The Chessman (3 page)

A cubicle the size of a postage stamp was made available for when Cady was in the office. Cady had sat in the cube and read through the Gottlieb file. The clear glass queen tied Gottlieb to the earlier deaths, and burglary appeared not to be a motive—also the case in the earlier deaths. But the AD had been correct; there wasn’t much to prove or disprove the existence of a copycat killer. Cady sent Agent Preston an e-mail stating as much and headed out for the day. When Cady checked into the hotel, the receptionist informed him that his week-long reservation had been made the night before.

Cady thought about Roland Jund and shook his head. A kid’s meal toy.

—

The Chessman file waited on the coffee table in front of him. He remembered that first morning, the grim scene at the law offices of Sanfield & Fine. Cady had been there merely as an observer, ignorant of the chain of events about to unfold…and the toll on body and soul that they would exact.

Cady closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and tried to force himself back into the zone. On the count of three he opened both his eyes and the file folder.

On top was the CE, the chronicle of events form that he’d personally typed up three years earlier. It was followed by a separate folder containing a copy of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s investigation into the slaying of K. Barrett “Barry” Sanfield. The detectives at MPD had done a meticulous job, but were quite content to share the hot potato with the Fibbies after the Zalentine twin killings connected the M.O. It was political dynamite and MPD was more than happy to ride shotgun, even if it only spun them an inch or two away from the harsh glare of the media magnifying glass.

Cady could hardly blame them.

The MPD’s homicide report on Sanfield began with pictures of the power attorney from better days, a couple of obvious professional shots that the litigator had taken for promotional purposes, such as those appearing on his firm’s web site, in articles or legal journals, or at conferences that he might keynote. The pictures of Sanfield that came after these would never appear in a legal journal or be distributed at a keynote speech. These pics were the ones snapped by a forensic photographer.

K. Barrett Sanfield was the D.C. power attorney—the Magician, as he was known among the inner circles—that the politicians with the thickest billfolds rushed to in order to make certain
situations
disappear. Sanfield had been one of a handful advising President Clinton on the Lewinsky matter, before the blue dress came to light and made all else a moot point. Sanfield had been behind-the-scenes for Gore during the chaos in Florida. Those two
situations
hadn’t broken his way, unlike the vast majority of Sanfield’s cases—the ones you didn’t see on the evening news—which was exactly why his anxious clients didn’t blink an eye at his billing rate.

Sanfield had been Arlen Farris’s campaign manager in 1976, the win that sent Farris to the United States Senate as the Junior Senator from Delaware. Farris had ridden in on Jimmy Carter’s coattails but stayed a few decades longer. Sanfield had followed Farris to D.C. after the election and set up shop—said shop being Sanfield & Fine, Attorneys at Law. Very blue chip. Business thrived and, in the early 1990s, Sanfield’s effectively connected law firm was able to command a corner wing on the twelfth floor of One Franklin Square, a posh high-rise commercial office building on K Street.

Sanfield, long divorced with no children of his own, had not been found until the following morning. Stephen Fine, son of Gerald Fine—Sanfield’s partner and confidant—and a junior partner workaholic his own self, had arrived for work at his usual 5:30 in the a.m., seen Sanfield’s door was shut, was amazed that anyone, much less his godfather Barry, had beat him in that morning, and, after brewing a double bag of leaded, peeked his head into Sanfield’s office to say hi. And what the junior partner saw caused him to drop his cup of java, scamper out to the foyer as though the devil himself were in hot pursuit, smack the down button a couple dozen times, and call 911 on his cell phone in the elevator as he fled to the safety of the guard station on the first floor.

Cady had been at the scene within hours of the discovery of Sanfield’s body. His presence there was twofold: ostensibly to lend a helping hand to the local gendarmes, as well as facilitate the use of the FBI Crime Lab in the collection and analysis of crime scene data. But the ulterior motive for Cady’s loitering was to keep Assistant Director Jund apprised, firsthand and in real time, of any new developments in the Sanfield slaying. Cady imagined that even at this early a stage in the investigation, a flock of politicos was already lining up to breathe down the assistant director’s neck.

“I thought Barry’s killer was still in the office,” Stephen Fine said when Cady had initially interviewed him for the bureau. Looking at the forensic photographs of K. Barrett Sanfield, Cady wondered if Fine was still the early bird of the office.

MPD determined, and Cady concurred, that the scene had played out this way. Sanfield had stood up, likely in an effort to defend himself from the attacker or attackers. It had been a short struggle, no defensive cuts on Sanfield’s hands, but the blade had entered upward underneath the solar plexus and breastbone, through the pericardium, puncturing the right atrium of Sanfield’s heart. Death was almost instantaneous. MPD’s initial line of thought was that Sanfield hadn’t sensed danger until the last possible instant, and that perhaps Sanfield knew his killer.

The most they could glean from the entry wound was that the killer was likely right-handed. The knife was likely a type of OTF stiletto—a stabbing weapon—the kind outlawed in the late 1950s. Aside from the fact that the killer wasn’t considerate enough to leave the spring-release blade at the scene, the medical examiner noted from the entry wound and internal damage that the blade had been twisted, rotated back and forth repeatedly, in order to router a wider opening. Some might call that overkill, but not in the manner that domestic crimes of passion involving all manner of kitchen cutlery are overkill. Here the ME realized that, however bent, there was an iota of logic involved. After Sanfield had sunk back down in his chair, and a minute of bloodletting had passed, the killer pressed the chess piece—a glass queen—crown first into the gap he’d created beneath attorney’s solar plexus. Not something you saw every day.

MPD’s crime scene investigators took fingerprints from every conceivable surface in Sanfield’s executive office, all door handles, his aged mahogany desk, his credenza and matching wall-length bookcase, his two-tone leather couch, his Herman Miller Aeron chair, his liquor cabinet, the Scotch bottles—you name it. MPD was able to quietly, and impressively, match all prints against clients, staff members, and janitors. Clients and colleagues in Sanfield’s orbit were okay with this effort at ruling out the known prints on the agreement that none of the prints would be sent to any database. Unfortunately in this case, once elimination printing was finished, MPD was left with no remaining unknown prints.

In terms of building security, tenants could opt to go with the corporate security firm contracted by One Franklin Square, Cadence Security, or negotiate with another company of their own choosing. Sanfield & Fine chose to stick with Cadence Security and had them set up the access control system for S&F’s office facilities. Cadence’s single card solution for parking and office entry, as well as building and elevator access during afterhours, appeared to be a no-brainer. Each S&F employee was issued one proximity ID card—a prox card—that they wouldn’t even have to remove from their wallet, purse or badge holder as they waved it in front of the card reader and let the radio frequency identification technology, a transponder chip in the prox card, take care of the rest. If you were authorized to enter, the door would unlock. If not, well, good luck with all that.

An initial break came when the electronic surveillance report provided by Cadence Security indicated that Debbie Varner, one of the newer paralegals, had entered the offices through the reception door at 8:42 that evening, a time that the ME was able to establish as the general time of death based on internal temperature readings of Sanfield’s body.

Upon immediate face-to-face questioning, a hysterical Ms. Varner informed the detectives that she’d misplaced her security badge, which she normally kept in the armrest compartment of her Subaru, thought she’d accidentally left it at home, had piggybacked in that morning with Peg Maynard, another fresh-faced Sanfield & Fine paralegal, and fully planned on reporting it if her badge didn’t appear in another day or two. Her alibi for that night had checked out, as Ms. Varner and her roommate/partner had been at dog obedience training across town from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m., surrounded by many witnesses—and not just the four-legged variety.

Cady remembered thinking at the time that no matter how the case turned out, these two new paralegals weren’t long for Sanfield & Fine.

Ms. Varner’s badge had also been used to activate the elevator at 8:58 p.m. From the front reception area, it took less than a minute to wind through the hallways to Sanfield’s corner office suite. Then a little extra time to return to the elevator foyer and summon a lift—assuming the killer didn’t sprint. That gave the killer about fourteen minutes to stab Sanfield, insert the glass queen, and get back to the elevator. But the real question for Cady was, why did it take so long? Every additional second on the scene could spell the perpetrator’s downfall. Did the killer know Sanfield? Was that why there weren’t defensive wounds about Sanfield’s hands? Or was he there for the hit, but also searching for something? Too many questions.

A secondary break came when MPD’s Detective Bruce Pearl worked with the red-faced and major-league pissed off head of Cadence Security—Dick Heath, an ex-FBI man himself—to review the night’s digital surveillance recordings from the closed-circuit television surveillance cameras strategically placed at all the entrances and exits of the block-long high rise. Video from each security camera was transmitted to the monitors at the corresponding guard station covering that particular access point.

Heath, Pearl, and a team of Cadence guards reviewed the digital recordings from the prior evening. The building was for the most part emptied out by that time of night, with only an occasional workaholic sneaking out into the darkening skies. Heath got a hit on the monitor he was glaring at, with a time log reading in the bottom right corner of the video of 9:01 p.m., a time that fit hand in glove with the digital timeline established per Ms. Varner’s prox card. A hunched figure with a baseball cap, carrying something indecipherable in his right hand, was shown leaving through the northeast exit. Suddenly, he materialized on Heath’s display monitor as if out of nowhere, as though he’d figured out a way to slide through One Franklin and only get detected on this single surveillance camera. His face was aimed downward, away from the camera, off in the shadows to the side. But one thing was starkly evident; the figure had a pronounced limp.

Heath called Detective Pearl and the other Cadence guards over, scanned back the video recording, and let the others view this misshapen figure as he made his exit.

“Ah, hell,” one of the night watchmen spoke up. “That’s just the kid.”

Cady flipped a page ahead to the most interesting part in this section of the case file, the transcript of Detective Pearl questioning the Cadence security guard, a bodybuilder type named Ritter, who knew
the kid
.

“How long has this person been hanging around One Franklin Square?” asked Detective Pearl.

“He began showing up a month, maybe six weeks back. He had that club foot or something and a crippled-up claw of a hand that always held a juice box, the kind my kids get in those Oscar Mayer Lunchables.”

“Did you ever talk to him?”

“Absolutely. The first night I saw him limping back and forth by the main entry, I went over to see if he needed help.”

“What did he have to say?”

“Look, Detective, I’m not up on the medical conditions for the mildly retarded, so in the back of my mind I’m assuming he’s got cerebral palsy or something. Anyway, he was a real happy guy, nodded at everything, and there was a bit of spittle problem. I remember taking a step backwards. He stuttered something about the Metro bus, and I figured the kid was waiting for the 9:05. The kid was here about every other night for an hour.”

“You keep calling him
the kid
. How old do you think he was?”

“He wasn’t really a kid. I guess I just thought of him that way, just like I think of them as kids in the Special Olympics. You know, both that and him sucking down those juice boxes. Hard to tell, but I’d say he could be anywhere between early 20s and a youngish 40.”

“What did he look like?”

“Obviously Caucasian,” Ritter said. “I’m five-ten, and he was taller than me even though he was scrunched up, so maybe six-one if he stood up straight. Greasy complexion, always looked like he’d recently washed his face with fried chicken or something. Black hair. And he always wore a Nationals’ baseball cap all crooked on his head, rain or shine. Plus, he wore one of those hairnets underneath.”

“He wore a hairnet?”

“I figured one of the restaurants down the block had him making onion rings or something easy, and that he came here to kill some time before the bus picked him up.”

“Did you talk to him often?”

“Just that one time, Detective. To be honest, he wasn’t hurting anyone and I didn’t want to get any more spittle on me, so whenever I saw him across the lobby or outside by the windows looking in or when he’d play by the elevators, I just gave him a nod. I think the other guys did the same. We all kind of felt sorry for him, you know.”

“He played by the elevators?”

“I saw him there. Once or twice. Just farting around. You know, pressing the buttons and going in and out. Didn’t hurt anything because at this time of night, he’d need an ID card to make them actually run.”

Heath and Detective Pearl were able to hunt down and account for the handful of other figures caught on the video cameras that evening, but the kid never came back. The Metro bus drivers on One Franklin Square and the other nearby routes had no recollection of a mentally handicapped man sporting a limp and a Nationals’ cap. Pearl had his people check with all restaurants within six city blocks, but none of those establishments had anyone fitting the kid’s description slinging French fries or bussing tables.