Supreme Justice (12 page)

Over this noise, Reeder—getting to his feet, back and shoulder hurting a little, side of his head not much at all—could make out a chopper coming. Rogers materialized over the fallen man, her gun sweeping the woods for accomplices.

Reeder said, “By himself, I think.”

“You okay?”

“He bruised my pride.”

She trained her pistol on the fallen intruder, on his back like a bug, rolling but not righting, as Reeder frisked him—no weapon. No ID, either.

She was saying, “You have the right to remain silent . . .”

But the intruder wasn’t at all silent—he was moaning in a loud, jagged manner, like a lawn mower motor that couldn’t quite catch: moan,
cough
, moan,
cough
.

Reeder yanked the ski mask off and saw a hawk-nosed, pockmarked thirtysomething loser with the same kind of lank, stringy dark hair as Charles Granger.

The
whup-whup
of the helicopter grew ever louder, as did the sirens, a cacophony conspiring to drown out Rogers’s voice as she completed the Miranda warning.

She had to shout for Reeder to hear as she indicated the baton: “How many suspects are you going to bust up with that thing?”

“He jumped me on his way to kill the Chief Justice.”

The intruder interrupted his moaning to say, “Fuck . . . I wasn’t gonna kill
nobody
.”

Reeder and Rogers both glanced down at him.

“I got no weapon,” he said, eyes big in the narrow face. “What was I gonna kill him with, the sterling silver? What are you fucking
talking
about?”

Rogers knelt, cuffed him, patted him down again—she came up only with a small pry bar.

“What were you going to do with that?” Reeder said, indicating the pry bar.

“For the French doors,” the intruder said, sitting like a sidelined football player hugging an injury. “Homeowner’s out of town. In friggin’ Bermuda.”

Rogers asked, “Who told you that?”

The chopper came into view, the spotlight underneath shining down on the house, taking only a hovering second to spot the group on the lawn, blades churning air noisily.

Below, the cuffed trespasser turned his head away to avoid the glare.

Getting a radio from her pocket, Rogers shouted into it, “
Clear, clear! Suspect in custody
!
”

For several excruciatingly loud moments, the helicopter paused in midair, then backed away. Flashing lights on the street visible on either side of the big house announced police cars. A lot of them.

Reeder said, “What’s your name?”

“Marvin.”

“First or last?”

“Tom Marvin. Thomas J. You’ll find me in the computers, but no violence. I never hurt nobody on a job.”

Tell that to my back,
Reeder thought. Then he repeated Rogers’s earlier question: “Who told you the owner was in Bermuda?”

“
He
did,” the guy said, and pointed toward the near mansion.

“What, the owner?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

“The owner told you he was going to Bermuda and invited you to invade his home?”

“
Yeah
. Hello? Insurance scam! E-mailed me a picture of a painting, said the thing was covered for hundreds of thou, plus he had a buyer, some underground collector guy. Said he’d make out like a bandit.”

Reeder said, “You’re a bandit, Tom. How do you think you’re making out?”

“Screw you and that fuckin’ whip of yours.”

Rogers said, “How much did he promise you? The owner of the house.”

“One hundred k. For the simplest boost in the world. He even told me what wire to snip to kill the alarm system.”

“What’s his name, the owner?”

“Jackson. Whitaker Jackson.”

Reeder and Rogers exchanged glances.

Reeder said, “Ever hear of him before?”

No longer moaning, probably settling into shock, Marvin said, “No. Do I look like I hang around with guys who live in houses like that?”

“What did he look like?”

“He didn’t look like anything. He was just a voice on the phone.”

“He called your cell?” Finally, a break maybe, though it would probably lead to a burner phone.

Shaking his head, Marvin said, “No, I don’t have one. Well, I mean . . . I do now. This one just showed up in my hoodie pocket, couple weeks ago. Guy’s been calling me on it ever since.”

Rogers asked, “Phone just . . . showed up?”

Marvin shrugged. “Riding the Metro, I get off, it’s ringing in my pocket. First time I knew it was there.”

Reeder said, “And you just take this call, from this cell phone that shows up in your pocket?”

“Yeah. I freelance, you know? Gotta take a flier now and then.”

Rogers asked, “What did he sound like, the guy on the phone?”

“Well-spoken type. Businessman, sort of.” Marvin raised a shaky finger toward Reeder. “Like that guy.”

Reeder grunted a laugh. “You heard
my
voice on the phone?”

“Didn’t say that. But it could’ve been. Whoever it was sent me that picture by e-mail and five grand cash.”

Rogers asked, “How was the cash delivered?”

“Came in the mail. Kinda risky doing that, but it was his money, and it came.”

Reeder ran a palm over his face. “All this sounded kosher to you?”

“The five grand was kosher, and the ninety-five more sounded kosher enough.”

That was about all Reeder could take. He needed to find some Tylenol for his goddamn back, and the old collarbone injury was screaming. No medicine existed to cure this pain in the ass they’d just busted. But he had one more question to ask.

“Tom,” Reeder said, “would you happen to know a guy named Charlie Granger?”

Marvin frowned.

“Easy question, Tom. Granger. Charlie.”

“. . . Okay, yeah. I do. So what?”

“How about Butch Brooks?”

Nothing.

“Know him, Tom? Won’t be hard to track.”

A reluctant nod. “I know him.”

The uniformed cops were coming down the back lawn, and Reeder let Rogers bring them up to speed.

Reeder looked into the woods. Was the assassin, or perhaps the mastermind behind the assassinations, watching from there, right now? If so, he or she was too well camouflaged.

Then Sloan was at his side, and Reeder explained what had happened.

“Obviously,” the SAIC said, “this wasn’t a burglary you interrupted.”

“No. I don’t figure the Chief Justice hired Tom Marvin to help on an insurance scam.”

Sloan chuckled dryly at the thought.

Reeder said, “This was about putting us through our paces. Testing us.”

Sloan frowned. “They had to know we’d put on more security after Gutierrez.”

“Right, but they wanted to know how much, what our response time would be, and so on. They knew this was how it would play out, and they wanted to see what we would do. Now they know.”

Sloan said, “Sounds like we’re still one step behind.”

“Well, Gabe, we better catch up . . . because next time? I don’t think it’ll be a test.”

“
I’d like to be known just as a good worker in the vineyard who held his own and contributed generally to the advancement of the law.”

Harry Blackmun, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, 1970–1994, author of the
Roe v. Wade
decision.
Section 5, Lot 40-4, Map Grid V/W-36, Arlington National Cemetery.

TWELVE

Attendants loaded the suspect, now wearing an Aircast on his broken tibia, onto a gurney. They strapped Marvin down, then slowly rolled the stretcher across the lawn past Patti Rogers, the man’s face knotted in pain. The night had cooled, but a sheen of sweat pearled the perp’s face in the rolling lights of the police cars.

Had Reeder overstepped?
she wondered.
Two perps with broken limbs in as many incidents.

Of course, these were easy questions to ask now that they knew Marvin was no assassin. Reeder’s assumption—that the man in black, emerging from the woods behind the Chief Justice’s house, was a probable assassin—had been sound.

And yet . . . and yet . . .

The last time Reeder had been in harm’s way, he’d taken a bullet for a president. No doubt shrink time had followed. After that, a desk and ill-advised words about the man he’d saved, finally resignation . . . then of late thrust into fieldwork of an extreme nature.

Was he guilty of misjudgment?
she wondered.
Of excessive force?

Sloan and Reeder were talking just out of earshot. Normally she might take her concerns to Sloan, her longtime partner; but Sloan was Reeder’s longer-time
friend
.

They were coming toward her now, Reeder a little ashen, though his face was its usual indifferent mask; still, he looked a little sick. Stress? Conscience?

Sloan said, “Patti, let’s hear your take on tonight.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Somebody was checking to see how much and what kind of security we set up.”

Sloan nodded. “Peep’s view, too.”

She caught a hint of a smile from Reeder, pleased perhaps that they’d read the burglary attempt the same way.

“That’ll do for an overview,” Sloan said. “But what’s your version of the events?”

She started from spotting the flashlight in the forest. Wrapping up, she said, “When I got close enough to see—very damn dark out here, before these lights, Gabe—Joe was on the ground and the suspect was just taking off into the woods. Joe lashed out with that baton and brought him down.”

“Appropriate amount of force, would you say?”

“. . . Yes.”

Sloan sighed. “Good. I just want all our ducks in a row. This is the third assault on a justice in four days.”

Reeder said, “At least we didn’t lose one this time.”

She nodded toward the house. “Where is the CJ now?”

The SAIC said, “Until we can sweep the property and make sure it’s safe for his return, Chief Justice and Mrs. Jackson are in a hotel under Secret Service protection.”

She nodded. “What about the other justices?”

“Covered. Very well covered.”

Reeder asked, “Did our team interview any of them?”

Sloan rolled his eyes. “Yes, for what good it did. Worse than interviewing straight citizens! None of the other justices have any idea why Venter and Gutierrez might have been singled out—other than your theory, Peep, that this may be to rid the Court of two archconservatives.”

Reeder frowned. “Nothing personal in the lives of either man that any of their colleagues can come up with?”

Sloan shook his head. “Not a thing. Or any controversial judgments that spring to mind out of the many. Without their clerks, high and mighty can’t tell you where they were this morning, let alone what their schedule is tomorrow.”

“I’d be lying,” Rogers said, “if I said that surprised me.”

Sloan eyed her. “Peep thinks this may be an inside job.”

With a smirk, she said, “What, one of their clerks?”

“Not
that
inside,” the SAIC said, “though Christ knows the justices have probably provided their lackeys with enough motives. No, somebody in the federal government.”

“Not exactly how I put it,” Reeder said.

Sloan gave him a cut-the-bullshit look that Rogers knew too well. “You all
but
said it, Peep. And I know you well enough to read between the lines.”

Reeder’s notion rang true to her—and, anyway, the consultant had been on top of this all along.

But she asked Sloan, “What do you think, boss?”

“The person or persons behind this,” he said, “seems to understand our usual responses and tactics, all right. But I’m not convinced the killer is someone inside the federal government.”

Reeder shook his head. “I never said in the
federal
government—although it could be.”

Rogers squinted at him. “Meaning?”

The consultant shrugged. “Start with the three suspects we picked up.”

“Okay,” she said.

His eyes traveled from her face to Sloan’s. “Do we think any one of these three shit-for-brains is the mastermind of a plot to change history?”

Rogers and Sloan shook their heads.

“Well,” Reeder continued, “the late Mr. Brooks aside, the others both seem to have been set up. Do we believe either of ’em can convincingly lie to us?”

Head shakes all around.

“So let’s assume,” Rogers said, “they’re telling the truth. Granger was watching TV with Mommy. Marvin was doing the bidding of a voice on a cell phone.”

“Which would mean,” Reeder said, “the ringleader is one smart bastard who knew one or likely three of these small-timers going in.”

Rogers nodded. “Someone they knew in prison, maybe.”

Sloan cut in, saying, “What con, smart or stupid, would want to suffer the kind of heat we’re going to bring? Anyway, if Peep is right, this is political. Maybe even . . . ideological. I mean, it’s not some mob guy mad at the Supreme Court for sustaining his damn conviction.”

“Not a mob guy,” Rogers agreed. “A bitter politician in the slam, maybe, who feels betrayed?”

“We rule out nothing,” Reeder said. “But we stick with the notion that someone knew one or all of these lowlifes . . . most likely from the other side of the glass.”

Rogers frowned. “A cop, you mean?”

Sloan said, “That theory only takes in about half the population of the metro area, if you factor in all the fed agencies, police departments, correctional department employees . . .”

Reeder said, “Don’t forget the lawyers.”

“Oh, I won’t,” Sloan said. “After all, every third person in DC is a goddamn lawyer, and we wouldn’t want to leave them out . . . Nice going, Peep. You’ve pared our list of suspects down to four million.”

Blandly, Reeder said, “It’s a start.”

They laughed a little. They could all use it.

By cell, Sloan got Miggie Altuve out of bed to get the computer expert started on making connections between Granger, Brooks, and Marvin.

Leaving the crime scene to the techs, Rogers drove Reeder back to Arlington National Cemetery, and his car.

“The answer is maybe,” Reeder said, as they drove through darkness.

“Huh?”

“Did I use excessive force back there? Is this a troubling pattern, me breaking one suspect’s arm and another’s leg? The answer is maybe.”

She flashed her eyes from the road to Reeder, saying, “How the hell do you
do
that?”

“Know what people are thinking? I don’t always.”

“You do often enough to be a pain in the ass.”

“It’s a gift.” He shrugged, looking out into the night gliding by. “Or maybe a burden.”

She glanced over again. “So how
do
you manage it?”

The silence dragged on, and she wondered if he had gone to sleep over there.

Finally, he said, “At first, starting maybe junior high . . . I just sort of
felt
things. It was just the way my mind bent. Then later, seemed like I could see things that a lot of people simply didn’t. Or didn’t bother to.”

“When was this?”

“Well before the Secret Service. College, I guess. Of course, once I was in the Service, they trained me to use this . . .
leaning
even more. I wouldn’t call it a talent or even an ability. Maybe a tool.”

“I would.”

He ignored that. “Eventually I studied kinesics, body language, and sharpened the tool even more.”

“Can you turn it off?”

When he didn’t answer right away, she glanced over again. Their eyes met and she saw pain.

“Sometimes,” he said, and it was almost a whisper, “I wish I could.”

“. . . But it’s useful.”

“Not in a marriage.”

The intimacy of that shook her.

Trying to sound light, she said, “Well, uh . . . speaking as a different kind of partner, I think it’s an entirely positive thing. Even if it is sometimes . . .”

“A pain in the ass? My wife hated arguing with me. Said I was always two, three steps ahead of her. I was obnoxious, she said. No, I
can’t
turn it off.”

She said nothing for a while, just driving toward Arlington, little traffic at this hour. They rode in silence for several minutes.

He said, and it was not a question, “You think I might be out of control, at least a little.”

“. . . Are you?”

“I don’t think so. Only to the extent that being afraid qualifies as being out of control.”

“Every officer confronting a dangerous suspect is afraid.”

He huffed a humorless laugh. “I don’t have to tell you I’ve been out of the game for quite some time, before Gabe threw me back in the thick of it. Patti, both times I was scared shitless.”

This seemed absurd coming from a big, rugged guy like Reeder. But he clearly wasn’t kidding.

He said, “The first time, with Granger? I just lashed out. He had a gun, and I had a baton, and the adrenaline must have . . . I hit him with all the force in me.”

“And the second time?”

“Our friend Tom? I had to stop him. If I didn’t take him down, all the way down, he might have shot me.”

“He didn’t have a gun.”

“We didn’t know that.”

“No,” she admitted. “We didn’t.”

Reeder said, “In my position, you might have shot him.”

“A wounding shot.”

“Are you sure, in the excitement, in the near dark, that you wouldn’t have aimed at maximum body mass? And risk killing him?”

“. . . I have a feeling you already know the answer to that one, Joe.”

“I believe I do.”

They drove a while.

Then she said, “This is a lot to share with a partner of a couple of days.”

“The key word there is
partner
. Look, I know I can be remote. That I lapse into this . . . ‘people reader’ mode. Since I’ll be your partner for a while, I’d appreciate you cutting me a little slack on that score. Okay, Patti?”

She smiled at him. “Okay, Joe. You okay from that scuffle? Need a doc to look at you?”

“No.”

When they got to his car, they agreed to meet at the office.

“In how long?” she asked.

“Five hours,” he said. “Between the two of us, we should at least be able to catch eight.”

The smiles they exchanged weren’t exactly warm, but they both knew one thing: Joe Reeder and Patti Rogers were partners now, for as long as this frustrating and important case might last.

Five hours later, give or take a minute, Patti Rogers parked her unmarked Ford in the Hoover Building ramp. She had slept, showered, and even managed to change into a fresh suit, a nice gray Donna Karan number; but she felt like she’d come straight from under a bridge abutment after a night in a refrigerator carton.

She saw Reeder in the rearview mirror, headed her way. He might be just back from a week’s vacation in the Bahamas. No ashen color now—rested and ready. Crisp suit, darker gray than hers, white shirt, black tie.

As he closed the distance, she powered down the window and called back to him: “I wish I felt like you look.”

“Same back at you, Patti. Good morning. Don’t get out—you’re driving. We’re meeting the Chief Justice in twenty minutes.”

She got them to the Supreme Court Building without resorting to the siren, and they were soon being led by a clerk dressed better than either of them into an expansive, dark-paneled office where law books filled built-in bookcases and history hung in the air like smoke.

Chief Justice Whitaker Jackson sat behind a mahogany desk somewhat smaller than his home state of Rhode Island. Two visitor’s chairs waited before the desk.

Though in his seventies, Jackson enjoyed timeless masculine good looks, like Randolph Scott in the old westerns, gray hair worn a little long, prominent cheekbones, a long but well-carved nose. His light blue eyes bore a red filigree, and his black suit and white shirt had a rumpled aspect—had he been up all night, in the aftermath of the break-in at his house? His silk tie with its black and gold diagonal stripes made a loose noose. He looked exhausted, and it wasn’t even 10:00 a.m.

But there was no weariness in it when he rose as they entered. He was tall, well over six feet, taller even than Reeder.

They did not immediately sit—formalities needed attending.

“Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice,” she said, “for seeing us on short notice. I’m Special Agent Patricia Rogers, and this is task force consultant Joseph Reeder of ABC Security.”

“Been too long, Peep,” the Chief Justice said, his voice weary, though he managed to give Reeder an energetic smile.

“Good morning, Your Honor,” Reeder said.

The men shook hands.

Reeder knowing Chief Justice Jackson was no surprise to her. His Secret Service duties would have put him next to the most powerful people in DC—for that matter, the world. She and the Chief Justice shook hands, as well.

“Special Agent Rogers,” Jackson said. “A pleasure despite the circumstances. You must be very good at your job to be on this particular investigation . . . and in such skilled if, uh, controversial company . . . right, Peep? Won’t you two have a seat?”

Now, finally, they sat, though the two men waited for her. Rituals. Traditions. Customs. DC.

“So, Special Agent Rogers,” Jackson said in the warm, rich baritone that had flowed from the bench so often, “I understand you’re not here to discuss the peculiar doings at my home last night so much as to explore these tragic murders—the loss of my friends Justices Venter and Gutierrez.”

“That’s correct, Your Honor.”