Due Diligence (5 page)

Chapter Four

It was close to 9:00 p.m. and we were sitting in the car outside my sister's house. I placed my hand on his shoulder. “You were wonderful tonight.”

“You sound surprised.”

I shrugged. “To be honest, Benny, I had my concerns.” I turned to watch my niece, Jennifer, who had reached the front porch and was ringing the doorbell. We'd given her a ride home. “However,” I continued, “you were positively—well—”

“Judicial?”

“More than just judicial.” I paused to wave good-bye to Jennifer as my sister opened the front door. I turned back to Benny and smiled. “Toward the end there I was ready to nominate you for the next opening on the Supremes.”

Benny beamed.

He had been wonderful, too.

Thank God.

I'd had doubts from the moment he volunteered during the Passover seder dinner last month. We were all at my sister Ann's house: Richie and Ann, their two children, my mother, my Aunt Becky, Benny, and me. During dinner my niece Jennifer described the moot court project and said her teacher needed two lawyers to serve as judges.

“Could you be one of the judges, Aunt Rachel?”

“Sure,” I told her. “I'd love to.”

“Oh, great. It'll be so awesome having you there, Aunt Rachel.”

“Yo, little woman,” Benny said to Jennifer. “You need one more, right?”

She nodded uncertainly. “I guess so.”

He raised his eyebrows and beamed. “You mean, ‘I guess so, Your Honor.' Wait until you see me in my black gown.” He turned to me, stroking his chin in feigned contemplation. “What do you think of pearls?”

I gave him a puzzled look. “What?”

“Pearls, dahling. With my black gown.” He pretended to mull it over. “Yes,” he said with a decisive nod. “Definitely pearls. And black pumps, of course.”

Later that night, just after we'd opened the door for Elijah, I took Jennifer aside to assure her that Benny was only kidding about the pearls and pumps.

Still, I'd had my doubts up until the event itself. After all, putting Benny in a room with a group of junior high school kids sounded like a volatile formula. Even under normal circumstances, it didn't take much for Benny to assume the role of Id the Unchained.

But not so tonight. He'd been patient and courteous and helpful and impartial and logical—everything you always wanted in a judge but so rarely got. Ironically, Jennifer's classmates would have had a far more realistic view of the American judiciary with Id the Unchained as their judge instead of Mr. Justice Goldberg.

I leaned over and kissed him on the nose. “Thanks, Benny.”

He shrugged, embarrassed by the praise. “I enjoyed it.” As we drove off, he asked, “How's the rabbi?”

I realized that David had never returned my calls from that morning. That was odd. I wanted to hear his reactions to the list he sent me, and I wanted to see him. Mostly the latter. I hadn't seen or talked to him in two days.

“Hello?” Benny said to me.

“Would you mind swinging by his house?” I asked. “It's not that far out of the way.”

“No problem. What's up?”

“Probably nothing. He sent me that list of names he mentioned the other night. I tried calling him about it today but couldn't find him.”

Two days
, I repeated to myself, feeling a little ripple of apprehension. But when we turned onto his street and approached his house, I was relieved to see his car in the driveway. Benny pulled in behind the red Saab. There was a faded Armstrong campaign bumper sticker on the rear fender. He'd be able to put a new one on before long, I thought. Just as soon as Douglas Armstrong officially launched his campaign for president.

“Thanks, Benny.” I opened the car door.

“I'll wait to see if he can take you home.”

As I approached the house, I noticed that the entire first floor was lit up. The second floor was dark. I rang the doorbell and waited. No answer. I rang it again and waited. From inside I could hear rock music blaring from the stereo system in the living room. The volume was turned way up. Probably too high to hear the doorbell. I reached for the brass door knocker. The force of the first rap pushed the door open slightly. I stared at the doorknob for a moment and then opened the door further.

Peering in, I called, “Hello? David?”

The music was too loud.

I stepped into the foyer. “David?” I shouted. “Hello! Is anyone there?”

I took three more steps into the house, far enough to see into the living room. All the lamps were on. The stereo was blaring the Rolling Stones' “Brown Sugar” into an empty room. Uneasy, I walked over to the stereo and turned off the power.

Dead silence. I waited, straining my ears.

“David?” I called. My throat felt pinched. “Hello?”

I walked around the first floor, moving cautiously from one brightly lit room to the next. All were empty.

I stopped at the foot of the stairs leading up to the second floor. Staring up into the darkness, I could feel my anxiety edging toward dread.

“What's up?”

I jumped at the sound of Benny's voice. He was standing in the foyer. I gave him a worried shrug. “I don't know. No one answers.”

He joined me at the foot of the stairs.

“David?” I called.

No response.

I flipped on the light to the second-floor landing. Benny and I started up the stairs, stopping every few steps to listen. There was no sound other than the creak of the stairs. I reached the top and turned toward his room.

“Oh, no,” I gasped, stumbling backward against a wall.

Spray-painted in black on the white wall outside David's bedroom was a dripping swastika. I stared in horror, my eyes darting between the black swastika and the closed bedroom door.

“David,” I whispered, moving toward his bedroom. I stopped at the door, my heart pounding. I stared at the doorknob.

Please, God
, I prayed,
please, please, please
.

“Wait,” Benny said, stepping in front of me.

I stood behind him as he opened the door. The light from the hallway illuminated the darkened room.

All I could see from where I stood was the top of the headboard, which was splattered with reds and grays. On the wall above the headboard were the words
Die Nigger Lover
spray-painted in dripping black.

The earth seemed to shift on its axis.

“Oh God,” I said as I staggered forward, grabbing Benny's right shoulder. “David. Oh God.”

Benny blocked me with his body. “No,” he said, his right arm reaching back roughly to push me behind him. He backed up and pulled the door shut. He turned to me, his eyes wide. “Call the police.”

I tried to push around him toward the door.

“No,” he said fiercely, grabbing me by the shoulders. “You can't help him, Rachel. Go downstairs. Call the police.”

I stared up at Benny, tears blurring my vision.

“No, Rachel.”

Slowly, I turned away.

Chapter Five

It just don't feel right
.

Of the thousands of words spoken on the subject of David's death during the dreary aftermath, it was those five that stuck.

It just don't feel right
.

Even after the dramatic shootout that ended the murder investigation with the deaths of Eugene Worrell and five of his followers.

It just don't feel right
.

Five words, uttered in the wee hours of that awful first night. Uttered at the bottom of the stairs by the white detective as I sat in the living room of David's house, staring at the wall.

“It just don't feel right.”

The words had registered slowly, like a distant echo. I shifted my gaze from the wall to the man who had uttered them. He was the older of the two detectives, the white one, the one called Hank. He was short and chunky, with a large gray walrus mustache that covered his lower lip when his mouth was closed.

“Say what?” the other detective said. He was the black one, the skinny one with the goatee and shaved head, the one called Joe.

The older one tugged at his mustache and shook his head. He was bald, and there were large bags under his eyes.

After a moment, the black one shrugged. “Maybe.”

***

During these bleak first days after David's death, I thought that my sense of incompleteness, of matters left unresolved, was caused, at least in part, by the way David's family handled the arrangements, which was basically to get his body out of St. Louis ASAP. Within hours of the autopsy, the corpse was on a plane to Phoenix for a private graveside funeral, family only.

Although there was a memorial service in St. Louis, it wasn't a real funeral. There was no casket; indeed, as I sat in the front row of the chapel, dazed, waiting for the eulogies to begin, I couldn't blank out the fact that David was already in the ground halfway across the country. Moreover, the combination of high-powered speakers, jostling Minicam TV news crews, and photographers with cameras set on autodrive seemed to heighten the unreality of the experience.

Although there was an impressive array of speakers, I remembered very little of what they said. In addition to the head rabbi and the president of David's congregation, those delivering eulogies included St. Louis Mayor Freeman Bosley, Jr., Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt, and Senator Douglas Armstrong. The one thing I do recall was Senator Armstrong pausing to offer me his condolences. “I am sorry, Rachel,” he said gently, taking my hand in his. “He was an exceptional human being.”

I looked up, deeply touched by what he said.

The sense of incompleteness continued after the memorial service. Part of it was caused by the absence of the usual Jewish rituals and gatherings that help support the mourners and ease the pain. The family was in Phoenix, so there was no one sitting shivah in St. Louis. But most of the incompleteness was due to the fact that David's murderers were still at large.

That seemed to change dramatically a few days after the memorial service, the result of good luck and solid police work. The coroner had placed the time of David's death at approximately twenty-four hours before Benny and I found him. In cross-checking other police reports, the detectives came across a hit-and-run traffic accident report in David's neighborhood on the night he died, i.e., the night before I found him. A young couple returning from a party at midnight had been rammed by a rusted Buick Riviera as they passed David's street. The husband claimed he had stopped at the traffic sign and then proceeded into the intersection, at which point the Riviera ran its stop sign and hit them broadside. The Riviera backed up and pulled away with a squeal of its tires. Unfortunately, they weren't able to get the Riviera's license plate. All they could say for sure was that there were three men in the car: two in the front seat and one in the back.

Two days later, after every police department in metropolitan St. Louis had been faxed a description of the car, two officers found an abandoned Riviera in the Spanish Lake area. The car not only matched the description of the hit-and-run car but had paint chips on the front bumper that matched the paint on the other car involved in the hit-and-run. Although the license plates were gone, the police were able to trace the car by its vehicle identification number. It was registered in the name of Eugene Worrell of Jefferson County, Missouri.

Eugene Worrell was unmarried, thirty-one years old, and worked the day shift on the minivan line in the Chrysler plant in Fenton. Although he had been arrested only twice—a drunk-and-disorderly outside a tavern in Sunset Hills and an attempted statutory rape at a motel off Watson Road—there were detailed files on him maintained by several police departments, the St. Louis office of the FBI and the Eastern Missouri chapters of the NAACP and the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League. This was because the United Auto Workers of America Local 325 was not the only organization to which Eugene belonged. He was also commandant of the Himmler Echelon, a small neo-Nazi group in Jefferson County that was loosely affiliated with the Aryan Nation.

According to the surviving members of the Himmler Echelon, Worrell swore he'd been framed. His “proof” was that he had personally reported his car stolen two days before it was discovered in Spanish Lake. In the aftermath of the shootout, the police dismissed the theft report as an inept attempt by a guilty man to cover his tracks. As for his claim that he'd been framed, it was precisely what one might expect from someone whose FBI personality profile included the terms “paranoid,” “filled with rage,” and “persecution complex (believes government out to kill him).”

In a hospital interview, one of the survivors said that Eugene Worrell had told his men of an anonymous midnight telephone call warning him that the police were coming to kill him. In response to the phone tip, Worrell gathered the rest of the Himmler Echelon at his house that night. They were armed and ready when the first squad cars arrived the following evening at dusk. Officers Dan Harter and Jimmy Engle got within ten yards of the front porch before an eruption of automatic gunfire literally knocked them off their feet, lulling both immediately. It was not an astute strategic move. Two hours later, with police helicopters hovering overhead and dozens of squad cars surrounding the cordoned perimeter, a twenty-four-man SWAT team charged the house, backed by huge spotlights that virtually blinded the nine men inside. “It was like shooting fish in a barrel,” one unidentified SWAT team member later commented. Fishing season lasted exactly one minute and twenty-seven seconds. By then, six of the nine members of the Himmler Echelon, including Eugene Worrell, were dead. The remaining three were wounded and disarmed.

The next day, at a press conference covered by the local and national media, the police officially announced the successful conclusion of their investigation into the murder of Rabbi David Marcus.

Case closed, bad guys caught, move on to the next one.

Except for me.

I was still haunted by a sense of incompleteness, of matters left unresolved. Those same five words stood out with graphic clarity.

It just don't feel right
.

Which was why, two days after the big shootout, I was seated across the table from Detective Hank Nichols of the University City Police Department.

“Just a gut feeling,” he said. He tugged at his walrus mustache and shrugged. “But sometimes your gut's wrong.”

“Whether you were right or wrong,” I said, “what didn't feel right to you?”

He stroked his mustache as he studied me. “Well,” he finally said, “it didn't seem like the work of amateurs.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your typical hate-crime perpetrators are amateurs—losers with guns. But that homicide”—he shrugged, puzzled—“it just didn't feel like the work of amateurs.”

“Why?”

“That was professional work, Miss Gold. A quick clean head shot.” He shook his head. “None of Worrell's people had that kind of training. Men like his, you expect sloppiness. You expect something like the traffic accident that night. That was pure amateur hour. But not the kill shot.” He paused. “There were other things.”

“Such as?”

“No fingerprints, no visible signs of entry. You'd expect both with amateurs.”

“Anything else?”

“Well,” he said uncertainly, “we checked that house pretty careful. I can't pinpoint why, but I just had the sense that the place had been searched. And if so, it was done by someone who took pains to make sure it didn't look like it had been searched.”

“Was anything missing?”

He gave me a weary smile. “Hard to know what's missing unless you know what was there in the first place.” He paused, his eyes far away.

“Why did it bother you that the place might have been searched?”

“Because it doesn't fit the MO of one of those skinhead groups. A hate crime is a lynching, Miss Gold. You either kill your man or you don't, but you don't go search his house.”

“Maybe they were looking for money,” I said.

“I suppose,” he said without conviction. “We'll just have to see what turns up.”

“Did you have any other suspects before you found out about the accident?”

He shook his head solemnly.

“If Worrell was the one who killed him, why would he report his car as stolen?”

“Stupidity. Maybe he thought it would make him seem innocent. I don't pretend to know how his mind worked.”

“Did he have an alibi?”

“Not much of one. The three who survived, they claimed they'd all been playing cards that night in his basement.” He shook his head. “Pretty lame.”

I studied Nichols. “Detective, do you think Worrell and his thugs killed him?”

He thought it over and scratched his neck uncomfortably. “I just don't know, Miss Gold. Looking back, it sure seems more likely than not. You just don't ever know for sure. Some cases end like that.”

I thanked him and drove back to my office.

I'd gone to the police station for reassurance. More than anything, I wanted to know that David's murder had been avenged. I'd gone to see Detective Nichols hoping for the closure I needed to get on with my life. He wasn't able to give me that.

It just don't feel right
.

***

“For chrissakes,” Benny said as he refilled my wineglass, “the only thing missing is a signed confession.”

I picked moodily at my salad. “That's a big thing to be missing.”

“Rachel, the reason he didn't sign a confession is that the cops blew his fucking head off before they could hand him a pen.”

In an effort to cheer me up, Benny had invited me over to his apartment for dinner.

“What if Worrell and his men were set up?” I asked.

Benny looked at me as if I were crazy. “What makes you think they were set up?”

I shrugged. “Detective Nichols said that the murder looked like it had been done by a pro. What kind of professional hit man would be clumsy enough to ram into another car while leaving the scene of the crime?”

“But these weren't professional hit men, Rachel. They were slimeballs with room-temp IQs.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they were professional hit men who wanted to make sure that someone would be able to remember that one particular car was in David's neighborhood on the night of the murder. What better way than to smash it into another car?”

“Which means you have to assume that your professionals really did steal his car.”

“Right.”

Benny raised his eyebrows. “Rachel, you're getting to sound like one of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy nuts.”

“It's not far-fetched.”

“Right,” he said sarcastically.

“It's not,” I protested. “If someone else wanted him dead, what better way to do it than to make it look like the crime was committed by a neo-Nazi group? And don't forget that anonymous telephone tip.”

“Whoa,” Benny said, signaling for a time-out. “Now you're saying that the phone call was part of the setup?”

“What better way to panic a violent paranoid into a shootout with the cops?”

“Wait a minute. Doesn't it make more sense that it was from a sympathetic cop involved in the investigation?”

“A cop?” I asked.

“Of course a cop. Is it beyond the realm of reason to suppose that there might be at least one rural Missouri cop who is sympathetic to the tenets of a white supremacist organization?”

I thought it over. “Maybe. But not necessarily. If someone wanted to blame David's murder on Eugene Worrell and then increase the odds that Worrell would be dead before his trial, you'd make sure someone told him that the government had framed him and was now coming to kill him.”

“Someone?” Benny said. “Who's this mysterious someone who wants David Marcus dead? Oliver North? Ernst Blofeld? Come on, Rachel. He was a decent, good-hearted rabbi who once played minor league baseball. The only type of person with any reason to kill him would be a deranged, Jew-hating, lowlife piece of pond scum like Eugene Worrell.”

“I know.” I gave him a sad smile. “It's logical, it makes sense, it's probably true. But I'm not one hundred percent convinced, yet. I need to get to there, Benny. I have to find a way to get there. Otherwise it's just going to haunt me. I can't—help it.” My eyes filled with tears. I used the napkin to wipe my eyes and blow my nose. “I owe it to him.”

“Why?” he said gently.

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Because he was special. Because he would have done it if I were the victim.” I paused, struggling to keep my composure. “If it turns out that Worrell was the killer, fine. But I have to know that for sure, and I don't, yet.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I'm going to try to eliminate the other possibility.”