Washington Deceased (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

“A long-standing tradition of the American civil service holds that briefings should always consist of exactly three points,” Michaelson said. “At today's meeting, I have to depart from that rule, as I have only two points to make.”

“Perhaps you could make them then,” Warden F. Whitmore Stevens said.

Michaelson glanced around the small assembly gathered in the basement of Honor Cottage B-4 at Fritchieburg. In addition to Stevens and himself, those present included Clark Grissom, the head of the FBI team investigating Martinelli's murder, Correctional Officer Grade-2 Wesson Smith, and Martin Billikin from the Justice Department's White Collar Crime office. Adding to the oddity of the venue was the presence of a portable video-taperecorder and monitor. It was about one o'clock in the afternoon, some fifteen hours after Wendy's struggle with Cox. None of the inmates was in evidence.

“Well, I can state the points at least,” Michaelson said in response to Stevens' suggestion. “Making them may prove to be a bit of a challenge.”

“I'll say,” Grissom muttered.

“My points are these,” Michaelson continued placidly. “One, that Desmond Gardner didn't kill Sweet Tony Martinelli; and two, that the investigative resources that have thus far been devoted to trying to prove that he did should therefore be diverted from that unpromising objective to the more fruitful one of trying to discover why Martinelli was killed.”

“Not who did kill him, but why he was killed?” Grissom demanded.

“That is correct. We already know who did it. The interesting question is why.”

“I can't wait to hear this,” Billikin said.

“I think it's only fair to tell you,” Grissom interjected, speaking to Michaelson, “that as far as I'm concerned you've got a tough row to hoe. Facts are facts.”

“It's hard to argue with tautologies,” Michaelson acknowledged.

“I know all about that little adventure last night with that Cox character, and I can guarantee you that's going to bear some looking into—from several points of view. But I don't see any solid connection between that guy and the Martinelli killing.”

“There is in my judgment a substantial connection,” Michaelson insisted. “We can start….”

“This is a digression,” Stevens objected. “You said your first point was, Gardner didn't do it. Let's get to that. If we're still with you when you're through making your pitch on that issue, we can talk about this other stuff.”

“Entirely right,” Michaelson conceded. “Let me begin by asking this question: What theory do you have to account for the gun that killed Martinelli being successfully smuggled into the building?”

“We have to speculate,” the FBI agent conceded. “The most logical possibility is that it was smuggled in disassembled, with each piece too small to set off the metal detector.”

“I see,” Michaelson said. “Not a promising theory, if my own experience and Officer Smith's assurances about the capabilities of the window metal detector are any guide. But, assuming you're right, we approach the critical point.”

He gestured toward a small, wooden table that had been set up in the intersection of the corridor and the lateral hallway. A blue cotton cloth covered the table. Arrayed on the cloth were a .22 caliber Colt Targetmaster pistol, a red and white box of Remington .22 caliber long rifle ammunition, and a pair of blue and white cotton work gloves.

“Warden Stevens has kindly supplied the ammunition,” Michaelson said. “Can we agree that the other items are those found in the Supply Room along with Mr. Martinelli's body?”

“Those're my initials on the evidence bag tags, and I took 'em out of the bags myself,” Grissom said.

“Good. Now, Officer Smith, I imagine you have some substantial familiarity with firearms.”

“Sure,” Smith said.

“How is that particular weapon loaded?”

“It's clip-fed,” Smith answered instantly. “There's a magazine, called a clip, inside the handle. There's a spring inside the magazine. You put the cartridges into the clip, put the clip into the handle, then pull that slide on top of the gun back to load the first cartridge into the breech. After you do that, the action of firing the gun automatically ejects the spent shell casing and loads the next cartridge from the clip into the breech.”

“Perhaps you could show us,” Michaelson prompted. “About loading the clip, I mean. The rest we can leave for the moment to our collective imaginations.”

Smith glanced at Stevens, who nodded briefly. Smith walked over to the table and picked up the pistol. He checked to make sure that the safety was on. He pulled the slide back to make sure that there were no bullets in the gun. He pushed a button above the trigger guard. A vented black metal rectangle snapped about three inches out of the bottom of the handle. Smith pulled this object completely free of the gun and laid the pistol itself down.

“That, I take it, is the clip?” Michaelson asked innocently.

“Right,” Smith said, his voice a bit distracted. “You want me to load this now?”

“Yes,” Michaelson said.

Smith opened the box of ammunition. The cartridges seemed remarkably small—no more than an inch long and at most a quarter-inch in diameter at the base. Smith gripped the clip in his left hand and picked up one of the cartridges between the thumb and index finger of his right.

“One moment, Officer Smith,” Michaelson said. “Excuse me. I forgot to mention that I'd like you to load the weapon while wearing those gloves.”

“What?” Smith demanded, his face an expressive depiction of bald astonishment. “Are you serious?”

“Quite serious. Those cotton work gloves there. Please put those on and then load the cartridges into the clip.”

“I couldn't do that in a million years,” Smith snorted. “Neither could anyone else.”

“Do me a favor. Try.”

Smith tried. The effort amply confirmed his assertion of impossibility. His last attempt ended with the clip's spring sending a very much unloaded bullet spinning up into the air.

Michaelson caught the cartridge before it could fall back to the table.

“No sense taking chances, eh?” he said, smiling at the others. “What a loss to American law enforcement if it got us all.”

Smith reached for another cartridge.

“Wait a minute,” Stevens ordered.

“Yes, do wait,” Michaelson said. “I don't think we require further demonstration. I suspect that Officer Smith here is the most proficient among us in this particular area, but I'm willing to have anyone else who cares to try take a stab at it. I'm confident that the results will be the same. I will pay one thousand dollars to anyone here who can load a .22 caliber cartridge into that clip while wearing that pair of cotton work gloves.”

“Proving what?” Grissom asked.

“That it can't be done. It's perfectly possible to fire a gun while wearing gloves. Loading a small-caliber, clip-fed weapon while wearing thick, awkward gloves like these is a different matter.”

“So what?”

“So,” Michaelson said musingly, “if the gun were smuggled into the building in pieces and assembled—and therefore loaded—in here, there should either have been fingerprints on the shell casing found in the Supply Room, or there should have been some explanation other than those work gloves for the absence of such prints.”

“All right,” Billikin said with a shrug. “There was some other explanation.”

“For example?” Michaelson prompted.

“For example, whoever loaded the gun did it bare-fingered and then wiped the prints off.”

“Wiped them off how? Once they're in the clip you can't reach them anymore.”

“True enough,” Grissom said. “But after you've fired the gun it ejects the spent shell casing. Then you can pick it up and wipe it off very easily.”

“But in that case, there should have been prints on the bullets that were still in the clip,” Michaelson insisted. “And there weren't. Were there?”

Grissom's response was a grudging shake of his head.

“He's got you there,” Billikin said, a trace of irony in his voice.

“He's got both of us there,” Grissom rejoined. “It was your theory.”

“Okay,” Billikin said. “Fair enough. Scratch one theory. So someone loaded the gun wearing surgical gloves instead of those work gloves.”

“And then I suppose,” Michaelson said, “whoever this was must have concealed the surgical gloves so cleverly that a top-notch scene-of-crime team from the FBI's Washington Field Office failed to turn them up during an exhaustive search of the premises and surrounding area. Doesn't seem likely, does it?”

“No it doesn't,” Grissom said emphatically.

“The gun could have been loaded and concealed in the cottage two weeks ago, and the surgical gloves smuggled clear out of the prison before the murder ever took place,” Billikin said.

“Bit of a stretch, isn't it?” Michaelson asked tolerantly. “Surely someone who had planned a murder that meticulously would have contrived to do the actual killing in such a way that he wouldn't have been videotaped entering and then running out of the murder room around the time the fatal shot was fired. Or don't you agree?”

“Something Gardner planned on could've gone wrong and upset his plans,” Billikin persisted.

“That's one possibility. Another possibility, though, is that a key piece of physical evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis of Gardner's guilt.”

“It's a hell of a reach from that fact to where you want to go with it,” Grissom said.

“Isn't it true,” Michaelson asked the man, “that criminals frequently overlook the possibility of fingerprints on bullets, as opposed to weapons, that shell casings are ideal receptacles for prints, and that wrongdoers are not infrequently convicted on the basis of prints found on cartridges and shell casings even though the perpetrators had wiped the weapons themselves clean?”

“Yes it is,” Grissom said. “But it's also true that there's absolutely nothing inevitable about finding a fingerprint on any surface, ever. Half of what fingerprint experts do is explain to juries why no prints were found in such and such a place.”

“I defer to your technical expertise,” Michaelson nodded. “But the point troubled you in this case from the beginning, didn't it? Isn't that one of the reasons that you felt you didn't have enough of a case yet to charge former Senator Gardner?”

“That's within the Bureau,” Grissom said, but the answer to Michaelson's question was clear from his face.

“And of course added to that are some other troubling questions: How did Gardner, in the few seconds the videotape record allowed to him after entering the room, come up with the gun, surprise Martinelli, kill him with an expert shot, disable the camera, discard the gun, take off the gloves and get rid of them too? Why did Martinelli, having entered a room that he had no right to be in, for a purpose presumably criminal, stand in full view of the surveillance camera and as far as possible from the door, when his normal instinct would have been to stand directly beneath the camera and as close as possible to the door? And in some ways most interesting, how and why did the killer stop the transmission from the surveillance camera only considerably after disabling the camera itself?”

“Yeah, sure,” Grissom said. “You're right. That stuff bothers me. I can really see a slick shyster play it up, and I can definitely see a jury not buying the case.”

“Nevertheless….” Michaelson prompted, smiling.

“Nevertheless is right. The fact remains that this guy Martinelli nevertheless got dead inside that room at a particular time, and the only other person who could possibly have been in that room anywhere near that time is this scumbag politician, Gardner. Martinelli was killed by somebody who was in the room with him. Gardner was. Nobody else was. Nobody else went into the room. Nobody else came out of the room. Nobody else was still in the room. Therefore and nevertheless, Gardner killed the sonofabitch. The problem isn't figuring it out, the problem is proving it.”

“Your syllogism is correct in the formal sense,” Michaelson said. “Like all syllogisms, however, it's no stronger than its major premise—and as to that premise I have come to entertain the gravest doubts.”

“I'm not sure what you're saying, but I think you're trying to tell me I'm wrong.”

“Perhaps if I had Ms. Gardner's assistance I could explain the matter more clearly. Wendy?” Michaelson called. “Are you back there somewhere?”

Wendy stepped out of the stairwell at the back of the corridor and walked toward the group. As she came into full view, Grissom suppressed a brief gasp at the yellow and purple discolorations around both of her cheekbones and the swelling of her lips. The smile she offered him was patronizing, and he couldn't figure out why. He didn't know it, but he was looking at a tougher Wendy Gardner than the one who had sat fecklessly in Cavalier Books the afternoon before—a Wendy Gardner who knew that you could be hit in the face without it being the end of the world, and that you could feel lousy about doing something and still have it be the right thing to do.

“You look like you got worked over pretty good,” Grissom said.

“You oughta see the other guy,” Wendy replied, upgrading the smile from patronizing to gamely joshing. She tossed a folded piece of white paper into Stevens' lap. “I'm supposed to give that to you.”

Stevens picked the paper up and read it: “‘Warden, we seem to have lost transmission from camera number six at B-4.' That's the signal?” Stevens asked then, glancing up at Michaelson.

Michaelson nodded.

“Freeze all cameras at B-4,” Stevens said.

“What is this?” Grissom demanded. “Community theater?”