Murder at the Pentagon (3 page)

She noticed another woman who seemed to be alone. Should she introduce herself or leave the picnic, which was her first inclination? She looked a little more closely. The other woman had … well, a sensual aura about her as some women do, not so much a matter of dress or makeup, but through an inherent sense that it is their birthright, almost their duty, to flirt and to be coy, to attract and to seduce, men or women. The woman was approximately Margit’s height and wore beige slacks and a flowered shirt. An abundance of gold hair was loosely curled, the heat and humidity causing it to relax more than it should. Her features were ordinary (in the sense that none stood out as wonderful) except for lips that were fuller than average. Superb, pouty lips. Sexy lips.

The woman leaned against a tree away from the crowd. Margit approached her. “Hi,” she said, “I’m Margit Falk. New here.” The woman had not seen her coming, and she
seemed startled before saying, “Hello. I’m Christa Wren. I’m not.”

Margit gestured to the picnic. “Fun,” she said.

“Yes, it has been. Are you going to work in the Pentagon?”

“I’m an air-force major assigned to the General Counsel’s Office. Do you work here?”

“No. I’m with someone.”

“Oh.” Margit didn’t ask who he was, or where he was. Why assume it was a
he
? Maybe she was with a girlfriend. No, it would be a man.

Christa offered the explanation Margit hadn’t asked for. “I’m here with Dr. Joycelen. He had to go inside for something.”

“Dr. Joycelen. I certainly know of him, although I’ve never met him. He’s with DARPA.”

“Deputy director.”

“A brilliant man, yes?” Margit said.

“Very smart. A genius.”

“So I’ve heard. Well, nice meeting you. Maybe I’ll see you again. At another picnic. Or the Christmas party. Surely we have a Christmas party.” Margit laughed softly.

“Maybe,” said Christa, who looked back again to a door leading from the center court into a wing of the Pentagon.

Not a word was spoken where the two of them met by the purple watercooler. One started to speak, but then there was a sound, a ridiculously tiny
‘pop’
considering the damage that followed. The bullet shattered eyeglasses and pierced skin and bone directly between the eyes. A word formed on the dying person’s lips but was never uttered. Sudden. Quick. Dead
.

There was only one witness on the scene. The killer. No one else to see
.

Except for a silent eye, one of hundreds of surveillance cameras peering down. Perpetual, unrelenting vision when they worked, hopelessly blind when they didn’t
.

* * *

Another fifteen minutes, Margit told herself as she left Christa Wren and watched Bill Monroney step up to a microphone on a small wooden platform near the kiosk. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “time to announce the winners of the athletic competitions. We’ll start with the kids’ events.” A younger man holding a box containing medals and ribbons joined Monroney on the platform. Margit had been introduced to the younger officer during a meeting. Mucci? Yes, she seemed to recall that was his name. A major, like herself. Major Anthony Mucci. All spit and polish, she remembered. An officer out of a recruiting poster, brown hair cropped close; intense, steady eyes; good posture; few words. Even in his civvies, he was the quintessential young military man. Impressive.

The children who’d won their events proudly stepped up on the platform to receive their recognition. In truth there were medals for every young person—fourth place, sixth place, eighth place, whatever, and it took time to get through them. Once Monroney had, Mucci brought up another box, medals now for the adult competitors. Monroney had started to announce the first few when Margit became aware that two men had come out of the Pentagon and were walking at a brisk pace toward the platform. Others saw them, too, including Monroney and Mucci. Monroney came off the platform, and he and the two late arrivals engaged in an animated, hushed conversation. When they were through, Monroney returned to the platform, took the microphone in his hand, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, there’s been an accident inside. Sorry to say so, but the picnic is over. Medals for the rest of the winners will be delivered to them on Monday. Please, disperse now. Go home. Thank you for coming.”

Monroney motioned to Mucci and another staff man to join him, and they followed the two who’d brought news of the accident back into the Pentagon through the same doors.

The crowd, dispersing, was abuzz. So suddenly. So quickly. What happened? What
kind
of accident? Who?

Instinctively, Margit turned to look at the spot where Christa Wren had been leaning against the tree. She wasn’t
there anymore. Margit stood on tiptoe and looked over the crowd, saw Christa walking quickly from the center court and through the designated entrance/exit being used by slower-moving picnic-goers.

Margit joined the crowd as it filed toward the exit, heard the talk around her, the questions, the speculations. She had no one with whom to join in such conversation. No sense in playing the speculative game anyway. She’d find out soon enough—along with everyone else.

Monroney, Mucci, the third officer who’d joined them, and the two security men looked down on the body. They were in a subbasement of the Pentagon, a storage area reached by a set of stairs and an elevator, both heavily guarded one floor above. Dr. Richard Joycelen was slumped against the watercooler. The bullet that took his life had passed cleanly between his eyes, and blood had drained freely from the wound, over a prominent hump in his nose and down one side of his face. Much of it was already congealed, and was reddish brown rather than oxygen-fired red.

“Has the building been secured?” Monroney asked one of the security men. “Medics called?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” To Mucci: “Let’s go upstairs. Looks like we’ll have the rest of the weekend here, and it sure as hell won’t be any picnic.”

“Okay if I leave?” Jeff Foxboro asked his boss, Hank Wishengrad.

“Hell, no.” Wishengrad grinned. “You’ve only been here for three days and nights, and you look it. Go home.”

“Not directly. A dinner date, but I’ll hit the sack early, unless I fall asleep in my soup. You could use some rack time yourself.”

The Wisconsin senator sat back in the tall red leather chair and slid his hands behind his head. His hair was silver, and he wore it longer than would be expected of a man in his sixties, a U.S. senator to boot, almost long enough to be termed “flowing.” Coupled with half-glasses that spent most of their time perched on top of his head and a penchant for bow ties, he had the look of a 1960s intellectual, a professor, a radical lawyer, or a senior beatnik, an appearance pundits on the Hill mocked as affectation. Which was only half true.

The senator closed his eyes and asked absently, “Who you having dinner with?”

“The woman I told you about, Margit Falk.”

“The major?”

“One and the same. Actually, it’s a foursome. Mackensie Smith, my former law professor, and his wife, Annabel, invited us for dinner.”

Hank Wishengrad opened his eyes, and a smile curled his lips. “Mac Smith. How is he?”

“Just fine, I hope. Haven’t seen much of him since we graduated. We keep in touch once in a while by phone. Great man, and married to a wonderful woman. Actually, Margit choreographed this dinner. She’s been trying to mount a mini-class reunion ever since she got posted back to Washington.”

Wishengrad stood, stretched, yawned. “Well, Jeff, if you pick up any pearls from the distinguished professor, or from your Pentagon sweetheart, be sure and pass them on in the morning. We can use all the smart thinking we can get around here. Sometimes I think we gave up thinking after the Marshall Plan.”

Foxboro took his tan raincoat from an antique coat tree and put it on over his brown tweed jacket. He went to the window and looked outside. A light rain had begun to fall. Maybe it would cool the city, drop it down a few degrees to a slow boil. He saw his image in the glass and patted the top of his head to rearrange hair that was not out of place. It made little difference. Foxboro’s sandy hair had the consistency of brushes used to thin out the undercoat of dogs and cats. Each individual hair made its own statement, pursued the direction it wished to go in, and he’d never been able to properly prune the bush until running across a stylist in Georgetown of the sort who had replaced barbers and who promised to “tame the beast”—and did, sort of. Foxboro carried his five-feet-eleven-inch frame straight-up: oddly, a distinct military posture, although he had not served in any branch of service. His face was squared-off and his brow was usually furrowed, set in an angry look that did not accurately reflect the quick, dry wit that could send that same face into a kaleidoscope of laugh lines. He lifted weights, but only for muscle tone, not for bicep bulge, and he’d developed into a
pretty good Chinese cook after taking an extension course in D.C.

“My best to Mac Smith,” Wishengrad said as Foxboro made for the door.

“Sure thing, Senator. I’ll tell him you have a new plan to get our nonexistent railroads to run on time—the Mussolini Plan. Have a good night. Get on home. Chances are, the United States government will still be in business in the morning.”

Foxboro had intended to walk from the Dirksen Senate Office Building to Mackensie Smith’s house on Twenty-fifth Street in Foggy Bottom, but the fact that he was already late prompted him to jump into the rare, blessedly empty, rainy-night cruising taxi.

As fatigued as he was, the contemplation of an evening with Margit and the Smiths energized him. He grinned as he projected what dinner would be like. While a law student at G. W., he’d been to his learned but streetsmart, practical professor’s home for dinner on a few occasions. Those evenings invariably ended up in raucous debate among the students invited for the evening and their teacher, who seemed very much at ease moderating the conflicting points of view that flew around the table. That Smith had a remarkable mind was without question, but it was often Annabel who capped off an issue with a pointed, insightful, usually witty comment, smiling sweetly at her husband when their viewpoints clashed and his ended up on the floor. Foxboro sometimes wondered after leaving their house whether they continued disagreeing, whether they ever fought. Probably not the latter; the Smiths seemed blissfully suited to each other, to say nothing of looking good together: he a craggy, rugged-looking man behind whose heavy horn-rimmed glasses, the beard-line was always reappearing minutes after a close shave; she a stunning female with a complexion like half-and-half, a thick mane of copper hair, and a figure that left scant doubt to which of the two major sexes she belonged.

Foxboro bounded up steps in front of the narrow, two-story taupe brick house with the Federal blue shutters and
door, and announced his arrival with a sharp rap of the brass knocker. Annabel answered. She held Rufus, their Great Blue Dane, by his collar to keep him from planting large paws on Foxboro’s shoulders. “Hello, Jeff,” she said pleasantly. “Come in. We were getting a little worried about you.”

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Been a hectic couple of days at the office. Or years. I forget which.”

“Decades,” said Annabel, taking his coat and leading him to the living room, where Margit sat, a glass of white wine in her hand.

“Hi, honey,” Foxboro said, kissing her cheek, lingering a little. To Annabel: “Where’s the prof?” Foxboro was never sure how to address Mac Smith. In his student days, of course, it was Professor Smith. Now that Foxboro was a full-fledged attorney and a senatorial aide, he’d been asked by Smith to call him Mac, which he did but always with a modicum of unease.

“Where else?” Annabel replied. “In the kitchen whipping up another culinary triumph. Something to make Burger King limp with envy. Drink?”

“Yes, please,” Foxboro said. “Scotch on the rocks would be help for the needy.”

Annabel returned with a large glass filled with ice and Knockando. Few blends in the Smith household, Jeff thought appreciatively. All the scotch was single blend, and the bourbon came from a single barrel. Smith poked his head out of the kitchen to shout a greeting. He wore a long apron over a blue button-down shirt and red paisley tie. The illustration on the apron was a stream running through a forest. Two oven mitts shaped like trout were attached to the apron with Velcro.

Annabel sat next to Margit on a love seat, Rufus sprawled at their feet and halfway into the next room. Foxboro wandered into the kitchen, where Smith was busy rubbing a beef tenderloin with soy sauce. He further seasoned the meat with fresh pepper, then placed the platter on top of the refrigerator. “The last time I cooked a beef tenderloin, I made the
mistake of leaving it on the counter,” Smith said. “One swallow, and Rufus enjoyed another hors d’oeuvre.”

Foxboro laughed. “A Big Mac for him.”

“And Chinese takeout for us. How have you been, Jeff?”

“Pretty well, although I feel as though I’ve taken up residence in Senator Wishengrad’s office. By the way, he sends his best. I didn’t know you were friends.”

Smith looked up from a large cast-iron skillet into which he’d placed a tablespoon of olive oil. “We’re not friends. I spent some time on the senator’s commission on the cities, and I got to know what a good man he is. Not much came out of the commission, I’m afraid. Your boss is in the minority where federal aid to cities is concerned, but we did what we could. You have a drink. Good.” Smith picked up a heavy cut-crystal glass filled with ice and a velvety brown liquid, raised it to his lips, and sipped slowly and noisily. “Excellent. I know the trend these days continues to be wine spritzers, or bottled water with little bubbles, but a good single-barrel bourbon is a lot more soul-satisfying. At least for me. Rufus doesn’t much care for it.” He turned on the oven, adjusted the temperature dial to 450 degrees, and leaned against the counter. “I haven’t caught up on the news yet today. Anything on the Joycelen murder?”

Foxboro shrugged. “About the only thing Rufus
doesn’t
care for, except burglars. Not much talk about the murder where I’ve spent the last few days. Oh, there was some speculation right after it happened, but our Arab friend with his new toy is center stage.”