The President's Assassin (12 page)

And for a brief moment we did think about it. Clearly there were a thousand easier and less conspicuous ways to murder Merrill Benedict—an ambush in his driveway, poison in his toothpaste—any and all of which could’ve been accomplished without witnesses, without complications, and without this indiscriminate brutality. But I was sure that was exactly the point—the decision to murder Merrill Benedict in plain daylight, in the densest traffic, at the worst possible hour was meant to ignite an atrocity, to provoke awe and revulsion. Throw a stone into water, and you know you’ll get ripples. Unbelievable.

“Seven dead, so far,” Meany muttered, a bit stunned. “Twenty-two more injured, several critically.”

Actually, eight dead and twenty-one wounded as of a moment ago, but the devil’s not in the details in a nightmare like this. Meany commented, “Thank God it was rush hour. No children.”

“Think parents, “ I replied. No need to spell out that there were a lot of kids waiting for Mom or Pop to come swinging through the door, who were instead about to find a glum-faced D.C. detective bearing bad tidings on their stoop. I caught Jennie’s eye, and she turned away.

I looked at George and asked, “Witnesses?”

“What?”

“Witnesses, George?”

“Oh...well, the police are collecting statements.” He said to Jennie, “That lady over by that ambulance...the blue skirt, over there?” He pointed and we saw her. “She thinks she saw something. Make yourself useful and see what the cops are getting out of her.”

The lady in question was already being interrogated by a pair of detectives. Jennie flashed her fed creds and asked the duo to take a powder. Actually, I was a little surprised when the detectives put up no fight and complied. Then again, the conditions on this highway weren’t normal—not with this level of carnage, not with a federal notice to report all serious incidents immediately, and certainly not with feds falling out of helicopters. It was beginning to dawn on the locals that what happened here was something much worse than a simple case of road rage gone berserk.

Jennie asked the lady’s name, Carol Blandon; her age, sixty-one; her address, Montgomery, Maryland; and so forth. We didn’t care about her personal info, but it’s important to assess a witness before you get into it. With a shaky hand, Mrs. Blandon held a bloody bandage over her left eye, and clearly she was distressed and a little out of focus. But she appeared lucid enough, and she sounded reliable, albeit a bit crabby, which, given the circumstances, was understandable. In a soothing and respectful tone Jennie finally asked what happened.

“Oh, I...well, I was in the third lane...you know, of the four lanes. I was...I think I was...maybe, three cars behind that black car over there.” She stared for a moment at the wreck that was once poor Merrill Benedict’s BMW. “I was listening to the radio...I don’t remember what, and...and, I...well, I saw this man stand up in his car and stick his upper body out of the moonroof.”

This was a very significant point. I asked, “You saw him stand up?”

“I suppose he might already have been standing when I looked. What’s the difference?”

“You’re right. No difference.” Actually, the difference was that Mrs. Blandon just went from being a key witness to a contextual witness in court, assuming we got to that point.

Jennie asked her, “Do you recall what he looked like?”

“No. It all happened very fast.”

Jennie then asked Mrs. Blandon, “Do you recall the make of car?”

“I...I don’t know.”

“Color, number of doors, SUV, sedan...anything? It would be helpful.”

“It was on the inside lane and the cars in between obscured my view. I couldn’t tell you anyway...I’m not good about that.”

Jennie and I exchanged glances. I said, “Well, just tell us what happened.”

“All right, this young man was sticking out the top of the car. It was an odd sight. I remember thinking it was some high school kid...” She shook her head. “Then he had something on his shoulder...not big...a tube of some sort and it belched fire.”

I said, “Not a gun...a tube?”

She stared at me a moment. “Yes. A tube. And then...then, oh my...well, then everything turned crazy, and I
had
to stop looking. Cars were banging into each other...I hit the brakes, and I got slammed from behind...and...and...oh, sweet Lord, it was awful.”

I drew Jennie off to the side, out of Mrs. Blandon’s earshot. I informed her, “She’s describing a shoulder-fired antitank weapon. The guy fired out the sunroof because the backblast needs to escape or you get fried.”

Jennie nodded and pointed at an exit ramp about a hundred yards from where we stood. She said, “That’s probably where they escaped. They fired, exited, and drove off like nothing happened.”

“Right. Maybe somebody who drove on, or somebody already in the hospital, got a better look at that car. We should find out.”

She put her hand on my arm and said, “I’ll ask George to tell the cops to ask around. We’ll also ask the local TV and radio stations to request public assistance.”

Jennie’s cell phone rang and she backed off and answered it, leaving me to thank Mrs. Blandon for her assistance. I overheard Jennie say, “Yeah...uh-huh. What?...oh, shit...you’re kidding.”

She rolled her eyes at me and said into the phone, “No...I don’t mean,
literally
, you’re kidding.” She paused. “All right, just tell me everything you
know
...Okay, fine—everything you
think
you know.”

She listened for another two minutes, intermittently prodding the agent on the other end, then said, “I see.” After another moment she said, “At least an hour. Our helicopter’s gone. No. I can’t...Well, just call Mark Butterman. See if he can get over there. I want that place swept clean.”

She hung up, drew a few breaths, and then informed me, “You won’t believe this.”

Surveying the surrounding carnage, I replied, “Try me.”

“Justice Fineberg walked up to the front door of his large and lovely Bethesda home at 7:00
P.M
. and it exploded.”

“
Phillip
Fineberg?”

“Yeah. Know anything about him?”

“A bit. But how...I mean, doesn’t a Supreme Court justice have a security detail?”

“The Supremes have their own security people, a mix of retired cops...some retired Bureau types...double-dippers. My office handles their clearances, reviews their procedures, and coordinates joint matters.” After a pause, she added, “They’re a good outfit. But they’re not bodyguards. They just weren’t expecting...”

“What?”

“The on-scene investigator’s not sure.” She added, somewhat annoyed, “I’m so tired of dealing with agents with law degrees. Ask a simple question and you get ten conditionals. You know what I mean?”

Right. “Well, what did he tell you?”

“The security agent who drove the justice home said the explosion happened at the front entrance. Little damage to the home. Even the doorway’s intact. Fineberg was the only casualty.”

“Shrapnel marks?”

“Yeah...like that. Some sort of fragmentary device, he thinks. The device nearly blew Fineberg in half.”

I considered that a moment. “The explosive device was placed outside the door.”

“In fact, it was.” She looked at me and said, “You’re on a roll...Want to take a stab at the rest of it?”

“Sure.” I asked, “Was there a security system at the house?”

“An electronic system. Sensors inside, cameras outside—all very sophisticated...supposedly tamperproof. Since 9/11, all the Supremes have them.”

“Do the cameras record or just view?”

“Record. Tapes are kept for twenty-four hours, then taped over.”

“Surely the killers reconnoitered in advance.”

“That would make sense.” She thought about that and came to the appropriate conclusion. “We’ll review the tapes and see if we can pick them out.”

“After what we saw this morning, we should consider the possibility that they knew the security routine...possibly even the security setup in advance.”

“Bad assumption,” Jennie replied. “The Secret Service and the Supremes’ security detail are different organizations.”

“With a hundred million dollars, think about what you can buy. Or who.”

“All right...I won’t rule it out as a possibility.”

I tried to re-create how it might have happened, thinking about how I would do it. “When you review the tapes, you might see a delivery drop earlier in the day. FedEx, UPS—something.”

She shook her head. “Not possible.”

“Of course it’s possible.”

“All mail and packages are collected and screened for explosives and poisons. Even the stuff delivered to their homes. Standard precaution since the anthrax and ricin attacks.”

“Did I say the bomb was
in
the parcel?”

“Oh...you mean—”

“Yeah. As the delivery person dropped off the package, he—possibly she—planted the explosive device somewhere near the front door.”

“How?”

“Like, they bent over, one hand placed the package by the door, and the other inconspicuously put the bomb in place.”

She considered that and then said, “That could work, couldn’t it?”

I nodded. “It’s an ideal ambush site. Fineberg had to be stationary at least a few seconds to unlock the door.”

“I...I hadn’t thought of that.”

“If there are bushes by the door, maybe the explosive device was hidden there. But you said it nearly blew him in half.”

“The agent reported the explosion went off around waist level.”

“That doesn’t make sense. A normal explosive device or mine would blow off his feet, possibly his legs.” I considered this for a moment, then I thought about the antitank weapon used here, and a really weird thought popped into my mind. “Unless it was a Bouncing Betty.”

“A Bouncing Betty?”

“A type of military mine.”

“Tell me about that.”

“They’re fairly common...small...hard to detect with the naked eye, especially when camouflaged. You stuff it into the ground and it sticks up about two inches. When it’s triggered, a small explosive goes off, the detonating device pops about three feet into the air, and then goes off.”

“Wouldn’t Fineberg have to step on the mine?”

“They come out of the factory pressure detonated. But they can be modified into tripwire- or even command-detonated devices.”

“So it would—”

“Yes—it would. A guy’s up the street watching. The second Fineberg’s hand touches the knob, up pops Mr. Nasty.”

“Jesus—how do you protect against something like that?”

“I think that’s exactly the point.”

“What am I missing here?”

“Their note—we can’t.”

She nodded. Then she suggested, “But there’s something important—something we’re overlooking. I’m not thinking...” She glanced in the direction of the ruined BMW, then said, “Antitank weapons...Bouncing Bettys...this is military hardware we’re talking about.”

“And...?”

“And where did these people get their hands on these things? Right?”

Right.

Jennie then rushed off to inform Meany of the newest disaster, our guesses about the weapons used, and what this might mean in terms of fresh leads and whatever.

Left with nothing better to do, I withdrew my cell phone from a pocket and turned it on for the first time that day. The little window informed me that somebody in the 703 area code had called about ten times. Incidentally, the CIA, like the Army, is big on reporting chains and timely communications. Of course, as a lawyer, I’m accustomed to working and operating alone, making my own decisions, accountable to nobody but my clients and the court docket. I was having a little trouble getting back into this chain of command thing.

I decided to get this over with and called Phyllis. On an open airwave, I was no doubt engaging in an egregious heresy of some sort. But with three helicopters broadcasting overhead, and a Supreme Court justice splattered across the front of his house, confidentiality was the least of our worries, in my view.

Phyllis sounded a lot annoyed and wasted a few comments reminding me I wasn’t the only one working this case, and so on. Then she listened patiently as I unloaded the latest. She asked a few questions, some of which I could answer, and some of which I couldn’t. Finally she commented, “Well, I can’t recall a worse evening.”

I nearly replied, “How about 9/11?” The CIA hadn’t exactly ended that day parading down Constitution Avenue draped in victory laurels, as I recalled. But maybe she had a point. By the evening of 9/11 the worst was over, except for the shock, funerals, cleanup, and revenge. These guys weren’t through. In fact, the worst could be yet to come. I commented, “Well, the morning wasn’t so hot either.”

“The morning was just the entree.”

“Right.” I suggested, “We should probably anticipate another hit to start off our day tomorrow.”

“It would be a mistake to expect these people to be predictable. They haven’t been yet.”

“Would you care to wager?”

“No, I would not.” She changed the subject and noted, “This is all very mystifying. It’s obvious why they assassinated Merrill Benedict, don’t you think?”

“I think it
looks
obvious. Like Belknap, he’s a confidant of the President, and given his job...Well, there’s going to be a big hole at the White House morning press briefing tomorrow.”

“Indeed. Now, what about Fineberg?”

Good question. Connections are important in any criminal case; they’re irreplaceable when they’re all you have. So I considered her question and it was a bit tricky.

Justice Phillip Fineberg wasn’t close to anybody I knew of. And though it pains me to speak ill of the dead, here goes; the man was a prick. He was about seventy, a legal egghead plucked two Presidents back from the faculty of Yale Law, and every President since has cursed the choice. The press generally characterized him, somewhat delicately, as cantankerous and iconoclastic, journalistic code words for a robed asshole. He browbeat and terrified every lawyer unfortunate enough to appear at the highest court, even those arguing a case he favored.

The American Bar Association could raffle tickets to pee on his gravestone. Also his legal opinions were irrational, and he was famous—or infamous—for writing contrarian dissents insulting to both the minority and majority opinions. His eight brethren would dearly love to get this lug in a back alley and lump him up good. Except somebody beat them to the punch.