Conflict of Interest

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “At least we have power here at the courthouse,” Joanne said. “My kids are at home without electricity”

  “You’re renting the Spencer house, right?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “They plan to move back in March. At first they told me May, but I guess their big house sold ahead of schedule. They intend to make the house at Seacliff Point their primary residence. I assume you’ve heard that Judge Spencer is retiring next year.”

  Kennedy looked down at the floor. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news.”

  Joanne gasped. “They found the body”

  “No,” Kennedy said, “I’d classify that as good news.”

  The elevator stopped and they stepped out. Joanne attempted to keep up with him as he headed down the back corridor to the entrance to his office. He had long legs and walked fast, so much so that even some of the male ADAs couldn’t keep up with him. He stopped in front of the back door, waiting for her to remove her key and unlock the door, rather than bothering to use his own.

  “The authorities in Valencia have called off the search,” Kennedy told her. “They were going to extend it through today, but the weather made it impossible. Now they’re dealing with traffic accidents, mud slides, flooding, road closures. According to the weather bureau, the storm is due to last through the end of the week. The area where they’ve been searching must be a swamp by now.”

  “Will they resume the search when the weather breaks?”

  “Not without additional evidence.”

  “Mrs. Decker will be shattered,” Joanne said, her brows furrowing.

  “There’s nothing more we can do,” Kennedy said, disappearing down the hallway.

  Inside her office, Joanne removed her raincoat, then checked her voice mail. She wanted to get a cup of coffee, yet she forced herself to make the call to Elizabeth Decker. The woman should know immediately that the authorities had discontinued the search for her son’s body. When a recording came on, she left a message, relieved that she could postpone the conversation until later in the day.

  Joanne opened her wallet and pulled out Eli Connors’s business card. For a few moments, she sat with her palm pressed against her forehead, her mind completely blank. “Humph,” she said, turning the card over in her hand. For the amount of money she’d paid him, his card struck her as odd. All it had on it was his name and pager number. The paper was thin, and the edges appeared to have been cut with a pair of scissors. With the technology available today, most people had discarded their pagers for cell phones. Palm Pilots, and other means of communications. Of course, Eli was generally at sea.

  Joanne had seen the Nightwatch last evening from her bedroom window, and had wished the detective could have come ashore. Joanne didn’t know what to do about her daughter. When she’d arrived home from work, she’d discovered that Leah had not come home from school. At first, Mike had thought Leah had missed the bus, but after calling several of her friends, he’d started to worry that something had happened to her. Just when Joanne was about to call the police, Leah walked in the door, ran to her room, and barricaded herself inside for the remainder of the evening. Joanne was left to wonder what she had done to deserve such disrespect from her daughter. Her children were physically under her wing again, yet her husband still controlled Leah.

  Setting her own problems aside, Joanne realized why she’d pulled out Eli’s card. If anyone could find Ian Decker’s body, it would be Eli Connors. Since there was nothing to validate the detective’s concerns about her or her children’s safety, she suspected he would take off as soon as the weather cleared. He hadn’t worked in several months, and maintaining a vessel like the Nightwatch was costly. Elizabeth couldn’t afford to pay him, though, and Joanne certainly didn’t have any extra money lying around.

  Before she knew it, however, Joanne found herself dialing his pager number. She had no idea how many times she’d called him during the two years Mike and Leah had been missing. She tossed his card aside, wondering why she’d taken the time to retrieve it. She’d long ago committed his number to memory.

  Eli had been her rock, her counselor, her guardian angel.

  Joanne walked down the hall to the small kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee, and took a sip as she headed back to her office. She heard her phone ringing as soon as she walked through the door. Reaching over her desk to answer it, she knew that it was Eli.

  “You need something?”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the parking lot.”

  Joanne asked, “What parking lot?”

  “Look out your window.”

  “I don’t have a window,” Joanne told him. The detective never failed to amaze her. “Are you trying to tell me you’re in the courthouse parking lot?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Nasty day, huh?”

  “Come up to my office,” she said. “I have something I’d like to run by you.”

  “I don’t go inside government buildings,” Eli answered. “With my luck, the damn thing will blow up, and they’ll blame it on me.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “No,” Eli said, “it’s realistic.”

  “Where do you want me to meet you?”

  “Go through the underground tunnel to the jail,” Eli told her. “I’ll pick you up near the motor pool.”

  “Why in God’s name are you in the parking lot of the government center?”

  “You paged me,” Eli said, disconnecting.

  Thirty minutes later, Eli and Joanne were sitting in a booth at Lulu’s Café, a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop near the wharf in Ventura. Some of the locals gathered at Lulu’s for breakfast, but because of the storm, the restaurant was deserted. Eli had just finished a stack of pancakes, a side order of bacon, two eggs, and sucked up about four cups of coffee. Joanne had already eaten breakfast at home, and was nursing her second cup of coffee. The detective removed his baseball cap, then ran his hand over his bald head, tucking the hat inside the pocket of his windbreaker. “Are you certain this Decker guy didn’t just skip town?”

  Joanne slouched in the booth. “I should have brought a tape of the interview with Tom Rubinsky,” she said. “Then you’d know what we’re dealing with.” Kennedy had failed to compliment her on the interrogation, which had been disheartening. Although Rubinsky hadn’t confessed or drawn them a map to Decker’s grave, she thought she’d done a good job under the circumstances. Kennedy had been willing to file first-degree murder charges, which told her he was convinced that Decker hadn’t simply absconded. Without a body, though, they might never be able to convict Tom Rubinsky of anything more serious than robbery and auto theft. The most appalling fact was that Gary, if the police failed to apprehend him, might suffer no penalty whatsoever. No matter how offensive Tom’s behavior had been during the interview, she still considered Gary the more dangerous of the two brothers.

  Dean Kennedy was an aloof man. Joanne shouldn’t have expected any pats on the back. He seldom wasted time telling a subordinate something that he felt they should already know. She wondered about his wife, if he ever told her he loved her. Some men thought if they told you once, it should last a lifetime. An intensely private person, Kennedy didn’t mix his private and professional life. He didn’t always treat his staff with the same respect. She’d been shocked when he’d brought up the situation with Doug.

  “My boss would never file first-degree murder charges if he had any doubts,” Joanne told the detective. “Without more evidence, we can’t justify continuing the search. Another problem is that the location where the caller said the body is buried falls outside our jurisdiction. That means we’re at the mercy of the Valencia authorities.”

  “Ultimately,” Eli reminded her, “jurisdiction will be determined on where the crime occurred not where they dumped the body. How big is the area?”

  “Valencia has been searching within a twenty-mile radius of Magic Mountain,” Joanne told him. “Decker could be stashed in a meat locker, or buried in someone’s ba
ckyard. I believe his mother would have heard from him by now if he was alive. The anonymous phone call is what bothers me. What if one of the brothers disguised his voice and called Elizabeth, purposely feeding her erroneous information? We could have underestimated these men.” She paused, thinking over the scenario she’d just described. “Don’t you see how brilliant something like that could be?”

  “Not precisely,” Eli said. “But I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  Joanne shoved her coffee cup aside and folded her arms on top of the table. “Once we deploy a large amount of equipment and manpower without success,” she said, “the case will eventually become inactive. By sending us on a wild-goose chase, the Rubinskys may have saved themselves from a facing a murder rap. Our robbery case has some serious problems too. Should we fail to gain a conviction, all these men will be looking at is auto theft.”

  “Did you put a tap on the mother’s phone?”

  “Since the call, yes,” she said, asking the waitress to refill her water glass. “We can’t rule out the possibility that the Rubinskys may have another crime partner. I was certain they’d transported the body in the Ford Taurus, the car Tom was driving at the time of his arrest. I was wrong. The crime lab says the car is clean.”

  “They probably took it to a car wash.”

  “We’re checking the car washes now,” Joanne advised. “There’s a ton of car washes, Eli. People in California wash their cars more often than they do their children.”

  “Good line,” Eli said, chuckling.

  “There’s nothing funny about this,” Joanne snapped. “I’m supposed to be at the courthouse, not in some dive watching you slop down pancakes.” She pointed at his stomach. “You’re going to have a heart attack if you don’t lose some weight.”

  “That’s the least of my worries,” Eli said, patting his stomach. “I’m more worried about a bullet than a heart attack.” He pulled out a package of chewing gum. When Joanne waved it away, he popped a stick in his mouth.

  “You’ve never told me exactly why you had to leave the CIA.”

  Eli frowned. “You know I can’t tell you what happened. Why do you think I live the way I do? If what I know got out, I’d have all kinds of people gunning for me.”

  Joanne was intrigued. She’d approached this subject before and always got the same reaction. “Have I heard about it?” she asked, resting her chin on her fist. “Did the situation have any racial connotations?”

  Eli had a pained expression on his face.

  “Well,” she said, “you are black.”

  “Gee,” he said sarcastically, “I hadn’t noticed. Has anyone ever told you that you’re white?”

  “Stop it, Eli,” Joanne said, knowing he was going to make her work for every morsel of information. “Would I have heard about it on television? Was it written up in the newspaper?”

  “Yeah,” Eli said, nervously scratching his neck.

  “You weren’t with the Secret Service, were you?”

  “Something went wrong, okay?” he said, looking around to make certain no one was in earshot. “I saw something I wasn’t suppose to see.”

  “What did you see?” Joanne probed. “Come on, Eli. You’re going to drive me crazy if you don’t tell me.”

  “I witnessed a murder in the White House,” he said, speaking in hushed tones. “It was either a murder for hire or a massive cover-up. What I know for a fact is that they moved the body and set it up to look like a suicide.”

  “Lord, Eli, was it Roland Milhouser?” Milhouser had been attorney general for six months when he’d been found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the study at his home in Georgetown. Joanne had never heard any rumors that the attorney general’s death might have been a homicide. Speculations were that he’d been having an affair, that he was mentally ill, that he’d been an alcoholic. Eli had been involved in something far more serious than she had imagined.

  “You understand why I can’t tell you,” Eli said. “I’d be putting you at risk. Washington is a dangerous town. People think it’s money that causes all the problems. It’s not, it’s power.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more,” Joanne said quickly. “I’m sorry I asked.”

  Eli gestured for the check. “Are you willing to provide me with everything I need on this Decker matter?”

  Joanne stared out the window, trying to decide how far she was willing to go, particularly now that she’d heard Eli’s story. She certainly didn’t want to find herself in his position, always having to look over her shoulder. She doubted if Eli Connors was even his real name. Had he left a wife behind, children, a home?

  She listened to the wind howling. The rain was coming down in transparent sheets. Lightning zigzagged across the sky, followed almost immediately by a loud clap of thunder. She suddenly felt a gust of cold air and pulled her jacket tighter around her body. Ian Decker’s image came to mind, glancing over his shoulder at her the last day he’d been present in the courtroom. She knew now what it was shed seen in his eyes—resignation. Had he had a premonition that the Rubinsky brothers were going to kill him? Had he felt powerless to stop it? This was what hurt Joanne the most, that a person as vulnerable as Decker had found no protection from evil. Instead of the massive resources of the government working on his behalf, they’d been attempting to imprison him. Joanne was ashamed. When Dreiser first brought Decker’s problems to her attention, she’d felt burdened and disinterested. Should he turn up dead, the entire criminal justice system would have blood on its hands.

  “I’ll get you copies of the police reports along with my personal notes,” Joanne blurted out. “That’s as far as I’m willing to go.”

  Joanne’s thoughts turned to Elizabeth Decker. The police said she’d been searching every day, occasionally with her daughter but most of the time alone. She was probably out there right now, oblivious to the rain and lightning, driven by a force far stronger than nature.

  “I’ll need to see everything you’ve got if you want me to find this man.”

  “You know I can’t take evidence out of the building,” Joanne snapped back at him. “I want to help his mother, but I don’t want to place my career on the line. I have kids of my own to consider. You, of all people, should know what my family has been through.”

  “It’s your decision,” Eh said.

  “The tape from the convenience store is distorted. And you can’t take a chance by approaching the witnesses,” Joanne told him. “Finding out who has been distributing this decoy gun could lead us to Gary Rubinsky, but I don’t want you involved in that end of the investigation. You’ll end up butting heads with the same people you’re trying to avoid. Every law enforcement agency in the country is trying to find the source of those guns.”

  “I might be able to enhance that film,” Eli said. “Let me take a look at it?”

  “The crime lab already looked at the tape,” Joanne argued. “Don’t tell me you have more sophisticated equipment than we do.”

  “Sometimes it’s not the equipment, it’s the talent,” Eli told her, his tone more fact than boasting. “And don’t forget, the county crime lab handles thousands of cases. Most of their work is done under duress, trying to meet mandatory deadlines. I don’t have a crew on the Night-watch. It looks like I’m going to have some time on my hands riding out this storm.”

  “Let’s forget about the evidence for right now,” she told him. “Are you going to work for free?”

  Eli cracked his neck, his enormous frame cramped inside the small booth. “There’s a lot of sad cases,” he told her. “We can’t right every wrong, Joanne. And no matter how much I’d like to offer my services without charge, I’ve got to cover my own expenses. With you, well, I guess you could say this became more than a business arrangement. I would have never hung around this long if I didn’t think of you and your kids like family. And I certainly wouldn’t have ever discussed the reason I left the agency unless I was certain I could trust you.”

&nb
sp; “Elizabeth Decker can’t afford to pay you, Eli,” Joanne said, seeing the clock on the wall and realizing people were probably looking for her. “She mortgaged her home to get her son out of jail.”

  “Who posted the Rubinskys’ bail?”

  “I don’t really know,” Joanne said. “They went through a bail bondsman. I have to get back to the office, Eli. I haven’t even notified Arnold Dreiser that Valencia has discontinued the search.”

  “Dreiser, huh,” the detective said, pulling out his baseball cap. “I think I’ve heard of this guy. Isn’t he a well-known attorney?”

  “His specialty is medical malpractice,” Joanne said, sliding out of the booth. “He’s related to Elizabeth Decker, otherwise he wouldn’t be involved.”

  Eli pulled a ten out and left it on top of the bill. “Dreiser won a major class-action suit several years back. If my memory serves me correctly, it involved a defect in a car. The wheelbase was too short, causing it to roll. I don’t recall the exact amount of the settlement, but I think the numbers were high.”

  Joanne was surprised she hadn’t come up with the idea of getting Dreiser to pay Eli’s fees. “Do you know about his son?”

  “No,” Eli said, holding the door open for her as they exited the restaurant.

  “The boy committed suicide, “Joanne said, opening her umbrella before they stepped out into the rain.

  “Don’t tell me he thinks it was a murder,” Eli said, grimacing.

  “No,” Joanne said. “My opinion is Dreiser thought if he got Decker cleared he would make amends for whatever guilt he’s carrying over the death of his son. Now that we suspect that the Rubinskys may have killed him, Dreiser’s become even more emotionally involved.”

  “Are you willing to do your part, get me what I need to put this together?”