Absolute Power (20 page)

Frank’s nostrils quivered as he watched the ME. “What?”

“You mentioned nothing being left at the crime scene. I’ve been thinking about that. You’re right. It was
too
clean.” The Medical Examiner took his time in lighting up a Pall Mall—unfiltered, Frank noted. Every pathologist he had ever worked with had smoked. The Medical Examiner blew rings in the air, obviously enjoying this mental exercise.

“Her fingernails were too clean.”

Frank looked puzzled.

The Medical Examiner continued. “I mean there was no dirt, nail polish—although she was wearing it, bright red stuff—none of the ordinary residues you’d expect to find. Nothing. It was like they had been scoped out, you know what I mean?” He paused and then continued. “I also found minute traces of a solution.” He paused again. “Like a cleansing solution.”

“She’d been to some fancy beauty salon that morning. For a nail job and all that.”

The ME shook his head. “Then you’d expect to find more residue, not less, with all the chemicals they use.”

“So what are you saying? That her nails were deliberately cleaned out?”

The Medical Examiner nodded. “Someone was real careful not to leave any ident material behind.”

“Which means they were paranoid about being identified, somehow, by the physical evidence.”

“Most perps are, Seth.”

“To a degree. But squirting out fingernails and leaving a place so clean our E-vac came up basically empty is a little much.”

Frank scanned the report. “You also found traces of oil on her palms?”

The ME nodded, looked closely at the detective. “A preservative/protective compound. You know, like you’d use on fabrics, leathers, stuff like that.”

“So she may have been holding something and the residue was left there?”

“Yep. Although we can’t be sure exactly when the oil came to be on her hands.” The Medical Examiner put his glasses back on. “You think she knew the person, Seth?”

“None of the evidence points that way, unless she invited him over to burglarize the place.”

The Medical Examiner had a sudden inspiration. “Maybe she set up the burglary. You know? Tired of the old man, brings in the new bedroom buddy to conveniently steal their nest egg and it’s off to Fairy Tale Land?”

Frank considered the theory. “Except they have a falling out or there’s a double cross all along, and she gets the business end of some serious lead?”

“It fits the facts, Seth.”

Frank shook his head. “From all accounts the deceased loved
being
Mrs. Walter Sullivan. More than the money, if you know what I mean. She got to rub shoulders, and probably other parts of her anatomy, with famous people all over the world. Pretty heady for somebody who used to flip burgers at a Burger King.”

The ME stared at him. “You’re kidding?”

The detective smiled. “Eighty-year-old billionaires sometimes get strange ideas. It’s like where does the eight-hundred-pound gorilla sit? Anywhere he damn well pleases.”

The Medical Examiner grinned and shook his head. Billionaire? What would he do with a billion dollars? He looked down at the ink blotter on his desk. Then he put out his cigarette and looked back at the report, then at Frank. He cleared his throat.

“I think the second slug was a semi- or full-metal jacket.”

Frank loosened his tie, put his elbows on the desk. “Okay.”

The Medical Examiner went on. “It blew through the right temporal bone of the cranium and burst through the left pareital bone, leaving an exit wound over twice the size of the entry.”

“So you’re saying definitely two guns.”

“Not unless the guy was chambering different types of ammo in the same gun.” He looked keenly at the detective. “That doesn’t seem to surprise you, Seth.”

“It would have an hour ago. It doesn’t now.”

“So we probably have two perps.”

“Two perps with two guns. And a lady how big?”

The Medical Examiner didn’t need to refer to his notes. “Sixty-two inches tall, one hundred and five pounds.”

“So a little woman and two probable male perps with heavy-caliber hardware who try to strangle her, beat her up and then both open fire on her, killing her.”

The Medical Examiner rubbed at his chin. The facts were more than a little puzzling.

Frank glanced at the report. “You’re sure the strangulation marks and beating came before death?”

The Medical Examiner looked offended. “Positive. Pretty mess, isn’t it?”

Frank flipped through the report, making notes as he went. “You could say that. No attempted rape. Nothing like that?”

The Medical Examiner didn’t answer.

Finally Frank looked up at him, took off his glasses, put them down on the desk and leaned back, sipping the black coffee he had been offered earlier.

“The report doesn’t say anything about a sexual assault,” he reminded his friend.

The Medical Examiner finally stirred. “The report’s correct. There was no sexual assault. No trace of seminal fluid, no evidence of penetration, no overt bruising. All that leads me to conclude, officially, that no sexual assault occurred.”

“So? You’re not satisfied with that conclusion?” Frank looked at him expectantly.

The Medical Examiner took a sip of coffee, stretched out his long arms until he felt a comforting pop deep within the confines of his aging body and then leaned forward.

“Your wife ever go in for a gynecological exam?”

“Sure, doesn’t every woman?”

“You’d be surprised,” the Medical Examiner replied dryly, then continued. “Thing is, you go in for an exam, no matter how good the ob-gyn is, there’s usually some slight swelling and small abrasions in the genitalia. It’s the nature of the beast. To be thorough, you have to get in there and dig around.”

Frank put down his coffee, shifted in his chair. “So what are you saying, she had her gynecologist visit her in the middle of the night right before she got popped?”

“The indications were slight, very slight, but they were there.” The Medical Examiner paused, choosing his words carefully. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since I handed in the protocol. Understand, it could be nothing. She could have done it herself, you understand what I’m saying? To each their own. But from the looks of it, I don’t think it was self-inflicted. I think somebody examined her shortly
after
her death. Maybe two hours after, maybe earlier.”

“Checked her for what? To see if something had happened?” Frank did not try to hide his incredulity.

The Medical Examiner eyed him steadily. “Not much else to check a woman for down there in that particular situation, is there?”

Frank stared at the man for a long moment. This information merely added to his already increasing temple throbber. He shook his head. The balloon theory again. Push one side in and it bulges out somewhere else. He scribbled down some notes, his eyebrows bunched together, the coffee sipped unconsciously.

The Medical Examiner looked him over. This was not an easy one, but so far, the detective had punched all the right buttons, asked good questions. He was puzzled, but then that was a big part of the process. The good ones never solved them all. But then they also didn’t remain puzzled forever. Eventually, if you were lucky and diligent, maybe more of some on one case than on another, you would break it open, and the pieces would come tumbling into place. The Medical Examiner hoped this was one of those cases. Right now, it didn’t look all that good.

“She was pretty drunk when she bought it.” Frank was examining the toxicology report.

“Point two-one. I haven’t personally seen that number since my college frat days.”

Frank smiled. “Well I’m wondering where she got that point two-one.”

“Plenty of booze in a place like that.”

“Yeah, except there were no dirty glasses, no open bottles, and no discards in the trash.”

“So, maybe she got drunk somewhere else.”

“So how’d she get home?”

The Medical Examiner thought for a moment, rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Drove. I’ve seen people with higher percentages behind the wheel.”

“You mean in the autopsy room, don’t you?” Frank continued: “The problem with that theory is that none of the cars in the garage had been driven from the time the household left for the Caribbean.”

“How do you know that? An engine isn’t going to be warm after three days.”

Frank perused the pages of his notebook, found what he wanted and slid it around to his friend.

“Sullivan has a full-time chauffeur. Old guy named Bernie Kopeti. Knows his cars, anal as a tax lawyer, and he keeps meticulous records on Sullivan’s fleet of automobiles. Has the mileage for every one of them in a log book, updated daily, if you can believe it. At my request he checked the odometer on each of the cars in the garage, which presumably were the only ones the wife would have access to, and in fact were the only cars in the garage at the time of the discovery of the body. On top of that Kopeti confirmed that no vehicles were missing. There was no additional mileage on any of them. They hadn’t been driven since everyone cleared out for the Caribbean. Christine Sullivan didn’t drive home in one of those cars. So how did she get home?”

“Cab?”

Frank shook his head. “We’ve talked to every cab company that operates out here. No fare was dropped off at the Sullivan address on that night. It’d be pretty hard to forget the place, wouldn’t you think?”

“Unless maybe the cabbie whacked her, and isn’t talking.”

“You’re saying she invited a cabbie into her house?”

“I’m saying she was drunk and probably didn’t know what the hell she was doing.”

“That doesn’t jibe with the fact that the alarm system was tampered with, or that there was a rope dangling outside her window. Or that we’re probably talking about two perps. I’ve never seen a cab driven by two cabbies.”

A thought struck Frank and he scribbled in his notebook. He was certain Christine Sullivan had been driven home by someone she knew. Since that person or persons had not come forward, Frank thought he had a pretty good idea why they hadn’t. And exiting out the window via a rope instead of the way they’d entered—through the front door—meant that something had caused the killers to rush. The most obvious reason was the private security patrol, but the security guard on duty that night had not reported anything out of the ordinary. The perps didn’t know that, however. The mere sight of the patrol car might have prompted such a hasty exit.

The Medical Examiner leaned back in his chair, unsure of what to say. He spread out his hands. “Any suspects?”

Frank finished writing. “Maybe.”

The Medical Examiner looked sharply at him. “What’s her husband’s story? One of the richest guys in the country.”

“The world.” Frank put his notebook away, picked up the report, drained the last of his coffee. “She decided to opt out on the way to the airport. Her husband believes she went to stay at their Watergate apartment in town. That fact has been confirmed. Their jet was scheduled to pick her up in three days and take her down to the Sullivan estate outside of Bridgetown, Barbados. When she didn’t show at the airport, Sullivan got worried and started calling. That’s his story.”

“She give him any reason for the change in plan?”

“Not that he’s telling me.”

“Rich guys can afford the best. Make it look like a burglary while they’re four thousand miles away swinging in a hammock sipping island bug juice. Think he’s one of them?”

Frank stared at the wall for a long moment. His thoughts went back to the memory of Walter Sullivan sitting quietly next to his wife at the morgue. How he looked when he had no reason to believe anyone was watching.

Frank looked at the Medical Examiner, then got up to leave.

“No. I don’t.”

CHAPTER TEN

B
ILL
B
URTON WAS SITTING IN THE WHITE HOUSE SECRET
Service command post. He slowly put down the newspaper, his third of the morning. Each carried a follow-up account of the murder of Christine Sullivan. The facts were virtually the same as the initial stories. Apparently there were no new developments.

He had talked to Varney and Johnson. At a cookout over the weekend at his place. Just him, Collin and their two fellow agents. The guy had been in the vault, seen the President and the Mrs. The man had come out, knocked out the President, killed the lady and gotten away despite the best efforts of Burton and Collin. That story didn’t exactly match the actual sequence of events that night but both men had unfailingly accepted Burton’s version of the occurrence. Both men had also expressed anger, indignation that anyone had laid a hand on the man they were dedicated to protect. The perp deserved what was coming to him. No one would hear of the President’s involvement from them.

After they had left, Burton had sat in his backyard sipping a beer. If they only knew. The trouble was,
he
did. An honest man his entire life, Bill Burton did not savor his new role as prevaricator.

Burton swallowed his second cup of coffee and checked his watch. He poured himself another cup and looked around the White House Secret Service quarters.

He had always wanted to be a member of an elite security force, protecting the most important individual on the planet: the quiet resourcefulness, strength and intelligence of the Secret Service agent, the close camaraderie. The knowledge that at any moment you would be expected to and in fact would sacrifice your life for that of another man, for the benefit of the common good, made for a supremely noble act in a world more and more devoid of anything remotely virtuous. All that had allowed Agent William James Burton to get up with a smile each morning and sleep soundly at night. Now that feeling was gone. He had simply done his job, and the feeling was gone. He shook his head, sneaked a quick smoke.

Sitting on a keg of dynamite. That’s what they all were doing. The more Gloria Russell explained it to him, the more impossible he thought it was.

The car had been a disaster. Very discreet inquiries had traced it directly to the goddamned D.C. police impoundment lot. That was too dangerous to push. Russell had been pissed. But let her be. She said she had this under control. Bullshit.