Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

“You’re a reader, Lieutenant Kearney?”

Frederick Rhinelander stood at the desk. Behind him, a section of the bookcase was closing with a pneumatic sigh. Rhinelander glanced back at the meticulously crafted door, then at his visitors. He wore a bright, childlike smile.

“I love that thing,” he said, and pointed to the now closed door. “It always creates such a stir. Please… sit,” he told Frank, indicating the empty chair next to Jose.

“Gentlemen, thank you for coming out here. I hope I didn’t inconvenience you.” He looked at Frank, then Jose. It was Jose who first understood Rhinelander wanted an answer.

“No inconvenience,” Jose said.

“I had some issues here that required tending to,” Rhinelander responded. “You are familiar with congressional hearings procedures?”

Frank and Jose shook their heads.

Rhinelander sat back in his chair and matched his fingertips together, hands forming a tent. “Hearings are a way that Congress gets testimony on a formal record… Sworn testimony,” he added with a prim, schoolmarmish severity. “And then Congress decides, based on that record, what laws must be passed, changed, or done away with.”

“And we’re going to have to testify?” Jose asked.

Rhinelander pursed his lips. “Not necessarily. I asked you here today to get some ideas as to what lines of questioning would be most beneficial.”

“Who to?”

“Why, to the people of the District, of course,” Rhinelander said loftily.

“Oh. Okay. How can we help?”

Rhinelander casually dropped his right hand beneath the desk, then brought it up.

Somewhere in the library, Frank imagined, discreetly placed microphones and videocameras had been alerted.

“Let’s start with Kevin Gentry’s killing. The papers are reporting a Colombian connection. What do you know about that?”

“That there isn’t much there, Mr. Chairman,” Frank said.

“What is there?”

“First, there’s the business dealings.”

“Which are?”

“Skeeter’s and Pencil’s dealings. You don’t do big-time drugs in the District without connections. Either Jamaican or Colombian. Pencil’s former girlfriend says he and Skeeter traveled repeatedly to South America. Then there was the weapon used to kill Skeeter and wound Pencil-”

“Yes, yes,” Rhinelander said with a sour note. “The gun that also killed Kevin and”-Rhinelander pointed an accusing finger-“and reopened a case that your department had marked closed.”

Jose ignored Rhinelander’s charge. “So we have a connection between Skeeter, Pencil, and Kevin Gentry. Then you add the fact that Kevin Gentry had worked for CIA in Colombia and that somebody killed Pencil by cutting his throat and pulling his tongue out through the opening-what they call a Colombian necktie.”

Rhinelander shuddered and ran his tongue across his lips. “Grotesque.” Recovering, he turned his hands palms up. “But is that all we have?”

“So far.”

“Brian Atkins might have something,” Frank said. “Have you talked with him?”

The corners of Rhinelander’s mouth curved up ever so slightly. He regarded Frank for a moment, then returned to Jose.

“Let me ask you this.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Because you have no evidence doesn’t mean there is no evidence. Might it be possible that there is more substantial evidence of a Colombian connection?

Jose nodded. “Yessir, it’s possible.”

“And if there is more substantial evidence,” Rhinelander pressed on, “is your department best qualified to conduct the investigation?”

Frank watched his partner size up Rhinelander; he could feel Jose working out what he’d answer.

“A lot of ifs, Mr. Chairman.” Jose began carefully, deliberately, a mason laying a foundation. “We’re responsible for investigating homicides in the District of Columbia. If the perp… the perpetrator… is from another country and he’s in the District, we’ll apprehend him. If he’s somewhere else, we’ll get that jurisdiction to apprehend him. We may not be Interpol or the Bureau, but we know how to track down killers and take them off the street.”

Rhinelander’s tightened lips said he wasn’t happy with Jose’s answer. Rather than challenge Jose, however, he asked, “Do you have any suspects?”

“Not yet.”

“No suspects.” Rhinelander said it in a pious monotone, putting a mark against a mental checklist. “Any prospects?” he followed up.

“Sir, if we had ‘prospects,’ we’d have suspects,” Jose said. “Way we work, we gather information. We put the pieces together. We’re still gathering.”

“Informants?”

Rhinelander’s tone was maddeningly condescending, arrogantly dismissive.

Frank saw the muscle along Jose’s jawline quiver. He stepped in. “People are talking to us.”

Rhinelander toyed with a gold fountain pen, taking its cap off, making several exploratory dashes on a lined pad, putting the cap back on, settling the pen on the desktop. He looked at Frank, then at Jose.

“You realize, of course, that this is a high-visibility case?”

“We noticed,” Jose said.

“And you realize,” Rhinelander went on, “that my subcommittee funds the District government.”

“Yes, we-”

“And you realize”-Rhinelander cut Jose off-“that along with funding we are responsible for oversight.” He paused a beat. “Oversight,” he continued in his prim, schoolmarmish voice, “means that we want to make certain those funds are properly spent.” Another beat. “Do you appreciate that?”

Jose took a breath, then swallowed. “Yes, sir,” he said, “we appreciate that. We really do.”

Rhinelander weighed that for a moment before accepting it. Then he picked up the gold fountain pen and twirled it between his fingertips like a baton.

“Thank you for your time, gentlemen. It’s helpful to have an appreciation of the state of play before we open the hearings. Cornell will show you out.”

As though summoned telepathically, Cornell materialized in the doorway. Leaving the library, Frank looked back: Rhinelander was gone, and the bookcase door was just sliding shut.

Jose tossed the keys to Frank. Neither of them spoke until they were well down the parkway toward Washington.

“Feels like we been on a short trip to hell,” Jose said dispiritedly.

“Some people are rich, Hoser, and other people just have money.”

Jose smiled. “Not bad. Who said that?”

“Maggie Kearney’s little boy Frank.”

“That sounds like my daddy.”

“Hoser, that sounds like a compliment.”

Frank stood for an indecisive moment in the breakfast room, a CD of Handel’s Water Music in one hand, Johnny Cash, 1955-1983 in the other, and Monty wrapping around his left leg.

“Okay, what is it,” he asked the cat, “Freddy or Johnny?”

Monty growled an answer, so Frank loaded up the Man in Black. Cash started out with “Hey Porter.” Having made one decision, Frank wrestled with another. Freezer to microwave? Whip up an omelet? Call out for pizza?

The omelet won. From the refrigerator, Frank rescued four brown speckled eggs, two jalapeno peppers, several shallots, the butt of a Smithfield ham, and a wedge of extrasharp cheddar. He went back into the refrigerator for a half-bottle of a California Pinot Grigio.

Cash was driving his gravel-rich baritone hard with “Folsom Prison Blues,” accompanied by waves of inmates’ raucous cheering.

Frank notched up the volume. While the peppers and shallots sauteed, he grated some cheese, then cracked the eggs into a yellow-glazed mixing bowl. “… let that lonesome whistle,” he sang with Cash in a monotone as he beat the eggs, “blow my blues away.”