Margaret Truman's Experiment in Murder (38 page)

The streets were now choked with people who'd heard the news and needed to leave their homes and stores and to join others in shock. Official vehicles, their sirens blaring, converged on the scene from every direction as Smith managed to find a cab.

Once at the apartment, Annabel turned on the TV and Mac made everyone a scotch and soda. They sat transfixed in front of the set, the words and images on Channel 5, the Washington CNN affiliate, jarring yet unreal. The reporters tried to keep up with information being fed from various sources, switching to correspondents around the country. Much of what was being reported was speculation based upon rumors culled from unsubstantiated sources.

Mac ordered in Chinese food. As he paid the delivery man, the TV coverage shifted to a press conference from FBI headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. At the podium was the bureau's director.

“First of all,” he said, “I urge you to report responsibly and not react to rumors that naturally circulate in events like this. That said, former Wisconsin senator George Mortinson, candidate for the presidency of the United States, was killed this afternoon by an alleged assailant identified as Iskander Itani, twenty-six years old, a resident of San Francisco. Senator Mortinson was pronounced dead at the scene. He'd been greeting visitors to a campaign rally at the Ronald Reagan Building at the time of the shooting. The alleged assailant was immediately taken into custody by the Secret Service and other agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He is being held in a secure facility, the location of which I am not at liberty to disclose.”

Tatum, who'd been sitting with his elbows on his knees, face cupped in his hands, sat up and said, “San Francisco.” Mac, Annabel, and Cindy looked at him but kept their attention riveted on the screen.

The director continued. “I know that it is not unusual for some to suspect that a plot of some sort, a terrorist plot, is behind such assassinations, but I assure you that we have absolutely no information at this time to indicate that anyone was involved besides the alleged assassin.

“Your FBI has agents investigating the alleged assassin's background and is attempting to ascertain the motive for this senseless killing. I'll now take a few questions, but bear in mind that I am not able to discuss any aspect of the investigation.”

A chorus of voices erupted in the room, reporters trying to outshout each other to gain his attention. The director dismissed the first three questions but answered the fourth, which was posed by a reporter from the
Washington Post.
“How can you say that you've ruled out a conspiracy? From the little we've learned so far, the shooter is an Arab.”

“Mr. Itani is an Arab American, but let's not jump to premature conclusions,” the director said sternly. “We'll schedule regular updates as further information becomes known to us.”

With that, he left the podium, a cacophony of questions following him from the room.

Mac turned down the sound as Annabel served the Chinese dishes. They had little to say, nor did they eat with any relish. Nic and Cindy left at nine and went to her apartment, where they watched television until falling asleep on the couch. Mac and Annabel also stayed up taking in the steady stream of information, real and imagined, from the CNN studios, and they, too, made it to bed after dozing off. Unlike the previous romantic night for the Mortinsons, the Smiths, and Nic and Cindy, this one was somber for everyone involved.

Mac and Annabel had just gotten up the following morning and hadn't yet turned on the TV or read the newspaper, whose front page carried the sort of huge, boldfaced headline used only for meaningful, usually grim, events. Annabel answered the phone.

“It's Nic,” Tatum said breathlessly. “Do you have the TV on?”

“We just got up.”

“Turn it on quick!”

She did as the anchor was saying, “Let's go back to our correspondent in San Francisco.”

A young familiar female face filled the screen. “As I reported a few minutes ago, we've learned that the alleged killer of Senator George Mortinson, Iskander Itani, had been treated by a local psychiatrist here in San Francisco, Dr. Sheldon Borger. According to our sources, Mr. Itani was a patient of Dr. Borger's for a number of weeks and actually lived in the doctor's Nob Hill residence during that time. Dr. Borger is a well-known, well-respected physician whose patient roster includes a number of famous people from show business and industry. Attempts to reach the doctor have failed, but we will continue to try.”

Annabel handed the phone to her husband.

“You heard it, Mac?” Tatum asked excitedly.

“Yes.”

“I knew it yesterday when I heard that he was from San Francisco. I just knew it, damn it!”

“Hold on, Nic. That's a pretty big leap.”

“What is it, Mac, a coincidence? Can't be. Sheila Klaus is a patient of Borger, who just happens to be a CIA-funded shrink doing mind-control experiments on unsuspecting men and women. She returns from seeing him and runs down Mark Sedgwick. Now another ‘patient' of Dr. Borger, who stayed in his house, travels to D.C. and guns down the next president of the United States.
Coincidence?
Give me a break.”

Smith's legal instincts told him to poke holes in Nic's conclusion, but he couldn't. As circumstantial as Tatum's evidence was—and it didn't even meet that standard—something told Mac that what the young psychologist was saying rang true.

“Let's say what you say is valid, Nic. What do you intend to do about it?”

“Tell the story to anybody who'll listen. Just before I called you, I got a call from the FBI. They want me at headquarters this morning to go over again what I saw yesterday. I'll start by telling them. If they won't listen, won't give it any credence, I'll go to the media.”

“The press will run with it even though there's no proof of what you're claiming.”

“That's not my problem. What's important is that Borger and others like him be stopped, that the CIA's insane experiments stop.”

It occurred to Smith that accusing Borger of having manipulated George Mortinson‘s killer could put Tatum on the receiving end of a slander suit. But judging from the zeal he exhibited on the phone, that possibility wouldn't deter him. But a much larger issue came to the attorney. If Borger was what Tatum claimed he was, a man capable of masterminding two murders including the leading candidate for president of the United States, he wouldn't hesitate to eliminate someone accusing him of those crimes, nor would his backers, that element presumably from the CIA that supported Borger in his efforts.

“Do what you think you have to do, Nic,” Smith said, “but be careful how you go about it.”

Smith ended the conversation with Tatum and told Annabel what Nic intended to do.

“He's walking into a hornets' nest,” she said.

“A hornets' nest would be a walk on the Mall compared with what he's about to get into.”

 

CHAPTER

45

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON, D.C.

Detective Duane Woodhouse had been involved in numerous cases over the years in which jurisdiction had become a thorny issue, with both the FBI and the SFPD withholding information, even evidence from each other. But the barriers seemed to have come down now that the next president had been gunned down in cold blood. This wasn't your run-of-the-mill local turf war; Woodhouse and the San Francisco FBI director shared everything they knew.

*   *   *

In Washington, investigators into the assassination went down every possible avenue in search of information.

An attempt was made to locate a taxi driver who might have taken Itani to the rally. It resulted in two dozen cabbies whose logs indicated that they'd dropped passengers off at the Ronald Reagan Building early that afternoon. They were shown a photo of Itani, but no one remembered having had such a fare, or in one case would not admit it. The driver who'd picked up Itani and a second man remembered them but opted to not tell the authorities because his resident status in the country was shaky. He didn't need trouble with Immigration.

Other agents questioned the flight attendant who'd worked the flight Itani had taken to Washington from San Francisco. She remembered him well, even knew the drinks she'd served him.

“Was he traveling alone? she was asked.

“There were two other men with him. I mean, they sat on either side of him in coach, but I can't say that they were traveling together. I mean, I don't know if they were friends before the flight.”

“Can you describe them?”

“Oh, wow, I think so.” She laughed. “One of them kept complaining about the size of the seats in coach. They were big guys. I know that they talked to each other, although the one in the middle, the one who shot the senator, didn't say much. He asked me for a drink, a Tom Collins or something like that. We don't carry that drink on board so one of the big men told me how to make it.” She welled up. “Is he really the man who shot the senator? It's scary that he was that close to me.” She broke into tears and hugged herself.

Itani was held in isolation and under twenty-four-hour guard in a cell at Fort McNair, the two-hundred-year-old army base at 4th and P streets, on land where the Potomac and Anacostia rivers merge. Teams of FBI special agents took turns around the clock interrogating him.

“When did you decide to kill the senator?” they asked.

Itani's answer: “I want to see my mother and brothers.”

“You have to answer our questions before you can see them.”

Itani hadn't been told that his family had been taken into protective custody in San Francisco and flown on a government aircraft to Washington, where they were being held in secured quarters at the Washington Naval Yard, not far from where Itani was sequestered and where the Washington Nationals baseball team played its home games.

“Why did you kill Senator Mortinson?”

Itani: “He had to die.”

“Where did you get the weapon?”

Itani: “I want to see Elena.”

“Who's Elena?”

Itani: “I want to see my family.”

“Did anyone help you plan killing Senator Mortinson?”

“No. He was a bastard. He had to die. I want to see my family.”

Armed with information gathered from the flight attendant, the agents pressed Itani to admit that he'd traveled from San Francisco with two other men, which he vehemently denied. Because they didn't have tangible information about his alleged traveling companions, they were unable to resolve that lead, at least until some corroborating evidence surfaced.

And so it went, interrogation after interrogation, the agents' efforts stonewalled at every turn. Some leading attorneys called for Itani to have the benefit of legal counsel and to be properly arraigned, their protests countered by FBI and other government agency claims that Itani represented a threat to national security and was being held as an enemy combatant.

And conspiracy buffs ratcheted up their theories that Itani was part of a larger plot.

*   *   *

In San Francisco, Detective Duane Woodhouse had another meeting with the FBI's regional director, who outlined for him the result of the questioning of the flight attendant.

Woodhouse laughed. “I complain about those small coach seats all the time,” he said. “You have names of the other men, the big guys as she described them?”

“Yes, based upon their seat assignments.” The director named them.

“Frankly, that's disappointing,” Woodhouse said. “I thought the names you came up with might have been different.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“You'll follow up on their identities.”

“We already have. The names on their tickets, and the IDs used at Security, don't match up with anyone. False names.”

“Which means they
were
traveling with him. Why else go to the bother of using phony identities?”

The director ended the meeting by asking how Woodhouse's investigation of Elena Marciano's murder was progressing.

“We're making progress,” he said. “We sent officers to boatyards in the area where her body surfaced to see whether anyone had rented a boat on the day that the ME determined she'd died. It would have been a wasted exercise if the killer owned his or her own boat, but it was worth a stab. And it paid off. The owner of a boat rental company says that he rented a boat to two men early on the morning in question. One of them signed the rental agreement and gave his name and address: Jacob Gibbons, the same guy who was at Borger's house, Borger's so-called business associate. The boatyard owner provided sketchy descriptions of the men, one big and ‘tough looking,' as he put it, the other also big but ‘sort of puffy.' He didn't have a name for the man with Gibbons, but we're assuming that it was Peter Puhlman, the other guy at Borger's house.”

“Another connection between Dr. Borger and the murder,” the FBI director mused. “Anything else come out of it?”

“Yeah. We ran the names of Gibbons and Puhlman through the FBI's national database, and the results came back just before I came here. Gibbons is a former prizefighter who'd had run-ins with the law in San Francisco over the years, mostly connected with loan sharks and minor-league hoodlums. His name also surfaced as the result of what was described by Washington cops as having been involved in a minor bar fracas there. No arrests were made, but names of the participants were noted and entered into the daily report. This is what you'll find interesting. The dustup in the bar occurred just a few days before the assassination.”

“Then Gibbons was in D.C. at that time.”

“Right. And if what we suspect is correct, he was one of the two men the flight attendant said were with Itani on the plane.”