Murder on the Potomac

Murder at the National Cathedral

“A vigorous tale of twists and turns … An authentic thriller.”

—The Washington Post Book World

Murder on Embassy Row

“Juicy … Satisfying entertainment … There is a sweetly romantic love affair and a lot of inside information about the decor, food and party life in Washington.… [Truman] gets better each time out.”

—People

Murder in the Supreme Court

“An adept murder mystery … about the murderous, evil ways of our nation’s leaders … Truman’s hints as to the real state of Washington are terrifying if true.”

—Chicago Sun-Times

Murder in Georgetown

“The kind of murder mystery that will keep you hanging on until the final pages.”

—United Press International

When Mackensie Smith closed his criminal-law practice to teach law at George Washington University, he vowed to find time to smell the proverbial roses. Which didn’t necessarily mean he planned to turn to gardening. In truth, he did not enjoy gardening, although his appreciation of a delicate scent, especially from Annabel’s throat or shoulders, was as strong as anyone’s.

For Smith, indulging in quiet leisure time could mean many things, for he was a man of many interests. But two purely personal pursuits were most important to him: spending more time with Annabel, his wife, and enjoying reflective hours on or along the banks of the Potomac River, a Washington symbol as surely as most of the city’s monuments. Like most rivers, it was one of the principal reasons the city had sprung up there in the first place.

Somehow, for Smith, the Potomac and Annabel were
kindred spirits. Not in any strained philosophical or poetic sense; Smith was too much the pragmatist for that sort of thinking. Maybe it was that both woman and river provided him with the sort of peace he craved. Annabel was an oasis of calm, as was the river. Both moved smoothly and with a touch of the stately, but no pretenses of grandeur. And there certainly was a parallel beauty. Annabel Reed-Smith was the loveliest female creature on earth as far as Mac was concerned. That she’d chosen him as her life’s mate was a reality for which he thanked Someone on a fairly irregular basis.

This day in late August, after having done so again, and taught a class and lunched with a friend from the State Department, he’d thought to stop by the river for an hour. Ordinarily, he would have found a secluded spot near the city and strolled the river’s bank, watching crews from the universities practice their smooth but arduous sport, appreciating lovers walking hand in hand or lounging on the grass, or just taken time to drink in the river’s tranquillity as it quietly slid past the city to empty into Chesapeake Bay. He occasionally fished the river for bass, smallmouth upstream, bigmouth down, usually in the company of a friend, Wendell Tierney, who fished to catch fish. Not Smith. Sure, it was fun hooking one on his barbless hooks, carefully guiding it to Tierney’s bass boat and gently releasing it to be caught another day. But catching fish wasn’t as important as being there. Yes, that was it. Just being there was worth it. Maybe that’s what rivers were for.

But he decided to do something different this particular afternoon. He drove north on the Virginia side of the river until reaching Great Falls, whose foaming rage
creates Washington’s most stunning act of nature. (Its tumultuous waters, Smith thought, were rivaled only by the turmoil of politics-as-usual downriver.) He walked to the edge of the Potomac River Gorge and looked out over this scenic, moving masterpiece. Far below, water that had poured over the falls swirled in fast-flowing circular patterns. Like all intense beauty, awe-inspiring, producing fear as well as admiration.

The sunny warmth of the day had lured hundreds of tourists. Schoolchildren squealed with noisy delight as they romped through groves of oak and hickory trees. Photographers propped their cameras on tripods and waited for the perfect slant of sunlight. Bird-watchers trained binoculars on the sheer granite slopes that formed the gorge, fractured in many places after the molten lava of millions of years ago had cooled, the resulting fissures now filled with rich deposits of white quartz.

Lovely, thought Smith. Like her.

In time, with the visceral pleasure of warm sun on his face and the bracing clean air off the falls, he decided to head home. He might get dinner started. Or at least set up the ice in glasses. He turned and walked a few steps in the direction of his car, thinking that this might be one of life’s big moments, not big at all but a quiet time when you want nothing more than you have, and then the scream sliced the air like the fissures in the rocks. He turned and saw people running to the gorge’s edge. He quickly went to the rail and looked down. The small body below was caught in the swirling currents, tiny arms flapping in vain search of a grip. There was no sound, although the child must have been screaming;
there was only the roar of a hundred thousand gallons of water a second cascading over the falls, majestic in its power, unforgiving in its violence.

Somewhere in Washington, D.C., on the Sunday following the tragedy at Great Falls, a funeral was conducted for the girl who’d drowned. The newspapers made even more of it than usual because the tragedy had happened where it did: another fatality claimed by the falls. Of all the parks across America managed by the National Park Service, Great Falls produced the highest number of victims—seven, eight, sometimes ten drownings a year. Few were the result of falls into the gorge. Most stemmed from reckless swimmers or boaters failing to respect the water’s power. In this case, the child, part of a class that had made a visit to Great Falls to celebrate the end of a hot summer-school session, had slipped away and had gone around the low railings that defined safety. What glorious freedom after two months in a sweltering classroom. You could almost think you could spread your tiny wings and fly.

The grieving family had already announced a lawsuit against the Park Service, as well as the administration of the school attended by the deceased girl.

But aside from those people emotionally involved in the child’s death, for most D.C. residents nothing had changed. It was too pretty an afternoon to dwell upon unpleasant events. People were out on the streets. The heat of the summer, like the death of the child, would soon be another pale memory. Autumn beckoned, Washington’s finest, most palatable season.

“ ’Morning, Sam,” a tall, slender young man with a neatly trimmed black mustache said to another young man he’d intercepted. He wore a soft tan leather vest over an American University T-shirt, tight jeans, and sneakers.

As the two men exchanged banal words, a few men and women sauntered past them. Then a third young man approached wearing a
SAVE THE EARTH
T-shirt beneath an outlandishly oversized gray double-breasted suit jacket, a small revolver in his right hand. Sam backed away, although the weapon was pointed at the other fellow.

“You bastard!” The newcomer’s voice matched the threat in his hand. And then the revolver’s report violated the scene’s tranquillity. Others who watched recoiled with horror, then braced like mannequins, mouths and eyes opened wide.

The young man slowly backed away, hands raised as though shields against another bullet.

“Don’t murder me,” he said. “
Please
don’t murder me.”

Another shot, this time the weapon pointed at the victim’s
groin. His expression was more bewilderment than pain. “I’m …” He gasped, wrapping his arms around a tree in an attempt to stay erect. But his thigh and groin melted into a wet red stain, and his body seemed to melt, too, into the ground.

His attacker stood over him and now held the revolver inches from the man’s head and squeezed the trigger. A misfire, a dull, metallic
thunk
. The assailant recocked the weapon, pressed it to the chest, and fired again. The fallen man’s shirt became a crimson Rorschach. Again, the revolver was held to his head. Another misfire.

He placed the weapon in his pocket, smiled at the stunned onlookers, and asked of no one in particular, “Is he dead yet? Is the bastard dead?”

He walked off, slowly, casually; one expected to hear him begin whistling a happy Disney tune.

Another dramatic scene in the larger production that is the nation’s capital.

The Next Night

This was Annabel’s first meeting; she’d been elected to the board two weeks ago. She was introduced by the chairman as “Annabel Reed-Smith, wife of former criminal attorney and now distinguished George Washington University law professor Mackensie Smith—and herself a former attorney who gave up the law to become proud owner of a thriving Georgetown art gallery.” She took her seat at a large oak conference table on the second floor of the National Building Museum on F Street NW, between Fourth and Fifth, across from Judiciary Square and adjacent to Washington, D.C.’s “Chinatown,” such as it is.

The chairman, Wendell Tierney, was in his customary position at the head of the table and called the meeting to order. Tierney hadn’t learned yet not to introduce
women by giving the occupation of their husbands and their status as wives first. Before addressing the formalities, reading minutes from the previous meeting and other routine things done by boards of directors rather than giving direction, he had a few more words of welcome for Annabel. “Mrs. Smith’s distinguished career as an attorney, and more recently as a valued member of the arts community, is well known to all of us. Her husband’s fund-raising efforts on behalf of this institution are also well known—and sincerely appreciated.” He smiled. “We’re honored to have you join our board, Annabel. You will surely be of aid to us. I might also add that you provide a welcome and attractive visual aid.”

Annabel politely thanked the chairman for his “kind words,” glancing at two other women in the room. Did they resent the sexism, too? And the implied insult? One, Pauline Juris, had been Tierney’s administrative aide and personal assistant for years. She was a tall, slender, pretty woman whose plainness of makeup and dress was by design, suitable, perhaps, to Tierney Development Corporation, Inc., the conservative company headed by her boss, but that did little for her. Annabel had observed that Pauline’s legs had a ballet dancer’s muscularity, like the pronounced calf muscles on some San Francisco women, developed from trudging up and down that city’s hills. The other observation made by Annabel upon first meeting Pauline—once at Annabel’s gallery, a few other times at the inevitable Washington fund-raisers—was that her lips were more fleshy than one would have assigned to her otherwise small facial features. Sexy lips, Annabel thought.