The Jury Master (27 page)

“Good for you,” she said.

She lit the cigarette, set the pack and lighter on the coffee table, and put a glass ashtray in her lap, blowing smoke at the ceiling as she talked. “One damn habit I’ve never been able to lick. I’ve quit more times than I can remember. My mother harangues me. My husband harangues me. My kids
really
harangue me. I stopped for about three weeks. Then I got the news of my brother’s death.”

“I’m very sorry,” he said.

She flicked ashes as if flicking away his comment. “So who are you, Mr. Sloane?”

“Please, call me David.” He handed her a business card from his shirt pocket.

She considered it for a moment with a bemused smile. “A lawyer.”

“I’m not here looking for business, Ms. Blair.” He recalled from the newspaper articles that Aileen Branick Blair was an attorney in Boston. He hoped it gave him credibility, and the two of them common ground.

“I hope not. It wouldn’t say much about your practice if you had to come three thousand miles for business.” She put the card on the table. “You said you have information that concerns my brother’s death?”

“I believe I do.”

She crossed her legs and smoothed her khakis. The family resemblance to her brother was strong, especially with her hair pulled back and tied in a ponytail: the prominent chin, Irish-fair skin, blue eyes. “All right, but let me be straight with you before you get started. I’m not even sure why you’re sitting here. I’ve been asking myself why I said yes ever since you called. Next thing I knew, I was giving you directions. We’ve had dozens of telephone calls and I’ve said no to every single one of them. But there was something about you on the telephone, something in your voice, a sincerity I hadn’t heard in the others, that convinced me to talk with you. I like to believe I have pretty good instincts.” She stubbed the butt of the cigarette into the ashtray, picked up the pack, and tapped out another as she continued talking. “But let me tell you something before you get started and waste both our time: I’ve been hearing a lot of crap for three days now and not getting a lot of answers. My mother and father are too old for this, my brothers have a business to run, and Joe’s wife . . . well, she’s not emotionally capable of handling this right now. We sent her home to Boston with her kids to make the arrangements. I’m the youngest, but I’m also the family bulldog. I don’t deny it. The responsibility falls to me. I’ve gone from shock to denial. According to my therapist, I’m supposed to be at reluctant acceptance by now, but I’m too goddamned pissed.”

He smiled at her comment. “Fair enough.”

She nodded. “So how did you know my brother?”

“I don’t know.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You told me on the telephone that Joe called you.”

“He did call me. Your brother called my office in San Francisco and left a message for me Thursday evening, six-thirty San Francisco time.” Sloane handed her the pink message slip. “Judging from what I’ve read in the newspapers, that’s after anyone reported seeing him alive.”

“That’s his office number,” she said.

“And I have to assume from the fact that he left that number and a message requesting that I call him back that your brother intended to go back to his office.” The implication hung between them like the cigarette smoke. “So, cutting to the chase, it appears your brother expected to be alive. Not exactly the act of a man contemplating killing himself.”

Blair studied him. “But you never talked to him?”

“No.”

“And yet you say you didn’t know my brother?”

“I said I don’t think I knew him, Aileen. It gets more complicated after the phone call.”

She nodded. “I thought it might. I didn’t figure you flew three thousand miles to tell me your voice mail, either. I think you better start from the beginning, David.”

He had considered where to begin on the drive to the house. “The night after your brother left his message, someone broke into my mailbox and my apartment. The strange thing about it was, they didn’t take anything. They just tore it apart. I dismissed it as vandals.”

“But not anymore.”

“Whoever broke in was looking for something, something in particular. Something sent to me in the mail—by your brother.” He reached into the briefcase, took out the envelope, and handed it to her.

She considered the envelope. “That’s Joe’s handwriting,” she confirmed. She opened the tab, pulled out the papers, and studied them for several minutes. Then she looked up at Sloane, her brow furrowed. “Adoption papers?”

“Your brother sent me the paperwork for the release of those papers. He found them. I didn’t. Before I received that package I had no idea I was adopted. I understood that my parents died in a car accident when I was a young boy.”

“You had no idea?”

It had been an astonishing revelation, except that Sloane, on contemplating thoughts he had never before stopped to analyze, for fear of the answers, realized he did not feel pain or anger when he opened the package. He felt relief. He could not recall ever crying over the death of his parents or remember longing for a gentle touch, a guiding hand, or a consoling voice, and that had brought guilt. Why did he feel so little for two people he was supposed to love instinctively? The revelation in the package had lifted that burden from his shoulders, though in its place it had left an even heavier weight, one that made him feel even more like a rudderless boat in a storm.

He pointed to the papers in Blair’s hands. “Edith and Ernest Sloane, the people I believed to be my parents, died in a car accident when I was six years old.”

Aileen Blair shuffled through the file. “These are the papers to adopt you?”

“I thought so.”

She stopped fingering through the pages and looked up at him. “Joe was wrong?”

“You’ll see records in there from St. Andrews Hospital in Glendale, California. I had my law firm in Los Angeles obtain them for me. The woman on those forms, the one who supposedly gave me up for adoption, was named Dianna O’Leary. Eighteen years old, unmarried, living with a staunchly religious aunt and uncle.”

“Jesus!” Blair said. She had come to the articles that Foster & Bane’s Los Angeles office had obtained from the
Los Angeles Times
archives. Dianna O’Leary did not leave the hospital with a baby boy, and she had not given him up for adoption.

“She suffocated her own son,” Blair said, startled.

“The district attorney didn’t have any compassion for her. She did fifteen years for second-degree murder. When she got out she killed herself with an overdose of prescription painkillers.”

Blair gave him a quizzical look. “But if that woman didn’t give up her child for adoption, then these papers make no sense.”

“No, they don’t.”

She looked up at him.

“Someone forged them to make it look like Edith and Ernest Sloane adopted that child and named him David.”

“Who?”

“The only logical assumption is that it was your brother.”

She lowered the papers. “Joe? Why would Joe forge these papers?”

“Again, I don’t know for certain, but the only rational explanation I can think of, Aileen, was to hide me, my identity.”

Now she leaned closer. “Why would you assume that?”

He took the papers from her hands, shuffling through them before handing one back to her. “Because Edith and Ernest Sloane did adopt a young boy, Aileen.” He handed her a death certificate. “But David Allen Sloane, seven years old, died in that car accident with them.”

49

E
XETER ROSE FROM
his beanbag to greet Parker Madsen as Madsen stepped into his office. He rubbed the crown of the dog’s head, buzzed his secretary, and instructed her to admit his visitor.

“I apologize for disturbing you,” Rivers Jones said on opening the door and entering the office. His gait was noticeably quicker. “You said you wanted to be completely briefed on the Branick investigation. We have a problem.”

Madsen arched an eyebrow as he fed Exeter a dog treat and continued to rub his head.

“We’ve reviewed Joe Branick’s telephone records for the past six months. There’s a number that comes up repeatedly.” Jones circled behind a chair, as if distance would soften the blow of the information he was about to impart. “The number is to a home in McLean. The calls were made at all hours of the day and night, sometimes one right after the other. Several the final day.”

“A woman,” Madsen said, still scratching the dog’s head.

Jones leaned forward. “She’s an escort, sir.”

Madsen looked up. “A prostitute.”

Jones cleared his throat. “In a manner of speaking.”

“She gets paid to have sex with men?”

“Yes.”

“A prostitute. A whore.”

Jones propped his briefcase on the chair, took out a single sheet of paper encased in plastic, and handed it to Madsen. “And we found this.”

Madsen snapped his fingers and pointed Exeter back to his beanbag before stepping forward and taking the document. He put on a pair of bifocal reading glasses. “Where?” he asked, lowering the page.

“In his briefcase.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“Difficult to say. The briefcase was in his office when we went in to . . . check for things. The office was still sealed, so possibly no one, but I can’t be sure.”

“Be sure.”

Jones nodded, taking back the letter. The sound of the air conditioner hummed above them. “Excuse me for saying so, General, but you don’t appear surprised.”

Madsen smirked. “Very little surprises me anymore about men and their character, Rivers. I’ve spent my life evaluating men. Unfortunately I’ve become a cynic. Few men are as they appear. I told you when I briefed you on the situation that I suspected more. I’m sure this is another reason the president wants this matter handled delicately.” He turned and walked back behind his desk. “What are you going to do?”

Jones thought for a moment. “I intend to talk with this woman, Terri Lane, find out what she knows about this, when she last saw or spoke to Mr. Branick.”

Madsen rubbed a hand across his lips, appearing deep in thought.

“Do you disagree?”

Madsen shrugged and put a hand in the air. “It is your investigation, Rivers.”

Jones looked troubled. “I respect your opinion.”

Madsen took a breath. “If this woman is interviewed, Rivers, this matter will leak. We both know that. The more stones you throw in a pond of water, the more ripples you create. The more ripples, the better the chance some will reach the shore. If one does, who knows what stories this woman is liable to start telling.”

“Sir?”

“Given her chosen profession, Rivers, and the fact that these calls are to McLean, I have to assume she had a regular and well-paying clientele. Do you think the press would leave this with Joe Branick? They’d smell blood. They’d smell a scandal.”

“You don’t think she’d be discreet?”

Madsen found this amusing. “God knows how this woman recorded her clientele to protect herself, Rivers. If it is as I suspect, she’ll be on
Oprah
and every other talk show across America.” Madsen looked to his right, as if he could see Robert Peak sitting in the Oval Office. “You can imagine how something like this, if leaked to the press, would destroy Joe Branick’s family.” He circled behind his desk. “The president is clearly protecting a fallen comrade, Rivers. Unfortunately, I’m afraid others won’t see it that way. After Watergate and Ken Starr, everyone wants the chance to take down a president.”

Jones cleared his throat. “I’ve thought about that, and I think I may have a solution.”

Madsen turned back to him.

“This information doesn’t change the fact that Mr. Branick killed himself.”

“I suppose it doesn’t,” Madsen said.

“The man committed suicide. We took this matter in-house to confirm that fact. Now we have. This is not a matter of national security or public interest.”

Madsen nodded. “I agree. What’s your point?”

“My point is, we can issue a statement to the press that the United States Department of Justice is satisfied that this was a horribly unfortunate, self-inflicted act, and direct that the matter be handled by the West Virginia park police to close.”

“The press will want to know what convinced you.”

“The autopsy.” Jones smiled, apparently seeing a light at the end of his dark tunnel. “We obtained it yesterday.” He pulled the report from his briefcase and handed it to Madsen. “The ballistics tests match. The powder burns are consistent with a self-inflicted wound. He shot himself.”

Madsen looked up from the report. “What about the chemical analysis?”

“It’s irrelevant,” Jones said. “It has nothing to do with the question of whether he did or did not kill himself. It doesn’t change the ultimate act. We’ll issue a short statement that the autopsy confirms Joe Branick took his own life. It will be left to the local authorities to close the investigation. Since they won’t find anything, it will end there.”

Madsen shook his head as if unconvinced. “The press will still want to know why he did it, why he took his own life.”

“Leave that to the family. If they want to besmirch his reputation, disclose that his marriage was in a shambles and he was drinking, let them.”

Madsen nodded. “It sounds like a workable solution. But how do you intend to give this information to the family?”

Jones grimaced as if feeling the onset of a sudden pain. “That could be difficult. Mr. Branick’s sister has been raising hell waiting for the autopsy results. She’s scheduled to come to Washington tomorrow to clean out Mr. Branick’s office, and she wants a status report.”

“When are you meeting her?”

“Noon. I intended to break the news to her then. I could cancel—”

“No.” Madsen considered this for a moment. “Keep your appointment. Meet her at Mr. Branick’s office.” He handed the autopsy report back to the assistant United States attorney. “Then tell her there’s been a change of plans.”

50

A
ILEEN BLAIR STARED,
mouth agape. The ash on her burning cigarette looked precariously close to snapping off and falling in her lap. “But if that child died, as you say, then . . .”