The Rose Conspiracy (41 page)

He ordered a bucket of lobster and shrimp, but didn't eat most of it. A friendly waitress tried to strike up a conversation, but he was in no mood to make small talk.

Like the rolling tide, it often came over him. The memories. The woman he could no longer hold or touch. Or share a pillow with. And then he would try to figure out what grade Beth would be in just then.
What sports she would have gone out for. How she might have changed so much in just the past two and a half years…if everything had been different.

But it wasn't different. It was exactly as it was.

Blackstone tossed down a healthy tip, left his bucket still half full of seafood, and walked through the sand back to his rental car. And then drove back to his resort hotel room.

After an unsatisfactory night's sleep, Blackstone got up early. He drove from Hilton Head into Savannah so he could arrive at the historic downtown tourist area along the river by nine in the morning. Blackstone drove through the streets lined with moss-laden trees, stately old houses, and circular roundabouts at the intersections. He parked his car and headed down to the shops and businesses along the Savannah River.

Then he began.

At each shop he stopped in and met with the proprietor. He would pull out the photo of Agent Johnson that Tully had e-mailed him. Then he asked the same question:

“I am looking for a man named Ralph Johnson. He is with the FBI. Here is his picture. Have you seen him?”

When they would give him a concerned look and shake their heads, then Blackstone would add, “If you do see him, just let him know that I will be walking along the river here, or else up by the little park at the end of Drayton Street. Will you tell him that if you see him?”

By two in the afternoon, he had canvassed most of the shops in the Old Town along the river.

He grabbed a sandwich and then sat down on a park bench on the edge of a small park. Blackstone clicked open his cell phone and called his office for his messages.

By three o'clock, he was still seated on the park bench, watching passersby and horse-drawn carriages. He was beginning to wonder whether he had just wasted a plane ticket and an entire workday.

Then he turned and saw someone standing next to him. Blackstone looked up and saw a broad-shouldered black man, dressed in a dark suit and tie, eating an ice cream cone.

“Agent Johnson,” Blackstone said with mock surprise. “How strange we should run into each other like this. And in old Savannah, no less.”

Johnson didn't speak at first, but sat down on the bench next to him. Then, when he had nearly finished the ice-cream cone, he began to speak. But when he did, he never turned his head. He kept looking straight ahead.

“You know as well as I do that there are limitations,” Johnson said quietly, “on a defense attorney's right to speak to an investigating federal agent without first getting permission from the AUSA prosecuting the case.”

“But that is assuming that I would have intentions to question you about the Smithsonian case,” Blackstone said.

“You announced your intentions to half the tourist shops in Savannah,” Johnson said. “You even waved a printout around with my picture on it. I would have pegged you to be more sophisticated than that.”

“Time's short,” Blackstone said. “Trial date's fast approaching. I'm down to the slapstick shtick. The vaudeville routine. Really broad stuff. It's not my first choice of methods…but then, what's a guy to do?”

“I'm really not sure why I ought to be talking with you, Blackstone,” Johnson said.

“I am,” Blackstone shot back. “First, I know that you have been dealt a rotten hand by someone in Henry Hartz's prosecution team. Second, and this is the important part—I think that you know something important about the Smithsonian crimes, and you'd like to tell somebody. Maybe you've already tried, and it was all in vain. Anyway, you would like to share what you know, but you can't quite figure out how you can make that happen.”

“You understand I can't talk to you about your client's case,” Johnson said.

“Of course.”

After some silence Blackstone spoke up.

“Nice picturesque river town, Savannah,” Blackstone said. “Only bad thing about a river, though, is that you get rats.”

“Rats?” Johnson asked.

“Sure, rats,” Blackstone said. “I've seen rats—seen how they scamper up a rope onto a ship. They're quiet. Blend into the corners. Hide in the shadows. The point is this—if you're trying to find out who the rat is, and where he is, where do you start looking?”

Johnson paused for a moment.

“I think it can be a matter of timing,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, timing,” Johnson reiterated. “Sailors are supposed to be on the ship. But the rat isn't. I'll tell you something pretty amazing, too. Sometimes a rat can fool you and even blend in like a sailor. So, you have to figure out
when
the sailors arrived—and
when
the rat got there—and you compare the two. That's how you find the rat.”

“How would a person go about doing that?” Blackstone asked, thinking hard on the FBI agent's metaphor.

“Oh, you start with paperwork, I suppose,” Johnson said. “You look at the obvious, the records you looked at a dozen times before, but this time with a different eye. See if you can see the tracks…a rat leaves tracks, you know.”

Then he added, with a bitter smirk on his face, “Little rat tracks. And rat droppings.”

Special Agent Ralph Johnson had finished his ice-cream cone. So he stood up from the park bench, wiped his hands on a little paper napkin, and tossed it in an outdoor wastepaper basket.

Then he reached inside his coat pocket and pulled something out.

Blackstone stood up next to him.

Johnson held out a little colored brochure of the historical spots in Savannah.

“Too bad,” Johnson said, handing the brochure to Blackstone, “that I won't have time to see more of the historical sites in this city. Some of them have real significance.”

With that, Agent Johnson looked around and then walked away, with Blackstone still holding the brochure.

Blackstone opened it up. One historical spot had been circled with a pen.

It was the location called “The Cotton Exchange.”

Blackstone looked at the map to figure out where the Cotton Exchange was located. Then he realized that it was about one hundred feet directly in front of him, toward the river. Blackstone crossed the little park and strode up to the old, red stone building. The front door was locked and
bolted shut. The windows were shuttered tight. At the top were the words
Savannah Cotton Exchange
etched in the stone.

But something else caught his attention. In an aged, arched sign stretching over the doorway of that same building there was another sign.

It read, FREEMASONS' HALL.

CHAPTER 52

A
fter landing back in Washington, while he was driving back to the law office from the airport, Blackstone used his cell phone to call Jason.

“I've got some more work for you,” he told his paralegal. “Go into my office and grab the black notebook marked ‘
U.S.A. v. Vinnie Archmont—
Gov't Report Summaries.' Then go to the big black notebook in Vinnie's case where I have indexed all the FBI reports, crime lab reports. When you have both of them in front of you, check my summaries of the crime scene investigation and match it with the actual FBI 302 report of the initial evaluation of Langley's office. I want to make sure that my summaries are absolutely accurate in condensing the activities of the crime scene team.”

“Gotcha,” Jason said.

“Second,” Blackstone said, “and this is critical—go through the whole FBI crime scene report, as well as all my summaries, and create a timeline chart for me. I want you to list each person who had access to Langley's office for the twelve-hour period before the murder, and then the twelve-hour period after he was killed, including the crime lab team members, the agents, and the District of Columbia police. I want to see who they were, and what time they would have entered and exited his office.”

“I can do that, sure,” Jason said.

“But before you do that,” Blackstone said, “check the Internet. Do a Google, then hit the local library if you have to. Check into the history of Savannah, Georgia, and the history of the early Freemasons in that city.”

“Will do,” Jason said. “Anything in particular?”

Blackstone pondered that, as he started going over in his mind Reverend Lamb's dissertation in his office.

“Check for anything,” Blackstone said, “that mentions ‘speculative Freemasonry.' Look for that.”

“By the way there is a phone call that just came in for you. Wait a minute while I grab it from Frieda.”

After a few minutes Jason returned to the phone.

“Here it is,” Jason said. “A guy from the U.S. marshal's office called. Said it's important that you call him right away.”

Blackstone scribbled down the number.

Then he called the federal marshals service. He waited on the line while his caller was located.

“Mr. Blackstone,” the caller said. “I'm one of the agents here with the United States Marshal Service.”

“What can I do for you?” Blackstone asked.

“I wanted you to know that we now have custody of your client, Vinnie Archmont.”

“I don't understand,” Blackstone said.

“Counselor,” the U.S. marshal said, “she was caught trying to abscond across the United States border into Canada.”

For just an instant, Blackstone's brilliant, polymath mind went numb. All he could do was fixate on the marshal's use of the criminal justice nomenclature, the pejorative loaded with sinister innuendos—
abscond.

But then, a second later, Blackstone was already calculating the devastating damage that Vinnie had done to her own legal defense.

“Where is she now?” Blackstone asked, trying not to sound frantic.

“Here at the marshal's office, at the Federal Building,” he answered. “She will be here for the rest of the day before they decide what facility they will ship her to. I think the AUSA will be filing something with the judge right away.”

Yes. I bet he will,
Blackstone thought to himself. And he knew exactly what Henry Hartz's next move was going to be.

But he didn't have to wait long to find out for sure.

His call-waiting beeped on his cell phone. Blackstone cut the call short, told the marshal he was on his way over to see his client, and then clicked onto the call-through.

It was Henry Hartz.

“Did the U.S. Marshal's Service give you the bad news?” he asked.

“I just got off the phone with them,” Blackstone said, trying not to sound shaken.

“Just filed an emergency motion with Judge Templeton,” Hartz said.

“Let me guess,” Blackstone shot back. “Asking for jail detention for Vinnie without bail.”

“This is exactly why I thought when this case began—that she couldn't be trusted being out on bail, facing a death penalty charge,” Hartz said. “The hearing is set for 5:30 p.m., today. After the end of the judge's regular docket. You know now, after she pulled this stunt, he's going to lock her up until trial. No question about that.”

“I'll be there at 5:30,” Blackstone said.

“One other matter,” Hartz said. “I'm also filing a motion with the court asking that, at trial, I be allowed to introduce evidence to the jury of Vinnie's attempted escape out of the country as evidence of implied guilt.”

“You don't have any idea what she was trying to do up there at the Canadian border or why she did it.”

“Do you?” Hartz barked back.

“I'm on my way to talk to her right now,” Blackstone shot back.

“Well, I know one thing,” Hartz said. “The judge's clear terms of bail required that she not leave the borders of the continental United States while her case was pending. She has committed attempted bail-jumping. But more important than that, proof of flight from the authority of the court is proof of a guilty conscience. A
criminally
guilty conscience.”