William Bernhardt - Capitol Murder

“Not for want of trying.” Amanda Burton stood behind her man, the usual unpleasant expression on her face. “I’ve called all my connections in the Senate and the law enforcement world. They haven’t been able to tell me anything.”

Shandy, her blond hair tucked behind her ears, nodded. “Marshall’s come up dry, too. And if Marshall can’t find it, it isn’t available. Oh-I almost forgot.” She pulled a sealed envelope out of her satchel. “This is for you, Boss.”

Glancy held the letter between his fingers. “Should I read it now, dear? Or in private?”

She smiled. “It can wait till later.”

“Thanks.” He tucked it into his coat pocket. “It’s a comfort to know I have such dedicated people taking care of business while I’m stuck in this trial.”

“Speaking of which,” Shandy said, turning toward Ben, “you look cute as a bug in Todd’s navy-blue Brooks Brothers.”

Ben glanced at the suit he was wearing. “What, this old thing?”

Shandy laughed. “Fits you much better than that blue rag you were wearing twice a week. What’s ‘Dillard’s,’ anyway?”

Ben stiffened slightly. “Dillard’s is a first-rate Oklahoma-based chain of department stores-”

“But Ben doesn’t shop there,” Christina interjected. “He shops at a consignment store and buys the hand-me-downs of people who shop at Dillard’s.”

Ben adjusted the knot in his necktie. “Nothing wrong with a little frugality.”

Judge Herndon’s clerk entered the courtroom, closely trailed by the man himself. The judge greeted everyone, gave the usual admonitions to his sequestered jury, then got down to business. “I especially want to remind the members of the press in the audience that no disturbances, outbursts, or unruly behavior will be tolerated. And that goes for the nonpress personages in the gallery as well.”

Herndon had never started the day with anything like this before. Did he know something Ben didn’t? Was there some reason he foresaw the possibility of an outburst?

“Mr. Padolino,” the judge said, leaning back in his chair, “please call your next witness.”

“With pleasure.” Padolino rose, smoothed the crease in his jacket, then addressed the court. “The District calls Miss Shandy Craig.”

“What?” Ben hadn’t meant to say it aloud, wasn’t really even conscious he was speaking. He turned, along with everyone else sitting at counsel table, to face the rear of the gallery. Sure enough, lovely Shandy rose to her feet.

She was not surprised.

“I don’t believe it,” Glancy said, under his breath.

Christina, Marie, the rest of Glancy’s staff, and everyone in the gallery who knew the players seemed equally stunned, including a few of the people sitting at Padolino’s table. Well, that’s the best way to keep a secret, Ben thought grimly. Tell no one.

Shandy started down the nave of the gallery, composed, her chin slightly raised, moving without hesitation. Marshall Bressler was seated in his wheelchair toward the front on the defense side. As she approached, he turned his wheels outward slightly, blocking her progress.

Shandy stopped. The two made eye contact. Even without telepathic powers, Ben felt confident he knew what message was being communicated by the senator’s administrative assistant to his young protégée.

You traitor.

Shandy calmly sidestepped him, passed through the swinging doors, and was sworn in by the bailiff.

Ben had assumed-had hoped, really-that Shandy’s testimony would focus on the discovery of Veronica Cooper’s body. Unfortunately, he was incorrect.

“Was there anything unusual about the hiring process?” Padolino asked.

“Well,” Shandy replied, “I couldn’t help but notice that all the other applicants for the vacated intern position-there were four of us-were about my age, and I don’t want to seem egotistical, but no one there was hard on the eyes.”

“During the interview process, were you asked any… unusual questions?”

Ben and Christina looked at each other. Here we go again.

“It wasn’t so much his questions as the remarks he made in between. I didn’t get the joke some of the time. But I did think he was making remarks that were sexually suggestive. He’d laugh and his eyebrows would dance up and down.”

“Perhaps he was just trying to learn a little something about you,” Padolino suggested. “So he could assess your qualifications for the job.”

“Well, at one point he asked if I was wearing a thong. You know, underwear. I had a hard time seeing how that fit into a congressional intern’s job description.”

“Anything else?”

“Not really. I think he wanted to talk to me more, but he was pressed for time. As you know, the video had just hit the airwaves the day before. He had reporters practically beating down his door, he had a committee about to go into session and, he said, ‘many other important meetings.’ So he gave me the job and I went to work. I was in the committee room when the meeting began at nine.”

Ben slowly released his breath. That wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t good, but they could survive it. If that was where it stopped.

“Could you please explain to the jury why you were at the meeting for the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the day in question?”

“Of course.” Shandy shifted slightly to face the jury, adjusting her skirt to keep her knees covered. Now that Ben thought about it, she was dressed much more conservatively than she had been in the past. Padolino had coached her well. “As I said, it was my first day on the job, my first day working for Senator Glancy. He told me to follow him around all day long, just to get the lay of the land. That didn’t last long-his office was so overrun by the media that the senator’s PR adviser, Amanda Burton, paged me and instructed me to return to the office. But I was at the committee meeting for a good long while.”

“And were you there between the hours of nine and ten?”

“I was.”

“A previous witness, Senator Tidwell, has testified that he saw Senator Glancy leave the conference room during that time.” He paused, making the jury wait for it. “Did you?”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

Ben closed his eyes. There it was. The clincher. Verification from Glancy’s own staff member, albeit a new one. Ben had interviewed Shandy after he took the case, of course, as he had every member of Glancy’s staff and everyone else on the prosecution’s witness list. She had given no indication of any sexual misconduct by the senator, during her job interview or later. And she certainly had said nothing about seeing the senator leave the committee meeting-even though she knew that meeting was key to his alibi.

“Did you see where he went?”

“I did not. I just looked up one moment and he was gone. But I had a hunch.”

Ben tensed, ready to spring. This wasn’t speculation yet, but it sounded as if it might be on the verge.

“And what was the basis for this hunch?”

“I knew how Senator Glancy got to the meeting. Because he brought me along. We didn’t come the usual way, through the marble corridors like the other senators. We took what he called his ‘secret passageway.’”

“And that was?”

“A back stairwell. Through a rear door in his private office he could enter the emergency stairway, wind through some maze-like hallways, and end up in the committee room, without ever once emerging in any of the public areas of the building. He said it was very exclusive-only a few of the senators even knew about it. He also told me about his hideaway and how you could get to it via these back passageways without being spotted.”

Ben felt Christina kicking him in the shins under the table. She knew where this was going as well as he did.