(2012) Political Suicide

by Michael Palmer

  “I thought she had an alibi—some sort of meeting.”

  “It was a meeting of congressional spouses. Quite a large meeting, in fact. It featured a buffet brunch. People milling around, then eventually sitting down. From what we can tell, she hasn’t produced any specific witness saying she was there throughout the time window when her husband was killed. It’s likely the police were so sure of themselves with Dr. McHugh that they never even asked her for an alibi, let alone someone to support it. All we have to do is create doubt. The longer we wait to ask her to produce an alibi witness, the less chance someone will be willing to swear under oath that Jeannine was at the meeting during the ME’s window.”

  “Nice.”

  “So you’re going to propose that Jeannine Colston shot and killed her husband before McHugh arrived at the property, and then left for the meeting in the Capitol?”

  “Or after. Dr. McHugh was in a blackout. All bets are off. She could have been there and hid from him. Try this: Dr. McHugh shows up intoxicated. Jeannine and he have a fight. Colston overhears the squabble and confronts his wife about the affair. Tempers flare, and Jeannine Colston gets a gun and kills him.”

  “Does Colston even own a gun?” Devlin asked.

  Sarah had her sixty-plus-page report memorized. “If you turn to page thirty-five in your brief,” she said, “I have outlined our ballistics strategy.”

  The partners flipped to the page.

  “The bullets recovered from Colston’s body were fired from a .45 ACP,” Sarah said, summarizing the lengthy report. “Forensics showed the slugs had a six-groove left-hand twist rifling mark. The Colt company is the only major U.S. handgun manufacturer that consistently uses a left-hand twist. However, several foreign handgun manufacturers also use a left-hand twist, including Taurus. The Colstons happen to have a registered Taurus PT1911. Reasonable doubt. That’s our middle name, yes?”

  It was no surprise how quickly the police had produced the ballistic forensic details. The Colston case was high-profile and demanded speedy processing of the evidence. Maryland also had one of the most comprehensive ballistics fingerprinting systems in the world. In fact, all new firearms sales were required to provide a fired slug to the state police, who then logged that information into their database.

  Each year, Devlin and Rodgers sponsored a ballistics seminar for the firm. The comprehensive full-day session was one of the main reasons Sarah had signed on. Subsequently, several of her cases had hinged on ballistics evidence, and as a result, she had become something of an expert in the science. The inside of every gun barrel contained groove marks that helped a bullet spin and fly to where it was aimed. The “twist” referred to the inches of bore required for one complete rifling spiral.

  The ballistics database contained measurements and photographs of the number and depth of each groove and right or left twist direction, in addition to a host of other identifiers. Those data were then used to determine a possible gun manufacturer and make of the weapon that did the firing. To get an exact match required the recovery of the murder weapon and a comprehensive firing test conducted by a ballistics expert.

  “Did we test the Taurus?” Devlin asked.

  “I plan to contract a three-fire test with one of our forensics experts,” Sarah said. “I don’t expect a match, but you never know.”

  Devlin smiled. “You never know” was a favorite adage of his.

  The ballistics expert would fire Colston’s Taurus three times into a water tank. The technique would cradle the bullet and preserve the grooves.

  “Of course,” Heather said with a sly smile, “that doesn’t mean the Colstons’ couldn’t own another Taurus.”

  “Always possible,” Sarah replied, “and a seed of doubt I will be only too happy to plant. For now, all I’m going to show is that they owned a gun from the same manufacturer that is potentially the manufacturer of the weapon that killed Elias Colston. Maybe the Colstons didn’t register all their firearms. Maybe the congressman received a Taurus as a gift from a lobbyist who knew he liked the make. Remember, he was a military man—a marine. Maybe Jeannine used that unregistered gun to kill her husband and then she hid the weapon somewhere. Maybe—one of our favorite words.”

  The partners murmured their approval.

  Only Devlin looked concerned. “Well done, Sarah,” he said. “Now, there’s something else I want to discuss.”

  Uh-oh. Sarah tried not to read much into the change of topic, but that was like trying not to breathe. “Anything,” she said.

  “Succinctly put, I want to know if you think you should continue to head Gary McHugh’s defense team. As his counsel for a number of years, I could rearrange my schedule and take over. That’s an option we should discuss.”

  Sarah swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “Is it something I’ve done wrong?”

  Devlin cracked a thin smile. “No, Sarah. You’ve done your usual stellar job and gotten things off to a great start. But there’s a physician involved, and over the last few years, you have led us to believe you were not completely comfortable defending doctors.”

  Sarah tried to appear unaffected by the implication of Devlin’s remark, but Heather’s concerned expression suggested she had failed.

  “I don’t see that as a problem in the McHugh matter, Grayson.”

  Sarah struggled without success to push the image of David, immobile in his hospital bed, dying a prolonged, needless death, out of her mind. She reined in the terrible image. Shedding tears in Grayson’s private conference room would not send a positive message to those who would be determining her future partnership.

  Devlin glanced at the notes in front of him. “You’ve recused yourself from three cases dealing with physicians,” Devlin said.

  Sarah bit the inside of her cheek to keep from responding too quickly. “I’m fine to handle this one,” she said. She kept her reply to a minimum. Weakness or bias of this sort was enough to delay her appointment or even to quash it altogether. She could be impartial. She could represent Gary McHugh—an arrogant doctor, for sure—without being clouded by thoughts of David.

  “Well, I’ve read your brief, and it looks to me as if another doctor is involved now,” Devlin said.

  “That’s true.”

  Devlin nodded. “So?”

  “I can handle it,” Sarah said.

  Devlin fixed her with the practiced eye that had broken countless witnesses over the years. Then he silently polled the room. “You affirm in your brief that this second physician is Dr. Louis Welcome.”

  “That’s correct. McHugh has enlisted his help. He’s a doctor in the ER at Eisenhower Memorial, and a longtime friend. He also works part-time as an associate director of the Physician Wellness Office, helping alcoholic and chemically dependent physicians. My experience even before David tells me that involving physicians in our cases has a huge potential for blowing up in our faces. There is just too much ego involved—too much arrogance.”

  “And your position on this Welcome?”

  “As you can see, I’ve already made it clear to Dr. Welcome that he is anything but welcome on our team. If he gets in our way or endangers our case, I will do everything in my power to get him to back off. For starters, I am going to have our investigators do a little background checking on him in case we need leverage. From what I can tell, there may actually be some conflict of interest at work if Welcome is professionally involved with McHugh through this Physician Wellness Office.”

  “So long as your investigation and your response to this Welcome is ethical.”

  The comment resurrected the image of David, tubes snaking out of him in all directions, backed by the thrum of the machines that were keeping him alive.

  “I hope you know that I would never do anything that would adversely affect this firm,” Sarah said.

  But if Welcome gets in my way or jeopardizes my chance to make partner here, I will cut him off at the knees.

  CHAPTER 11

  Elias Co
lston had been shot to death in the center bay of a three-bay garage. The space was empty now, and if there had been a chalk outline of where his body lay, it had been scrubbed away. There was a black Mercedes C-Class sedan in the left bay, a silver Infiniti in the right, and some gardening equipment along the back wall. Nothing of any real interest.

  Lou ascended a carpeted stairway and opened the door at the top using the punch-code Jeannine had given him—the day she and Elias had married, probably the biggest day of their lives.

  Big wheel keeps on turning, he was thinking.

  Elias’s office occupied the entire second floor the garage. It was paneled in dark wood, and carpeted from the same roll as the stairs. Very male. An expansive bookshelf filled one wall, with double-hung windows centered on the others—blinds, no curtains. And carefully arranged in almost every available space were framed photos and testimonials, geometrically aligned, so that Lou wondered if the police who had investigated the office had even touched them. Colston, a former marine himself, had apparently never lost his ingrained desire for neatness and order. The books were arranged by height and type: hardbacks with hardbacks, paper with paper, larger tomes on the bottom shelves, more framed photos along the very top. The well-worn antique desk was absent of clutter, and the fine film of dust that had accumulated there, Lou guessed, arrived over the days following the murder.

  The desk was augmented at right angles by a workstation that held a printer, two phones, a fax, file box, Rolodex, and a space for a computer, which he suspected had been disemboweled and dissected in some police lab.

  The single row of photos on the top bookshelf was mirrored by one behind the desk chair, extending along the wall to the door that probably opened to the second floor of the house. Wedding … children … summer scenes … military units and buddy shots … a football team posed on risers … what almost certainly were honeymoon photos … Marine Corps ribbons separated from their rows and surrounding an obituary for Lance Corporal Mark Raymont Colston. The obituary and accompanying picture were ones Lou had seen before. Mark Colston was darkly handsome, with thick brows and gentle eyes more like a poet’s than like a warrior’s.

  Lou checked the drawers of the desk. To his astonishment, they had not been emptied. It felt so clear that the police investigating the case were simply going through the motions. Dr. Gary McHugh had shot his lover’s husband to death. Case closed.

  He swept together the papers and envelopes in the top drawer and set them on the desk. A few bills; several letters of thanks from constituents, and several more making requests. Replied had been written on the top right corner of each of those, in what was almost certainly the congressman’s hand. Lou scanned each one. Nothing that stood out. Beneath the letters was a Baltimore Ravens schedule for the present year, and a birthday card signed, Love, Debbie—one of Jeannine and Elias’s surviving children.

  Finally, there was an envelope addressed to Mr. James Styles at a post office box in Bowie, Maryland. The return address read “Pine Forest Clinic, Shockley, Minnesota.” The logo featured three pines behind sedate lettering. The envelope was empty. Lou used a sheet of typing paper to record information from the notes and envelopes, folded the sheet, and slipped it into his pocket.

  There was nothing of interest in the other two drawers. A trip to the Internet would help him see whether or not the Pine Forest Clinic or James Styles of Bowie, Maryland, fell in that category as well. For a time, Lou paced around the office. He wondered in passing what Elias Colston was doing in the garage when he was murdered. Just exiting his car? Getting set to leave? Waiting for someone? Perhaps searching for something?

  The news for McHugh and Sarah Cooper was not going to be good.

  At that instant, something caught Lou’s attention. It was one of the ten or so framed photos of various sizes on the top shelf of the bookcase. But this one was different from the others. This one was facing the wall. Probably inspected and placed back carelessly, he was thinking as he reached up for it. The felt back may have caused investigators to miss that they had replaced it front side in. More likely, though, given their shoddy examination of the office, they simply hadn’t noticed, in which case the photo might have been carefully placed that way by Colston.

  Lou reached up, gently brought the frame down, and turned it over.

  The medal on display against a black velvet field was a gold five-pointed star, each point tipped with trefoils and encircled by a green laurel wreath. The star was suspended beneath a gold bar, which had the word VALOR inscribed in its center and an eagle perched atop.

  The discreet gold plaque beneath it read:

  MEDAL OF HONOR

  MARK RAYMONT COLSTON

  Lou caught his breath. He had no idea how many of the highest decoration the country could bestow for bravery had ever been awarded, but he knew it wasn’t many. For more than a minute, he simply gazed at the medal, trying to imagine the horrible circumstances surrounding it, and wondering what had led the father of the recipient to turn it to the wall, if in fact, that was what he had done.

  It was then, he felt a distinct fullness beneath the felt backing.

  Working on the desk, he released the eight catches holding the backing in place. It fell away, revealing a clear plastic sleeve.

  And inside the sleeve was a CD.

  CHAPTER 12

  Three days earlier, Lou had driven to the Colston home, stopping just short of the driveway and then retreating to the bridge where police were theorizing that Gary McHugh had disposed of the gun he used to murder Elias. Their theory did not make sense to him then, and it wasn’t making sense now, as he rolled slowly over the span, looking from side to side at the partially ice-covered river and wondering how McHugh, in a virtual blackout, after just shooting his friend to death point-blank, could have stopped, sized up the status of the water to be sure the gun would not simply end up on the ice, and then tossed it over the waist-high stone railing.

  The tree McHugh had hit at enough speed to total his car and leave him battered and unconscious was down a slight embankment, fifty or so feet from the far end of the bridge. The deep gouge in the trunk suggested McHugh had quickly gotten up a head of steam before skidding or veering off the road. Possible, but not probable. At least, that was Lou’s assessment.

  Clearly the cops felt otherwise.

  Immediately after the detectives arrived on the scene, before they began their investigation, Jeannine Colston had informed them of her relationship with McHugh. According to her, they next examined the recording from the security cameras covering the front drive. McHugh coming and parking. McHugh leaving his car and heading toward the house. McHugh returning and driving off. Word from the emergency room at Anne Arundel Hospital would have filled in some of the side pieces.

  Motive, method, opportunity, alcohol.

  Crank up the guillotine blade and light the torches. We’ve got our man. Tell the press to back off and wait for the DA’s statement. Move along, now, folks. Move along.…

  In their haste to finish the investigation of what they considered a slam dunk, the police had missed a strange and inexplicable finding—a matted and framed medal for valor, the ultimate valor, turned to the wall by … by—how could it not have been by Elias Colston?

  Had the odd finding been an isolated one—an error by Colston after dusting the shelves, or a burst of anger at his son’s death—that might have been that. But there was nothing isolated about it. The meticulous congressman and retired marine had carefully sequestered a recording of some sort, and left a sign indicating where it was that was as definitive, as unsubtle as Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

  If harm comes to me, if you are inspecting my office, this is where you should look. This is where the money is.

  Lou fingered the CD resting on the passenger seat of his aging Toyota, and began to scan the side roads for an isolated spot where he could listen in privacy. He had given thought to rousing Jeannine from her nap and listening with her, but it seemed wise
r to get a preview. It was always possible that the disc had nothing at all to do with Elias’s death—or his son’s, for that matter. Perhaps, like his wife, he was having an affair. Perhaps he had made the recording and then changed his mind about sending it to someone, and had hidden it in the frame until he could decide.

  A dirt road caught his eye, cutting off to the left. It was overhung with ghostly winter branches, many of them topped with snow. Tire tracks entered the woods along shallow frozen mud-packed ruts. Lou pulled in thirty yards, stopped by a NO TRESPASSING sign, and lowered his window three inches. The breeze was like a splash of aftershave. He cut the engine. Dense silence engulfed him. Finally, he turned the key to auxiliary and slipped in the CD.

  There was a burst of static, and then a recording of two men, one younger, and one older. The older voice Lou knew immediately—Elias Colston. The representative’s funeral had featured the broadcast of an impassioned speech he delivered some months before to both houses of Congress, pleading in the memory of his hero son for a decisive decrease in military spending, and a shift in priorities from defense and satellite development to education. Wonderful, brilliantly constructed rhetoric from the head of the House Armed Services Committee.

  The younger man was someone named Hector. He spoke with an accent Lou recognized from his years working at Eisenhower Memorial—Hispanic, etched by the streets. His vocabulary and the simplicity of his sentences suggested that he probably was not educated much beyond high school.

  It took Lou just a short while to become convinced that the conversation was being recorded by Colston, and that Hector was unaware of it.

  “Well, Hector, I confess I was quite surprised to hear from you. How long has it been?”

  “A couple of years, sir. Since just after the … I mean since just after Mark was…”

  “It’s okay, Hector, you can say it.”

  “Since Mark’s funeral. I really miss him, sir. I hope you know that. We all do. He was an all-American, a real-deal hero. The guys still talk about what he did.”