Murder at Ford's Theatre (18 page)

“What did Nadia say about him?”

“Have you talked to him?” Cole asked.

“Mind if we ask the questions, Joe?” said Johnson.

“Do you know Jeremiah Lerner?” Klayman asked.

He shook his head.

“Ever see him together with Nadia?”

“No.”

“What did she tell you about him, Joe?”

He made an embarrassed false start before saying, “She thought he was some kind of a stud. I guess she’d know, huh, considering what a slut she was.”

Johnson came from his position at the door and stood over Cole. “Let me give you a little good advice, my man,” he said in his best baritone. “I am getting tired of hearing you trash the victim. I am getting tired of hearing you talk like you’re the original macho man and slandering a young woman who was beaten to death. Is my message getting across?”

“I didn’t mean anything. It’s just that—”

“So you were angry with her. Right?” said Klayman.

“Yeah, I was, and I told her so.”

“How did she react?”

“She laughed and told me to get out.”

“And this was Saturday night?”

“Right.”

“Not Monday night.”

“Monday? No. Hey, look, if you think I got mad enough to kill her, you’re all wrong.”

“You own a pair of Ecco shoes?” Klayman asked.

“What’s that?”

“Mind if I look at your shoes?” Johnson asked, opening the closet door.

“No. Why should I mind?”

“Which shoes are yours, and which ones are your roommates?”

Cole showed them his shoes. No Eccos among them.

Klayman opened the door, and he and Johnson stepped into the hall, with Cole following anxiously.

“So you know I didn’t kill her. Right?”

Johnson replied, “You just remember what I said about slandering the dead, Joe.”

“Okay.”

On their way back to First District headquarters, Johnson said, “Man, I don’t like that smug bastard.”

“Think he’s lying? Think he was with her Monday night?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. We should check the restaurant he says he took her to.”

“Right.”

“You know, buddy, I’ve got to give it to you about the shoes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Noticing that the Lerner kid was wearing a pair when we brought him in, and remembering it when forensics came back with a match of the prints to that sole pattern.”

They stopped at a light, and Klayman raised his right foot off the accelerator. “Eccos,” he said, returning his foot to the pedal. “My parents bought me this pair last time they visited.”

Johnson chuckled. “I’m impressed. Yeah, I am impressed.”

“I was more impressed with the judge who gave us the warrant. Hardly compelling evidence to base it on.”

They pulled into the parking lot at the rear of the building.

“What about Bancroft, the old actor?” Johnson asked. “We know Lerner lied to us about knowing the victim because of what Cole says. We get Bancroft on the record about it and the kid is dead meat. He’s due back tomorrow?”

“That’s what he said. I figured we could check him out tomorrow afternoon, after my class.”

“How’d you get Hathaway to give you the morning off? He’s got us on twenty-four/seven until we break this case.”

“Herman’s a believer in education,” Klayman responded wryly.

Johnson chuckled. “Like Lincoln, huh? Hey, by the way, since you’ve become a shoe expert, what kind of shoes did Lincoln wear? Eccos?”

Klayman said without hesitating, “He wore size fourteen boots made by a New York boot maker named Kahler. Lincoln made tracings of his own feet and sent them to New York.”

Klayman opened the rear door to headquarters and held it for Johnson, who’d stopped a few feet away.

“Coming?” Klayman asked.

“I should have known better than to ask,” Johnson said.

TWENTY-TWO

“C
LARISE.
It’s Bruce.”

“I just walked in the door.” She cradled her cell phone between shoulder and cheek as she kicked off her shoes and moved through the Georgetown house. “I have guests arriving in a half hour and—”

“Have you heard from Jeremiah?”

“No. Oh, the interview with him this afternoon. I’d almost forgotten. I meant to call you. How did it go?”

“Badly. He lied to the police when he said he didn’t know the girl. He did know her. He dated her.”

“Oh, my God. Are you sure?”

“I was there, remember? He admitted it to me, and to Mac Smith. The police took his shoes.”

“What?”

“His shoes. They had a warrant for his shoes.”

“Why?”

“As evidence, of course. He left, drove off in my Jag. You haven’t heard from him?”

“No. I told you I hadn’t. Where did he go?”

“Damn it, Clarise, if I knew that I wouldn’t be calling you. Look, this is serious. He’s obviously in big trouble with the law and—”

“Can’t you do something?”

“Such as?”

“Such as—you’re a U.S. senator, for Christ’s sake. Maybe it’s political, a way to get at you—and at me. My confirmation hearing is looming and—”

“I don’t give a damn about your hearing, Clarise. Jeremiah is—”

“Thank you very much, Senator Lerner. What do you want me to do about Jeremiah, get in my car and cruise the streets looking for him?”

She felt her internal thermostat rising, becoming hotter. She could see her ex-husband sitting in his study, probably wearing one of his dozens of custom English suits, debonair and smug, viewing her as a hysterical woman unable to control herself and not making sense. She prided herself in her ability to manage her anger, to force cognition to trump emotions, to use any anger she might feel in a positive way, channeling it to achieve whatever goal was in her sights at the moment. But she hadn’t always been successful in doing it.

T
HERE WAS THE TIME
less than a year ago when rumors had begun to circulate about a possible sexual affair between her former husband and Nadia Zarinski. Clarise had first heard about it when a friend, who consumed gossip and thrived on it the way health fanatics consume and thrive on sprouts and personal trainers, called.

“Clarise, dear, how are you?”

“I’m fine. How are you, Sissy?”

“Well, I must admit I’d be considerably better if my very good friend, Clarise Emerson, wasn’t being trashed the way she is.”

“I’m sorry, Sissy, but I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I have an appointment I’m already late for.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Maybe I’m speaking out of turn. You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?” Her pique was palpable.

“About Bruce and his intern.”

“What about them?”

She lightened her voice to soften her response. “About them having . . . well, I suppose there’s no delicate way of putting it . . . having a thing.”

Clarise’s immediate reaction was muted. Politicians becoming involved with female interns was nothing new in Washington. She laughed and said, “Don’t you just love this city’s rumor mill, Sissy? Thanks for sharing the latest with me. Have to run. Bye, sweetie.”

But after hanging up and chewing on what she’d been told, she found herself becoming increasingly agitated. And when, an hour later, she turned on all-news radio WTOP and heard mention of the rumor about Bruce and the intern, she experienced a painful wave of disgust, which quickly escalated into rage. She considered calling her former husband but held back—until the rumor developed legs and seemed to dominate every newscast. Worse, it soon became the centerpiece of whispers all over Washington. When she walked into a room, the sudden silence, then the shift to any inane subject other than what had been being discussed, was transparent.

Of course, she was asked about it by those who considered themselves close enough to tread on such delicate ground, and honed lighthearted answers that she considered sophisticated but that in no way truly reflected what she was feeling. Her favorite line was, “At Bruce’s age, talking after making love is as important as making love itself. Having sex with an empty-headed twenty-two-year-old isn’t his style.” She’d said it so many times, to so many people, that she sometimes thought she believed it.

She finally confronted him about the rumor after a Washington
Post
writer questioned what impact his affair with Nadia Zarinski would have on
her
future in Washington. He wrote:

Despite the adamant denials by Senator Lerner and the intern, Nadia Zarinski, that they’d engaged in sex in his Senate office after hours, the story just won’t go away. Obviously, the extent to which it has sullied his reputation as it might affect a future presidential run is worthy of serious discussion. But what of his high-powered former wife, Clarise Emerson, who heads the oh-so-staid and proper Ford’s Theatre, and who has recently been nominated to head the controversial agency, the National Endowment for the Arts? Pundits say the ripple effect might swamp her, Hillary Clinton’s successful ‘divorce’ from her husband’s shenanigans aside.

“Y
OU BASTARD!
How could you?” she demanded as they stood in his study. It was night; landscape lighting in the gardens beyond the windows tossed ribbons of white light across the room. The senator was dressed in suit, tie, and white shirt: “I have a dinner appointment in an hour,” he’d told her when she arrived unannounced at his door.

“I don’t give a damn about your dinner dates,” she said. “What were you thinking, playing doctor-nursey with some kid bimbo? You couldn’t find a mature woman to satisfy your goddamn sexual urges?”

“Calm down, Clarise. Hysteria doesn’t become you.”

She tried, tried very hard to get hold of her emotions, and partially succeeded, at least to the extent that her voice lost some of its shrillness, and her hands shook less.

“Don’t you realize what this is doing to me, Bruce? To you? We’re not a couple of slugs whose life isn’t impacted by this kind of cheap scandal. Our futures are at stake.”

“Clarise,” he said calmly from where he sat behind his desk—she paced the room—“Who I choose to sleep with is my business and my business alone. I’ll worry about my future, thank you, and you take care of yours.”

She was speechless. She stopped pacing and grabbed the back of a chair to steady herself. She’d expected a denial from him, a blanket refutation of the rumor. Instead, he seemed to be saying—

“Are you admitting to me that you
did
sleep with that little bitch?”

“I think it’s time you left, Clarise.”

“No, I will not leave, Bruce. Has it ever occurred to you the embarrassment Jeremiah must feel about his father taking up with a woman his son’s own age?”

“She’s older than Jeremiah, Clarise. It would help if you’d deal with the facts, not flashes of imagination. Besides, I’m sure Jeremiah is worldly enough to not fall apart, as his mother seems to be doing.”

She suffered the sort of frustration she’d always felt when engaged in an argument with her ex. He was unflappable, low key, his law training of many years ago still ingrained, a stolid wall of seeming reason and wisdom. Infuriating!

She fell silent, pulling herself together, searching for the right words to say next, words that would penetrate his armor.

He came around the desk and reached to put his hands on her shoulders. She recoiled and stepped back. “I heard she’s still working for you,” she said softly, tentatively.

“Yes. I won’t allow rumors and the press to destroy a young woman’s life.”

“How princely.”

“Let it go, Clarise. You’ve got more important things on your plate than to fixate on something this trivial.”

“Trivial?”

“Insignificant. Go home. I have to leave. Maybe we can discuss this at another, calmer time. Have you heard from Jeremiah?”

“Yes.”

“He’s well?”

“Yes.”

“One of these days, he’ll come around and realize how silly he’s been acting. He’ll grow up. They take longer these days to grow up, don’t they?”

She smiled and said, “And some never do, Bruce.” A welcome steely resolve had replaced her previous frenzy. “I’ll tell you this, Bruce Lerner,” she said. “I will never allow you, or one of your young sluts, to ruin my life.”

The amused grin on his face as she turned to leave made her want to kill him. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt that.

“C
ALL ME
if Jeremiah shows up at your house, Clarise,” Lerner said.

“And you do the same.”

K
LAYMAN AND
R
ACHEL
K
ESSLER
met at ten at the Georgetown Café, one of Washington’s few restaurants open all night. Rick and Mo Johnson had finished their day at nine-thirty interviewing Nadia Zarinski’s parents, particularly about their deceased daughter’s financial situation.

“The parents claim they didn’t know that their kid was being paid by Senator Lerner’s office,” Klayman told Rachel over chicken salad sandwiches and iced tea. “They paint her as a young woman struggling to make ends meet in a big city, you know, always writing or calling home and asking for money. I hated to burst their bubble by telling them about her being a paid intern, but there was no choice. I mean, she probably didn’t get paid much and needed extra to live on. Interns don’t get paid much, right?”

“I didn’t know they got paid at all.”

“That’s right. Anyway, the father took it well, but the mother actually accused Mo and me of lying about it. She’s a tough lady, and who can blame her? Her daughter gets murdered in an alley and it sounds like we’re prosecuting her.”

“I don’t envy what you have to do in your job,” Rachel said. “I couldn’t do it.”

Rachel Kessler was a large girl, with strong features, prominent nose and cheekbones, and a wide mouth. She wore her brunette hair short, which tended to exaggerate her broad face. She worked as a statistical analyst at HUD, a job she described as deadly dull but without pressure. She wore an oversized, midnight blue sweatshirt, jeans, and a lightweight white windbreaker. Klayman liked many things about her, particularly her quiet nature and infectious laugh. And, like her job, dating her didn’t apply pressure to him in their fledgling relationship. She was easy to be with, like a welcome weekend houseguest who immediately falls into the flow of things and doesn’t cause problems or create tension, someone who eats anything and helps clean up.

“You said she had a lot of jewelry,” Rachel said.

“Yeah. We asked the parents whether their daughter had any independent source of money. They claimed she didn’t, at least not that they knew of. They’ll get the jewelry at some point. Right now it’s evidence.”

“Are there any leads?”

He shook his head. There were some things he was willing to share with family and friends, but most aspects of an investigation were off-limits.

“Amazing,” she said, shaking her head.

“What is?”

“You being a detective. I mean—don’t misunderstand—what I mean is that I think of cops as”—she laughed heartily—“as big and not especially bright. That’s not you.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“I didn’t mean it to compliment you, Rick. I suppose what I’m doing is admitting to my own stereotyping, my own occupational profiling. You know, all Irishmen drink, and all Greeks dance like Zorba.” Another laugh. “I’m not making sense, am I?”

“Sure you are. We all do that. What counts, I think, is whether we recognize what we’re doing and don’t let it affect how we treat others.”

“I agree,” she said. “Feel like dessert?”

“Sure. Ice cream.”

They’d reached that awkward moment when it was time to decide how they would spend the remainder of the night. Klayman had read in some magazine that women make up their minds whether to go to bed with a date far in advance of being asked. While she dipped into her bowl of chocolate–peanut butter ice cream, he went through the internal debate of whether to suggest they extend the evening at his apartment, or hers. His emotions were mixed. On the one hand, he was sexually attracted to her; their few previous episodes of lovemaking had been pleasurable. On the other hand, he was still operating on police time, his mind filled with thoughts of what had transpired that day, and what future days might hold.

“It’s been a tough day,” he said.

“And a long one for you,” she said.

“Yeah.”

He tried to read her: Would she be disappointed if he called it a night, to the extent that she would decide to look elsewhere for male companionship? Or, if he transformed himself from cop to lover and suggested they spend the night together, would she turn him down because she’d decided she wasn’t interested in sex that night, and make him feel foolish?

She answered his questions by saying, “You have your class in the morning. What did you say it’s about, Lincoln as a lawyer?”

He nodded. “Taught by one of the lawyers for—”

Her eyebrows went up.

“Mackensie Smith. He used to be a criminal lawyer, but now he teaches at GW.”

“You started to say—”

“Nothing. Yeah, I have his class tomorrow, and then back on the investigation. You should meet my partner, Mo Johnson. A great guy.”

“You’ve mentioned him before.”

“He’s got a nice family. He’s a big jazz buff.”

She laughed. “Another stereotype.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Jazz is a black music. That’s the stereotype. It’s wrong, I know, but—”

“He’s serious about it. A real scholar. I never see Mo as being black. I mean, sure, I know he’s Afro-American because his skin is darker than mine, the way I know you’re a female, or somebody is short or tall. But he’s just my partner, a guy. When I was in college, I voted against allowing a black student into my fraternity, not because he was black, but because he was a jerk, a real pain in the butt. I figured that represented true racial equality because I would have done the same for a white pain in the butt.”

“That’s nice,” she said.

“I suppose he views me a little differently. He brings up the black-white thing every once in a while. Can’t blame him. I understand.”