So she decided to try a different tack. She decided to talk to the people who knew Heiss best, which meant family. At the library and online she determined who Heiss' children were, and his grandchildren. In the grand scheme of things, she decided, Heiss had probably poisoned his children's minds against Jews. They wouldn't be receptive. So how about starting at the other end? What if she began her search with the grandchildren?
First up, according to the death notice, was a granddaughter named Julie Meekins. Four phone calls from her office in Chicago and Christine had the granddaughter's info. Seemed she had been married twice, the second marriage was a keeper, and she now lived in San Diego, in Ocean Beach, where she owned a fitness spa.
San Diego by air was four hours from O'Hare. Christine hopped on the firm's Gulfstream, grabbed two frosty bottles of water out of the mahogany fridge, and flopped in a bulkhead seat. She was the only passenger. She was wearing bluejeans, sandals, boat neck blouse, and light yellow sweater. She wore her sunglasses perched atop her head—all of it in anticipation of the warm, sunny, San Diego weather.
She popped her MacBook and began reviewing witness statements, death notices, background profiles, and pre-trial memoranda prepared by the trial team in anticipation of what she considered their most important case. They were all important, of course, but this case held particular significance because Christine had served in Iraq as an MP and was opposed to any nationalism which threatened minorities—whether the Nazis or religious zealots or racists—she thought the world would be far better off without any of them. Now she had a chance to beat the Nazis at the murder game and she was going to make the best of it. This was one she didn't intend to lose.
She read the profile on her quarry. Julie S. Basinger. Married name. Age forty-six, graduate of Loyola, major in physical education and minor in philosophy (?—someone had written in the notes), owner of Ocean Beach Bodies.
The Gulfstream jet landed and taxied up to the General Aviation terminal in San Diego. The pilot advised over the speaker the outside temperature was a beautiful 73°. Christine gathered up her belongings and stepped down the airway onto the tarmac. She loved San Diego and was happy for the opportunity to be there, question her witness, and maybe find some West Coast Mexican food in the process.
She rented a car and headed up the interstate toward Ocean Beach. At the OB turn-off, she headed west and navigated down Newport Street, where she found a motel. It looked cheesy enough. She wheeled the Ford Taurus in, checked in, and found her room upstairs directly across from the office. All the exterior doors were turquoise and the walls were sand colored—just what she had expected to find for the money. She spread her things out on her bed and dialed up the GPS on her smartphone. Ocean Beach Bodies was located over two blocks south. Christine went in the bathroom, applied a fresh coat of lip-gloss, ran a brush through her hair, and left the room.
From the sidewalk she could look across the street at the Pacific Ocean. There were hundreds of people out enjoying the weather. Down by the pier, a man and two surly teenagers were building a sandcastle portraying Neptune reclining handsomely in an undersea chair, apparently oblivious to all the air around him. She began walking south, dodging panhandlers and pot dealers as she went. Just from habit, she suddenly stopped, spun around, and studied the people behind her on the sidewalk. Perhaps twenty paces back, a man in a yellow shirt who was wearing Elvis sunglasses with the purple lenses, stopped and turned to the side. She turned back around, counted five more paces, and spun around once again. Again the man stopped but this time stared directly at her. He knew he had been made, his face told her. Reflexively, she touched the Glock 26 in her waistband holster, and cocked her head at the man. Her look said to him, "Come on, what are you waiting for?" Just then, the man suddenly bolted across the street and disappeared down an alleyway between a Chinese restaurant and a kosher deli. She stood, watching, waiting, just to see if he should reappear. He did not. She then hurried across the street, certain she hadn't been seen, and continued heading south.
She considered the situation, the obvious tail. Had her telephone calls alerted Heiss' friends? Or was it something else she wasn't aware of? She went back over the previous two days in her mind, trying to determine where she might have laid down a scent someone had picked up on. Her inquiry had begun with a telephone call to an old friend at the Chicago FBI, Special Agent In Charge Pauline Pepper. Agent Pepper had directed her to the FBI special agent, now retired, who had investigated the Janich Heiss shooting. His name was Rafael Espinoza and he was now living on a boat moored in Coral Gables, Florida. She had called Mr. Espinoza and finally connected with him via the AT&T 411 operator. What wasn't included in the file, he told her, was the fact Julie Basinger, the granddaughter, had hearsay information about the shooting. Espinoza, who was now in his 70s, had no clear recollection of the granddaughter's position, which is what had sent Christine to San Diego to speak with her. Based on this investigative history over the last two days, Christine retrospectively saw nothing that would've tipped off Heiss’s supporters. Which left only one plausible explanation for the man in the yellow shirt with the Elvis sunglasses: her phone calls were being intercepted. She ducked into the South Beach Bar & Grille and found a table up front by the glass. She kept her sunglasses covering her eyes and held the plastic menu up, intending to see but not be seen by anyone passing by. It was her hope yellow shirt would come into view and she might be able to fall in behind him.
Then it happened. No sooner had she thought the thought, than the man slowly passed by the window, headed south. Christine leapt up from the table, threw a five-dollar bill on her place mat, and slipped back out onto the sidewalk. The quarry had now become the hunter.
The man slowly made his way along the sidewalk, shooting looks left and right, peering into windows, and even crossing the street at one point and scanning up and down the beach, obviously hoping she might be taking the sun. She wasn't. When he came back across the street, darting between a VW convertible and a candy-apple Impala, she fell in close behind. Then they were at Niagara Street, which was Christine's destination, and she immediately saw Ocean Beach Bodies across the asphalt.
She came up behind the man and nudged his kidneys with her knuckles.
"It's a pistol and it's ready to take out a kidney if you don't follow my exact orders."
The man began to raise his hands.
"Don't!" she commanded. "Leave your hands down, idiot!"
"What do you want? Who are you?"
"You know damn good and well who I am. The question is, why are you following me? And where did you pick up my trail? At the airport? Did you know I'd be flying into General Aviation? Let's hear it."
"Let's see the gun."
Christine unholstered her Glock and shoved it where her knuckles had been.
"Feel familiar? Forty caliber. Enough to severely limit your ability to make pee-pee if you screw with me."
"Okay, okay. What do you want to know?"
"Let's start with why you're following me."
The man began to turn to face her. She jammed the gun harder against his back. She didn't want to go hand-to-hand with him right there on the sidewalk. While she was confident of her ability to take him down, she wanted to avoid the notoriety. Not only that, she wasn't sure her concealed carry permit out of Illinois would hold water in California. She wanted to avoid that little issue, should the cops suddenly appear.
"Straight ahead. Cross the street, go beyond the corner, and take the alley to your left. Now!"
They crossed and turned down into the alley. Now she allowed the man to face her.
"Take off the sunglasses."
He complied with her order.
"I don't know you," she said. "If I'd seen you before I'd know. Now start talking."
"I'm a friend of Julie's. We want to know why you want her.”
"How did you come to know about me? Or that I wanted her?"
"How do you think? Your phones were easy."
<
br /> "And you're a member of the Nazi Party?"
"I'm proud to say I'm a white supremacist, I swear by the teachings of Mein Kampf, my father was a disciple of George Lincoln Rockwell, and I'm my father's son."
"So you're a Nazi."
"If you say so."
Christine dropped the muzzle of her gun to a forty-five-degree angle. Just enough so the man suddenly lashed out with his fist, catching her on the side of the head, and stunning her. She stumbled back and then sat down hard on the alleyway cement. She was shaking her head as the man leapt at her and wrapped both hands around her throat, dropping to his knees, placing his hip against her body and forcing her down, down, until she was prone and struggling to tear his hands away from her throat. The sky above, so peaceful and cerulean just one short hour ago, was now pin wheeling and darkening as her airway was compromised. She was falling down that rabbit hole and she had been there before, fighting drunks as a new MP, and she reflexively fought back.
With a great thrust upward of her lower body, she managed to bring her left knee up and crunch it into the man's crotch. He immediately straightened up and, for an instant, his grip around her throat relaxed. Relaxed just enough Christine was able to work her hands inside of his forearms and break his grip on her throat. Just then, she rolled to her side and got into a kneeling position. Where was the gun? She shot a look behind. When he had cuffed her on the side of the head she had dropped the gun and it was now ten feet away. Too far. She struggled upright just as the man did the same and shot her knuckles against his windpipe with all the force of her black belt training. The man jumped fully upright and she hit him again, this time with the flat of her hand, flat against his nose, sending the cartilage up into his skull and brain. She watched as his eyes blinked several times and he frantically grabbed at his face. But then he slumped to his knees and toppled to his side. Christine retrieved the Glock and approached the man from behind. She pointed directly at the top of his head and fired once. Instantly he went still and died. She slipped the gun inside her waistband and carefully looked for where she knew the spent cartridge would have been ejected from the gun. She caught its glint in the afternoon light and pocketed the evidence.
Grasping the corpse by the ankles, Christine dragged her assailant halfway down the alley to a blue Dumpster. She threw back the lid and jerked him up to her waist as if weightlifting two hundred pounds. She then put one leg back, got her body under the weight, and stood upright, bringing him high enough to dump him into the garbage bin. Then she banged down the lid.
She looked both ways. No one had seen her.
Exiting the alleyway, she headed north, back toward her motel. In the distance she heard a siren but she moved along with the strolling crowd, neither hurrying nor pausing to gawk, and covered the city block to her motel, when she double-timed up the exterior stairs and let herself into her room.
She sprawled on the second Queen bed and caught her breath. Then she picked the paper cover from a plastic glass and ran some water out of the tap. She took two long drinks and wiped her mouth with a hand towel. She peered into her eyes in the bathroom mirror. They were calm and unafraid. Which was good; she wanted to appear professional when she met with Julie. Hysterical wouldn't have worked.
On the room phone beside the bed, she called the Ocean Beach Bodies number from the white pages.
"Julie Basinger, please."
"May I say who is calling?"
"Chris. I'm a friend. Personal."
"One moment."
She began counting ceiling tiles, had the long leg and the short leg counted and was ready to multiply and solve for X, when a sleepy-sounding voice answered.
"This is Julie."
"Julie, hi, my name is Christine Sussman."
"Do I know you?"
"No, but I'm calling about your grandfather, Janich Heiss."
Long silence, not-so-quiet breathing.
"His name was John E. Meekins."
"Julie, you know and I know his real name was Janich Heiss. He came from Germany to the United States about 1943-44."
"So what?"
"I want to ask you some questions about him."
"Sorry, I don't have any answers. I hardly knew him."
"Do you know anything about the day he died?"
"The day he was murdered, you mean? I know the man who killed my grandfather is on trial right now. And if you're the lawyer's assistant and you're looking for some help, you can just forget it. I adored my grandfather. I don't give a single damn what anyone says about him. He was good to me and Bibby and that's all I care about."
"Bibby, your brother?"
"Yes. You should talk to him. He probably gives a damn about your client. I don't. I hope your client burns in hell, where he belongs."
"I'm sorry you feel that way."
"He's a Jew. That's all that needs to be said."
The phone went dead.
“Bibby” was the name Agent Pepper had given her. Father Richard Meekins, SJ, known to his friends and family as “Bibby.”
Christine zippered her bag and was out the door on the run. She phoned ahead to Albert Hightower at the airport. Albert was Thaddeus' law partner—one of them—and flew the firm Gulfstream every chance he got.
"Don't turn anything off," she told him. "We're going to Tonopah!"
The federal courthouse in Chicago is fairly modern in the interior. The courtrooms are all done in government gray walls, tile floors, and veneered woods. In Judge Howard J. Brant's courtroom the throne emplacement was mahogany veneer and the counsel tables were unmatched walnut. The spectator pews were pine. So there was a great cross-section of North American woods on display, and the jury hearing the case of United States of American vs. Lodzi Ashstein was likewise diverse and mismatched. Whites, blacks, Hispanics, men, women—the jury pool had served up its best potpourri this time out. Jury selection itself went quite fast because in Judge Brant's court, as in most federal courts, the attorneys weren't allowed to question the jurors and try to get them to commit to the theory of the law which favored one side or the other. Those were bygone days in the federal courts.
Thaddeus had put Lodzi on the stand. The old man told his story, remembered not to embellish, and admitted pulling the trigger on the gun which killed Heiss. He told the story from start to finish, Treblinka to Crystal Lake and when he finished he looked exhausted. After all, he was ninety years old and he had just been forced to re-live some of the horrors in his long life. After he testified they took a fifteen-minute afternoon break before cross-examination began.
While they were on break, the Assistant U.S. Attorney approached Thaddeus in the hallway and pulled him aside. Her name was Rona VanMeter and she was brilliant, attractive, and, at this point in the trial, trusted implicitly by the jury. When she spoke, the jury lifted their eyes from their note pads and listened. Thaddeus had noticed all this and had been feeling very frightened about Lodzi's chances with the jury. Rona VanMeter was wearing a navy pantsuit with a bright blue shirt and small red tie. On her left hand, ring finger, was a one-carat engagement ring, wedding band, and on her wrist was a gold Rolex. Her nails were professional—short, natural color but lacquered. When she smiled she reminded Thaddeus of the evening newscaster on CNN, a woman whose eyes lit up the screen when she appeared. Rona's personality was like that. She was a people magnet and, much to Thaddeus' dismay, the jury belonged to her. He had made no headway with them during Lodzi's testimony.
"They liked your client well enough," Rona said of the jury. "But they feel boxed in by the law. You know, the law is the law and, bottom line, your guy did pull the trigger."
Thaddeus winced. He nodded. "I'm afraid you're right. Lodzi Ashstein is a man who's easy to like and I think the jury has found a special place for him in their heart, but, dammit, he did shoot Heiss. Whatever the justification, there's no defense. Unless they buy the self-defense angle."
Rona nodded. "You seemed to bring that out. Problem is, there's no corroboration. You
r guy could just be making up the bit about the telephone call. Or they could just as easily believe it wasn't even about him. That it wasn't him who was being threatened. Who knows?"
"I agree. This isn't a take-down, for sure."
She moved a step closer, confidential now. She glanced around, making sure no one overheard, as the hallway was filled with bystanders and cops and marshals.
"Look, let's cut a deal. He does two years in jail. We'll structure it so it's the least institutionalized of all the federal prisons. It'll almost be like he's living at home."
Thaddeus shook his head.
"Can't do it. There's a very good chance at his age he would die in prison. He can't ever be imprisoned again. After hearing his testimony and knowing what we know about Treblinka, I can totally understand his position."
She nodded. "Of course. I just hate to see him continue, Thaddeus. But I have to do my job."
"I know. And I understand. So does Lodzi. Just so you know, he holds none of this against you. He knows it's your job."
"Thanks for telling me. This trial has left me bewildered at times, at our justice system. Justice was done when Mr. Ashstein pulled the trigger. He shot a monster. No doubt about it. But our laws don't look at any of that. They look only at the act and the death. Heiss should have been extradited to Israel when your man came to the U.S Attorney's office forty years ago and requested it. It's too bad."
"Agree."
"Well, I'm going to cross-examine when we go back in. I won't be doing him any favors."
"I know. It is what it is."
"Sorry we can't make something happen. But I totally understand. Thanks, Thad."
"Thanks for trying."
Rona nodded at Thaddeus, touched the side of her head and smiled, and headed back down the hallway toward court.
Thaddeus ducked into the restroom, relieved himself, and then went to the sink to wash up. He washed his hands and leaned down and splashed water in his eyes. With a paper towel, he dabbed his eyes and then blinked several times. He was thirty years old, and he thought he looked at least forty. This trial was really wearing him down, and he was feeling beat up every minute of it. He decided after it was over he would load up Katy and the kids and they would find an island someplace with white sand, and just chill. He needed it, Katy would welcome it, and the kids would be thrilled to miss school. Turquoise had returned from the Wickenburg treatment facility, and was now much more open to discussing chemicals and what went on among her circle of friends. Katy told her it was time to make new friends and Turquoise responded she already knew that. There was friction between them, but Thad and Katy thought it was normal parent-child stuff. And they believed Turquoise when she said she was sixty days clean and sober one morning. Why wouldn't they believe her?
Unspeakable Prayers: WW II to Present Day (Thaddeus Murfee Series of Legal Thrillers) Page 22