Murder on the Potomac (16 page)

It was a day of meetings all over town.

Darcy Eikenberg faced four of them at MPD Headquarters at 300 Indiana Avenue.

She was late for the first because she’d spent more time than planned interviewing employees of Tierney Development Corporation. Her tardy arrival didn’t set well with the head of the Forensic Unit, the crusty veteran
Wally Zenger. He said as she came through the door, “I hate to break the news, Darcy, but the Juris case isn’t the only one we’re working on.”

Eikenberg brushed off his comment and took a chair at the table. In the middle of it was a fourteen-by-twelve black typewriter case. “Canon” was printed on its cover. Inside was a Typestar 6 battery-powered typewriter that used the ink-jet principle of printing.

“Well?” Eikenberg asked Zenger.

“No doubt about it. The letters found in her apartment were typed on this thing.”

“On this type of machine, or this one specifically?” Eikenberg asked.

Zenger raised large, bushy eyebrows and muttered something under his breath. He fixed her across the table and said, “If I say the letters were typed on this typewriter, I mean
this
typewriter. We bought four others. They all look pretty much alike except the T and M tend to bleed a little on this one. The others didn’t On top of that, this unit is set to the same specifications as the letters, margins left and right, top and bottom. It’s the one.”

“Okay,” Eikenberg said, taking in faces around the table, including two detectives who’d produced the typewriter and who were assigned to Eikenberg on the Juris case, and three cops from Forensics. She said to the detectives, “Get back to the National Building Museum and find out who had access to this typewriter and where it was kept most of the time.”

“We took it from the room they call the commissioner’s suite,” a detective said.

“Is that where it was always kept? Run it down before the day is out.”

*  *  *

The Second Meeting

MPD’s Evidence Unit had been a source of embarrassment for years. Its job was seemingly simple and straightforward—to catalog and file evidence in criminal cases so that it was available in its original form for presentation during trial. But evidence sometimes disappeared. Illegal drugs seized in raids occasionally vanished. In one case, Internal Affairs built a case against cops who’d confiscated the drugs and sold them back to the same dealers from whom they’d been taken. Weapons had occasionally flown the coop, too. And sensitive documents to be used to prosecute certain government officials seemed to have been lifted aloft by breezes through open windows and floated to a kinder, gentler place.

Such incidents did not occur with regularity. To the contrary, materials generally stayed in Evidence until prosecutors called upon them to build their cases. It had been at least six months since any controversy had arisen over MPD’s handling of evidence.

But the leak of the letters purportedly written by Wendell Tierney to Pauline Juris had broken that string.

The officer in charge of Evidence, eighteen-year veteran Frank Chester, had spent most of his MPD years behind a desk and pushing papers. His early years on D.C.’s streets had been relatively uneventful, and his performance reports never rated him higher than average. The word was that Chester didn’t have the heart, or guts, to be a street cop.

When he was offered a job in Evidence after four years, Chester took it and never complained. It suited his style. A nine-to-fiver. In it for the pension. Two years to go.

Seeing Detective Darcy Eikenberg come through the door was not destined to make Frank Chester smile. He had little use for all detectives, with their swagger and boast, but had a particular dislike for female cops. Women didn’t belong in fire trucks, patrol cars, or the military. He wasn’t terribly original in his rationale—“There’s always that time of the month,” or, “They just end up quitting to have babies.” He’d never married.

Eikenberg was aware of Chester’s chauvinistic attitudes and knew he wasn’t unique. Many of her male colleagues felt the same. She also knew that Chester was not a man to seek confrontation or conflict. He kept such thoughts to himself. Watery blue eyes and weak lips said more than any words.

When confronted with men like Frank Chester, Eikenberg invariably presented herself at her female best. She knew it made them squirm and took pleasure from their discomfort. Instead of choosing a chair, she perched on the edge of his desk and slowly, provocatively crossed her legs. “Well, Frank, whodunit?” she asked, flashing a winsome smile.

He looked at her quizzically.

“Who leaked the letters?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Leaking the contents of those letters put me in one hell of an awkward position. Ever hear of Mackensie Smith?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s Wendell Tierney’s attorney. He’s a professor at George Washington University. And he’s one unhappy camper. When I told him some inefficient, ineffectual, stupid member of the Evidence Unit blabbered to reporters
about those letters, he—well, he looked like he’d just eaten a rotten egg.” Before Chester could respond—if he’d even intended to—she added, and stopped smiling: “And that makes
me
very angry.”

“Look, Darcy, lots of people saw those letters. Why are you looking at me like I leaked them?”

“I’m not looking at you as though you personally leaked them, Frank. But you are the head of Evidence. Ever hear of an old presidential expression ‘The buck stops here’?”

“Truman. Harry Truman.”

“A history scholar, too,” she said. “IA is serious about this investigation. When they find out who leaked those letters, bye-bye pension.”

“Yeah, okay,” Chester muttered.

“I talked to your brother this morning,” she said.

His response was a blank stare.

“I asked Joe Chester whether
he
had some reason for those letters to be made public.”

“So?”

“So, he told me he didn’t. But I figured maybe he had a reason to hang Wendell Tierney out to dry. Maybe he called his brother at MPD and said, ‘Hey, Frank, give me some stuff on what Tierney wrote to his mistress.’ ”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Chester said, standing. “My brother and I don’t talk. My brother and I haven’t talked in ten years. So get off my case, awright?”

Eikenberg stood, straightened her skirt, and checked her reflection in a window. “I know I’m wrong,” she said, continuing to study herself in the pane. “At least I hope I’m wrong.” She turned and looked down at
him—she was inches taller. “I assume those letters are secure in the safe.”

Chester walked out.

The Third Meeting

Eikenberg had been assigned three more detectives for the Juris case. They met in a basement room. With them, she was all business. “Dr. Lucas Wharton, former husband of the deceased, claims he had dinner with her to discuss land they jointly owned in West Virginia. He claims he never went near Roosevelt Island that night. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.” She pushed photocopies of paper across the table to each of them. “Here’s the information he gave us on the car he rented. Find it, bring it in, and let the lab go over it.”

“Chances are the rental company cleaned it up,” one of the detectives said. He was an obese older man with a breathing problem.

“When’s the last time you drove a truly clean rented car?” she said. “Check it out and do it fast.”

The Fourth Meeting

Chief of Detectives Joe Horton was known as a cop’s cop, seasoned by D.C. street wars, steel-eyed, taciturn, and with a generous blessing of balanced cynicism. He’d gone bald at twenty but hadn’t tried to do anything about it. A point for him. His head was a series of craters and hills, a lunar landscape. He still wore knit ties—maroon this day—and had framed pictures of his children and grandchildren all over his office. A good guy, everyone knew. But don’t cross him. Eikenberg made sure she was on time.

“Fill me in,” Horton said.

“Making progress,” she said, pulling a steno pad from her purse and referring to it. “I’ve got people checking out the rental car the deceased’s husband drove the night of her murder. That’s Dr. Lucas Wharton, big-shot surgeon from New York. We’ve interviewed him twice. Talks a good story, but I have my doubts.”

Horton’s reply was to place a folder in front of her. She opened it, read, glanced up with a knowing look. “This was fast,” she said.

“I put a priority on it,” he said. “That’s valuable land Ms. Juris and her ex-husband owned.”

“Only they didn’t own all of it together,” Eikenberg said. “Not from what I see here.”

“Right. Juris bought the adjacent parcel a month before she was killed. Down payment in cash. A hundred-and-fifty grand.”

“But she didn’t have any money,” Eikenberg said. She decided to not mention the rumor of missing funds from the National Building Museum. Not yet. She’d run that down herself. No sense giving up what it might produce to another cop.

“So she has a friend,” said Horton. “The land they jointly held wasn’t worth a hell of a lot. But when you add what she brought to the deal, it’s suddenly worth a lot more. Tierney Development is going in there big time. Condos, shopping mall, the works. Worth a lot if you put the two parcels together. And she owned the big slice.”

“I want to think about this,” Eikenberg said, placing the folder in her briefcase.

“Yeah, I figured you would. Looks to me like the doc got screwed by his ex-wife.”

“Don’t you love it when we’re drowning in motives?” she said. “Want to hear another?”

“Sure, only make it quick. The commissioner and I have a date in a few minutes.”

“I interviewed people at Tierney Development again this morning. I asked them about rumors that Wendell Tierney might have had a thing going with Pauline Juris.”

“And?”

“And I got these noncommittal stares. Nobody knows anything, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Except that two people I talked to didn’t completely dismiss the notion of an affair between Tierney and Juris.”

“That’s progress,” said Horton.

“I thought so, Joe, especially since the Tierney they pointed to wasn’t Wendell Tierney. It was his son, Chip.”

Horton removed half-glasses that had been perched on the end of his prominent nose. “Son? Sleeping with Pauline Juris?”

“That’s what I read into what I heard this morning.”

“So how do you figure this?”

“Like everything else, I have to think about it. But if Chip Tierney and his father’s personal assistant were sleeping together, it means he might have had a reason to do her in. Lovers’ squabble. Threats to tell his father about their affair. Or—”

“Or what? I have to leave.”

“Or Chip Tierney’s fiancée, Terri Pete. I talked to her, Joe. Hate to be old-fashioned, but she defines gold digger. She’s got Chip Tierney all twisted up around her
fìnger—and body. Claims she only met Pauline Juris once or twice and had no feelings about her one way or the other. Right! She could have found out about her sweetie’s fling with Daddy’s aide and done in the competition. Certainly adds to the suspect list.”

Horton stood, stretched, buttoned his suit jacket, and came around the desk. “You’re really into this, aren’t you?”

She looked up. “I guess you could say that.”

“Gotten to the point where you want somebody brought in and charged?”

“Brought in, not charged. Held as long as we can get away with,” she said.

“Who?”

“Dr. Wharton.”

“We have enough on him?”

“No, but I’d like Tierney—make that plural—the Tierneys to think the pressure is off them.”

“All right, but let’s wait until they check the rental car. I’d feel better having caught him in a lie.”

“Fair enough. By the way, Joe, I need a bigger expense account.”

It was his first laugh that day.

“Tierney runs with a well-heeled crowd,” she said. “I’ve gotten to know some of them and want to get to know them better. That means lunches, dinners, hanging out, getting them to trust me, forget I’m a cop and view me as a sympathetic listener. Not big expenses, Joe, but I don’t want to feel guilty picking up a tab.”

He smiled and patted her shoulder. “Okay, but don’t overdo it. IA tells me they haven’t come up with who leaked the Tierney letters.”

“No surprise,” she said. “Just as long as it doesn’t happen again.”

“If it does, heads will hang on these walls along with the shots of my kids and grandkids.”

That Same Night

Suzanne Tierney entered the Grand Hyatt Hotel on H Street and headed directly for the Grand Slam. The Slam was a popular bar where sports of every stripe and season were projected on huge TV screens. She snaked her way through the crowded room.

Sun Ben Cheong looked at her but said nothing, returning his attention to the screen. He’d placed a sizable bet on a baseball game and was unhappy his team wasn’t covering the spread.

Suzanne, whose annoyance level was always close to the surface, tapped his arm. “Hey, I have a life, too. Tear yourself away from the game. I need to talk to you
now
.”

Cheong ran fingers over his nose and scowled at what was on the screen. No need to watch any longer.
He was a loser and knew it. “Over there,” he said, indicating an unoccupied corner of the room.

“Okay,” he said. “What’s so important?”

“The money you owe me.”

Suzanne had rehearsed a number of lead-ins on her way to the bar, but Cheong’s cold, unsympathetic demeanor rendered smooth opening gambits difficult. He had that effect on people. Because he was direct, it brought out directness in others.

He stared at her, unblinking, then glanced at another television set at the sound of the crowd’s roar. They had scored again; his bookie in Tyson’s Corner would want his money in the morning.

“Sun Ben, please don’t play games with me,” Suzanne said, her earlier toughness replaced by a pleading tone. “It isn’t fair.”

Cheong returned his attention to her and knit his brow as though running through a complex series of calculations. “How much?” he asked.

Toughness to pleading to frustration. “You
know
how much. One hundred thousand dollars. What we agreed on.”