by Warren Adler
They entered a narrow room with a computer work station at one end and a long shelflike overhang covering the length of the room. On the shelf were newspapers, reference books, a coffee maker and a mismatched cluster of coffee mugs. Next to the computer were four oversized, thickly stuffed manila envelopes.
Aside from the computer desk chair, there were two others made of shaped green plastic on chrome legs. Recessed ceiling lights cast an orangey glow over everything. It was not a flattering color, especially for Charleen. There was a window in the room, but the blinds were drawn.
On the walls were a series of photographs. A young Sheila Burns with ex-President Reagan. A somewhat older Sheila Burns with former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, with Maureen Reagan, with Justice Sandra O’Connor.
“My rogues gallery,” she said, seeing Fiona eyeing the pictures.
There were other pictures as well, personal pictures. Sheila Burns running in the Boston Marathon. Another of her skiing. Another showing her and others with a group of elephants. Still another of her rappelling up a mountain and another with a group of people, some of whom looked quite foreign, Filipinos, perhaps. An inscription read: Nepal, 1985. Ghurkas probably.
“I’m an outdoor girl,” she said, apparently pleased at Fiona’s and Charleen’s interest. Her height belied the evidence. She stood near the coffee machine.
“Coffee?”
“No thanks,” Fiona said. Charleen shook her head.
She poured a mug for herself and motioned them to sit down on the plastic chairs and turned the desk chair toward them. Then she sat down, placed her legs Indian style on the chair and faced them. Reaching out, she patted a small pile of thick manila envelopes.
“Clips of Polly’s stories. Ten years’ worth. Mr. Barker wanted you to have them. Ten years’ worth of Polly’s stories. I’m not sure you’ve got as many suspects as you think,” Sheila said.
She lifted one of the envelopes from the pile and read from notes she had written on it.
“Note that most of our subjects were either rich or powerful. She didn’t go after the little guys, only the big boys. And no one ever got to her legally. She was scrupulously accurate.”
“You think it’s possible that one of them did her in for revenge?” Fiona asked.
“You’ve got them. Judge for yourself. Polly believed that she was performing a public service, rooting out the liars, the hypocrites and the cheats. No question that she hit them hard. She called them broken-field runners. When her stories stopped them from going one way, they went another. I did a little checking. Most of them came up with a pretty good afterlife.”
“It’s possible. Revenge has its allure,” Fiona said.
“Seems so.” Sheila sighed.
Fiona looked around the small office.
“This the best they could do?” she asked. “Doesn’t look like the office of a hotshot columnist.”
“It’s not,” Sheila replied. “It’s my office. Polly has never been here. Never will, either. In fact, I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”
“Will they replace her?” Fiona asked.
Sheila hesitated. Her eyes moved from Fiona’s face. She shifted her body in the chair and clasped her hands in front of her. The clasp, Fiona could tell, was tight, a gesture of resolve.
“They don’t tell me much. Mr. Barker said I should just hold down the fort for the time being. So I’m holding it. I’ve been talking only to those people Mr. Barker has authorized me to talk to. Like you. Not to any outside media. Notice how quiet it is. Only internal calls get in here. And I’m living at the Hilton across the street to keep out of the way of the other media. The paper is moving lots of copy on it. And this thing with Chester Downey. Very strange.
“It’s a first,” Sheila added.
“A first what?” Fiona asked.
“A first suicide. Not one of Polly’s other subjects did that. Even those that eventually went to jail.”
“Maybe she was rougher on Downey than on the others,” Fiona suggested.
“Not really. A number of those she wrote about got in trouble for being too nepotistic,” Sheila replied. “But they didn’t blow their brains out.”
“Somehow,” Fiona said, “I think the other, the sex thing, might have set him off.”
“It never ran,” Sheila said.
“But Downey thought it might,” Fiona countered.
“Might be worth pursuing,” Sheila shrugged.
“You think so?” Fiona asked.
“I’m not alone. It’s all over the television news. People speculating that Downey killed Polly, then killed himself. The media loves quick and easy solutions.”
“Anything surface on the sex business elsewhere?” Fiona asked.
“I haven’t seen anything on it,” Sheila replied.
“You think it will stay under wraps?” Fiona asked.
“In this town?” Sheila emitted a long throaty laugh. “Even dust particles send messages.”
“Have the feds been here?” Fiona asked.
“Oh yes. I talked to them for hours last night.”
“What did you tell them?” Fiona asked.
“Everything I knew, of course. Mr. Barker sat in.”
“Did he?”
“After all, he was her employer. Mine, too. There were also two lawyers there. And a stenographer with one of those machines.”
Can’t be too cautious with the feds, Fiona thought. Of course, Barker had the Eggplant in his pocket. No need for caution on that score. Above all, Fiona hated to be taken for granted. She exchanged glances with Charleen and, for the first time, she sensed that they were on the same wavelength.
“What exactly did you do for Polly Dearborn?” Fiona asked.
“I guess you’d say I was her everything. Mainly I was her person at the paper. Simple as that. I did all the easy research, relayed messages, picked up material around town, answered all her calls at the paper, was a kind of conduit between Polly and Mr. Barker. You see, Polly worked out of her apartment. Never came to the paper. Sometimes she would query me to find out this or that.”
“Were you plugged into her computer at the apartment?” Charleen interjected in a deliberately benign and gentle way.
“She sent her copy in by fax.”
“I was referring to access,” Charleen said. “Could you get into her files with your computer?”
“Absolutely not.” She smiled and stared directly at Charleen. “You have to understand Polly. She was a control freak. Also paranoid about her material.”
“You did say you did general research,” Fiona said.
“Oh yes. I researched where all the data banks were. Also where new ones were coming up. She was a fanatic on data banks. That’s where she claimed she got most of her backup material. Right there in some data bank. I was never authorized to go into one of them to search out something. She never did give me the access codes. Polly did all that herself. She was a whiz at computers. I’m kind of a dumbhead when it comes to them, although I’m okay with word processing, but Polly was—” Sheila paused, then shook her head in approval of what she seemed about to say—“well a real computer whiz. Would you believe that she was plugged into nearly fifty data banks?” She leaned forward on the chair and lowered her voice a few decibels. “There’s no privacy anymore. None at all. For Polly getting the dirt she did was like falling off a log.”
“Did you ever operate the computer in her apartment?” Charleen asked.
“Polly would have chopped my hands off,” Sheila said. “No way. I did meet with her there for an hour or so three times a week. We would go over the mail, invitations, things to do, the usual. As for her computer, that was sacrosanct to her.”
“Do you have any idea what was on the computer?”
Sheila seemed to grow cautious. She had not unclasped her hands throughout the questioning process. In fact, her knuckles had turned whiter.
“Not specifically.”
“Hot stuff though?” Fi
ona asked.
“I can’t say. I’ve never gotten into it.”
“Could you have?” Charleen asked.
“I doubt it. I assumed she had it pretty well secured.” She paused, then added quickly, “I assume she had it totally secured.”
“Now that she’s dead, what do you expect will happen to the information in the computer?” Charleen asked.
“Not for me to say.” She raised her eyes upward. “That’s for the powers that be to decide.”
“Barker?” Fiona asked.
“That would be his decision.”
“When is the funeral?” Fiona asked.
“Won’t be any.” Sheila sounded suddenly hoarse. “She’s been cremated and her ashes spread over the Potomac.”
“That was fast.”
“She had it in her will,” Sheila said.
“When was the last time you were at the apartment?” Charleen asked. She and Fiona had finally established an interrogation rhythm.
Sheila cocked her head, obviously searching for an accurate answer.
“Not counting when we met . . . three days ago,” she said.
“What did you do?”
“I told you, we went over things. There were invitations to go over.”
“Did she get many?” Fiona asked.
“Hundreds. And she went out a lot. Picked up lots of leads that way. Polly kept her ears open. Of course, she had to pick and choose where she went. In the kind of work she did she made lots of enemies, also contacts, people wanting to kiss her butt so maybe she wouldn’t be an enemy. Lots of people called her to give her little tidbits. You know, tips. Between that and the data banks she could track things, confirm things. You know what I mean?”
Fiona knew, of course. In Washington leaks were endemic. People had secret grievances, private grudges, and the media encouraged those with axes to grind to come forward, promising anonymity to informers and gossip mongers.
“One thing about our stories,” Sheila continued. Fiona noted the use of the collective pronoun. “They were the truth. Very, very rarely were we off the mark. Polly was unusually thorough in her checking. She always called those about whom she had found negative material to give them a chance to defend themselves. That was a religion with her.”
“Like Chester Downey?”
“And his son,” Sheila said.
“I assume you knew about the material that was cut out of the story that ran today?” Fiona asked.
“I told you that.”
“When did you know it?”
“When Polly faxed it over.”
“Not before?”
Sheila shook her head.
“You didn’t know Polly. She only showed her stories when they were finished.”
“Barker was going to discuss the third installment with Polly first, give her some opportunity for rebuttal. Am I right?”
“Yes. That was their agreement. If Mr. Barker thought something material should be eliminated, his policy was to call her. Always. In the Downey situation, when he couldn’t reach her, he contacted me, and when I couldn’t reach her I went to the apartment . . . where I met you both.”
“Do you think that Polly sometimes went too far in her stories?” Fiona asked.
“Too far?”
“Like on the Downey story. The father-son incest. Do you think that constitutes too far?”
Sheila looked puzzled for a moment. A frown creased her brow and quickly smoothed.
“Not at all. The public has a right to expect the highest standards of morality and character from public officials. The media is the court of last resort. Corruption and immorality must be exposed. That was Polly Dearborn’s job and she did it like no other. She was the best. I learned a great deal from her.”
“You’d like to do that type of work?” Fiona asked. “Not just be an assistant, but really do it. Like Miss Dearborn.”
“If Mr. Barker made me an offer . . .” She paused. Her hands had relaxed for a while. Now the knuckles went white again. “What’s wrong with that? Anyone would jump at the chance.”
“Have you put in your oar for Miss Dearborn’s job?” Fiona asked.
Sheila shrugged and seemed reluctant to answer.
“You’d be the logical choice,” Charleen said.
“I thought so,” Sheila replied, swallowing the words.
“You’ve learned a great deal on this job, haven’t you, Sheila?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Did you like Polly Dearborn?” Fiona asked.
“My, that sounds almost accusatory.”
“It wasn’t meant that way,” Fiona replied. “I’m sorry.”
Sheila stared at Fiona’s face. Fiona offered a broad, warm smile. It was natural for people to get paranoid at an interrogation in a murder case. Some more than others. When that happened, Fiona did everything she could to put them at their ease. Sheila Burns could be a fund of knowledge.
“I had nothing but admiration for her,” Sheila continued. “She was fantastic. Aloof, yes. A loner, yes. Not very giving, but she knew her business.”
“Did it bother you that people got hurt from her stories?”
“Not at all,” Sheila said quickly. “That wasn’t our affair. We told no lies. Public officials must be accountable. That was the way Polly thought about it and I agreed with her completely.”
“Do you think that the sexual material about Downey and his son should have been printed?”
“Why not? It came from testimony of a court trial. She might have found it in one of the data banks. I’m not sure. But she had the material confirmed. I think the American people are entitled to know about a man’s character, especially if he is in a key role like Defense Secretary. Why not?”
“Because Downey and his son both denied the truth of the testimony and the cult thing was mitigating circumstances.”
“We are journalists, not lawyers. The information existed. Polly made it quite clear that it was not something that had been dreamed up. And she hedged it as best she could.”
“So you disagree with Harry Barker?” Fiona asked.
A frown passed over her forehead.
“He’s the editor. Actually, Polly won most of the arguments. She would submit proof and usually Mr. Barker would bend.”
“But not in this case.”
“I think she died before she could make the case.” Sheila shrugged. “The fact is that the information is out there if you know how to find it. It wasn’t fabricated. Polly had dredged it up through hard work. I think Mr. Barker was wrong not to run it.”
“You think he bowed to pressure from Mr. Downey?”
“I wouldn’t begin to speculate. I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Barker. In his wisdom, he made the decision to eliminate it. I won’t second-guess him.”
“Does he know how you feel about it?”
“What would it matter? I’m just a peon.”
For the first time since they had been with her, she grew sulky and distant. Fiona was beginning to feel a sense of enormous frustration.
“But wouldn’t it have been overkill?” Fiona asked. She knew it was a deviation from the central focus of her questions, but Sheila’s growing militant attitude was irritating.
“The truth is the truth is the truth,” Sheila said. “A journalist’s job is to present it. That’s our mandate. Polly Dearborn died for that principle.” Sheila’s face had flushed. A bit of spittle clotted on one side of her mouth. Fiona was surprised at the sudden vehemence. She felt the rising sense of her own rage.
“In my business,” she said, “getting at the truth is a tricky business. Things are not always as they seem at first. And even when you think you have the truth and bring a case to the courts, the most vicious criminal has a right to defend himself and juries must be unanimous in their judgement, which has to be ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’
“Now I’m getting a lecture,” Sheila said. “Are you saying we have to come up with the same parameters as a court o
f law? Come on.”
“Why not?” Fiona said. “Beyond a reasonable doubt sounds like a pretty good standard for journalists.”
“What about people who abuse a public trust?”
“Like Downey?”
“Sure. Like Downey. Favoring his son’s company. That’s abuse. Hiding assets from his wife. That’s a manifestation of his character. Same goes for incest with his son. That also has something to do with character.”
Fiona paused to study the woman, still sitting Indian style, hands clasped tightly as if she were holding a device to keep herself upright.
“At least I know why Polly Dearborn hired you,” Fiona said, looking at Charleen, meaning for her to join in.
“You say she died for her principles?” Charleen asked.
“People do,” Sheila said pointedly. “Martin Luther King, for one.”
“Guess we got your dander up,” Charleen said, ignoring the pandering.
“I’m committed on that point.”
“Do you think that Polly Dearborn was killed by someone she wrote about or was about to write about?”
Sheila appeared to be mulling the question.
“I’m not a detective.”
Charleen turned to Fiona, an obvious gesture that she had done her part and was now passing the relay stick. Fiona took it eagerly.
“Who was to be next on Miss Dearborn’s hit list?”
“There it is. The raw bigotry of a true media basher.”
“I’m asking only for names,” Fiona said. She was fishing now, hoping to catch something on their hook that wasn’t to be found in the computer material. The fact was that Polly Dearborn was gathering facts on many important people, raiding data banks, assembling material for future use. Nor was it likely that the future target knew that he or she was being researched. Or was it?
“On that point, she kept her own counsel. I never knew who she would be writing about until she had committed herself.”
“Not even the barest hint?” Fiona prodded.
“Not even that.”
“Would Mr. Barker know?”