The Witch of Watergate (11 page)

"You think he killed that bitch, don't you?"

"There's not enough facts to draw that
conclusion," Fiona said.

"Or me. Maybe you really believe I did it."

"Or together," Charleen snapped. Fiona couldn't
fault her on that intervention.

"Yes, together. That would be rich."

"You certainty had the motive. Both of you,"
Fiona said. There were others, too, that Polly Dearborn had destroyed, but this
one was too recent, too compellingly topical, to be ignored.

"Bet your ass on that," Downey muttered. He got
up from the chair and strode across the room, looking idly at a row of books on
their shelves. Then he turned suddenly.

"But you have no evidence," he said pointedly.

"Frankly, no, but that doesn't foreclose on the
possibility that maybe you have."

"Me?"

"The note he left you," Fiona pressed.

"It's none of your business. His last words to me were
for my eyes only."

"When was it given to you?"

The question seemed to confuse him momentarily.

"It was hand-delivered to me at the funeral parlor. I
thought it was from the police."

"Wasn't us. Federal agents were on the scene within
minutes of my getting here. They took charge of the letter."

"All I want to know is whether there was anything in
it that suggested that your father might have been the person who killed Polly
Dearborn."

"A confession, you mean?"

"Yes."

"If that was so, why would the federal agents have
returned it to me?" Robert Downey asked.

"They have their own reasons for everything. Their
agenda is not that of the Metropolitan Police Force. They have other
priorities."

He appeared to be thinking it over.

"Nobody will ever see it now. I've destroyed it."

"Why did you do that?"

"I don't have to explain that to you."

"No, you don't," Fiona agreed. "But it is
possible that what you destroyed was not the genuine article. You'd be
surprised how accurately they can create authentic-looking
correspondence."

Her imagination was soaring into the realm of spy fiction,
CIA shenanigans, dirty tricks, conspiracy and double-cross. Give her a little
time and she might construct a logical scenario. Chester Downey, America's
Secretary of Defense, was a former KGB mole or somesuch. Lots of people around
who would bite on that apple.

"All right, Mr. Downey, then I'll ask you—do you
believe that your father murdered Polly Dearborn, then killed himself?"

Downey smiled and bit his lip. The knobs of his cheekbones
were beginning to turn scarlet.

"If he did, he would have done it that way. A public
hanging. That's what was symbolically happening to him. He appreciated things
like that."

Despite his grief, Downey appeared fascinated by the
interrogation. Suspects, guilty or not, often enjoyed these cat-and-mouse
games, especially those with a vaunted opinion of themselves, where matching
wits with their pursuers represented a life-or-death challenge.

"Yes," Downey said slowly, shaking his head in
the affirmative. "Why not proceed on that theory?"

"We are," Charleen snapped. "Is there
something you can offer us that might help?"

"I wish I could," Downey said, offering a bold
smile.

Despite the sardonic challenge, Fiona sensed that it was
probably unlikely that Downey senior would have told his son that he murdered
Polly Dearborn. As an allegedly loving father, he would not wish to complicate
life for his son after his own death. It was time to switch gears.

"Where were you on the night Polly Dearborn was
murdered?" Fiona asked abruptly. She had hardened her approach now. For
his part, Downey showed the first signs of caution.

"I was in bed, I suppose," he murmured.

"Were you alone?" Charleen asked abruptly. Fiona
cut her another glance of rebuke.

"Alone?" He seemed to recoil from the question.

"Just looking for corroboration," Charleen said.

"Yes," he said after a long hesitation "I
was alone." His answer did not carry much conviction.

"Too bad," Charleen said. "A witness would
have disposed of the matter quickly."

"I think it's time that I disposed of both of you
quickly." He strode to the door of the den, opened it and stepped aside.
They had apparently invaded his boundaries. He was being conclusive now and
Fiona sensed that it was not the time to press forward without more evidence.
She started to cross the room. Charleen hung back.

"Were you sexually abused by your father?"
Charleen asked Downey. The question seemed to freeze him. He looked at her for
a long moment.

"Not my day for the kindness of strangers," he
said, puffing his cheeks, then expelling the air. Fiona knew the reference from
the Tennessee Williams play. They were definitely transgressing now. He would,
Fiona knew, be prepared to defend that boundary with his life.

"I think we've taken enough of Mr. Downey's
time," Fiona said, shooting a cutting glance at Charleen.

"But we haven't finished here," Charleen said.

"Yes we have," Fiona said. She grabbed Charleen
by the elbow and ushered her out of the room.

Back in the car, they were silent for a long time. To
Fiona's surprise, it was Charleen who broke the silence.

"He was wide open," she said. "We could have
run a truck through him."

"For what purpose?"

"There was a compelling reason here. A motive with
teeth."

"You really think he did it?"

"He or his father. Or he with his father."

"That's a conclusion without evidence."

"Then we've got to find the evidence, don't we?"

"That's a dangerous way for a homicide detective to
think," Fiona said, as she drove. She could feel Charleen's eyes boring
into her.

"The guilt came out of him like sweat."

"Which guilt was that?"

She waited for Charleen's answer.

"I have an advantage over you, Sergeant
FitzGerald," Charleen said.

"Fiona. Make it Fiona, Charleen. The formality seems,
well, hostile. Now what's the advantage?" She had pointed the car toward M
Street. They had told Sheila Burns that they would meet her at the
Post
sometime after lunch.

"I read Downey's trial testimony in the hard copies.
You and the Captain hadn't got to it. But I read it and it disgusted me."

"Doesn't make a case, Charleen. Sexual deviation is
one thing, murder another."

"Sometimes you're so patronizing, Sergeant Fitz—Fiona.
It's galling."

"Can't you just remove the damned chip,
Charleen?"

She was silent for a while, then she spoke.

"He testified that his father seduced him at twelve on
a camping trip in Yosemite National Park, and that it happened many times after
that."

"Did the father confirm or deny it?"

"Denied it. Said it was the cult's doing. That they
came up with the most horrible thing they could devise to tear father and son
apart."

"And the verdict?"

"Hung jury. Young Downey went back to the cult."

"All this was in Polly Dearborn's computer?"

"Everything. Apparently he drifted out of the cult himself
about a year later, went back to college and, you might say, reconciled with
his father."

"What's this, 'you might say'?"

"Dearborn had a comment on her computer. She suspected
that this affair was a lifelong thing, that it was still going on."

Fiona felt a sudden stab of rage. Self-righteous Polly
Dearborn, a sexaphobe, afraid of the dick, a virgin after forty. How dare she
judge the sexual propensities of others? She cast a sidelong glance at Charleen
Evans. And you, she asked, silently, imagining tight-assed and controlled
Charleen impaled on some big black dick. No way, she decided, remembering the
obsessive order of her apartment. Nothing ever out of line for old Charleen.

"Okay, so what if they were still having an affair?
We're still talking murder."

"It's one strong motive," Charleen said.
"Imagine having your deepest secrets splashed all over the papers."

"She's done it before. There are others who have also
been brought down."

"Not like this. This was more than an ordinary
career-breaker. This was ten points on the psychic Richter scale."

"Not bad, Charleen," Fiona said. "The part
about the Richter scale."

"Now it's ridicule," Charleen harumphed.

"You and your attitudes. I'll try to ignore it. The
bottom line is do you seriously believe that one or the other Downey or both
killed Polly Dearborn?"

"Let's say that the possibility should be seriously
considered."

"You want to bring it to Captain Greene?"

Charleen was silent as she looked out of the window. A warm
sun had brought out early lunchers who brown-bagged on Farragut Square and
filled the sidewalk tables of restaurants.

"Not yet," Charleen said. "But I think we
missed something at the apartment. I don't know what. But something."

Fiona headed the car toward 15th Street, then made a right
into a parking lot adjacent to the
Washington Post
building.

"Okay. I offer you my expression of support. After the
Burns woman we go back to the witch's lair."

"There it is again," Charleen said.

"I hope so. Ridicule, was it?"

"Sarcasm," Charleen replied. Fiona took it as a
good sign. Charleen was loosening up.

THEY FOLLOWED SHEILA Burns to her office.

"You'll never find it without me," she had said
cheerily over the telephone at the reception desk in the lobby. A few moments
later, she was beside them, a small woman with white skin framed by ringlets of
jet black hair. She shook hands and led them to the elevator.

"They've got me in this Siberian hole," she said
after the elevator had stopped at the third floor. Fiona noted that the
editorial department was on the sixth floor. They followed her through a maze
of corridors until they came to an unmarked, door which Sheila opened with a
key.

They entered a narrow room with a computer work station at
one end and a long shelflike overhang covering the length of the room. On the
shelf were newspapers, reference books, a coffee maker and a mismatched cluster
of coffee mugs. Next to the computer were four oversized, thickly stuffed
manila envelopes.

Aside from the computer desk chair, there were two others
made of shaped green plastic on chrome legs. Recessed ceiling lights cast an
orangey glow over everything. It was not a flattering color, especially for
Charleen. There was a window in the room, but the blinds were drawn.

On the walls were a series of photographs. A young Sheila
Burns with ex-President Reagan. A somewhat older Sheila Burns with former
Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, with Maureen Reagan, with Justice Sandra
O'Connor.

"My rogues gallery," she said, seeing Fiona
eyeing the pictures.

There were other pictures as well, personal pictures.
Sheila Burns running in the Boston Marathon. Another of her skiing. Another
showing her and others with a group of elephants. Still another of her
rappelling up a mountain and another with a group of people, some of whom
looked quite foreign, Filipinos, perhaps. An inscription read: Nepal, 1985.
Ghurkas probably.

"I'm an outdoor girl," she said, apparently
pleased at Fiona's and Charleen's interest. Her height belied the evidence. She
stood near the coffee machine.

"Coffee?"

"No thanks," Fiona said. Charleen shook her head.

She poured a mug for herself and motioned them to sit down
on the plastic chairs and turned the desk chair toward them. Then she sat down,
placed her legs Indian style on the chair and faced them. Reaching out, she
patted a small pile of thick manila envelopes.

"Clips of Polly's stories. Ten years' worth. Mr.
Barker wanted you to have them. Ten years' worth of Polly's stories. I'm not
sure you've got as many suspects as you think," Sheila said.

She lifted one of the envelopes from the pile and read from
notes she had written on it.

"Note that most of our subjects were either rich or
powerful. She didn't go after the little guys, only the big boys. And no one
ever got to her legally. She was scrupulously accurate."

"You think it's possible that one of them did her in
for revenge?" Fiona asked.

"You've got them. Judge for yourself. Polly believed
that she was performing a public service, rooting out the liars, the hypocrites
and the cheats. No question that she hit them hard. She called them
broken-field runners. When her stories stopped them from going one way, they
went another. I did a little checking. Most of them came up with a pretty good
afterlife."

"It's possible. Revenge has its allure," Fiona
said.

"Seems so." Sheila sighed.

Fiona looked around the small office.

"This the best they could do?" she asked.
"Doesn't look like the office of a hotshot columnist."

"It's not," Sheila replied. "It's my office.
Polly has never been here. Never will, either. In fact, I don't know how long
I'll be here."

"Will they replace her?" Fiona asked.

Sheila hesitated. Her eyes moved from Fiona's face. She
shifted her body in the chair and clasped her hands in front of her. The clasp,
Fiona could tell, was tight, a gesture of resolve.

"They don't tell me much. Mr. Barker said I should
just hold down the fort for the time being. So I'm holding it. I've been
talking only to those people Mr. Barker has authorized me to talk to. Like you.
Not to any outside media. Notice how quiet it is. Only internal calls get in
here. And I'm living at the Hilton across the street to keep out of the way of
the other media. The paper is moving lots of copy on it. And this thing with
Chester Downey. Very strange.

"It's a first," Sheila added.

"A first what?" Fiona asked.

"A first suicide. Not one of Polly's other subjects
did that. Even those that eventually went to jail."

"Maybe she was rougher on Downey than on the
others," Fiona suggested.

"Not really. A number of those she wrote about got in
trouble for being too nepotistic," Sheila replied. "But they didn't
blow their brains out."

"Somehow," Fiona said, "I think the other,
the sex thing, might have set him off."

"It never ran," Sheila said.

"But Downey thought it might," Fiona countered.

"Might be worth pursuing," Sheila shrugged.

"You think so?" Fiona asked.

"I'm not alone. It's all over the television news.
People speculating that Downey killed Polly, then killed himself. The media
loves quick and easy solutions."

"Anything surface on the sex business elsewhere?"
Fiona asked.

"I haven't seen anything on it," Sheila replied.

"You think it will stay under wraps?" Fiona
asked.

"In this town?" Sheila emitted a long throaty
laugh. "Even dust particles send messages."

"Have the feds been here?" Fiona asked.

"Oh yes. I talked to them for hours last night."

"What did you tell them?" Fiona asked.

"Everything I knew, of course. Mr. Barker sat
in."

"Did he?"

"After all, he was her employer. Mine, too. There were
also two lawyers there. And a stenographer with one of those machines."

Can't be too cautious with the feds, Fiona thought. Of
course, Barker had the Eggplant in his pocket. No need for caution on that
score. Above all, Fiona hated to be taken for granted. She exchanged glances
with Charleen and, for the first time, she sensed that they were on the same
wavelength.

"What exactly did you do for Polly Dearborn?"
Fiona asked.

"I guess you'd say I was her everything. Mainly I was
her person at the paper. Simple as that. I did all the easy research, relayed
messages, picked up material around town, answered all her calls at the paper,
was a kind of conduit between Polly and Mr. Barker. You see, Polly worked out
of her apartment. Never came to the paper. Sometimes she would query me to find
out this or that."

"Were you plugged into her computer at the
apartment?" Charleen interjected in a deliberately benign and gentle way.

"She sent her copy in by fax."

"I was referring to access," Charleen said.
"Could you get into her files with your computer?"

"Absolutely not." She smiled and stared directly
at Charleen. "You have to understand Polly. She was a control freak. Also
paranoid about her material."

"You did say you did general research," Fiona
said.

"Oh yes. I researched where all the data banks were.
Also where new ones were coming up. She was a fanatic on data banks. That's
where she claimed she got most of her backup material. Right there in some data
bank. I was never authorized to go into one of them to search out something.
She never did give me the access codes. Polly did all that herself. She was a
whiz at computers. I'm kind of a dumbhead when it comes to them, although I'm
okay with word processing, but Polly was—" Sheila paused, then shook her
head in approval of what she seemed about to say—"well a real computer
whiz. Would you believe that she was plugged into nearly fifty data
banks?" She leaned forward on the chair and lowered her voice a few
decibels. "There's no privacy anymore. None at all. For Polly getting the
dirt she did was like falling off a log."

"Did you ever operate the computer in her
apartment?" Charleen asked.

"Polly would have chopped my hands off," Sheila
said. "No way. I did meet with her there for an hour or so three times a
week. We would go over the mail, invitations, things to do, the usual. As for
her computer, that was sacrosanct to her."

"Do you have any idea what was on the computer?"

Sheila seemed to grow cautious. She had not unclasped her
hands throughout the questioning process. In fact, her knuckles had turned whiter.

"Not specifically."

"Hot stuff though?" Fiona asked.

"I can't say. I've never gotten into it."

"Could you have?" Charleen asked.

"I doubt it. I assumed she had it pretty well
secured." She paused, then added quickly, "I assume she had it
totally secured."

"Now that she's dead, what do you expect will happen
to the information in the computer?" Charleen asked.

"Not for me to say." She raised her eyes upward.
"That's for the powers that be to decide."

"Barker?" Fiona asked.

"That would be his decision."

"When is the funeral?" Fiona asked.

"Won't be any." Sheila sounded suddenly hoarse.
"She's been cremated and her ashes spread over the Potomac."

"That was fast."

"She had it in her will," Sheila said.

"When was the last time you were at the
apartment?" Charleen asked. She and Fiona had finally established an
interrogation rhythm.

Sheila cocked her head, obviously searching for an accurate
answer.

"Not counting when we met ... three days ago,"
she said.

"What did you do?"

"I told you, we went over things. There were
invitations to go over."

"Did she get many?" Fiona asked.

"Hundreds. And she went out a lot. Picked up lots of
leads that way. Polly kept her ears open. Of course, she had to pick and choose
where she went. In the kind of work she did she made lots of enemies, also
contacts, people wanting to kiss her butt so maybe she wouldn't be an enemy.
Lots of people called her to give her little tidbits. You know, tips. Between
that and the data banks she could track things, confirm things. You know what I
mean?"

Fiona knew, of course. In Washington leaks were endemic.
People had secret grievances, private grudges, and the media encouraged those
with axes to grind to come forward, promising anonymity to informers and gossip
mongers.

"One thing about our stories," Sheila continued.
Fiona noted the use of the collective pronoun. "They were the truth. Very,
very rarely were we off the mark. Polly was unusually thorough in her checking.
She always called those about whom she had found negative material to give them
a chance to defend themselves. That was a religion with her."

"Like Chester Downey?"

"And his son," Sheila said.

"I assume you knew about the material that was cut out
of the story that ran today?" Fiona asked.

"I told you that."

"When did you know it?"

"When Polly faxed it over."

"Not before?"

Sheila shook her head.

"You didn't know Polly. She only showed her stories
when they were finished."

"Barker was going to discuss the third installment
with Polly first, give her some opportunity for rebuttal. Am I right?"

"Yes. That was their agreement. If Mr. Barker thought
something material should be eliminated, his policy was to call her. Always. In
the Downey situation, when he couldn't reach her, he contacted me, and when I
couldn't reach her I went to the apartment ... where I met you both."

"Do you think that Polly sometimes went too far in her
stories?" Fiona asked.

"Too far?"

"Like on the Downey story. The father-son incest. Do
you think that constitutes too far?"

Sheila looked puzzled for a moment. A frown creased her
brow and quickly smoothed.

"Not at all. The public has a right to expect the
highest standards of morality and character from public officials. The media is
the court of last resort. Corruption and immorality must be exposed. That was
Polly Dearborn's job and she did it like no other. She was the best. I learned
a great deal from her."

"You'd like to do that type of work?" Fiona
asked. "Not just be an assistant, but really do it. Like Miss
Dearborn."

"If Mr. Barker made me an offer..." She paused.
Her hands had relaxed for a while. Now the knuckles went white again.
"What's wrong with that? Anyone would jump at the chance."

"Have you put in your oar for Miss Dearborn's
job?" Fiona asked.

Sheila shrugged and seemed reluctant to answer.

"You'd be the logical choice," Charleen said.

"I thought so," Sheila replied, swallowing the
words.

"You've learned a great deal on this job, haven't you,
Sheila?"

"Yes, I have."

"Did you like Polly Dearborn?" Fiona asked.

"My, that sounds almost accusatory."

"It wasn't meant that way," Fiona replied.
"I'm sorry."

Sheila stared at Fiona's face. Fiona offered a broad, warm
smile. It was natural for people to get paranoid at an interrogation in a
murder case. Some more than others. When that happened, Fiona did everything
she could to put them at their ease. Sheila Burns could be a fund of knowledge.

"I had nothing but admiration for her," Sheila
continued. "She was fantastic. Aloof, yes. A loner, yes. Not very giving,
but she knew her business."

"Did it bother you that people got hurt from her
stories?"

"Not at all," Sheila said quickly. "That
wasn't our affair. We told no lies. Public officials must be accountable. That
was the way Polly thought about it and I agreed with her completely."

"Do you think that the sexual material about Downey
and his son should have been printed?"

"Why not? It came from testimony of a court trial. She
might have found it in one of the data banks. I'm not sure. But she had the
material confirmed. I think the American people are entitled to know about a
man's character, especially if he is in a key role like Defense Secretary. Why
not?"