I run through yards and sidewalks, not breaking my pace, not wondering if anyone can see me or whether my actions seem suspicious, just racing back toward my Triumph with Jonathan Liu’s laptop tucked under my arm.
Q: Were you able to determine a manner of death for Mrs. Casper, the decedent?
A: No. The deceased sustained a fatal gunshot wound to the head. The evidence points to either homicide or suicide, but does not rule out either possibility.
Q: But can’t you examine the scene of the death and the body and determine how she died?
A: Usually. The crime scene, autopsy, toxicology, and ballistics reports usually are enough to tell the story of how someone died. But sometimes forensic pathology can be manipulated to mislead and misinform. Evidence can be warped to hide the truth.
Q: Murder can be made to look like suicide, and suicide can be made to look like murder.
A: Precisely.
I reach my bike, parked a half mile down on Albemarle Street. I zip the laptop into the satchel on the back of the Triumph and kick the bike to life. My chest is burning and sweat is dripping into my eyes, but at least now I have wheels. The sky is making noises about rain, which on a list of things I need in my life right now is just about dead last.
Q: Who discovered the body?
A: The juvenile, Benjamin, did. At least according to his father, Professor Casper. His father retained counsel for him and never allowed us to interview Benjamin.
Q: Can you describe the scene he found?
A: Her body was lying flat on the floor, with the gun resting in her left hand. There was significant blood spatter on the walls, shower curtain, floor—well, virtually everywhere. It was a fairly small bathroom, and as I’d said before, he hugged and held his mother postmortem. In doing so, the body was moved somewhat, and some of the blood spatter was disturbed.
I ride the Triumph down Connecticut, past the UDC’s Van Ness campus, my mind racing through the scenarios and wondering how I can figure this all out. C’mon, now, Ben, focus—drive slowly, observe traffic rules, and FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON—
Wait. There’s a cop across the way, idling at the light, westbound on Tilden. Take it slow, but not too slow, don’t look over too much, just cruise through the intersection—
Q: Did your bloodstain pattern analysis indicate where the decedent had been standing at the time the weapon was fired?
A: Yes. You see, a blood droplet in free fall will take the shape of a sphere. When it strikes a surface and a well-formed stain is produced, it’s easy to determine the angle at which the droplet struck the surface. If there are enough bloodstains, it’s possible to determine the location of the victim and the relative position of the weapon.
Q: And Doctor, in doing that analysis, the area of origin—in this case the exit wound—was nearly six inches lower than you would have expected based on Mrs. Casper’s height and the location of the exit wound, true?
A: That’s true.
Q: Which might lead you to conclude Mrs. Casper was crouching, leaning over, flinching—something like that?
A: It might.
Q: So it would be consistent with a murder scenario. It would be consistent with the juvenile overtaking his mother by force, placing a gun against her head, and pulling the trigger?
A: It could be.
Q: Or sneaking up on her while she was bent over?
A: Possibly.
Q: And the fact that the juvenile’s fingerprint was found on the weapon—would that not make this possibility more likely still?
A: Yes, it would.
Rain starts to fall. Shit. It’s hard enough to navigate the Triumph with electricity running through my veins and my thoughts scattered in twenty directions. I need to keep this bike upright and moving. I need to get to a hotel in one piece.
I need to find out what’s on Jonathan Liu’s laptop.
Q: Professor Casper, I know this is difficult, but please tell us how you came upon the scene in question.
A: When I got upstairs, I knew immediately something was wrong. I could see my wife sprawled out on the bathroom floor. I—I knew—I’m sorry. I just—it’s so hard—
Q: That’s okay, Professor Casper. Take your time. If you’d like a glass of water…
A: Our son, Benjamin, was bent over her, crying. His arms were tucked under her, like he was trying to hug her. He was…saying good-bye to her, I think.
Q: And where was the gun?
A: In my wife’s hand. I’m sure Benjamin didn’t do this. I’m sure he didn’t kill her. As much as I loved my wife, I have to believe she did this to herself. Please, Your Honor—don’t take away my son, too.
The rain is kicking up now into a full-scale downpour. I have to get off the road. I can’t think straight right now and I can’t afford—
Wait, Calvert Street, the Omni hotel—do I have time to turn?
I make a late right turn, my top-of-the-line wheels doing their best—
But I got too greedy. The bike flies out from under me, skidding across the slick intersection and crashing into a light pole.
I’m not doing so well, either. I slide about ten feet on my right side. My leg is going to need some work. But no broken bones. At least I wore my helmet. A lesson to all you kids out there.
The intersection is empty this time of night. Good for me. More good news: the bike stayed in one piece, too, I notice as I get her upright.
The bad part?
The screen on Jonathan Liu’s laptop is splintered into pieces.
When Anne Brennan comes out of her condo building the next morning, she catches my eye from across the street and does a double take. She points to herself as a question and I nod.
“Ben,” she says when she crosses the street. I can only imagine how I look to her. Another sleepless night at another hotel after I tried in vain to resurrect Jonathan Liu’s laptop.
She reacts badly when I give her the news about the Chinese lobbyist. Bad as in scared, which is the appropriate reaction. Everyone associated with Diana Hotchkiss seems to be falling on hard times these days.
“What in the world is going on?” she whispers to me, shading her eyes with a hand. She’s a nice midwestern girl, fun-loving and sweet—not cut out for this kind of thing.
“I don’t know, Anne. That’s what I’m trying to find out.” This isn’t exactly an ideal locale for a conversation, standing in the middle of a busy sidewalk in the U Street Corridor, but this whole affair is so bizarre that this rendezvous seems to fit right in.
I take her by the shoulders. “Listen, Anne. I thought I knew Diana. But I guess I didn’t. I didn’t know about Jonathan Liu or Alexander Kutuzov. And I didn’t know she was taking medication for depression.”
I can see from Anne’s reaction that she didn’t know that last part, either.
“What I’m saying is, I don’t know what I don’t know. But something was going on with Diana. And whether you’ve been holding back purposely or you don’t realize it, I think you know something you haven’t told me.”
She draws back, like she’s been accused. She places a hand at the nape of her neck. “I’m not holding back. I swear. Ask me anything.”
I struggle to even
know
what to ask. “The White House,” I say, recalling my conversation with Jonathan Liu. “Did Diana have any connection to the White House?”
“Well, c’mon, Ben. She was Craig Carney’s aide. Isn’t he one of President Francis’s best friends?”
I sigh. She’s right, of course. Craig Carney is deputy director of the CIA and one of the president’s closest allies. He probably calls the White House his second home. Diana probably did, too.
“Diana was there all the time,” Anne says. “She was on a first-name basis with Libby.”
The First Lady, she means. Back when Blake Francis was a member of Congress, before he was elected governor of New York, he married Libretta Rose, a socialite and heiress to a jewel company’s fortune. Libby Rose Francis bankrolled his successful gubernatorial race, and eight years later he was elected president.
“And you know how Diana talked about President Francis,” she adds. “It was like he walked on water.”
I do recall that. “What about Operation Delano?” I ask. “Does that ring a bell?”
Anne’s darting eyes freeze. Recognition. Her mouth parts and she looks at me, then thinks twice about responding.
“Tell me,” I plead.
“I know that word. Delano, I mean. Not Operation Delano, but—I heard Diana say it over the phone one time. She was on her cell phone. I don’t know who she was talking to. But I remember it because it’s not a name you hear often. It was FDR’s middle name, right?”
“Right.”
“I think what she was saying was, ‘I don’t care about Delano,’ or something like that. Like she was mad, arguing with someone. I remember asking her, when she got off the phone, if she was having an affair with FDR. Y’know, making a joke.”
“What did she say when you said that?”
The wind blows Anne’s bangs off her forehead. She looks younger than her years. Under different circumstances, I might—well, under different circumstances. “She changed the subject, that’s what she did. What do you think this means, Ben? What’s Operation Delano?”
“I don’t know,” I say. There’s no point in engaging in rank speculation, especially with Anne, who’s probably freaked out enough as it is. So I don’t tell her what I think.
I don’t tell her what I get when I add up Diana’s suspicious death, the involvement of the CIA, the Chinese government, and what appears to be a massive cover-up.
I don’t tell her that I think Diana Hotchkiss might be a spy for the US government.
Detective Ellis Burk drums his fingers on the steering wheel of his sedan. He says to me, “This story gets odder and odder the more you tell me.”
And he doesn’t know the half of it. I decided to leave out my trip to Jonathan Liu’s house last night. The cops can find out about his death on their own.
“Alexander Kutuzov.” Ellis nods. “I think I’ve heard of him.”
“Diana was sensitive about her relationship with him. That must mean something.”
“According to your friend Anne Brennan.”
“Right. According to Anne.”
“So I’m working on a secondhand account of how someone thinks someone else felt about something. That’s not exactly a rock-solid lead, Ben.”
“That’s why you’re an investigator, Ellis. Last time I checked, you follow up on leads. Does any of that sound familiar?”
“For cases I’m working on? Sure it does.” He looks over at me. “But this ain’t my case, partner. You’ll recall the CIA took it away from us local crime fighters. Does
that
sound familiar?”
Ellis is a good man. He could have told me to jump in a lake when I asked him to accompany me today. He’d have every right and every reason to. But something has raised his antennae, and Ellis is one of those cops who’s more concerned about right and wrong than he is about technicalities like jurisdictional boundaries.
Or maybe he just took one look at me and took pity on me. I’m sure I must look terrible. I peeked at myself in the mirror this morning and I looked like a character in a Tim Burton movie. And I’m not thinking clearly anymore. I’m seeing shadows where there are none, hearing footsteps that don’t exist. I need help.
“I owe you one, man,” I say.
“You’re damn right you do.” When I don’t answer, Ellis glances at me. “We’ll check this guy out, Ben. Don’t worry.”
We drive to 5th Street in Dupont Circle, where AK Collectibles is located. It sits in the middle of the block, just as Anne Brennan said it did. Inside, the place is like a rich person’s study, with soft lighting and dark oak bookshelves, some chocolate brown leather chairs, every book covered in a protective sheath. There is classical music playing overhead and a dour gentleman looking over his glasses at us from the cash register.
Ellis flashes his badge and tells the guy he wants to talk to Alexander Kutuzov. You’d think he’d asked for a meeting with Santa Claus or the tooth fairy from the salesman’s reaction. He picks up a phone and whispers into it.
We loiter for a few minutes. I nod to a locked glass case containing a three-volume set of
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen. I had a tutor, also named Jane, who liked the author so much she went to Jane Austen conventions where everyone dressed up like characters from her novels. I wish I liked anything that much. I wish my right leg hadn’t been torn up when I wiped out on the bike last night.
Also, I wish people weren’t trying to kill me.
I didn’t see the movie, but I loved Keira Knightley in
Domino
,
where she played a bounty hunter. Very hot.
“What’s the damage?” I ask the guy behind the counter, motioning toward the glass case containing the Jane Austen books.
He looks over his glasses at me again. “Volume two has some tearing in the rear flyleaf, and we made some small repairs to a couple of the pages in volume three.”
“No. I meant, how much does this cost?”
“Ah. You are looking at a first edition from 1813.”
Look, if you don’t want to tell me, just say so.
“Sixty thousand,” says a man who appears from a door behind the counter. His accent is heavy on the Russian. He is middle-aged, bald, and dressed in a black suit, black shirt, and black tie. His neck is the size of a tree trunk, and his face looks like it was cut out of a rock formation.
“Sixty thousand what?” I ask. “Rubles?”
The man seems amused at my naïveté. “You must not be a collector.” He looks at Ellis. “Now, Officer—”
“Detective.”
“Yes, Detective. Mr. Kutuzov is not here, obviously. Though I believe he is in the States at the moment, but I cannot tell you this with certainty.”
“But you know how to get hold of him,” Ellis says. Ellis hands his card over the counter.
Knightley was also good in one of those
Pirates of the Caribbean
movies and one of the
Star Wars
prequels.
The man takes Ellis’s card and gives him another card. Ellis takes it and reads it, as do I. It’s a card for a lawyer named Edgar Griffin, from Griffin and Weaver.
“That’s too bad,” says Ellis. “I was hoping to just have a quick chat with Mr. Kutuzov and then move along. But if you’re involving lawyers, then maybe we’ll have to take him to the police station for questioning. It makes the whole thing more antagonistic.”
“Antagonistic.” The Russian allows a brief smile. “I thought in America you were not punished for requesting the assistance of counsel.”
“You know a lot about our system for a guy who sells used books for a living,” I say. It isn’t really my place to chime in, but this guy doesn’t know that I’m a reporter and not a cop. Maybe Ellis and I can be a team, like on
Castle
,
except I’m not a crime novelist and Ellis isn’t a hot brunette, last time I looked.
Ellis says, “Tell Mr. Kutuzov, or his lawyer, that if I don’t hear from him soon, I’m going to come looking for him again, and it won’t be as enjoyable as this visit.”
The man stares at Ellis with a flare in his eyes, but he ultimately relents. “As you wish,” he says. “I shall pass on your inquiry.”
“Please do that.”
We’re back in the car a minute later. “Well, that didn’t take long,” says Ellis. “We’re barely in the door and the guy’s already lawyered up.” He looks at me. “It’s a start, Ben. We’ve shaken the tree. Now let’s see what falls out.”