A Long Day for Dying Read online

  “Another thing bugs me,” Andy said, addressing Simon. “I think it’s a mistake to focus on a woman perp. Sure, she could clobber the general with the bottle. But hold him down? The general’s a big guy. Take a lot of strength.”

  “I could do it,” Amanda said.

  She wasn’t bragging, simply stating a fact. And if she could restrain the general, so could another athletic woman.

  “Andy,” Simon said quietly, “is correct to be cautious. We know a woman was in here with General Garber. We know they had at least one drink together. We know they probably didn’t engage in sex, because the bed and condom weren’t used—”

  “Blow job,” Andy said.

  Simon nodded. “A valid point.”

  I made a mental note to have the forensic techs search for semen stains.

  Simon continued, “What wedon’t know is whether the woman struck him with the bottle. Someone could have entered after she left, argued with the general, and attacked him.”

  More nods. Amanda said, “There might even have been more than one person involved. The woman could have had an accomplice.”

  Simon didn’t comment. This didn’t really fit his scenario of an unpremeditated act.

  We all gazed down at the body, sifting through the possibilities. It came down to the woman; we had to locate her. I removed the passenger list from my pocket and scanned it. “Seven women,” I said, “excluding the flight crew.”

  “Four female flight attendants on the crew,” Andy said. “That makes eleven. Five or six are what I’d call attractive. Three are definite lookers.”

  “I’m surethat’s a high standard,” Amanda said.

  Andy gave her a wink. “Play your cards right, I’ll put you on my list.”

  “I’d rather be dead,” she said flatly.

  Andy grinned. Amanda rolled her eyes in disgust.

  “Which of these women are still on base?” Simon asked Andy.

  “Only Colonel Weller, Lieutenant Colonel Marsha Gustin—she’s General Markel’s aide—and Major Crenshaw from protocol. Oh, and Senior Airman Michelle Capello, a security cop. Capello we might want to take a look at. She’s a jock. Lifts weights.”

  “Please,” Amanda said. “I think even General Garber would draw the line at sleeping with an airman.”

  Andy massaged his jowls. “I dunno. Airman Marcelli’s got a pretty healthy set of—”

  “You’re disgusting,” Amanda said.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m just saying that’s how guys are. Take Clinton and Lewinsky, or Congressman Condit and Chandra Levy. Powerful men go for good-looking girls. The younger, the better. Makes them feel more like a stud. Right, Marty?”

  Amanda turned to me.

  Brother.I said, “Andy’s wrong. Not all men are morally bankrupt.”

  “So you wouldn’t be tempted?” She seemed amused now.

  I felt my face redden. “Of course not.”

  “Even a little?”

  “No.”

  “Bullshit,” Andy said.

  Simon cleared his throat sharply to refocus our attention. He said, “There’s another explanation we haven’t considered—”

  I said, “Okay.”

  “Drugs. The woman might have drugged General Garber. That might explain how she managed to restrain him.”

  I said, “So now we’re talking premeditation.”

  Simon hesitated, then nodded.

  “To prove he was drugged,” I said, “we’ll need the autopsy blood work results.”

  “Fat chance now,” Amanda said.

  Simon watched me, waiting for me to come up with a solution. I shook my head. “I’m firing blanks.”

  “I could swing by and observe the autopsy,” Andy suggested. “Maybe try and sweet-talk Bowman into cooperating.”

  “He’ll never let you in the door,” I said.

  Andy winked. “I’d like to see the little prick try and stop me.”

  “All right,” I said. “But play it by the book. I don’t want to give the SECDEF an excuse to toss us off the case.”

  He grinned. “Got it. Nothing physical.”

  “I’m not kidding, Andy.”

  “Hey, hey, relax, Marty. I’ll be a fucking Boy Scout. All I’m gonna do is talk to him.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Turning to Simon, I addressed the question that had bothered us from the beginning. How had the killer managed to lock the door from the outside?

  “Logic tells us there has to be a way, Martin. We’ll figure it out eventually.”

  Typical Simon. He’d concluded Garber had been murdered and assumed everything else would fall into place. I said, “And if we don’t…”

  He sighed and faced the door. For the next a minute he didn’t move. He just concentrated on the busted lock. Finally, he surrendered with a head shake and addressed Amanda. “Were you a good engineering student?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very good?”

  “Near the top of my class.”

  “It should be something relatively simple. Possibly a magnet was used to slide the latch. Or perhaps there’s a hidden keyhole. Something the Secret Service might have installed to gain access in event of an emergency while the vice president was flying. Whatever the secret, it would have been something that could be done quickly. Can you find the answer?”

  “I can try,” she said, already at the door.

  11

  Amanda inspected the lock with Simon’s penlight. The bolt was partially bent back from the force of being pushed in. Andy said, “You’re wasting your time. There’s no magic keyhole. Hell, I’d know if there was. I’m the security guy, remember.”

  She kept on working.

  Andy went on, “I’m telling you, all the doors operate exactly the same. They were one of the first things I checked. They were all locked.”

  I stiffened at the comment. Amanda stared at him. Simon said, “Allthe doors?”

  “Sure. Technically there are five.”

  He went to the closet and pushed open the two doors. “Most people don’t realize there’s a second set of doors at the back of the closet. They were installed so the aides can iron the DV’s clothes and return them without disturbing the person in the compartment. For security, they were designed like the main door, to only be locked from the inside. After I found the body, I checked the interior and exterior doors. Both sets were locked.”

  Simon and I came up behind him. Simon said, “When I opened the closet earlier, it wasn’t locked.”

  “Right. You’re talking the two interior doors. I didn’t lock them after I checked them out. You can tell if they’re locked by the little window on the back of each door. Have a look.” He twisted the latch on one door, partially opened it, and had us peer at it from the back side. We saw the window he’d described. It read “Occupied.”

  “Like an airline john,” I said.

  “Right. Same basic design. Two locks and two windows each on the interior doors and exterior doors, for a total of four. The windows tell the aides the doors are locked so they don’t bother trying to open them and disturb the sleeping beauty in the compartment.” Andy pushed aside the two hangup bags, revealing an identical set of doors at the back. He turned both latches to the right; they didn’t move. He said, “Like I said—locked. To be honest, getting out this way would have been tougher, since you’d have to figure out how to lock two sets of doors from the outside.”

  He backed out of the closet, his eyes shifting between Simon and me. “It’s not looking good, fellas. If someone killed him, they’d have to be fucking Casper to get out of here.”

  No one spoke. We all looked to Simon, not daring to voice what we were thinking: Could Simon be wrong about the mark on the throat?

  “Anything, Amanda?” Simon asked quietly.

  A shrug. “Your magnet suggestion could be a possibility, but the lock assembly appears to be aluminum. And if that’s the case…”

  She drifted off without bothering to point out
the obvious; aluminum didn’t magnetize.

  Simon nodded, his face knitted in concentration. He looked down General Garber’s body and back to the door. Trying to decide if he could have made a mistake.

  Abruptly his body relaxed, and the tension left his face. He smiled faintly. “Of course.”

  I said, “You already figured it out?”

  But Simon’s attention was on Andy. He asked him how long after he’d first entered the compartment had he checked the closet doors.

  Andy thought. “It was pretty crazy, at first. Probably four or five minutes. Once I got the room and hallway cleared, and Colonel Weller calmed down.”

  “So there were people in here with you?”

  Simon had expressed the question casually, but the implication hit me like a jolt. Amanda’s head snapped around to me; she’d caught on, too.

  Andy answered Simon, saying, “Right. Paul and Tommy were here. And Colonel Weller, of course. The three generals showed up when they heard her scream. Markel’s aide, Colonel Marsha Gustin, also showed up; she’s a friend of Weller’s. That’s pretty much it. There were a lot of people in the hall. I finally had Tommy and Paul clear everyone out so I could—”

  He paused, frowning.

  His eyes went from Simon to Amanda and finally to me. We were all nodding along, as if in understanding.

  Andy got it then. His eyes popped wide. “Son of abitch. There were people in here. That means the closet doors could have been lockedafter I came in—”

  We kept nodding.

  “—by someone who’d been in the room. In all the commotion, when no one was looking.”

  “Probably,” Simon said.

  “Probably, my ass. That has to be it. That’s the only way it could have happened.Fuck. ”

  He gazed angrily at the closet doors. Upset with himself for not considering this possibility.

  We all took a few moments to fully consider Andy’s account. I removed my notepad and jotted down the names of the people who’d been in the room. It didn’t take a math whiz to know we now had five prime suspects. Two women and three four-star generals.

  Staring at the names, I felt a chill. If Garber had been killed by one of the women, that was one thing. Crimes of passion were understandable, possibly explainable.

  But if the killer was another member of the Joint Chiefs…

  Jesus.

  “So what the hell do we do now?” Andy asked.

  All eyes went to Simon, including mine. He passed the baton back to me, saying, “Martin?”

  Since we were driven by the time element, I devised a plan for divvying up the workload. Andy, Paul Carter, and Tom Gentry would initially remain on the plane to monitor the forensic team and conduct a complete inspection of the passenger cabin. I wasn’t holding up much hope that they’d turn up anything incriminating, since all the baggage had been removed by the passengers. Andy had entertained thoughts of getting everyone to leave them, but had been overruled by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Markel—the same guy who’d supposedly ordered General Morley to give us a hard time.

  Once the body was transferred to Malcolm Grow Hospital, Andy would tag along and try and intimidate Dr. Bowman into letting him watch. If that didn’t work, he’d notify us, and we’d try to come up with something else. We needed the autopsy results to determine General Garber’s level of intoxication, whether he’d been drugged, and his precise time of death.

  In the meantime, Simon, Amanda, and I would set up house in the maintenance offices, where we would conduct the interviews with the eleven passengers and, later, the flight crew. After the forensic team wrapped up, Carter and Gentry would give us a hand.

  “Questions?” I asked, when I finished.

  Amanda prompted, “The general decs.”

  “Right.” I asked Andy if he had the work number for the customs officer, Margie Benson. He didn’t, but could get it. I told him to pass it to Amanda, so she could contact Officer Benson and find out which passenger had declared a bottle of Glenlivet on their general declaration form.

  “How about I call Margie?” Andy said. “Give me an excuse to talk to her.”

  “Get real,” Amanda said.

  “What’s the big deal?” he said, eyeing her with annoyance. “I can talk to her as easily as you can.”

  “She hates you,” Amanda said. “Remember?”

  “You got it all wrong. We just had a misunderstanding, is all. When I turn on my charm, Margie will realize I’m not such bad guy.”

  “No, Andy,” I said.

  “Fine,” he grunted. “But you’re screwing with my love life here. She could be the next Mrs. Hobbs.”

  Amanda said, “That make her what, number four?”

  Andy gave her a slow blink. “Be nice, huh? I don’t rag on you for the thing you got going.”

  “Mything?” she said, stiffening. “What thing is that?”

  Andy seemed flustered by her response. His face reddened, and he looked away. “It’s nothing. Forget I said anything.” He poked his head out the door and hollered for Carter and Gentry.

  Amanda grabbed his arm hard. “Out with it, Andy. What’s that crack supposed to mean?”

  He turned around, avoiding her eyes. “I said it’s nothing. Really. Excuse me, huh.”

  As he tried to walk around her, she sidestepped and blocked his path. “C’mon, Andy. Let’s have it.”

  He sighed, his eyes slowly crawling up to hers. He was clearly embarrassed. I tried to get his attention, but he never glanced my way. After a couple of false starts, he started to respond.

  “Don’t even think about it, Andy,” I said.

  Amanda whirled around to me. “Hey, what is this? What the hell is going on?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said.

  “Now,Marty.”

  “Amanda, it’d be better if we discussed this later. In private.” I nodded to the door, where Carter and Gentry were watching us. Simon was also frowning, wondering what we were talking about.

  Amanda gazed at me, confusion and hurt creeping into her beautiful eyes. She was imagining the worst, and I felt like a jerk. I said, “It’s not that big a deal.”

  Of course, she knew I was lying. Andy and I wouldn’t react this way if it wasn’t a big deal. I braced myself, anticipating an angry response from her.

  Instead, she surprised me with a resigned shrug. “Sure, Marty. Whatever you say.”

  I asked her to notify the SPs that we wanted someone to escort the passengers from the DV lounge. Even though she realized I was trying to get rid of her, she didn’t resist. Her compliant reaction told me she’d probably suspected what Andy had been about to say. As a woman who worked in a man’s world, she’d been in this situation before.

  After she left, I turned on Andy. I was furious, but managed to keep my voice below a roar.

  “You asshole,” I said.

  I went over to the coffee table to retrieve the bottle and highball glasses. Andy followed me, saying, “But I thought she knew about the rumors. How was I supposed to know she didn’t? Hell, for all I knew, they were true. C’mon, you know I didn’t mean anything by it. Okay, okay, I got a big mouth. I admit it.Say something. ”

  I didn’t trust myself to reply. I just glared at him and walked out into the hallway, where Simon was waiting.

  He said mildly, “Rumors?”

  When I told him, he said, “A lesbian?” He began to laugh.

  I said irritably, “You think this is funny?”

  “I’m amused by the irony, Martin.”

  “Irony?”

  “Yes. If Amanda made her feelings known, she wouldn’t be in this predicament, and there certainly wouldn’t be any malicious rumors. But she can’t make her feelings known for a number of reasons.”

  He’d lost me. “What are you talking about?”

  “You really don’t know? Don’t have any idea?”

  I gave him a hard look. “Would I be asking if I did?”

  “You
must wonder why someone as attractive as Amanda rarely dates.”

  “Sure. She comes on like Lucy Lawless and scares guys off.”

  His face went blank.

  “You know, Xena the warrior princess…Never mind.” Simon must have a dozen TVs spread throughout his mansion, but I’d never known him to actually watch one.

  “Amanda,” he said, “doesn’t date because she has no desire to. She turns down offers from potential suitors all the time.”

  “And you know this because…”

  “Amanda occasionally confides in me.”

  “Right.She’d tell you something that she wouldn’t tell me? Since when did you two become so tight?”

  “We’re not. That’s what makes this situation so amusing, Martin. Why she feels she can talk to me, but not to you.” He continued down the short hallway, chuckling to himself.

  I almost told Simon that Amanda still considered him pompous, regimented, and overbearing.

  But that would be petty.

  12

  Simon and I went to up to the front of the plane, where the forensic team had camped out. We turned over the bottle and glasses to Martha Jones, so she could analyze them for prints and conduct a color and brand comparison on the lipstick smear. I also instructed the serology people to check out the room for semen stains. Afterwards, I gave everyone a two-minute win-one-for-the-Gipper speech, explaining that General Garber’s death was an apparent murder and that it was up to us to get to the truth, and fast. To hammer home the latter point, I mentioned the president’s deadline of 2000 hours, which generated a lot of surprised looks and a few protests. I summed up by saying that anything incriminating they found, they were to come to Simon or Amanda or me, and no one else.

  “Apparent murder,” Martha Jones said. “So there’s still a chance it could be an accident?”

  Before I could answer, Simon said, “There’s always a chance.” He gave her a smile.

  She sighed. “What about getting some help on running the tests? Odds are we won’t make the 2000 deadline.”

  I looked to Simon, saw his head shake. “Do the best you can, Martha,” I said.

  We gazed out at the faces, waiting for more questions. There weren’t any. “All right,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”