Murder in the Supreme Court (Capital Crimes Series Book 3) (4 page)

“Sold. I’ll pick you up at seven. Where do you live?”

There was a long pause. “Do you like Indian food?” she asked.

“No.”

“How about Hungarian?”

“Of course I like Hungarian food, as long as I don’t have to steal the chicken. I am Hungarian, at least half of me. My mother was a stoic Swede.”

“Well, I have a favorite Hungarian restaurant, Csiko’s, on Connecticut Avenue, Northwest. It’s in the Broadmoor Apartment Building. How about meeting there at seven? I’ll make a reservation.”

“See you then, but give me a call if anything breaks sooner.”

“I will. Talk to you soon.”

It was true that Martin Teller was part Hungarian. It was
not true that he liked Hungarian food, especially goulash, or anything with paprika in it. As far as he was concerned, cooking Hungarian food for his father, and having to eat it, had sent his Nordic mother to an early grave.

“What about Sutherland’s friends? Have they been contacted?” Dorian Mars asked Teller.

“We’re doing it now,” Teller said.

“Not fast enough. The commissioner called. He’s up in arms.”

You sure turn a phrase, Dorian. Well, not to be outdone… “What does he expect, miracles?” Teller lighted a clove.

“I wish you wouldn’t smoke those things in here, Marty. They’re offensive.”

“Not to me.”

“Please.”

“Okay.” He carefully extinguished it, saving its expensive remains.

“Let’s go over it,” Mars said. “Everybody in the Court has been interviewed?”

Teller shook his head and eyed the cold cigarette. “Of course not, Dorian. Setting up interviews with people in the Supreme Court takes time.”

“I understand that. What about the family?”

“Still working on it. The father, the shrink, is sort of impressive, strange but sure of himself, arrogant as hell, dresses good. The sister is getting her Ph.D. in California.”

“California what? California politics, California geography?”

“California, Dorian. That’s where she goes to school. She’s studying literature.”

“Classical? English?”

“Hungarian.”

“A Ph.D. in Hungarian literature?”

“Something like that. I haven’t met the deceased’s mother yet.”

“Why? Procrastination is the thief of time.”

“Because her only son has been shot dead in the Supreme Court, which tends to give a mother headaches.”

“Talk to her. Talk to anybody, but get something going fast. I’m under a hell of a lot of pressure from up top.”

“I understand,” Teller said.

“Are you coordinating with Justice?”

“Sure. We’re in touch every day.”

“Good. Marty, give me a gut feeling about this case. Who do you think?”

Teller shrugged. “It’s wide open. I wish I had even a solid hunch to give you, but I don’t. The only thing I will say is that it might be a woman.”

“Why?”

“His life-style. The kid was handsome, smart, a dedicated swinger, broads all over the place, probably lots of them mad at him. I’m going over after this meeting to check
out his bachelor pad in Georgetown. I had it sealed off the minute we heard he was dead.”

“A woman, huh?”

“Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes it makes sense to me, but then it comes off too much like a dime novel, a woman coming into the Supreme Court in the middle of the night and putting a bullet in his head while he sits in the Chief Justice’s chair. When I look at it that way, I end up leaning toward somebody who works in the Court. His coworkers didn’t like him much, either.”

“Why?”

“Power. He was on a power trip, from what I hear. Maybe he caught a justice in the john doing something he shouldn’t be doing and held it over his head, if you’ll pardon the visual.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous. Supreme Court justices are human, just like you and me. They go to the bathroom and—”

“I know, I know. Let’s get back to family and friends. The father, you say he’s strange. Is he strange enough to have killed his own son? And if so, why?”

Teller picked up his cigarette from the ashtray and put it between his lips.

“Don’t, Marty.”

“I won’t light it. The father? What father kills his only son?”

“It happens. Life’s a stage, and we’re all players on it.”

“You’re so right, boss… Look, Dorian, too many could have killed Clarence Sutherland. There seem to be as many motives as there are alibis. I’ll keep plugging. By the way, I ordered a wall chart for my office.”

“A chart?”

“Yeah, a flow chart, it’s called. I was getting confused with the Sutherland case so I thought I’d put it all on a chart. This chart has arrows and stars and even glitter letters
to highlight things. It might not mean much to you, but I wanted it. It was cheap.”

“How cheap?”

“A hundred. I billed the Sutherland case number.”

“A hundred?” Mars sighed. “I wish you’d cleared it with me first.”

“Sorry.”

“I’ll approve it. I’ll approve anything to see things move.”

“Things’ll move, believe me, Dorian.”

“I want to meet every morning here at nine until the Sutherland case is wrapped up.”

“Sure, bank on it, Dorian. Nine, right here, every morning.”

“Good.”

***

Teller drove to Clarence Sutherland’s Georgetown town house. A uniformed patrolman stood in front. Yellow tape had been strung across the entrance, and a sign on the door read NO ENTRANCE.

“How’s things?” Teller asked the patrolman.

“Not bad, Lieutenant. How’s with you?”

“Not bad. Anybody been around?”

“People from your division, that’s about it. Say, Lieutenant Teller, if you’re planning to be here for a little bit, how about letting me go for coffee?”

“Sure. Make it a half-hour. That’s all the time I’ve got.”

He entered a small foyer. To the left was a door leading to Sutherland’s apartment. A staircase to the right led to another apartment upstairs. Teller fished out a key, opened Clarence’s door and stepped inside.

The living room was large, lavishly decorated. A conversation pit formed by persimmon couches dominated the room. A large projection screen hovered over everything. Teller went to it and saw that it was linked to an elaborate television system that included a videotape recorder. Next
to it was a long bookcase on which dozens of videotape cartridges were neatly stacked.

He went to the bedroom. It was the same size as the living room. A circular king-sized bed was made to appear even larger by a mirror that spanned the wall behind it. There was a television projection screen in that room too, as well as an expensive stereo system within arm’s reach of the bed.

“What the hell is that?” he asked himself as he approached a panel of buttons and dials next to the bed. He pressed one button, and a small chandelier made of tiny pieces of mirror rotated above the bed. He turned one of the dials. A magenta spotlight came on. It was aimed at the chandelier, and its beam flashed off the mirror chips, creating a mosaic of twinkling light in every corner of the room.

“Lord,” Teller muttered as he played with the other dials and knobs. Soon, he had the room spinning in multicolored light, reds and blues, even a strobe effect that caught everything, including the hand he injected into its field, in stop-motion.

He shut off the lights and opened a drawer in a table next to the bed. He didn’t expect to find much. The initial search of the apartment had turned up an array of so-called recreational drugs, nothing of the hard variety but enough to send the kid to jail had it gone that way. A telephone book had been taken from the apartment and delivered to Teller at headquarters. He’d turned it over to another detective with instructions to contact every person listed in it.

He picked up the only item in the drawer, a diary of sorts. In it were dates and names, first names only, with initials following. What intrigued him were symbols next to each name. They’d been carefully drawn with a variety of colored pens, stars and circles, exclamation points, question
marks, and an occasional “Dynamite… Dull… Promising…”

“A busy boy,” Teller muttered to himself as he put the book in his raincoat pocket. In the good old days he’d have been called a cad.

He looked about the rest of the apartment, then returned to the living room, where he took a closer look at the videotapes on the bookcase. There were a few old movies, but most of them were disgusting corn porn. The label on a homegrown one read CINDY AND ME, APRIL. Touching stuff.

“Excuse me,” a voice said from the front door that Teller had failed to close behind him.

“Yeah?”

“Are you a detective?”

“Who are you?”

“Wally Plum. I live upstairs.”

“What can I do for you?”

“You can call off those goons outside. I live here, and I resent being stopped every time I come home.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. They let you in, don’t they?”

“That isn’t the point.”

Teller took a closer look at Wally Plum. He was thin and what was called good-looking, like many other young men around Washington. His features were angular, his skin surprisingly dark considering his blond hair and eyebrows. He’d begun balding prematurely; his hair was carefully arranged to maximize what he had. He wore a too-tight double-breasted charcoal gray suit, and a blue shirt with a white collar that was pinched together by a thin gold bar beneath a solid maroon tie.

“Mr. Plum,” Teller said, “I’m sorry for any inconvenience, but a murder has been committed—”

“I know that. Clarence was my friend.”

“Yeah? How close were you?”

Plum laughed. “If I tell you, will that make me a suspect?”

“Could be.”

“We were good friends. I rented my apartment from him.”

“He owned this place?”

“Yes.”

“Not bad on a law clerk’s salary.”

“He had help.”

“Family?”

“Yes.”

“Nice apartment. I was noticing his collection of tapes.”

Another laugh. “He had some good stuff.”

“What about this one?” He pulled CINDY AND ME, APRIL, from the shelf and handed it to Plum.

“Oh, that. We used to kid around sometimes.”

“What’d you do, take movies of yourselves?”

“Sure.”

Teller took the cartridge from Plum and returned it to the shelf. “The bedroom,” he said. “It looks like a setup.”

“It worked well for Clarence.”

Teller shook his head and crossed the living room to the couch. He pushed on a cushion with his fingertips, then sat on it. “You know, Mr. Plum, I do believe the world has passed me by.”

“How so?”

“All this sort of stuff. I don’t understand any of it.”

“Generation gap. Things change.”

“I know.” He lit a cigarette. “I have two daughters, and most of their talk is all Greek to me. Well, so long as you’re here, tell me about Clarence Sutherland.”

Plum sat in a chair near the door, crossed his legs. “What would you like to know?”

“Anything you can tell me. Start with what he especially liked to do.”

“You’ve seen the apartment.”

“I mean besides that.”

“There was nothing besides that.”

“Come on, he must have had hobbies, interests aside from chasing girls. Where did he like to hang out?”

“A lot of places.”

“Did you hang around with him in those places? Were you drinking buddies?”

“Clarence didn’t drink, maybe an occasional glass of wine.”

“Drugs?”

“No.”

“They found lots here in the apartment.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“I wish you did. I might be more inclined to cross you off as a potential suspect.” And if he believed that, he’d believe in the tooth fairy. Hell, maybe Mr. Plum did…

Plum raised his eyebrows. “Oh, that’s the way it is. Did Clarence use drugs? No, just soft stuff that everybody’s into—”

“Like what? Pot?”

“Yes.”

“Coke?”

“Once in a while. You
drink
. There’s that generation gap again.”

“I’m not in the mood to debate it with you,” Teller said.

“Good. Anything else I can tell you about Clarence?”

“Other friends. Who’d he hang out with besides you?”

“We didn’t hang out, Lieutenant.”

“Whatever you want to call it.”

“Clarence had many friends. Despite his prestigious family his friends included many sorts. Sometimes he enjoyed the low life. Clarence liked to get involved with strange types.”

“Give me some of them.”

“Names?”

“If you know them.”

“I don’t remember names. There were parties. He’d invite them, or meet them in a bar and—”

“Male, female?”

“Mostly female.”

“Mostly? Was he—?”

“Gay? No. Bisexual? No. Clarence was straight.”

“But sort of kinky.”

“Depends on your point of view. Look, Lieutenant, Clarence in
my
view was a normal, healthy American male, having a good time before it was time to settle down.”

“Did he have a steady girl friend? Somebody he saw regularly. Was he, forgive the expression, in love with anybody?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Do you know any woman who might have wanted to take a shot at him?”

“No.”

“Do you know any women who were in love with him?”

“Sure, a few. Clarence had charm to burn.”

“Name one.”

“Laurie Rawls.”

“From the Court?”

“Right. She drove him crazy, calling at odd hours, showing up when he was with somebody else and making scenes. That lady has a problem. She played the game, but deep down all she wanted was to have a brood of kids and keep the apple pies coming out of the oven.”

“Sounds like a nice girl.”

“If you’re into that.”

“Clarence wasn’t, I take it.”

“You take it right. I already told you—”

“What else can you tell me?”

“Nothing really. Sometimes he saw older women. It’s a
trend. Older women are into younger men these days. It makes them feel young.”

“I’d think it’d make them feel older.”

“Doesn’t seem to work that way. At any rate, he saw a few from time to time.”

“Names.”

“Don’t know them. Sorry.”