A Long Day for Dying Page 9

  As everyone began gathering their equipment, I handed Martha my card. “Do me a favor. Let me know if anyone from the SECDEF’s office contacts you and gives you any…guidance.”

  Our eyes met. She knew what I was really asking.

  She took the card, looking uncomfortable. “I can’t promise anything, Marty.”

  At least that wasn’t a no.

  Before leaving the plane, Simon and I had a final housekeeping item to check out. Whenever there’s a murder, you have to be able to establish both motive and opportunity. In General Garber’s case, the first was a given. So that left opportunity. Specifically, how difficult would it have been for someone to enter the compartment without being observed?

  Logically, we concluded that the odds of detection correlated directly to the distance someone sat from the compartment. The closer, the better.

  The passenger manifest contained the seat numbers, so we started at the back of the plane and worked our way forward, noting where the five suspects were sitting. It took us less than five minutes. We passed through three separate sections, all separated by bulkheads. The largest was the rearmost one—the figurative back of the bus—where the lower-ranking officers and enlisted sat. The next section forward was reserved for the communications specialists and the personal staff members assigned to the four generals, including the aides, lieutenant colonels Weller and Gustin.

  The third section was located directly aft of Garber’s compartment. It was designed more like an intimate lounge area, with eight plush first-class chairs, four to a side, a small table between each pair of chairs. It’s nice to be comfortable when planning a war.

  “The generals sat in here?” Simon said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyone else?”

  I checked the manifest. “Nope. Each general was assigned two seats. The last pair of seats was empty. Four-stars usually don’t mingle with the help.”

  Simon stepped forward and opened the swinging door that we’d passed through earlier. We were looking down the hallway of Garber’s compartment. Members of the forensic team were still filing inside. I guessed the door was maybe five giant steps away. Four if you played in the NBA.

  Simon turned to me. “No view from the front or back of the plane. It would have been easy enough for someone to wait until everyone was asleep and to slip into Garber’s room without being seen.”

  I nodded. “And if one of the aides had paid Garber a late-night visit, he or she would have had to walk through here. One of the generals might have noticed. Or possibly someone in the second section would have seen the aide leave.”

  My eyes drifted over the room. It was completely empty, without so much as a coffee cup visible. But those items probably would have been collected before landing. I began opening the overhead bins. Simon crossed the room and did the same. Nothing. Andy was right; they’d cleared everything out.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  We turned toward the hallway. Carter was standing in the doorway of the bulkhead. I said, “Yes, Paul?”

  “Andy mentioned your theory about the closet—”

  “Right. Sure.”

  “I thought you should know that I was standing near the closet after we went inside. I didn’t notice anyone open any of the doors.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Several minutes. I was trying to calm down Colonel Weller because she was pretty distraught. I finally asked Colonel Gustin to escort her back to her seat. By then, the generals had come in, and I was trying to keep them from interfering, so Andy and Tommy could finish checking out General Garber’s body.”

  “Sounds like you were pretty busy,” I said.

  A tired smile. “You don’t know the half of it, sir. But I think I’d have noticed if anyone tried to enter the closet. The only time I left was when Andy told Tommy and me to clear everyone out. There were a number of people in the hallway, and Andy wanted them to return to their seats.”

  “Anyone remain in the room?”

  “The generals. They left pretty quickly to make phone calls. Couldn’t have stayed more than a minute or two.”

  “I see.” Simon was anxious to ask something, so I eased to the right.

  “Paul,” he asked, coming forward, “you said you were standing near the closet. How near?”

  “A few feet. I was over by the chair at the desk. That’s where I’d taken Colonel Weller to calm her.”

  “If she was so distraught, why didn’t you remove her from the room immediately?”

  “Well…she sort of fainted.”

  “Sort of?”

  “She didn’t lose consciousness, Lieutenant. She just sort of collapsed from the shock and all. Then she went kinda crazy when we tried to pick her up.”

  “And while you were attending to her, I assume your attention wasn’t on the closet doors?”

  “No, sir. But still think I would have noticed someone poking around. The place is pretty small.”

  Simon nodded at his logic. “I’m sure you’re correct. Thank you, Paul.”

  As Carter left, I said, “He’s mistaken. Someone in the room must have locked the doors. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “I agree.”

  But as we walked out, he still looked worried.

  We emerged from the plane onto the landing at the top of the portable staircase. Below us, we could see Amanda over by the side door, talking with the two security cops. She was standing toe-to-toe with them and seemed to be dressing them down. One cop had a radio to his mouth and appeared to be trying to listen to her while he relayed something. I heard Amanda say something about passengers. The cop looked flustered. Amanda angrily snatched the radio from his hand.

  I said, “Must be giving us a runaround about sending someone to escort.”

  Simon nodded.

  “Guess my talk didn’t do much good.”

  “They’ll delay us when they can.”

  “If the military keeps interfering, they’ll be able to run out the clock without us getting close to solving this thing.”

  “True.”

  “And that’s okay with you?”

  He gave me a long look. “I promised Senator Garber I would attempt to learn the truth. I never told him I would succeed.”

  “Come off it, Simon. Once he realizes his son was murdered, he’ll never back off. He’ll push this thing until he gets justice.”

  “That’s why we mustn’t commit ourselves.”

  “Huh?”

  His eyes bored into mine. “We tell the senator that we onlysuspect his son was murdered, Martin. We make it clear we could be mistaken.”

  I could only shake my head. Ethics 101, according to Professor Simon. Now I understood his qualified response to Martha Jones earlier.

  I said, “So we’re going to keep our options open until the end?”

  “Something like that.”

  We went down the steps.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I nodded at the two med techs sitting in the Humvee. They stared back with anxious eyes. Marty the Bogeyman.

  As Simon and I walked toward the maintenance offices, I said, “One thing confuses me.”

  He smiled. “Only one?”

  “The highball glasses,” I said. “They were obviously removed because they were incriminating. That tells me the killer was a woman and not some guy who came in later. He wouldn’t have had a reason to take them.”

  “Remember,” he said, “the killer was trying to make the death appear accidental. He probably removed the glasses because they could have led us to the bottle. We would have wondered what the general had been drinking.”

  “Why would a guy wipe away the lipstick smear?”

  Silence. Like me, Simon knew the killer would only have wiped at the smear if it was personally incriminating. So unless the guy was a cross-dresser, we were back to a woman suspect.

  For now.

  We’d almost reached the double doors of the maintenance offices when we hear
d a shout. Turning, we saw Amanda frantically waving an arm at us, the radio still to her ear. Behind her, the two cops were bolting out the side door.

  “They’re here,” Amanda hollered. “They just landed.”

  13

  Simon, Amanda, and I waited by the Humvee with the two med techs and watched as the entourage entered the side door of the hangar. Senator Garber appeared first, followed by Secretary of Defense Churchfield and a gaunt navy admiral who I assumed was some kind of military assistant. My buddy Brigadier General Morley appeared next, followed by Major Vega and a couple of large, stern-faced men in civilian suits, wearing spy-guy earphones. No cool wraparound sunglasses, though, but maybe that was only in the movies. The two security cops brought up the rear and remained by the door.

  As the group headed toward us, Senator Garber and Secretary Churchfield led the way. They walked slowly, their expressions somber. The entourage trailed them in complete silence; no one so much as whispered. It was as if we were watching a funeral procession, which in some respects, we were.

  My eyes settled on Senator Garber. Like his son, he was a big man, well over six feet, with a thick chest that seemed to strain the buttons on his thousand-dollar linensuit. Now in his seventies, he had a politician’s stereotypical mane of thick white hair, and his features still retained the handsome, rugged quality that had won him more than his fair share of the female votes over the years. A senator for close to thirty years, Garber had long been acknowledged as a major Washington, D.C., power broker, and not simply because of his longevity or his chairmanship of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee.

  Rather, it was Garber’s legendary ability for political arm-twisting and his reputation as the consummate deal maker. Anyone who wanted legislation passed—the White House, Democrats and Republicans, corporate lobbyists and special interest groups—they all paid homage to Garber or risked having their bills incinerated in the flames of a filibuster or tabled for some innocuous rules violation known only to him. Even theWashington Post, a noted Garber critic, acknowledged the senator’s clout in their recently published list of the country’s most influential politicians. Garber had been ranked number two, right below the president and three spots above the person walking beside him now.

  And that’s where I shifted my eyes.

  To the formidable figure in an impeccably tailored red power suit, who in three short years had risen from relative obscurity to become everybody’s favorite secretary of defense and the poster child of feminists everywhere.

  The Honorable Joanna Churchfield.

  “The Most Admired Woman in America.”

  That was the title of last week’sNewsweek, with Secretary Churchfield on the cover. It hadn’t always been that way.

  As one might expect, Secretary Churchfield’s appointment to the nation’s preeminent defense post had been sparked with controversy. Despite her impressive credentials—she’d retired from the air force as the second female three-star general in the history of the service—many in Congress and the public questioned whether a woman had the proper temperament to lead the largest military in the world. An admittedly sexist attitude, but gender stereotypes are deeply rooted and difficult to change. To the president’s credit, he doggedly withstood the criticism and never wavered in his support for Churchfield. His faith was rewarded by her spectacular response to the events of September 11. She’d orchestrated a brilliantly efficient campaign in Afghanistan, winning admiration from even her harshest critics, and was continuing to methodically hunt out terrorist cells worldwide. In her press briefings, she’d further enhanced her reputation by coming across as hardnosed, competent, and ruthlessly uncompromising. Ironically, her sex only heightened her popularity. Americans relished the notion that bin Laden and his Al Qaeda goons were getting their asses kicked by a woman.

  The procession continued toward us. Churchfield’s high heels clicked loudly on the concrete floor, a concession to femininity that I found surprising. But I suppose being the head of the most powerful military figure in the world doesn’t make you any less a woman.

  She looked much as she did on TV: a tall, sharp-featured woman in her early fifties, auburn hair cut short and feathered stylishly over her ears; a lined face that hinted of stressful decisions and years spent in the sun; large, wide-set eyes that could harden instantly when annoyed by a reporter’s question.

  A nudge in my ribs. Then Amanda’s whispered voice: “She’s staring at you, Marty.”

  As if I hadn’t noticed.

  For the last ten paces or so, Secretary Churchfield’s eyes had been fixed on me. They were piercingly blue and seemed to look right through me. I tried to force myself to gaze back. Her eyes chilled, accepting the challenge. I realized getting into a stare-down with the SECDEF bordered on insanity, and looked away. As I did, I caught a tiny smile.

  “A mistake,” Simon murmured. “She now knows she can intimidate you.”

  I didn’t give a damn. She was the secretary of defense. Her job was to intimidate people.

  The clicking of the heels stopped. Secretary Churchfield and Senator Garber were eyeing me expectantly. So was everyone else in the entourage.

  I was about to initiate the introductions, when another figure entered the side door, talking loudly on a cell phone. He ended the call and hurried over to us.

  He was a short, heavy-set man with a square, flat-top haircut and an even squarer face. He moved with the rigid gait of someone marching in parade, and the arrogant set of his jaw made it clear he was someone accustomed to getting his way. Even though I’d never seen him before, his medaled army uniform and the four stars he wore immediately told me who he was.

  As the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General David Markel, came closer, I felt his eyes seek me out. Like Churchfield, he seemed to know exactly who I was. Unlike Churchfield, his bushy eyebrows and fierce gaze gave him a slightly unbalanced look. Watching him, I was reminded of what Amanda had said:The word at thePentagon is, Markel’s a little nuts. Even the other chiefs are afraid of him.

  Lucky me.

  “Senator,” I said, finally moving forward, “my condolences for your loss—”

  Senator Garber’s grip was firm, Churchfield’s even firmer, and General Markel’s was downright paralyzing.

  He played all the textbook power games. He held my hand longer than necessary, easing forward into my personal space so I would have to step back. He rarely blinked and spoke in a menacing growl that he must have spent years practicing. The man was all about intimidation, and I had to admit it was working. He gave me the willies.

  By contrast, Admiral Wheeler, Churchfield’s military assistant, had a voice that sounded as if he had a mouth full of cotton, and his hand felt like a damp rag, which I thought was fitting for a navy man.

  As we cycled through the introductions, General Morley and Major Vega hung back, nodding along like bobble-head dolls. No one introduced the two Mutt-and-Jeff security men, who’d drifted off to the side and pretended to be invisible—a futile exercise, considering they were both the size of my garage. Mutt had a sandy brown buzz cut and no discernible neck. His partner, Jeff, had a neck like a deflated tire, at least three chins, and tightly curled red hair that reminded me of a Berber carpet.

  For a parent who’d lost a child, Senator Garber showed remarkable composure. Only by looking into his eyes could you see pain. After donning the latex gloves the med techs had given him, Garber contemplated Simon, Amanda, and me, then said quietly, “What have you learned?”

  Simon made no move to respond. I ordered the med techs to notify the forensic team that we’d be up in a minute. When they departed, I answered Garber, carefully choosing my words. “Senator, we have indications your son might have been murdered.” I checked out Churchfield and Markel; she didn’t even bat an eyelash at this; he did—twice. I continued, “But at this point we’re not certain.”

  My eyes returned to Markel, who was about to speak. Churchfield touched his arm. When he glance
d over, she shook her head once.

  Markel’s mouth obediently closed. He stood there, his face blank. Watching this exchange, I was reminded of a pit bull being restrained by his master.

  Garber asked, “When will you know, Agent Collins?”

  “It’s difficult to say, Senator. Perhaps later this afternoon, when forensics completes some of their analysis.”

  Garber glanced at Simon, who backed me up with a nod.

  “What you’re telling us,” Secretary Churchfield said, sounding puzzled, “is that you’re not convinced General Garber was actually murdered?”

  “It’s too early to make any definitive conclusions, Madam Secretary,” I said.

  “So you still could decide the death was accidental?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I could almost see the gears in her head crank away as she tried to mesh this with the information Doc Bowman had almost certainly relayed to her. “I see,” she said finally.

  But her eyes continued to dissect me. Trying to determine whether she could believe me.

  Garber said to Simon, “Now about those problems with cooperation you mentioned earlier—”

  “Problems?” Churchfield said. “What problems? Why wasn’t I told about this? I’ve instructed everyone to cooperate fully.” She looked around accusingly.

  “Most have been resolved, ma’am,” Simon said. “We have a few minor issues remaining. One concerns the passengers on base that we still need to interview—”

  He looked directly at General Markel.

  Markel met his gaze with a thin smile. He said amiably, “You’re a goddamn liar, Lieutenant.”

  Simon’s face remained expressionless.

  Churchfield said, “General Markel, please—”

  “Madam Secretary,” Markel said. “The lieutenant is implying the military isn’t fully cooperating. It’s not true.”

  Simon said, “We’re still waiting for those passengers, General.”

  Markel smiled again. “Tell the man, Chuck.”