Paramour

by Gerald Petievich

  "You think they shot him first, then took his money."

  "There are no signs of a struggle, no defensive wounds-scratches, bruises-but we'll have to wait for the autopsy-"

  "Are there any witnesses?" Powers interrupted.

  "We're doing a neighborhood canvass, but so far no one saw or heard anything."

  "So there's nothing to go on."

  "Not a hell of a lot. Just a street robbery."

  "Or at least that's what it looks like."

  Lyons reached inside his jacket for smokes. He lit up.

  "Landry didn't believe Stryker's death was a suicide. I don't believe this is a robbery," Powers said.

  Lyons blew some smoke. "In this town, a street robbery would be a good way to cover up a murder. The next question is, who has a motive for killing him?"

  "I'm not sure yet, Art, but one way or the other I'm going to find out. In the meantime I'd appreciate it if you would keep what we just talked about between the two of us."

  "Are you saying this has something to do with Stryker's death?"

  "I'll know more soon."

  "I'll keep my mouth shut and investigate this case for the time being, but if you or anybody else tries to lock me out, to keep me from finding who killed him, I'll go public and blow this thing out of the water. What I'm saying is that Ken Landry was my friend. Fuck the White House and the cloak-and-dagger bullshit."

  "When that time comes, I'll be right there with you."

  "Get a sheet," Lyons said to a uniformed officer standing nearby. The officer stepped to a police car and opened the trunk. He took out a sheet, and Powers helped him cover Landry's body.

  Sullivan, dressed in a sport coat with open-collar shirt, hurried into the garage and approached the body. "What happened?"

  "A robbery," Powers said.

  "Is there anything to go-"

  Powers shook his head. "I'll notify the family," he said, choking back tears.

  At the Landry house in Keyboard Estates, Powers, summoning all his strength to maintain composure, told Doris gently that her husband was dead. She cried hysterically in his arms at first, then retired to a bedroom with Reggie and Tisha. When relatives arrived and Powers was sure the family was in good hands, he left.

  At his apartment there were numerous messages on his answering machine-White House Detail agents and Blackie Horowitz informing him of Landry's murder-but he didn't feel like returning any calls. Overwhelmed by loss and anger, he sat down on the sofa, cupped his face in his hands, and wept bitterly. Then, after a while, he came to his feet and washed his face at the kitchen sink. And suddenly he was overwhelmed by anger-calculating, eye-darting, combat anger.

  Powers picked up the telephone receiver and dialed Dulles International Airport. After being transferred a few times, he reached Scott Settle, an FBI agent stationed permanently at the Dulles FBI office. They chatted briefly, Powers praying Settle hadn't heard about his resignation from the Secret Service. Settle mentioned he'd seen the news and asked if Powers knew Landry.

  "Yes, I knew him," Powers muttered. He cleared his throat. "United Airlines," he said. "I'm trying to identify a flight attendant I saw meet with a suspect during a surveillance. "

  "I'll make the arrangements," Settle said.

  At the United Airlines office at Dulles, Powers flipped quickly through a series of binders containing color photographs of all male and female flight attendants as Settle, a tall former college All-American football player, wandered about the office.

  Finally, he found a photo of the redhead who'd spoken with Marilyn shortly before she boarded the flight to Germany. Below the photo was an employee identification number and a name and address: ALBERTS, WINONA, 13293 Grisholm, McLean, Virginia, Fearing Settle would write an FBI contact report about assisting him and list the name of the flight attendant, Powers repeated the name and address to himself several times to commit them to memory. Then he turned a few more pages and closed the book.

  "Find who you're looking for?"

  "Afraid not," he said, believing Settle might mention the name in his daily activity report.

  "Sure you're not just looking for some fine piece of tail you saw on a flight?" Settle said.

  Powers shook his head and smiled. "Thanks for the help."

  In McLean, Virginia, a high-income community of private family dwellings, condominiums, and shopping malls that looked like all the other suburbs in the greater DC area, Powers used an automobile club map to find Winona Alberts's address. Her condominium was in the middle of a bank of stucco condos, all of which were facing other condos.

  He knocked on the front door. Through the frosted glass panes he could see movement inside. Winona Alberts opened the door. Her red hair was wrapped in a scarf, and she wore a yellow T-shirt and blue jeans.

  "Miss Alberts, I'm Jack Powers. I have a few questions for you. May I step in?"

  "Questions about what?" she said cautiously.

  "About someone you were seen with at Dulles Airport."

  "Who-are you a policeman?"

  "I'm acting on behalf of the U.S. government."

  "Who is it I was seen with?"

  Powers took out the baseball team photograph and pointed to Marilyn. "This woman."

  "That isn't a very good photograph."

  "August twentieth. You spoke with her briefly at Dulles Airport."

  "I don't think I-the twentieth. Yes, I had just come in on a flight. "

  "How long have you known her?"

  "Is she in some kind of trouble?"

  "She's missing."

  "Missing?"

  "Anything you can tell me about her would be helpful."

  "I met her at Heathrow about a year or so ago. We were both stranded by fog and stuck in the waiting area all night, and we just struck up a conversation. That was the first and only time I saw her. But even with the change in hair color, I remembered her, because ... we were chatting all night."

  "What color was her hair when you met her?"

  "Blond. I think she looked better as a blonde."

  "What did she tell you about herself?"

  "She talked a lot about art. Susan was interested in art."

  "Susan?"

  "Yes. I never asked her last name."

  "Are you sure that was the name she gave you?"

  "Positive. Susan."

  "Are you sure the woman you spoke with at Dulles is the Susan you met?"

  "When I approached her at Dulles, at first I thought I might have made a mistake; she was standoffish. But that was because she was in a hurry to catch a flight. I never forget a face. And her voice. It was her, all right. I'm positive. "

  "That night at Heathrow. Did she mention anything about what she did for a living?"

  "I'm afraid I don't remember. I did most of the talking that evening. I'd just broken up with a guy, and I couldn't stop talking about it. Emotional release."

  "What was her destination?" Powers said.

  "Good question. She said she'd been on vacation in England and was headed home. That's all I remember...You haven't even shown me any identification."

  "Just let me ask-"

  "How do I know you're really a policeman?"

  "This is a matter of national security. I have just one more question. The night you met her at Heathrow. What was her destination?"

  "Germany."

  "Where in Germany?"

  "Frankfurt, I think. I'm sorry. I'm not going to answer any more questions unless you show me some identification."

  "Just one more-"

  She shook her head, stepped back, and shut the door in his face.

  That Labor Day evening, the Homicide Squad Room at DC Police Headquarters was deserted. The long rows of dingy desks were empty, and the walls were littered with wanted posters and composite drawings of black victims and murder suspects and a few mimeographed invitations to a police retirement party for a detective named Leroy Caradine. In the corner of the room next to Lyons's desk was a map with ten or twelve
red dots at various DC locations titled BLUE CHEVY TASK FORCE.

  Only one secretary was there, an attractive young woman with garishly short hair and a low-cut summer dress revealing caked talcum powder between her cleavage. She was sitting at a desk near the door, reading.

  He asked about Lyons, and she told him he was at the morgue and would be in shortly. Powers stepped into the hallway and purchased coffee from a vending machine. He kept picturing Landry's body lying on the garage floor.

  Lyons came in a few minutes later. His eyes were baggy, red-rimmed slits. He looked surprised to see Powers.

  "Have you developed any leads?" Powers said.

  Lyons shook his head. "Nothing so far. By the way, thanks for notifying Landry's family."

  Powers nodded. "What were the results of the autopsy?"

  "The rounds were thirty-eight caliber-three, all in or near the heart. Even singly, any one of the wounds could have been mortal. The trajectories showed that he was twisting to the right when he was hit from behind."

  "How do the rounds look?"

  Lyons opened a three-ringed notebook on his desk. He turned pages to some blown-up color photographs of the three bullet rounds. "As you can see, two of the rounds are misshapen, but this one is in good enough condition to tie to a weapon, if we ever find it."

  The phone rang. Lyons picked it up. "Yes, sir." He racked the receiver. "I have to brief the captain. It'll only take a few minutes, so make yourself at home."

  "Thanks," Powers said.

  Lyons crossed the room and went out the door.

  Powers sat down at Lyons's desk. The secretary looked up from her reading. He smiled. She smiled back, turned a page.

  He opened the binder and took out one of the copies of the photograph of the bullet round recovered during the autopsy. With one movement, he slipped it inside his jacket and under his arm. Then he stood up and walked directly past the secretary and out of the room.

  In Fairfax, Virginia, about thirty minutes out of DC, Powers slowed down and left the highway at Butler Road. Traffic on the opposite side of the highway had been bumper-to-bumper all the way.

  Passing through the center of the well-manicured suburban Fairfax, he took a right on Fargo Way, a two-lane, tree-lined road leading past a series of residential cul-de-sacs that all looked the same. After a mile or so, he turned left and climbed a slight grade. Twelve cookie-cutter two-story houses lined a short keyhole-shaped street. The garage door of the third house on the right was up. Herb Kugler was using a table saw.

  Powers pulled into the wide driveway, parked, and climbed out of the car carrying an 8 by 11 manila envelope. Kugler, a youthful-looking man of sixty, brushed the OFF switch on the saw and pulled off his glasses.

  "Well, look who's here," he said, coming from the garage.

  They shook hands warmly. Kugler, a man of medium height, had curly gray hair trimmed short. Though he'd been Chief of the Secret Service Forensics Division for more than thirty years, he looked more like a fit old soldier than a technician, researcher, and author of The Guide to Modern Police Handguns. After the assassination of President Kennedy, Kugler, at the behest of the Warren Commission, had been charged with determining whether Oswald, or anyone else, for that matter, could have fired from the window of the Dallas School Book Depository and scored two hits on a passenger seated in a moving convertible limousine.

  The meticulous Kugler, enlisting the aid of medical doctors and a famous sculptor, personally constructed a mannequin out of various materials including rubber, soft plastic, and animal bones to the exact size, weight, and anatomical specifications, including brain and tissue density, of President Kennedy.

  Re-creating the events of the assassination even down to using the same Secret Service driver who'd driven Kennedy on the day of the assassination, Kugler had positioned himself at the window in the book depository and fired Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher Carcano rifle at the mannequin as the presidential limousine rounded the corner.

  The fifty-page article he'd written for the Warren Commission, outlining his experiment and showing the similarity of Kennedy's wounds to those of the mannequin, was considered the most telling evidence to the Commission that Oswald had not only been the assassin but had acted alone.

  "I heard about Ken Landry on television," Kugler said. "What happened?"

  "Street robbery."

  "Ken always carried his piece off duty. I wonder if he got a chance-"

  "He got off a couple of shots, but it didn't do him any good."

  "Damn. Goddamn. His wife and family-"

  "Actually, that's why I'm here, Herb. I'd like you to take a look at some evidence."

  "Certainly."

  Kugler put his arm around Powers's shoulder and took him through the garage entrance to the kitchen. He led him to a dining room table and turned on a light. Powers took the photo of the spent bullet round from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Kugler. They sat down and Kugler studied the photograph for a long time.

  "How's retirement treating you, Herb?"

  "I miss the Secret Service, but not some of the people in it," he said, without taking his eyes off the photograph. "Used to be every man in the outfit was on a first-name basis. The politicians respected us. The Service was an elite group. But Director Fogarty is nothing but a damn stooge for the President-any President. And for that matter, any First Lady. The man was born to bow and scrape. I'll bet he's eaten ten thousand miles of shit during his career." He smiled. "It feels good to say that without fear of being transferred to Newark."

  Kugler left the table and went to the garage. He returned immediately with a Sherlock Holmes-style magnifying glass and a flashlight. Using the glass and the light, he turned the photograph upside down, then sideways, holding it at arm's length.

  Finally he set the photo down on the table.

  "Is there anything you can tell me other than it's a thirty-eight?" Powers said.

  "I'd have to look at the round itself, of course, but from what I can tell by this photo, it looks like there's grating." He pointed. "See here? It looks like the striations have been shaved around the sides a little."

  "What could cause that?"

  "Shaving is usually evidence of a suppressor of some kind," he said ominously.

  "A silencer."

  "I'm not positive, but that's what it looks like. Is the Service handling the investigation?"

  Powers shook his head. "Metro. It's being handled as a street robbery. That's why I wanted someone else to take a look at the evidence."

  "This is something a criminalist might not notice right off the bat. What did Secret Service Forensics Division have to say?"

  "I didn't show it to anyone there. Actually I'm no longer an agent, Herb. I took retirement."

  "You what?"

  "I decided to go out in the big world and try to make some real bucks."

  Kugler studied him. "I always figured you for a thirty-year man," he said cautiously.

  "I'm involved in this investigation because Ken was my friend."

  Kugler's eyes met his. "What's going on, Jack?"

  "I don't know exactly," Powers said, reaching into the flight bag. He took out the revolver and removed the newspaper covering it. "I need to know everything you can tell me about this."

  Kugler rubbed his thumb across the defaced serial number. "I'll see what I can do,"

  "This is a ... political chore relating to the man. So I'd rather you didn't mention-"

  "No one will ever know," Kugler said, studying him.

  "Thanks, friend," Powers said, coming to his feet.

  "Are you in some kind of trouble, Jack?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "I've never heard of a street robber using a pistol silencer."

  "Neither have I," Powers said. Though silencers were frequently evident in television and in motion pictures, they were seldom used in real life.

  "Even the Mafia doesn't use them," Kugler said ominously.

  "The silencer was
invented by the CIA, wasn't it, Herb?"

  "It sure as hell was."

  ****

  TWENTY-TWO

  At his apartment that night, Powers sat at his kitchen table and pondered what he knew. Doodling, he wrote the words SUSAN and FRANKFURT on his note pad. Though there was a possibility Winona Alberts had been mistaken when she approached Marilyn at the airport, something, perhaps her levelheaded demeanor, told him to believe her. He took out the baseball team photograph James Chilcott had given him and stared at it for a long time. Having made a decision, he rummaged through a kitchen drawer until he found his American Airlines Advantage Club mileage record. Checking, he saw he had more than enough mileage left for a free round trip to Europe.

  He phoned for an airline reservation.

  There was a flight leaving in two hours.

  Powers arrived in Frankfurt at 10 A.M. the following day. Though there were dark clouds forming to the west, it was warm and the sun was out. During the flight he'd tried to read a newspaper and a Time magazine he'd purchased at the airport gift shop, but couldn't keep his concentration.

  The aircraft taxied down the runway and came to a stop at the terminal. He waited until all the passengers, tired and grouchy from the long flight, pushed and shoved their way into the jetway. With the aisles clear, he came to his feet and followed them, moving slowly in the crowds through lines at both the customs and the immigration control points. After perfunctory questions by uniformed officials, he was allowed to pass.

  At the Hertz desk, he rented a car and, using a city map he found in the glove compartment, maneuvered his way to the autobahn. There he headed north, moving to the right lane frequently as speeding Mercedes Benzes and BMWs, as if to point out he was a foreigner and unaccustomed to traveling at dangerous speeds, pulled up precariously within inches of his rear bumper and blinked headlights for him to clear the way.