A Simple Act of Violence (73 page)

‘Me and James Killarney go back an awful long time . . . there were things that happened in Nicaragua, things that I did . . . and he never—’ Robey coughed sharply and held his hand to his chest.

Miller frowned. He leaned closer to Robey. ‘You okay?’ he asked.

Robey nodded, closed his eyes for a moment. A single tear made its way down his left cheek.

‘There was a history,’ Robey said. ‘That’s all I need to say.’

‘Until?’

‘Until Don was drafted back into operation . . . until the nightmare started all over again. As soon as he was called back we knew that we couldn’t protect Sarah the way we wanted to. Don had been there for her, and once he was active again it became impossible . . .’

‘And so you had to figure out a way to make any possible threat on her life unimportant?’

‘When Catherine got sick, you know? When she got sick we knew . . .’ Robey gripped the arms of the chair. His forehead glistened with sweat. ‘If Catherine was dead . . . if Catherine’s death led the authorities to investigate what was going on . . .’ Robey took a deep breath. He screwed up his eyes as if he was in intense pain, and then he hesitated before speaking. ‘With Catherine dead . . . and then if documentation was made available . . . a lot of documentation was made available to a lot of people simultaneously . . .’ Robey’s breath caught in his lungs and he coughed again.

‘What’s happening?’ Miller said. ‘Are you okay?’

‘It’s alright,’ Robey said, his voice weakening. ‘And if a lot of documentation was made available to a lot of people at the same time, and if Catherine was already dead, and if they could not get to me, then there would be no reason for them to go after Sarah . . . there would be no threat to hold over us . . . nothing to make anybody afraid of . . .’

Robey coughed again, this time louder, the sound sharp and painful. He withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his mouth. He stayed silent for a while, trying to breathe, and when he took his hand away there was blood on the handkerchief.

‘What’s happening here?’ Miller said. ‘What’s going on? Are you sick or something?’

Robey shook his head. ‘This is why I had to have someone else,’ he said, his voice barely a whisper. ‘Someone else had to see what was happening . . . someone else had to know the truth. I knew they’d get to Don . . . I knew Killarney would get to everyone . . . even you, eh? He even tried to kill you but he killed Oliver instead . . .’

Robey closed his eyes.

Miller gripped the man’s shoulder and shook him. ‘What’s happening with you? What—’

Robey opened his eyes. ‘I’m sorry it had to be you,’ he said. ‘Hell, you know it had to be someone . . . I wanted someone without a family, I really did. I wanted someone without a family who could piece this thing together and understand enough of what happened . . .’

‘You said that there’s a lot of documentation—’

‘Already on its way,’ Robey said. ‘It’s already on its way, Detective Miller . . .’ Robey’s breathing was shallow. He reached out his hand to take Miller’s and he pulled Miller toward him. ‘And Walter Thorne . . . there’s a rifle in a bag . . . follow the trajectory of the shot back to . . . back to the building across the street . . . in a room there’s a bag with a rifle . . . prints on it . . .’

Robey’s breathing was labored, painful to hear, painful to watch.

‘Do something for me . . .’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Do something for me . . .’

Miller looked back at Robey, held his breath, waiting . . .

‘Need someone left behind to see she’s okay . . . make sure they don’t get her. That’s the most important reason I needed you . . . with me and Catherine gone there is no reason to threaten her, but they are vindictive, you know? They can be vindictive and unthinking and I need someone to help her.’

Robey seemed incapable of holding his head up straight. He struggled to look at Miller. A thin line of blood and saliva crept from the corner of his mouth and descended slowly to the lapel of his jacket.

‘You can do that for me?’ he slurred. ‘That much you can do for me . . . keep an eye on her . . . make sure they don’t kill her out of spite . . .’

‘Yes,’ Miller said. ‘I can do that . . . I can do that much.’

Robey smiled weakly, and from his coat pocket he took a white envelope, and he pressed it into Miller’s hand. Miller looked at it, and printed neatly across the front was a single word, the same lettering as the words on the back of the photograph he had found in the United Trust office.

SARAH.

And then there was something in Robey’s eyes that said everything was done, and there was little else to say, and what else there might have been didn’t matter now because the play was over, the thing had run its course, and there was nothing else to keep him in the theater . . .

John Robey sort of slid sideways in the chair until the weight of his head was resting against Miller’s shoulder.

Miller didn’t move. He closed his eyes, and then opened them once more when music suddenly filled the auditorium.

The sound of a piano through the speakers above Miller’s head, and he watched as Sarah Bishop glided out and across the ice as if from nowhere, and Miller sat motionless as she crouched down low, almost pressed into nothing, and then opened up like a flower growing from nowhere . . .

Strings came in behind the piano, and then a woman’s voice:

Each time she swept toward the edge of the rink his heart almost stopped.

And he watched Sarah Bishop, and his eyes filled with tears, and he wondered whether there would ever be a chance that she could understand what had happened . . .

And then she saw them - Detective Robert Miller and John Robey, a new acquaintance and a very old friend, watching from the gods as she practised.

She raised her hand and waved, and Miller waved his hand in response, and she paused for a moment before facing the outside of the rink and gliding backwards, picking with the left toe and leaping off the right leg . . .

The singing once more, a plaintive and heartfelt language that Miller did not understand . . .

It was an hour before Miller called the police from his cell phone. He sat with Robey throughout Sarah Bishop’s entire training routine. As she skated away toward the exit she waved again. Miller waved in return. They did not speak. There was nothing to say.

The police department came, as did Tom Alexander. They bagged Robey’s body and put him on a stretcher. Miller sat and watched as they made their careful and circuitous way along the aisles and between the seats.

After a little while Alexander returned, asked Miller if he was okay, did he need a ride somewhere?

Miller shook his head. ‘I’m okay Tom . . . I’m okay . . .’

Alexander smiled. ‘Gonna give you a citation for getting this guy, eh? Cop killer, you know?’

‘Sure they will . . . sure they will . . .’

‘You really don’t need a ride somewhere? I can take you back into the city.’

‘It’s okay, I’ve got my car. Just want to be alone for a little while.’

Alexander nodded understandingly. ‘You take care.’

Miller didn’t reply, merely smiled an exhausted smile, watched as Tom Alexander turned and made his way down toward the exit.

Miller closed his eyes.

He breathed deeply.

He thought of the highway, of driving somewhere and not stopping. Highways were all the same. White lights came toward you, red lights went away. Just get on the highway and keep going . . . didn’t matter where, anywhere but here . . . horizon ahead, as far as the eye could see, as close to forever as he could imagine . . .

On the morning of Tuesday, 21st November 2006, ten days after the death of Catherine Sheridan, one week after the murder of Natasha Joyce, a Crime Scene Unit headed by Greg Reid accessed an office on Sixth Street, an office with windows that overlooked Judiciary Square. Beneath the floorboards of the office a canvas bag was found, within it a lightweight AR7 rifle. Ballistics confirmed that the bullet recovered from the cranium of Judge Walter Thorne carried the same land and groove markings as the test shot fired from the AR7 in laboratory conditions.

There were prints on the gun. They were not John Robey’s.

Despite the fact that gun oil present in the chamber and along the bolt indicated that the weapon had remained unused for many years, it was nevertheless confirmed that it had been fired the previous day. One shot was fired, from a fourth-floor office. The shot passed through the left-hand section of the French window in Judge Thorne’s office, entered his head behind the right ear, ricocheted repeatedly through his brain, and killed him instantly.

They printed the gun and ran those prints through AFIS. There was no match.

At ten-eighteen a.m. a FedEx courier appeared at the offices of the Washington district attorney. The D.A.’s secretary signed for receipt of a package of documents approximately five inches thick. Within the subsequent two hours the same package was delivered to the offices and chambers of the United States Chief Justice, eight associate justices, the chairmen of the House subcommittees on Foreign Affairs, Government Operations and Intelligence, eighteen further Congressman, twelve members of the Senate, the Secretaries of State for Defense and Justice, the head of the National Security Council, and the White House press office. Packages were also delivered to the senior editorial directors of the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and at the personal residences of the Washington section chiefs of Central Intelligence Agency directorates for Overseas Operations, Intelligence Production and Support Activities.

It was said later that the central Washington secure network telephone exchange serving the federal triangle, Congress, the Senate, and much of the intelligence community, collapsed beneath the overload of calls. It was a rumor never reported, left unsubstantiated.

At one-eighteen p.m. the body of an FBI agent named James Killarney was found in the car park overlooking G Place near Union Station. He appeared to have committed suicide: a single shot through the roof of the mouth, an exit wound the size of a fist and much of the contents of his head across the roof of his car. Undergoing standard identity confirmation procedure at the coroner’s office, he was found to possess the same fingerprints as those lifted from the AR7 that killed Walter Thorne. There was no powder residue on either of Killarney’s hands, nothing to suggest he had held either the .38 handgun that ended his own life, or the rifle that ended Thorne’s. Nevertheless, they had probative confirmation that Killarney had fired the gun that killed Walter Thorne. Both Thorne’s assassination and Killarney’s suicide were pursued no further.

 

It was Tom Alexander who called Miller. Called him at home.

‘Atropine,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘He poisoned himself with atropine.’

‘What the fuck is that?’

‘Comes from belladonna, you’ve heard of that?’

‘I’ve heard of it yes.’

‘Different variations of the same thing . . . they even give a combination of atropine and something called obidoxime to the military as an antidote to nerve agents.’

‘Tell me something, Tom,’ Miller said.

Alexander paused, Miller could hear his hesitation in the silence.

‘How bad was it?’

‘Eh?’

‘How bad did he hurt?’

‘He took a serious amount, detective . . . a very serious amount. He knew he’d die. There was no coming back from this one. Speeded his heart up . . . that’s what it does, speeds the heart up. Basically his heart would have gone at eight, ten times the normal speed and then just collapsed. I can’t tell you how much he would’ve hurt . . . a great deal, I should think, but I don’t know for sure.’

Miller didn’t reply.

‘You know why it’s called that?’ Alexander asked.

‘What?’

‘Atropine . . . why it’s called that.’

‘No,’ Miller said. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Named after Atropos, one of the three Fates. It’s Greek mythology. Atropos was the Fate who had the job of deciding how someone would die.’

Miller closed his eyes. He could hear his own breathing.

‘I’ll see you sometime,’ Alexander said. ‘Figured you’d wanna know . . . about Robey, you know? That’s why I called.’

‘Thanks, Tom . . . I appreciate it.’

The line went dead.

Miller hung up the phone.

 

Late Wednesday afternoon. Washington Second Precinct briefing room. Lassiter was present, as was ADA Cohen. Miller had not seen Al Roth until half an hour before the meeting. They shared few words. There were few words to share. Miller asked after Amanda and the kids. They were good. Happy to have him home.

‘John Robey did not exist,’ Lassiter said quietly.

Miller looked at Nanci Cohen, then at Roth.

Lassiter shrugged, tried to smile. ‘Of course, he did exist . . . he was a real person . . .’ He stopped, looked at Cohen.

‘That is the official line,’ Cohen said. ‘He sent some things . . . he sent documents to the entire fucking government. He sent papers to congressmen, senators, newspapers . . .’ Cohen paused, glanced at Lassiter. ‘And the United States Supreme Court—’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Miller asked. ‘The United States Supreme Court has barred the newspapers from reporting on any of this.’

Cohen didn’t reply.

‘There will be a congressional inquiry—’ Lassiter began.