Joseph Finder - Guilty Minds

“All right. Now, this reporter alleges that on three nights this past month, you had, uh, sessions with this Heidi L’Amour.”

“Which I’ve already told you is false.”

“Right, but can you account for your whereabouts on those three nights?”

He hesitated for an instant, but long enough to put me on alert. “I was at home,” he said.

“Actually, on one of those nights, weren’t you at the annual Mock Trial and Dinner of the Shakespeare Theatre Company at Sidney Harman Hall on F Street?” That was in the quickie background file Dorothy had prepared for me by the time I landed at Reagan National Airport. It was a star-studded event the Supreme Court justices seemed to do every year.

“No. I had to cancel my appearance at the Mock Trial. I was feeling a little under the weather.”

Dorothy had missed that. He must have been scheduled to appear, but the website hadn’t been updated. “So you were at home all three of those nights?”

He nodded pensively.

“Excellent. So your wife can establish your alibi.”

He paused. “My wife and I are separated. This is not generally known. It’s also nobody’s business.”

But I already knew this, of course. I’d wondered whether he would try to gloss that over with me. “This is Washington,” I said. “Everything is everybody’s business. So do you live in the Chevy Chase house or does she?”

“She does. I live at the Watergate.”

“I see.”

“I live alone. So that, uh, won’t work as an alibi.”

I could have tormented the chief justice further, asking whether the doormen or the lobby attendants would back him up, but I’d done enough. “You actually weren’t at the Watergate on those nights, were you?”

He gave me a look that I couldn’t quite read. Was he surprised or offended or just taken aback? He didn’t reply right away, so I went on, watching him intently. “For that entire week, you were somewhere else.” Just before our meeting, I’d gone to the Watergate and asked a few questions, dispensed a little cash. I’d done my due diligence.

Now he looked away. I noticed a reddening in his cheeks, but I wasn’t sure whether I was seeing a flush of anger or the sting of embarrassment. I remained silent. I’m a big believer in the power of silence.

“It’s irrelevant where I was,” Claflin said.

“If we want to blow this story out of the water, I’m afraid it’s entirely relevant. The simplest refutation is to establish an ironclad alibi.”

“Then I think we’re going to have a problem.”

I waited, said nothing.

“Your challenge is to prove I never met with this prostitute. I’m afraid I can’t help you beyond what I’ve already said.”

But I persisted. “The court was in recess that week. You had no public appearances, gave no speeches. There’s nothing on the public record for that entire week. The Watergate’s security cameras, the parking lot cameras, they’re all going to reveal you weren’t home at the time of the alleged incidents. Did you travel somewhere?” I was bluffing, of course. I didn’t have time to check out security cameras.

He continued looking away. Finally he turned toward me and spoke. “Can I trust your confidence?”

“Of course.”

“If this gets out I’m going to have real problems.”

“I understand.”

“The reason I wasn’t home that week is that I was at Sibley Hospital, in the inpatient mental health clinic. I was having electroconvulsive therapy.”

I tried to hide my astonishment. “Electroshock therapy?”

He nodded. “For depression. You can understand why it’s important to me that this be kept private.”

“So you have an alibi we can’t use,” I finally said, because it was all I could think to say.

Who else knows?”

Claflin shrugged. “No one except you and my wife and Gideon, as far as I know. My wife and I may have our differences, but she’d never betray my confidence. I’m certain of that.”

“Are you still being treated?”

“No. I had twelve sessions at Sibley.”

“Did they work?”

He smiled, unexpectedly. “They did, thank you.”

“Maybe it’s not a coincidence.”

“What’s not?”

“That each of the occasions you allegedly saw a call girl occurred at the same time as you were being treated at Sibley. Whoever is setting you up must know about the treatments.”

“I don’t see how it’s possible. Unless someone at the hospital...”

“Anything is possible.” I thought for a moment. “You allegedly met with this girl in a room at the Monroe.” The Monroe was one of the finest hotels in DC, a few blocks from the White House. “Have you ever stayed there?”

“Why would I stay in a hotel? I live here.”

“When you moved out of your house, for example.”

He shook his head.

“I’ve never stayed in a hotel in town.”

“The questions refer to hotel records at the Monroe, claiming you reserved a room for each of those nights.”

“How would anyone know that?”

“Obviously they had a source at the hotel who checked the guest registry database.”

“But it’s not true. How long do we have before they decide whether to run the piece?”

I looked at my watch. “As of five P.M. yesterday it was forty-eight hours. By my count, there’s twenty-seven hours left.”

“That’s impossible. What can you possibly hope to accomplish in twenty-seven hours?”

“I guess we’ll find out.” I stood up. “Now I’d better get to it.”

The white marble corridors downstairs were mostly empty now. The floors gleamed. My footsteps echoed distantly. I found the bank of gray metal lockers, located mine, and opened it.

And stared at the empty compartment.

Nothing was there. My laptop, my iPhone: gone.

I double-checked the number on the key. It matched the number on the locker. I had the right locker, and my belongings had vanished.

At the end of the rows of lockers was a cloakroom where you could check your coat or umbrella or whatever else you couldn’t stuff into a locker. The attendant on duty was a matronly black woman with large sleepy eyes behind elaborate eyeglass frames that swooped down from the temple to the earpiece. Her black hair glistened with pomade. She spoke in a gruff, gravelly contralto.

“Honey, you know what kind of rush we get before court starts? I got a line halfway out to the street. Even if I could see the lockers from here, which I can’t, I sure don’t have time to look. I’m sorry, dear. I wish I could help you.”

“You keep the spare keys here, right? I’m sure people lose locker keys all the time.”

She blinked a few times, looking like she was on the verge of drifting off to sleep. “Less than you might think. I’m sorry, I don’t understand. You’re telling me you think someone took stuff out of your locker, right? So why’re you needing a spare key?”

I tried not to show my impatience. “Maybe someone took one of your spares and opened my locker. Would you mind checking to see if one’s missing?”

She shrugged and reached down to get something from under the counter. Then, key in hand, she unlocked a gray steel box mounted to the wall. I saw the row of green plastic key fobs, and even though I was too far away to read the numbers, I didn’t have to. There was no gap in the row of keys. None was missing.

She turned back, shook her head. “Nope.”

“The policeman who brought me over here,” I began.

“What policeman would that be, sir?”

“He met me when I came in, an hour or so ago, and brought me over here. Big tall blond guy, brush cut? Did you see him come back here at any point?”

She shook her head slowly with an exaggerated swing from side to side. “Doesn’t sound familiar. One of our Supreme Court police?”