Murder in the Supreme Court (Capital Crimes Series Book 3)

by Margaret Truman

  “Sorry to barge in,” he said with a trace of a German accent, “but I wondered if you needed me today to drive. You said yesterday that the Court limo might not be available.”

  Temple looked at the young man, whose attention was fixed on Cecily. “In an hour,” he said. “I’ll be ready in an hour.”

  “Yes, sir.” Karl vanished from the doorway.

  “What happened to your Court limo, Temp?”

  “Maintenance, I think, or being used for the funeral.”

  “You’re not going?” she asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “You should. He was chief clerk.”

  He tried to control the trembling in his right arm but couldn’t, and it quickly spread throughout his body. The crutch crashed to the floor and his hand hit the carafe.

  “Are you all right, Temp?”

  “Look at you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can’t you at least have the decency to cover up when a man enters the room?”

  She looked down, then up at him. “I’m wearing a robe, for God’s sake.”

  “It has snaps, why don’t you use them—?”

  “This is ridiculous,” she said as she pulled the hem of the robe over her bare legs and tugged the upper portion of it across her chest. “Excuse me, I have to get dressed for the funeral.”

  He placed the palms of his hands on the table and slowly pushed himself to his feet. She came around, picked up his crutch and handed it to him.

  “Why do you have to go to that bastard’s funeral, Cecily?”

  “Because I think it’s right—”

  “Sutherland was a disgusting—”

  “I don’t want to discuss it, Temp.” She left the room. He followed, his steps slow, labored, the rubber-tipped crutch preceding his right leg as he dragged it across the floor. He reached her bedroom, opened the door and said, “You insult me by going to Sutherland’s funeral.”

  She tossed her robe on the bed and entered her private bathroom.

  “You slut,” he said just loud enough for her to hear.

  She’d been leaning over the sink and peering at herself in the mirror. She straightened, turned and said, “And you, Mr. Justice, have the gall to talk about insulting someone?”

  He tottered and grabbed the door for support. The trembling increased. It appeared he would topple over at any moment. She ran across the room and gripped his arm.

  “Don’t touch me,” he said in a strong voice. She stepped back. He raised the crutch as though to strike her, lowered it. “All right, damn you, go to his funeral, Cecily, and celebrate his death for me.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The Episcopal priest conducting the graveside service for Clarence Sutherland glanced at the thirty people who’d come to pay their final respects. Clarence’s mother was near collapse and leaned against her husband. Their daughter, Jill, who’d arrived on an overnight flight from California, stood with her arm about her mother’s shoulders.

  A delegation from the Supreme Court headed by Associate Justice Morgan Childs stood together. Childs looked up into an angry gray sky and blinked as the first drops of rain fell. Next to him was Clarence’s clerk colleague, Laurie Rawls, who was crying.

  Martin Teller turned up the collar of a Burberry trench coat. He’d awakened with the beginnings of a head cold. He glanced at Dr. Sutherland’s secretary, Vera Jones, who stood behind the Sutherland family. She was the only person there, he realized, who’d dressed appropriately for the weather, right down to ankle-length Totes covering her shoes.

  The corpulent, ruddy-faced priest still seemed to be catching his breath after the walk from the limousine. He looked down at The Book of Common Prayer he held in his beefy hands. “Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, Clarence, and we commit his body to the ground…”

  Dr. Sutherland stepped forward, scooped up a handful of soil and sprinkled it over the coffin as cemetery workmen lowered it on straps. The rain fell harder and the priest held a hand over his head. He spoke faster.

  Teller sneezed loudly, momentarily distracting attention from the grave site of three security men assigned by the Treasury Department to Justice Childs.

  “The Lord be with you,” said the priest.

  “And with thy spirit,” a few responded.

  “Let us pray. Lord have mercy upon us.”

  “Christ have mercy upon us,” was the reply.

  “Lord have mercy upon us.”

  Teller watched the mourners return to their limousines. When they were gone, he approached the grave and looked down at the coffin. Who did you in, kid?

  “Everybody has to leave,” a workman said.

  “Oh, yeah, right. Sorry.”

  There were several phone messages waiting for him when he returned to MPD headquarters, including one from Susanna Pinscher. He called her first.

  “You were at the funeral?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Very touching. And wet. I caught cold.”

  “So fast?”

  “If it gets serious I can claim workman’s comp. You know, Miss Pinscher, I was thinking about you last night.”

  “You were?” Her voice had a smile in it.

  “Yes, I was. I finally figured out who you look like.”

  “And?”

  “Candice Bergen.”

  “That’s very flattering coming from Paul Newman.”

  “Definitely Candy Bergen.”

  “Do you always decide who people look like?”

  “It’s a hobby. How about dinner this week?”

  “It might be hard. I—”

  “To discuss the case. I have some thoughts.”

  “I’d like to hear them. Tell you what, Detective Teller, let’s make it Saturday night. I have an appointment Saturday morning with Justice Childs. I might also be speaking with some of the other justices during the week. I’ll be able to fill you in on those interviews.”

  “Sold. I’ll pick you up at seven. Where do you live?”

  There was a long pause. “Do you like Indian food?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “How about Hungarian?”

  “Of course I like Hungarian food, as long as I don’t have to steal the chicken. I am Hungarian, at least half of me. My mother was a stoic Swede.”

  “Well, I have a favorite Hungarian restaurant, Csiko’s, on Connecticut Avenue, Northwest. It’s in the Broadmoor Apartment Building. How about meeting there at seven? I’ll make a reservation.”

  “See you then, but give me a call if anything breaks sooner.”

  “I will. Talk to you soon.”

  It was true that Martin Teller was part Hungarian. It was not true that he liked Hungarian food, especially goulash, or anything with paprika in it. As far as he was concerned, cooking Hungarian food for his father, and having to eat it, had sent his Nordic mother to an early grave.

  CHAPTER 6

  “What about Sutherland’s friends? Have they been contacted?” Dorian Mars asked Teller.

  “We’re doing it now,” Teller said.

  “Not fast enough. The commissioner called. He’s up in arms.”

  You sure turn a phrase, Dorian. Well, not to be outdone… “What does he expect, miracles?” Teller lighted a clove.

  “I wish you wouldn’t smoke those things in here, Marty. They’re offensive.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Please.”

  “Okay.” He carefully extinguished it, saving its expensive remains.

  “Let’s go over it,” Mars said. “Everybody in the Court has been interviewed?”

  Teller shook his head and eyed the cold cigarette. “Of course not, Dorian. Setting up interviews with people in the Supreme Court takes time.”

  “I understand that. What about the family?”

  “Still working on it. The father, the shrink, is sort of impressive, strange but sure of himself, arrogant as hell, dresses good. The sister is getting her Ph.D. in California.”


  “California what? California politics, California geography?”

  “California, Dorian. That’s where she goes to school. She’s studying literature.”

  “Classical? English?”

  “Hungarian.”

  “A Ph.D. in Hungarian literature?”

  “Something like that. I haven’t met the deceased’s mother yet.”

  “Why? Procrastination is the thief of time.”

  “Because her only son has been shot dead in the Supreme Court, which tends to give a mother headaches.”

  “Talk to her. Talk to anybody, but get something going fast. I’m under a hell of a lot of pressure from up top.”

  “I understand,” Teller said.

  “Are you coordinating with Justice?”

  “Sure. We’re in touch every day.”

  “Good. Marty, give me a gut feeling about this case. Who do you think?”

  Teller shrugged. “It’s wide open. I wish I had even a solid hunch to give you, but I don’t. The only thing I will say is that it might be a woman.”

  “Why?”

  “His life-style. The kid was handsome, smart, a dedicated swinger, broads all over the place, probably lots of them mad at him. I’m going over after this meeting to check out his bachelor pad in Georgetown. I had it sealed off the minute we heard he was dead.”

  “A woman, huh?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes it makes sense to me, but then it comes off too much like a dime novel, a woman coming into the Supreme Court in the middle of the night and putting a bullet in his head while he sits in the Chief Justice’s chair. When I look at it that way, I end up leaning toward somebody who works in the Court. His coworkers didn’t like him much, either.”

  “Why?”

  “Power. He was on a power trip, from what I hear. Maybe he caught a justice in the john doing something he shouldn’t be doing and held it over his head, if you’ll pardon the visual.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “It’s not ridiculous. Supreme Court justices are human, just like you and me. They go to the bathroom and—”

  “I know, I know. Let’s get back to family and friends. The father, you say he’s strange. Is he strange enough to have killed his own son? And if so, why?”

  Teller picked up his cigarette from the ashtray and put it between his lips.

  “Don’t, Marty.”

  “I won’t light it. The father? What father kills his only son?”

  “It happens. Life’s a stage, and we’re all players on it.”

  “You’re so right, boss… Look, Dorian, too many could have killed Clarence Sutherland. There seem to be as many motives as there are alibis. I’ll keep plugging. By the way, I ordered a wall chart for my office.”

  “A chart?”

  “Yeah, a flow chart, it’s called. I was getting confused with the Sutherland case so I thought I’d put it all on a chart. This chart has arrows and stars and even glitter letters to highlight things. It might not mean much to you, but I wanted it. It was cheap.”

  “How cheap?”

  “A hundred. I billed the Sutherland case number.”

  “A hundred?” Mars sighed. “I wish you’d cleared it with me first.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’ll approve it. I’ll approve anything to see things move.”

  “Things’ll move, believe me, Dorian.”

  “I want to meet every morning here at nine until the Sutherland case is wrapped up.”

  “Sure, bank on it, Dorian. Nine, right here, every morning.”

  “Good.”

  ***

  Teller drove to Clarence Sutherland’s Georgetown town house. A uniformed patrolman stood in front. Yellow tape had been strung across the entrance, and a sign on the door read NO ENTRANCE.

  “How’s things?” Teller asked the patrolman.

  “Not bad, Lieutenant. How’s with you?”

  “Not bad. Anybody been around?”

  “People from your division, that’s about it. Say, Lieutenant Teller, if you’re planning to be here for a little bit, how about letting me go for coffee?”

  “Sure. Make it a half-hour. That’s all the time I’ve got.”

  He entered a small foyer. To the left was a door leading to Sutherland’s apartment. A staircase to the right led to another apartment upstairs. Teller fished out a key, opened Clarence’s door and stepped inside.

  The living room was large, lavishly decorated. A conversation pit formed by persimmon couches dominated the room. A large projection screen hovered over everything. Teller went to it and saw that it was linked to an elaborate television system that included a videotape recorder. Next to it was a long bookcase on which dozens of videotape cartridges were neatly stacked.

  He went to the bedroom. It was the same size as the living room. A circular king-sized bed was made to appear even larger by a mirror that spanned the wall behind it. There was a television projection screen in that room too, as well as an expensive stereo system within arm’s reach of the bed.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked himself as he approached a panel of buttons and dials next to the bed. He pressed one button, and a small chandelier made of tiny pieces of mirror rotated above the bed. He turned one of the dials. A magenta spotlight came on. It was aimed at the chandelier, and its beam flashed off the mirror chips, creating a mosaic of twinkling light in every corner of the room.

  “Lord,” Teller muttered as he played with the other dials and knobs. Soon, he had the room spinning in multicolored light, reds and blues, even a strobe effect that caught everything, including the hand he injected into its field, in stop-motion.

  He shut off the lights and opened a drawer in a table next to the bed. He didn’t expect to find much. The initial search of the apartment had turned up an array of so-called recreational drugs, nothing of the hard variety but enough to send the kid to jail had it gone that way. A telephone book had been taken from the apartment and delivered to Teller at headquarters. He’d turned it over to another detective with instructions to contact every person listed in it.

  He picked up the only item in the drawer, a diary of sorts. In it were dates and names, first names only, with initials following. What intrigued him were symbols next to each name. They’d been carefully drawn with a variety of colored pens, stars and circles, exclamation points, question marks, and an occasional “Dynamite… Dull… Promising…”

  “A busy boy,” Teller muttered to himself as he put the book in his raincoat pocket. In the good old days he’d have been called a cad.

  He looked about the rest of the apartment, then returned to the living room, where he took a closer look at the videotapes on the bookcase. There were a few old movies, but most of them were disgusting corn porn. The label on a homegrown one read CINDY AND ME, APRIL. Touching stuff.

  “Excuse me,” a voice said from the front door that Teller had failed to close behind him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you a detective?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Wally Plum. I live upstairs.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “You can call off those goons outside. I live here, and I resent being stopped every time I come home.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. They let you in, don’t they?”

  “That isn’t the point.”

  Teller took a closer look at Wally Plum. He was thin and what was called good-looking, like many other young men around Washington. His features were angular, his skin surprisingly dark considering his blond hair and eyebrows. He’d begun balding prematurely; his hair was carefully arranged to maximize what he had. He wore a too-tight double-breasted charcoal gray suit, and a blue shirt with a white collar that was pinched together by a thin gold bar beneath a solid maroon tie.

  “Mr. Plum,” Teller said, “I’m sorry for any inconvenience, but a murder has been committed—”

  “I know that. Clarence was my friend.”

  “Yeah? How close were you
?”

  Plum laughed. “If I tell you, will that make me a suspect?”

  “Could be.”

  “We were good friends. I rented my apartment from him.”

  “He owned this place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not bad on a law clerk’s salary.”

  “He had help.”

  “Family?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice apartment. I was noticing his collection of tapes.”

  Another laugh. “He had some good stuff.”

  “What about this one?” He pulled CINDY AND ME, APRIL, from the shelf and handed it to Plum.

  “Oh, that. We used to kid around sometimes.”

  “What’d you do, take movies of yourselves?”

  “Sure.”

  Teller took the cartridge from Plum and returned it to the shelf. “The bedroom,” he said. “It looks like a setup.”

  “It worked well for Clarence.”

  Teller shook his head and crossed the living room to the couch. He pushed on a cushion with his fingertips, then sat on it. “You know, Mr. Plum, I do believe the world has passed me by.”

  “How so?”

  “All this sort of stuff. I don’t understand any of it.”

  “Generation gap. Things change.”

  “I know.” He lit a cigarette. “I have two daughters, and most of their talk is all Greek to me. Well, so long as you’re here, tell me about Clarence Sutherland.”

  Plum sat in a chair near the door, crossed his legs. “What would you like to know?”

  “Anything you can tell me. Start with what he especially liked to do.”

  “You’ve seen the apartment.”

  “I mean besides that.”

  “There was nothing besides that.”

  “Come on, he must have had hobbies, interests aside from chasing girls. Where did he like to hang out?”

  “A lot of places.”

  “Did you hang around with him in those places? Were you drinking buddies?”