Murder in the Supreme Court (Capital Crimes Series Book 3) (12 page)

“True. I don’t know how he does it. Somebody told me the other day he’s written more than twenty books. I see things by him in magazines too. I hope I’m half that active when I get—”

It was a smile intended to put him at ease. “Yes, my husband is old, detective, and has his physical problems, but he doesn’t stop for a moment. He’s a very virile man.”

He wished she hadn’t used the word
virile
. Why mention something so intimate to a stranger? He shifted gears and asked her whether she enjoyed being in the public eye.

“No, I hate it. I’m a very simple person, a very private one.”

“I’m sure you are.”

He was getting fed up with her posturing. He wished she’d get to the point. When she didn’t, and after a few
more meaningless exchanges, he put it to her. “Why did you come here this morning, Mrs. Conover? Does it by any chance have to do with the Sutherland case?”

She pursed her lips and looked away.

“If you have something to contribute, anything, you might as well do it now. Frankly, I can use all the help I can get, even if it’s painful for you. We can talk frankly and privately.”

She looked at him. “Can we? I mean, can I discuss things with you and be
sure
it will stay in this room?”

Teller sat back and lit a clove. “That depends,” he said as a blue cloud of smoke headed for the ceiling. “If you want to share a confidence with me, I’m sure there’ll be no problem in keeping it confidential, but if it has a bearing on the investigation, I can’t promise. I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

“Funny, but I do trust you, detective. You have that kind of face.”

“Thank you.” (What the hell kind of face was
that
?)

“I’m concerned about how I’ll be seen by you… and others. After all, a wife is supposed to stand by her husband for better or for worse. A wife can’t testify in court against her husband, can she?”

“She can’t be forced to. Can if she wants to.”

“Then you understand my dilemma.”

“No, I don’t. You haven’t told me anything yet.”

“I’m sorry.” He couldn’t see any tears but she dabbed a corner of her eye with a tiny embroidered handkerchief. “All right, Detective Teller. Here.” She reached into a floppy oversized purse, pulled out a brown paper bag and handed it to him. “Go ahead, look at it,” she said.

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, reached inside the bag and pulled out a Charter Arms Pathfinder .22-caliber pistol with a seventy-six millimeter barrel.

“Yours?” he asked.

“My husband’s.”

“And?”

She looked down at her lap. “It might be the gun used to kill Clarence. It’s the same kind of pistol described in the newspapers.”

Teller weighed the pistol, examined it. “It’s easy to ascertain whether it was the murder weapon.”

“Yes, you can do that sort of thing, can’t you?”

“That’s right. But before we get to the technology, Mrs. Conover, I’d like to know more about why you think this weapon might be the one used in Clarence Sutherland’s murder?”

“I told you, it fits the description in the papers.”

“So do thousands of other .22-caliber handguns. If everybody who owned one turned it in after reading about Sutherland, we wouldn’t have room to store them.”

“But those other people don’t work in the Supreme Court, nor did they know about Clarence or have a reason to—” She stopped abruptly.

“Are you actually telling me you think that your husband might have used this weapon to kill Clarence Sutherland?”

She gasped, opened her eyes, then shook her head. “
No
, I’m not suggesting anything like that. He kept the gun in his chambers. I guess someone who knew that took it to kill Clarence.”

“If it’s the murder weapon.”

“Well… but you can find that out, can’t you?”

Teller shrugged. “How did
you
know your husband had this weapon, Mrs. Conover?”

“I… Justice Conover and I once had an argument, a silly spat. He waved the gun at me. It was over as fast as it started.”

“You argued in his chambers?”

“Yes.”

“And he waved a gun at you?”

“It was all so silly, just—”

“Maybe life has passed me by, Mrs. Conover, but from where I sit a man waving a gun at his wife sounds like more than just a silly spat.”

She stamped her foot. “I’m sorry I ever
mentioned
it. God… I thought it was right to bring the gun to you. I was just trying to help…”

“Did that
spat
with your husband involve Clarence Sutherland, by any chance?”

“Of course not. I don’t remember what it was about.”

Teller looked at her hard. “All right, I’ll have ballistics check this out.”

“There’s something else… I’m afraid…”

“You think your husband is capable of killing you?”

“He’s… he can be volatile at times. He’s very jealous and imagines things—”

“Was he jealous of Clarence Sutherland?”

She opened her eyes and dabbed at them with her handkerchief. “He’s jealous of
everyone
.”

“I’m going to take the pistol to ballistics now, Mrs. Conover. You’re free to stay if you’d like, but you don’t have to.”

“I think I’d like to leave,” she said. “I do ask that if it is the murder weapon you let me know before anyone else.”

“We’ll see.”

He helped her on with her coat and held the door open. “It was gutsy of you to come forward like this,” he said, not meaning it but feeling he had to say it.

“I had to,” she said. “Thank you for being so decent about everything…”

He watched her move off to the elevators, then went to the ballistics lab, found its director and handed him the pistol. “The Sutherland case,” he said. “It’s hot.”…

The chief of ballistics came to Teller’s office immediately
after the tests. “It’s the weapon,” he said. “Perfect match. Bullet and muzzle. No question.”

“Prints?”

“Partials, maybe enough for a positive ID, maybe not. But there’s no doubt about the weapon itself, Marty. Sutherland was shot with it.”

Teller spun around in his chair and looked out his window over a gray, wet Washington.

“Who’s it belong to?” the lab chief asked.

“Somebody I wish it didn’t. Keep this cool until I have a chance to talk to Mars. Not a damn word to anybody.”

“Okay, Marty, but move fast. These things are hard to sit on for very long.”

Ten minutes later Teller was meeting with Dorian Mars. He told him about Cecily Conover’s visit, her handing over the murder weapon. Mars listened, no change of expression. After Teller had finished, Mars lit his pipe, clicked the stem against his teeth and said, “Silence is golden, Marty.”

“So I’ve heard. The lid stays on?”

“Tight.”

“How long?”

“I’ll get to the commissioner right away. Hey, this guy is the senior justice of the United States Supreme Court—”

“Owning the gun doesn’t mean he used it, Dorian. His wife says someone must have taken it from his chambers. Maybe she did. Implying her husband just might have done it… a jealous man, and really diverting suspicion from herself… after all, she’s a few light-years younger than he is. Maybe he was getting in her way. The bloom was off the rose of playing a justice’s wife?…”

Mars dropped the pipe on his desk and picked up his phone. “I’ll call you later, Marty. Stay available.”

As Teller was leaving he heard Mars say into the phone, “…I don’t care what he’s doing or where he’s doing it, this can’t wait, and if you make
me
wait you’ll be a new statistic on the unemployment rolls.”

Susanna Pinscher called Martin Teller at three that afternoon.

“You promised to keep me informed about any developments on your end. You didn’t.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Yes, you do. I’m talking about the gun you got into your hot hands this morning.”

It took him a moment, finally, “I don’t believe it.”

“Come on, do you think something that important can be kept a secret?”

“Who told you?”

“It doesn’t matter, somebody here at Justice.”

“It does matter, damn it. If there’s a leak from here I want to plug it.”

“Later. The important thing is that you have the murder weapon. What now?”

“It’s being discussed. It’s not like your run-of-the-mill murder weapon, Susanna. The damn thing belongs to Justice Temple Conover. Not only that, his wife brings it to MPD, which is not what a run-of-the-mill wife does.”

“Can we get together?”

“Sure. When?”

“A drink, dinner.”

He was about to leave his office at six to meet her when Dorian Mars came through the door.

“I was just leaving,” Teller said.

“It’ll take a minute. Look, Marty, first of all the commissioner, along with other heavy rollers, wants the Conover thing hushed up for a few days.”

“It’s probably all over town already,” Teller said. He didn’t mention his conversation with Susanna.

“Maybe so,” Mars said, “but I want it kept tight to our vest.”

“Tight to?… Right. I really have to run.”

“One more minute, Marty. You told me that you were working close with Justice.”

“I have a contact.”

“Maybe you should find another one.”

“Why?”

“The scuttlebutt is that Justice has developed an important lead in the case.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, but I sure as hell want to. It’s still MPD’s responsibility to resolve this case and I’ll be damned if I’ll stand still for those people over at Justice doing our job and rubbing our noses in it.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Fill me in at the nine o’clock meeting.”

“I’ll do my best.”

***

He met Susanna at Coolbreeze’s, a neighborhood bar on Eleventh Street, where they ordered Italian specials of the day from a blackboard and a bottle of Corvo red. Teller told her about Cecily Conover’s visit. When he was finished, she asked what the MPD intended to do with the evidence.

“Nothing for the moment. Conover will have to be questioned again, but right now everybody’s bracing for a confrontation with the Court’s senior justice over the fact the murder weapon belongs to him.”

“I think everybody at MPD is very naive,” she said.

“Why?”

“I guarantee you that by noon tomorrow the gun will be front-page material. It’s already all over Justice, and I’m sure it’s the same at MPD.”

Teller nodded. “You’re right, but it sure isn’t going to come from me. Now, let’s talk about you and Justice. You sounded annoyed on the phone that I hadn’t called you with the gun story. You do understand why, don’t you?”

She shook her head and sipped her wine. “No, I don’t. We agreed to share information. Telling me isn’t like telling a reporter from the
Post
.”

“I know that, but I was in a spot. While we’re on the subject of sharing information, what’s the so-called big breakthrough at Justice?”

She shrugged. “What big breakthrough?”

Teller held up his index finger. “No games, Susanna. I leveled with you—”

“Only after I called you on it.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve filled you in about Conover’s gun. Your turn.”

“What I came up with is minor league compared to the gun. I’ve been assigned a couple of nice bright young interns to help with the investigation. I had them go back over
everything ever written about public figures in the case, Conover, Childs, Poulson, Dr. Sutherland, anybody who piqued a journalist’s interest.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t know what else to have them do. Frankly, Marty, it’s all been a dead end for me. I envy you having the murder weapon plopped in your lap.”

Teller bit his lip and poured the last of the wine into their glasses. He hated to admit she was right. He hadn’t done a thing to bring about possession of the pistol, couldn’t point to painstaking digging or innovative thought.

She continued. “At any rate, one of my interns came up with an intriguing bit.”

“Go ahead.”

“Chief Justice Poulson has been a patient of Dr. Chester Sutherland. What do you think?” she asked.

“A man is entitled to see a doctor, including a shrink.”

She looked annoyed. “But if that shrink’s son was his murdered clerk, and the patient happens to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?”

“Sure, it’s an interesting linkup—”

“What if Clarence Sutherland knew about Poulson’s psychiatric problems through his father and held it over his head? Remember I told you about my lunch with Laurie Rawls, how she said no one could understand why Clarence wasn’t fired? Even granted his ability. Maybe that’s how he kept his job.”

Teller said, “And maybe Poulson killed his law clerk to keep his mouth shut?”

“Maybe.”

“If so, the kid must have come up with some pretty damaging information. Do you think Poulson’s gay?”

She shook her head, then changed tack. “Who knows? Stranger things have come out. A homosexual Chief Justice would blow the lid off the whole nation, not to mention the
career of the President who appointed him, a President awash in moral rectitude and a Chief Justice who publicly is known to share his sentiments…”

Teller nodded. Farfetched, but so was Watergate and the idiotic Bay of Pigs… “By the way,” Teller said, “when you mentioned Laurie Rawls it reminded me of something. I talked to a close friend of Clarence Sutherland, a guy named Plum. Plum says Laurie was crazy in love with Clarence, called him at all odd hours, made huge scenes when he was with somebody else.”

“It seems to fit his pattern. I want to see her again. I think I could keep our relationship going. I must say I like her—I’d hate to see her come up guilty.”

“Come on, lady, you’re investigating a murder. I’ll take whatever, whoever I can get. You get that way after a few years in this business.”

He paid the check and they went outside. “How are your kids?” he asked.

“Fine. How are yours?”

“Good, last I heard. Nightcap?”

“Okay.”

“I’d suggest my place but the cleaning woman hasn’t been in for six months.”

She took his arm. “Mine was in this morning.”

They sat in her living room for several hours, talking about their lives, families, exchanging gossip about people in Washington, and some of the cases they’d been involved with.