The Witch of Watergate

by Warren Adler

  “Then he thinks Farber screwed him.”

  “And a can of worms grows into a can of snakes,” the Eggplant said. “Aside from the fact that we’ve made a mockery of police procedures and opened us up to enough legal violations to”—he sucked in a deep breath—“I don’t even want to think about it.”

  Fiona could tell his level of tolerance was fast reaching the breaking point. Undaunted, Charleen pressed on.

  “Farber gave Barker until tomorrow at noon. Let’s say we get the search warrant. We do his office and his house,” Charleen said. Her tenacity was swiftly becoming obsessive. “And we don’t find the computer.”

  “For real?” the Eggplant asked.

  “For real,” Charleen said.

  “I don’t believe this,” the Eggplant said. He was surprisingly calm, probably numb with exasperation.

  “Farber sees there’s no money in it,” Charleen went on. “He meets the terms of Polly Dearborn’s will. He destroys the computer.” A profound smugness was developing in her attitude. As if she had it all figured out. The entire exchange seemed like a Ping-Pong game without end. “We destroy what we have and that’s the end of that.”

  “But suppose he discovers that the disks are missing?” Fiona asked Charleen.

  Charleen pondered the question.

  “I don’t think he will,” she said.

  “Gut instinct?” Fiona asked.

  “Sort of,” Charleen muttered.

  “Like your theory on the note in the computer?”

  The Eggplant shook his head rapidly in a gesture of despair.

  “Shall I base my entire police career on your gut instincts, Officer Evans?” Charleen seemed at the end of her rope. She shrugged and said nothing.

  “We’re all crazy, you know that?” the Eggplant said. He kicked the tire of the car. “If I was smart I’d go right back in there and tell him that we have the disks, that we took them because we calculated that the material would be necessary to our investigation, that we have to keep it private until the investigation is over.”

  “I was hoping you would tell him that,” Fiona admitted. He turned to her, gave her a look of total disapproval and pressed on.

  “Now he expects us to go before a judge, get a search warrant and find the computer. Sounds simple, right?”

  “That’s exactly what I thought,” Charleen said, grabbing this straw of justification.

  “You thought,” the Eggplant said again. “What do you think Harry Barker expects us to do with the computer material?”

  He did not wait for her answer, which apparently was to be slow in coming. She looked utterly confused.

  “He wants us to get it for him, Evans. Never mind the legal niceties.”

  Charleen rubbed her chin and again looked toward Fiona, who returned what she hoped was a good imitation of Charleen’s best look of neutrality. She hoped it was being read by Charleen as: You’ll get no help from me, Mama.

  “I’m all confused,” Charleen said, turning away, facing the Eggplant again.

  “Welcome to the club, Officer Evans,” the Eggplant said pointedly, cutting a sidelong glance at Fiona as if she were the judge in this dispute. “Now I’ve got to get us a search warrant.”

  Fiona clutched the large manila envelopes filled with clippings that Sheila Burns had given them. She put one in each palm as if she were weighing them.

  “And we’ve got a killer to find,” Fiona said.

  “Think you’ll find him in there, FitzGerald?”

  “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “With a little luck maybe you could nail him by noon tomorrow,” the Eggplant muttered as he opened the door of his car and prepared to slide inside.

  “Maybe so,” Charleen said.

  He stopped in mid-motion, still doubled over to avoid hitting his head on the roof. In that position he stared at Charleen Evans for a long moment, then shook his head in disbelief and slid behind the wheel.

  “You really want to stay in Homicide?” Fiona asked after the Eggplant had left the lot.

  “Absolutely,” Charleen responded. “I’m made for it.”

  16

  “ALL THIS ELECTRONIC garbage,” Howard, the doorman said. “Just window dressing. Anybody wants to get in, they get in.”

  It was the same man that had called the police and brought them up to Polly Dearborn’s apartment.

  “On days now.” Howard explained. “After that experience, no more nights for me. For a while there I thought they might think I was the one done her in.”

  He stood leaning against the front desk dressed in a brown uniform. A switchboard operator of Asian extraction with a giggling high-pitched voice answered the phone and took messages, smiling at them between calls.

  Through the window walls they could see the sweeping driveway and surrounding concrete structures of the Watergate complex.

  It was really Fiona’s idea, to go back to the scene of the crime. There was so much extraneous matter interfering with this case, that she thought it might be a good idea to go back to basics. Charleen had offered no opinion. For the first time in years, Fiona felt professionally out of control, subject to complicating political agendas and media pressures. Not to mention the pressure of coping with Charleen Evans, which had assumed gargantuan proportions.

  “What about the security system in each apartment?” Fiona asked, determined to treat the Charleen factor as an aberration to which she had to become adjusted.

  “Too complicated. People forget to turn it on.” Howard said. “Place leaks like a sieve. You can get in from the garage and if you’re determined you can even find a way up the stairs.” He waved his hand around the lobby area. “You can even con yourself in through here. None of us have eyes in the back of our heads. And Carmelita here, she has to go to the john while I’m on a call, next thing you know we got a visitor.”

  “Nevertheless,” Charleen said, “according to our records, there have been surprisingly few break-ins.” There was never any telling what homework Charleen had done.

  “Psychological barriers is the secret on that.” He lowered his voice. “But between us and the lampost it’s an easy place in which to score.”

  “Miss Dearborn’s lawyer was here earlier,” Fiona said, casually watching the man’s face. He hesitated for a moment, but it told Fiona what she wanted to know. For twenty bucks, he’d give away the store.

  “He had a key,” the desk man said defensively. “Said he was here to take inventory of Miss Dearborn’s effects.” He frowned and looked puzzled. “Okay to let him up, wasn’t it?”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Fiona said.

  He seemed relieved.

  “I knew the brother would be okay, too,” he said.

  Fiona kept her face composed. Brother? A quick glance at Charleen showed her instantly alert as well. Polly Dearborn had no relatives.

  “Of course. There would be no reason not to let the family up. I told Carmelita it would be okay to give him a passkey. He said he’d be right down. I was up in 8A helping Mrs. Parker. She’s real old . . .”

  “You remember when?” Fiona asked casually.

  He looked at his watch.

  “No more than an hour, I’d say. That right, Carmelita?”

  “About an hour,” she confirmed, shaking her head.

  “What did he look like?” Fiona asked, trying to maintain her detachment.

  Carmelita shrugged.

  “I don’t remember, except that he wore a hat. Oh, he said he was in a hurry and needed something from the apartment. Howard probably would have brought him up but he was busy. And I couldn’t leave the board. When I called him at 8A he said okay and I gave him the key.”

  “How long did he stay?” Fiona asked.

  “Oh, maybe fifteen minutes. No more than that. Howard wasn’t even back yet from 8A.”

  “We okay on that, too?” Howard asked.

  “No problem,” Fiona said, confused by the revelation.

  “W
ould you say the man had a reddish coloring?” Charleen asked. Fiona knew where she was headed.

  Carmelita looked puzzled for a moment, then her face brightened.

  “Maybe . . .” Then she hesitated. “I can’t be sure.”

  “What about his hands, Carmelita?” Charleen pressed. “Did they have reddish blond hair? Freckles?”

  “I don’t know. I think he wore gloves.”

  “Did he have high cheekbones? Like knobs here?”

  Charleen demonstrated.

  “Maybe,” the girl said.

  “Beware the power of suggestion,” Fiona said.

  “I’m just trying to make her recall,” Charleen countered.

  “Yes,” Carmelita said. “Maybe high cheekbones.” She shook her head. “I think.” Then she brightened. “He wore a hat. I remember that.”

  “Could you recognize him if you saw him again?” Charleen pressed.

  “I’m really not sure about that. I was so busy.”

  “What about his voice?” Charleen asked. “You are a telephone operator.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am not sure.”

  “Did you ever see this man before?” Charleen asked.

  Carmelita shook her head.

  “Not hanging around. Like on the night Miss Dearborn was killed?”

  “I think you’ve come to the end of the line on this, Officer Evans,” Fiona said, turning again to the doorman in an effort to foreclose on this line of questioning.

  “Did she get many visitors?” Fiona asked.

  “Very few. A maid came twice a week is all.” He rubbed his chin and looked at the ceiling as if more information could be found there. “This short girl with black hair came.” He scratched his head. “Maybe twice a week.”

  “Sheila Burns.”

  “Yeah. Burns. That was her name.”

  “When she came did she stop at the desk?” Fiona asked.

  “At the beginning, yeah. Then after a while you get to know people and you just nod. Let them know it’s okay for them to go up. Nice lady. Always ready with a smile. We like people to give us a smile, don’t we, Carmelita?” Carmelita giggled and nodded.

  “No other regulars?”

  “Regulars?” He scratched his head again. “Nobody that made an impression. She went out a lot, though. People would pick her up, stop at the desk and we’d call and tell her so-and-so was waiting.”

  “Can you remember any names?”

  “Hell, I see so many people.”

  “That night . . .” Fiona began, trying to jog the doorman’s memory. “You saw nothing strange, nothing out of sync?”

  “Not until I saw Miss Dearborn hanging from the balcony. I’ll never forget that sight. You know the police pumped me for hours on what I saw or heard that night. Believe me, I wish I could come up with something better.”

  “You’ve been very cooperative,” Fiona said. “Now we need to get back into Miss Dearborn’s apartment.”

  “I’ll take you right up,” he said.

  “Just the key will be fine,” Fiona said.

  The two potted trees on the terrace had been set straight again. Fiona also noted a different “feel” to the apartment. It already had the air of space not lived in. A thin layer of dust had begun to build on various surfaces.

  Charleen had gone to the bedroom.

  “Computer’s gone,” she said when she returned.

  “Did you have any doubts?” Fiona sighed.

  They stood in the center of the living room. There were times when Fiona had revisited a murder scene and quietly contemplated the surroundings. Often, she would absorb insights from such contemplation. It was almost as if the atmosphere, the air, the space, the inanimate objects, these silent observers who had borne witness to a heinous event, had the capacity to articulate these observations in a mysterious way.

  The details of the deed itself seemed clear. Polly Dearborn, garroted then pulled across the floor by the rope. Rope, carpet fibers and grains of soil had confirmed that theory.

  On the terrace, the end of the rope had been tied down and the woman thrown over the side.

  A clearer picture of the woman had begun to emerge. For Fiona that was always a primal point. The victim was always the quintessential clue. This victim, a term which seemed excessive in this case, Polly Dearborn, was self-directed, tightly focused and carefully controlled. She was secretive and obsessed with a forum to wreak havoc, especially if her intended victim was important enough and self-deluded enough to believe that all his warts and indiscretions had been carefully buried behind the facade of power and privilege.

  “Are we looking in the wrong direction?” Fiona asked suddenly, surprised that she had given it a voice. The question had been intended to be silent and rhetorical.

  “Maybe the motive to do her was personal, not professional,” Fiona mused. Before Charleen could reply, Fiona plunged forward. “We’ve been assuming that she was killed for something she had written or was going to write. Maybe this was purely personal. A man with whom she was involved. A crime of passion. Which might explain the second man.”

  “No,” Charleen said somewhat abruptly.

  “That’s a pretty affirmative no,” Fiona snapped, irritated, yet again, by Charleen’s propensity for absolute convictions. She missed Cates’ tentativeness, his willingness to debate with an open mind.

  “This woman had no other life,” Charleen said.

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “There was no room in it for anyone else. This lady had a mission.” Charleen’s eyes seemed to have adopted that vague introspective look that Fiona had seen before, as if she were looking for explanations deep within herself. “Her life was her work.”

  Fiona had a burst of insight.

  “And her computer was her lover,” she said, hoping the remark would sound facetious, which it definitely was not. Alertness leaped back into Charleen’s eyes.

  “Something like that,” Charleen said haltingly.

  You’re talking about yourself, aren’t you, Charleen, Fiona thought. Tread carefully, she warned herself. At the same time she felt oddly relieved. She was discovering the key to Charleen’s character. Since they were locked together in this bizarre conspiracy, that was no small thing.

  “And the second man?” Fiona asked. “In your head, you’ve already convicted the poor bastard.”

  So far she had not conveyed to the Eggplant Charleen’s theory about one or both of the Downeys as the perpetrators.

  “You object to my pursuing my theory?” Charleen said with a flash of belligerence.

  “Instinct, right?”

  “Anything wrong with that?”

  No point in confrontation, Fiona told herself, retreating. Instinct, or, as she liked to describe it, subconscious thinking, was a perfectly appropriate device. Following a hunch was often surprisingly effective. Except that Charleen’s instincts seemed somehow awry, based on an irrational certainty.

  “All right then,” Fiona said. “Why would he come back?”

  “The computer,” Charleen said flatly. “When the story didn’t run with the information about him and his father, he thought he might as well try to destroy the place where it was stored.”

  “That’s taking an awful chance,” Fiona said.

  “People that would do a thing like that take risks,” Charleen said confidently, not a doubt visible. “Then he saw the computer was gone and he left.”

  “If he was the killer, why not get rid of the computer when the job was being done?” Fiona asked.

  “Because the killer wanted it to look like a suicide, remember.” Charleen said smugly, offering the faintest hint of a smile. “He told us about what was in the computer. He said that Barker had mentioned it to his father. It must have suddenly occurred to him that the material existed in Dearborn’s computer and that he had to get rid of it somehow.”

  Fiona reviewed the conversation with Downey in her mind. Maybe so, she admitted to herself, but she wa
s still unwilling to buy Charleen’s theory.

  “Well, it’s obvious . . . I’ll grant that . . . that the man had a purpose for coming here,” Fiona said. A thought seemed to come to her and she nodded suddenly. “He might have left something in the apartment.”

  “On the night he killed her?”

  “You’re talking yourself into something, Charleen,” Fiona cautioned.

  “I’m giving you logic,” Charleen countered.

  “Speculation,” Fiona shot back.

  “All right, what is your theory?”

  “I have no theory. I’m not even certain it was Downey who came back here,” Fiona said. “That telephone operator said nothing that could possibly confirm his identity. It’s in your mind only.” It was an outright rebuke.

  “Well, here we are,” Charleen said sarcastically, casting an eye around the apartment. “A stranger was here. Why?”

  They had searched the place thoroughly on the morning of the murder, not quite knowing what they were looking for. It was Charleen who came the closest, opening the computer, revealing possible motives. Nothing else seemed to have relevance.

  “I’m not sure,” Fiona said. “But first we bring Flannagan’s boys back to dust this place.” She grew contemplative again, studying the apartment from her vantage point, turning in a complete circle. “Wouldn’t know where to begin. That’s the trouble with this case. There doesn’t seem to be a starting gate.”

  “But it does have a finish line,” Charleen said. “And that I think I can see pretty clearly.”

  17

  THEY SAT IN the darkest corner of Paddy’s, a little bar that Fiona occasionally frequented by herself when she needed the blandishment of solitude and the stimulus of alcohol.

  It was after midnight and weariness had seeped into her bones. But it had been impossible to sleep and she had roamed the house like a ghost unable to find peace. She had tried to read the material provided by Sheila Burns but after a few futile tries she had put it aside.

  Then she had turned on the television. But she quickly turned it off when a bulletin offered the news that four more gang murders had occurred in Southeast Washington. The news fed her anger and her agitation and added to the idea that was at the root of her discomfort. She felt the awful sense of losing control of her life, of being rootless, ineffective and unsure in the face of Charleen Evans’ certainty.