The Witch of Watergate (3 page)

During her week on the squad, Charleen Evans had barely
acknowledged Fiona's presence. Even the bonding possibilities of their meeting
in the ladies' room had not opened up any communication, merely the barest
grunt of acknowledgment. Only the forceful sound of her ablutions in the closed
toilet booth hinted that she did, after all, have human qualities.

So far, Fiona had found no common ground between them, not
even on the grounds of gender. To be fair, no opportunity had arisen for that
kind of alliance. Until now.

"We're posting new assignments for most of you,"
the Eggplant said. He stood up and stamped out his panatela in the overflowing
ashtray in front of him, then moved out of the room to his office.

Chairs squeaked on the scuffed wooden floor as the squad
filed out. There were few smiles. One couldn't, Fiona felt, quite characterize
these meetings as pep rallies, but they did reinforce the sense of bonding and
determination that was needed to continue their operations in the face of the
new reality.

"Looks like splitsville for us," Cates said.
Having been partnered with a woman, he, too, had understood the implications.

"I'll raise holy hell," Fiona said, hissing
through clenched teeth, anger pumping up her adrenaline. "My badge is like
yours." She slipped it out of her purse and showed it to him. "See
any balls on it?"

"Nobody wants it, Fi," he muttered, keeping his
voice down. "You heard him. Combat."

It was obvious that he did not like being a party to this
particular confrontation.

"Well, I want it on principle," Fiona said.

She debated whether or not to jump the gun on what she was
dead certain was coming. She had not long to wait. With the exception of her
and Evans the entire squad was assigned to drug-related homicide. She and Evans
were to continue tracking naturals. This was a prime responsibility of
Homicide, checking out every death in the District of Columbia, mostly a
routine task, confirming death certificates, culling data from hospitals and
funeral parlors, eye-balling suspicious corpses.

"Hope you're not going to take this, Evans,"
Fiona said.

"Take what?" Evans snapped, not looking at Fiona.
Her inquiry seemed surly, her attitude standoffish and sour. Fiona was not sure
whether this demeanor was actually meant for her or was simply Evans' regular
attitude.

"This macho-pig bullshit," Fiona said. "They
start this separating crap, you know where it ends."

"They got two bathrooms, lady," Evans said
between tight lips. Although her skin was dark, like bittersweet chocolate, her
features were delicate, more Caucasian than Negroid, and her hair was cut in a
tight helmet of curly hair, peppered by premature grey. She seemed to be
Fiona's age, mid-thirtyish, but it was difficult to tell.

Her clothes fit well on her long frame, a solid navy blue
suit with a red kerchief carefully placed where her decolletage hinted at an
ample bosom tightly in check. She wore tiny gold earrings but no rings or
bracelets. Fiona had already noted that her legs were shapely and muscular and
she was sure that under her clothes was a tight, muscular and well-exercised
body.

Everything about her—voice, speech and carriage—announced
her formidability. Fiona speculated that she was the kind of castrating black
woman that scared the shit out of black men. At least that was the persona that
she presented.

She had noted that the men on the squad treated her with
deference, and she had been, up to then, paired with a grey-haired,
soft-spoken, black homicide veteran affectionately nicknamed "Pop"
Herman, who held a hard-won reputation as a man who could charm a rabid dog
into submission.

So far they had appeared to get along efficiently, if not
warmly. To put it mildly, Charleen Evans could not strike anyone as warm and
friendly.

"It's wrong, Evans," Fiona persisted. "He's
deliberately putting us out of the mainstream."

"His prerogative," Evans snapped.

"I can handle myself, be as physical as any man,"
Fiona said. She studied Evans with deliberation, her glance washing over her
body. "And I have no doubts about you."

Charleen Evans barely moved a facial muscle. Fiona noted
that her brown eyes were flecked with yellow.

"Sorry, lady. We got different agendas," she said
firmly, turning away. She moved to her desk, sat down and reached for the
phone. Fiona followed her and stood beside the desk. She was tempted to reach
out to still the hand that was punching in numbers. Instinct told her to abort
the gesture. The moat that Evans had constructed around herself brooked no
contact.

"They get away with this, other things will erode.
We'll have to reinvent the wheel, go back to the regs and the statutes. It's
fucking discrimination, Evans." In trying to regulate the decibel level of
her voice, Fiona's words came out as a wet hiss.

With careful deliberation, Charleen Evans replaced the
telephone and stopped punching in numbers. She looked up at Fiona, her eyes
narrowing, her stare intense.

"Do you wish to discuss discrimination, Sergeant
FitzGerald?" she said with contempt.

"Well, well," Fiona said. "One of
those."

"Those? A black bitch, you mean."

"We are not dealing with race here, Mama. Only
gender." She watched the woman's eyes glaze with growing anger.
You
test me, I'll test you, bitch
, Fiona decided.

"Well, well," Evans said, unsmiling. "One of
those."

"Put away the pussy-whip, Evans. It won't work on me.
Be an ally or an enemy. That's your choice. I don't give a rat's ass. I've told
you my position and I intend to articulate it with or without you."

Fiona wanted to say more, but she held off and turned away
instead. This was one tough, arrogant, fearsome black broad with a big chip on
her shoulder and no visible softness. She felt her eyes burning into her as she
moved toward the Captain's office. Most of the others in the squad room had
scrambled, gone into combat.

The Eggplant was on the phone. He looked up when she came
in and waved his hand to shoo her out.

"I've got to see you, Captain."

"Later."

"It's rather important," she said, raising her
voice.

"Can't you see I'm up to my ass?"

"I want to lodge a protest," she said, her voice
cracking, suddenly conscious of a growing feeling of impotence. He barked into
the phone. Had he heard? She wasn't sure.

"I'm not going away," Fiona said, her feet
feeling as if they were encased in cement.

"Then stay," he shouted. "Who gives a shit?
I've got more crap on my plate than any homo sapiens can handle. Two more this
morning. You got it. Drug-related. Gang motivated. What the fuck have you got
on your mind?"

"It's important," she mumbled, but her resolve
was waning. She was losing heart, feeling compassion for his dilemma. Her own
concerns seemed suddenly trivial.

"Please, FitzGerald. I appeal to your better nature.
Whatever it is, put it on ice. I promise we will discuss it. But not now. Not
fucking now. I beg of you."

There was little she could do. She felt helpless, a sense
of weakness. The timing for protest was all wrong. Turning, she went back to
the squad room. Charleen Evans had surely heard everything. Was she gloating?
She was speaking on the telephone and did not look up.

Fiona slumped at her desk, slightly disoriented, nursing
her wounds, trying to salvage some self-respect. Worse, she felt defeated by
this woman. Yes, pussy-whipped by her aggressive self-assurance. Fiona's
antagonism should have been directed against the Eggplant, against the male
macho bigotry. Instead, it seemed concentrated in her feelings toward Charleen
Evans.

Suddenly a file slapped the desk, startling her. She saw a
shadow hover, then recede. She knew it was Charleen Evans and she fought the
urge to look up, lock glances. She reached for the file, but did not open it.
She knew what it was, the overnight list of hospital deaths. No, she decided,
patting the file. She will not intimidate me. Finally, she looked up, turned
and confronted Charleen Evans.

She was talking into the phone, but her eyes lifted when
she saw Fiona's face. It was then that she raised her middle finger, punching
the air. Fiona flushed and turned away. No split decision here. Fiona
FitzGerald had lost the first round.

THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT, Fiona revolved like a top in her bed,
ruffling the sheets with each crease feeling like a razor's edge cutting into
her flesh. She was fully conscious, as if unable to shake a caffeine high, but
try as she might she could not find her lost courage.

Reliving yesterday had all the earmarks of a nightmare. She
had spent the day trying to sublimate her anger and humiliation, finding words
she might have spoken, but didn't. It only added to her misery to know how
badly she had handled the situation.

She had, she decided, been a fool not to insist on making
her protest, despite the Eggplant's problems, if only to put her complaint on
the record. The record was essential. At the least she should have started to
create a paper trail. In dealing with the bureaucracy a paper trail was
essential.

It was not trivial. It was a matter of bedrock principal.

Through the slats of her drawn blinds, visible through the
sheer curtains of her bedroom, she waited for the lightening of the world.
Perhaps in the new day she would find her courage. She wished she had the arms
of a male to comfort her in this moment of her lost confidence, an irony that
was not lost on her. But she was currently undergoing a time of shortage in
that regard, some of it self-generated.

There were peaks and valleys in the rhythm of her desires.
She was now in a long, dry, barren valley of sexual disillusion, lustless and unfeeling.
It was a time of questioning, which always left her vulnerable. Was this single
life her subliminal choice? An exercise in self-protection or self-deception?
Like her love life, the maternal instinct also ebbed and flowed, usually in
inverse proportion to her emotional involvement. When she loved, she felt
threatened by the idea of marriage and motherhood, but when she was meandering
through the dry valley, she felt as if she had been abandoned by life, the
womanly role of wife and mother sorely missed.

However convoluted the trail of self-pity, the full focus
of her anger was directed against Charleen Evans, the castrating black
ballbuster. She could identify now with the horror experienced by the black
male when confronted with such a menace, the humiliation, the fear.

This was the monster that caused them to cup their balls
for self-protection and reach for their "johnsons" for
self-assurance. These black overbearing bitches, like the African honeybadger,
were out to tear off their genitals, rendering them useless as performing
males.

Charleen Evans' message was loud and clear. Fiona could
identify it all right. In a mysterious gesture she reached for her own crotch,
seeking her own reassurance, finding none.

Through all this self-pity and angst she heard the rasp of
the telephone, boring into her consciousness like a metal drill. She reached
for it with an unsteady hand as if she were awakening with a hangover.

"FitzGerald?"

The voice was instantly recognizable. Fiona shot up to a
sitting position. Her. The voice of the damned. She pinched her cheeks to be
sure she was not dreaming.

"Yo," Fiona replied, determined to be casual.

"Officer Evans," the voice said.

Fiona squinted into the red digital numbers of the clock on
the dresser. It was barely five in the morning.

"He just called," Evans said, oddly tentative.

"Who?"

"Captain Green."

"He called you?"

Fiona could not contain her indignation. She was the senior
detective. Why call Evans first? A Homicide rookie to boot. It was, she knew,
petty and egocentric to think such thoughts, but she couldn't stop it.

"He wants you to pick me up as fast as you can and get
us over to the Watergate."

"The Watergate?"

"You won't believe this. But there's a woman hanging
from a balcony."

"A suicide?"

"We'll soon know, won't we?"

There it was, the incipient arrogance. But somehow it had
the opposite effect. Fiona had more homicide experience. In that area the woman
was a real tenderfoot. Nor would she want to fuck up for lack of experience.
The worm turns, Fiona thought, banking the fires of her indignation. Just like
the Eggplant to call Evans first. He wouldn't want to go through any protest
shit. Not now. Not with a woman hanging from a balcony of the Watergate, soon
to be fully visible to an awakening Washington.

"Give me directions to your place, Evans," Fiona
barked, taking charge. Evans gave them. "And call Flanagan and the tech
boys."

"I already have, Sergeant FitzGerald."

"
Ain't you just wonnerful
," Fiona told
herself silently.

"Meet you outside, Officer," Fiona snapped.

"I'll be there ... Sergeant," Evans shot back.

Fiona hung up.

"Black bitch," she muttered, jumping out of bed.

They could actually see a woman dangling over the
tooth-shaped cement balcony of the tenth floor of the Watergate South Building, like a broken puppet on a string, flapping in the breeze, her pink satiny
dressing gown catching a phosphorescent glint from the meager predawn light.

They stood on the river side, squinting upward along the
building's white curved facade from the vantage of the greening lawn that
separated the building from Rock Creek Parkway. Cars did not slow since the
body was too high up and it was too dark for a clear visual shot.

Three elderly people in robes stood in a cluster a few feet
from Fiona and Evans looking upward as a doorman in uniform described the event
of the discovery. Fiona figured him for about fifty, a cut above the ordinary
variety of doorman.

"Got this call from Mrs. Epstein in 1H," the
doorman said, pointing to one of the two grey-haired ladies, her complexion
white and pasty in the dull light. "Said she walked out on her patio. I'm
used to it. Lot of older folks here. They see things, hear things. I check them
all out anyhow." He looked at his watch. "Forty minutes ago. You
people are fast."

Mrs. Epstein sensed that they were talking about her and
moved closer.

"You could have knocked me over," Mrs. Epstein
said.

"Have you been up there?" Fiona asked the
doorman.

"Hell no," the doorman said. "That's your
job." He looked up and pointed. "You can tell from here the lady's
dead." He was right, of course.

"I don't sleep very well," Mrs. Epstein said.
"Sometimes I come out here on the patio in the middle of the night. I just
happened to look up."

"That was when?" Evans asked, poised, pad and pen
in hand.

"Just about an hour ago, I'd say. Wouldn't you,
Howard?"

"Just about," the doorman said, nodding.

"Better lead the way," Fiona told him. She turned
to Evans. "Get her statement. I'll take scene." She saw the
hesitation in Evans' eyes, the brief debate of dominance, then the surrender.
Cop professionalism was taking over. Fiona was by far the more experienced in
these matters and Evans knew it.

"Before Mrs. Epstein's call, did you sense anything in
the building that seemed different?" Fiona asked the doorman as they went
up in the elevator.

"Same as always. Wish I did."

"Why so?"

"Hell, this is Watergate, Officer. This could get me
famous like those others." He smiled, showing his yellowing teeth.

She followed the doorman to the service door of the
apartment and waited as he found the right key.

"Apartments here have a main door and a service
door," the doorman volunteered.

Fiona put out her hand and he placed the passkey into her
palm. He seemed disappointed by the silent request as if they were shunting him
aside and he was seeing fame slip away.

"Could be on security," he grumbled. "They
got these systems, but people forget to activate them."

"Apparently, this one did," Fiona said, carefully
turning the key, feeling the locking mechanism retract. Wrapping her hand in a
handkerchief so as not to spoil the prints, she opened the door. It opened to
the kitchen and they walked through a dining area into the living room.

It was getting lighter now, throwing shadows along the
walls and on the carpet, which was thick and well padded. There was art on the
walls, large splashy canvases. A breakfront, looking very much like a real
antique, in which numerous ceramic figures were displayed. Dresden, she
observed, remembering her mother's penchant for them, delicate human figures in
groupings, the women in long gowns, the men in stockings, tight pants and
powdered wigs. Low bookcases lined the inner walls.

The outer walls were floor-to-ceiling windows and a sliding
door that led to the terrace. With the wrapped hand, she slid open the door and
stepped out. The view was panoramic, the slate grey Potomac waiting for the
glint of sunrise. She could see the three bridges that crossed over the river
to the Virginia side. To her left she saw the Jefferson Memorial, and straight
ahead the high-rise skyline of Virginia and a sprinkling of window and street
lights.

The terrace was shaped in a half-moon lined with plantings
along its edge. A rope was wrapped around a cement tooth, held fast by a
complicated professional-looking knot.

Two potted evergreens in wooden tubs lay on their sides as
if they had been deliberately toppled to make room for someone, a body, to
scale the low terrace wall. On the inside edge of the terrace, just beyond the
sliding door, were two pink slippers placed casually parallel to each other.

Peering over the edge, Fiona saw the female corpse swinging
gently in the breeze, a pale ghostly apparition in a pink dressing gown hanging
from the end of about eight feet of rope.

"People downstairs will get one helluva surprise when
they wake up and see Miz Dearborn's body swinging up here," the doorman
said as he looked over the terrace wall.

"Dearborn?"

Fiona suddenly remembered Chappy's remark referring to
"the Witch of Watergate."

"Not Polly Dearborn?"

"That's her down there. Make no mistake," the
doorman said, proud to be back in the game again.

"Big stuff," Fiona said, thinking of the Eggplant
and his allocation of manpower resources. Can't avoid this one, she thought,
wondering if she could persuade him to give Cates back to her. At least it
solved the matter of her protest, put it on the back burner.

"Rotten way to do it," the doorman said,
continuing to peer down at the corpse. "She should have just jumped, got
it over with."

"What makes you think it's suicide?" Fiona asked,
leaving the question in the air as she turned to face the oncoming Flannagan
and his band of technical people. They fanned out. Cameras flashed.

"Crazy," Flannagan muttered as he looked over the
terrace. More pictures were taken, then the body was hauled up and laid on the
tiled floor, over which the men had placed a body bag.

Although these people had done such a thing many times
before, Fiona was always surprised at the almost reverent regard for modesty
with which the body was handled. In this case, the woman's dressing gown, worn
over her nightgown, was stretched taut and tucked tightly behind her calves.

They could, of course, do nothing about the neck, which was
askew and reddish blue where the rope, to which it was still attached, had cut
into the flesh. The woman's head was permanently cocked to one side. The
protruding eyes and extended purple tongue were part of the classic death mask
of a hanging victim.

"It's her all right," Fiona said to no one in
particular as she studied the corpse's face then kneeled to inspect the knot,
which appeared to be a well-constructed, obviously efficient hangman's noose.
"Polly Dearborn of the stiletto pen."

"Polly Dearborn, the writer?" It was Charleen
Evans' ejaculation of surprise as she came through the door to the terrace.
Evans looked down at the body as if the identification needed corroboration.

"Used to be," Fiona said.

Evans kneeled beside the body. She reached out, pulled at
the upper part of the dressing gown. The dead woman was wearing a metal device
of some sort around her neck.

"We'll need that," Evans muttered.

"What is it?"

"The key to her computer," Evans said, fingering
it. "Custom job. I was wondering why her computer didn't work." She
looked up at Fiona. The key was on a gold chain. "It's that
important," Evans said.

Fiona nodded. With strong agile fingers, Evans loosened the
rope and lifted it over the woman's head. She did the same with the gold chain,
inspecting the key.

"I'll see if it fits," Evans said, going off to
the bedroom.

The men began to bag the body, which they lifted and placed
on a stretcher. Two men carried it out of the apartment. The doorman followed,
perhaps reasoning that his potential notoriety was now directly proportional to
his proximity to the body.

"Through the garage, please," Fiona barked as the
men passed through the door. In sensitive high-profile cases like this one, the
Eggplant's caveat on the media was always operative. Only one voice speaks for
Homicide. His. The object was to keep things under wraps until the Eggplant was
"apprahzed."

When the last of Flannagan's technical team had gone, Fiona
stood in the center of the living room, inspecting the immediate vicinity,
while Evans roamed through the other rooms.

Always when she was working scene, she needed a single
moment of calm reflection, a time to concentrate. Suicide or murder? This was
the overriding issue here.

Beware the obvious, she cautioned herself, although the
visible evidence clearly bespoke suicide. Death had offered its blandishments
and become the operative choice at the historic moment of bedevilment, the
so-called wee hours when the imagination fixates on the worst-case scenario.

She carried the idea further in her mind, letting it take
hold in her imagination. Depression, like a spreading oil spill, would have
soaked into the woman's psyche, crowding out all optimism, leaving death as the
only alternative to a life of guilt and the pain inflicted by ghosts and
goblins.