Sweepers (8 page)

I’m here to-“

“Yeah, I know,” he interrupted, sitting back in his chair.

“To establish liaison. So, let’s stop beating around the bushes here.

You know we’re not going to reveal every little detail of what we’re working here with this case. But what I hear you saying is that you’d like a little heads-up, we decide to make Sherman for the perpetrator.

Is that about it?”

Karen decided this was the time to show him that they wanted a little more than that. “Not exactly,” she said. “We might be more useful than that. Let me fill you in on something. She told him about going to Elizabeth’s town house the night before with Admiral Sherman. He nodded slowly keeping his face a blank while she talked, taking it all in but mask. He was indeed a pro, Karen thought, but she did get a reaction when she told him about the slippers. He reached for his notebook and wrotd something down. He appeared to think for a moment when she was finished. “Lemme ask you,” he said. “Did Sherman authorize you to tell us this?”

““Authorize’? Wrong word. I told him that the police ought to know about this, and he agreed.”

“Why did you go with Sherman last night?” he asked.

“He asked me to. Personally, I think he thought it would look better if he had someone with him. There were no indications that the house Was a crime scene when we got there. That’s not a problem, is it?”

“Nope,” he replied. “Did he appear to key on anything else when he went through the place?”

Karen shook her head. “No. He went through the entire house, but I don’t think he was looking for anything specific. He appeared to be, I don’t know, trying to exorcise the place in a way. He turned on all the lights went into all the rooms. I had the impression that he suspects something’s not right with the picture, but he also realizes that if he yells murder, he’s the only guy you’re looking at. I think the man feels he’s in a box.”

Mcnair thought about that for a moment. Then he looked back up at Karen.

“Do you think he’s clean?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” Karen replied immediately. “Absent any physical evidence to the contrary. Based on what you said about the time of death-early evening, Friday-he was either in the Pentagon or at that restaurant. Did that check out, by the way?”

He looked at her for a moment, as if gauging whether or not he should answer the question she had just casually slipped in.

“The restaurant, yes,” he said grudgingly. “Like he said, he’s a regular. They remembered him being there. We haven’t talked to his office yet.”

Perhaps I can help with that.” She handed over one of her cards, with Sherman’s deputy’s name and number written on the back. He slipped the card into a pocket in-his notebook and then sat back, looking at her again, a speculative expression on his face. Karen waited. Mcnair appeared to be one of those cops who could be perfectly polite, even solicitous in his approach to people, but who still exuded the stoniness born of dealing with murder and murderers. Finally, he nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Let me try this again, see if I get it right this time. You will stay close to this Sherman guy while we’re working this thing. You’ll pass along to us any information of interest that develops. In return, we will keep you informed as to how our investigation’s shaping up. You want advance notice if we decide to move against Sherman, but you also want us to get off him just as soon as we feel there’s no case to be made. How’s that?”

Karen gave him her brightest smile. “Admiral Carpenter has told me to ensure that your investigation is fully facilitated by the Navy, one way or the other.”

He nodded again. Karen almost thought he was going to offer his hand so they could shake on it, but he didn’t. He surprised her with another question instead.

“Tell me something, Commander. Does this guy Sherman think you’re on his side on this?”

Karen felt the slightest tinge of a flush start around her throat.

“Admiral Sherman wants to clear this up as quickly as we do, Detective,” she replied.

He nodded again, the ghost of a smile on his face.

“Damn,” he said. “And I thought we cops were the masters of evasion.”

Karen struggled to maintain her composure as he continued to stare at her. He had understood the setup only too well. Then he got up, signifying they were done. He handed her one of his own cards. She realized that he was almost an inch shorter than she was, but bigger than she remembered. Indeterminate age, maybe late thirties. Metallic gray eyes. An iciness back in there. A basically hard face under all that professional courtesy.

“We’ll be in touch, Commander,” he was saying. “Anything comes up you think is useful, there’s the number.”

“Thank you, Detective,” she said. “I guess I do have one more question: As things stand now, do you think Admiral Sherman murdered his exgirlfriend?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Hard to tell just now, Commander. I’m not sure what the slippers signify, if anything. But we’ll sure let you know if that’s what we conclude. “

“Now who’s the master of evasion?” she said, but he only smiled politely and escorted her back out to the reception area.

Karen tried to shrug off the Judas feeling as she drove back into town.

Sherman was a flag officer. He didn’t get to be a flag officer without knowing how the system worked. He had to suspect at least that Carpenter would be working his agenda, which would not necessarily parallel Sherown man’s best interests. As the JAG, Carpenter would have his eye on protecting the Navy. And she was not, in fact, his lawyer. So legally speaking, there were no confidentiality aspects to their conversations.

So there really wasn’t a problem here, right? Right. So why did she feel she was betraying the man?

She mentally reevaluated her tasking: gain Sherman’s confidence, tell him that she had a line into the cops and that she would alert him to anything shaking from those quarters. In return, he would tell her-what, if anything? Well, like going to Elizabeth Walsh’s house last night, where the slipper business had come up. She sighed as she drove down Route 50 toward the Beltway.

Time for a workout. She would call Sherman’s office from the athletic club to see when he had a hole in his schedule after lunch. Then the hard part: She would have to back-brief Carpenter and talk to von Renselshe hadn’t spoken to him yet today.

Ten minutes after one o’clock, Karen entered the OP-32 outer office, with a salad plate in hand. The yeoman got up and knocked on Sherman’s inner office door, stuck his head in, and then held the door open for her. Sherman was finishing a sandwich at a small conference table. His office was similar to Admiral Carpenter’s but smaller and with less prestigious furniture. He did not get up, just waved her over to the table.

“So, how did it go out there with the Polizei?”

She took a moment to summon her thoughts while she unwrapped her plastic fork and opened a carton of milk. She took a bite of salad.

“Well,” she said, “it was pretty short. I told him about your visit to Ms. Walsh’s house, and the slippers-that she would not have been wearing those slippers.”

“And?”

“Mcnair didn’t really react one way or the other, but he did make a note of it.”

“Did he seem to care that I had gone there?”

“No, sir. They’re apparently not treating her house as a crime scene. In a way, it’s kind of strange what they’re doing—or not doing, I mean.

The slippers, the laundry, the basket: All of that would have been held in a lab somewhere if this was a homicide investigation. And their would have been police seals on the house. Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything going on. Or if there is, Mcnair didn’t reveal it.”

“You’re probably right,” he said. “Did you get any hint of what those forensic ambiguities were?”

. “No, sir. But I’m almost beginning to think that that term is a euphemism for somebody’s hunch.”

He nodded thoughtfully and finished his sandwich. Crumpling up the’paper plate, he leaned back in his chair. “Do they understand that I’m a little reluctant to be Freddy Forthcoming as long as they’re acting as if I’m possibly a suspect of some kind?”

“Yes, sir. But, Admiral, I don’t think you are a real suspect.

“Then why won’t they just say so? The longer they keep this up, the bigger my political problem in Opnav becomes.”

“Cops don’t work that way, Admiral. They don’t tell outsiders anything they don’t have to. Besides, the converse is true: If you were a viable suspect, they would be acting altogether differently.”

H’ nodded again and looked away for a moment, e as if making a decision.

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

“But it has to remain in confidence for now, vis-A-vis the cops at least. Are you okay with that?”

She thought fast. Here it was: the confidentiality issue.

From the cops, he’d said. Did that mean from Carpenter, too? She stalled for time by miming that her mouth was full.

“Admiral,” she said finally, “if you’re about to tell me you’re an ax murderer, then, no, that’s not going to be possible.” She thought about qualifying that, but she said nothing more. Somewhere along the line, she was going to have to face this problem. But he did not seem perturbed by her answer.

“No, nothing like that. I’m a hatchet man, myself” He smiled at her then, and she felt a little less uncomfortable.

But then his expression sobered. “Something happened last night that I think bears on this whole situation. There’s a story behind it, going back more than twenty years. I’ll give you the basics, and then see what you think.”

“This bears on Elizabeth Walsh’s death?”

“Yes, I think so. And unfortunately, it may corroborate my own misgivings about what really happened to Elizabeth. “

“I’m all ears,” she said, finishing her salad and packing up the plate and wrapper.

Sherman nodded and went to his desk. He sat down and put his palms up to his face and rubbed his cheeks.

“Last night, I went home to change before going over to Elizabeth’s.

Went through the mail. Usual stuff-bills, catalogs. And one letter.” He paused and gave her a long look between his fingers. “A threatening letter.”

“A threat? What kind of threat?”

“This relates to something that happened in Vietnamwhen I was a lieutenant. An incident that I suspect the Navy would not want to have come out, even after so many years.

So for now, I won’t disclose what it was. But because of what happened, a certain individual swore revenge-against me. And he apparently understood the old rule about revenge being a dish best savored cold.”

Karen was baffled. “And that’s what this letter was about? Revenge?”

“Yes. Back in the early seventies” this man told me he would get even with me for something we-l-had done.

But he said he would wait until I had something ‘of value to lose. And that when he came back, he would give me one warning.”

“Which is what this letter was.”

“Yes. It wasn’t signed, but it has to be him. Galantz.”

“Galantz?” Karen wished she had had her notebook out, but was unsure she should go digging for it just now.

Yes. Galantz.” He spelled the last name for her. “Hospital Corpsman First Class Marcus Galantz. Last known duty station was as a member of SEAL Team One.”

“A SEAL! Oh, dear.”

He paused and rubbed his face again, then looked across the room at the far wall, his eyes focused out about a mile into space, his lips pressed together in a flat line. She was beginning to understand his concern. A threatening letter from a SEAL. Lovely. “what did the letter say?” she asked finally. “It said,”Sherman: Time to settle up. Things of value, remember? Walsh was the first.’

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah.’ “Admiral, we have to get this letter to the police. This changes everything. It also means that Elizabeth-” She stopped, seeing the sudden flash of pain on his face. “I’m sorry, Admiral.”

He nodded but did not say anything for a moment. Then he continued.

“At first, I didn’t know what to do. And I’m not sure I’m ready to bring the police into this. Or at least I wasn’t sure until I went to talk to my sea daddy, Admiral Galen Schmidt. You may remember him: He was Chief of Naval Personnel in early ‘93, when he had to quit because of heart problems. He’d been my mentor ever since my first Bureau tour back in the late seventies. He’s retired and living in Mclean now, not far from my house.”

“Yes, I remember him. Everyone said he was a prime candidate to be the next CNO.”

“Yes. Great guy. Anyhow, after getting that letter and going to Elizabeth’s house, I went to see him. I told him about Elizabeth. He knew her, liked her a lot. I also told him about the letter, and most of the story behind it.” . Which you won’t tell me, she thought. But that detective will surely want to know. “He wasn’t familiar with the incident back in Vietnam?”

“Very few people are, and probably no one still on active duty. It was all news to him. Long story short, I asked. him whether or not I ought to tell the cops about the letter because of what it implies about Elizabeth’s so-called accident. His advice was that I should tell them.”

“But?”

“But I’ve got two problems with that. First, I’m not sure I’m ready to open that can of worms, especially outside the Navy. Or even inside, for that matter. And second, I no longer have the letter.”

I ” What?’ He got up and started to pace around the office. “When I got home from Galen’s house, I found my front door unlocked-not open, but definitely unlocked. I never leave my door unlocked. In fact, it locks itself when I pull it shut. I thought about calling the cops-you know, maybe somebody in the house. But instead I went in and checked the place out. Nothing was missing. So I secured for the night, then took some paperwork upstairs. Only later, around eleven-thirty, when I was ready to go to sleep, I thought about bringing the letter in. I went back downstairs and discovered that’s what was missing-the letter, the envelope, the whole thing.”

“Wow. You think somebody, maybe even this Galantz guy, broke into your house and retrieved the letter? After he was sure you had read it?”

“That’s exactly what I think, yes.”