Dead End (16 page)

‘There was some stuff from Paris that didn't arrive in the usual way,' disclosed Parnell, at last. ‘Rebecca was curious. It turned out to be some check experiments that didn't work out. According to the research vice president, the project was cancelled.'

‘You think it's connected with that?'

In the driver's seat the usher shifted and said: ‘I'm becoming uncomfortable about the confidentiality restrictions of this.'

Jackson said: ‘You're bound by a specific court order – the judge is going to be told.' To Parnell he said: ‘In court you leave everything to me, understood?'

‘With as much difficulty as I'm having understanding anything,' said Parnell.

Suddenly alert to where they were, Parnell said: ‘Hey, you took the wrong turn – we're going back into Washington!'

‘Stop to make first,' said Jackson. ‘We're going to Crystal City, to the Acme body shop. No need for you to come in when we get there. You just stay in the car.'

‘Remember who I am?' demanded Parnell, rhetorically. ‘I'm the person accused of what amounts to murder. I have the right!'

‘I'm not contesting that right,' shot back Jackson. ‘And I haven't forgotten who you are or what you're accused of. You stay in the car because I think it's best – the best for you. So that's what you'll do.'

‘I'm a client!' protested Parnell. ‘And I'm not used to being talked to like that!' and winced at his own pomposity.

‘Look at it as a learning curve,' dismissed Jackson.

They went over the Potomac high, at the Arlington Bridge, to miss the traffic build-up, and as they turned along the George Washington Memorial Parkway, Parnell saw the Tidal Basin to his left and remembered boastfully rowing Rebecca upriver and unthinkingly said: ‘Oh Christ!'

‘What?' demanded Jackson, beside him.

‘Nothing.'

‘You said something.'

‘It's not important.'

‘Everything's important!'

‘I just thought of something.'

‘Everything you think about is important,' insisted the lawyer.

‘This wasn't,' refused Parnell. Except that it was: it was the first proper, deeper realization – deeper than that which had registered with him in Burt Showcross's overcrowded office the previous day.
Rebecca was dead
, he thought, stepping the words out in his mind. He wasn't any more going to take her rowing on the river or to a restaurant where their meal and wine was chosen for them, or to a shack on a bay that looked as big as an ocean, to glue themselves up eating crabs so small you ate everything, shells and all. Someone
had
killed her, murdered her! And tried to make him a victim – frame him as the murderer – as well. Why? What had she – they – done for anyone to do all that? Hate them so much to do all that? Parnell rejected the threadbare phrase that came automatically to mind. He'd make it make sense! What could AF209 mean except Rebecca's obsession with that damned French business? Who – where – was the runaway lover? Rebecca would have taken him to her uncle's restaurant – introduced him, given the man a name, just as she'd introduced Parnell. A place, the obvious place, to start. Bethesda! Even more obvious. There had to be a clue there, among her personal belongings: a photograph, a letter, a name in an address book, no matter how much she might have despised the man for her abandonment. Belongings he had no way, no right, to examine, he reminded himself. He had to find a way, any way. He'd do it – find it. Parnell came out of the reverie at their entry into an industrial park, conscious that Jackson was leaning forward to guide the court official at the wheel, actually gesturing directions from an earlier torn-off page from the much used legal pad. Almost at once Parnell saw the neon sign of the Acme repair facility, the lettering of its Toyota appointment almost as big as the name itself. The forecourt and a lot of what he could see behind the warehouse-sized building was a dead cars' graveyard.

‘Wait!' insisted Jackson.

The usher shifted, uncertainly. ‘I shouldn't leave him. I'm responsible.'

Parnell said: ‘You mind not talking across me, like I don't exist?'

‘Just give us a moment,' Jackson asked Parnell, no longer demanding. ‘You'll understand soon enough.'

It was only a moment. Parnell straightened at the returning approach of Jackson and the court officer. Another man and a woman walked with them almost to his car before detouring to another vehicle, predictably a Toyota.

‘All set,' announced Jackson, coming heavily into the back seat beside Parnell. ‘They're going to follow. Manager and the gal whose job it is to pick up all the weekend messages. And did she do a hell of a good job!' He held up another cassette. ‘Rebecca's voice is on it. I didn't want you to have to go through hearing it more than once, later in court.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Parnell. ‘And thanks.'

Parnell was by now accustomed to the waiting media scrum, to which Jackson repeated what he'd said outside the apartment. Everyone from the morning arraignment was already waiting inside. Parnell took the seat he'd previously occupied. Jackson sat the two Acme garage employees in the first row beyond the separating court rail, beside two men to whom he spoke after shaking hands. Finally he crossed for a whispered conversation with Vernon Hanson, showing the prosecuting attorney the two tape loops and indicating the four beyond the rail. They were interrupted by the court usher, returning from the judge's chambers. At once the two lawyers followed the man back through a door from which he'd just emerged. The usher continued on, gesturing to the two men whom Jackson had greeted. One, a slightly, studiously bespectacled man, pushed through the rail and followed the usher with an awkward, stiff-legged walk.

It was ten minutes before they returned, the usher with a tape replay machine under his arm. Bending close to Parnell, Jackson said: ‘Judge Wilson listened to the tapes and heard who I intended to call. Hanson wanted to withdraw the charges there and then but I argued it should be done in open court and the judge agreed. It's payback time for Jacob Meadows … and you …'

Everyone rose to the judge's entry and this time the lawyer gestured for Parnell to sit immediately after the man was settled. There was a momentary uncertainty before Hanson rose, hurriedly but no longer with jack-in-the-box urgency, and announced that in the light of new evidence, of which the judge was aware, he wished to withdraw all the charges.

‘I am aware of what has developed,' agreed the black-gowned judge. ‘And in view of the considerable publicity this matter has already aroused, I believe, in fairness to Mr Parnell, that these new facts should be entered into the public domain. I also think there are other matters that have been brought to my attention that should be discussed in open court. After that, you may withdraw your charges, Mr Hanson, but not before …' He turned into the court. ‘I believe there is another attorney who wishes to make an application before me. I understand that neither Mr Jackson nor Mr Hanson has any objection?'

Both lawyers shook their heads as the man who had seen the judge in private pushed once more through the separating rail and walked unevenly to the stand. The man gave his name on oath as Edwin Pullinger and identified himself as a counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He had been made aware of evidence that had been produced in court concerning an Air France flight that had been the subject of an inconclusive terrorism investigation both in the United States and France. The FBI, in conjunction with the Office of Homeland Security, were responsible for investigations into terrorism, and he was making formal application for the death of Ms Rebecca Lang to be officially transferred by the court from Metro DC police to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

‘Mr Hanson?' questioned the judge.

‘There is no objection from the prosecution,' immediately surrendered the lawyer.

‘Mr Jackson?'

‘I am anxious for it to be transferred,' said Parnell's lawyer.

‘Before this court so orders, there are other matters for it to consider. Mr Jackson?'

Parnell's lawyer stood with a legal pad in his hand but did not appear to need the notes. His client had been arraigned on totally false charges as the result of an investigation that was this afternoon to be exposed as initially wrongly and too hastily conducted, incompetent and potentially criminal in intent, and which could have resulted in a serious miscarriage of justice. That was not strictly a matter within the FBI remit into the terrorist aspect that had emerged, but he hoped their enquiries extended to what had clearly been a criminal attempt to incriminate his client. He intended further to invite the court to order a separate examination into the conduct and competence of the Metro DC police department and its claimed expert witnesses.

As Jackson spoke, Parnell pointedly turned, looking first to Vernon Hanson and then, more intently, to the two Metro DC officers. All three were staring, unfocused, directly ahead. So was the forensics professor, Jacob Meadows.

Parnell was surprised, although he supposed he shouldn't have been, at Jackson recalling him to the stand formally to give evidence of his having discovered the answering-machine message from the Toyota-approved garage at his apartment that morning, which was confirmed by the court official, who followed him to the stand. Hanson shook his head, tight-lipped, at the overly courteous invitation to cross-examine. It was the usher who operated the tape machine to play back the repair-shop message, directly after which Jackson called its manager. The man testified that the voice on the tape was his and that he had been responding at eight-thirty on the previous day, Monday morning, to a message that had been left on their answering service timed at five thirty-two on the Saturday afternoon. The girl followed her manager to the stand. She described accessing the recorded messages as her first job of the day. Their machine had a time counter, which was how they could be so precise on Ms Lang's Saturday call coming at five thirty-two p.m. At Jackson's demand, she stopped, for the usher to insert into the replay machine the tape recovered that morning from the repair shop.

Rebecca's voice echoed into the hushed court, rising and falling, Rebecca obviously doing something else at the same time. ‘
A friend's car got hit, in his firm's car lot
…
he's very busy, will let it go if someone doesn't fix it for him
…
please call him …
' She dictated the apartment number. Then: ‘
If he asks how, why, you called, tell him a friend. It's a surprise
…'

The coughing, gulping emotion welled up within Parnell, who knew most people in the court were looking at him, as he'd known there would have been faces at the Dubette windows yesterday. His eyes misted in his effort to subdue the coughing, which he did, trying to wipe them at the same time as blowing his nose, which he needed to do. That's why she hadn't told him on the Sunday: she'd wanted an innocent, simple surprise for someone too work-obsessed to do anything for himself.

‘This court rules in favour of the FBI application,' announced Judge Wilson. ‘To prevent any future prejudice in what is now to be, at my formal request, an ongoing FBI investigation, I will not comment, beyond making clear my deep and profound disappointment at having such a case brought before me in the manner in which it was, even at a remand stage. I do, however, require for any future action I might consider, separate explanations from both the Metro DC police department and the attorney's division of this city, detailing how such a situation arose …' He nodded to Parnell, who hurriedly stood to Jackson's prompting. ‘You, Mr Parnell, leave this court a totally innocent and vindicated man, with the apologies of this court for the experience to which you were subjected. I further order that complete and full costs be paid for your defence, irrespective of any separate action you and your legal advisors might contemplate. You also have the court's sympathy for your personal loss …'

Jackson bustled Parnell into the barely furnished anteroom in which they had begun the day together, pressing the door closed behind him by leaning against it as he said: ‘Jesus, what a day! But we won. Boy, how we won!'

‘Thanks,' said Parnell, simply.

‘A lot of it fell into my lap: our laps. The tape, particularly.'

‘How'd you get the FBI involved like that?'

‘Started out in their counsel's department at the J. Edgar Hoover building, before going private. Kept a few friends there. Once I confirmed AF209, it was a walk in the park.'

‘I want the bastards who did it!' exclaimed Parnell.

‘It'll get done,' promised Jackson. ‘You pick up on the judge's hint for a civil suit against the police?'

‘Of course,' shrugged Parnell. ‘But what's the point?'

‘Don't make any decisions yet. It's all too soon.' He shouted: ‘Enter,' to the hesitant knock at the door, striding forward to meet the FBI lawyer, whom he at once introduced to Parnell.

Ed Pullinger said: ‘Barry tells me you've no idea at all how that flight number came to be in Ms Lang's purse.'

‘None,' declared Parnell. ‘What I do know – am totally sure of – is that Rebecca had no knowledge of or connection with terrorism. It's ludicrous.'

‘Barry told me that, too. You're not planning to go anywhere, are you, Mr Parnell?'

‘No.'

‘I'll give you my personal guarantee that my client will remain in the city and be available at all times,' said Jackson, formally.

Pullinger nodded, smiling for the first time. To the other lawyer he said: ‘You sure kicked ass in there!'

‘They were bending over, making it easy,' said Jackson.

‘I guess we'll be seeing quite a lot of each other,' said Pullinger.

‘I guess,' said Jackson. To Parnell he said: ‘You ready to meet the baying media?'