Capitol Murder

by William Bernhardt

  “I won’t do it,” Ben said emphatically. “Given the way this case is being covered, even the slightest courtroom accusation could destroy someone’s life. It’s a totally unethical tactic.”

  Marshall pursed his lips. “You’re sure about this. No Mister X?”

  “Not unless it’s a Mister X whom I really believe might’ve done the deed.”

  Marshall nodded slowly, then pivoted his chair around and wheeled himself toward the doorway. “Then let’s hope one turns up.”

  “Psst!”

  Christina looked up and saw Padolino leaning out the hallway door of his office, motioning. “Can you come in for a moment?”

  “Ooo-kay.” She stepped inside. He slammed the door quickly behind her. “Is there some reason for the secrecy?”

  “Well… I thought it best we not be seen talking together. You know, before the trial is over. Wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea.”

  “That you’re conspiring with the enemy?”

  “Something like that. And I didn’t want to get you in trouble with your boss.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that.” Christina stared at him, at the way he was twitching his fingers, pacing back and forth. He never acted this nervous in the courtroom-or for that matter when he was speaking on national television. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was just wondering…” He fidgeted with the edge of his desk. “I wondered if maybe, you know, when this case is over you and I could, like… get a drink together. Or something. I know your boss doesn’t drink. Do you?”

  “Absolutely,” she answered. “I’m a fiend for club soda. Are you serious?”

  “What? Did I do something wrong? Do I not seem serious? I just thought, maybe, you know, you and I-”

  “Is this some sort of psych-out plan? Some dastardly plot to weaken the defense by making advances to opposing counsel?”

  “No! Not at all.” He pressed his hands together. “I’ve just been, you know, watching you. I mean, not in a bad way. Just during the case and all. And I thought maybe you and I should get to know each other better.”

  Christina’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t know whether to believe the man or not. And it didn’t much matter, in any case. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think my boss-who by the way is actually my partner-would appreciate it.”

  “But I already asked him.”

  Christina froze. “What?”

  “I asked him. If it would be all right if I asked you out. I mean, for all I knew there could be something going on between the two of you. Some of my staff thought there was. So I did the honorable thing. I asked him.”

  “And he said…”

  “He told me to go right ahead. Do whatever I wanted to do.”

  “Is that a fact.” Christina turned, careful to keep her face from registering emotion. “Well, in that case-”

  The door swung open so fast it almost hit her in the face. Steve Melanfield came barreling through. “Paul! Great news. We-” He saw Christina and stopped. “Oh. Hello.”

  “Back at you,” Christina said. “What’s the good news?”

  He looked at her, then back at Padolino, then back at her. “What the hell. I suppose it doesn’t matter. Everyone will know soon. My people in Oklahoma City tell me it’s at least ninety percent certain we’re going to have a new senator.”

  “Excuse me?” Christina said. “We haven’t lost this case yet.”

  He shrugged. “Win or lose, the governor has had it. He’s going to call for Glancy’s resignation. ’Course, Glancy could refuse, but given all that’s been revealed, it puts him in a pretty tough spot.”

  “And if Glancy resigns?”

  “The governor gets to pick someone to fill out the remainder of his term.”

  “And who do you suppose that will be?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care. But I know this-the governor owes Kodiak Oil big time. He’ll make sure we’re taken care of. He won’t pick anyone hostile to me.”

  “Or me,” said another voice from the hallway. This time it was Oklahoma’s junior senator, Brad Tidwell, and he appeared just as jubilant as Melanfield. “And since I’ll become the senior senator, I think I can arrange to assume most or all of Glancy’s former committee assignments.” He squeezed Melanfield tightly on the shoulder. “Steve, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship. Alaska or bust!”

  “You people are making me sick,” Christina said. “Have you totally forgotten why we’re here? This isn’t some campaign-headquarters smoke-filled room. It’s a courtroom. A man is on trial for his life.”

  Tidwell was not impressed. “We’re all on trial for our lives, lady. From the moment we declare our candidacy to the day we die. Todd knows that as well as I do. But he screwed up. Now he’s paying for it.” He shrugged, then let loose another grin. “No reason why others shouldn’t profit from his mistake.”

  Christina started for the door. “You’re disgusting.”

  Padolino held out his hand. “Christina-about my…”

  “Forget it.” She pushed Tidwell out of her way. “Buy these two jackals a drink. While you’re at it, buy them a conscience.” She slammed the door behind her.

  When Loving awoke, his head was throbbing and he felt as if he was being tortured. It took a few more moments of consciousness to gather his senses sufficiently to comprehend the reason-he was being tortured.

  He was strung up, literally, his hands tied together with wire, dangling from the ceiling. His feet did not quite touch the floor. He’d been stripped bare to the waist. Am I hanging from a meat hook, he wondered, like that woman back at the S &M palace? Didn’t really matter, not while his arms felt as if they were being ripped out of their sockets. Regardless of what he was hanging from, it hurt like hell.

  “Ah, Loving, we’re awake, are we? That’s good. I was becoming anxious.”

  Loving didn’t have to adjust his vision to know who was speaking to him. “Look who’s here. Amber’s alleged daddy. Also known as the Sire.”

  He smiled thinly. “How smart you are. I suspected you’d find us, eventually. So I made preparations.” From a rack on the wall, he took the end of a long large fire hose into both hands, then turned the spigot. Water spewed out-slamming into Loving’s chest.

  “Ahhhh!” Loving felt the harsh blast tearing at him, knocking him backward, putting even more strain on his aching arms. “Stoooop!”

  The Sire turned off the water. “Since you asked nicely. I just wanted you to get nice and wet. Water is such a good conductor.”

  “You killed Amber,” Loving said, gasping. It was difficult to breathe while hanging like this. Almost impossible to speak. “And you killed Colleen and Veronica Cooper, too.”

  “To the contrary, I never kill anyone.” He smiled through thin, blood-red lips. “I merely release them from their bodies. But they still live. They become a part of me. A part of my immortal essence.”

  Loving could taste blood in his mouth. He spat it out. “Have you killed Beatrice?”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “I saw you in there! Your sick little ceremony.”

  The Sire stepped closer-though not near enough for Loving to wrap his legs around his throat. “You misapprehend the nature of our ceremony. We never intended to kill her, at least not there. What purpose would that serve?” He smiled. “We ate her. We took turns, sucking her dry.”

  Despite his pain, Loving felt his temper rising. “She’s still alive?”

  “For now. Until she outlives her usefulness to us.” He waited until Loving looked him in the eyes before he continued. “What have you told the police about me? Or that attorney you work for?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Okay, everythin’. They know all about your sick little church. You’d better get the hell out of here.”

  “Again, you’re lying.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” he sighed. “I’m su
re. How much do you know about my little church?”

  “Everything there is to know. Everything those girls knew, and then some. Enough to put you behind bars for the rest of your life.”

  The Sire pondered. “You could be telling the truth. But I don’t think so. Let me ask again. What do you know about my church?”

  “You run a church? Damn. I thought this was an IHOP.”

  The Sire frowned. “I can see this is going to be useless. You require persuasion.”

  “Listen, creep, you can shoot me with your little hose all night long. It won’t make any difference.”

  “I suspect it would, after a few days. But I don’t have a few days. Dr. Usher?”

  Loving heard a door creak somewhere in the darkness. A figure emerged. He was wearing a white coat, like a surgeon, but that didn’t prevent Loving from recognizing him.

  It was Deep Throat. And he was carrying a little black bag.

  “Dr. Usher did a residency in surgery. Did you know?”

  Loving felt a cold chill envelop his body.

  “I think you should start with the scalpel, Doctor. What do you think?”

  “As you wish, Sire.” His expression was flat, almost blank. He was like an automaton, a slave with no choice but to do his master’s bidding.

  “Very well. You may begin.”

  “Look,” Loving said, “I don’t know what you’re thinkin’, but I’m not gonna-”

  In the blink of an eye Deep Throat-or Dr. Usher-lunged forward, scalpel extended. The blade entered the soft part of Loving’s abdomen, just above the waist, just below the kidneys.

  Loving screamed.

  As soon as Ben entered the courtroom, he saw that his next witness was already present, which alleviated one potential worry. On the other hand, his witness was talking to Shawn MacReady, the congressman from Arkansas and former witness for the prosecution, which tended to create additional worries.

  Ben approached them. “All ready to go?”

  His witness was a tall, exceedingly thin man, almost gaunt in appearance, but with a sinewy strength to him. John Carradine in his prime. Not someone Ben would want to arm wrestle. “I think so. If you’re sure you want to do this.”

  “I’m sure.” He shifted his gaze to MacReady. “Anything I can do for you?”

  “No. I was just discussing the possibility of employing your witness. I’ve had a few security concerns of late. Thought he might be able to help.” He paused. “For that matter, from what I hear, you’ve had a few security concerns yourself, Kincaid.”

  “You could say that. Guard out front told me Darrin Cooper tried to get into the courtroom again today. Fortunately they stopped him.”

  The bailiff brought the court into session and a few moments later, the judge and jury were back in place. Ben called his next witness.

  “The defense calls Max Capshaw.”

  The tall man shuffled when he walked, with a slight hunch to his shoulders. He was wearing a suit that could be described as ill fitting at best: Ben guessed that it was borrowed and that he didn’t normally work with a Windsor knot pressed against his neck.

  Ben wasted no time establishing that Capshaw was a licensed private detective in the District of Columbia and that he was the man Marie Glancy had hired to follow Veronica Cooper. With great detail and considerable verve, Capshaw told the jury everything he had witnessed over the course of six months tailing the woman. Todd Glancy barely figured in the narrative, and when he did, Capshaw glossed over it quickly. What he spent his time on was Veronica Cooper’s nightlife. Amber and Colleen and Beatrice. Stigmata. The Chosen. Even Circle Thirteen. Veronica’s addiction to the designer drug. And her addiction to sex. Lots and lots of sex. Not just with Todd Glancy-not even primarily with Todd Glancy. With all kinds of men. And women. As Capshaw described her sexual encounters, they seemed so patternless and indiscriminate that the jury was left wondering if she had even been aware of what she was doing or who she was doing it with. Padolino objected repeatedly, but Herndon consistently overruled him, reminding Padolino that only yesterday he had been allowed to delve into the parties’ sex lives with great abandon. Sauce for the goose.

  “During the time that you observed Ms. Cooper, how often would you say that she engaged in sexual relations?” Ben asked.

  Capshaw screwed up his face. “Jeez, I don’t know. Some nights she did it three, four times, with that many different guys. Some nights in that upstairs orgy apartment she went from one person to the next, one right after the other. Never even went out for a smoke.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen a girl with energy like that. ’Course a lot of that was being fueled by the drug.”

  “So it would be fair to say that Ms. Cooper engaged in sexual activity on a regular basis with a wide variety of sexual partners.”

  “Definitely. Hell, I was telling my friend last night-the big surprise isn’t that the senator got caught having sex with that chick. The surprise is that he didn’t catch something worse.”

  Thank you so much, Ben thought, moving quickly to his next question.

  “And you’re certain she was a member of this… Circle Thirteen? The vampire club. And the Inner Circle.”

  “You betcha. I saw her there, back at that so-called church where they hold all their ceremonies. I watched the whole thing with night-vision binoculars through this rose window. She was wearing robes and chanting and the whole sick nine yards. They even slaughtered a chicken and splattered its blood all over the floor. Disgusting.”

  “And Ms. Cooper participated in these black magic exercises?”

  Capshaw chuckled. “Well, she wasn’t Wendy the Good Witch, that’s for damn sure.”

  Ben searched for the right words. “And did you ever see Ms. Cooper physically engaged with one of these… vampires?”

  “Engaged? I watched one bite her in the neck.”

  Ben stared at him. “You mean… for real?”

  “Hell yes. Some of those guys actually have their teeth filed to a sharp point so they can do that sick stuff. You remember the Bartmann guy saying how he turned her on? And he didn’t even have all his teeth. Now imagine her with one of these dudes with the big sharpened canines. I’m tellin’ ya, she was creamin’. Er, you know-very excited. In a sexual sort of way.”

  “I think we get the picture, sir.” Ben returned to the enlargements from the coroner’s report he had used before. “Earlier we heard Dr. Bukowsky admit under cross-examination that there was a wound to Ms. Cooper’s jugular vein too small to have been made by a knife.” He held up the enlargement and pointed. “You’ve seen these men, sir, and you’ve seen how they interacted with Ms. Cooper. I know you’re not a coroner, but do you think it’s possible this puncture wound was made by… a fang?”

  “Objection!” Padolino cried. “The witness has no medical expertise. This whole line of questioning is becoming ridiculous. Counsel is turning the trial into a Hammer horror show.”

  “I’ll allow it,” Herndon said firmly. “Overruled.”

  “It’s more than possible,” Capshaw said, not missing a beat. “It would’ve been easy. Some of those guys had fangs so long and sharp they could rip your whole head off.”

  “Based upon your observations, sir, would you say these people with whom Ms. Cooper consorted could be described as dangerous?”

  “I’d say that anyone who has their teeth sharpened so they can bite someone in the neck is by definition dangerous,” he replied. “And you mix in the drugs and the booze and the loose sex-well, I’ve heard of living on the edge, but this chick was practically dangling over the precipice. God forbid she ever did anything to make one of those guys mad. Any of them could’ve gotten to her. Anything could’ve happened to her. Anything at all.”

  “Well, that was all very thrilling,” Padolino said, as he strolled to the podium to cross-examine. “Almost like watching the late late show, complete with ghouls and goblins and vampires. But Veronica Cooper wasn’t killed by a vampire or his fangs, was she? S
he was killed by a big thick knife. I don’t believe you’re refuting the coroner’s testimony on that point, are you, Dr. Capshaw?”

  Capshaw gave him a wry look. “No, I’m not disputing that the girl was killed by a knife.” Padolino started to move on, but Capshaw cut him off. “The question is, who was holding the knife. And from what I saw of the girl’s lifestyle, the possible suspects range somewhere in the four-digit numbers.”

  “Move to strike,” Padolino said angrily. “Mr. Capshaw, did you in fact see anyone kill Ms. Cooper?”

  “No, obviously not. Mrs. Glancy ended my employment a few days before Cooper was killed.”

  “Did you ever see any of these-” He made a show of suppressing his smirk. “-vampires hurt Ms. Cooper?”

  “Not as such. Not in a way she didn’t like, anyhow.”

  “Did you ever see any of these people threaten Ms. Cooper?”

  “No.”

  “Do you even know of any reason any of them would have to kill her? Sounds like they were all one big happy coven.”

  “Well, it’s possible that-”

  “Excuse me, sir, but I don’t want to hear about possibilities. I asked if you know-note the word-know of any reason these people would have to kill Veronica Cooper.”

  “No.”

  “And to your knowledge, did any of these vampires have access to the hallways of the U.S. Senate?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then I submit, sir, that your thousands of mythical unnamed suspects are a smokescreen. There’s only one person who had a motive to kill Ms. Cooper, much less had access to her or the place where her body was found.”

  “Is it time for closing arguments?” Ben said, rising to his feet. “’Cause I had some more witnesses I wanted to call first.”

  Judge Herndon suppressed a smile. “Mr. Padolino, you’re up here to ask questions, not to make speeches.”

  “My apologies, your honor. I just don’t want to see the jury misled by all this nonsensical-” The judge gave him a sharp look. “Right, right. Questions.” He returned his attention to the witness. “Sir, you’ve talked a great deal about Ms. Cooper’s other alleged sexual partners. But you’ve said next to nothing about the one we’re all certain of, whom we saw in living color. Did you ever observe Ms. Cooper with the defendant?”