As he began to lead Vera out of the courtroom, he asked her what she meant by saying, “Was it all for nothing?”
She shook her head. “I mean that terrible Laurie Rawls… I know people will say I hate her because we both had affairs with Clarence, but it’s not just that.” She looked at Teller now, seemed to come back from the remote state she’d been in. “Detective Teller… yes, you and Miss Pinscher were right to come to the office, to wonder about the Poulson file. God knows, I only wish I had it when you came, that I hadn’t been such a damned miserable fool as to believe him about what he said he felt for me. Did I really believe him? I’m afraid I did… because I so much wanted to. You never knew him, but he could be the most charming, loving, even… yes, loving… At first it was the looks, some people said a Robert Redford look-alike. He could convince you that you were the only woman alive… yes, he convinced me of that, and of course I badly wanted to believe it, like I said. I’m not the most desirable woman to most men, I was flattered, excited, felt like a real woman for the first time since I could remember… Oh, there are no excuses, not really…”
“Well, that’s right, Vera, but there are explanations, and you’ve got them, if anybody in a case like this ever did. I don’t know what will happen, but I’m damned if I’m not going to do what I can to see that those explanations aren’t forgotten when it counts…” He was about to say “when you come to trial,” but maybe that wouldn’t happen, maybe they’d get her off on grounds of temporary insanity, which would be okay by him in one sense, but in another, damned unfair. What the lady had done was murder and nobody could say that was okay… but if ever there was a justification… and not saying there was… Vera Jones sure had it…
“Thank you,” and she almost smiled, “but there’s still Laurie Rawls. Now she has the file on the Chief Justice, just like Clarence did. She just now tried to get Justice Childs’s file too, threatening me. Well, at least she won’t get that. But Justice Poulson’s file…”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that now,” Teller said, although he was plenty worried. Whatever Vera Jones said would be discounted by Laurie. That tough little lady would deny everything, say Vera was cracked, had gone around the bend because Clarence gave her a tumble and then dumped her, and so forth. And some might be inclined to believe her. Well, by God, Clarence hadn’t given him a tumble, and he hadn’t gone round the bend… well, not yet anyway, but if he hung around this city much longer who could predict? Sooner or later it seemed to get to everybody, even to a wonderful opera-loving gourmet cop like Martin Teller…
“But I am worried,” Vera was saying. “I know people won’t believe me. I know what they’ll say about me. And if that woman ever gets a job close to the President, like Clarence was going to do and like she says she’s after—”
“We’ll work on that, Vera… Tell me, what happened that night… I mean, if you can talk about it now, maybe it will help me to help you…”
She nodded, shrugged. “I’d called Clarence and pleaded with him to return the files on Justice Poulson that he’d gotten from me. My God, along with everything else, I’d betrayed his father, a man I’ve worked for and respected for years. Clarence told me to come to his office, we’d talk about it. When I got there he laughed at me, called me names… some of which I deserved… especially about being dumb. Anyway, after a while we came into this courtroom—”
“Why?”
“He liked it here, said he’d be sitting in one of the chairs up there one day, maybe even the chair in the Oval Office. God, isn’t that scary?”
Teller nodded. “It surely is, Miss Jones… Well, what happened then?”
“I knew that there was more than idle threat in what he said. He had so much on so many people… I asked him for the file, for my sake… that will show you how dumb I was, all right…”
“Go back a moment, Miss Jones. That night with Clarence before you came to the courtroom. Did anything else happen there?” He was wondering about the gun.
“Yes, he had a file of material that Justice Conover had collected about his wife. Clarence had found it in Justice Conover’s chambers and took it, along with a gun. He laughed about how he had found out about the file, that Mrs. Conover had told him about it, that she was sure her husband was keeping tabs on her… she and Clarence had been… intimate… too. And so Clarence went to the judge’s office and found it, got into his locked files… and we know how he got the key, don’t we? From Laurie Rawls. Clarence brought the gun with him into the courtroom. He told me not to worry, that he’d take good care of me, just as his father had done for years. Imagine, trying to compare himself with his father… He also laughed at Justice Conover, said how hypocritical it was for a great liberal and anti-gun-control man to keep a gun in his office. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but now I wish I had said something, that maybe a man like Justice Conover had made enemies in his career by his courageous stands, maybe he had good reason to keep a gun. Clarence, though, said it was to scare away all the men sniffing around the old boy’s… those were his words… wife. And I knew then what I’d known but never admitted to myself… that Clarence had been one of those men, that he’d had an affair with Mrs. Conover too. And then he started in about all the other stuff he had to keep other people in line… justices of this Court, his own father, even the President… Oh yes, he said, he’d be in the White House sooner than anybody thought…”
Teller stopped her just as they came to the courtroom door. He led her back, gently holding her arm, and up to the raised area of the bench. Poulson, as he expected, had gone. He followed now just behind her, letting go of her arm. He removed his .38 from its holster beneath his armpit, emptied the bullets into his pocket. He offered her the gun when she reached the middle chair, the Chief Justice’s chair. “Vera, show me what happened. Was Clarence sitting here?”
She nodded.
Leave it to paranoid Clarence to pick the Chief Justice’s chair. Crazy, but crazy like a fox… Teller sat in the chair. “Go ahead, Vera.”
She resisted taking the gun at first, then did and quickly placed it on the bench in front of Teller. “He began one of his speeches about how grateful he was for all the stupid, corrupt people who made themselves so conveniently vulnerable to him. How in a way they were all working for him, and maybe someday he’d have a reunion, when he made it to where he was going… He went on like that, until I just couldn’t stand it. Oh yes, he included me in his group, but it was more than the awfulness of what he said, it was the way he said it so calmly, like it was already done, like nothing could stop him… it took hold of me then, my own part in what he had done and even worse what he would do… all because of my own stupidity and weakness… And then, you won’t believe this, but then he actually tried to make love to me, grabbed hold of me and I picked up that gun”—she picked up the gun now—“and… I did it…” And as she said those last words she squeezed the trigger, and the only sound in that august courtroom was the sound of metal striking metal, a sound that the late Clarence Sutherland never heard.
Gently he took the gun from her hand, returned it to his holster, and led her out of the courtroom, out of the building and into the dark Washington night.
CHAPTER 34
They left the Kennedy center after a performance of Puccini’s La Bohème.
“It was great,” Susanna said. “So much… passion.”
“That’s Puccini,” Teller said as he let go of her hand and fumbled for his car keys. “Where to now?”
“Up to you. No, I take that back. You picked the entertainment, so far, now it’s up to me.” She looked straight ahead, and said, straight faced, “We go to your place.”
And just as straight faced, he said, “The cleaning woman hasn’t been in, joint’s a mess—”
“You don’t have a cleaning woman.”
“I surrender.”
***
In his apartment, which was fully as much of a mess as he’d warned it would be, he took an old blanket
off of the couch. “Keeps the cat hairs off. Sit, but watch out for the middle, a bad spring.” He put on the stereo. “Drink?”
“Love one.”
When they’d settled in with their drinks, he said, “Vera told me Clarence looked like Robert Redford. Not in the morgue he didn’t. I didn’t go into that. I’d already put her through enough in the courtroom. God, it was eerie, Poulson there, then her showing me how she shot Sutherland…”
They sat on one end of the couch, drinks in hand. One of the cats rubbed against her leg.
“Martin,” she said, “do you think it’s over?”
“Yes… well, our part in it anyway. Tell me about your scene with Laurie Rawls.” After he had told Susanna what Vera had said about Laurie, Susanna had approached Laurie. To try to talk her out of what she intended to do…
“I went to her apartment. Of course she was very different from what she’d been the other times we’d been together. All self-assured and hard. Until I told her that you were ready to press blackmail charges against her.”
“What did she say?”
“At first she hung tough, said I was bluffing. I told her that besides having enough evidence to make a solid case, a few leaks to the media would ruin her White House chances anyway.”
“And?”
“She quickstepped into Miss Sugar again, even managed a few tears. Told me as a woman I ought to understand… she was only trying to look out for herself in a tough man’s world.”
“And?”
“I’m afraid I almost hit her. What I told her was to stuff it, that if she didn’t resign from the Court, turn down the White House job and get out of town I’d make it my career to make sure she went to jail. I think she believed me.”
“Good deal. And of course the White House wouldn’t touch her now anyway, and she knows it.”
“Do you know what still bothers me, Martin? Jorgens is still President and Poulson is still Chief Justice.”
“Susanna, we solved a murder. After that, it’s life goes on. Speaking of which,” and he reached for her.
“Hold it, detective. I’m still talking…”
“I know. All right, look, you could leak the story to some buddy reporter about Poulson having been in an institution and that President Jorgens knew about it when he nominated him for Chief Justice.”
“I couldn’t—”
“Of course you couldn’t.”
“Besides, there’s Childs. He’s still an inspiration to millions of people. His story would come out, and in the worst possible light.” She sipped her drink. “Do you think Dr. Sutherland knew Vera Jones had killed his son?”
“I think so. Boy, what a rat he was, his own father wouldn’t turn in his murderer.”
“Did she say so to you? I mean that the doctor knew?”
“She as much as said it, and it was pretty clear anyway. But what do I do with that kind of information? I could bring charges against him for obstructing justice by withholding information about a murder investigation, but that’s not in the cards. It’s been billed as a crime of passion. That way nobody’s boat gets rocked. And it’s a better defense for Vera… God knows, she deserves all the breaks she can get. Besides I’ve got other things to worry about, like a pregnant daughter, my pension and two mangy cats… What about you, counselor?”
“I’m thinking of taking off.”
“You just got here. And this was your idea, remember?”
“I mean to California, idiot. And I do remember—”
“No, damn it.”
“I talked to my ex. It hasn’t been so easy for him, trying to start over again, taking care of three kids. It’s time I took them on, grew up. I think a new start might be good for all of us.”
He didn’t know what to say except, “Want another drink?”
“Please.”
When he came back from the kitchen with the refills, she asked him more about what Vera Jones had told him before her formal interrogation.
“I really felt for her,” he said. “Still do. She snapped in the courtroom when she was with Clarence that night, like she did at first the night she confessed. Funny, she lost control, shot him, then collected herself enough to return the gun to Conover’s chambers, using keys Clarence had with him. More, she goes back to the courtroom and puts the keys in his pocket. It’s ironic that Clarence had Poulson’s file with him that night, only she didn’t know it. She thought he only had the file Justice Conover had built on his wife. Vera returned it to Conover’s chambers too, along with the gun and Poulson’s file, which is now back in Dr. Sutherland’s office where it belongs. She could have taken it that night but didn’t have her wits about her enough for that. Or maybe she was scared to be stopped going out and having it found on her. I guess that was it…
“Well, after seeing the phony file Sutherland showed us. I thought so. He was surprised, you’ll remember, so that left Vera as the only one who could have taken it, and then tried to cover her tracks with retyped stuff. That’s why I decided to follow her myself. I got lucky.”
“Not so lucky… for a cop you’re pretty smart… By the way, what did you think about the decision in Nidel v. Illinois?”
“What did you think?”
“Well, you know my sentiments, but more than anything. I think I was especially pleased to see Justice Conover get well enough to vote. He’s a good man and has had a rough time.”
“Must be a blow to the White House,” he said.
“I guess, but like you say, there are more important things—like your kids, mine, our lives—speaking of which, detective, enough of this talk, let’s get down to cases.” She moved over close to him on the couch.
“Not here, the spring…”
“Doesn’t a bachelor detective have a bedroom?”
He did, and after shoving the cats from their way, proceeded to show her, and to put thoughts of California, at least for the moment, far, far out of her mind.
Other Books by Margaret Truman
Murder in the White House
Murder on Capitol Hill
Murder in the Smithsonian
Murder on Embassy Row
Murder at the FBI
Murder in the Supreme Court (Capital Crimes Series Book 3) Page 23