Murder at Ford's Theatre

by Margaret Truman

“If she did fall to her knees from the first blow, was the angle of the second blow consistent with someone standing over her?” Klayman asked.

  Ong displayed a rare smile. “Maybe her attacker wasn’t standing over her, Detective. Maybe he was very short.”

  “The strange case of the murdering midget. Sounds like a Holmes novel.” Klayman smiled, thanked the ME, and drove to district headquarters. Johnson was conferring with their boss, Herman Hathaway, a short, wiry man with slicked-back black hair and a silly looking tiny tuft of black whiskers on the point of his chin.

  “Charlie Chan come up with anything exciting?” Hathaway asked Klayman as he entered the office and took a chair next to Johnson.

  “Not much. Whoever did her hit her twice, once in the face, once on the head. Blunt, broad object. Time of death maybe between midnight and two.”

  “The press is on it,” Hathaway said. “Got a call from Senator Lerner’s office. She was an intern there.”

  “Got that already,” Klayman said.

  “You also got the rumor that the senator might have gotten his jollies with his intern?” Hathaway asked.

  “I heard something about that,” said Johnson.

  “Damn rumors,” Klayman said. “Everything’s a rumor in this town, every intern a lay.”

  “Sometimes they’re true,” said his boss. “You’ll check it, of course.”

  “Of course.” Klayman turned to Johnson. “Did you reach her parents?”

  “Yeah. They live in Florida.” He glanced down at his notebook. “Retired. Father taught at Purdue University in Indiana, agricultural science. Mother was a nurse. Deceased had one sister older, one brother younger.”

  Johnson’s ability to elicit information while being the bearer of bad news always impressed Klayman. The few times he’d made such calls he’d gotten off as quickly as possible. But his partner didn’t squander the opportunity to find out things, and was invariably successful. Not only was that voice calming, it held you captive.

  “They’re flying up tonight,” Johnson said. “Got them a room at the Channel Inn.”

  “Our resident travel agent,” Hathaway said while picking up the ringing phone.

  “Figured I’d help ’em out,” Johnson said. “Nice people.” The Channel Inn was on the Washington Channel, close to First District headquarters, first choice when housing out-of-towners in D.C. on police business.

  “How’d the formal statements go?” Klayman asked.

  “Okay,” Johnson replied. “Everybody claims an alibi, didn’t see her last night. One guy they mentioned is interesting, though.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Another peek at his notebook. “A Sydney Bancroft.”

  “The old British actor.”

  “You know him?”

  “Not personally, but I’ve seen a few of his films. Why is he interesting?”

  “He works at Ford’s Theatre, Rick. He was supposed to be there this morning for a meeting but never showed up. Ms. Emerson says he’s out of town. But one of the stagehands claims Bancroft was always sniffing around the deceased, making a nuisance of himself, you know, touching where he shouldn’t have, lewd comments, dirty old man kind of stuff.”

  “And they say he might have had something to do with her murder?”

  “No, only that he’s worth talking to.”

  “Why didn’t he show up this morning? Is he out of town?”

  “I called the number they gave me. No answer. His message on the machine sounds like he’s reciting Shakespeare or something.” Johnson’s attempt to mimic the message came out a mix of cockney and hip-hop; Klayman suppressed a smile.

  “Well, ‘To be or not to be,’” Johnson said, laughing.

  “You missed your calling,” Klayman said, standing and stretching.

  Hathaway got off the phone and asked what was on their agenda for the rest of the day.

  “We’ll check out where Ms. Zarinski lived,” Klayman answered. “See if we can rustle up some friends, boyfriends, enemies. By the way, what about our FBI undercover eyewitness, Mr. Partridge?”

  Hathaway snickered. “He’s sleeping it off downstairs. When he sobers up you can have the pleasure of questioning him. Bring your gas masks.”

  “LINCOLN WAS A GOOD LAWYER before he became president.”

  Mackensie Smith perched on the edge of his desk and took in the faces of the nineteen third-year law students seated in his class in George Washington University’s law building. It was the first session of a new course he’d lobbied to add to the law school curriculum, Lincoln the Lawyer, and he was enthusiastic about teaching it. Smith had been a top Washington criminal attorney until a drunk driver slaughtered his first wife and only child on the Beltway, prompting him to close up his criminal law practice and gravitate to the less violent, although sometimes treacherous, world of academia. He’d been a Lincoln buff since high school, compliments of a history teacher who always managed to weave a Lincoln story into any phase of American history being taught. It was during law school that Smith gravitated to reading not about President Lincoln but Lincoln as a young lawyer in Illinois. While Lincoln’s law experiences didn’t have direct relevance to other courses Smith taught to fledgling attorneys—although he had been involved in some precedent-setting cases, particularly in the area of municipal law—it was Honest Abe’s attitudes about justice and the pursuit of it that Smith found compelling.

  The young men and women sitting before him were the cream of the law school’s crop, and Smith was flattered they’d chosen this new course as one of their few electives. He chalked it up to the subject matter. But truth was, most of them had opted for the course in order to be in another of Mac Smith’s classes. Modesty precluded his acknowledging, even to himself, that he was a favorite professor among the student body.

  “I wonder how many of you would have gone through what Abe Lincoln went through to become a lawyer,” Smith began.

  “He was self-taught, wasn’t he?” a student said.

  “Correct.”

  “Which was probably easier than going through three years of law school,” said another, adding a laugh to couch the statement for Smith’s sake.

  “Think so?” Smith asked pleasantly. “I think not. Lincoln was driven to study law in his spare time by a devotion to justice, decency, and equality. He didn’t have any money, and worked menial jobs like clerking in a store to support himself. He read constantly. There were no study guides to help him, no formalized textbooks, no lucrative job in some Wall Street law firm to motivate him.”

  “No brilliant law professors to mentor him,” someone said.

  “How nice of you to recognize that, Mr. Gormley,” Smith said, mock-seriously. “My point is, Lincoln wanted to become a lawyer for what it would allow him to do for the common man. How many of you does that apply to?”

  A dozen hands immediately shot up, followed by most of the rest.

  “Your demonstration of altruism is heartwarming,” Smith said. “Lincoln was encouraged to study law by Justice of the Peace Bowling Green, and started by reading—and memorizing—every page of Blackstone’s Commentaries. Know how he memorized it? He wrote every page from the book on pads to help him fix the words in his mind. He did that twice, and then rewrote every page in his own words. That’s dedication, wouldn’t you agree?”

  There were no arguments.

  Fifty minutes later, as the class was about to leave, Smith announced, “I’d like each of you to spend a few hours at Ford’s Theatre before we meet again next Tuesday. How many of you have been there?”

  Three hands were raised.

  “Take in one of the park ranger’s lectures while you’re there. Examine the displays in the museum. It’s in the basement. We’ll talk about it next time.”

  “What does his assassination have to do with his having been a lawyer? Or theatre?”

  Smith stared at the questioner, smiled, shook his head, and didn’t answer. He’ll make a good trial lawyer, he thought. Que
stion everything, accept nothing.

  He added to his thought, and an insufferable dinner companion.

  Smith packed his briefcase and headed for the faculty lounge, where he was due to meet with the law school’s dean about a problem student. He entered the large room furnished with polished tufted leather couches and husky oak tables, spotted the dean sitting in a far corner, and joined him.

  “How did your first class go, Mac?”

  “Fine. If I can get them to view the law the way Lincoln did, it’ll be a success.”

  “Tragic what happened at Ford’s Theatre this morning, wasn’t it?”

  “What happened?”

  The dean gave him a capsule version of events as reported on the radio: Young intern from Senator Lerner’s office, and theatre aficionado—brutally murdered in the alley behind the theatre.

  “Leads?”

  “None that I heard. Typical all-news radio station report. We, the listeners, with our twenty-second attention spans, are told by an announcer speaking into a speech compression machine all we need to know—or can comprehend.”

  Smith grinned. The dean’s patience with all things modern was inelastic. No song written after 1945 was worthy of recording, no piece of art failing to accurately depict pastoral scenes or the human form worthy of hanging. His hard-nosed view of the way things should be was tempered by a brilliant legal mind, a fervent commitment to turning out good lawyers, and surprising political and diplomatic skills when it came to navigating the roiling waters of a large educational institution. Smith would miss him; the dean was a year from retirement.

  “Well, that is tragic news. I’m going there after I leave you.”

  “Board of Governors meeting?”

  “No. I’m meeting Annabel—I think. Maybe after what’s happened she’ll have left. Clarise Emerson is coming for dinner tonight. That might be scuttled, too. Now, what about our recalcitrant student?”

  FOUR

  KLAYMAN AND JOHNSON DROVE to Dupont Circle, where Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire Avenues intersected, and parked on Eighteenth and N, a few blocks from the circle itself. Klayman knew the area well. When not on duty, he enjoyed browsing the galleries and cafés, especially Kramerbooks & Afterwords, where he would sip strong coffee and eat small but intensely rich pastries while browsing possible selections in the bookstore portion of this funky Washington landmark.

  ONE MORNING, not long after they’d paired up and while cruising in the Dupont Circle area, Klayman told his partner he’d spent the previous night in that same neighborhood with a friend.

  “A buddy?” Johnson asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What’d you do? Where’d you go?”

  “We went to the movies and had dinner.”

  They passed a movie theatre catering to gay men. “You go there last night?” Johnson asked, his voice forced-casual, his attention out the window.

  “I’m not gay, Mo.”

  Johnson turned and faced him. “Hey, man, I wasn’t suggesting you were. It’s just that—”

  “Just that what?”

  “Well, I mean, you’re single and you don’t seem to—I don’t know, don’t seem that interested in women, and this is where they hang out and—”

  Klayman pulled to the curb and stopped. “Mo,” he said, “I am not gay. But if I were, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

  “No offense, man,” Johnson said, holding up his hands and laughing. “Just clearing the air, that’s all. Wouldn’t mean a damn thing to me if you were—one a’ them. Live and let live, I say.”

  “That’s what I say, too,” Klayman said.

  “What people do in their bedrooms is their business.”

  “Let’s drop it, okay?”

  “Okay, my man. It-is-dropped.”

  The subject hadn’t been brought up again, although Klayman wondered whether Johnson still harbored those thoughts, and if it would, in fact, matter to him. If Johnson did think Klayman was gay, as well as young, white, and Jewish, it would severely test his partner’s open-mindedness.

  Johnson was married—happily it seemed—to Etta, a tall, handsome woman with strong features and a glint in her wide brown eyes, and an edge to her laugh that said she’d seen it all and wasn’t surprised by anything. They had three sons—young adults a year apart, each as big and strong as their father. Klayman had been a guest at a few Johnson family gatherings, backyard barbecues, the funeral when Johnson’s father died, impromptu late dinners when they’d come off a case and Etta had insisted Klayman have something to eat before returning home.

  Once, after repeated urging, Klayman brought a young woman he was seeing to a cookout at Mo and Etta’s house. It wasn’t a serious relationship—Klayman and Maryjane had met at Kramerbooks & Afterwords and forged what was basically a platonic relationship based upon mutual love of certain books—although they had made love on occasion; “We’re friends and lovers,” Maryjane had liked to say. After they’d left the party, Klayman suffered guilt at why he’d brought her. It was to show his partner that he was quite comfortable around women, thank you, and you needn’t question my sexual orientation.

  Klayman and Maryjane stopped seeing each other shortly after that. She started dating a young, black attorney from the Department of Agriculture and told Klayman it was “a physical thing.” He didn’t argue, nor was he hurt. She’d lately been talking about the need to marry and to start a family—the biological clock and all, fulfillment as a woman—which had bothered Klayman. Marriage was not in his current plans.

  “THIS IS IT,” Johnson said, pointing to a three-storey town house on N Street. A tiny patch of English-style garden was neatly tended, bordered by a low, black wrought-iron fence. A keyhole portico covered the front door; the sun brought stained glass in the door to life.

  A young, preppy woman, with silver streaked into her blond hair, wearing a pink sweatshirt and tan Bermuda shorts, answered their knock.

  “Detectives from the First District,” Klayman said, displaying his badge.

  “Has something happened to Mark?” the woman asked.

  “I don’t think so, ma’am. It’s about Ms. Zarinski.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m afraid she’s dead,” Johnson said, lowering his voice beyond its usual depth. “A murder victim.”

  “Oh, my God. This city is—”

  “You didn’t know?” Klayman asked. “It’s been on the news.”

  “I don’t watch TV during the day. When was she killed?”

  “May we come in?” Klayman asked. “This is where she lived, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. She rents from Mark and me. I . . .”

  Klayman and Johnson waited patiently until she realized she hadn’t responded to their request.

  “Of course, please. You’ll have to excuse the mess. Our housekeeper called in sick—she’s been doing that a lot lately, and I really wonder about her—and I haven’t had time to neaten up.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Johnson as they followed her into a foyer dominated by yellow and blue tile on the floor and walls, and into a living room to their left.

  “Ms. Zarinski rented a room from you?” Klayman asked.

  “No, not a room. An apartment. Upstairs. The third floor. We have the first and second.”

  Klayman turned his head left and right. “She used this same front entrance?”

  “No. There’s a staircase outside, at the rear of the house. We had it installed to accommodate a tenant.”

  “She’s your only tenant?”

  “Yes.” Laura Rosner sat in a tan leather director’s chair and exhaled loudly. “My God, who killed her?”

  “When did you last see her, ma’am?”

  “Last night, I think.” She screwed up her thin face in deliberate thought. “Yes, it was last night. Mark and I were cooking out in the yard. We asked her to eat with us, but she said she had a date.” A slow shake of her pretty head. “Nadia always seemed to ha
ve a date.”

  “She saw lots of men?” Klayman asked.

  “You met them?” asked Johnson.

  “Just one or two.”

  “Names?”

  “Jim, or John. I don’t know. They were a little weird.”

  “Weird?” Johnson repeated.

  “Theatrical-type people. You know.”

  “Last night,” Klayman said. “Any idea where she was going to meet her date?”

  “No. No idea. She worked for Senator Lerner. I wonder.”

  The detectives looked quizzically at her.

  “There were those rumors. She was very sexy. Sort of liked to flaunt it. She didn’t dress like an intern in a senator’s office.”

  “How would that be, ma’am?” Klayman asked.

  “Conservative. She didn’t dress conservatively.”

  “She pay her rent on time?” Johnson asked. “Was she a good tenant?”

  “Her father paid her rent. The check arrived from Florida right on time every month. A good tenant? She was all right, I guess, although Mark and I didn’t appreciate how many times her male friends slept over. Not that we’re prudes or anything. How can you be in this day and age? We just thought it was—well, you know, inappropriate.”

  They spent another ten minutes in the living room before asking to see Nadia’s apartment on the third floor, and followed her up the outside staircase. Their initial impression was that Nadia Zarinski wasn’t into neatness, and her landlady mirrored their reaction with a sour expression. A pile of dishes with baked-on food sat in the sink. The white tile floor had spots where food or liquid had fallen and hadn’t been wiped up. Johnson opened the refrigerator. There was little in it: milk with an expired sell-by date, two slices of pizza in Baggies, lemons and limes on their last legs, half a loaf of bread, and a bottle of vodka with enough left in it for two, maybe three, short drinks.

  Clothing was strewn everywhere, over the back of a chair in the kitchen, on a couch and chair in the small living room, and on the bed and floor of the bedroom. A peek in dresser drawers showed little regard for folding underwear or sweaters. The top of the dresser was covered with outdated fashion magazines and issues of People, Cosmopolitan, and Washingtonian.