A Simple Act of Violence (68 page)

He remembered the slick of blood on the floor outside Robey’s apartment. Could picture Al Roth’s expression, the tone of his voice, the words he’d used: ‘When you’re ready you better come in and take a look at this.’

All of it.

Up close and personal.

Miller stood in the heart of the intelligence community, up ahead a narrow-fronted building. It was from here that United Trust had paid Catherine Sheridan. And Don Carvalho? Was that another Robey alias, like Michael McCullough? Was this yet another piece of the seemingly infinite puzzle that Robey had created for the world?

Miller crossed the street and entered the front door of the building.

United Trust had a mailbox in the lobby, but the feel of the place was unmistakable. The building smelled musty and forgotten. There was some sort of activity behind a frosted-glass door to his right, the sign silently announcing Amalgamated Federal Workers Union. Up on the third floor he found United Trust’s offices. There was no sound from within, no silhouettes against the frosted glass. A narrow corridor ran to left and right, similarly unoccupied offices on each side, and he knew that though Catherine Sheridan’s income might have originated here, United Trust was a name, and that was all.

The frustration was almost unbearable. A thread, small though it might have been, but a thread nevertheless, a tension as you pulled, the feeling that this time there would be something at the end, something of substance . . . but suddenly the tension released and the thread came away in your hands.

It had been the same every step of the way, as close to nothing as he could imagine.

Miller wanted to scream. He wanted to kick the door through . . .

He held his breath for a moment.

He stepped away from the door and felt the facing wall against his back.

He took a step forward again and tried the door handle. It was firm, but the door itself was not heavy. A pane of frosted glass in its upper half, the lower half nothing more than a wood panel inset. He would later tell himself that he had known. He would later rationalize it, take it out of the realm of intuition and instinct, and tell himself that Robey had predicted this all along. That’s the only explanation he could find, for nothing else made sense. Nothing of this made any sense at all unless John Robey had orchestrated every single step of this thing.

Life wasn’t easy on the uncertain, the meek, the quiet. Sometimes things were done because there was nothing else to do.

The sudden sound of splintering wood, a sound that reverberated through the building and brought people from the Amalgamated Federal Workers Union running up the stairs to investigate what was happening - that sound never actually occurred. What did occur was a dull tearing noise as Miller kicked a good shoe-sized hole in the panel. He reached his arm through and upward to unlock the door from within. It was a single latch, nothing more, and when Miller felt the latch snap back from the striker plate there was something akin to relief, the feeling that now there was no going back. He had violated the law on two occasions in a single case. The hairbrush from Robey’s apartment, and now this. Internal Affairs appeared in his thoughts once more. He was a dirty cop who colluded with corrupt city officials.

Miller stepped back and opened the office door.

A single desk, a plain deal chair. A room no more than forty or fifty square feet in size. The window so dirty he could barely see down into the street, its ledge littered with numerous dead flies. It smelled of dust, the age-old haunt of cigarette smoke perhaps, and beneath that the mold taint from carpets that had lain uncleaned for some interminable time.

On the right-hand side was a single file cabinet, grey metal, three drawers. Miller took a latex glove from his inside jacket pocket, and opened the lowest drawer. That and its neighbor were empty, but in the upper drawer was a single white envelope. He lifted it out carefully, turned it over. It was sealed, but there was something inside.

Miller glanced back toward the corridor, looked to the window, and then he carefully opened the envelope.

It was the same picture. On the back were written the same words.
Christmas ’82.
But this time John Robey and Catherine Sheridan were not the only faces that looked back at him. The photograph beneath Sheridan’s bed had been cropped from this one. Here there were five faces, and he recognized all but one.

Miller knew who the man to Robey’s left was immediately. James Killarney, the Arlington FBI representative. And behind and to the right of Catherine, the unmistakable face of Judge Walter Thorne. They were all younger. But Miller knew who they were, except one. A dark-haired man standing beside Killarney, smiling as if this was summer vacation, a fishing trip . . . .

Miller frowned. Could this be right? What the hell did this mean? What in God’s name did Judge Thorne have to do with this?

The FBI and the Justice Department knew the identity of Catherine Sheridan and John Robey? Killarney had come down to brief them on the Ribbon Killer investigation, and yet he had known Catherine Sheridan personally?

Miller tucked the picture back into the envelope and put it into his pocket. He went through the desk drawers. A couple of pencils, a rusted thumbtack, some more dead flies. He looked beneath the carpet as best he could, behind the file cabinet, ran his fingers along the edge where it met the floor to see if anything was hidden beneath.

There was nothing.

He left quickly, did his best to push the broken panel back into place from the inside, and then returned to the street.

Miller looked back at the building from the opposite sidewalk. There was no movement behind the windows, no indication that he’d been seen or was being watched. But that, as he now understood, meant nothing at all. There were eyes everywhere, and they possessed universal pivots, and they watched ceaselessly, and they saw everything.

He headed back the way he’d come.

It was then that he saw him again. No question.

The raincoat man.

Sure of it. Sure as living and breathing. Passing by the end of the street and turning left at the junction.

Miller went after him, at first a rapid walk and then he was jogging past Freedom Plaza. The man did not look back, did not glance over his shoulder, and when he turned left onto Pennsylvania Avenue Miller speeded up. He knew that by the time he reached the corner the man would be gone, but he was scared, and he did not like what he was feeling, and in that moment he believed it would have been better to face the man than to stay back and do nothing.

Just as he’d predicted, when he turned the corner the raincoat man was nowhere to be seen. He wondered if a car had been waiting for him. He wondered if there were other people, watching him through high-powered binoculars even now; people who knew he had broken into the offices of United Trust Incorporated Finance and stolen a photograph.

Miller stopped to catch his breath. Was he now imagining things? He asked himself how many men in Washington wore dark suits and tan-colored raincoats. Did he see the man already running and assume that he was escaping?

Was he losing his mind?

People passed by; Miller looked at none of them directly, saw them all as one faceless wave of humanity, and then he retraced his steps and made his way to the car.

He drove northeast towards the familiar part of the city, past the FBI Building, Ford’s Theater, through Chinatown and onto New York Avenue. He could feel the photograph in his jacket pocket when he turned the steering wheel and his upper arm pressed against his body.

James Killarney was in this. And Thorne. Judge Thorne. Was he supposed to talk to him? What the hell did it mean?

Miller wondered where Judge Thorne would be. In court? In chambers? All judges had an office in Judiciary Square near the Verizon Center. Judiciary Square was no more than three or four blocks away. Miller slowed up and pulled the car over to the side of the road. He looked at the photograph again. The words on the back were printed in block caps. There was no point guessing who might have written them. He had a photograph and a name: Donald Carvalho.

Miller drove down Sixth and took a left onto F Street. He walked the remainder of the way, past the National Building Museum and down to the corner. In the precinct there was a directory of judges’ offices for the Square. He had spoken with Judge Thorne on a couple of occasions, the standard arraignments and court appearances. Thorne would be familiar with Miller’s recent IAD investigation, the small storm of publicity that it had created. Beyond that, Thorne would know as much as Miller regarding this current investigation. Thorne had received copies of all of their reports. Miller wondered if Thorne was an ally or an enemy. Was he being told to speak to him or investigate him?

There was no way of knowing, aside from going up there and finding the man.

He located the judicial administrative office. He was asked about the nature of his business. He told the receptionist it related to an outstanding warrant, and he waited while the judge was paged. The receptionist told Miller that the judge was in his office but unable to meet with him. Did he wish to make an appointment?

‘Could you just check with him if he can answer some questions about United Trust?’ Miller said.

The receptionist smiled understandingly. ‘He really is very busy,’ she said.

‘I know,’ Miller replied. ‘I appreciate that, but if you could just check with him—’

The receptionist called through to Judge Thorne’s office, spoke with his assistant, waited a moment while the message was relayed. The receptionist frowned, nodded her head, said, ‘Okay, I’ll tell him.’

She looked at Miller, the understanding smile gone. ‘You’re to wait here,’ she said. ‘Someone is coming down to get you.’

Miller waited, apprehensive, his pulse quickening. A cool sweat broke out on the back of his neck. For a moment he wondered if he shouldn’t ask to sit down.

He did not wait long. A middle-aged man appeared, smartly-dressed in a charcoal suit, white shirt, dark blue and white polka dot tie. They all looked the same, these men, eminently forgettable, and when he asked Miller to relinquish his gun, said it would be kept safe for his return, showed Miller toward the outer door without ever introducing himself - without offering an explanation for the sudden availability of Judge Thorne - these things simply contributed further to Miller’s anxiety and unease.

‘Judge Thorne does not have a great deal of time,’ the man told Miller as they walked down to a building at the end of the street. There, he punched a number into the external security box. A buzzer sounded, the door was unlocked; Miller followed the man inside.

The inner hallway smelled like a library, took Miller’s thoughts to the Carnegie, the books that Catherine Sheridan had marked; he thought of the day after her murder when he and Roth had gone there to speak with Julia Gibb, the small note she’d made in the hope that it might be helpful. He considered the beginning of this thing, his complete lack of awareness of where this thing would take him: here. Nine days after her murder she had brought him here, to the private offices of Judge Walter Thorne, a highly respected and very intelligent man; a man slated for the United States Supreme Court, perhaps the Senate.

Miller was instructed to stand in the reception area for a moment. He did as he was asked, then, in less than a minute, he was shown into a luxurious office, ceiling-high bookshelves to the right, a pair of French windows to the left, and told that Judge Thorne would be with him shortly.

Miller drew aside the lace drape that obscured the view of the yard. The French windows overlooked a walled, neatly manicured yard prepared for the winter, in its center a small marble urn flanked by a pair of intricate wrought-iron benches. He heard the door close gently behind him.

He turned, and Judge Walter Thorne stood there, smiling.

‘When it’s warm I sit out there,’ he said. ‘Also when I don’t wish for my conversations to be overheard . . . not that it makes a great deal of difference I’m sure. I imagine that if someone wished to eavesdrop on me they could do it anyplace at all.’

Miller estimated that Walter Thorne was in his early sixties. He was around five-foot-nine or ten, but the character and authority in his face gave him the presence of someone much taller. There was something about Thorne that communicated a sense of importance.

‘You are lucky to be alive,’ was the first thing that Walter Thorne told Robert Miller.

Miller frowned.

‘Don’t be naïve, Detective Miller . . . don’t tell me you didn’t realize that the officer who died on Friday evening was supposed to be you?’

‘What?’ Miller felt his knees start to give. He took a step backwards.

‘I credited you with a greater understanding of what was happening here,’ Thorne said. He smiled, indicated a chair by the windows. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Sit down. Let me get you a brandy.’

Miller raised his hand.

‘What? No brandy? But you’re not on duty, detective . . . my understanding is that you have been liberated from this investigation, free to do with your time as you wish . . .’

‘The case was taken off us by the FBI.’

Thorne smiled. ‘The case was taken off you by James Killarney. The FBI and James Killarney are not necessarily the same thing.’

Miller opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came to him. He didn’t understand what Thorne was saying. He thought of the photograph in his pocket, but felt it better not to reveal his hand before he understood the game.

Thorne busied himself with brandy snifters and a decanter. He turned to face Miller, a glass in each hand. ‘This is better than brandy,’ he said. ‘This is a ’29 Armagnac, very good indeed . . .’

Miller took the glass, drank it straight down, felt the rush of it filling his chest.