The Simple Truth

by David Baldacci

  looked around for a moment. “By the way, where is Dellasandro?”

  “He’s trying to coordinate all the new security measures,” Klaus reported. “I’ve never seen him this worried. I think he’s taking it personally.”

  “I’ve been on the Court for almost thirty-three years, and I never thought I would ever see the likes of this,” Justice Murphy said sadly.

  “None of us did, Tommy,” Knight said forcefully. She looked pointedly at Chandler. “You have no leads at all?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. We have several things to go on. I’m talking about Michael Fiske’s death. With Wright’s murder it’s still too early to say.”

  “But you believe them to be connected?” Ramsey said.

  “I really don’t have a belief on that one way or the other.”

  “What do you recommend that we do?”

  “That you go about your business as usual. If this is the work of some nut out to disrupt the Court, then you’d be playing into his hands by canceling your docket.”

  “Or we could risk infuriating whoever’s doing this, with the result that he will strike again,” Knight said.

  “That’s always a possibility, Justice Knight,” Chandler conceded. “But I’m not convinced that what the Court does or doesn’t do will have any effect on that. If the cases are connected.” He looked at Ramsey. “I do think it’s worth going over the cases both clerks were involved in, just to cover that base. I know it’s a long shot, but I could end up kicking myself later on if I don’t address it now.”

  “I understand.”

  Chandler turned to Justice Murphy. “Will you and your other clerks still be available today to go over cases Michael Fiske was handling?”

  “Yes,” Murphy replied quickly.

  “And I would appreciate if all of you would confer with the other justices and try to determine if any one case you’ve heard over the last few years may have prompted some action like this,” said Chandler.

  Knight looked at him and shook her head. “Detective Chandler, many of the cases we deal with stir incredible emotions in people. It would be impossible to know where to start.”

  “I see your point. I guess you’ve all been lucky that no one’s tried to do something like this before.”

  “Well, if you want us to go about our normal routines, then I suppose that the dinner honoring Judge Wilkinson will go forward tonight,” Knight said.

  Murphy sat straight up in protest. “Beth, if nothing else, I think the murders of two Court personnel would dictate that the dinner be put off.”

  “That’s easy enough to say, Tommy, but you didn’t happen to plan the event. I did. Kenneth Wilkinson is eighty-five years old and he has pancreatic cancer. I won’t risk putting it off, unfortunate as the timing may be. This is very important to him.”

  “And to you as well, correct, Beth?” Ramsey said. “And your husband?”

  “That’s right. Are we going to have another debate on legal ethics, Harold? In front of all these people?”

  “No,” he said. “You know my feelings on the subject.”

  “Yes, I do, and the dinner will proceed.”

  Fiske was fascinated by the exchange. He thought he saw a hint of a smile pass across Ramsey’s face as the man said, “All right, Beth. Far be it from me to attempt to change your mind on any matter of importance, much less those bordering on the trivial.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Tremaine set the Army helicopter down in the grassy field. As the circling of the copter blades slowed, he and Rayfield looked over at the sedan parked near the edge of the tree line. They lifted off their seat harnesses, climbed out and, torsos bent forward as they passed beneath the blades, headed toward the car. When they reached it, Rayfield sat in the front seat while Tremaine slipped into the back.

  “Glad you could make it,” said the man in the driver’s seat, turning to face Rayfield.

  The colonel’s jaw fell. “What happened to you?”

  The bruises were purplish in the center, leaching out to yellow around the edges. One clung to the side of his right eye, the two others spread out from his collar.

  “Fiske,” he answered.

  “Fiske? He’s dead.”

  “His brother, John,” the man said impatiently. “He caught me at his brother’s apartment.”

  “Did he recognize you?”

  “I was wearing a mask.”

  “What was he doing at his brother’s apartment?”

  “Same thing I was, looking for anything that the cops could use to find out the truth.”

  “Did he find anything?”

  “Nothing to find. We’d already gotten Fiske’s laptop.” He looked at Tremaine. “And you got his briefcase from his car before you killed him, right?” Tremaine nodded. “Where is it?” the man asked.

  “A pile of ash.”

  “Good.”

  “Is this brother a problem?” Rayfield wanted to know.

  “Maybe. He’s an ex-cop. He and one of the other clerks are snooping around. He’s helping the detective investigate the clerks’murders.”

  Rayfield started. “Murders? More than one?”

  “Steven Wright.”

  “What the hell’s going on?” Rayfield demanded.

  “Wright saw someone come out of Michael Fiske’s office. He also heard something he shouldn’t have. We couldn’t trust him to be quiet, so I had to bluff him out of the building and kill him. We’re okay on that one.”

  “Are you nuts? This thing is totally out of control,” Rayfield said angrily.

  The man looked at Tremaine. “Hey, Vic, tell your superior to stay cool. I think Nam took away some of your nerve, Frank. You’ve never been the same since.”

  “Four murders, and you say stay cool? And Harms and his brother are still out there.”

  “So we’ve got two more bodies to go. The two most important. You understand that, don’t you, Vic?”

  “I do,” Tremaine answered.

  The man looked over at Rayfield with a pair of very cold eyes.

  Rayfield swallowed nervously. “I guess there’s no going back now.”

  “You’re right there.”

  “John Fiske and this clerk: What are you doing about them? If Fiske is on some mission to find his brother’s killer, he may be a problem.”

  “He already is a problem. They’re on a real short leash. And they’ll stay there until we decide what to do with them.”

  “Meaning?” Rayfield asked.

  “Meaning we might have four more bodies to go instead of two.”

  * * *

  Sara sat in her new office. Chandler had declared the space she shared with Wright off limits, but he had allowed Court personnel to move Sara’s computer and work files to this overflow space. She had taken the list of state prison agencies Fiske had given her and started calling. At the end of a half an hour she hung up the phone, depressed. There was no one with the last name Harms in any prison in any of those states. She tried to remember any other helpful word or phrase from the documents she had seen, but she finally gave that up.

  Suddenly she had a mental flash: the letter R sticking in her mind. Harms’s first name started with an R; she had seen that in the filing. It was maddening that she couldn’t remember anything else.

  She stood, and that’s when it caught her eye. She had just grabbed a stack of files with her abrupt move and hadn’t noticed it until now. It was the Chance bench memo. The one she had told Wright he had to work on last night until he finished. A handwritten note was attached asking Sara to review it.

  She sat down and her head sank to the desktop. What if there really was some psychopath targeting clerks? Was it just chance that Wright had been killed instead of her? For a minute she sat there, frozen. Come on, Sara, you can beat this. You have to beat this, she urged herself. Using every bit of resolve she could marshal, she stood and walked out the door.

  A minute later, she entered the clerks’ office, and wen
t over to a clerk who was manning one of the Court’s computer database terminals. The question she was about to ask was one she had asked earlier, but she wanted to be absolutely certain.

  “Could you check and see if there’s any case at the Court with the name Harms as one of the parties?”

  The clerk nodded and started tapping buttons. After about a minute he shook his head.

  “I’m not finding anything. When was it filed?”

  “Recently. Within the last couple of weeks or so.”

  “I’ve gone back six months — there’s nothing coming up. Didn’t you ask me about this a while ago?”

  Before Sara could answer, another voice spoke.

  “Did you say Harms?”

  Sara stared at the other clerk. “Yes. Harms was the last name.”

  “That’s strange.”

  Sara’s skin started to tingle. “What?”

  “I got a call early this morning from a man asking about an appeal and he used that name. I told him we didn’t have any case filing with that name.”

  “Harms? You’re sure?” The clerk nodded. “How about a first name?” Sara asked, trying to suppress her excitement.

  The clerk thought a moment.

  “Maybe starting with an R?” Sara prompted.

  The clerk snapped his fingers. “That’s right. Rufus, Rufus Harms. Sounds like a hick.”

  “Did the caller identify himself?”

  “No. He got pretty upset.”

  “Anything else you can remember?”

  The man thought a bit longer. “He said something about the guy rotting in a stockade, whatever that meant.”

  Sara’s eyes opened wide and she started to race out.

  “What’s this all about, Sara? Does this have anything to do with the murders?”the clerk asked. Sara kept going without answering. The clerk hesitated for a moment and then looked around to see if anyone was watching. Then he picked up his phone and dialed a number. When it was answered, he spoke quietly into the receiver.

  Sara almost sprinted up the stairs. The reference to the stockade had shown her that there was a big hole in Fiske’s list. She reached her office, grabbed a card from her Rolodex and dialed the number. She was calling Military Police Operations. Fiske had covered both the federal and state prison populations, but he had not thought of the military. Sara’s favorite uncle had retired from the Army as a brigadier general. She knew very well what a stockade was: Rufus Harms was a prisoner of the United States Army.

  She got through to Master Sergeant Dillard, the corrections specialist on duty. “I don’t have his prison ID number, but I believe he’s incarcerated at a military facility within four hundred miles or so of Washington,” she said.

  “I can’t give you that information. The official procedure is to send a written request to the deputy chief of staff for operations and plans. Then that department, in turn, will send your request to the Freedom of Information Act people. They may or may not answer your request depending on the circumstances.”

  “The thing is, I really need the information now.”

  “Are you from the media?”

  “No, I’m calling from the United States Supreme Court.”

  “Right. How do I know that?”

  Sara thought for a moment. “Call directory assistance for the general number for the Supreme Court. Then call the number they give you and ask for me. My name is Sara Evans.”

  Dillard sounded skeptical. “This is highly unusual.”

  “Please, Sergeant Dillard, it’s really important.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. “Give me a few minutes.”

  Five very long minutes later the call was put through to Sara’s phone. “You know, Sergeant Dillard, I’ve gotten information from your office before about military prisoners without going through the FOIA process.”

  “Well, sometimes the people here are a little generous with the information.”

  “I just want to know where Rufus Harms is, that’s all.”

  “Actually, it wouldn’t really be a problem with any other prisoner.”

  “I don’t understand. Why is Rufus Harms so special?”

  “Haven’t you been reading your newspaper?”

  “Not today, no, why?”

  “Maybe it’s not real big news, but the public ought to know, for its own safety if nothing else.”

  “The public ought to know what?”

  “That Rufus Harms escaped.” In concise sentences, Dillard filled her in on the details.

  “Where was he incarcerated?”

  “Fort Jackson.”

  “Where is that?”

  Dillard told her and Sara wrote down the location.

  “Now I got a question for you, Ms. Evans. Why is the Supreme Court interested in Rufus Harms?”

  “He filed an appeal with the Court.”

  “What sort of appeal?”

  “I’m sorry, Sergeant Dillard, but that’s all I can tell you. I have rules to go by too.”

  “All right, but I tell you what. If I were you, I’d hold off working on his appeal. The courts aren’t open to dead people, are they?”

  “Actually, they can be. What exactly did the man do?”

  “You’ll have to check his military file.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but I don’t do a lot of work with the military.”

  She could hear him muttering a bit over the phone.

  “Since he’s a prisoner of the military, Rufus Harms is no longer technically in the United States Army. Along with his conviction he would have been given either a dishonorable or a bad-conduct discharge. His military records would have been sent to the St. Louis Military Personnel Records office. Hard copies are kept there. It’s not on a computer database or anything. Harms was convicted about twenty-five years ago, so his records should have been transferred to microfilm, although the personnel office is a little behind on that process. If you or anyone other than Harms wants his records, you have to use a subpoena.”

  Sara wrote all of this down. “Thank you again, Sergeant Dillard, you’ve been a huge help.”

  She had map software on her computer. Sara brought the screen up and, using her mouse, drew a distance line from Washington, D.C., to the approximate location of Fort Jackson.

  “Almost four hundred miles exactly,” she said to herself. She hurried upstairs to the Court’s third-floor library and went on-line via one of the computer terminals there. None of the law clerks’office terminals were connected to phone modems for obvious reasons of security and confidentiality. But the library terminals had on-line access. Using an Internet explorer service she typed in Rufus Harms’s name. She looked around at the hand-carved oak paneling as she waited for the computer to sprinkle its technological pixie dust.

  A few minutes later she was reading all the latest news accounts on Rufus Harms, his background and that of his brother.