Dead End

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Don’t you forget the paint in the locker drawer.’

  Thirty

  The interviews with the two suspended Metro DC police officers were, of course, conducted separately, again at the FBI field office, and from both there was immediate legal insistence upon, instead of objection to, tape recordings. Each was also individually accompanied by two demanding lawyers, one personal, the other representing the Metro DC police department. Despite their separation, each officer quickly appeared to follow a virtually identical script. Of course they knew Harry Johnson: they’d worked with him. But they hadn’t been friends, acquaintances even – he was just a guy they’d seen around. No, Harry hadn’t indicated that he knew Richard Parnell’s car until the scientist himself led them to it. They had not recovered every item from Rebecca Lang’s purse from the bottom of the gorge when they arrested him – the terrorist-alert flight number had been shown to them for the first time by a Metro DC forensic scientist, Professor Jacob Meadows, who’d produced the entire contents of the handbag after the recovery of the body and the vehicle. Neither had been present at that recovery. As far as they knew, the recovery had been carried out by police engineers who had also collected up material later handed over to Professor Meadows. Their involvement had begun, after a radio alert while they were on patrol, with the discovery, from the ID in her purse, that Rebecca Lang had worked at Dubette. At the time of their going to McLean, the death of Ms Lang had been considered a fatal traffic accident, not murder. Both believed it was Harry Johnson who had told them of the personal relationship between Ms Lang and Richard Parnell, although it might first have been suggested by Dwight Newton – neither could be absolutely sure. They had not attached any significance to the flight number when they found it among Rebecca Lang’s belongings – it had been Parnell’s attorney who had introduced that significance into the initial court hearing. They had believed there was bona fide justification to take Richard Parnell into custody, considering the circumstances of what they then believed to be a fatal accident and the damage to Parnell’s car. Their arrest procedure had conformed to every legal regulation and guidance. There had been no intimidation, harassment or abuse, either verbal or physical – throughout they had acted fully within the legally established boundaries of suspect arrest, based upon preliminary forensic findings. Neither remembered Johnson specifically drawing their attention to the damage to Parnell’s car – it had been obvious as they approached. They didn’t look around the Toyota, for any paint-debris evidence of it being hit by a neighbouring car.

  Helen Montgomery had been the first to be interviewed, in the morning. Towards the end of the encounter, Dingley said: ‘The only reason for your detaining Richard Parnell when you did was because of the damage to his car?’

  ‘We’d been told the dead woman’s car had been in collision with a grey vehicle. The Toyota was grey.’

  ‘You’d also been told, according to what you’re now telling us, that Richard Parnell and Rebecca Lang were into a relationship,’ said Benton. ‘Wasn’t it a very long jump to connect him to the death purely on the basis of the colour of his car?’

  ‘Is that a question for your specific enquiry?’ immediately intruded the Metro DC lawyer, Phillip Brack, a man so obese he had to sit with his legs splayed, unable to bring them together.

  ‘It could very well be, if your client was curious about an inexplicable Air France flight number being on the body of the dead woman,’ said Dingley.

  ‘My client has already told you that, at the moment of the arrest, she was unaware of that flight number. Or its apparent significance.’

  ‘So, it was what?’ questioned Benton. ‘Taking Richard Parnell into police custody for further questioning into what was nothing more than a possible coincidence?’

  ‘We’re in danger of straying into wrong territory,’ warned Brack.

  ‘I think we’re on the right side of the dividing line,’ insisted Dingley.

  ‘That’s what it was,’ said the woman. ‘Further questioning.’

  ‘For which he had to be manacled?’ demanded Benton.

  ‘That’s it!’ stopped Brack, just ahead of Helen Montgomery’s personal attorney, a heavily bespectacled, Ivy-League-suited black lawyer named Donald Sinclair.

  ‘That’s too much,’ said Sinclair, rewording his protest.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been, for a suspected terrorist,’ said Benton.

  ‘We’ve already covered that ground,’ reminded Sinclair.

  ‘I’m not sure we have, to our satisfaction – to satisfy an FBI involvement,’ disputed Dingley. ‘Unless you knew of the terrorist implications, I can’t see why you had to take Richard Parnell into custody in chains. Take us through the conversation you had with Harry Johnson, as best you can remember it.’

  For the first time, Helen Montgomery showed a hesitation. ‘I’ve told you. We got a dispatcher’s message that there’d been a fatality in Rock Creek Park, Rebecca Lang, whose ID gave Dubette as her workplace …’

  ‘Do Metro DC automatically record their communications?’ broke in Benton.

  There was another pause. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, there’ll be a tape of that exchange?’

  ‘I guess so. Anyway, we get to Dubette, ask to see Harry in security, who takes us up to Ms Lang’s division and calls in the vice president as well as the personnel director …’

  ‘Whoa!’ stopped Benton. ‘Let’s take it all a lot slower. You knew Harry Johnson was head of Dubette security. You call him from the car? Tell him you were on your way?’

  ‘I may have done. I’m not sure.’

  ‘You arrive at Dubette, you tell Harry what?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘I can’t remember, precisely. Something like someone who works for Dubette, Rebecca Lang, looks to have been killed in a motor accident … forced over the edge of a drop in Rock Creek Park and …’

  ‘That’s what the dispatcher said, was it?’ intruded Benton once more. ‘That it wasn’t just an accident … that Rebecca Lang’s vehicle had been forced over the edge of a drop …? That’s what the tape will show?’

  ‘I’m not sure … I mean, I think so, but I can’t recall the precise words,’ stumbled the woman.

  ‘Guess that might just have been a reason for cuffing Parnell,’ offered Dingley.

  ‘What did Harry say to that?’ picked up Benton.

  ‘Maybe “how terrible” or something like that. And that we’d better tell people in authority. Which is what we did.’

  ‘So that’s when you first heard the name Richard Parnell, when you got to someone in authority?’ said Dingley.

  ‘No, before that,’ said the woman. ‘As we were going through the building, I told Harry we needed to find out what Ms Lang had been doing, to be in Rock Creek Park. Harry said Parnell would be the person to tell us. That he and the girl were involved and that Parnell would be the person to know.’

  ‘Know what? Tell you what?’ asked Dingley.

  ‘Whatever we wanted to know, I suppose.’

  ‘Did you talk about Parnell’s car?’

  ‘Not that I remember.’

  ‘How did Parnell take it, when you told him?’ asked Benton.

  ‘All right, I guess.’

  ‘All right, you guess!’ exclaimed Benton. ‘You tell a man his fiancée’s been killed in a car crash and he takes it all right!’

  ‘No. He was shocked, I suppose. But he didn’t break down or anything like that.’

  ‘How did Parnell’s car come into the conversation?’ suddenly asked Dingley. ‘And why? You go to Dubette to tell them an employee has died. You discover she’s into a relationship with someone there, you go into the car park to find his car damaged, so you manacle him and take him into custody. Wasn’t that all a bit too quick … too circumstantial …?’

  ‘I’m coming in here again …!’ Brack began to object, but Dingley overrode him.

  ‘Come in as much as you want, for the benefit of the tape and to protest later. But we’re
talking terrorism and it seems to me, to my partner and I, that decisions were made either prematurely …’ The halting hand came up again. ‘… or on the basis of evidence which isn’t being disclosed to us. Which is very much part of our investigation. So, we’d appreciate an answer.’

  ‘Nothing whatsoever has been withheld,’ insisted the woman.

  ‘Why do you think Johnson couldn’t remember you or Officer Bellamy?’

  ‘My client has already answered that question,’ said Sinclair. ‘If you want it repeated, I’ll repeat it: she has no idea.’

  ‘Was he involved in the internal Metro DC police department enquiries into corruption and evidence-planting in 1996?’ demanded Benton.

  Brack said: ‘Stop!’ just slightly ahead of the black lawyer.

  Sinclair said: ‘Upon my advice, my client refuses to answer that question.’

  Brack added: ‘A question that is grossly improper.’

  ‘I don’t consider it is,’ said Dingley, mildly. ‘But there would be records of those internal enquiries, wouldn’t there, Mr Brack?’

  The obese lawyer shifted in his inadequate chair. ‘I have no way of knowing that.’

  ‘We hope to be able to,’ said Benton.

  ‘She wasn’t spooked,’ complained Benton. They’d just finished listening to the tape replay, reloading the machine for Peter Bellamy’s afternoon arrival, their sandwiches still uneaten on Dingley’s desk.

  ‘She came close,’ argued Dingley.

  ‘Close wasn’t close enough. We’re still looking at towels and salt and pepper shakers.’

  ‘The taps will be on Johnson’s phones by now …’ started Dingley, stopping to pick up the telephone, which was nearer to where he was by the desk. In quick succession he said: ‘OK … good … shit … OK … that’s what we do to restore faith in the Bureau.’

  ‘What?’ asked Benton, when his partner replaced the receiver.

  ‘We got our access order, against Metro DC police,’ said Dingley.

  Looks between Dingley and Benton were sufficient within an hour of their afternoon interview unspeakingly to agree that there had been careful rehearsal between Peter Bellamy and Helen Montgomery. The waddling Phillip Brack again represented Metro DC police department. Bellamy’s personal attorney was a woman, Hilda Jeffries. She wore a trouser suit, a short hair-style and no make-up.

  It was within that hour that the FBI agents took Bellamy through the echoed preliminaries they’d earlier recorded with Helen Montgomery, this time with Benton leading the hard-cop/soft-cop routine, although with a sudden, hopefully confusing, twist. Bellamy was at the end of a denial of any prior conversation about damage to Parnell’s Toyota when Dingley said: ‘What sort of guy do you think Harry is?’

  ‘Good. Lucky …’ began the police officer, before being halted by Brack.

  The Metro DC lawyer said: ‘Where’s this questioning getting us?’

  ‘An inch at a time, because of so many interruptions,’ said Benton. ‘Why do you consider Harry Johnson a lucky guy?’

  ‘That was a hell of a job he landed himself at Dubette, right out of the department,’ improvised Bellamy.

  ‘I thought it was a shoo-in,’ said Dingley. ‘Joe Blanchard opened the door for him.’

  ‘It wasn’t that guaranteed,’ said the man, believing there was firm ground underfoot.

  ‘How do you know that?’ persisted Benton.

  ‘What bearing has this upon your investigation?’ demanded the female lawyer.

  ‘I won’t know until I hear the answer,’ said Benton. To Bellamy he said: ‘Why wasn’t it guaranteed that Harry would get the Dubette job, with Blanchard’s backing?’

  ‘It couldn’t have been, could it?’ floundered Bellamy. ‘There must have been other applicants.’

  ‘What about you?’ said Benton. ‘You ever think you could slot into a Dubette job, knowing Harry like you did?’

  ‘Could have been an ace in the hole.’

  ‘We hear Dubette pay well,’ invited Dingley.

  ‘Top dollar,’ smiled Bellamy.

  ‘How much time you got, before you can leave?’ queried Benton, tuned to his partner’s approach.

  ‘Coupla years … three maybe.’

  ‘Is Dubette your ace in the hole?’ asked Benton.

  ‘Where’s this going?’ lumbered Brack.

  ‘In a direction,’ replied Benton, intentionally dismissive. ‘You got it in mind that you can get a job with Dubette if you choose to leave Metro DC police, right?’

  ‘It’s always a thought,’ conceded Bellamy.

  ‘You ever get caught up in all those troubles in the Metro DC police department in 1996?’ abruptly demanded Benton.

  ‘My client declines to answer that question,’ interrupted Hilda Jeffries, at once.

  ‘I think you should know that the FBI has obtained a court order enforcing full disclosure not just of the conclusions of internal hearings of that time, but also of inconclusive investigations,’ announced Benton.

  ‘I wasn’t advised of this application,’ protested Brack, at once.

  ‘We were only advised ourselves of the application by counsel at the J. Edgar Hoover building a few minutes before this interview began,’ said Dingley, easily.

  ‘This is something I need to discuss with my client,’ said Hilda Jeffries. ‘Something Phil and I should definitely have been told earlier.’

  ‘This was the earliest opportunity,’ insisted Dingley, un-repentantly.

  ‘Before this recorded interview began was an earlier opportunity,’ insisted Hilda Jeffries, in return. ‘This could well become a court protest. Certainly this meeting will progress no further.’

  ‘They’re dirty,’ insisted Benton, an hour later in the 14th Street bar. ‘I got five bucks that says Harry and Pete Bellamy and maybe Helen Montgomery got investigated in 1996 but that there was insufficient proof to prosecute. Harry just got asked to leave. How’s that sound?’

  ‘Sounds like a very feasible local police corruption deal,’ agreed Dingley. ‘Which isn’t an FBI problem or investigation.’

  ‘I know we’re missing our terrorism link,’ conceded Benton. ‘But a local police corruption deal is an FBI investigation if Metro DC police computers have been going beyond State borders and looking at things they shouldn’t be looking at.’

  ‘That’s a wild guess that gets us nowhere,’ refused Dingley.

  ‘I think we’ve taken a step forward,’ argued Benton.

  ‘Half a step,’ cautioned Dingley. ‘All we’ve got in addition to lies is a lot of conjecture.’

  ‘I’m encouraged beyond towels and salt and pepper shakers,’ said Benton. ‘And we shouldn’t forget Dwight Newton had a look-see at Parnell’s file, according to the log.’

  ‘No reason to leave him out,’ accepted Dingley. ‘Let’s give it the weekend for him to stop worrying – think we’re not interested. We’ve got a lot of reading to do.’

  ‘You know what I’d like, just once?’ said Benton.

  ‘What?’

  ‘To have an interview without a goddamned lawyer in the way.’

  ‘Law enforcement would be a hell of a lot easier without lawyers,’ agreed Benton.

  They ate at the Kennedy Centre before the concert. Inevitably they talked about Johnson’s headline-grabbing arrest and previous day’s bail release, and Parnell said there hadn’t been an opportunity to ask the FBI agents if it was a break in the case – he’d hoped they would have called him if it were, which they hadn’t. He had planned to contact them at the beginning of the following week, but as he and Beverley talked, Parnell remembered Dingley’s assurance always to be reachable at the numbers they’d given him – surprised he’d forgotten – and decided to try the cellphone listings the next day. Work had started on the controlled toxicity-reduction of the newly arrived avian flu viruses but it was necessarily slow. No safe level had been established, which left nothing more to say which hadn’t already been said during their customary and so far inco
nclusive end-of-the-day discussions. Beverley judged Ted Lapidus a good research-team leader, but thought Sean Sato would be the one most likely to make a discovery, and finished by saying: ‘And now I want to know about you.’

  ‘I’ll get involved the moment we get to a controllable virus level,’ promised Parnell, deciding against telling her of the most recent confrontation with Dwight Newton.

  ‘That wasn’t the question,’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought there’s anything left to know about me,’ said Parnell. ‘Let’s hear about Beverley Jackson.’

  ‘Dull story,’ she insisted. ‘Dad was an industrial chemist, so I guess I inherited the interest. Found I was good at it. Got caught up in the new science of genetics and wanted to prove I could be good at that too, which is why I came after the Dubette job. Didn’t think you were particularly impressed by me at the job interview, incidentally. Didn’t believe I stood a chance. Not sure how I feel about the company itself – I’ve got to see Wayne Denny next week, by the way, about this psychology nonsense. Sean’s decided to go ahead and take it. Thinks to refuse will screw him up with the company. That’s about it.’

  ‘You missed out marriage and Barry.’ Would she tell him about the one time they’d lied to each other? he wondered.

  ‘College romance, stars in our eyes,’ she said. ‘Didn’t live together long enough to get to know each other. Turned out we were both more interested in work and our careers than we were in each other. We talked about it and decided it was a mistake for which neither of us were to blame. Just one of those things that didn’t work, so instead of ending up miserable and disliking each other, we’d call it a day …’ She giggled. ‘Barry did the divorce for free and I abandoned any claim for alimony.’

  ‘Just like that!’ said Parnell.

  ‘It was a good deal. We end up friends, even go out together sometimes. His folks are dead, like mine are now, and we spent last Christmas together at Aspen. Barry paid.’

  ‘All very grown-up and civilized,’ said Parnell. He wasn’t going to discover the great unsaid – maybe there was nothing to learn.