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

by Margaret Truman

  “Yes.”

  “Can you prove them?”

  “I think so.”

  “Childs is swaying in his position. His vote, I understand, is now crucial to the outcome of Nidel v. Illinois.”

  “I thought he was solidly for the state of Illinois.”

  “Not as of this morning. Can you do something about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Glad to hear it. As I told you at the beginning of this meeting, the job of judicial liaison can be yours, provided you can contribute to certain conditions within the Court—”

  “Count on me, Mr. Lauderman. There is nothing Clarence Sutherland knew that I don’t know. Nothing he could do that I can’t do.”

  “I’m going to enjoy working with you, Miss Rawls. I have a good sense of people. You’re good people, and I intend to tell President Jorgens exactly that.”

  “Thank you.”

  They stood and shook hands. “Maybe we could have dinner some night,” he said. “Since we’re likely to be working together for what I hope is a long time, we really should get to know each other. Don’t you agree?”

  “I certainly do. Thank you. You’ll hear from me shortly, Mr. Lauderman.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The brief, volatile confrontation with Dan Brazier had left Susanna temporarily shaken, and by the following morning, highly annoyed with herself for having exited so hastily before asking the questions that had brought her to the apartment in the first place.

  She’d told her father about the incident the night it happened. He was adamant about her getting off the Sutherland case. When confronted with her decision to return to see Brazier, he became angry.

  “I have a job,” she said.

  “Your job is also to be a mother to your children.” Which once again started all the business of her having given custody to her former husband. By the time she left the house for Brazier’s apartment, a thick cloud of tension trailed behind.

  She deeply regretted that but forced herself to forget about the argument and to concentrate on what she would say to Brazier. She knew that ordinarily she was not a particularly brave person, tended to avoid confrontation… Except, damn it, that wasn’t completely true, she reminded herself as she passed over the Bay Bridge. It had taken real courage, no matter what anyone said, to end her bad marriage and especially to give up physical possession of her children. She’d stood up to it, had made a good career in a male-dominated world without sacrificing herself as a woman, without forgetting that she was a woman. Or a mother. She was still a good mother, even though she did not have everyday possession of her children. But their relationship was better than it had ever been. No, she had nothing to apologize for, feel guilty about, and was not about to create something now by avoiding Dan Brazier.

  She planned her approach, went over it a dozen times. It didn’t matter how he reacted, whether he hit out at her, just as long as she got to ask her questions.

  She rang the downstairs buzzer. Sheryl Figgs opened the door at the top of the stairs and squinted against a shaft of bright sunlight that backlit Susanna. “Who is it?” she asked.

  “Susanna Pinscher. I’d like to speak to Mr. Brazier.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think that’s—”

  Susanna quickly climbed the stairs. “Please, Miss Figgs, I won’t stay long. I’m sorry about dinner the other night, but it was a difficult situation.”

  Sheryl glanced nervously into the apartment. She was wearing a faded pink robe and was barefoot, her hair was tousled. Obviously she’d just gotten out of bed.

  “Is he here?” Susanna asked, looking past her.

  “He’s… we just…”

  “I’ll only stay a minute,” Susanna said, stepping around her and into the living room.

  “Who is it?” Brazier called from another room.

  “It’s me, Susanna Pinscher. I’d like to speak with you.”

  Sheryl came up behind her. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea. He was so angry after you left last time he—”

  Brazier wheeled himself from the bedroom, chest bare, a dollop of shaving cream still beneath his right earlobe.

  “Why did you come back?” he asked, wiping water from his neck with the towel.

  “To ask you a few questions.” Susanna looked into his gray eyes, at his powerful upper body that could have belonged to a weight lifter. “I won’t stay long, no longer than the last time,” she said, determined not to wilt under his intense gaze.

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “I really think you do.” She summoned up the line she’d rehearsed in the car. She had nothing to back it up, only Laurie Rawls’s comment based on something Clarence had told her. She’d decided not to ask it as a question, she’d challenge and hope for the best. “Morgan Childs isn’t what he’s cracked up to be—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “About his so-called heroic deeds in Korea? I understand that was all made up, and you helped.”

  He started to respond, then wiped the back of his hand across his square, lined face as though to dismiss the subject, and her.

  “Why?” Susanna pressed.

  “What do you know?” he said, turning his chair and wheeling to the window. “What the hell does anybody know any more about heroes?”

  “I know I like them better if they’re legitimate.”

  Sheryl Figgs approached him. “Dan,” she said, “if you’d rather have her leave—”

  He waved her away, fixed Susanna with a look and pointed his index finger at her. “How do you know what you say you know?”

  “It’s my job, Mr. Brazier. I’m investigating a murder, and this could be relevant.”

  “How?”

  She couldn’t backtrack now. He’d all but acknowledged it, at least he hadn’t denied it. “Clarence Sutherland knew about Justice Childs’s so-called exploits in Korea. Sutherland was a man who used information for power. If he held damaging knowledge over Childs’s head, it might have provided a real motive for your friend to have killed him—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Whatever Morgan Childs is or isn’t, he’s not a murderer.”

  “And Nixon wasn’t a crook, and the boy next door who killed his family was always so polite and nice… It’s an old story, Mr. Brazier. Appearances can deceive… anyway, the fact is that a substantial part of Justice Childs’s public image revolves around his having performed all sorts of heroic deeds in Korea, which isn’t exactly true.”

  “So?”

  “So? Is that all you can say? A whole country was misled by a fantasy you wrote. Why did you do it?” She hoped she hadn’t gone too far… after all, she wasn’t really certain how much he was involved in Childs’s Korean scenario.

  He tugged on the arms of his wheelchair as though not sure which way to move, then looked up and asked, “What’s your politics, Miss Pinscher? Liberal, conservative? Don’t give a damn?”

  “Moderate, I suppose.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I try to go by the issues. Sometimes I come down on what’s considered to be the liberal side, other times the conservative.”

  Brazier looked at Sheryl, who leaned against a wall. “Get me a shirt, will you?” She returned from the bedroom with a wrinkled red plaid shirt that he slipped over his massive shoulders, leaving it unbuttoned.

  Susanna said, “My politics really haven’t any bearing on this, Mr. Brazier. What I’m wondering about is why you and Justice Childs would get together on a sham—?”

  “That’s your word.”

  She pulled out a chair from the desk, sat down and said as calmly as she could, “Mr. Brazier, I’m not here to make trouble. What happened in Korea between you and Justice Childs is no one’s business but your own, unless, of course, it bears on Clarence Sutherland’s murder. I’m not your antagonist. I’m doing my job, or trying to…”

  “Then you should understand.”r />
  “Understand what?”

  “That we did what we had to do.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t follow you.”

  “Korea needed a hero. Before Vietnam. Maybe if we’d been more successful there’d have been no Nam. Anyway, nobody quite understood what was going on. It was a United Nations action, mostly manned by the U.S. MacArthur got everybody confused about not being allowed to win the war—Harry Truman had to fire him for insubordination… for forgetting who was Commander in Chief. Harry was right. But the country badly needed something to be proud of, we made the most of a brave man… Childs… who was a natural for the hero’s role—a kind of rallying point for back home. Hell, the flag-raising photo on Iwo Jima that hit every front page in America during World War II was a phony too, a sham to use your word, staged by a military public relations guy to give the folks back home a sense of the glory and courage of their troops—which was no sham. So…”

  “I think I understand,” she said, “but when something is that calculated, it seems to me it loses its value. I mean, I can’t quite buy the end justifies the means—”

  “Okay, Miss Pinscher, enough.”

  “Mr. Brazier, again, I tell you I’m not trying to stir up trouble, but I’m sure you can understand that—”

  He lit a cigarette and wheeled himself into the kitchen, returning with a bottle of gin. “Drink?” he asked.

  “No, thank you.”

  “We have wine,” Sheryl called from the bedroom, where she’d gone to dress.

  “You look like a wine drinker,” Brazier said as he poured himself a tumbler full of gin.

  “If that means what I think it means—”

  “It means I’m tired of your judging me, or Childs, Miss Pinscher. All right, so you’ve discovered the deep dark secret of Korea and Morgan Childs. Where’d you get it, from that scum Sutherland?”

  “Clarence, or his father?”

  He cocked his head and closed one eye. “You’re pretty good, lady.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve got me talking too damn much.” He shook his head and drank down more of the gin. “Where did you get the story about Childs and me?”

  She was relieved he’d mentioned Sutherland and decided to go with it. “Clarence Sutherland found out about it from his father’s files.” She remembered having seen Sutherland’s name in Brazier’s old appointment book. “I take it you were a patient, and you told Dr. Sutherland about Childs and Korea. The son picked up the information somehow from his father’s confidential files and used it to blackmail Childs…”

  It was pretty much all supposition on her part, but Brazier’s expression seemed to confirm it. He again filled his glass and looked toward the window. Sheryl came from the bedroom, dressed in slacks and sweater. “You’ve done a job, Susanna Pinscher. I toast you.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Travis McGee and Susanna Pinscher, sleuths of a feather, and so forth… so you know a deep, dark secret… what are you going to do with it?”

  “Nothing, unless, as I said, it bears on the Sutherland case—”

  “And if it does?”

  “If it does, I’ll have to—”

  “Look, what if Morgan Childs did kill the Sutherland kid, which of course I’m not saying he did… I mean, what did we lose except a cheap, venomous, blackmailing snake ready and willing to sell a national hero down the tubes for his own private gain? Think about it, lady, put them on a balancing scale. Sutherland was filth. Morgan Childs represents to millions of Americans the sort of man we hardly ever see anymore. Name someone these days who’s worth being called a hero, someone to look up to, to stand for something good in America. Athletes? That’s a laugh. The only thing they’ve left kids to look up to are the size of their contracts. Movie stars? Forget it. Politicians? Those that aren’t under indictment, or taping illegally, are busy getting rich in payoffs from the folks that financed their election campaigns…” He leaned forward in his chair. “Morgan and I have our problems, but they’re ours, not yours or anybody else’s. He means something to you, to me, to every person in America. He sits on the highest court in the land and votes his convictions about whether something is or isn’t constitutional. He hasn’t mortgaged himself to anybody. He stands for decency and honor, things we don’t have much of anymore. There’s a network of boys’ groups in America that goes by Morgan Childs’s name and that exists because he raises millions every year for them—”

  “I understand all this, Mr. Brazier, and I happen to agree with much of what you say. My father often talks the same way. I have three children of my own, and I worry about who they’ll be able to look up to. I’ve met Justice Childs, went flying with him, matter of fact. I liked him, he reminds me of my father… but if Clarence Sutherland threatened him enough to drive him to murder, that’s obviously overriding—”

  “Leave it alone,” Brazier said.

  “I can’t—”

  “Drop it,” he said, not turning. “There’s a bigger picture to be considered—”

  “Mr. Brazier, a person has been killed, and—”

  He spun the chair around so fast that his glass flew from his hands and landed at Sheryl’s feet. She picked it up, scooping ice cubes into it with her hand. Brazier shouted, “Morgan Childs counts for something, damn it. He means something to America, and to me. He saved my life in Korea and—”

  “I understand what you’re saying and I sympathize with it, but I’ve got to ask… did your good friend Morgan Childs murder Clarence Sutherland?”

  His words came slowly, measured by the anger he was suppressing. “Just… get… out. Before I do something violent.”

  She backed into the hall, followed by Sheryl, who closed the door behind her.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Pinscher. Dan is… well, he’s very difficult at times, especially when it involves this country and Korea and Morgan Childs. He really cares so much, has such deep convictions that sometimes it gets the better of him.”

  “I understand,” Susanna said. She touched her arm.

  “I love him so much,” she said. “He’s been through a lot. He’s a decent, fine man in pain. I’ve had pain in my life, but nothing like what he’s suffered.”

  “I respect him,” Susanna said. “Please believe that.”

  “I do.” She wiped her eyes. “You know, he could have been an important man, Susanna.”

  “He was. His by-line was in every magazine in America.”

  “But he could have been even bigger.”

  “Why didn’t it happen?”

  “He became so bitter, so terribly negative. I tried to snap him out of it, tried to encourage him to write again but he refused.”

  “He hasn’t written anything in how long?”

  “Years. When we first met he was almost finished with a book, but he never finished it. It just sits under the bed collecting dust.”

  “What sort of book?”

  “It’s about how the CIA tested drugs on people years ago.” She partially swallowed the final words.

  “I’d read newspaper reports about it when the CIA was forced to release its files. How did Dan get interested in it?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter… he’ll never finish it… He’s so damned worried about protecting people and his country. Even the doctors that were involved in the experiments—”

  “Doctors? Dr. Sutherland, for example?”

  Sheryl quickly shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Dan got involved in the project when he was at a clinic somewhere in Delaware, a place called Sunken Springs.”

  “Was Dr. Sutherland mentioned in Dan’s manuscript, Sheryl? Is that why Dan had his name in his appointment book?”

  “What book?”

  “The one in your bedroom, the one he saw me looking at the last time I was at your apartment.”

  “He didn’t tell me that.”

  “Oh. I thought—”

  “He just said he didn’t want anybody snoopi
ng around his life. He was so mad at me for letting you in…”

  “I’m sorry I’ve caused you grief.”

  “You haven’t. I accept what goes with being in love with someone like Dan. I know lots of men who wouldn’t cause such problems, but they also wouldn’t give me what Dan gives me.”

  “Yes… well, thanks again, Sheryl, for taking me into your confidence. It’s been a real… experience meeting you, and Dan Brazier…”

  CHAPTER 30

  Susanna and her son arrived back home in Washington at eight in the evening. She delivered him to his father’s house, drove to the Justice Department, went to her office and, by the light of a desk lamp, reviewed notes she’d made during the flight. She dialed Martin Teller’s home number. No answer. She tried MPD headquarters. An officer at the desk said he thought Detective Teller was still in the building. After a few minutes Teller came on the line.

  “Martin, I’m back. I need to see you. Are you free?”

  “Come on over. I’ll be in my office.”

  It was close to eleven when she arrived. Teller was in shirt sleeves, wearing a dark five-o’clock shadow. He closed the door, sat in his chair. She perched on the edge of the desk.

  “Okay, let’s have it.”

  She did, at first leaving out items that might link her two meetings with Brazier to the Sutherland murder.

  “Brazier sounds a little crazy. How does it relate to the case?”

  “Here’s how. First, Morgan Childs isn’t quite what he’s cracked up to be, although I don’t think any the less of him because of it, at least not from Brazier’s version of the whys. What matters, though, is that Childs was vulnerable because of charming Clarence Sutherland’s knowledge of his true Korean background. Dan Brazier laid it on a bit thick in his stories once they got back home and Childs went along. Was, I gather, persuaded to go along by Brazier, who felt the country deserved a hero out of that war and Childs was ideal material. He did apparently save Brazier’s life, but I didn’t get the details on that. Anyway, reluctant hero or not, Childs is open to a journalistic field day if what Brazier did and he went along with ever comes out. It could indeed be made to look like he’s been a fraud, he might well face impeachment by the Congress… it’s sure as hell a motive for murder and makes him a suspect. Even good guys panic when they see their life going up in smoke. Agreed?”