The Simple Truth (38 page)

“John, it’s not like anyone believes that you could have murdered your own brother. And how would that tie in to Steven’s death?”

“If the two are connected.”

“So did McKenna have a theory as to what your motive might be?”

Fiske put his coffee down. It might be good to get somebody else’s view, he thought.
“No, but the fact is, I have a perfect motive.”

Surprised, she put down her coffee.
“What?”

“I found out today that Mike had taken out a half-million-dollar life insurance policy on himself and named me as the beneficiary. That qualifies as a top-rank motive, don’t you think?”

“But you said you just found out today.”

“Do you seriously think McKenna will believe that?”

“That’s strange.”

Fiske cocked his head at her.
“What is?”

“Justice Knight said something along the lines that most homicides are committed by family members, and that I shouldn’t trust anybody — meaning, I’m sure, you.”

“Was she ever in the Army that you know?”

Sara almost laughed.
“No, why?”

“I was just wondering if she could have anything to do with Rufus Harms.”

Sara smiled.
“But now that we’re on the subject, how about Senator Knight? He might have been in the Army.”

“He wasn’t. I remember reading in the Richmond papers during his first Senate campaign that he was physically unable to be in the Armed Forces. His political opponent at the time was a war hero and he tried to make a big deal out of Knight not serving his country. But he did, in an intelligence capacity, good record and all, and the whole thing went away.”
Fiske shook his head in frustration.
“This is silly. We’re trying to pound square pegs in round holes.”
He took a long breath.
“I hope Rider can help us.”

* * *

Dressed in overalls, the man pushed the bulky cleaning cart down the hallway and then stopped outside one office, noting the stenciled lettering on the frosted glass door: SAMUEL RIDER, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. The man cocked his head and looked around, listening intently. The office building was small and Rider’s law office was one of only a half dozen places of business on the second floor. At this hour, the town and the building were pretty much deserted.

Josh Harms tapped against the door and waited for a response. He tapped again, this time a little louder. Josh had left Rufus in the truck parked in the alley while he reconnoitered the area. He had found the cleaning supply closet and hatched his plan in case someone showed up. He tapped on Rider’s office door once more, waited another couple of minutes, pursed his lips and gave a low whistle. Within twenty seconds, Rufus, who had been trailing him in the darkness of the hallway, joined him. Rufus wasn’t wearing a cleaning uniform; there hadn’t been one in the storage closet that came close to fitting him.

Josh pulled his lock-pick equipment and within a few seconds they were on the other side of the office door in the receptionist’s area.

“We got to move fast. Somebody might show up,”
Josh said. Tucked inside his belt was his pistol, fully loaded, a round chambered.

“I’ll look here and you go into Samuel’s office and start looking around.”

Rufus was already going through a file cabinet using the flashlight he had brought with him from the truck. Josh went into Rider’s office. The first thing he did, after checking the street for activity, was close the drapes. He pulled out a flashlight of his own and started searching. He came to the locked desk drawer and jimmied it. He gave a low whistle as his hand closed around the packet that had been taped to the underside of the desk drawer. He went to the doorway.
“Rufus, I got it.”

His brother rushed in and took the papers. He scanned them under the flashlight’s arc.

“You still ain’t told me how having these pieces of paper is gonna help your butt any which way.”

“I ain’t thought that all the way through, but I’d rather have them than not have them.”

“Well, let’s get out of here before somebody has
us.
”

They had barely made it to the receptionist area when they both heard the footsteps, two sets of them. They glanced quickly at each other. Josh pulled the pistol and punched off the safety.
“Cops. They know we’re here.”

Rufus looked at him and shook his head.
“It ain’t the cops. And it ain’t the Army. Building’s deserted. If it was them they’d come in here sirens going and the next sound we’d be hearing is glass breaking when the tear gas canisters come through the damn window. Come on.”
Rufus led the way back into Rider’s interior office and softly closed the door. All they could do now was wait.

Chandler walked around Michael Fiske’s apartment. He knelt down and examined the gouge mark in the floor caused by John Fiske’s swing with a tire iron. If the blow had found its mark, this mystery might have been solved. Chandler rose and shook his head. It was never that easy. His men were putting the finishing touches on the apartment. Black carbon dusting powder lay everywhere in piles like magic sprinkles, which in a way they were. They had taken Michael Fiske’s prints for purposes of elimination. They would have to get his brother’s as well. Since John Fiske was a lawyer licensed in Virginia, his fingerprints would be on file with the Virginia State Police. He should get Sara Evans’s prints as well, he figured. She had undoubtedly been here too. He looked down the hallway. In the bedroom, perhaps? However, his inquiries had revealed only that the two had been good friends.

He had met with Murphy and his clerks. They had gone over all the cases Michael had been working on. Nothing really stuck out. That line of investigation would simply take too long. And people were dying.

John Fiske’s unwillingness to confide in Chandler had cost him. As Fiske had earlier deduced, Chandler had cut off the flow of information to him. Chandler had played fair with the Feds, though, and passed along what he had to McKenna, including his newfound information on Rufus Harms’s escape from prison and Michael Fiske’s earlier calls to the prison. He had also informed McKenna of the missing appeal Fiske had told him about. McKenna had thanked him but had been unable to add any new information of his own. As if on cue, he heard a sound at the front door and the FBI agent walked into the room — after showing his ID card to the uniform outside and being added to the crime scene list, Chandler assumed. Crime scene. Well, it was one of sorts, Chandler said to himself.

“You’re working late tonight, Agent McKenna.”

“So are you.”
The FBI agent’s gaze swept the area, starting at the center and marching outward grid by grid.
“So, is the director of the FBI just a little bit on your butt, or a lot, to get this thing solved?”

“Same as your boss. In the Bureau you get double kudos if you solve the crime in time for the evening news.”
McKenna flashed a rare smile, although it was as though his mouth didn’t know quite how to manage it, because the effect came off as lopsided.

Chandler wondered if the man did it on purpose to throw people off. Because he’d had a weird feeling about the guy, Chandler had discreetly checked out Warren McKenna. His career at the Bureau was first-rate in all respects. He had been assigned to the Washington Metropolitan Field Office at Buzzard Point for eight years after transferring from the Richmond Field Office. Before his career at the FBI, he had done a brief stint in the military, then completed college. Since that time McKenna had done nothing except make positive impressions on his superiors. One curious thing Chandler had found out: McKenna had refused several promotions that would have taken him out of the field.

“You’re lucky John Fiske hasn’t slapped you with a lawsuit yet. He still might.”

“Maybe he should,”
was McKenna’s surprising reply.
“I probably would if I were him.”

“I’ll be sure and tell him that,”
Chandler said slowly.

McKenna’s gaze darted all over the place for a couple of minutes, seemingly absorbing every detail like a sheet of Polaroid, before he glanced back at Chandler.
“What are you, anyway, his mentor?”

“Didn’t know the man until a couple days ago.”

“You make friends a lot faster than I do, then.”
McKenna inclined his head at Chandler.
“Mind if I look around?”

“Go ahead. Try not to touch anything that doesn’t look like it’s got a pound of print dust on it.”

McKenna nodded and stepped carefully around the living room. He noted the mark on the floor.

“Fiske going after his purported attacker?”

“That’s right. Only I didn’t know he was purported.”

“He is until we have a corroborating account. At least that’s how I work.”

Chandler unwrapped a piece of gum and popped it in his mouth, slowly chewing over both the agent’s words and the gum.

“Sara Evans reported to me that she also saw a man flee from the building and that Fiske was chasing him. Is that good enough for you?”

“That’s convenient corroboration. Fiske is one lucky guy. He should run out right now and play the lottery while he’s so hot.”

“I wouldn’t call losing your brother being lucky.”

McKenna stopped walking and looked at the pantry door, which was ajar and covered with print dust.
“I guess it depends on how you look at it, doesn’t it?”

“What the hell do you have against him? You don’t even know the guy.”

McKenna’s eyes flashed at him.
“That’s right, Detective Chandler, and you know what? Neither do you.”

Chandler wanted to say something back but couldn’t think of anything. In a way the man was right. This thought was interrupted by one of his men.

“Detective Chandler, we found something I think you might want to see.”

Chandler took the sheaf of papers from the tech and looked down at it. McKenna joined him.

“Looks like an insurance policy,”
McKenna said.

“We found it on one of the shelves in the pantry. No food in there. Guy used it for storage. Tax returns, bills and stuff like that are in there too.”

“Half a million bucks worth of life insurance,”
Chandler muttered. He flipped rapidly through the pages, passing by the legalese until he got to the end, where more specific information was set forth.

“Michael Fiske was the insured.”

McKenna’s finger suddenly stabbed at the bottom of the page. Chandler paled a little as he read the line the man had so energetically indicated.
“And John is the primary beneficiary.”

The two men looked at each other.
“Would you like to take a walk and hear a theory of mine?”
McKenna asked.

Chandler wasn’t sure exactly what to do.

“It won’t take long,”
McKenna added.
“In fact, some of it you’re probably thinking right now, I would imagine.”

Chandler finally shrugged.
“You got five minutes.”

The two men walked out onto the sidewalk in front of the row house. McKenna took a moment to light up a cigarette and then offered one to Chandler. The detective held out his pack of gum.
“I can be overweight or I can smoke. I like to eat, so there we are.”

They strolled along the dark street as McKenna began talking.
“I found out that Fiske doesn’t have an alibi for the probable time his brother was murdered.”

“Might be something in his favor. If he killed his brother, he would’ve worked hard to establish one.”

“I disagree for a couple of reasons. First, he probably never thought he would become a suspect.”

“With a half-million-dollar life insurance policy?”

“He might have thought we wouldn’t find out. We go down a different trail and that’s it. He waits awhile and then collects his money.”

“I don’t know about that. What’s your second point?”

“If he had some perfect alibi — which there is no such thing if you’re guilty — then a hole would come up in it somewhere, sometime, somehow. So why bother? He was a cop and now a lawyer. He knows all about alibis. He says he doesn’t have one and then he doesn’t have to worry about it blowing up in his face. And then he counts on everybody reaching the conclusion you just did, namely, that if he’s guilty he would’ve concocted a good one.”

McKenna took a long drag on his cigarette and looked up at the few stars visible in the sky.
“So he’s got motive and, by his own admission, opportunity. I checked him out. He’s got a dip-shit law practice in Richmond, defending the scum of the earth. Guy never even went to law school. He’s third-rate at best. Unmarried, no kids, lives in a shithole. A real loner. Oh, and he left the Richmond police force under a somewhat dark cloud.”

“How do you mean?”
Chandler asked sharply.

“Let’s just say that there was a shooting incident that was never fully explained other than the fact a civilian and another police officer were dead as a result.”

Chandler looked shaken, but recovered.
“So why does he come up and offer his assistance in the investigation?”

“Again, a cover. Fiske’s position would be, ‘How could I have pulled the trigger? I’m up here working my butt off to find the person who murdered my brother.’”

“How does that explain Wright’s death?”

“Who says it has to? Like you said, the two murders could be unrelated. If they are, then if I were Fiske I’d jump on it and argue that they are connected. See, he’s got an alibi for Wright’s murder.”

Evans again, Chandler thought.

McKenna continued,
“So if we believe they’re connected, he’s home free.”

“And Sara Evans? Remember? She said she saw the guy running out of Michael Fiske’s apartment building. You say she’s lying too?”
McKenna stopped walking and so did Chandler. McKenna took a last puff of his cigarette and then crushed it out on the sidewalk with several twists of his foot.
“Sara Evans too,”
McKenna repeated Chandler’s words, eyeing the detective closely.