Blowout (24 page)

“They had three sons. Townsend Barrister, the eldest, married a woman named Samantha Cooper, in 1964. It was a really big bash that included nearly all the townspeople. It was in the middle of the summer, a big barbecue at the house. The Barristers brought in all kinds of help. They really did it up right.”

Savich, still rubbing Sean's back, said, “So they approved of their firstborn son's marriage?”

“It appears so, but I can't be sure. I'll need to go deeper. The couple moved into the big house with the two brothers and the parents.”

“Ouch.”

“Wasn't so bad. As you know from firsthand experience, that house is huge.”

“You got any feel for how she got along with her brothers-in-law?”

Sherlock turned to see him rocking slightly in his chair, Sean held tightly against him. She smiled. Such a familiar sight, it made her want to grin like a loon. She cleared her throat. “I'm reading between the lines in all this stuff—articles on the family, biographical info on the brother, everything the Pittsburgh office could pull together. The second brother, Derek was his name, was two years older than Samantha. He unexpectedly left home three months after Townsend and Samantha married. He joined the army, went to Vietnam and was killed within three months. The family was devastated.”

“Do you think he had the hots for his brother's wife?”

“There's no hint of anything like that, naturally, but it could explain his abrupt and unexpected departure. He was twenty-two, had just graduated from Penn State, was going to start training in his father's bank, but he up and left and joined the army.”

“How about the youngest brother?”

“Jonathan. He was seventeen at the time, a senior in high school when Samantha and Townsend were married, and he remained living there until he went to Dartmouth that fall. He was a wild one, big into drugs—well, but a lot of people were back then.”

Savich rose. “Give me a moment. Our boy is out. Let me go put him down.”

When Savich came back, he leaned down and kissed the back of her neck. “What happened to Jonathan?”

“He lives in Boston now. He's very well-off, has three boys of his own, all married with children, and he's still married to his first wife. He seems fine financially and psychologically, as in no public fits or aberrant behavior.”

“Okay, the parents. What happened to the senior Barristers?”

“Now that's really strange. Both of them drowned in a boating accident on Lake Klister. That was one year to the day after Townsend married Samantha.”

“Was there any suspicion at all of foul play?”

“None that I've been able to see. One day they were there, hale and hearty, then the next day they were gone—there was no sudden storm or squall, nothing to explain why both of them fell out of their boat, other than talk of lots of booze. Evidently the senior Barristers liked their martinis, and they liked to be on the lake fishing while they drank—so it could be that simple. The belief is that one of them went overboard, the other went in to make a save, and both drowned.

“Townsend took over everything. Problem is that Townsend wasn't the businessman his father was. But Samantha was. She began taking over very quickly. Then she got pregnant in 1966 and gave birth to Austin Douglas Barrister on August 14, 1967. Within a year she was running the whole show. It appears from the records that Townsend Barrister became something of a drunk, was arrested a couple of times on DUIs—out of the local area, so it couldn't be kept out of the regional press, but still he had enough influence to have the charges quashed.

“It wasn't in the local paper, naturally. Townsend also took up gambling, went to Las Vegas every two or three weeks.

“On August 14, 1973, on the very same day that they'd been married, the same day the senior Barristers drowned, the same day Austin Douglas Barrister was born, Samantha died as well. There was a huge party for Austin on the grounds of the house, a big barbecue for his sixth birthday. Samantha was running around seeing to everything. Townsend was manning the bar,
probably drinking pretty steadily, and everyone seemed to be having a good old time, until they found Samantha. Here's a quote from the
Blessed Creek Weekly Journal:
‘Samantha Barrister's body was discovered on the floor of her second-floor bathroom at three o'clock in the afternoon by one of the guests, Mrs. Emmy Hodges, who said she'd wanted to use the facilities and thought that Samantha's bathroom would be free. “She was lying in blood,” said Mrs. Hodges, “it was under her, seeping all around her. It was horrible. I knew she was dead, knew it right away.” '

“Then there's the quote from newly elected Sheriff Doozer Harms, the sheriff we met in Blessed Creek just last Friday. He said, ‘Mrs. Barrister was stabbed through the heart by a person unknown.' ”

“You've got a gleam in your eye, Sherlock. What else did you find out?”

“First thing I did was locate the widower, Townsend Barrister, same as you did. He's in Boston. I managed to actually speak to him. He wasn't real happy to hear from the FBI, but I kept after him until he opened up. Turns out he's remarried to a woman who brought in lots of money that he hasn't managed to go through yet. He has a new family, two daughters.

“Now, here's why we couldn't find out anything about his son, Austin Douglas. When I asked him where his son was, he hemmed and hawed until I threatened to have agents on his doorstep. He finally said that Austin Douglas up and disappeared the day he graduated high school. He's never heard from him again, doesn't have a clue where he is.”

Savich was surprised. “I didn't expect this when I set MAX on Samantha's murder. Well, it doesn't matter. We'll locate him, no problem. I'll give MAX the task of finding Austin.”

“I already did. It turns out to be quite a problem, for MAX and for everyone. When Austin Barrister up and left Boston at eighteen, he must have latched on to a new identity, because I can't find him anywhere in the U.S.

“Boston field office is working on tracking him down, starting with interviewing the family and all his former high school friends.”

“Sounds like he was escaping,” Savich said. “I wonder why.”

S
UPREME
C
OURT
B
UILDING
W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.
F
RIDAY MORNING

E
LAINE
L
A
F
LEURETTE WASN
'
T
in Justice Califano's chambers, only Eliza Vickers, who had a phone tucked under one ear, her finger poised above the button of another ringing line. She looked up, nodded at them, and began speaking more quickly into the phone. Ben and Callie moved to the visitors' chairs and sat down.

Two minutes later, Eliza laid the phone gently back into its cradle, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes. “Sorry for the delay. Detective Raven, Callie, it's good to see both of you.” She ran her hand through her straight hair. “It hasn't stopped. We're having to review all of Justice Califano's unfinished work, decide which Justices and clerks will take over drafting majority and dissenting opinions on case votes already taken, and so much more—
concurrences, join memos, bench memos, certs., but that's not your concern.

“I've been offered help, but somehow, I need to do it myself. I also need to speak to Mrs. Califano about all of Stewart's things.” Her voice trembled a bit, but almost immediately she had herself in control again. She even smiled at them. “I haven't been able to reach her. Do you know where she is, Callie?”

“She went to the High Style Boutique at Tyson's Corner,” Callie said. “Don't you have her cell phone?”

“Yes, but I didn't want to intrude like that, it's more personal.” Eliza slowly rose and stretched. “I've been here since six o'clock this morning, trying to get all the stuff cleaned up. Now, would you like some coffee? I've made some in Stewart's office.”

“No, thank you. Actually, we were looking for Fleurette. Where is she? Why isn't she here helping you?”

“What time is it?”

Callie said, “It's nearly eleven.”

“Her uncle was killed in Vietnam on this date in 1975. She visits the Wall every year at this time. She won't be back until noon.”

Ben nodded, paused a moment, studying her face. “Are you okay? Is there anything we can do, Eliza?”

For a moment Ben thought she hesitated, but then the phone rang, she shrugged, and said over her shoulder, “No, everything is under control. Well, not really, but it will be. The funeral, it was very nice, Callie. The President was eloquent. Your mother and her friends all did very well.”

“Yes, the President was eloquent, but then my stepfather was such a good man. It wouldn't be difficult for anyone to say wonderful things about him.”

“No, it wouldn't,” Eliza said, then again, looked as if she might say something more—but then she reached for the phone, gave them a small wave, and turned away. Callie heard her say, “Justice Califano's chambers. Eliza Vickers.”

Ben said, “We're only about ten minutes from the Vietnam Memorial. You ever been there?”

“Yes. It's always a two-handkerchief occasion, no matter how many times I go there. I think the Wall is the most moving memorial in all of Washington.”

“Yes, I agree with you. Nearly everyone lost someone in Vietnam. One of my father's best friends managed to ship home with two shattered legs that healed in time, but his psychological wounds were more difficult. My father came here right after the Wall was finished. He saw his friend in a wheelchair in front of the Wall, looking for other friends who'd been lost over there. My father told me they spoke for some time, but he never saw him after that.”

It took them eight minutes to get to Constitution Gardens, a beautiful open space that pointed east to the Washington Monument and west to the Lincoln Memorial. Callie looked around the vast empty space as they pulled into a parking place on the street. “Well, it is January, cold, and the only tourists likely to be here have to be from North Dakota.”

They walked down the path toward the Wall. They saw Fleurette immediately, standing at the middle of the Wall, completely still except for a single finger she was tracing over a name.

Ben cleared his throat as they came down the walk so as not to startle her. There were only three other people scattered along the Wall, three older men who looked cold and determined. Even from ten feet, Ben could see a sheen of tears in their eyes and hear
their low voices. He knew they were talking about young men who hadn't come home, but who'd left their names on a beautiful granite wall.

“Fleurette? It's Detective Raven and Callie Markham.”

She seemed completely unaware of him for a moment. Then she slowly turned and straightened. “Is something wrong? What's happened now?”

“Nothing. We wanted to speak to you.” He nodded to the Wall. Even though he knew, he asked, “Who is here for you?”

“My uncle, Bobby LaFleurette, my dad's younger brother. He'd be in his fifties now, not young anymore.” She turned back, traced her fingers over his name. “He died in 1975, just months before the troop withdrawal. He was only twenty-one years old. I'm twenty-six. Isn't that the strangest thing? He was so very young, and in many ways he'll be young forever.”

Her finger traced again over the name, Robert R. LaFleurette. “His name comes right before Robert Petit and right after Douglas Mahoney. I've always wondered how they knew exactly who died in what order—that's how they're all listed, you know, in order of their death.”

Callie said, “Why do you come here, Fleurette?”

“Because Bobby was so young, because my father never stopped talking about him, how fun and wild he was, how he would have been such a hotshot in the business world, if only he'd survived the war. My father brought me here when the Wall first opened, back in 1984. I was six years old, and I remember it so very clearly.”

Callie said, “Fleurette, remember when we talked on Sunday? You said that Danny O'Malley had looked smug last Friday morning.”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“Smug how, exactly?”

“Like he knew something that neither I nor Eliza knew, and it tickled him. He looked—pleased with himself. I remember he was nodding, like he was having this sort of internal conversation with himself, and he liked what he was hearing.”

Ben said, “Think back, Fleurette. Do you remember if Danny looked at Justice Califano when he left his chambers to go to the meeting?”

She closed her eyes a moment, then they popped open. “Yes, Danny did do that. Yes, he did look at Justice Califano. It was a bit of a smirk, really. It all happened so fast it really didn't settle in when it happened. But when I close my eyes now, I can see Danny sitting there, tapping his pen against his desk pad, and a smirk passing over his face.”

“Did Justice Califano notice? Did he look over at Danny?”

“I don't—”

“Close your eyes again, Fleurette. Think back.”

Fleurette closed her eyes. She swayed a moment, leaned against the Wall for support. “Justice Califano's back was to me when he passed by Danny's desk, but he glanced at me before he left—and he looked suddenly tired.”

“Tired?”

“Yes, he looked tired, like something was too much for him. There was something on his mind, something he knew he had to deal with, but he looked tired. Maybe I'm reading too much into it now. You want me to see something and so I'm trying too hard to cooperate with you.”

“But you don't think so?” Ben asked.

Slowly, she shook her head. She looked up at the gray sky. “It's
going to rain soon. I wonder if it will turn to snow again. I hope not. Everything becomes such a mess.”

Callie said, “Fleurette, why are you scared?”

“Scared? Me? I'm not scared.”

“Yes,” Callie said slowly, “you are. On Sunday, I could see it very plainly. You are scared. Why?”

Fleurette looked off toward the Lincoln Memorial, then back again at Callie. “Look, two people close to me have been murdered. If you saw any fear in me, it's because of that.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, nothing else. I'd sure tell you if there were.”

Ben said, “Bobby Fisher—one of Justice Alto-Thorpe's law clerks—”

“Yeah, I know the little creep.”

“He said you and Danny went out to lunch on Friday. You didn't mention that to us.”

“That's because we only walked to the corner together. Danny was in a mood, preoccupied, snarly—I suppose it makes sense now—but then I thought,
Danny, you're such a pain sometimes.
I'd heard about a shoe sale at Maximillan's, not two blocks away. I dumped him and went shoe shopping.”

“Bobby said you two had your heads together, a real chummy conversation,” Ben said.

“No, that's Bobby being a creep again. He probably wanted you to focus your attention on someone else. He disliked Justice Califano, probably because he and Alto-Thorpe weren't on good terms.”

“Bobby Fisher and Eliza—what did you think about that? You knew he wanted her to go out with him?”

Fleurette shrugged. “Oh that. Fact is, Eliza couldn't have cared
less. Bobby didn't really come into her line of focus, you know what I mean? She put up with him. What she really wanted to do was drop-kick him out of the building.”

“Do you think Eliza really disliked Bobby that much? Do you think he hated her because she kept turning him down?”

“Who knows? When he finally ran out of there on Friday, she looked at me, rolled her eyes, and said, ‘Well, maybe that's the last time I'll have to tell him to take a hike.' ”

“So she never really took him all that seriously.”

“No,” Fleurette said. “The only person she took seriously was Justice Califano.”

“So what did Danny say to you before you told him you were going shoe shopping?”

“Nothing really, just something like ‘Women and shoes, that's all you think about.' Then he said he was going to see a foreign film with Annie that night, that he had something going—listen, Danny was always on the make. Usually whatever he said didn't mean anything.”

“Except this time it did, didn't it?” Ben said.

Before Ben and Callie left her by the Vietnam Wall, next to her uncle's name, Ben remembered to ask Fleurette what color her toenail polish was last Friday. She looked startled, then laughed. “It's called ‘I'm Not Really a Waitress Red.' ”

Callie said to Ben as they drove away, “I wonder if her father makes the pilgrimage here every year like Fleurette does.”

“Somehow I don't think so. After all, he wasn't six years old when he first came here.”

“She's scared, even though she denies it.”

“Yes, I think you're right.”