The Witch of Watergate (17 page)

"I'm not sure," Charleen admitted.

"Just don't commit to it," Fiona pressed.

"Like Robert Downey?"

"You got it," Fiona said. "Keep an open
mind."

The rebuke took its toll. Charleen, tight-lipped and
uncertain, began to rifle through papers on her desk.

And yet, Charleen had raised one issue that did linger in
her mind, rousing the very instinct she had secretly accused Charleen of not
having: "Barker knows something we don't," she had said.

Yes, he does
, Fiona agreed.

SHE HAD NEVER seen the Eggplant so agitated. A vein
palpitated on his forehead, spittle had formed on the edges of his mouth, the
whites of his eyes were crisscrossed with red veins and his nostrils seemed
unusually wide and distended as if they had expanded to gulp up scarce air.

He was slumped over the wheel of his car. Fiona sat beside
him. Charleen was in the back. Their car was parked beside the Eggplant's in a
picnic parking spot on a deserted stretch of Rock Creek Park.

It was the Eggplant's idea to meet there, someplace off the
beaten track. Not at headquarters. Not at Sherry's. No place that was indoors.
The request had all the symptoms of acute paranoia. It was the hour of twilight
and only the dark clouds that hovered over the city belied the time. Fiona felt
chilled. The mood was ominous.

"I don't know how he got it, but he's got it. No
question." The Eggplant shook his head in frustration.

He had just come from the Mayor's office, he had explained.
Summoned there out of the blue. What he found was a man on the edge of hysteria
and rage.

"The way he tells it," the Eggplant said,
"the
Post
had called with allegations about his conduct that were
insulting and harassing. Those are the words he used, 'insulting and
harassing.' Then he gave me the topper. He said they asked him about something
that took place years ago. An indiscretion, he called it."

"Was he specific?" Fiona asked.

"No," the Eggplant said. "He said it was a
pack of lies."

"Like Downey," Charleen muttered, as if she were
still trying to sell that discredited idea. Fiona and the Eggplant ignored the
comment.

"I mean what he said at first," Charleen said,
assuming their reaction.

"There is no question but that they've got it,"
the Eggplant said.

"The computer material?" Fiona asked him.

"I'd bet my life on it."

"They got it and they're going to use it," the
Eggplant said. "They're going to have his ass for lunch."

"Maybe you're just jumping to conclusions," Fiona
said without conviction.

"Bastard broke his word," the Eggplant said.
"Proves you can't do business with those rats. They'd sell their mother
for a story."

"That's a given," Fiona said, cutting a sharp
glance at Charleen, who thus far had remained silent. "What I want to know
is how he got the material. A couple of weeks ago he didn't have it. And you
can't accuse him of buying it from Farber, because he didn't have it. And we
saw you bust up the hard disks and burn the hard copies."

"Maybe he got it from some other source," the
Eggplant speculated.

"Possibly," Fiona said. "Although the
chances are that Polly developed it herself."

"Maybe she made copies beforehand," the Eggplant
said.

Fiona thought about that for a moment.

"If she was intent on destroying the material on her
death," Fiona said, "it would follow that she would not have made any
copies. The computer was both her record and her strongbox."

The logic of it seemed to offer little relief for the
Eggplant, who must have been seeing his chance at being Police Commissioner
slipping away.

"I thought at first," the Eggplant said, clearing
his throat, "that maybe they, one of their other reporters, had found some
other indiscretion, something that Polly Dearborn had failed to find. You know.
Where-there's-smoke-there's-fire kind of thing."

"That's a possibility," Fiona agreed.

"There is another possibility," Charleen said
suddenly. They turned to face her. She seemed somewhat tentative.

"We're listening, Evans," the Eggplant snapped.

"The murderer may have dumped the information from
Polly's computer to another one," Charleen said.

"Are you suggesting that he came up with his own
computer?"

"That or Polly Dearborn might have had another
computer in the apartment. Maybe a portable. And when the murderer saw that
there weren't any disk slots in Polly's machine, he fished around for a
computer to which she could transfer the information."

"And miraculously, there was one handy," Fiona
said.

"With connecting cables," Charleen said without
skipping a beat. "You can't hook them together without connecting
cables."

"Or he could have brought his own computer,"
Fiona said. She was conscious of the Eggplant's gazing from face to face as if
he were watching a Ping-Pong match.

"What about the computer key, the one you found around
the woman's neck?" Fiona asked.

"The murderer could have removed it," Charleen said,
"used it to open the computer, dumped the information into the other
computer, relocked the computer, then replaced it around the woman's neck and
thrown her over the terrace."

"How would he have known that the key was around Polly
Dearborn's neck?" Fiona asked.

"It would seem like a logical place to keep a key of
such significance," Charleen said. She seemed to have given the matter a
great deal of thought. As she spoke, she appeared to be getting back her old
confidence. A tinge of arrogance was also becoming visible. But Charleen was
making every effort to drown the tendency in humility.

"Explain the sequence, then," Fiona pressed, her
mind racing. "He garrotes Polly. Does he go for the computer before or
after he throws her over the terrace wall?"

Charleen wavered, pausing, biting her lip, not responding.
Fiona pressed on.

"He kills her, leaves her strangled on the floor, goes
to the computer, sees it's locked. Figures out where the key is. Then he opens
the computer, makes his copy and tosses her over the terrace. That it,
Charleen?"

"You're going too fast," Charleen muttered.

"Or this. He garrotes her, tosses her over the
terrace. Goes to the computer. Discovers that it's locked. Looks for the key.
Can't find it anywhere. A light goes on. He pulls the body up, removes the key,
does the copy, replaces it."

Fiona felt herself boring in, as if Charleen possessed the
guilty secret that held the solution to the Polly Dearborn case. Even as she
pressed forward, Fiona knew it was excessively aggressive. By now Charleen was
responding with confidence and increasing arrogance, enjoying the deductive
clash between them.

"The former scenario fits better," Charleen said.
"Neither the body nor the rope indicated that the woman had been pulled up
again. Besides, it would have been too big a chance for the killer to take.
Throwing her over the terrace would have been his last act."

"I think you got that right, Evans," the Eggplant
said. Actually, although it was difficult to decipher, this was meant as a
compliment, which seemed to please Charleen.

"But why leave the information intact on Dearborn's
computer?" the Eggplant said. "The killer couldn't have known that
one of the detectives on the scene was a computer expert and would take the
disks. As far as he knew, the information was left at the scene and might or
might not be discovered."

"But why make copies?" Fiona asked.

"Or take the disks," the Eggplant said.
"Like we did."

Charleen listened, but said nothing, rubbing her chin in
contemplation.

"It was supposed to be a suicide. If he took the
disks, we would have known immediately it was a murder."

"Got an answer for everything, Evans," the
Eggplant said. He was, of course, agreeing with the logic but not liking it. He
shook his head. "Seems to me that someone is hell-bent on getting the
Mayor. Somehow the killer has learned that there's critical information on
Dearborn's computer. He..." The Eggplant stopped suddenly, then blew out
air in frustration. "That's stupid. What the hell does he have to kill Dearborn
for? She's working to get the Mayor herself. Why interfere with that?"

It was an endless circle and, at that point, Fiona was
certain that they had all reached the same conclusion. Whatever happens, the
Mayor loses. And if the Mayor loses, Captain Luther Greene loses, and if
Captain Greene loses ... ?

"No choice," the Eggplant sighed. "We see
Barker, open the can of worms and get ourselves a killer."

He did not seem too happy about it.

"THIS IS A rotten time, Captain," Barker said. At
first he had refused to see them.

"The paper's going to bed," his secretary had
explained. "Can't this wait?"

"No, it can't," the Eggplant said firmly. When he
was determined, he could be tremendously intimidating. Finally, Barker had
relented.

"Five minutes—no more," Barker grunted.

"It's urgent," the Eggplant told him, slipping
into the same chair that he had sat in during their first meeting. Fiona also
took the seat that she had sat in that first time. They had sent Charleen back
to headquarters. Three cops would be one too many for confronting Barker.

Once again, Fiona was there to bear witness. She knew that.
She also knew that they were there to determine the source of the information
on the Mayor. After all, the Eggplant had destroyed what they believed was the
original material. Although they had not discussed it in depth, she had a good
idea what was in his mind. Find the source. Find the killer.

"Hold on until I finish this. The presses won't
wait," Barker said.

They watched him pore over page proofs, then pick up the telephone
and bark out orders. He was obviously a man used to command, whose word at the
paper was law. Finally, he took off his glasses, laid them still opened beside
him on the desk and put his feet up. Again, Fiona noted that his shoe soles
were remarkably clean and unscuffed.

"Okay," he said. "What've you got?"

There was an edge of belligerence in his voice.

"Nothing yet," the Eggplant said.

"So what's the urgency?"

Gone was the charm of their first meeting with Barker. He
seemed annoyed by their presence.

"It's what you've got that's the problem," the
Eggplant said.

Barker seemed taken aback by the Eggplant's attitude, which
was unmistakably confrontational.

"You'll have to make yourself clearer, Captain,"
Barker said. He was calm, confident, offering a thin, menacing smile. As they
had learned earlier, Barker had no tolerance for anyone who defied him.

"One of your reporters called the Mayor a few hours
ago asking for confirmation..."

"I am aware of that, Captain," Barker
interjected.

"We had an agreement," the Eggplant said. Fiona
was proud of his firmness, but apprehensive. He was taking on a dragon.

"What agreement?" Barker sneered.

"You were going to stop bashing us, stop referring to
our town as the murder capital of the United States, laying off the Mayor..."

"I kept my promise," Barker shot back. "It
wasn't open-ended." He removed his feet from the desk and slid forward on
his elbows. "Problem is, you didn't deliver your end. Not one fucking clue
to Polly Dearborn's murder and they're still butchering each other like mad
dogs out there." He stood up and began to pace his office, working up a
good head of steam. "We have a responsibility to this city. Our Mayor is a
goddamned phony. As a kid he was a drug pusher himself. We got him on that dead
to rights. Also he killed someone in a hit-and-run. He was in jail. An excon, a
murderer and a drug pusher. The public needs to know that, needs to know that
that's the kind of flawed character that runs this city. He's also an
innocent." Barker stopped and pointed a finger at the Eggplant's nose.
"Damned straight we're gonna get the bastard. Damned straight."

The Eggplant looked Barker in the eye.

"Where did you get that information, Mr. Barker? The
material about the drug-pushing and the hit-and-run?"

Barker smiled, stopped pacing and sat down again.

"Do you seriously believe, Captain, that I would
answer that question?"

"How do you know it's the truth?"

"I won't print it if it isn't," Barker said.
"That's why we're checking it out. That's why we called the man."

"You sure as hell didn't have this information the
last time we were here," the Eggplant said, accusatory now. He was
definitely taking chances, baiting his hook. The problem was that the fish at
the other end was too formidable. It could never be brought in.

"Well, whaddayaknow. Now he's none other than Sherlock
Holmes," Barker sneered.

"If you had it you would never have agreed to stop
beating up on the Mayor," the Eggplant said calmly.

"I don't believe this," Barker said, shaking his
head, offering a sarcastic cackling laugh, staring now into the Eggplant's
eyes.

"Am I right or wrong?" the Eggplant asked.

Barker frowned and continued to stare at the Eggplant. It
was Barker who finally yielded.

"So what if you're right?" he grumbled.

"You didn't have it then," the Eggplant pressed.

"We have it now," Barker sneered.

"And apparently you have faith in the source.
Otherwise you wouldn't have had your people call the Mayor to confirm it. Am I
right?"

"Are you telling me how to run my business,
Captain?"

"Problem is," the Eggplant said slowly, "the
source of your source is my business."

Barker looked puzzled.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You got the information from Polly Dearborn's
computer," the Eggplant said.

"I don't think it's any of your goddamned business
where I got it," Barker said.

"It's evidence in a homicide," the Eggplant shot
back.

Frown lines etched Barker's forehead.

"You're kidding me, right?"

"I'm dead serious," the Eggplant said.

Barker shook his head.

"What is this, some kind of a ploy? Are you telling me
I can't use this information about the Mayor because it's evidence in a
homicide? My nostrils are beginning to twitch. Do you realize the position
you're putting yourself in? The Mayor's not worth it, Captain." He turned
to Fiona. "And they've enlisted you, FitzGerald. Sounds to me like an act
of desperation by the Mayor. Sending two sacrificial lambs to the slaughter.
Are you trying to cover this up, protect that jackass in City Hall? Do you
realize that I have every right to tell our readers about this ploy? Have you
lost your mind, Captain?"

"Polly Dearborn got killed for that information,"
the Eggplant snapped. He was doing a good job of holding in his anger.

This is more than you can handle, Captain
, Fiona thought, frightened for him. He was pushing too hard.

"You're not making any sense at all, Captain,"
Barker said calmly, obviously confused. "If, as you contend, the
information was on Polly's computer, the chances are that it would have found
its way to our readers one way or another. Are you saying that Polly was killed
to repress the information? That would make the Mayor and his allies suspect.
Are you accusing the Mayor of masterminding Polly's murder?"

"You're twisting it," the Eggplant said.

"Or is there a more sinister agenda here?" Barker
said. In this mode, Fiona thought, he was fearsome. "You think I bought it
from Farber?"

"No, I don't," the Eggplant said.

"He sure as hell didn't give it to me," Barker
said. "He destroyed it, just as he said he would. He gave me a deadline. I
told you that."

"You also said you'd be sending out your lawyers to
get an injunction. You didn't." The Eggplant was calm, his eyes steady. He
did not look at Fiona, who watched the duel between the two men with growing
apprehension for her boss. Barker, if he chose, could ruin him with barely a
flick of his figurative wrist.

"Oh, that," Barker said, his evasiveness patently
transparent. "We decided against that. Too much of a hassle."

"For who? You said it yourself. You have lawyers on
the payroll and had a good chance of getting Dearborn's material. Why didn't
you?"

Barker's eyes narrowed as he studied the black man who sat
across his desk. He seemed to be reassessing his tactics, exploring the
implications of the Eggplant's questioning. He might have guessed correctly
that Captain Luther Greene was a stubborn and tenacious man.

"I don't understand any of this, Captain. What's your
game? Do you seriously believe that the
Post
will stop its investigation
of your Mayor? Are you looking for brownie points in this confrontation? What
the hell is going on?"

"I made it perfectly clear at the beginning of this
interview. Did the material come from Polly Dearborn's computer?"

"Surely, Captain, you must know that a newspaperman
would rather die than reveal his sources." The Eggplant did not answer,
nor did he draw away his gaze from Barker's.

Fiona could sense the approach of the critical moment. In
order to make his case persuasive he had to tell Barker the truth about the
computer information, in effect to put his professional life in the hands of a
man with no real stake in the secret, a man to whom revelation was everything.

"Even if it would help to catch a killer?" Fiona
interjected.

The Eggplant looked at her, obviously unhappy with her
intervention.

Barker grew contemplative. He studied them both.

"What I don't understand," Barker said, "is
why you believe that this information about the Mayor came from Polly's
computer."

The Eggplant and Fiona exchanged glances. Moment-of-truth
time, Fiona knew. The Eggplant was about to say something, but Barker was not
finished.

"Was it because it was Sheila Burns who called the
Mayor?"

There it was. For some reason the Eggplant hadn't told her.
Or the Mayor had not told the Eggplant. But Barker's revelation was the push
that started the dominoes falling. Of course. Sheila Burns.

"You promoted her, did you?" Fiona asked.

"Now you're going to tell me who I can promote?"
Barker said, somewhat defensively.

"Put her in Polly's place?" Fiona pressed.

"She was the logical choice," Barker said.

"Because she knew what was on Polly's computer,"
Fiona snapped.

"Not specifically. Only in general terms," Barker
said.

"Sheila Burns lied to us, then," Fiona said.

"Lied? That's a strong accusation, Sergeant
FitzGerald."

Not strong enough, Fiona thought, looking toward the
Eggplant. His features expressed approval. Carry the relay stick, his eyes told
her.

"She told us that Polly Dearborn was paranoid about
secrecy."

"Where is the lie in that?" Barker asked smugly.

"Then how would she have obtained the
information?" Fiona asked.

"I told you. She was Polly's assistant. She knew what
Polly was working on in general terms. She also knew about data banks, about
the way Polly bird-dogged a story through her computer. Hell, the Mayor's stuff
is public domain. It's all out there. You. Me. Everybody. Polly was a ferret.
Sheila is a clone. She developed the information on the Mayor herself." He
stood up and looked at his watch.

"I've got a paper to put out," he said, standing
up, dismissing them. In that attitude he exuded power. They were mere flies
ineffectually buzzing around him. He could scatter them with a brush of his
hand. "Maybe you've got a point. Maybe the killer of Polly Dearborn was
looking for that stuff in her computer. If you're implying that Sheila Burns
killed Polly, you're way off base. The only person who could benefit from
destroying the material on Polly's machine was the Mayor himself."

Fiona looked toward the Eggplant. He had come within a
hairsbreadth of confessing what they had done with the disks and she had
deliberately deflected it. Yet the fact remained that without the computer
evidence, any case against Sheila Burns would collapse under the weight of
hearsay.

"We don't intend to drop this, Mr. Barker," the
Eggplant said.

"Neither do we, Captain. Neither do we," Barker
said.

"You've got a paper to get out, Mr. Barker,"
Fiona said. "And we've got a killer to catch."

Barker's eyes narrowed. The ends of his lips rose in the
beginning of a smile. Then they stopped.

"You can tell your damned Mayor it won't work,"
Barker said. "And get the fuck out of here."