High Crimes (25 page)

PART FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“
I’m moving
in,” Devereaux said. “You got more rooms in here than the goddamn Hilton, and the roach motel’s starting to wear on me. And you need protection.”

Claire lay on a couch in one of the sitting rooms, both Jackie and Grimes hovering nearby with grave concern. It was close to one in the morning. She was considerably banged up, particularly along her side and her left hip, where she had landed on several small rocks. There were quite a few scrapes as well, including a long, ugly one along her neck and left cheek, by the ear. She also had a ferocious, thudding headache. She’d spent over an hour being questioned by Maryland state police, from which nothing, she knew, would ever come.

“I don’t need protection, Ray,” she said weakly.

“Naw, you don’t need protection,” he said sardonically. “Not you. Someone disables your braking system, intending for you to wipe out on a jeep that’s conveniently left in your path, with two probably half-empty gas tanks on the back, and get blown up, but, naw, everything’s fine.”

“If you care about me—” Jackie said. “No, forget about me. If you care about Annie, you’ll take him up on his offer.”

Claire shrugged, unwilling to argue with such logic.

“So you never lost consciousness at all?” Devereaux asked.

“Nope.”

“No vomiting, change in vision, none of that?”

“Nope.”

“Your pupils look the same size, far as I can tell. So you don’t have a concussion, but you really should get over to the ER and have ’em do a CAT scan.”

“Suddenly you’re a doctor, too?” Claire said.

“You’re not disoriented.”

“No more than usual,” she replied.

“All right, now, Jackie,” Devereaux said, “I want you to wake her up in a couple hours, make sure she can wake up.”

“Don’t bother,” Claire said. “I’ve got my nightly harassing phone call to wake me up.”

“You think it really was Lentini behind this, or just someone using his name for the set-up?” Grimes asked.

“Who cares?” Claire said.

“Nah,” Devereaux said. “The call you got—arranging your little meeting in Maryland—I got a local phone-company source tells me it came from a payphone inside the Pentagon. I doubt it really came from Lentini—if he’s lying low, hiding, he won’t be calling from inside the belly of the beast.”

“We gotta file a notice with the Quantico cops, the MPs,” Grimes said.

“To what end?” Claire asked. “Until we can figure out who did this to me, and prove it, we’ve got nothing.”

“You know something,” Devereaux said, looming over her, “you really piss me off royally. What the hell you think you were doing, arranging a meeting like that, asking me to wire you, and not telling me where you were going? I woulda gone with you.”

“He insisted I go alone,” Claire said feebly.

“They always do,” Devereaux scowled. “You gotta stop being so casual about your safety. I got news for you.” He turned around to the others. “For all of youse. You know your realtor from Pepper Pike?”

“Our witness? What’s-his-name, Fahey?” Grimes said. “Don’t tell me…”

“Yeah. He was killed in a car accident this morning.”

Claire bolted upright. Her head almost exploded with a searing pain. “Oh my God.”

“Whoever wanted him out of the way are the same folks who wanted
you
out of the way,” Devereaux said. “Similar modus vivendi.”

“Operandi,” Grimes said.

“Right. It seems to be the modus operandi of
Kubik
v.
the United States.
”

*   *   *

The phone rang at almost three-thirty in the morning.

Claire rolled over, remembered the pain she was in, and grabbed the phone before the machine could get it.

She didn’t wait for the man’s voice, or for the breathing.

“Missed, motherfucker,” she said, and slammed it down.

*   *   *

She woke up late—ten after nine. Court was already in session. She felt the jolt of pain, and then a jolt of realization in her stomach. “Oh,
God
,” she exclaimed, and leaped out of bed.

No, she remembered. This morning the armorer from Fort Bragg was taking the stand to testify for the government about the integrity of the computer armory records he supervised. Grimes was doing the cross. She never liked to miss a moment of testimony, but this wasn’t a tragedy. And she’d needed the sleep.

Devereaux and Jackie were seated at the breakfast table, talking. Annie was in Devereaux’s lap, sketching with a marker on a drawing pad. Claire could smell freshly brewed coffee.

“Hey, killah,” Devereaux greeted her.

Annie stared at her scraped-up mother with wide, tear-filled eyes, and she started to cry.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

She was
able to cover her scraped cheek fairly well with a concealer, but a large, garish, purple-yellow bruise had emerged around her left eye that even the most industrial-strength cover-up she had wouldn’t hide unless she troweled it on.

Tom noticed it immediately as he was brought to the defense table. “What the hell happened to you?” he said, gaping.

“I slipped and fell,” she said. “Living in a strange house, you know. Happens.”

He looked unpersuaded.

The fact was that they were losing the case. Despite Claire’s powerful cross-examinations of both Hernandez and La Pierre, the two witnesses had still done the job the prosecution had called them to do. The jury no doubt believed not only that Tom had machine-gunned eighty-seven mothers, children, and old men, but that he had visited upon them acts of sadism that could only have been devised by a disturbed mind.

By the afternoon session of the third day of testimony, Henry Abbott, the next eyewitness, was ready for cross-examination. Claire looked around the courtroom, located Ray Devereaux sitting in a spectator seat with his hands folded over his great belly, and smiled. He was wearing one of what he called his courtroom suits, in case he had to take the stand, and looked ill at ease.

She got slowly to her feet and approached the witness stand. Henry Abbott, dressed in a navy-blue suit and crisp white shirt with a silver-striped tie, looked relaxed and confident. He gazed at her with dead eyes. He exuded neither hatred nor contempt. He looked blankly through her, as if she were some invisible bag lady on the street.

“Mr. Abbott,” she said, “I’m Claire Chapman. I’m the lead defense counsel.”

He blinked and gave the barest nod.

“Mr. Abbott, did you see the accused shoot those eighty-seven people?”

“Yes, I did.”

Claire turned her head slightly so that she was out of the line of sight of the jury, then gave Abbott a brief smile. “So you saw the victims react to the impact of the bullets?”

“Yes.”

“Can you describe their reaction?”

“Their reaction? Some of them screamed and cried, some of them fell to the ground and tried to cover their heads. The mothers shielded their children with their bodies.”

Very good. He was well prepared. “And you saw their reaction to the bullets’ impact?”

“Yes.”

“Which was—?”

“Some of them flew backward. They twitched, fell, crumpled in bizarre positions.”

“And you believe the accused was the only one who could have fired those bullets?”

“He was the only one that did.”

“But can you state positively that the bullets that struck those victims came from the accused’s firearm?”

“As I say, he was the only one firing.”

“But did you see the bullets exiting his machine gun?”

“I couldn’t see the bullets in flight, if that’s what you mean. I’m not Superman.”

A few chuckles came from the jury box. Abbott was unshakable. He had been thoroughly briefed.

“Mr. Abbott, how many rounds are in an M-60’s ammunition belt?”

“One hundred.”

“If you’re machine-gunning eighty-seven people, one hundred rounds isn’t enough, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

“So you must have seen him reload.”

But Abbott was too well prepared. “He had two belts linked together,” he said evenly. “He didn’t have to reload.” A brief twinkle of triumph seemed to enter his eyes.

“Mr. Abbott, did your unit have muzzle devices called distorters available for your M-60 machine guns?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why did we have them?”

“Correct.”

“To mask the location of the shooter,” he said, one eyebrow cocked in a deft expression of contempt. “Sometimes it was very important that we not be located.”

“And can you tell me whether Sergeant Kubik had a distorter or a sound-suppressor on his weapon?”

Abbott hesitated. This detail they hadn’t furnished him.

“I believe not.”

“You believe not?” Claire echoed. “Well, isn’t the sound of an M-60 machine gun extremely loud?”

“Yes,” he conceded grudgingly.

“So there’s nothing subtle about it, is there? It would be just about impossible not to know whether an M-60 had a sound-suppressor on it, isn’t that right?”

He shrugged, wary of the trap he suspected she was laying for him. “Perhaps.”

“So, then, is it your testimony that Sergeant Kubik did not use a sound-suppressor or distorter when he fired the rounds that killed the eighty-seven civilians?”

“Right.”

Had he guessed? If so, he was lucky. Abbott was too sharp, or too well briefed, to be shaken from his prefabricated story. She decided it was time to pounce.

“Mr. Abbott, how much business does your company do with the Department of Defense?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Surely you have a fairly good idea.”

“A couple billion, certainly.”

“A couple of
billion dollars
,” she marveled. “So a good relationship with the Pentagon, and the army in particular, must be important to you and your company.”

He shrugged. “The customer’s always right, I like to say.”

“I’ll bet. And are you currently involved in any contract negotiations with the Pentagon?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“That’s a classified matter.”

“We’re in a classified courtroom, Mr. Abbott. Everyone here is cleared, including the jurors and the spectators. You can speak freely.”

“We’re conducting negotiations with the army for the purchase of a new generation of attack helicopters.”

“That must mean quite a lot of potential income for your firm.”

“Yes, it does.”

“And you’re one of the point men in those negotiations, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So that must make you inclined to be cooperative with the army.”

“Is that a question?”

“The customer’s always right, as you like to say.”

He shrugged.

“Mr. Abbott, do you remember the interview we had at the Madison Hotel four days ago?”

“Yes.”

“We met for breakfast, did we not?”

“We did.”

“Did I meet you along with my cocounsel, Mr. Grimes?”

“Yes, you did.”

“How long was the interview?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Does twenty-six minutes sound about right?”

“It may be. I don’t know.”

“Mr. Abbott, at our interview with you at the Madison Hotel, did you tell us you were coached by Colonel Marks, and told what to say in your CID interview?”

Now his eyes were dead again, the flat eyes of a snake. “No.”

“You don’t remember saying that?”

He leaned forward. “I never said it.”

“You never said you were coached before your CID interview?”

“No, I didn’t, and no, I wasn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Are you positive?”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Waldron shouted. “Asked and answered.”

“Overruled,” Farrell said, and took a sip of Pepsi as though he were watching a particularly exciting game on TV.

“I remind you you’re under oath, Mr. Abbott. You never told me that your commanding officer told you what to say to the CID?”

“I never said that, and he never did.”

“Are you aware, Mr. Abbott, that I can move to the witness stand and testify about what you told me?”

“Then it would be your word against mine,” he said blandly. “And you’re not exactly an unbiased witness, are you?”

Claire noticed several jurors watching this exchange with great interest. The foreman, or president of the court, the bespectacled black man, was busily taking notes. “If I told you that’s exactly what I remember, would I be lying?” she said.

“Yes, you would.”

“If I told you that’s exactly what my cocounsel remembers, would he be lying?”

“He most certainly would.”

“If I told you we were tape-recording that interview, would we be lying?” she asked casually and turned toward the defense table. The courtroom stirred. She saw Tom’s eyes gleaming. He was doing all he could not to smile.

Grimes handed her a small stack of papers. She saw Abbott stiffen and clench both hands at his sides. He glared at her fiercely.

“Your Honor,” she said, “may I approach the witness?”

“You may.”

She strolled over to the prosecution table and dropped a stapled sheaf of paper, then placed one on the judge’s bench. Then she handed one to Abbott.

“Mr. Abbott,” she said, “that’s a verbatim transcript of your interview with us, certified by my colleague, Mr. Grimes, and my investigator, Mr. Devereaux, transcribed from a tape recording made by Mr. Devereaux.” She didn’t yet bother to explain that Devereaux had provided her with a transmitter in a dummy cellular phone and had taped the conversation in his car parked in front of the Madison. “Please turn to page thirty-four, Mr. Abbott, and begin reading where it’s marked, seven lines down, beginning with, ‘He says, “Didn’t you see Kubik suddenly raise his weapon and begin to shoot?” I say, “No, sir, I didn’t.”’ And ending with ‘they don’t like snitches and turncoats.’”

Abbott’s face was dark with fury. Under his breath, he said, “Cunt.”

“Excuse me? What did you say?”

Abbott stared ferociously. A vein at his right temple throbbed.

“Did you just refer to me by a four-letter vulgarism, Mr. Abbott?”

Suddenly Abbott threw the transcript to the floor of the witness box. “Goddamn you, that was off the record!”

“It
was
off the record back then,” Claire said quietly. “But you led yourself into the perjury you just committed, not us, and we can’t allow that to happen.”

“Your Honor!” Waldron shot to his feet.

“
That’s it!
” Judge Farrell exploded, hammering his gavel. “The members are excused.”