer did take him home, that should be easy enough to check. I’ll tell Chandler.”

“So where does that leave us?”

Fiske shrugged.
“We need to see Harms’s military file. I’ve got an old friend with the Army JAG. I’m going to call and see if he can help expedite the process. Until we know who’s involved in all this, I want as few people as possible to know we’re looking around.”

Sara shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself.

“You know what?”
she said.
“I’m starting to become terrified of what the truth might be.”

While Sara went back to work, Fiske telephoned his lawyer friend at the JAG office, Phil Jansen, and relayed his request. Among other things, he asked Jansen to obtain a list of the personnel stationed at Fort Plessy during the time Rufus Harms was there.

When Fiske rejoined Chandler, he related his theory of why Wright had been killed. Chandler was impressed.
“We’ll check the cab companies too. We can only hope somebody saw or heard something.”

Chandler stared intently at the young man.
“So, did you find out anything interesting with Ms. Evans during your time together last night?”

“I think she’s a good person. A little impulsive, but a good person. Very smart.”

“Anything else? At our initial meeting, Ramsey said that she and your brother were close. She have any reason why he might have been killed?”

“You might want to ask her that.”

“Well, I’m asking you, John. I thought we were a team.”
He moved closer to Fiske.
“I’ve got way too much I don’t understand on the front end of this case without having to watch my backside. You were a police officer; you should understand about covering somebody’s backside.”

Fiske said angrily,
“I never let a partner down.”

“Good to hear. So tell me about last night.”

Fiske looked away, thinking how best to handle this. Withholding information was not the best course. So how could he do the right thing with Chandler and avoid destroying Sara’s life and his brother’s reputation?

“Can we get some coffee around here?”

“In the cafeteria. I’ll even buy.”

A few minutes later they were in the ground-floor cafeteria. The Court’s afternoon session was in progress and thus the cafeteria was fairly empty.

Fiske sipped on his coffee while Chandler watched him.

“John, it can’t be that bad, unless you tell me you’re the one running around popping people.”

“Buford, if I tell you something, then you have very specific rules as to what you do with that information and who else learns that information.”

“That’s true. And those rules are what’s stopping you from coming clean?”

“What do you think?”

“I think let’s talk hypotheticals, okay? Now, my job is to collect the facts and to use those facts to ultimately arrest somebody for a crime. If we’re not talking facts, but just theories — like your theory of why Wright was murdered — then I can follow up that theory but I don’t have an obligation to report it to anyone until it’s proven correct by the discovery of facts to corroborate it.”

“So we can talk theoretically and it’ll just stay between you and me?”

Chandler shook his head.
“Can’t promise it will
stay
between you and me. Not if it becomes a fact.”

Fiske looked down at his coffee cup. Sensing he was losing him, Chandler tapped his spoon against Fiske’s cup.

“John, the bottom line here is finding out who murdered your brother and Wright. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“It is. That’s all I want.”

Really? Chandler suddenly doubted that.
“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is you can hurt people at the same time you’re trying to help them.”

“Just your brother? Or somebody else?”

Fiske knew he had already said too much. He decided to go on the offensive.

“Okay, Buford, let’s discuss theories for a minute. Let’s suppose that somebody at the Court took an appeal before it was put into the Court’s system.”

“Why and how?”

“Apparently the
how
is easy. The
why
isn’t.”

“Okay, go on.”

“Now let’s suppose that somebody else at the Court saw this appeal, discovered that it wasn’t on the system, but didn’t say anything about it.”

“I take it the
why
on that is also complicated?”

“Maybe not. Let’s further assume that the person who took the appeal did so for a good reason. And that this person went somewhere, to visit the person who had filed the appeal.”

“The eight hundred miles on your brother’s car?”

Fiske stonily eyed the detective.
“That’s a fact, Buford, I’m not discussing facts.”

Chandler took a drink of coffee.
“Go on.”

“And let’s suppose that the person filing the appeal was a prisoner.”

“Is that a fact or just speculation?”

“I’m not prepared to say.”

“Well, I’m prepared to ask. Where is this prisoner?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you ’don’t know’? If he’s a prisoner, he has to be in some prison somewhere, doesn’t he?”

“Not necessarily.”

“What the hell does that — ”
Chandler abruptly closed his mouth and stared across the table.
“Are you saying this person escaped from prison?”
Fiske didn’t answer.
“Please don’t tell me that your brother got all suckered by some con’s BS plea for help, went to the prison, helped bust him out and then the guy killed him. Dammit, please do not tell me that.”
Chandler’s voice rose in his agitation.

“I’m not telling you that. That’s not what happened.”

“Okay. This appeal … do you know what it says?”

They had gone well beyond theories now, Fiske knew. He shook his head.
“I’ve never even seen it.”

“So how do you know it exists?”

“Buford, I’m not going to answer that question.”

“John, I can make you answer that question.”

“Then you’re going to have to.”

“You know you’re taking a risk here.”

“I do.”
Fiske finished his coffee and stood up.
“I’ll grab a cab back to pick up my car.”

“I’ll drive you. I do have other cases I’m working, even if this is the only one the world cares about right now.”

“I think it would be better for both of us if you didn’t drive me.”

Chandler pursed his lips.
“Suit yourself. Your car’s in the back lot. Keys are on the front seat.”

“Thanks.”

Chandler watched Fiske leave the cafeteria.
“I hope she’s worth it, John,”
the detective said quietly.

*    *    *

Chandler had put some inquiries of his own into play, and when he returned to his office he found a stack of paper on his desk. One standard line of investigation had been to obtain the phone records of Michael Fiske’s office and home phones over the last month. The results were catalogued in the ream of paper. The phone call to his brother was on there. There were others to family. A dozen of them to a phone number that had been identified as Sara Evans’s. That was interesting, he thought. Had both Fiske brothers fallen for the same woman? When Chandler got near the end of the list, his pulse quickened. After all the years on the job, that rarely happened anymore. Michael Fiske had called Fort Jackson in southwest Virginia several times, the last only three days before his body had been discovered. Fort Jackson, Chandler knew, housed a military prison. And that wasn’t all. Chandler scattered the piles on his desk until he found what he was looking for. The telex had been sent nationwide asking for assistance on apprehending the man. When he had seen it earlier, Chandler hadn’t thought much about it.

Now he intently studied the photo of Rufus Harms. He picked up his phone and made a quick call. Chandler needed one piece of information and he got it within a minute. Fort Jackson was approximately four hundred miles from Washington, D.C. Had Harms been the one to file the appeal John Fiske had mentioned? And if he had, why, according to Fiske’s
“theory,”
had his brother taken it?

Chandler looked back at the list of phone calls. His eyes flitted over one number without registering, perhaps because it was to some law office and there were several law-related calls on the list. But the name Sam Rider would have meant nothing to the detective even if he had focused on it for some reason. Chandler put down the phone list and contemplated bringing in Fiske and Sara Evans, and making them tell him what was going on. But then the instincts built up over thirty years kicked in with one precept clearly emerging: You can’t trust anyone.

*    *    *

“Come on, John,”
Sara pleaded. They were in her office near the end of the workday.

“Sara, I don’t even know Judge Wilkinson.”

“But don’t you see? If someone at the Court
is
involved, this would be a perfect opportunity to find out some information because practically everybody from the Court will be there.”

Fiske was about to protest again but then stopped. He rubbed his chin.
“What time does it start?”

“Seven-thirty. By the way, have you heard from your JAG friend?”

“Yeah. There are actually two files that are applicable. Harms’s service record, which contains not only his record of service, but also evaluations, personal info, enlistment contract, pay and medical histories. The second file, the record of his court-martial proceedings, would be with him at Fort Jackson. His lawyer’s work product would be maintained at the JAG office that handled Harms’s defense. That is, if they’ve kept it all these years. Jansen’s checking. He’ll send what he can.”