Collateral Damage (7 page)

Chapter Eleven

You're sure about the color?” the detective asked Marjorie twenty minutes into his interview with her.

“Yes,” Marjorie said. “The smoke definitely changed color when the blast from the fire extinguisher hit it.”

The detective was certainly the most junior of the three plainclothes officers who had shown up at Calvert Manor a little over half an hour after the ambulance had sped off. He flicked longish and unruly straw-colored hair with a quick head shake as he tapped at a notebook computer on his lap. Marjorie had no trouble imagining what Inspector Morse would have thought about the laptop. Or about people scattered in knots around the first floor, chatting desultorily while they waited for the cops to get around to them.

Another detective, who could shake his head all day long without flicking any hair, sauntered over and glanced down at his younger colleague's screen.

“Whaddaya got?” he asked.

“In the den. Didn't see anyone go upstairs. Didn't notice anyone get off the call. Smoke changed color.”

“What about this?” He handed the seated man a Baggie.

“Do you know of any reason why this would have been lying outside in the snow?” the guy with the laptop asked.

“No,” Marjorie said.

“Did you notice anyone running away from the
back
of the house after the smoke alarm went off?”

“No,” Marjorie said, “but I had other things on my mind.”

“I understand. Did you notice anyone with the original group inside who didn't turn up outside?”

“No. I mean everyone that I knew inside turned up outside, but I'm afraid I didn't pay that much attention to the musicians.” Marjorie examined the Baggie. She didn't know what drug residue looked like, but if there was anything at all on the soggy plastic bag, she couldn't see it.

“Another witness said that you were here a few days ago with someone who was looking at the house,” the older detective said.

“That's true,” Marjorie said. “Patrice Helmsing. And before that with Richard Michaelson. And once on my own before today.”

“That's a very precise recollection,” the younger detective said. Smiling. Encouraging. Challenging.

“I can't hide my own Easter eggs yet,” Marjorie said.

“Okay,” the younger cop said. The right collar tip on his aqua Izod curled upward and he tried unsuccessfully to flatten it. “I'll try to have a preliminary statement written up for you in twenty minutes or so. We'd appreciate it if you could wait to review it and sign it before you leave.”

Marjorie left the two detectives at the far end of the living room and strode toward the dining room, less in search of lobster paste on crustless bread than to stretch her legs. And to think.

She didn't know why it was important that the smoke had changed color, but that should be easy enough to find out.
Criminalistics and Scientific Crime Investigation
by Cunliffe and Piazza was buried somewhere in deep stock at Cavalier Books, and if that didn't have the answer, Carrie could find a tome somewhere in Georgetown University's libraries that would.

From the look of it, the Baggie had been found outside in the snow, which might be interesting or might just mean that a band member had dumped evidence of contraband pharmaceuticals once it was clear the cops were coming.

What was most interesting, though, was that three detectives and a scene-of-crime team had hustled out to Calvert Manor less than an hour after a patrolman learned that Preston Demarest had died in a room with a smoky fireplace. Marjorie wasn't sure how this type of thing played out in country houses in Sussex or elsewhere in the land of English detectives. In suburban Maryland, however, the implication was clear: This wasn't an arson investigation; it was a murder investigation.

She ate a minislice of smoked ham on an egg roll for form's sake. Then she ate another one because she was hungry after the first. She was actually eyeing tiny triangles of spinach quiche when she realized that she was unconsciously avoiding a painful visit to Catherine in the den. The upstairs had still been off-limits when everyone went back into the house, and Cindy had led Catherine into the den to rest while the sedatives worked.

Collecting three sandwiches on a napkin, Marjorie quietly entered the darkened room. Catherine lay on the couch where Marjorie had sat during the conference call. Her shoes were on the floor. A pale blue comforter covered her from foot to chin. Beneath a damp, folded facecloth on her forehead, her wide open eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling. On the telephone table at the head of the couch, a dove-gray teacup on a matching saucer sat next to a teapot under an embroidered cozy.

Catherine didn't react at all to Marjorie's entrance. Marjorie went over to the couch and crouched beside the younger woman.

“You look like you're being very well taken care of.”

“Cindy,” Catherine said, as if the two syllables required enormous effort.

“Would you like to eat anything?”

Catherine answered with a minute shake of her head.

“It's a shame to let this tea go to waste,” Marjorie said. Putting the sandwiches down, she picked up the saucer. “It's still nice and hot. Cindy must have freshened it up just a couple of minutes ago. Why don't you try some?”

Marjorie moved the cup close enough to Catherine for the fragrance of orange pekoe to waft toward her nose. The barest flicker of animation flashed in her eyes. She propped herself laboriously up on one elbow and sipped as Marjorie lifted the cup to her lips. The sip turned into several enthusiastic swallows before Catherine lay back contentedly.

“That was heaven,” she whispered in something much closer to a normal voice. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome. Are you sure you wouldn't like a sandwich?”

“No, thank you,” Catherine said. “I'm afraid I'm about to drift off to sleep again.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea.”

Marjorie put the cup and saucer back on the telephone table, replaced the compress on Catherine's forehead, and tucked the comforter back around her shoulders. By the time Marjorie had gotten to her feet, Catherine's eyes were closed and her breathing had turned rhythmic and peaceful.

She knows, Marjorie thought. She knows Demarest is dead.

Catherine might have figured this out in the front yard, the same way Marjorie had. But Catherine hadn't looked like she was in any condition for even that modest level of cogitation at the time.

The other possibility was that Cindy had found a way to break the news to her. And if so, it seemed to Marjorie that that was one of the sanest and kindest things Cindy could have done—exactly the way Marjorie would want to be treated when (not if, she acknowledged to herself, given their age difference) the time came for her to get bad news about Michaelson.

On reflection, in fact, it struck Marjorie that the only significant word in her conversation with Catherine had been “Cindy.” Not just Cindy taking care of Catherine in her immediate distress, but Cindy doing all those un-Cindy-like things that would mean something to Catherine: thinking to take her sister's shoes off, digging the comforter out of some forgotten drawer or closet, making the compress, brewing the tea, using a cozy to keep the pot warm, serving the tea in an elegant cup and saucer instead of a utilitarian mug, freshening the tea in the cup as it cooled. Things that were striking not because they were large but precisely because they were small. Small things done well. The kinds of things you wouldn't think your way to in the stress of a crisis. Things that had to emerge from habits of mind and heart deliberately bred and carefully ripened over years of lives shared. Marjorie was still mulling over this unfamiliar image of Cindy as she withdrew from the den and headed for the nearest downstairs bathroom. She didn't have the slightest notion of eavesdropping. It was just that when she found the door closed she thought it best to find out if someone else was inside. She raised her hand for a discreet knock when she heard C-Sharp's voice.

“All right, all right. She's strung out to hell and back. I just thought a little happy dust later on might help, that's all.”

“Don't think, it's not your strong suit.” Cindy's voice.

“You don't have to get pissy about it.”

“Don't whine until I'm through chewing your ass out,” Cindy said. “Just listen. Get this straight. You do not
ever
offer drugs to Catherine. Not crack, not 'ludes, not Ecstasy, not pot, not Jack Daniels, not Miller Lite. You do not make jokes about it. You do not talk about it. You do not think about it.”

“Okay, okay, I—”

“Shut up. You do not even
begin
to think about it.
If
you find yourself thinking about it, you get a hammer and hit yourself in the balls until you
stop
thinking about it. You got that?”

“Yes—OOF!
Jesus
, Cindy!”

“Good. Because if you don't, I will.”

There might have been more, but Marjorie figured she had the gist. She decided to go in search of other facilities.

Chapter Twelve

Colonel Mustard in the bedroom with the fireplace. What a precious little cliché this is turning into. Michaelson had the satisfaction of seeing Avery Phillips give the front room of Demarest's flat a deer-in-the-headlights look as Michaelson offered this comment from the corner armchair. Phillips had just come in and the disposable surgical gloves on his hands suggested that he had been expecting solitude.

“Aren't you glad to see me, A.P.?” Michaelson asked. “You look as jumpy as a gambler holding aces and eights with his back to the door. And where are Willie and Project, by the way?”

“Keeping their eyes open nearby in case the police get ambitious enough to take a look at this place before tomorrow morning. There's another jurisdiction involved, so I don't really expect that kind of company tonight, but you can't be too careful.”

“Quite right,” Michaelson said with a diffident smile.

“And as long as we're asking by-the-way questions: What are you doing here, by the way?”

“Searching for the same thing you are. The difference is that I found it.”

“Where is it?” Phillips asked.

“In the custody of the United States Postal Service, addressed to me at the Brookings Institution. And don't think about intercepting it, because you can't. Not that it would be worth the trouble.”

“You'll have to do better than that,” Phillips said with a knife-flick smile as he started opening drawers in a small desk near the door.

“Search the place if you want to,” Michaelson said, rising. “I've waited a good forty minutes for you because I thought we should talk as soon as possible. But if you'd rather waste your time verifying what I've just told you, we can talk tomorrow.”

“Talk about what?” Phillips asked as he stopped rifling the drawer.

“Two things. First: the substance of the document you would have found if I hadn't beaten you to it—which I will tell you. Second and more important: what you're actually up to in this little adventure—which you will tell me.”

“Deal,” Phillips said. “You first.”

Michaelson summarized the Lancer memo in four clipped sentences.

“What a bombshell,” Phillips exclaimed a bit theatrically when Michaelson had finished. “You can't imagine how cross I am about getting here too late to cop a prize like that.”

“Oh please,” Michaelson said. He smiled in spite of himself.

“Don't scoff,” Phillips said, raising an admonitory index finger. “There's something you don't know, although with the hints from that memo you'd find it out soon enough. Sometime in the mid-eighties a very holy woman died in a mountain village not far from Jessenice. Near the Austrian border. Catholic area. Imbued with piety and all that. The customary reports of miracles and visions and so forth followed. The village became a pilgrimage site.”

“Hence the memo's reference to ‘religious crap,'” Michaelson said. “If Jessenice were jammed to the gills during the off-season, which for an alpine area would be late spring and summer, that would imply huge numbers of pilgrims and therefore an upsurge in religious interest and practice.”

“And a head-grabbing increase in papal influence. All of which would be very bad news for commies, who you may remember tried to bump His Holiness off not many years before all this happened. Balkan Reds being the cringing little shits they are, a lot of them might have been inclined to cut their losses after getting information like this.”

“Very elegant,” Michaelson said.

“Well, you do see it, don't you?” Phillips demanded impatiently. “Andrew Shepherd, who I'll bet never stayed anywhere that didn't have every amenity from CNN International in English on down, told Lancer a fairy tale about some youth hostel. This false information had enormous potential political significance. He did that because someone told him to. Fill in the blanks.”

“Lancer was Aldrich Ames. Your turn.”

“Stop being difficult. You know this as well as I do.”

“Humor me,” Michaelson said.

“Someone at the CIA,” Phillips said with elaborate patience after pursing his lips in exasperation for a moment, “used this innocuous American businessman to give phony data to Aldrich Ames, and therefore to his Soviet paymasters, several years before Ames was formally exposed as a commie spy. Ergo, Langley knew for years that Ames was spying for the Reds and let him keep on spying so that we could peddle grade A bullshit to the Kremlin.”

“But all this time Ames was of course also giving the Russians some genuine information,” Michaelson said.

“Right. Which meant real human beings spying for the United States in the Soviet Union got a bullet in the back of the neck at Lubayanka Prison. But you can't make omelets without breaking eggs, can you? I can just hear one of the old bastards saying it: ‘I hated losing them, but I would have hated losing Germany more.'”

“And your own involvement?” Michaelson prompted.

“Isn't it obvious? This is page one stuff. Above the fold.”

“So?” Michaelson asked. “Are you looking for a job with the
Post?
”

“Of course not. I'm a real-estate broker. Calvert Manor is a piece of real estate. Buried somewhere in its bowels is documentation of this story, which the Central Intelligence Agency hopes never comes to light. So I buy the place.”

“After meanwhile using me to let the CIA know that you're surreptitiously after that property.”

“Well, yes, technically,” Phillips said. “I suppose ‘used' isn't an entirely inappropriate term. Excuse me for not being embarrassed about that.”

“In any event…” Michaelson prompted.

“In any event, not wanting me to stumble over the documentation, the CIA takes the shack off my hands for, say, a hundred fifty percent of what I pay for it. After modest expenses I pocket a profit of over a million dollars.”

Michaelson turned toward Phillips with an appreciative smile.

“Congratulations,” he said. “That was quite well done, especially for an extemporaneous presentation. I particularly liked that little moue with your lips near the beginning.”

“Are you suggesting that what I just said wasn't entirely truthful?” Phillips demanded in icily precise enunciations.

“No,” Michaelson said. “I'm suggesting that it's utter rot.”

“What an odd comment,” Phillips said, his face a picture of bafflement. “You're not normally quite that silly.”

“I'm referring to your premise, of course. That first bit about using Aldrich Ames as a disinformation agent is quite plausible. But any notion that the CIA would pay you off to keep the story under wraps is nonsense.”

“I keep hoping for an interval of lucidity in this conversation, and you keep disappointing me. Trust me: Spooks don't want their treachery publicized.”

“Sensible spooks would rather be thought treacherous than inept,” Michaelson said. “Aldrich Ames is the most devastating professional and public relations disaster the CIA has ever experienced. You think you can prove that leaving Ames on the job wasn't blithering incompetence but cold-blooded realpolitik. The CIA wouldn't pay a penny to spike that story. If you actually managed to get the theory in play, in fact, they'd drop enough hints to Safire to give the thing some legs. There's something connected with Calvert Manor that you hope to sell to someone who gets information through the national security apparatus. But the Lancer memo isn't it.”

“You're too clever for your own good. If I'm not after proof of the disinformation story, what
do
you think I'm up to?”

“I'm not certain. Our deal was that you were going to tell me. I held up my end. You're reneging.”

“Impasse.” Phillips shrugged.

“Pity,” Michaelson said. “Well, when conceptual negotiations get bogged down, State Department doctrine is to try for incremental steps. I need the police report on Demarest's death. Do you think you can get it?”

“We're talking about
Maryland
,” Phillips said. “For what I have in petty cash I could probably get the state seal and the cell phone number of the governor's mistress. But if I do, why should I share the thing with you?”

“Two reasons. First, if you get it to me by two o'clock tomorrow afternoon, I won't go after it through other sources. Second, I'll tell you something that will help you figure out how Demarest died.”

“That's it?”

“Last, best, and final offer. Take it or leave it.”

“What makes you think I give a damn about how Demarest died?”

Michaelson's face hardened and a splash of calculated cruelty colored his voice.

“Because I saw Willie and Project go after him.”

Phillips didn't flinch and no flicker of emotion disturbed his features.

“Time will tell, then, won't it?” he said carelessly. “Why don't you run along now?”

“If you insist,” Michaelson said, heading for the door. “I was rather hoping for a ride, though. I took a cab out here, and I'm getting a bit tired of this particular Metro trip.”

“No can do. I am going to toss the place now.”

“Why?” Michaelson asked.

“Because you missed something, you arrogant old fossil, that's why.”