The Rose Conspiracy (4 page)

“I thought you said I hadn't been charged with a crime yet.”

Blackstone smiled at that.

“You're right. But I was just talking in generalities.”

“Mr. Blackstone?” she asked.

Blackstone waited for the point.

Then she smiled a secret little kind of smile, tilted her head coquettishly, and stood up to leave. “Mr. Blackstone,” Vinnie said, extending her hand to him. “I like you very much. Perhaps I shall have you as my lawyer. We'll see. But one thing.”

“What's that?”

“I don't think you can be either my priest or my father confessor.”

She laughed a little when she said that, and then turned and walked out of his office.

Blackstone was sitting there, staring at the target letter from the U.S. Attorney's Office that she left on his desk.

Vinnie Archmont was beautiful but eccentric. And a little too coy for someone who might be charged with a crime that could send her to the death chamber. On the other hand, Blackstone really didn't think that was in the cards. Not a chance in a million. Most likely, the federal prosecutor had sent her the target letter to shake her up. To get her to come running to him and start talking so the government could find out who the real perpetrators were. And if that were the case, the feds were betting on the fact that Vinnie had a connection with someone who had a connection with the murder.

But as he sat at his desk, J.D. Blackstone was not struggling with any of that. What he really wondered about was the question that Vinnie didn't answer.

The one about the Booth diary.

CHAPTER 5

A
fter Vinnie Archmont left, Blackstone looked at his watch and decided he had missed most of the faculty meeting at the college, anyway. So he dashed down to his black Maserati, gunned his way over to the other side of the Beltway, and turned into a medical complex. He parked and hustled across the lot and through the glass door of a banal-looking medical office.

The receptionist recognized him.

“Good afternoon, Professor Blackstone,” she said, then glanced down at her appointment book.

“I'm sorry,” she continued, “but I don't think Dr. Koesler has you booked today.”

“Just tell Jim that his favorite patient is waiting.”

“I'm not sure if I can help you.”

“Come on, Ginny,” he said. “I know Jim always takes an early dinner break at this time. He is probably sitting in his office right now, eating chicken salad, reading something unnervingly exciting—like the newest
Journal of the American Psychiatric Association.
”

Ginny was about to throw up another roadblock, when the psychiatrist, Dr. Jim Koesler, stepped across the hall with a Styrofoam container in his hand and ducked into his office.

Before he could close the door, J.D. Blackstone had sprinted down the hall and wedged his foot into the door.

“Jim, so good to see you,” Blackstone said with a grin. “Chicken salad again, right?”

“You know, J.D.,” Koesler muttered unenthusiastically, “you don't believe in appointments…and don't believe in knocking. Those are basics in human civility. Maybe you could start with those and then slowly work your way up.”

Then Koesler paused and looked down at the salad he had placed on his desk.

“And it's not chicken,” he said with a wry smile. “It's turkey.”

“Turkey! You're so wild and unpredictable, Jim!”

“J.D., you help me out in one lawsuit, and as a result, you must think I will indulge your eccentricities forever.”

“Much simpler than that. Just refill my prescription. And by the way, where does our friendship fit in here, anyway? Going all the way back to our fraternity days in college.”

“Come on. You know the drill,” the psychiatrist said.

“Okay. Here it is,” Blackstone began in a rote monotone. “My sleeping habits are minimally controlled with the current medication to the point where I can actually sleep a few hours every night. Without it, I suffer from life-altering insomnia, which also affects my eating habits, my work, and my general attentiveness during the day. I have not experienced any adverse reactions with the drug you prescribed. I am not experiencing any dramatic weight changes or mood swings. I am in touch with supportive people and have not isolated myself in terms of psychosocial interactions. I am not a danger to myself or others. And I deny any suicidal ideation.”

Then Blackstone grabbed a piece of paper from Dr. Koesler's desk, scribbled something down on it hastily, and tossed it onto his desk.

Koesler glanced down at it. It was a stick-man drawing, with the stick-man's hands on his hips and a jagged frown on his face.

“There,” Blackstone said with a smart-aleck smile. “This is my version of the standard Draw-a-Picture Test.”

Then he added, “And that's me in the picture there, frowning because I can't sleep at night ever since my prescription ran out last week.”

“I sometimes think,” Koesler said, “that when you took time off from the law to pursue a PhD in psychology it was the worst thing that could have happened to you. It hasn't helped you to heal emotionally. Which I presume was the reason you did it. Instead, it has simply made you
more clever in dancing around the psychological triggers you still need to address since the death of Marilyn and Beth.”

“I need to address? Like what?”

“You're clinically depressed, J.D.,” Koesler said bluntly.

“Wrong. I lack several of the key indicators. Most importantly, my energy level and personal interactions are totally inconsistent with a depressive personality.”

There was a long pause. Neither man spoke.

Then Koesler grabbed his prescription pad, filled out the top sheet, ripped it off, and held it out to Blackstone, who grabbed it quickly. But after reading it he shook his head and complained.

“Hey, what gives?” Blackstone asked. “Last time you gave me a ninety-day supply.”

“You stop playing games and start addressing your issues, and I will rethink that next time,” Koesler said with a studied tone.

Blackstone stuffed the prescription into his pocket and walked quickly out to the parking lot.

Eight hours later, at almost three in the morning, Blackstone was standing in his Georgetown condo in his gym shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, with the television remote in his hand, flipping through the channels. A few magazines were scattered on the couch next to him, half opened to articles he was reading. As usual, his brain was wide-awake even though his body was exhausted.

Then the phone rang.

He stared at the caller ID. It read,
Federal Detention Center.

He had a bad feeling about that.

After wondering if he really wanted to pick it up, five rings later, he did so.

Vinnie Archmont was on the other end, sobbing, barely understandable. It took him several minutes to calm her down.

“I've been arrested,” she said in between sobs. “I was photographed…fingerprinted…you said…you said…”

“Vinnie, I have to admit I'm surprised you were indicted,” Blackstone said.

“I can't believe this is happening. All because of the Masonic thing. I don't want to die over something like that.”

“Vinnie,” he said, raising his voice. “Get a hold on yourself. First of all, I am assuming there is a jail guard near you, right?”

“Yes…two of them…right over there.”

“Okay. Then try to limit your answers to short responses. When I meet with you in the jail, you can go into all the detail you want. Right now try to stick with ‘yes' or ‘no' or ‘I don't know.' ”

“You said!” Vinnie continued in a broken voice, now going to the source of her angst. “Capital offense—that means the death penalty…”

“Now listen carefully,” Blackstone said firmly, “forget about the death penalty stuff. I am never going to let that happen.”

Suddenly, Blackstone was surprised at his own breach of protocol. He had represented desperate clients before. It was his strict rule to always give optimism whenever it was due, but never to guarantee results.
Never.

But then the lawyer reflected on something she had just said. “And did you say ‘Masonic thing'—is that the phrase you just used? Just give me a yes or no.”

“It's complicated…I don't know where to start.”

“Alright, forget I asked you. We'll talk about all that later,” Blackstone said, recognizing his client should refrain from saying anything else of substance in the presence of the jailers. Then he changed the subject slightly.

“I hate to talk practicalities,” Blackstone continued, “but this is going to be a complicated defense. I am going to require a very large retainer fee…”

“In England,” she said, now becoming much more focused, “I have a very good friend. Very famous. His name is Lord Magister Dee. He's very wealthy. He knows all about this. He will pay you anything you need. I have his number with me. Just write it down and call him. It's already mid-morning over there. Here it is.”

Vinnie gave Blackstone the number. Before hanging up, he assured her that as soon as the federal courthouse was opened that morning he would be there to check out the court file and start working on getting her released on bail.

“I am relying on you to save my life,” Vinnie said in a small voice. “Please help me.
Please.
”

After he hung up the phone, Blackstone immediately dialed the number in England.

The call was answered by a Colin Reading, who with a crisp British accent identified himself as “Lord Dee's personal secretary.” Blackstone explained who he was and why he was calling. Reading had been expecting the call. Blackstone quoted the retainer fee. The secretary didn't skip a beat. He asked for Blackstone's account number and the bank routing number and said the entire fee would be wire-transferred to the law firm's bank account by the end of the day.

If he had any initial intentions of trying to buy a few hours of sleep, J.D. Blackstone had now abandoned all hope. He grabbed the remote to turn off the television. An infomercial advertising a new vitamin drink that promised “to improve your overall health and add years to your life” had come on. That is when he clicked it off.

He decided to shower and get dressed to go down to the office. He could do some preliminary research at the firm before heading down to the courthouse and then over to the detention center.

As he stripped off his T-shirt he heard Vinnie's words in his head—
“I am relying on you to save my life.
”

Had Blackstone been any other DC lawyer, he would have been relishing the thought of his entrée into the year's most spectacular Capitol Hill murder case. But for him, the case was no longer merely a legal curiosity, with its dusty Civil War overtones and Vinnie's hints about the Freemasons. With Vinnie's indictment, things had just been ratcheted up to a whole new level.

Despite the intriguing legal issues of the case before him, Blackstone was dreading, for his own hidden reasons, the obvious fact that he was now responsible for someone else's survival.

CHAPTER 6