The President's Assassin (19 page)

“No...it’s not—”

“Wow—I mean, wow! What will that do for the glorious and esteemed Barnes name?” But in the event she couldn’t piece it together in her muddled mental state, I spelled it out for her. “The Barnes name in all the history books, beside Sirhan Sirhan, Lee Harvey Oswald, and that loony Hinckley. There’ll be books about you, your family, reporters crawling through everything, biopics of how you raised a sociopath, probably a Broadway play, some instant TV movies...Hey, who do you think they’ll get to play you, Mrs. Barnes?”

“Stop it, Sean.” Jennie looked at me and said, “Can’t you see this is a huge shock for Margaret?”

“You’re right. What was I thinking? Poor, poor Margaret Barnes. Why was I concerned about the wives, parents, and children of the sixteen people her son murdered today? How about Mr. Larry Elwood, Terrence Belknap’s driver, who we found this morning, barbecued to a crisp, after Jason put a few slugs in his skull.” Pause. “Or Agent June Lacy, one of Jason’s partners, who would’ve been married next week—except Jason, this morning, put a bullet through her throat.”

Margaret Barnes was shrinking into her seat. On her face you could see guilt, and in that guilt you could see that Jason’s actions made sense to her, that something inside this family either had created or at least corrupted a human vessel capable of every wicked deed I had just described.

Jennie laid a hand on Mrs. Barnes’s shoulder. She said, “Margaret,
we
need to find Jason.” She confided, “By morning, he’ll be the target of the largest manhunt in American history.
We’re
the only hope of taking him alive.”

I said to Jennie, “I hope she doesn’t talk. Let them shoot the bastard.”

“Sit down, Sean,” Jennie ordered. “Just...sit down, and shut your mouth.”

I sat.

Margaret Barnes was looking around the room, wide-eyed, and if she had a gun, a noose, and limbs that worked, I had not one doubt she would climb up onto a stool, slip the noose around her neck, and swallow a bullet herself. Actually, after what I’d just done to this poor lady, I felt ashamed enough to join her. Jennie said, “The human mind is a brittle thing, Margaret. We know Jason struggled to live a decent life...an honorable life. We also know he was fleeing something, some monster.” She added, “Apparently, he did not run far enough.”

Margaret Barnes looked at her, a little shocked by this insight. A good interrogator has to find common ground with the subject, of course. And the parent of a killer bears a special shame, and the mind of that parent searches for excuses, for so lace, even absolution. Jennie said, “I don’t blame you. Nobody should blame you. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

“But you can’t...It’s not his fault.”

“Whose fault is it, Margaret?”

She did not reply

“Margaret, help us understand.”

Mrs. Barnes sipped from her sherry, and from her expression I wasn’t sure
she
could piece it all together. She said, “He...his childhood...”

“Being robbed of his mother?”

“Yes. And my husband, he was very...he was quite strong-willed. And headstrong.”

Jennie said, “I know this is difficult, Margaret. But Calhoun’s dead. He can
never
hurt you again.” She reached forward and she turned off the tape recorder. She said, “Whatever you tell us stays between us. I promise.”

I knew why she did it, but turning off the recorder was, I thought, a bad move. But also, I realized in that instant that Jennie had picked up something I had missed entirely. Actually, she had picked up a lot I had missed, and I was curious to see what. Mrs. Barnes looked up at her. Jennie said, “It’s going to come out. It can’t stay hidden any longer. For your sake...for Jason’s sake, tell us.”

After a moment, Mrs. Barnes blubbered, “You can’t imagine.”

“Yes, well...I don’t want to imagine. I need
you
to describe it. You’ll feel better by telling us.”

For a long moment, Margaret Barnes stared into Jennie’s face, but it was not clear she understood a word. Jennie prompted, “Start with how he really broke your back.”

With a distressed expression she recoiled back into her seat. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Yes...yes, you do. You’ve always wanted to talk about it. Haven’t you?” She added, “For Jason. You owe him this.”

In the past two minutes Margaret Barnes had learned her son was a homicidal maniac, that the two agents in her home had come to destroy her soul, that she was about to become the most shamed mother in the country, and possibly that she would spend the remainder of her years in prison. Interrogations are a tricky business, and every experienced interrogator will tell you there is a moment, not a crescendo necessarily, but a turning point after which the subject either blurts out everything or the lawyers take over. In fact, she looked at Jennie and asked, “Shouldn’t I call my lawyer?”

Jennie glanced at me. I stood up and said, “Sure, Mrs. Barnes.” To Jennie I said, “Hand me your cuffs.” To Mrs. Barnes I ordered, “Put out your hands. After we’ve booked you, you can call your attorney from the holding cell of the nearest police station.”

Margaret Barnes stared at the cuffs in my hand for a very long time. Basically, a hardened criminal has been through the wringer a few times, and knows better than to talk to coppers under any circumstances. But ordinary people don’t appreciate how the odds are stacked against them; they think they can bluff and outsmart cops, they think they can get away with a medley of half-truths and half-lies, and as first-timers, they still believe they have their untainted reputations to protect.

Some combination of all these thoughts went through Margaret Barnes’s mind, and eventually she said, “All right. He...I mean, Calhoun...he beat me...and he threw me down the stairs. He was in a rage that night. He’d been...well, he’d been drinking...but he wasn’t...” She stared at me and, as though to underscore the one irrelevant truth she’d told, insisted scornfully, “He wasn’t
drunk.
”

Jennie said, “And afterward—together—you fabricated the car accident to conceal the truth.”

Mrs. Barnes nodded.

Jennie said, “He threatened you, didn’t he? He said it would ruin both your lives, and Jason’s.”

Again, she nodded. “I never lost consciousness. He...he hovered over me, and...and I couldn’t move my body...and, so we both knew I was badly hurt and...” She tried to stifle a heavy sob. “He threatened to kill me, Jennifer. And he would—believe me, I had not a doubt he would. He...he could be brutishly violent.”

Jennie allowed a moment to pass. She said, “I understand your decision, Margaret. I believe he might have killed you, and I’m sure he would’ve looked for a way to cover that up. But afterward...well, afterward, he controlled you, when you could go out, what you could do, when you could use the toilet, your feeding, your entertainment, and—”

She was nodding furiously. “I felt like...like an animal.”

“He was a cruel man, wasn’t he?”

“Beyond your imagination. He left the house every day, the good family man, the federal judge...you have no idea how normal...how charming he could be
outside
this house...how admired...how misjudged. But
inside
...”

“I do understand, Margaret. Calhoun was sick. He was addicted to control. He needed his partner to depend on him. He needed his wife to be subservient, and it may have been an accident, but probably he was satisfied when you ended up crippled and became absolutely dependent on him.” Mrs. Barnes was still nodding as Jennie spoke, and Jennie paused and with exquisite timing suggested, “And from Jason, from his son, he
also
demanded absolute obedience, didn’t he?”

Tears were now streaming down Margaret’s face and she was intermittently sobbing and drawing short breaths. The first dark secret was out, and it was like plucking the cork on a dusty bottle of champagne.

“I...my son and I...we have no relationship. We haven’t...well, we haven’t spoken in years.”

“We’ll get to that. Tell me about your family.”

And for the next ten minutes, Margaret related what it had been like to be a wife, to be a mother, and to be a son in the house of Calhoun Barnes, a greater monster than we had even imagined. Margaret Barnes, as Jennie said, did want to get it out, and it came like a torrent, a sobbing collection of endless nightmares for her, and for her son.

As I listened, I was struck that Jennie had also been surprisingly prescient back at Jason’s townhouse; Calhoun had been a terrorizing, overbearing bully who whipped and beat his son to a pulp for the tiniest infractions, who demanded and enforced perfection in matters and habits large and small. The things that could trigger Calhoun’s volcanic fury ranged from the trivial to the arbitrary. Little Jason once bought a turtle from a school classmate; Calhoun discovered the turtle, thrashed Jason with a belt, crushed the turtle under his foot, then forced Jason to clean up the squashed mess and, afterward, to wash his hands one hundred times. Adolescent Jason got into a schoolyard fight, which was fine, but he lost, which was not, and Calhoun thrashed him so badly he missed three days of school. And so forth, and so on.

Because the mother was equally terrorized, and because she was bedridden, and then handicapped, young Jason was forced to confront his monster alone, unprotected and vulnerable. But I think not even Jennie had anticipated the unremitting ferocity the father unleashed on his son. Margaret eventually commented, “But you know the oddest thing? Jason actually looked up to his father. He admired him, and he obeyed him, and wanted always to please him. The two of them were...unnaturally close. Jason idolized his father.” She took a deep breath. “I did not lie about that.” She inquired of her confessor, “Don’t you find that peculiar?”

“I find it normal, Margaret. We see it sometimes in hostage situations. There’s even a term for it—the Stockholm syndrome. The combination of applied terror and victim helplessness creates mental dependency, and, perversely, even affection and loyalty. For a young boy, trapped in the home of such an abusively dictatorial man, I’d be surprised to hear otherwise.”

“I...yes, I could see how that explains it.” In fact, she might—in her own way she probably had succumbed to the same bewitching phenomenon.

Jennie asked, “Did Jason ever learn the truth about your injury?”

“No. We...I kept it from him. I thought...a child...a son...should not have to bear such a terrible truth. Don’t you think that’s so?”

Jennie glanced at me, pointed at Margaret’s glass, and I got her another refill. I was tempted to tell Margaret that whatever her intentions, she had made a serious, even fatal miscalculation. In truth, she had made many mistakes, starting with her marriage, but mistakes compound, and some are worse than others, and cumulatively they become a disaster. Had the boy understood his father’s barbaric nature, he might have learned to despise, rather than admire and obey, the beast dominating his life.

In fact, the hour was very late, and I was tired and becoming increasingly impatient to learn exactly
what
had triggered Jason’s rage—but Jennie continued her pursuit, methodically and patiently. Margaret’s marriage to Calhoun had been a carnival of smoke and broken mirrors, and I was sure she had entertained strong visceral feelings, but she had never intellectualized or verbalized the causes and effects to others, or probably even to herself. Or perhaps she had, but with only the knowledge of how it had destroyed her life. Now she knew how it had destroyed her child’s also, and she needed to rationalize the adjusted causes and effects.

For the next few minutes, alternating between a whispery intensity and hurt chokes and sobs, she detailed how Calhoun had estranged her from Jason, isolating him and isolating her. Daddy taught his boy to admire strength; Mommy was crippled, Mommy was weak, Mommy deserved contempt. Also, Mommy was physically incapable of caring for and protecting him, magnifying Jason’s emotional enslavement to his father and his alienation from his mother. It struck me that young Jason might also have felt a sense of betrayal. Margaret had failed in nearly every sense, both practical and emotional, to be his mother, and a child is concerned not with cause but with effect.

Even I could understand that no child would emerge from such a malevolent and viciously manipulated environment healthy in mind, conscience, and soul. Jason’s head was probably a shopping cart of pathologies, Oedipal guilts, and sexual confusion. No wonder the guy wasn’t married yet. But Margaret finally paused to catch a breath, and Jennie, the good cop, asked her, “Another sherry?”

“Uh...if you’d be so kind.”

Jennie handed me Margaret’s glass. Being the bad cop carries its heavy burdens. I felt really bad about getting a witness liquored up and loose-lipped, but in murder investigations you do what works. As I got up, Jennie suggested to Margaret, “Now I think it’s time to figure out what happened, why Jason has taken the course he’s on.”

Margaret thought a moment, then said, “I think...I suppose, his father.”

“This was somehow related to the firm your husband and Phillip Fineberg started?”

“Oh...I believe most certainly it was.”

“Can you explain what happened?”

Margaret waited for me to bring her the refill, then started, “As I mentioned, the fit between Calhoun and Phillip was never good or particularly healthy. Theirs was a partnership of convenience, at best. I think that with success and wealth, they needed each other less and disliked each other more.”

“That’s how it usually works,” Jennie commented.

“Actually, I think Calhoun and Phillip were consummately jealous of each other.” She paused for a moment before she added, “They grew to really hate one another.”

“How long were they together?”

“Fifteen years. The last four or five were misery for them both. Calhoun complained viciously about Phillip. And I knew Phillip thoroughly despised Calhoun as well. And of course, by the seventies, the opportunities in this city toward Jews had changed greatly. Phillip knew it, and so did Calhoun.”

“Was there a blow-up?”

“Oh, nothing so reckless. They were both smart men, and quite greedy. They knew to manage their situation discreetly. Richmond is a small city, after all. They would invite unwanted scrutiny, and their legal competitors would have eaten them alive.” She paused a moment, then said, “Phillip finally ended it.”