Guilty Minds

by Joseph Finder

  But mostly I’ve always thought of the Supreme Court building as a triumph of branding.

  It was built fairly recently, in 1935. Prior to that, the justices were jammed into close quarters in the basement of the Capitol building. They got no respect. But once they got their own temple of justice, they had a clubhouse, a headquarters, a logo, and a mystique. And along with that mystique came power.

  A big chunk of that power and legitimacy, after all, is based on perception and persuasion. So you had a glistening marble landmark, quite prominent, in which nine invisible judges deliberated in absolute secrecy. Like the great and powerful Oz, with the smoke and green fire, and a small man behind the curtain working the props.

  When I first moved to Washington, working covert intel for the Defense Department, you could walk right up the grand front steps of the Supreme Court and enter through the heavy bronze doors. But ever since 9/11, the front entrance has been closed off. You have to enter through a basement door on the southwest side.

  I’d caught a late morning flight to DC. After I’d landed, I had three hours before I had to be at the court building. That was just enough time to do some quick research.

  Later, standing on the plaza in front of the court, I made some phone calls. When I’d gotten what I needed, I called Dorothy.

  “Any progress?” I asked

  “So far it’s a dead end.” I’d asked her to dig up whatever she could on an escort named Heidi L’Amour, who was employed by LilySchuyler .com, which marketed itself as a high-end escort service in DC.

  “According to the Lily Schuyler website it says she’s on vacation. So there’s no way to set up a date with her. That leaves us with just a name, and, you know, there’s a teensy-weensy chance that this name might be fake.”

  “You think?” I smiled. “What about trying a Google image search for her picture, see if it comes up on any other adult websites?”

  “Already tried it. Nothing.”

  “Means she probably doesn’t work for other escort services. The odds are she’d use the same photos if she did.”

  “You could call the phone number and offer a bonus if she’ll come back from vacation. You know, you like her look and she’s the only one you’ll settle for.”

  “Maybe. But I’m guessing she’s gone into hiding. She knows all hell’s about to break loose, as soon as that article’s published.”

  “I’ll keep at it,” Dorothy said. “Maybe I’ll have a brainstorm.”

  Then I joined a long line of tourists and passed through a metal detector, up a short flight of stairs to a large open hallway where clots of tourists were milling around. A few others strode by with a sense of purpose. Lawyers, I assumed. They were too well dressed to be reporters.

  I took the elevator up one flight, as Gideon had instructed me, and when I got out I looked around for the marshal’s office, where I was supposed to check in. A large beefy uniformed cop with a blond crewcut and ruddy cheeks approached, a metal clipboard in hand.

  “Help you, sir?”

  “The marshal’s office?”

  “Do you have a visitor’s pass?”

  “I have an appointment.”

  “With?”

  “Justice Claflin.”

  He nodded, looked at his clipboard. “Name?”

  “Nicholas Heller.”

  “May I see some form of government-issued ID?”

  I showed him my driver’s license.

  “Right this way, sir.”

  I followed him to a bank of coin-operated lockers outside a cloakroom. “You need to check any laptop computer, cell phone, PDA, iPad, or any other electronic device. If you prefer, you can use one of these lockers.”

  I nodded, fished around in my pockets for a quarter, but I didn’t have any. He slid one into the slot, pulled out the key, and handed it to me. I thanked him.

  “Good idea to check your stuff in a locker,” the cop said. “Can’t trust anyone around here.”

  6

  Jeremiah Claflin, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, had a bland, almost generic look about him: short graying brown hair, small nose, fine features. You’d call him nice-looking but not handsome. There was nothing interesting about his face. As soon as he was out of your sight, you’d forget what he looked like. He had deep lines on his forehead and crow’s feet around his eyes. He looked like he spent a lot of time in the sun, probably sailing.

  He greeted me politely but gave off a vibe that he had a lot more important things to do. “Jerry Claflin,” he murmured as we shook hands in his paneled waiting area. He was in shirtsleeves and a tie, no jacket.

  He gestured me to a couple of wingback chairs on either side of a large fireplace. His office was lined with old law books and had oriental rugs on the floor and a killer view of the Capitol dome.

  “So, Mr. Heller,” he said, “you’re—what, a private eye?” He said the words with a moue of disgust, the way you might say “carbuncle” or “abscess.”

  “If you want.”

  “Then what do you call yourself?”

  “A private intelligence operative.”

  “Is that like being a ‘mortician’ rather than an ‘undertaker’?”

  I smiled. He was known for his acid sense of humor. I decided to give some back. “Maybe more like being ‘justice’ instead of ‘judge.’ There’s a difference.”

  He laughed, pleasantly. Touché. I wasn’t particularly bothered by his contempt for me. He needed me a lot more than I needed him.

  Then he blinked a few times and smiled thinly. “I have to tell you, it’s not at all clear to me why you’re here.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder the same thing. You’re a busy man, so let’s get right down to it. Apparently Slander Sheet is about to publish an exposé about your relationship with a call girl. Which I assume is entirely false, right?”

  He pursed his lips, scowled. “I’m not even going to dignify that.”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to dignify it. Did you have a relationship with a call girl from the escort service Lily Schuyler?”

  “That’s preposterous on the face of it.”

  “Which means—what? True or false?”

  Claflin peered at me askance, as if wondering whether I was a moron.

  I said, “You’re going to have to put it in plain English for me. Sometimes I miss the subtleties.”

  “You’re asking me if I had sex with a hooker? The answer is absolutely not. No, I did not. Is that unsubtle enough for you?”

  “And you’ve never met a woman named Heidi L’Amour, is that right?”

  “That’s right. I’d never heard the name before this e-mail came in.” He gestured vaguely at the printout of questions I was holding.

  “Now, one of the reporter’s questions asks—the most serious charge—whether it’s true that this escort you claim you never met was a gift of sorts to you. Whether her fee was paid by Tom Wyden, the gambling mogul. You’re a friend of Mr. Wyden’s, is that correct?”

  “No, that’s not correct.”

  I arched a brow.

  “I once attended a function at his home in Las Vegas. Before I was appointed to the court.”

  “Have you been in touch with him since being named to the court?”

  “He’s invited me to various functions, and each time I’ve declined.”

  “So you haven’t seen him since coming to work in this building?”

  “That’s right. Do those questions allege otherwise?”

  I shook my head. “Is he a friend?”

  “No. We’ve shaken hands once or twice.”

  “Does he have a reason to want to bring you down?”

  “Quite the opposite. A few months ago we handed down a decision on Wyden Desert Resorts v. PokerLeader. A decision that came down in his
favor.”

  “All right. Now, this reporter alleges that on three nights this past month, you had, uh, sessions with this Heidi L’Amour.”

  “Which I’ve already told you is false.”

  “Right, but can you account for your whereabouts on those three nights?”

  He hesitated for an instant, but long enough to put me on alert. “I was at home,” he said.

  “Actually, on one of those nights, weren’t you at the annual Mock Trial and Dinner of the Shakespeare Theatre Company at Sidney Harman Hall on F Street?” That was in the quickie background file Dorothy had prepared for me by the time I landed at Reagan National Airport. It was a star-studded event the Supreme Court justices seemed to do every year.

  “No. I had to cancel my appearance at the Mock Trial. I was feeling a little under the weather.”

  Dorothy had missed that. He must have been scheduled to appear, but the website hadn’t been updated. “So you were at home all three of those nights?”

  He nodded pensively.

  “Excellent. So your wife can establish your alibi.”

  He paused. “My wife and I are separated. This is not generally known. It’s also nobody’s business.”

  But I already knew this, of course. I’d wondered whether he would try to gloss that over with me. “This is Washington,” I said. “Everything is everybody’s business. So do you live in the Chevy Chase house or does she?”

  “She does. I live at the Watergate.”

  “I see.”

  “I live alone. So that, uh, won’t work as an alibi.”

  I could have tormented the chief justice further, asking whether the doormen or the lobby attendants would back him up, but I’d done enough. “You actually weren’t at the Watergate on those nights, were you?”

  He gave me a look that I couldn’t quite read. Was he surprised or offended or just taken aback? He didn’t reply right away, so I went on, watching him intently. “For that entire week, you were somewhere else.” Just before our meeting, I’d gone to the Watergate and asked a few questions, dispensed a little cash. I’d done my due diligence.

  Now he looked away. I noticed a reddening in his cheeks, but I wasn’t sure whether I was seeing a flush of anger or the sting of embarrassment. I remained silent. I’m a big believer in the power of silence.

  “It’s irrelevant where I was,” Claflin said.

  “If we want to blow this story out of the water, I’m afraid it’s entirely relevant. The simplest refutation is to establish an ironclad alibi.”

  “Then I think we’re going to have a problem.”

  I waited, said nothing.

  “Your challenge is to prove I never met with this prostitute. I’m afraid I can’t help you beyond what I’ve already said.”

  But I persisted. “The court was in recess that week. You had no public appearances, gave no speeches. There’s nothing on the public record for that entire week. The Watergate’s security cameras, the parking lot cameras, they’re all going to reveal you weren’t home at the time of the alleged incidents. Did you travel somewhere?” I was bluffing, of course. I didn’t have time to check out security cameras.

  He continued looking away. Finally he turned toward me and spoke. “Can I trust your confidence?”

  “Of course.”

  “If this gets out I’m going to have real problems.”

  “I understand.”

  “The reason I wasn’t home that week is that I was at Sibley Hospital, in the inpatient mental health clinic. I was having electroconvulsive therapy.”

  I tried to hide my astonishment. “Electroshock therapy?”

  He nodded. “For depression. You can understand why it’s important to me that this be kept private.”

  “So you have an alibi we can’t use,” I finally said, because it was all I could think to say.

  7

  Who else knows?”

  Claflin shrugged. “No one except you and my wife and Gideon, as far as I know. My wife and I may have our differences, but she’d never betray my confidence. I’m certain of that.”

  “Are you still being treated?”

  “No. I had twelve sessions at Sibley.”

  “Did they work?”

  He smiled, unexpectedly. “They did, thank you.”

  “Maybe it’s not a coincidence.”

  “What’s not?”

  “That each of the occasions you allegedly saw a call girl occurred at the same time as you were being treated at Sibley. Whoever is setting you up must know about the treatments.”

  “I don’t see how it’s possible. Unless someone at the hospital . . .”

  “Anything is possible.” I thought for a moment. “You allegedly met with this girl in a room at the Monroe.” The Monroe was one of the finest hotels in DC, a few blocks from the White House. “Have you ever stayed there?”

  “Why would I stay in a hotel? I live here.”

  “When you moved out of your house, for example.”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ve never stayed in a hotel in town.”

  “The questions refer to hotel records at the Monroe, claiming you reserved a room for each of those nights.”

  “How would anyone know that?”

  “Obviously they had a source at the hotel who checked the guest registry database.”

  “But it’s not true. How long do we have before they decide whether to run the piece?”

  I looked at my watch. “As of five P.M. yesterday it was forty-eight hours. By my count, there’s twenty-seven hours left.”

  “That’s impossible. What can you possibly hope to accomplish in twenty-seven hours?”

  “I guess we’ll find out.” I stood up. “Now I’d better get to it.”

  —

  The white marble corridors downstairs were mostly empty now. The floors gleamed. My footsteps echoed distantly. I found the bank of gray metal lockers, located mine, and opened it.

  And stared at the empty compartment.

  Nothing was there. My laptop, my iPhone: gone.

  I double-checked the number on the key. It matched the number on the locker. I had the right locker, and my belongings had vanished.

  At the end of the rows of lockers was a cloakroom where you could check your coat or umbrella or whatever else you couldn’t stuff into a locker. The attendant on duty was a matronly black woman with large sleepy eyes behind elaborate eyeglass frames that swooped down from the temple to the earpiece. Her black hair glistened with pomade. She spoke in a gruff, gravelly contralto.

  “Honey, you know what kind of rush we get before court starts? I got a line halfway out to the street. Even if I could see the lockers from here, which I can’t, I sure don’t have time to look. I’m sorry, dear. I wish I could help you.”

  “You keep the spare keys here, right? I’m sure people lose locker keys all the time.”

  She blinked a few times, looking like she was on the verge of drifting off to sleep. “Less than you might think. I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You’re telling me you think someone took stuff out of your locker, right? So why’re you needing a spare key?”

  I tried not to show my impatience. “Maybe someone took one of your spares and opened my locker. Would you mind checking to see if one’s missing?”

  She shrugged and reached down to get something from under the counter. Then, key in hand, she unlocked a gray steel box mounted to the wall. I saw the row of green plastic key fobs, and even though I was too far away to read the numbers, I didn’t have to. There was no gap in the row of keys. None was missing.

  She turned back, shook her head. “Nope.”

  “The policeman who brought me over here,” I began.

  “What policeman would that be, sir?”

  “He met me when I came in, an hour or so ago, and brought
me over here. Big tall blond guy, brush cut? Did you see him come back here at any point?”

  She shook her head slowly with an exaggerated swing from side to side. “Doesn’t sound familiar. One of our Supreme Court police?”

  I thought for a moment, remembering his uniform. “He was Washington Metro Police.”

  “I doubt that. We have our own Supreme Court police. You see the tan patch on his left shoulder?”

  He had no tan patch on his shoulder. “Thanks,” I said, spun around, and began striding down the hall.

  8

  Whether he was a real cop or not, the guy with the blond brush cut who’d so politely guided me to my locker—even providing the quarter—was obviously the one who’d emptied it. He’d picked out my locker in advance, which meant he had a copy of the key. He didn’t need to take one of the spares. He’d just waited for me to leave and then removed my laptop and iPhone. Had I been on alert, and had I known what to look for, I’d have noticed that he was wearing the uniform of a DC city cop. It had been a simple if brazen move, and the only reason it worked was that I hadn’t been operating with my usual wariness.

  The question was, who was he and how did he know I’d be here?

  This I couldn’t yet figure out.

  I stopped mid-stride. I had a strong feeling that I was being watched. That the guy was somewhere nearby, within eyesight.

  It was more than a feeling, of course. It was the result of “situational awareness,” which is the military’s fancy term for knowing what’s going on around you. In combat, your life can depend on whether you notice anomalies: the scuff of a boot, the glint of a weapon. I sensed a stillness at my eleven o’clock and turned. There, at the head of the staircase at the other end of the great hall, was a familiar blond crewcut. A man in a policeman’s uniform.

  I walked casually in that direction, as if I hadn’t seen anything, but the man began going down the stairs, so I accelerated my pace until I was almost running. He must have realized he’d been spotted. By the time I reached the steep marble stairs, he was nowhere in sight. These were stairs meant for dignified procession, not hot pursuit. They were also not stairs you’d want to take a header down.