The Rose Conspiracy (5 page)

I
ndictments are documents that merely recite the formal charges of a crime, and the basis for a grand jury's charging a particular defendant. In themselves they are not evidence of guilt, and they should never be taken as such.

That is what J.D. Blackstone would tell the law students in his criminal practice class.

But it was hard for Blackstone to really believe that now as he read the indictment in the case of
United States of America v. Vinnie Archmont.

As he sat at a table in the clerk's office of the U.S. District Court building for the District of Columbia, he was scanning the court documents filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office that charged Vinnie with conspiracy to commit murder against a federal official and with theft of federal documents. Blackstone was getting the clear sense that the coldly calculated murder and sensational theft outlined in the indictment simply didn't fit the limited information he had about his client. At the same time, the allegations made out a powerful case against her.

The indictment cited the findings of federal investigators that

the murderer(s) had gained access to The Smithsonian Institution administration building, known as “the Castle,” after hours, by accessing a private side entrance. That door was controlled by an electronic keypad system. A review of Horace Langley's computer security registry log indicates that he had given the confidential code to defendant,
Vinnie Archmont, shortly before the date of Mr. Langley's murder.

The charging document also alleged that Vinnie had had several meetings with Langley, and had personal knowledge of his schedule and the fact that he would be working late into the night on the date of the murder.

But it was the final allegation that supplied the guts of the case. Blackstone knew that while criminal motive is not an essential legal element of a prosecutor's case, it is always a strategic advantage to prove to the folks in the jury box the big “why”: exactly why one human being would conspire to have another person killed.

The indictment's theory of motive was unique: that Vinnie was a member of a shadowy cult group. That the group had sought to obtain the John Wilkes Booth diary pages, and that the murder of Langley was accomplished in order to secure those documents before they were subjected to expert analysis and their contents published. The indictment alleged that the cult was comprised of radical zealots who proposed to use the Booth papers to advance their agenda.

As Blackstone read that, he found it almost laughable. Not that there couldn't be such a group. He was convinced there probably was. But Vinnie as a member? He had had only one meeting with Vinnie, yet for Blackstone, that was enough. He relied on his ability to dissect human personality quickly. Vinnie was a typical artisan: creative, a little whimsical, nonanalytical. Not particularly agenda-driven. She didn't fit the anarchist profile. The federal prosecutor was clearly trying to cook up the motive factor to bolster what could prove to be a thin criminal case.

As Blackstone was driving over to the federal detention center to meet with Vinnie, he got off a cell phone call to his office.

First he spoke with Frieda, his secretary. She only had one bit of news.

“Someone called for you and wanted to know if you were in the office,” she said.

“Who was it?”

“A man. He wouldn't give me his name. I asked, but he said ‘Never mind' and hung up.”

After that, Frieda transferred him to Julia Robins, his younger legal associate. Julia had been one of Blackstone's law students several years before. A terrifically bright woman, she had graduated second in her class. After a stint as a worker bee in the Office of Legal Counsel for the CIA, she came knocking on Blackstone's door, saying she didn't like federal agency work and asking if he would consider taking her in as a partner.

Blackstone had begun to accumulate a list of prominent Beltway cases by then. That, coupled with his full-time professorship at Capital City College, created a workload that was more than even he could handle alone. He'd been glad to add her to his law practice. All that was shortly before the tragic deaths of Blackstone's wife and daughter.

Julia was attractive, wore dark horn-rim glasses, and her dishwater-blonde hair was usually left in a tangle of slightly disheveled locks. Julia had managed a master's degree in chemistry at Harvard before deciding to switch to law. She attended Blackstone's law school on an academic scholarship and usually had a no-nonsense approach to the practice of law. Blackstone particularly liked that.

“I heard you are into the Smithsonian murder case,” Julia began. “Where do I fit in?”

“I need you to check out a guy over in London. An English Lord. His name is Magister Dee.”

“With a name like that, he sounds like a kook.”

“Let's hope not,” Blackstone replied.

“Why?”

“He's paying our legal fees on this case.”

“I'll check him out,” Julia said. “Who's the client?”

“Vinnie Archmont. She came in the office the other day.”

“Oh, so she's the little tart Frieda was telling me about. Frieda said she came in the office all flushed, and gushing all about how she had read about you and what an ‘absolutely fabulous' lawyer you must be.”

“Tart? My, aren't we catty,” Blackstone said with a chuckle.

“Well, Frieda told that me she had her pegged as either a model or an artist of some kind when she sashayed into the office. Very attractive, as I understand it.”

That was the other thing about Julia. She had harbored a law-school
crush on him when she was a student. Then, about a year after Blackstone's wife and daughter had died, Blackstone threw himself into a short, torrid, and ill-fated romance with Julia. Just as quickly as the relationship started, Blackstone abruptly broke it off. Since then, Julia had had loads of dates, but she never seemed serious about any of them. He was surprised, though, when she had decided to stay on in the small, two-partner law firm with him.

“You coming back to the office?” she asked.

“No, I'm on the way to see the tart at the detention center.”

Julia laughed.

“Okay,” she said. “You mentioned our having a working dinner to talk about some administrative issues with the practice.”

“That will have to wait.”

“Fine,” was all that Julia said before she said goodbye and hung up.

As he neared the jail facility, Blackstone glanced a few times in his rearview mirror at the car that was four car lengths behind him.

As he roared into the jammed parking lot at the federal jail facility, he was thinking about Vinnie.
I need to know a lot more about this woman,
was the thought that was rolling around in his head.

That—and also his question about why there was a tan Ford Taurus idling at the other end of the parking ramp, which seemed to have been following him for the last twenty minutes.

CHAPTER 7

S
o, are you being straight with me? About what you've told me so far?”

“I have to, don't I? You're my lawyer.”

“Still, some clients play games. Particularly about background information. Things they are ashamed of, or embarrassed about. They think those things don't matter—or that they won't come out. But in a murder trial everything comes out. And it all matters. Do you understand that, Vinnie?”

Vinnie Archmont nodded to Blackstone across the grey metal table in the jail conference room. She was dressed in a bright yellow prisoner's jump suit. She looked much different now. Her bright, flirtatious affect was gone. She looked somber and tired, and her Scarlett O'Hara curls were droopy and unkempt.

Blackstone had just spent their time together going over her “life biography.” Vinnie Archmont had an unusual background.

She was raised in Oklahoma by a mother and father who had a reputation for being eccentric. The mother was a flamboyant art teacher in a community college. Her father was a professor of humanities at the University of Oklahoma. He had written some articles which captured the attention, somehow, of Lord Magister Dee in England. The following year the father was invited by Lord Dee to participate in a conference in Scotland. Vinnie's father accepted, and he took his wife and daughter along. Dee met with the trio, took a liking to them immediately. Later he even invited them to his mansion house outside of London, where they spent the weekend.

There was something vaguely incomplete, though, about the way that Vinnie had described her background with her parents, despite Blackstone's prodding. He made a mental note about that. Perhaps he would pursue that later.

Over the next two years, Lord Dee and her parents kept in contact. Then he invited them over to England again, at his expense. They spent some of the time sightseeing. Vinnie was nineteen at the time. But the trip ended tragically. She was attending a matinee performance in London while her parents were taking a day trip by rail to the north of England. There was a train derailment and both of her parents were killed.

Vinnie explained how Lord Dee “swept me up, in all my grief. It was a terrible time. But he took me in. Treated me like royalty. Then when I returned to the States, he personally paid for me to finish art school. And it was Lord Dee who financed my art studio in Alexandria.”

Blackstone found all of that intriguing.

“Was there anything romantic—or sexual—between you and Lord Dee?” he asked bluntly.

Vinnie wasn't surprised at the question. But she seemed assured in her denial that there was anything but deep friendship between her and the twice-divorced Lord Dee. Over the years she was invited to England where she would spend holidays with Lord Dee and his various friends attending sumptuous parties. She also said the two spoke regularly on the phone and connected by e-mail.

Most of Vinnie's personal time in recent years was devoted to expanding her art studio and working on her sculptures. Her social circle was comprised mostly of artists, or former college friends. They were all from the Virginia, DC, or Maryland area.

She was once engaged to be married, but she said she broke that off. She described her former boyfriend, Kevin, as “kind and considerate, but a little possessive, and not very exciting.”

At the present, she said she wasn't seeing anyone romantically.

“Are you active in any groups? Church? Civic organizations? Political parties?” Blackstone asked. Vinnie said she was not much of a joiner. The only “group” she was part of, other than a local DC artisans' group that put on joint art exhibitions, was a neighborhood project that was raising money to renovate a neglected park. She said she went to a couple
of their meetings, donated some money, and helped clean up the playground area.

When Blackstone raised the allegations in the indictment of her being part of a “cult” group that planned the execution of Langley and the theft of the Booth diary, she laughed out loud and denied any such thing.

Vinnie admitted that the indictment was correct about Langley giving her the code to the security door. On the day of the murder, when the two met in the late afternoon or early evening, he told her he would be working late that night, and that “she should pop on by if she was bored and wanted to visit,” but should use the private entrance if she did.

Vinnie said that she knew that Horace Langley had some romantic feelings for her. But she never reciprocated. And she noted that his obvious overtures did not affect her professional work in working on his sculpture.

Blackstone was looking over his notes on all of that information, when a question came to mind.

“Just curious about something,” he said. “Why did your parents name you Vinnie? That's an unusual name for a girl.”

“Actually, it was my mother,” Vinnie said. “One of her heroes was a famous female artist from Oklahoma named Vinnie Ream. That's who I was named after.”

“I'm familiar with a lot of artists. But I haven't heard of her.”

“She lived in the 1800s. She sculpted Abraham Lincoln,” Vinnie said, trying to manage a smile.

“Interesting,” Blackstone remarked.