by Stuart Woods
“I’m yours for the morning. What do you want to see, and who do you want to talk with?”
“We’d like to walk the route that Mrs. Kendrick took from the tennis court to the place where her body was found,” Stone said.
“Of course. Come with u iwme.”
Stone and Dino said good-bye to Tim Coleman, then followed Fair Sutherlin, which Stone found to be a pleasant experience. She led them past the Oval Office and down a hallway, through a couple of doors, and out onto a walkway, then stopped after a few steps.
“This is where I found Mimi Kendrick,” Fair said.
“You found her?” Stone asked. “What were you doing out here?”
Fair looked a little embarrassed. “I had just finished a very heated phone conversation with a member of Congress, and when I hung up I was still angry. I came out here to get a little air and calm down.”
“Why here?” Dino asked.
“It’s the closest place to my office that’s outside,” she said, “unless of course I had gone through the Oval Office, and that’s not something I make a habit of, unless I’m called in there.”
Dino began looking at the ground around him, while Stone continued to talk with Fair. “Do you have a bad temper, Ms. Sutherlin?”
“Fair,” she said. “And you might say I have a fairly bad temper, under some circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“On that occasion, I was blatantly lied to by a congressman. I knew he was lying, and so did he, but he persisted.”
“What else makes you angry?” Stone asked, but she was staring at Dino.
Stone followed her gaze. Dino was standing next to a flower bed, holding a flat piece of granite. “What have you got there, Dino?”
“The murder weapon, I think.” He walked over to where Stone and Fair stood. “It’s an edging rock, and it was out of line with the others. It appears to have blood and hair on it and what looks like a lipstick smudge.” He pointed at a smear of something pink.
“And it was still there after a year? And with blood, hair, and lipstick on it?”
“It was stuck in the ground,” Dino said, “under a bush. Evidence can sometimes last like that.”
“And what does all this mean?” Fair asked.
“It means the murder was heat of the moment, not planned,” Dino replied. “Mrs. Kendrick might have had an argument with someone she encountered, an argument that made the other person angry or frightened. The murderer grabbed the first weapon available and hit her on the head with it. At least, that’s my guess at what a day in the FBI lab will determine.”
“Very good, Dino,” Stone said.
“And we’re just getting started,” Dino replied.
“I find this something of a stretch,” Fair Sutherlin said.
“Murder is always a stretch,” Dino said, “and usually improbable. In this case, what could one woman have said to another that made her angry enough to kill?”
“I can’t imagine,” Fair replied.
“Perhaps Mrs. Kendrick threatened her,” Stone said.
“Threatened her with what?”
“Perhaps she threatened to expose something that the other woman didn’t want to become general knowledge.”
“Like what?” Fair asked.
“That remains to be seen,” Stone replied “Thank you for your help, Fair. We’ll find our way out.”
Fair left, and Stone turned to Dino. “How the hell did you come up with that?”
“I merely observed, my dear Watson,” Dino said, affecting a terrible English accent. He produced a zipper bag and dropped the stone into it. “Now we’d better get this to the lab.”
7
Stone navigated them along Pennsylvania Avenue toward Georgetown, and they began driving down tree-lined streets of town houses. “Two down on the left,” Stone said, pointing to a house.
Dino invented a parking place and turned down his visor, which had a government business notice on it. They got out of the car and approached the front door. There was a discreet FOR SALE sign attached to the wrought-iron fence enclosing the small front garden, bearing the name and number of a realtor. Stone pulled away a couple of inches of yellow crime-scene tape from the front door, then unlocked it and led the way in.
“Pretty nice,” Dino said, looking around.
Stone walked into the living room and stopped. There seemed to be some pieces of furniture missing, and there were outlines on the walls where pictures had hung. “Burglary, you think?” Stone asked.
“Pretty picky burglars,” Dino said, looking up. “There,” he said, pointing at one of the beams across the room. “There’s a mark where the rope was.”
“That’s, what, twelve feet up?” Stone asked.
“About. There must have been a ladder here. Maybe the burglars took that, too.”
They walked around the house, checking the kitchen, which seemed to have been remodeled recently, and a comfortable study, where the bookcases were more than half empty and there were more missing-picture marks.
Stone opened a few drawers. “Pencils, paper clips, that sort of stuff. No paper, no files in the file drawers.”
“Burglars wouldn’t bother with that stuff,” Dino said. “The family must have come into the house and lifted whatever they wanted.”
A voice suddenly came from the doorway behind them. “Why not?” a man asked. “It was all ours.”
Stone and Dino turned to find a young man of medium height and slim build, wearing surgeon’s scrubs, standing behind them. “Are you FBI?” he asked.
Stone and Dino produced their White House IDs.
The young man looked closely at them. “Anybody I can call to verify you are who these say you are?”
“Tim Coleman, chief of staff,” Stone said. “Or Charleston Bostwick, his deputy.”
“Yeah, I know them,” he replied, handing back the IDs.
“You have us at a disadvantage,” Stone said.
“Oh, sorry, I’m Tom Kendrick. They were my parents.”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Stone said.
“Losses,” Tom replied. “The whole thing was screwy.”
Stone pointed at a leather sofa. “Why don’t you sit down and tell us about it?”
Tom didn’t mov F>
“Some people at the White House were not satisfied with the investigation into your parents’ deaths,” Stone replied. “They asked us to look into it.”
Tom went to the sofa and sat down, while Stone and Dino took chairs. “And what are your qualifications for that work?”
Dino spoke up. “I’m a detective lieutenant on the NYPD,” he said. “Stone is a retired homicide detective.”
“Then I guess you’re qualified. Actually, I’m glad you, or somebody like you, is looking into the situation, because it’s completely crazy.”
“Tell us about it,” Dino said.
“First of all, who would want to kill my mother? No sweeter human being ever existed. She had no enemies, not even in politics. And my father was just not the type to kill either my mother or himself. He’s the type who would have been all over the cops until they caught the killer. He met with the FBI and Secret Service people and answered every question, broken up as he was.”
“Being broken up is enough to cause some people to take their own lives,” Stone pointed out. “And being a suspect in the murder of a loved one could push a lot of people over the edge.”
“I guess all that is right, in theory,” Tom replied. “But it doesn’t jibe with who they were.”
“Well,” Dino said, “that’s enough of a reason for us to be here. Tell me, what happened to all the things that have obviously been removed?”
“My wife and I removed them and took them to our apartment,” Tom replied. “I’m a last-year resident at Washington Metro Hospital, and my wife works in a government office, so we couldn’t afford to keep this house. I doubt we could pay the taxes. We took the things we could use, or that were of sentimental value to us, a
nd put the house on the market.”
“How long ago?” Stone asked.
“Ten months,” Tom replied. “The market is moribund for all the usual reasons, and it probably won’t come back until the change in administrations. That always causes a huge upswing in Georgetown house sales, what with people leaving Washington and others moving in.”
“May I ask what the value of the house is?” Stone asked.
“We were told it would bring four and a half, five million in better times, and maybe three and a half, four million if we can hang on until the change of administrations, which is another year and a half. Or we could take a lowball offer now. We’ve had a couple of those.”
“What’s upstairs?” Stone asked.
“Four bedrooms and baths, a smaller study for my mother, and a kitchenette.”
Stone nodded. “I’m not all that familiar with the market here,” Stone said, “but it sounds like you got good advice from your realtor. What was the estate worth in toto?”
“Six and a half million,” Tom said. “More than half of that is this house, which they owned for more than thirty years. There was no estate tax last year, some legislative quirk.”
“I’m familiar with that,” Stone said. “Did you consider moving into the house until it sold? At least you wouldn’t be paying rent.”
“I pointed that out to Kath, but she’s spooked by the fact that my father hanged hims Kr h/font>
Stone nodded. “By the way, how did he get a rope tied to that beam?”
“He used an eight-foot stepladder. It’s in the garden shed.”
Stone nodded.
Dino spoke again. “Was there anything going on in the life of either of your parents that might have been a factor in what happened?”
Tom looked puzzled. “What sort of thing are you talking about?”
“Anything unusual, out of the ordinary. Could either of them have been having an affair?”
Tom emitted a short laugh. “They had been married for nearly forty years,” he said. “Since college. Doesn’t seem likely at this stage of the game, does it?”
“I guess not,” Dino said.
“What really gets me about this,” Tom said, “is that they both died within a day of each other, both violently. I just can’t come up with a scenario that would account for that. It will haunt me for the rest of my life.” He got to his feet. “I have to go to work.” He handed Dino a card. “My cell number is there,” he said. “Please call me if there’s anything else I can tell you, and please, please call me if you start to make any sense of this.”
Stone and Dino shook his hand and walked him to the front door.
“Well,” Dino said when he had gone, “forty years of marriage doesn’t mean a lot if one partner gets the love bug up his ass, does it?”
“You’re right,” Stone said, “but I don’t think we should explain that to Tom, unless we can prove it.”
8
Stone and Dino had a four o’clock appointment with the deputy director of the FBI, a man named Kerry Smith, who, they had been told, was the Bureau’s supervising agent for the investigation into the deaths of Brixton and Mimi Kendrick. They presented themselves in his reception room on time and were kept waiting for ten minutes. As they were shown into Smith’s office, Stone saw a door closing on the other side of the room.
“Good afternoon,” Smith said. “I’ve been expecting a visit from you gentlemen.” He indicated a seating area away from his desk. “Please sit down and be comfortable.”
Everyone settled into chairs. “I understand that someone at the White House is not happy with the conclusions reached by our investigators.”
“I think you might say that,” Stone replied equably. “Why do you think that is?”
“You’re asking me?” Smith said with a chuckle. “Why don’t you ask whoever sent you to see me?”
“I just wondered if you feel that the Bureau’s investigation might have left something to be desired.”
“I visited the crime scene myself, less than an hour after the body was discovered, and I have seen every investigative report my agents submitted. I haven’t seen any lack of enthusiasm for the investigation or any reason to question its conclusions. Now, please, tell me how I can help you.”
Dino opened his briefcase and extracted a brick inside a zippered plastic bag. He set it on Smith’s coffee table.
“What is that?” Smith asked.
“The murder weapon,” Dino replied.
“A brick?”
“Clearly. It has blood and hair on it and who knows what else? Maybe a trace of something from the killer.”
“Where did you get it?”
“It was one of many lining the flower beds adjacent to the site of the murder-the closest one to the body, as it happens. Your medical examiner’s report states that the murder weapon was a blunt instrument. Your agents failed to check the nearest blunt instruments available to the killer.”
Smith colored slightly. “That is embarrassing,” he said.
“We’d like it run through the famous FBI crime laboratory,” Dino said, “at the earliest possible moment.”
Smith picked up the phone on the coffee table and pressed a button. “Shelley, will you come in for a moment, please?”
A moment later the door opened and a quite beautiful blond woman entered. “Shelley, this is Mr. Stone Barrington and Lieutenant Dino Bacchetti. Gentlemen, this is Assistant Director Shelley Bach.”
Stone and Dino rose and shook her hand.
Smith picked up the plastic bag gingerly and handed it to his colleague. “Will you please hand-carry this to the lab? It may be the murder weapon in the Emily Kendrick case. Have them analyze the blood and hair on the brick for a match to Mrs. Kendrick and check the remainder of it for any possible traces of the murderer. Please impress upon the director of the lab the urgency of the situation. I’d like a report first thing tomorrow morning, even if it requires an all-nighter of the technician.”
“Yessir,” the woman said, and left the room.
Stone somehow knew immediately-he wasn’t sure how-that Kerry Smith and Shelley Bach were sleeping with each other, and probably had been for some time.
“That’s a very valuable piece of evidence,” Smith said. “I apologize for the negligence of my agents in not discovering it, and I thank you for bringing it in. What else can I do for you?”
“Mr. Smith,” Stone said, “we’ve noticed in our reading of the Bureau’s report that immediately upon the suicide of Brixton Kendrick, your agents stopped considering other possible suspects. Surely there must have been others under consideration.”
“Possibly,” Smith replied.
“May I ask, who were they? It might be useful for us to talk to them.”
“I’m aware that no other possible suspects were mentioned in the report, and it’s my assumption that the investigating agents were concerned that any such persons would almost certainly be employed in the White House, and they didn’t want to call media attention to specific persons there, since that might adversely affect those persons’ ability to do their jobs.”
“That was very delicate of them,” Stone said. “Perhaps we could speak to the agent or agents who made the decision to withhold those names from the report, and they could tell us directly, so that we might talk with the relevant people.”
Smith looked at the floor. “I must tell you that such a list would have to include virtually everyone working or present near the Oval Office at the time.” He cleared his throat. “Including the president of the United States.”
“I think it is unlikely that the president would be a credible suspect, since it is at his behest that we are here. If he murdered Mrs. Kendrick, he would be unlikely to personally reopen the investigation a year later.”
“I cannot but agree,” Smith said. He picked up the phone again and pressed a button. “Shelley, when you return to your office, please consult your notes and bring me a list of all the West Wing perso
nnel who might have had access to the crime scene around the time of the murder.” He hung up. “Assistant Director Bach was the lead investigator,” he said.
It seemed to Stone that Deputy Director Smith relied on Assistant Director Bach for a great many things.
“I’ve left a message on her voice mail,” Smith said, “since she apparently has not returned from the lab as yet. Do you have any other questions?”
“I think we might have a few of Assistant Director Bach,” Stone said.
Smith looked at his watch. “Where are you staying?”
“At the Hay-Adams.” Stone gave him the suite number.
“Given the hour, I think it might be best if, when she returns from the lab, I ask Assistant Director Bach to hand deliver her list to you there. Would that be satisfactory?”
“Yes,” Stone replied, “it would. We’ll look forward to speaking with her.”
He and Dino thanked Smith for his courtesy and left.
Back at the Hay-Adams, Dino took a sip of his scotch. “You know,” he said, “this investigation was played very close to the vest by the Bureau.”
“Yes, it was.”
“So much so that it’s almost as if someone important above the agents issued them their instructions and accepted their conclusions.”
“That’s a very astute observation, Dino,” Stone said, sipping his Knob Creek. “And it would seem that there were very few people at the White House in a position to do that, if you exclude the president and the first lady.”
“And their names should be on the list that the lovely Assistant Director Bach is bringing us,” he said. The phone rang, and Dino picked it up and listened. “Please send her right up,” he said, then hung up.
“Well,” Dino said, “I guess we’d better put on our shoes and jackets and tighten our ties.”
9
Stone and Dino had made themselves presentable by the time Assistant Director Shelley Bach arrived at the door, and, as it turned out, she had made herself very presentable, too. She was wearing a black sheath under a silk coat, very high heels, diamond studs in her ears, and an expensive-looking diamond-like necklace around her throat.