Supreme Justice (15 page)

Eaton almost snarled, “So fucking what?”

Rogers decided to stay out of this—the brief alliance between these two alpha males had been replaced by the old pissing contest.

“The assassin knew they’d be gone,” Reeder said, quiet but firm. “Had plenty of time. Cut the wires on the motion detector in the dark, got into the switch box, wired a bomb to the switch, also in the dark, and wanna bet didn’t leave so much as a fingerprint? Yet managed to drop a half-inch piece of wire onto the patio without realizing it. Really?”

Sloan said, “That’s how we catch criminals, Peep. They make mistakes.”

“Look, I’m not saying there isn’t a continuing threat . . . but we have the justices under protection. The bad guys getting to them now will be next to impossible. The two rigs found today were set up
before
our security measures were put into place.”

Sloan frowned. “What do you suggest?”

“Solid, old-fashioned investigative technique. We need to get back to our surviving suspects. One of them knows
something,
even if he doesn’t know it . . . and then there’s our eyewitness.”

Eaton smirked. “
What
eyewitness? We don’t have an eyewitness.”

“Sure we do. The clerk, Nicholas Blount, was with Venter when the Justice was shot. We haven’t really interviewed him in the kind of depth he deserves. Or the other notables present at the Verdict that night.”

Rogers said, in support, “Because we’ve been chasing our tails.”

Reeder nodded, exchanged smiles with her. “Because we’ve been chasing our tails is right.”

The discussion ended with the FBI bomb squad showing up. They disabled the device in less than five minutes, the agent who’d done that, Lawson, bringing the device over in a bag. He was slender, thirtysomething, with ancient eyes.

“Simple device,” he said. “Like—dirt simple.”

Sloan asked, “Would it have worked?”

“Powerful enough to destroy the box it was in, at least. Would’ve made a hell of a bang, and spit some nasty shards.”

Sloan said to Reeder, “Still think it’s an empty threat?”

“I never said it was an empty threat, Gabe. I just think we need to start playing offense, not defense.”

Sloan sighed, nodded. Then he said to the Homeland Security agents: “Eaton, you and Cribbs take a run at Granger and Marvin. They’ve seen enough of Reeder, Rogers, and me.”

Eaton nodded, and he and Cribbs headed out.

Very quietly, Sloan said to Reeder, “I brought you in to consult, Peep, because I value your opinion. But I can’t have you taking over.”

“Not my intention.”

“Then don’t undermine my authority.”

“Understood.”

Sloan was a little flushed, while Reeder seemed as placid as the pool under its electric cover.

She half expected the SAIC to belabor the point, but he didn’t. The pair had been friends a long time, and whatever passed silently between them, she wasn’t privy to.

Reeder said, “How about Rogers and I interview Nicky Blount?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sloan said quietly.

In the car, putting on her seat belt, Rogers turned to Reeder. “You
weren’t
trying to undermine his authority.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I’ve never seen him like that, and we were partners a long time.”

Reeder caught her eyes and held them. “Gabe’s under incredible stress, Patti. This isn’t just about solving murders. You were in that meeting with the President. This is a political nightmare, and he’s AD Fisk’s fall guy. Things in DC are
never
black and white.”

“Oh, I know,” she said. “Everything’s gray . . . except murder.”

“No,” Reeder said, shaking his head. “
Especially
murder.”

“To get what you want,
stop
doing what isn’t working.”

Earl Warren, Thirtieth Governor of the State of California, Fourteenth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Section 21, Lot S-32, Grid M-20.5, Arlington National Cemetery.

FIFTEEN

On the way to the Supreme Court Building, Reeder used his cell phone to scroll through police reports on Granger, Marvin, and the late Butch Brooks.

He said to Patti Rogers, “None of these guys has the smarts for what went into all this.”

“And yet they’re in it up to their eyeballs,” Rogers said, glancing over from behind the wheel. “Which means they’re flunkies.”

“And,” Reeder said, “flunkies report to somebody. Somebody a lot smarter.”

He kept going over the reports. Something was itching at the back of his brain—tied in with his people-reading skills was an ability to sense something small that was wrong in a big picture. Unfortunately, that was just a sense. An itch. But he kept scratching at it . . .

Then, in Brooks’s file, as he skimmed through the name, address, and other info, something tiny popped.

He said softly, almost to himself, “The AK-47 was at Granger’s house.”

“Right,” Rogers said. “So?”

“So it’s apparently a weapon from the out-of-state robberies. And we found the Verdict murder gun at Brooks’s, too . . .”

“What about it?”

“Well, the police report says Brooks was left-handed.”

She flashed him a frown. “Which is significant why?”

Reeder didn’t immediately respond. He was replaying in his mind the Verdict Chophouse security video.

He said, “The gunman at the Verdict was right-handed.”

She frowned at him again. “You’re sure?”

“No question about it.”

“Not that I doubt you,” she said. “But why don’t we ask Nicky Blount for confirmation?”

“Let’s do that.”

Entering through the front door of the Supreme Court Building on its west side proved trickier than anticipated. Justice Henry Venter’s body now lay in state in the Great Hall, the funeral ceremony having taken place earlier, the line of mourners still extending through the front doors and down the stone stairs.

As they flashed their credentials to a guard near the door, Reeder said to Rogers in a near whisper, “He’ll be buried a hero.”

“Is that so terrible?” Rogers asked as they stepped inside, catching some glares from those in line who figured they were cutting in.

“Not terrible,” he told her, “but still wrong. This is a criminal matter, and any commonly accepted inaccuracy can lead to a miscarriage of justice.”

On either side of the marble-hewn Great Hall were sixteen columns between which were busts of past chief justices. Rogers’s shoes clicked on the marble while Reeder’s were barely audible.

She said, “Sloan says you didn’t like Venter.”

“Venter was a pompous ass,” Reeder said. “But there’s a lot of that in this town.”

“So that’s not why you didn’t like him.”

His voice low, maintaining a surface respect for a man he respected very little, Reeder replied, “He made this country a worse place to live in, and we both know he died a coward.”

They were near the Stars-and-Stripes-draped coffin now. Some people were crying, others were dry-eyed, but all were somber—Reeder and Rogers included.

As they climbed the stairs to the second floor, Reeder said, “Maybe it won’t have to come out. A lot of people in our history who did worse than Henry Venter are remembered as heroes.”

The door to the outer office of Venter’s chambers stood open, revealing walls paneled in heavy polished wood, one given over to law-book-bulging bookshelves. Four clerks, including Nicholas Blount, were at work at their respective desks. It might have been any other busy day here, except this was one of tidying up, of concluding affairs.

Nicholas Blount stood out from his peers (two males, one female), but not because he was a senator’s son and carried a special bearing—rather, it was the blackened left eye and the bandaged left cheek, the expected result if the gunman who’d pistol-whipped him had been right-handed.

Due to his injuries, Nicky Blount was currently basking in the late Venter’s reflected heroism, a jurist who’d “given his life to save his valued clerk, his trusted friend” (as Sean Hannity had put it). The media seemed to be cuing Nicky up as a rising political star.

Would the younger Blount prove as reprehensible as his old man?
Reeder wondered. After all, Senator Wilson Blount and his good-ol’-boy cronies were the worst kind of pork-barrel, backward-thinking politicos.

Reeder approached the clerk, saying, “Mr. Blount? This is Special Agent Patti Rogers with the FBI. I’m Joe Reeder, task force consultant.”

They were expected.

“We certainly appreciate your efforts around this office,” Blount said with a businesslike smile, shaking hands with both.

Injuries aside, Blount had the blond, plasticine good looks of a career politician, or maybe a functionary in the Hitler Youth. His charcoal suit and white shirt with subdued dark tie were properly somber.

The clerk ushered them to visitor’s chairs at a desk in one corner.

Everyone sat.

“We are sorry for your loss,” Rogers said, “but I’m afraid we’ve already put this interview off longer than we should.”

“Thank you. I understand,” he said with a nod. “I’m sure Justice Venter would applaud your efforts.”

She gave him her own businesslike smile. “We shouldn’t have to take up too much of your time, Mr. Blount.”

“Fine. Whatever is necessary, Agent Rogers.”

“Could you give us your account of what happened that night at the Verdict?”

He ran a hand across his forehead and sighed deeply. “Reliving that tragedy, I fear, won’t be a problem. I’ve done it a thousand times or more, and I only wish I had acted more quickly. But Justice Venter beat me to the punch.”

Okay,
Reeder thought.
He’s written his script and has it memorized.

Nicky Blount would be telling this story until the day he died, needing to make himself look as good as possible, despite having pissed his pants in fear (a detail unlikely to be provided in this account). And the Justice would come across as a combo of Bruce Willis in a
Die Hard
movie and Davy Crockett at the Alamo.

Nonetheless, Reeder listened closely as the young man gave his version of events. Actually, it didn’t stray far from what had been on the security footage . . . aside from the crucial moment, where in the Blount account Venter died a hero.

Rogers asked a few predictable follow-ups, and her interview was coming to a close when Reeder asked, “Why didn’t the holdup man shoot you?”

“Well, isn’t that obvious?”

“Is it?”

The clerk shrugged, then nodded vigorously, two oddly contradictory responses. “Didn’t Justice Venter give his life for me?”

“Interesting question.”

“Not a question, Mr. Reeder. A statement. He gave his
life
for me.”

This was stated with the certainty of a Christian affirming that Jesus had died for his sins.

There was no arguing with a zealot, so Reeder asked, “In which hand did the shooter hold the gun?”

Let us see,
he thought,
how accurate Nicky is in remembering a detail like that . . . as opposed to reciting the epic poem of the heroic death of Justice Henry Venter.

Momentarily surprised, Blount said, “Well, uh . . . his right.”

“You’re quite certain of that?”

“Quite certain,” Blount said defensively. Like any liar, he became indignant when one of the true parts was questioned. “
Absolutely,
his right hand. I mean, for Christ’s sake—he pointed the thing in my face!”

“Thank you, Mr. Blount,” Reeder said. “Now, picture that hand, that gun, pointed right at you . . . however uncomfortable that might be. What
else
do you see about the shooter?”

Blount caught on quick, closed his eyes, thought for a moment. “Gloves, black shirt, black ski mask.”

“Any hair visible around the edges of the mask?”

“. . . No. None.”

“Eye color?”

Blount’s eyebrows furrowed. “. . . Blue eyes.”

“Quite sure?”

“Quite sure.”

Frowning a little, Rogers said, “Mr. Blount, you didn’t mention that to the police.”

“I didn’t think of it at the time, and I wasn’t asked about it, not directly. I hope I haven’t screwed anything up. I was in the ER getting stitched up, and . . . um . . . I was badly shaken.”

“You urinated in your pants,” Reeder said.

Blount glared at him, embarrassed. “Have
you
ever had a gun pointed at you?”

“Yes,” Reeder said.

The clerk blinked a few times. “Oh. You . . . you’re
that
guy, aren’t you? Sorry. You took a bullet. You’re a hero. Like the Justice. I
wasn’t
a hero. But I never claimed to be.”

Rogers flashed Reeder a dirty look and said to the interviewee, “We don’t have any intention of embarrassing you, Mr. Blount. We just need every fact, every detail, to get as complete a picture as possible.”

“I get it. I understand. It’s just . . . it was goddamn
frightening.
”

Reeder asked, “How tall was the gunman?”

“That much I
did
give the police—average height, average build.”

Average
was a word that no investigator relished hearing from a witness, a worthless word that meant something different to everybody on the planet.

Reeder asked, “Can you estimate a height, Mr. Blount?”

“I think so. Five eight or nine?”

“Weight?”

“One fifty maybe, one sixty?”

“Muscular build or slim?”

“Muscular.”

“Any paunch?”

“No. No beer gut.”

“Good. What about the other robber?”

Shrug. “He’s more just an impression than the one who was right there
on
me.”

“What was your impression, then?”

“Tall guy, big gun.”

“Do the same thing with him you did with the other one. Visualize him. Start at the gun and work back.”

Blount tried, but then shook his head. “He was way across the room, the one with the AK-47. I just didn’t get a good enough look. I’m sorry.”

“But you saw that it was an AK-47.”

“That made the
real
impression.”

Reeder wished they’d gotten to Blount sooner—they should have. The DC detectives that night had interviewed Blount while he was still in shock, with no follow-up till now. Like he’d told Sloan, these task forces were always a clusterfuck in early days.

Trying to find anything new to latch onto, Reeder asked, “What did they
sound
like?”

“Sound like?”

“Think back. Hear it. Characterize it.”

Blount closed his eyes, listening to his memory. “. . . Loud, angry, aggressive—like they meant business and were ready to kill somebody if necessary. Which is what they did, isn’t it?”

“Do you know music, Mr. Blount?”

“Well . . . yes. Some, I guess.”

“Ever sing in a choir?”

“Yes. Sure. As a kid.”

“Were their voices
different,
the holdup men? Was one a baritone and the other a bass? Was one a tenor?”

“I get you. I’d say baritones. Both baritones. One a little gruffer than the other.”

“Which was gruffer?”

“The AK-47.”

“Good. Very good, Mr. Blount. How about an accent? Foreign?”

“No.”

“Regional?”

“. . . No.”

“On the security footage we saw, the gunman said something to you. Right after he shot Justice Venter. What was it?”

This threw Blount.

They were discussing the most traumatic event of his roughly thirty years; he’d been threatened, witnessed a killing, been pistol-whipped.

And Reeder had touched the rawest of the raw nerves, the angriest of the wounds; had found the one crucial thing that Blount had shared with no one, and perhaps hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on, either.

Justice Venter’s clerk looked down at the blotter on his desk, fingers of one hand fumbling idly with a flash drive. For a while, they just sat there. When Blount finally looked up, tears were welling.

“He . . . he said it was my fault—the gunman, he said Justice Venter’s death was on me.”

Rogers sat forward. “What do you think he meant?”

“That . . . that if I had handed over my wallet faster, Justice Venter wouldn’t have tried to intervene. That if it wasn’t for me, the Justice would still be alive.”

Rogers remained professionally composed, but her eyes asked Reeder a terrible question:
Could Venter’s slaying be the result of a robbery gone wrong after all?

He shook his head almost imperceptibly, and, after a beat, she nodded back the same way: The subsequent murder of Justice Gutierrez and the possible attacks on the other judges almost certainly ruled that out.

Reeder returned his attention to Blount.

Having come into this interview with at least a vague dislike of this smooth son of a redneck politician, now all he needed was a guilt-ridden victim.

“Mr. Blount,” he said, “I can’t share with you any specifics—this is an ongoing investigation, after all, and of the highest sensitivity. National security concerns and all that.”

“I do understand . . .”

“
But
—I can assure you that you weren’t responsible in any way for Justice Venter’s death.”

“That’s . . . generous of you. Kind.”

“No. It’s the truth. Follow the news over the coming days and months, and you’ll have proof of that. Thank you, Mr. Blount.”

Everyone rose, and another round of shaking hands followed. Washington was nothing if not ritualistic, after all, from this farewell to the Justice lying in state downstairs.

Out into the afternoon sunshine, Rogers asked Reeder, “Why in the hell would that holdup guy say that to Blount?”

Reeder grunted a wry laugh. “Might just have been screwing with his head.”

“Is that what you think?”

“No. I think the bad guys wanted Nicky Blount feeling guilty and buying into Justice Venter trying to save his ass.”

She smirked. “To keep us chasing our tails.”

“Yes, and to muddy the waters from the git-go.”