She was okay, she insisted. She hadn’t been injured or abused, beyond the discomfort of having to sleep on the floor in what was, after all, a cage, and the degradation of being forced to use a commode in front of a guard. I noticed Vogel’s backup hadn’t arrived after all. Maybe they were scared off by the police presence.
“Rasmussen?” I asked Kombucha.
He nodded. “Giving us the probable cause we need to search the compound.”
“I think client files are in the basement,” I said. “Will you excuse me a minute?”
Merlin was in the back of the UPS truck, and he looked antsy. “Nick,” he said, “I need to return this thing.”
“The truck?”
“The stingray. And the truck.”
“Hold on. Help me up.”
He extended a hand, and helped me up into the cargo bay of the truck. I was gritting my teeth and moaning as I climbed up.
“You get shot?” Merlin said, noticing the hole in the shirt of my uniform.
I nodded.
“Shit,” he said. “I can’t return it with a hole in it.”
“How about, ‘You okay, Nick?’”
“You okay, Nick?”
I nodded my head. I was still amped from all the adrenaline. But that was all right. It was probably keeping me from feeling much of the pain from the bruised ribs.
Merlin had been closely monitoring the stingray. I’d given him Vogel’s mobile number, so he knew which of the many numbers the stingray had logged—including even distant neighbors—to lock onto. Once he did, he watched the list of numbers Vogel called grow.
“Seven numbers,” he said. “Check it out.”
I scanned the list of phone numbers.
One of them I recognized, as I was afraid I would, and I felt sick.
82
Mandy wanted to come with me, but I needed to do this alone.
Merlin gave me a ride back to his house, where I’d left the rented Chrysler. On the way we barely talked. I was tired. Vogel’s men had worn me out.
I stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts and tanked up on caffeine, popped a couple of Advil, and drove to DC.
On the way I played a tape-recording of Mandy’s interview in Anacostia. She’d recorded it on her iPhone and then sent me a link that, by means of some kind of iPhone wizardry, allowed me to play it.
I hit the ON button and put it on the seat next to me.
A very old man was speaking on the tape, an old man in a nursing home in Southeast Washington named Isaac Abelard. During the interview, she’d put the recorder on a bed tray next to the retired patrolman, she’d told me, with the result that her questions were hard to hear, but his answers were generally easier to make out.
Mandy: When did this happen?
Abelard: Oh, jeez, this must have been fifty, sixty years ago. Could it be sixty? I suppose that’s right. Sixty. I was a young officer—in my midtwenties, must have been.
Mandy: (inaudible)
Abelard: Oh, I knew him from the neighborhood. He was a good kid. We all knew he was a good kid. I always thought he’d either end up doing great things or wind up getting killed. [Laughs]
Mandy: (inaudible)
Abelard: Oh, I had no idea.
Mandy: Why are you willing to talk about it now?
Abelard: Because I always knew I done a bad thing, covering it up. A wrong thing. I just thought I had a good reason to do it. (inaudible) Because his sister got raped. And when he found out about it, he went out and found the guy who did it and . . . he killed the man.
Mandy: How?
Abelard: A gun he must have bought on the street. It was easy to buy a gun on the street in those days, if you knew the right people.
Mandy: But how did you find out about it?
Abelard: His poor sister told her mother, and her mother told someone, and—I always had my ear to the ground. I had my sources, I had people in the community who’d talk to me, and . . . (inaudible) how I did my job . . . I tracked him down and I said, “Young man, is it true?” And he was crying and weeping and . . . he told me he didn’t think anyone would do anything about it. He didn’t think the rapist would ever be arrested. I told him he was wrong, he should have trusted the legal system, but . . . but when I thought about it some more I realized, he was probably right. The rapist would probably have gotten away with it.
Mandy: (inaudible)
Abelard: Only his mother and his sister knew what he’d done. And I felt for the kid. And for his sister. The goddamned rapist had a rap sheet longer than his cankered dick. Pardon my French. Really bad news. So I made a decision. It would go no further. If he didn’t tell anyone what he’d done, it would be like it never happened. Well, his mother died, and his sister died. I’m the only one left who knows. And I don’t have much time. And I just—I just want to do the right thing.
I didn’t have an appointment, so I had to wait on one of the sharp-edged white leather sofas in the hard and glassy waiting area for almost fifteen minutes.
He came out to meet me himself, not his receptionist, which was unusual.
“Gideon,” I said, “we have a lot to talk about.”
83
The whole point was to discredit Mandy Seeger, wasn’t it?” I said.
I’d laid out everything I had on him, and now we were talking man-to-man. I wasn’t wearing a wire; I’d given him my word on that. I made it clear that his best chance was to talk me through what had gone down.
Gideon looked visibly deflated, and ten years older.
He hesitated. “And Slander Sheet.”
“You knew she was about to open that box. So you fed her a juicier story. Which was poisoned bait.”
“Dear God, Nick, I didn’t think—this is not the way it was supposed to play out. What they did to that girl—I had no idea. It sickens me.”
“How did you know Mandy was about to talk to that old cop?”
“I still know people in Anacostia, Nick. I lived in fear of it coming out. I didn’t even know Officer Abelard was still alive. He must be close to ninety.”
“But there must have been rumors.”
“There were always rumors. People knew my sister Olivia was raped when I was a teenager. I—I had such a temper back then. And you have to understand the times. When Olivia told me what had happened, I was sure he’d get away with it. He was a white man, after all. Is Mandy—Nick, is she going to use this story?”
“Of course she is. Ellen Wiley is paying her, and it’s going to run in Slander Sheet. The whole story, beginning to end. Starting with the man you killed when you were sixteen. Are you going to deny it?”
“What if I did? You know how people are. They’ll always believe the accusation against the so-called great man. That’s what our society has come to. That’s our culture. I never intended anything bad to happen to that poor girl. I never—never—thought anyone would be killed. My reputation—my honor—is vitally important to me.”
“I understand. You know, Mandy didn’t realize it was you.”
“But it was only a matter of time before she found out.”
I nodded. On the drive, I’d thought about what I was going to say. I’d put most of it together, but not all.
Two months ago, Mandy had heard a rumor about how some grand poobah, some Washington insider, had killed a man decades ago, but the murder was covered up. It sounded like a story for Slander Sheet, but it could also have been nothing, a waste of time. She made some calls. Located the source, a long-retired policeman now dying in a nursing home.
But she never got the chance to talk to the old cop, because a far more exciting story had presented itself. A story about a Supreme Court justice and a call girl. The story was false, of course, but it was made to withstand normal fact-checking by any good journalist.
It was also designed to fall apa
rt when a dedicated, high-powered investigator dug into it. The story was made to collapse, to discredit both the journalist and the website. That had been my role. To undermine the story.
So that no one would ever believe anything this journalist ever wrote again. Or anything that appeared on this website.
It had almost worked.
“So what happened, Gideon? One night you and Jeremiah Claflin put away a bottle of Old Overholt between you, and it comes out. Anacostia. This incident from all those years ago . . . ?”
He stared impassively. A pause. “WhistlePig.”
“Sorry?”
He spoke almost mechanically. “It wasn’t Old Overholt. That’s not my brand. The bottle in my office, that was a gift.”
“And a few years later, Claflin’s now the golden boy. He’s the one being put up for the top job. You’re not in the inner circle of consideration any longer. How’d that happen? Did Claflin whisper to one of the kingmakers that Gideon Parnell had a dark spot on his biographical X-ray?”
I waited. Gideon was silent for a long time. At last he said, his deep voice hushed, “I can’t be sure. I’ve always wondered.”
“And it ate at you, I’m sure. Which is why Claflin’s name had to be dragged through the shit before he was vindicated. In your campaign to bring down Slander Sheet. And you know, the thing is, Gideon—you’re probably too old to be named to the court. After all that.”
Gideon just looked wounded. I thought of what my father had said. It’s always your friends who do you in. Maybe that wasn’t about himself after all.
“Vogel had probably done investigations for the firm, right?”
Gideon nodded. But his mind was somewhere far away. “The evil that men do lives after them,” he said. “The good is oft interred with their bones.”
I’d heard that before. “If you mean killing your sister’s rapist, I think people will understand why you did what you did. You did a bad thing for a good reason.”
“Do you know who Wilbur Mills was?”
“Yeah, vaguely. A congressman. A stripper named Fanne Foxe, the Tidal Basin, a sex scandal.”
“And all anyone remembers about him is the sex scandal that ended his career. Then there’s Clark Clifford.”
Wearily, I said, “The BCCI scandal.”
“John Edwards.”
“The mistress, the kid. The wife with cancer.”
“John Tower.”
“Uh, Texas senator with a drinking problem.”
“Yes. The list is long. All of them men who accomplished things. But how they’re remembered? For some small-time scandal.” He slid open a desk drawer and looked at whatever it contained. “A lifetime spent doing good works—to end up a figure of disgrace?” He drew out from the drawer a handgun, a nickel-plated revolver with a short barrel.
“You’re not thinking straight,” I said.
But he put the gun to his temple.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Gideon!”
He closed his eyes. “How this story ends—how my story ends?” he said. “It’s in your hands. And mine.”
“Don’t!” I jumped out of my seat and tried to grab his gun, but it was too late.
I saw everything as if in slow motion.
I saw the revolver, like a toy in his giant hand. Saw his manicured fingernails. Saw his index finger squeeze the trigger.
I saw the hammer pull back into the cocked position. Saw the fractional rotation of the cylinder as it lined up a new bullet.
Heard the metallic click. Saw the hammer slam forward, the firing pin striking the primer at the back of the bullet casing.
I saw the muzzle flash, the tongue of flame, and then the cloud of smoke as the gun recoiled.
Heard the explosion, so immensely loud yet not nearly loud enough for what it signified.
And I felt something moist and hot mist my face.
Epilogue
When I was finally released from the hospital, I couldn’t wait to get back to Boston. But it wasn’t to be. The US attorney’s office needed me to attend Thomas Vogel’s pretrial detention hearing. They weren’t charging him with murder but with conspiracy to commit. Richard Rasmussen, the guy who actually killed Kayla and staged the suicide, had been charged with murder one.
They wanted to make sure Vogel remained in the DC jail through his trial. Which could be a year off or more.
So the government had to show that he might flee, or pose a danger to anyone in the community, or attempt to obstruct justice, or threaten a witness. The US attorney wanted me there, in case the defense put witnesses on. They’d parked me in a conference room next to the courtroom, where I paced like some caged tiger.
Vogel had hired the best criminal defense attorney in DC, a former federal prosecutor who was said to be a maestro of the courtroom. I was curious to hear some of the proceedings, but the courtroom was a media circus, packed with reporters and spectators, and I wanted to keep my head down and out of the way of the cameras. So I sat in the conference room next door and paced.
Suddenly it was over. I heard the explosion of babble and the clatter and the cacophony. I stood in the conference room doorway, trying to avoid the crush. Finally I caught a glimpse of the AUSA who was running the case. She didn’t look happy.
Vogel was a free man. He was out on bail of half a million dollars, which was chump change for a man of Vogel’s means and contacts.
On the way out of the DC Superior Court building, I saw Vogel, fifty feet away or so, as he was descending the front steps.
His eyes met mine. He gave me a firm, knowing nod—friendly, almost—and then, deliberately, purposefully, he leveled a pistol salute, making a finger gun with his thumb up, his forefinger pointing directly at me.
And he smiled.
—
I met Mandy for an early supper at Lobby, the dive bar with the license plates on the wall, the beer-sticky floor, the aroma of french fries. I had my go-bag with me, an aluminum Rimowa carry-on, which I stashed on the floor in our booth, at my feet. The speakers were blasting a David Bowie song. “Young Americans,” I realized.
She looked pretty terrific when she showed up. She had her hair up and was wearing pearl earrings, and her skin glowed. She had dark red lipstick on, which somehow complemented her coppery hair.
She ordered a Diet Coke and I had a Natty Boh, and for a while we watched the TV mounted to the wall, tuned to CNN. Jeremiah Claflin was being interviewed. I watched the fluid hand gestures, his sad eyes, the sententiously arched eyebrows, the drape of his hand-tailored suit. His perfectly knotted blue silk tie. The downward curve of his mouth as he spoke. His very white teeth. “He was the best of us,” Claflin was saying.
He was canny, Claflin was. I admired his fluency, his almost-cloaked ambition, all those smooth traits that had pushed him to the high court. Because he knew the truth about Gideon Parnell, yet he was participating in the lie. Claflin, Senator Brennan had said, was known for clarifying the concept of mens rea. Which struck me as ironic, since in Washington, pretty much everyone had a guilty mind.
We’d met for a drink in his office the evening before. He wanted to thank me in person. I wanted to ask him about Gideon, about what kind of long-festering resentment might have led him to drag his protégé’s name through the mud. But he feigned innocence. He didn’t know what I was talking about. I wondered: How did he really feel about Gideon, after all that had happened? Curdled ambivalence, surely. But that didn’t play well on TV. The lie was more convenient.
Now, on CNN, he was talking about Gideon and what a great man he was.
“He was, you know,” Mandy said, turning to me with an even gaze.
“Was what?”
“A great man.”
I nodded. The stories in The Washington Post and The New York Times and the Associated Press all mentioned the fact that he was known to b
e suffering from depression. Someone in his office had put that out, as if it lent his suicide a kind of logic. It wasn’t true, as far as I knew.
The obituaries were all front-page, of course, and they all talked about how he’d marched with Martin Luther King and how he’d golfed with presidents. To me, the man was a heroic figure with a profound flaw, a streak of vanity that had propelled him to greatness and yet also propelled him to his destruction.
The waitress took our orders. We both asked for burgers. I got the fries, and she got the Greek side salad.
“Are you in pain, still?” she asked. She indicated the bandage on my neck where I’d gotten slashed struggling with the Centurion guy in the basement of Vogel’s house.
“That’s nothing,” I said. “It’s the bruised ribs.”
“I always thought bulletproof vests protected you.”
“It stopped the bullet. It can’t stop the impact.”
She put her hand on mine, warm and tender.
“Are you enjoying being on TV all the time?” I said, teasing a little.
“I guess so. I don’t know. Part of me does. Part of me thinks I’m just a publicity whore.”
“You can always say no.”
She shrugged. “You say no too many times and they stop asking.”
“That’s the point.” I smiled. “You’re really good at it, Mandy. You’re a natural.”
“Thanks. You wouldn’t believe the offers I’ve been getting. I’ve been talking to a couple of literary agents—one at William Morris Endeavor, and one at ICM. They both think they can get me a really nice book deal. I mean, a lot of money. Tomorrow I’m on The View. And I’m taping 60 Minutes. Can I give them your name? 60 Minutes, I mean.”
“For what?”
“Don’t be coy, Nick. You know damn well why. The mystery man behind a whole chain of events.” She paused. “It would be great. For business, I mean. What do you think?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
“But this case was such a huge win for you.”
Guilty Minds Page 30