It was Train who finally spoke. “I’d like to help you here, Jerome. I really would. This is a serious mess you’re in. D.C.’s federal jurisdiction, and between the rock under your chair and the way you burned the woman, the feds will probably want to take over and go all the way with you. You’re not just looking at jail time—you’re looking at the needle.” Train rubbed his hand over his bald head. “I don’t want to see that. I don’t want that for your mother. We knew each other growing up. We’re from the same neighborhood. I want to see if we can save your family the pain of going through an execution, but the only way to be sure is for you to come clean on all this now.” He leaned forward and looked Washington in the eyes. “If we’re gonna save your ass, you’ve got to start talking to us. Tell us what happened.”
Washington looked away. He was tempted to keep quiet. He had some idea what the cops were after, and he knew he was probably screwed, but the gambler in him wanted to take a chance. “You’d never believe me,” he said after a minute.
“Try us,” Cassian shot back.
Washington looked at Train. “It wasn’t me,” he said.
Train sat back in his chair. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know the man’s name or anything like that, but I can describe him,” Washington said. “He bought a rock off me yesterday morning.” He nodded toward the plastic bag on the table. “Bought that torch, too.”
“Is that the best you can give us?” Cassian jeered.
Washington ignored him and focused on Train. “It’s true, I swear. Yesterday morning, I was sitting on the stoop at G Street, and this car pulls up to the curb, and a guy waves me over.”
“What kind of a car was it?” Train asked.
“I don’t know,” Washington said. He saw Train’s eyes roll. “A sedan,” he ventured. “It was a sedan. Nothin’ fancy, at least nothin’ I noticed. It was dark, though, maybe blue.” Train was paying attention again, but Washington could tell he was making little headway. “So the car stops and the guy waves me over. I walk up to the car, and the guy tells me he’s lookin’ for some rock. I tell him how much, and he says fine. I thought it was weird because he didn’t look like any kind of doper. But then, I know some people—the rich white kind of people—that have their chauffeurs or whatever buy for them. So he and I make the deal, and I start walkin’ back to the stoop, but he calls me back and asks me if I got anything to spark it with. I tell him no, but he says he’ll pay a C spot for any butane I got lyin’ around.” Washington’s eyes were focused on Train as he spun out the story, trying to gauge whether the detective was buying it. “Well, y’know, I liked that torch there, but a hundred’s a hundred, so I give it to him. He gives me the money and drives off.” He paused, breathing heavily. “That’s the last I saw him.”
Washington finished speaking, but kept his eyes on Train.
“You got anything else?” Train asked, his face unable to conceal his skepticism.
“Like what, man?” Washington asked. “What more can I tell you? That’s the God’s truth.”
Train rubbed his forehead in exasperation. “Well, what did this guy look like, for instance?”
Cassian shifted his stance against the wall, grunting slightly. “We really going to listen to this crap, Sarge?”
Train ignored his partner. “Go on, Jerome. Tell us what he looked like.”
Washington fidgeted in his seat. “I don’t know,” he said hesitantly. “He looked like a white guy.”
“Oh, okay,” Cassian snorted. “And we all look alike to you, right?”
“An’ he had brown hair, I think, and a regular kind of face. He was in his car, so I don’t know how tall he was, but I didn’t get the feeling he was too big.”
“So you’re giving us ‘brown hair, not too big, and a regular face’?” Train stared at Washington, shaking his head. “That’s gonna make your story a little difficult to verify, don’t you think, Jerome?”
“He was down a digit,” Washington spoke up quickly.
“Down a digit?” Train asked, not understanding.
“That’s right, down a digit. A finger—the man was missing one of his pinky fingers. I noticed it when he was paying me.”
“Oh, for the love of God,” Cassian growled. “What is this, a rerun of
The Fugitive
? What next? You gonna tell us the one-armed man helped him out?”
“Which hand?” Train asked.
“The right one.”
“Brown hair, regular face, normal height, missing a finger,” Train repeated slowly. “That about it, Jerome?”
Washington opened his hands. “That’s all I got.”
“We should be able to find this guy by nightfall, right, Sarge?” Cassian quipped.
Washington looked up at Cassian, and then turned to Train. He gave a dismissive shake of his head, leaning back in his chair. “You think I give a fuck anyhow? Shit, lawyer’ll carve this case to fuckin’ pieces. I’ll roll the fuckin’ dice, an’ if you spend your time goin’ after me, the man who did this gets away. Who gives a fuck, though, right, Train? Bitch probably deserved it an’ all.”
“You could get the needle, Jerome. You really want that for your mother?”
“Fuck my mother,” he said quietly. “Not sure she ever gave a shit about me anyhow. I get the needle, then I get the needle. Who gives a shit about one more dead nigger in this city, right, Train? But the fucked-up thing is I didn’t do this, so you chew on that.” He laughed bitterly. “You think about whether you can live with that, you self-righteous motherfucker!”
z
“What do you think?” Train asked Cassian once they were outside the room.
Cassian scratched the stubble on his chin. After a moment, he said, “I don’t know. It’s his lighter and his fingerprints, and this story about the nine-fingered man’s a little too far-fetched for me to buy.”
“But . . .”
“But something just doesn’t feel right. Maybe he deserves an Oscar, but something about his eyes and his voice made me believe him—at least just a little.”
Train nodded. “I had the same reaction.”
“So what do we do?”
“First thing we do is make sure the chief isn’t overcommit
ting on the press release.” Train nodded his head toward the captain’s office and the two of them began moving in that direction. As they passed the front desk, though, Cassian stopped and tapped Train in the chest to get his attention.
“What?”
Cassian pointed to the front desk where a couple of reporters were pulling sheets off a stack of paper, poring over their contents. Cassian walked over and pulled a sheet off for himself. He shook his head in disgust as he handed it to Train.
Train read the headline out loud.
“Police make arrest in mur
der of
Post
reporter,”
it blared. He read the two-paragraph report, amazed at the degree to which it implied that the crime had been solved. When he finished it, he balled it into his fist and tossed it into the trash can. “So much for getting our input.”
S
YDNEY SAT ON THE FUTON COUCH
in the apartment she’d rented in the Adams Morgan section of town. She’d stopped by to gather a few things to take back to her mother’s house. She was still ambivalent about moving in with her mother, but it seemed as though that bridge had already been crossed.
She sighed as she reached into the leather case and pulled out her sister’s laptop computer. It was a large, powerful model, and it held all the research Sydney had done to date for Professor Fuller at the law school. Liz had loaned the computer to her a couple of weeks earlier when Sydney told her that she had arrived in D.C. without many of her belongings, which were being shipped cross-country. Sydney hadn’t returned the computer to Liz before she was murdered, in part because it was a much better model than the desktop that had finally ar
rived from California, and in part because she knew her sister did most of her work on the desktop the paper provided her at the office.
She flipped open the laptop, and it came on automatically, the rhythmic, whimsical tones letting her know that the machine was warming up and would be ready for her in a moment. As the electrical pings and clicks reached a crescendo, the screen lit up with the ubiquitous Microsoft logo, holding in place for a moment as if to confirm Bill Gates’s control over the world, and then fading to the standard main screen. After another brief pause, the Outlook program automatically opened and Sydney was greeted with a message:
Good morning, Elizabeth. Today is Friday, June 9th. Would you like to confirm your schedule?
Sydney felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. Death seemed to have its greatest impact in the seemingly insignificant details of incurable absence. The silly little computer greeting drove home the reality of her sister’s death with surprising force, serving as a painful, terrible reminder of all the meetings and soccer practices and music recitals and dates her sister would miss.
She hung her head, and then on impulse, driven by her profound sense of loss, she clicked on the icon that read,
Yes, con
firm schedule, please.
Another window popped open, and Sydney scanned the events of the day her sister had planned. There was an editorial meeting at ten in the morning with Chris Plumber, her boss, presumably to discuss the stories she was working on. Liz was supposed to have lunch with a friend at one o’clock—Sydney wondered whether she should get in touch with the woman to cancel, but decided against it—and there was a notation that Amanda was due home from school by four-thirty. Other than that, the schedule was empty.
Suddenly, without even realizing she was doing it, Sydney began scrolling forward and backward through her sister’s Outlook schedule. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, back to Tuesday, Friday, Saturday; Sydney flipped aimlessly through the catalog of her sister’s days, looking for everything and nothing in particular. And then she stopped, staring at the screen in shock.
Wednesday, June 18th.
Two days before—the day Elizabeth was killed. For some reason, Sydney had the sick thought that there should have been some sort of notation around three-thirty marking her sister’s death. Perhaps
Meeting with Maker
would be appropriate, she thought, and then immediately felt guilty for allowing such sick, inappropriate humor to creep into her head. But there was nothing noted in the computer, just an entry that she and Amanda were having dinner with Lydia at around six o’clock. The only entries before that were for another editorial meeting at ten o’clock, which Sydney suspected was a daily meeting, and a conference scheduled with someone named James Barneton at twelve-thirty.
Sydney lingered over the fateful day’s schedule for a moment before focusing on the twelve-thirty conference.
James Barneton.
She knew that name, she was sure, but she was having trouble remembering from where. She racked her brain until it finally came to her. It was from Georgetown Law School, where she worked. He was a professor of law and political history. Her boss, Professor Fuller, was friendly with Professor Barneton, and had introduced her to him a couple weeks earlier when she had walked in on a conversation between them in Fuller’s office. Barneton was, as Fuller described it, a star in the academic world. He had published two successful texts within the past few years, one in political history and one in constitutional law, and his lectures were always the best attended at the university.
She looked back at the computer screen.
Twelve-thirty.
That was only a couple of hours before Liz was killed. Scrolling down the schedule, she noted that there was nothing else on her sister’s plate that day before the dinner with her mother. That meant that Barneton was likely the last person Liz talked to before her death—except, of course, for her killer. It was strange, she thought, that Liz had been in the same building where Sydney worked so soon before she was killed. For some inexplicable reason, it made her feel cheated. Obviously, Liz had no idea what lay in store for her later in the afternoon, and yet Sydney felt that somehow, had she had the chance to see her sister that afternoon, perhaps something might have been different. She knew how illogical that was, and yet she couldn’t shake the feeling. She wondered what had led her sister to the Georgetown campus to talk to Barneton, and she felt a growing need to know more about her sister’s final hours. She had to visit her office at the law school later that day anyway, just to check in. Perhaps, she thought, she would stop by and talk to Barneton.
z
James Barneton strode through the crowded halls of the Georgetown University Law School with the confidence of a Hollywood movie idol. That’s what he was, after all, he thought. At least within the confines of the ivy-perimetered ac
ademic arena, few had earned the same respect and attention he commanded. In his mind, as he walked, he could hear the whispers of the students, particularly the female students—
There goes Professor Barneton! God, he’s handsome!
He was handsome, too, he knew. Or at least he had been once. He’d passed fifty several years before, and some might now more readily describe him as distinguished than handsome, but he was sure he still had the ability to capture the imagination of a fair number of women, even those in their mid-twenties.
He rounded the corner and pushed his way through the doors that led to the faculty suites on the fourth floor. His office was in the corner of the building—prestigious real estate in the perk-conscious world of academia. As he neared the turn in the hallway, he noticed a young woman hovering just outside his door. She was attractive, he noted, and he smiled to himself, a feeling of warmth and power spreading through him as he felt the confirmation that, even approaching sixty, he could still turn women to jelly.
“Dr. Barneton?” the woman asked him as he approached.
“Yes,” he confirmed. He smiled his most confident smile.
“I’m Sydney Chapin,” she said, as though that should mean something to him.
He looked at her, keeping up the smile. Did he know her? He searched his memory. He found it hard to believe that he would have forgotten her, though she did seem vaguely familiar.