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

by Margaret Truman

  She stamped her foot. “I’m sorry I ever mentioned it. God… I thought it was right to bring the gun to you. I was just trying to help…”

  “Did that spat with your husband involve Clarence Sutherland, by any chance?”

  “Of course not. I don’t remember what it was about.”

  Teller looked at her hard. “All right, I’ll have ballistics check this out.”

  “There’s something else… I’m afraid…”

  “You think your husband is capable of killing you?”

  “He’s… he can be volatile at times. He’s very jealous and imagines things—”

  “Was he jealous of Clarence Sutherland?”

  She opened her eyes and dabbed at them with her handkerchief. “He’s jealous of everyone.”

  “I’m going to take the pistol to ballistics now, Mrs. Conover. You’re free to stay if you’d like, but you don’t have to.”

  “I think I’d like to leave,” she said. “I do ask that if it is the murder weapon you let me know before anyone else.”

  “We’ll see.”

  He helped her on with her coat and held the door open. “It was gutsy of you to come forward like this,” he said, not meaning it but feeling he had to say it.

  “I had to,” she said. “Thank you for being so decent about everything…”

  He watched her move off to the elevators, then went to the ballistics lab, found its director and handed him the pistol. “The Sutherland case,” he said. “It’s hot.”…

  The chief of ballistics came to Teller’s office immediately after the tests. “It’s the weapon,” he said. “Perfect match. Bullet and muzzle. No question.”

  “Prints?”

  “Partials, maybe enough for a positive ID, maybe not. But there’s no doubt about the weapon itself, Marty. Sutherland was shot with it.”

  Teller spun around in his chair and looked out his window over a gray, wet Washington.

  “Who’s it belong to?” the lab chief asked.

  “Somebody I wish it didn’t. Keep this cool until I have a chance to talk to Mars. Not a damn word to anybody.”

  “Okay, Marty, but move fast. These things are hard to sit on for very long.”

  Ten minutes later Teller was meeting with Dorian Mars. He told him about Cecily Conover’s visit, her handing over the murder weapon. Mars listened, no change of expression. After Teller had finished, Mars lit his pipe, clicked the stem against his teeth and said, “Silence is golden, Marty.”

  “So I’ve heard. The lid stays on?”

  “Tight.”

  “How long?”

  “I’ll get to the commissioner right away. Hey, this guy is the senior justice of the United States Supreme Court—”

  “Owning the gun doesn’t mean he used it, Dorian. His wife says someone must have taken it from his chambers. Maybe she did. Implying her husband just might have done it… a jealous man, and really diverting suspicion from herself… after all, she’s a few light-years younger than he is. Maybe he was getting in her way. The bloom was off the rose of playing a justice’s wife?…”

  Mars dropped the pipe on his desk and picked up his phone. “I’ll call you later, Marty. Stay available.”

  As Teller was leaving he heard Mars say into the phone, “…I don’t care what he’s doing or where he’s doing it, this can’t wait, and if you make me wait you’ll be a new statistic on the unemployment rolls.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Susanna Pinscher called Martin Teller at three that afternoon.

  “You promised to keep me informed about any developments on your end. You didn’t.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  “Yes, you do. I’m talking about the gun you got into your hot hands this morning.”

  It took him a moment, finally, “I don’t believe it.”

  “Come on, do you think something that important can be kept a secret?”

  “Who told you?”

  “It doesn’t matter, somebody here at Justice.”

  “It does matter, damn it. If there’s a leak from here I want to plug it.”

  “Later. The important thing is that you have the murder weapon. What now?”

  “It’s being discussed. It’s not like your run-of-the-mill murder weapon, Susanna. The damn thing belongs to Justice Temple Conover. Not only that, his wife brings it to MPD, which is not what a run-of-the-mill wife does.”

  “Can we get together?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “A drink, dinner.”

  He was about to leave his office at six to meet her when Dorian Mars came through the door.

  “I was just leaving,” Teller said.

  “It’ll take a minute. Look, Marty, first of all the commissioner, along with other heavy rollers, wants the Conover thing hushed up for a few days.”

  “It’s probably all over town already,” Teller said. He didn’t mention his conversation with Susanna.

  “Maybe so,” Mars said, “but I want it kept tight to our vest.”

  “Tight to?… Right. I really have to run.”

  “One more minute, Marty. You told me that you were working close with Justice.”

  “I have a contact.”

  “Maybe you should find another one.”

  “Why?”

  “The scuttlebutt is that Justice has developed an important lead in the case.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, but I sure as hell want to. It’s still MPD’s responsibility to resolve this case and I’ll be damned if I’ll stand still for those people over at Justice doing our job and rubbing our noses in it.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Fill me in at the nine o’clock meeting.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  ***

  He met Susanna at Coolbreeze’s, a neighborhood bar on Eleventh Street, where they ordered Italian specials of the day from a blackboard and a bottle of Corvo red. Teller told her about Cecily Conover’s visit. When he was finished, she asked what the MPD intended to do with the evidence.

  “Nothing for the moment. Conover will have to be questioned again, but right now everybody’s bracing for a confrontation with the Court’s senior justice over the fact the murder weapon belongs to him.”

  “I think everybody at MPD is very naive,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I guarantee you that by noon tomorrow the gun will be front-page material. It’s already all over Justice, and I’m sure it’s the same at MPD.”

  Teller nodded. “You’re right, but it sure isn’t going to come from me. Now, let’s talk about you and Justice. You sounded annoyed on the phone that I hadn’t called you with the gun story. You do understand why, don’t you?”

  She shook her head and sipped her wine. “No, I don’t. We agreed to share information. Telling me isn’t like telling a reporter from the Post.”

  “I know that, but I was in a spot. While we’re on the subject of sharing information, what’s the so-called big breakthrough at Justice?”

  She shrugged. “What big breakthrough?”

  Teller held up his index finger. “No games, Susanna. I leveled with you—”

  “Only after I called you on it.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ve filled you in about Conover’s gun. Your turn.”

  “What I came up with is minor league compared to the gun. I’ve been assigned a couple of nice bright young interns to help with the investigation. I had them go back over everything ever written about public figures in the case, Conover, Childs, Poulson, Dr. Sutherland, anybody who piqued a journalist’s interest.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t know what else to have them do. Frankly, Marty, it’s all been a dead end for me. I envy you having the murder weapon plopped in your lap.”

  Teller bit his lip and poured the last of the wine into their glasses. He hated to admit she was right. He hadn’t done a thing to bring about possession of the
pistol, couldn’t point to painstaking digging or innovative thought.

  She continued. “At any rate, one of my interns came up with an intriguing bit.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Chief Justice Poulson has been a patient of Dr. Chester Sutherland. What do you think?” she asked.

  “A man is entitled to see a doctor, including a shrink.”

  She looked annoyed. “But if that shrink’s son was his murdered clerk, and the patient happens to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?”

  “Sure, it’s an interesting linkup—”

  “What if Clarence Sutherland knew about Poulson’s psychiatric problems through his father and held it over his head? Remember I told you about my lunch with Laurie Rawls, how she said no one could understand why Clarence wasn’t fired? Even granted his ability. Maybe that’s how he kept his job.”

  Teller said, “And maybe Poulson killed his law clerk to keep his mouth shut?”

  “Maybe.”

  “If so, the kid must have come up with some pretty damaging information. Do you think Poulson’s gay?”

  She shook her head, then changed tack. “Who knows? Stranger things have come out. A homosexual Chief Justice would blow the lid off the whole nation, not to mention the career of the President who appointed him, a President awash in moral rectitude and a Chief Justice who publicly is known to share his sentiments…”

  Teller nodded. Farfetched, but so was Watergate and the idiotic Bay of Pigs… “By the way,” Teller said, “when you mentioned Laurie Rawls it reminded me of something. I talked to a close friend of Clarence Sutherland, a guy named Plum. Plum says Laurie was crazy in love with Clarence, called him at all odd hours, made huge scenes when he was with somebody else.”

  “It seems to fit his pattern. I want to see her again. I think I could keep our relationship going. I must say I like her—I’d hate to see her come up guilty.”

  “Come on, lady, you’re investigating a murder. I’ll take whatever, whoever I can get. You get that way after a few years in this business.”

  He paid the check and they went outside. “How are your kids?” he asked.

  “Fine. How are yours?”

  “Good, last I heard. Nightcap?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’d suggest my place but the cleaning woman hasn’t been in for six months.”

  She took his arm. “Mine was in this morning.”

  They sat in her living room for several hours, talking about their lives, families, exchanging gossip about people in Washington, and some of the cases they’d been involved with.

  She yawned. “I guess I’d better call it a night—”

  He slid close to her, took her in his arms and kissed her, gently at first, then more urgently. She fell back into soft corduroy cushions, her arms around his neck, their bodies pressed tight together…

  Afterward he said, “If I wanted to be flip, I’d say something brilliant like, ‘Thanks I needed that.’ What I’d like to say, if you can stand it, counselor, is ‘Thanks, and you’re quite a woman.’”

  She smiled. “And thank you, Teller. And, not being flip, I’ll say I really did need that… and enjoyed it…”

  As he was leaving her apartment at two in the morning he said, “Something bothers me about this info on Poulson being a patient of Dr. Sutherland.”

  “What?” She was now wearing a purple velour robe and slippers.

  “How your interns came up with it by reading old newspaper clippings. It’s not the sort of thing that makes the papers.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “Elementary, my dear Teller. One of the interns has a father who owns a pharmacy frequented by the high and the mighty, including Chief Justice Poulson. He’s had prescriptions filled there that were prescribed by Sutherland. And I’ll let you in on another shocking revelation.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Somebody in the Chief Justice’s family has hemorrhoids.”

  “I see. Good night, Susanna.”

  “Good night, Teller. Sleep tight.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Morgan Childs received clearance to land at New York’s Kennedy Airport. He banked his Piper Colt into a tight left turn, slipped into the prescribed landing pattern and set down smoothly on Runway 21 Right. He braked the small aircraft to a quick stop, turned off the runway and taxied to a designated small-plane area.

  After arranging for tie-down facilities he asked a dispatcher to call him a cab. “I’m catching American’s nine o’clock flight to San Francisco,” he told him.

  “Are you Judge Childs?” the dispatcher asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Happy to drive you over myself, sir.”

  The dispatcher, a gregarious fellow, did not stop talking all the way to the American Airlines terminal. Childs half listened; his thoughts were on recent events in the Court and on the purpose of his weekend trip to California. He was scheduled that night to address a western regional meeting of Sigma Delta Chi, the journalism fraternity, on the subject of freedom of the press. He’d originally turned down the invitation, but called the program chairman a week before the meeting. The chairman was delighted. “It’ll be quite an honor, Mr. Justice, and a pleasant surprise for our members,” he’d said.

  Childs boarded a 747 through Gate Three and glanced inside the flight deck as he passed it on the way to his seat in First Class. The three-man crew was busy preparing for departure, and Childs wished he could be up there with them rather than strapped in as a passenger. Nothing relaxed him more than being at the controls of an airplane in the vast ocean of air above the earth, the problems of everyday life far below and losing importance with every foot of altitude. He could have made a connection later in the day to San Francisco from Washington, but opted for the New York flight because it gave him a little solo time aloft.

  “Good morning, Justice Childs,” a flight attendant said. “We’ve been expecting you aboard.”

  “Good morning. Nice day for flying.”

  “Yes, beautiful. Can I get you anything?”

  “No, I’m fine, thank you.”

  He settled back in his seat, opened a briefcase and took out a handwritten draft of the speech he would give. The doors to the aircraft were closed and, engines whining, the huge aircraft rolled away from the gate. Fifteen minutes later it lifted off the ground and began its long, carefully prescribed journey west.

  Childs had a Bloody Mary before breakfast and worked on the speech, deleting paragraphs, inserting new ones. Satisfied that the notes did not contain inappropriate references to pending cases, he returned them to his briefcase. He peered out the window at the panorama thirty thousand feet below, then looked across the aisle where another passenger was reading a paperback book. A copy of that morning’s New York Times was next to him. He noticed Childs and said, “Help yourself.”

  Childs took up the paper and scanned the front page. He’d left his house that morning before his Washington Post had been delivered, and had deliberately avoided turning on his car radio on the way to the airport. With so little time for silence and reflection, he husbanded every moment he could find.

  He started to turn the page when an item at the bottom from United Press International caught his eye. The headline read: SUTHERLAND MURDER WEAPON FOUND.

  He read the lead:

  The .22-caliber pistol used in the killing of Supreme Court clerk Clarence Sutherland has been uncovered by the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, it was learned last night. The report, unconfirmed by MPD spokespeople but attributed to a reliable source within the department, claims that the pistol has been subjected to ballistics testing and that it is, in fact, the murder weapon.

  The story, which was continued inside the paper, went on to recount the details of Sutherland’s death. It ended: Dorian Mars, chief of detectives for the MPD, refused to comment when reached at his home, but promised a statement later today.

  The flight arrived in San Francisco at 12:15 California time. Childs went to a pho
ne booth and placed a credit-card call to his home in Virginia. His wife answered.

  “What have you heard about the weapon being found?” he asked.

  “It was on the news this morning. Some reporters have called.”

  “Why would they call me?”

  “They’re trying to find out more about it, I suppose. Morg, I’m very concerned.”

  His laugh was forced. “Why?”

  “Why did you call about it?”

  “Curious, that’s all. I read about it on the plane and thought you’d have picked up more than the initial dispatch I read.” There was silence on the other end. He asked, “Has there been any word on how the MPD got hold of the weapon, or who it belonged to?”

  “Not that I know of. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I just arrived and am heading for the hotel. I’ll call you from there.”

  “All right.”

  “Peg.”

  “What?”

  “I wish you were with me.”

  “I should have come.”

  “Yes, you should have. If another reporter or someone from the police call, tell them nothing. Understand? Just say, ‘No comment.’”

  “All right. Call me later.”

  “I will.”

  The SDX dinner committee had booked Childs into a suite on the fifteenth floor of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. A bouquet of flowers, a basket of cheese and two bottles of wine had been sent up by the hotel’s assistant manager, who had escorted Childs to the suite.

  “Is there anything you need, Mr. Justice?” he asked before leaving.

  “No, thank you, everything looks fine.”

  “Have a pleasant stay with us. We’re honored to have you.”

  Childs stepped onto a glassed-in terrace that overlooked the city. Bright sunlight streamed through the windows and created a small rainbow in one corner. It was silent in the suite, and very calm. Yet, in the midst of beauty and peace, he was apprehensive. It was a feeling he hated, one that said weakness, loss of control.

  He did what he usually did when anxious. He exercised. He stripped off his clothes and in his boxer shorts went through a half-hour of knee-bends and push-ups, stretching and pulling. He observed himself in a full-length mirror. He was in excellent shape for his age, which made him feel better. He tended to be scornful of people who didn’t take care of themselves. He’d survived his Korean captivity because he’d been mentally and physically strong, and if the need ever arose again to survive, he intended to still be ready.