Joseph Finder - Guilty Minds

Mandy: When did this happen?

Abelard: Oh, jeez, this must have been fifty, sixty years ago. Could it be sixty? I suppose that’s right. Sixty. I was a young officer — in my midtwenties, must have been.

Mandy: (inaudible)

Abelard: Oh, I knew him from the neighborhood. He was a good kid. We all knew he was a good kid. I always thought he’d either end up doing great things or wind up getting killed. [Laughs]

Mandy: (inaudible)

Abelard: Oh, I had no idea.

Mandy: Why are you willing to talk about it now?

Abelard: Because I always knew I done a bad thing, covering it up. A wrong thing. I just thought I had a good reason to do it. (inaudible) Because his sister got raped. And when he found out about it, he went out and found the guy who did it and... he killed the man.

Mandy: How?

Abelard: A gun he must have bought on the street. It was easy to buy a gun on the street in those days, if you knew the right people.

Mandy: But how did you find out about it?

Abelard: His poor sister told her mother, and her mother told someone, and — I always had my ear to the ground. I had my sources, I had people in the community who’d talk to me, and... (inaudible) how I did my job... I tracked him down and I said, “Young man, is it true?” And he was crying and weeping and... he told me he didn’t think anyone would do anything about it. He didn’t think the rapist would ever be arrested. I told him he was wrong, he should have trusted the legal system, but... but when I thought about it some more I realized, he was probably right. The rapist would probably have gotten away with it.

Mandy: (inaudible)

Abelard: Only his mother and his sister knew what he’d done. And I felt for the kid. And for his sister. The goddamned rapist had a rap sheet longer than his cankered dick. Pardon my French. Really bad news. So I made a decision. It would go no further. If he didn’t tell anyone what he’d done, it would be like it never happened. Well, his mother died, and his sister died. I’m the only one left who knows. And I don’t have much time. And I just — I just want to do the right thing.

I didn’t have an appointment, so I had to wait on one of the sharp-edged white leather sofas in the hard and glassy waiting area for almost fifteen minutes.

He came out to meet me himself, not his receptionist, which was unusual.

“Gideon,” I said, “we have a lot to talk about.”

The whole point was to discredit Mandy Seeger, wasn’t it?” I said.

I’d laid out everything I had on him, and now we were talking man-to-man. I wasn’t wearing a wire; I’d given him my word on that. I made it clear that his best chance was to talk me through what had gone down.

Gideon looked visibly deflated, and ten years older.

He hesitated. “And Slander Sheet.”

“You knew she was about to open that box. So you fed her a juicier story. Which was poisoned bait.”

“Dear God, Nick, I didn’t think — this is not the way it was supposed to play out. What they did to that girl — I had no idea. It sickens me.”

“How did you know Mandy was about to talk to that old cop?”

“I still know people in Anacostia, Nick. I lived in fear of it coming out. I didn’t even know Officer Abelard was still alive. He must be close to ninety.”

“But there must have been rumors.”

“There were always rumors. People knew my sister Olivia was raped when I was a teenager. I–I had such a temper back then. And you have to understand the times. When Olivia told me what had happened, I was sure he’d get away with it. He was a white man, after all. Is Mandy — Nick, is she going to use this story?”

“Of course she is. Ellen Wiley is paying her, and it’s going to run in Slander Sheet. The whole story, beginning to end. Starting with the man you killed when you were sixteen. Are you going to deny it?”

“What if I did? You know how people are. They’ll always believe the accusation against the so-called great man. That’s what our society has come to. That’s our culture. I never intended anything bad to happen to that poor girl. I never — never — thought anyone would be killed. My reputation — my honor — is vitally important to me.”

“I understand. You know, Mandy didn’t realize it was you.”

“But it was only a matter of time before she found out.”

I nodded. On the drive, I’d thought about what I was going to say. I’d put most of it together, but not all.

Two months ago, Mandy had heard a rumor about how some grand poobah, some Washington insider, had killed a man decades ago, but the murder was covered up. It sounded like a story for Slander Sheet, but it could also have been nothing, a waste of time. She made some calls. Located the source, a long-retired policeman now dying in a nursing home.

But she never got the chance to talk to the old cop, because a far more exciting story had presented itself. A story about a Supreme Court justice and a call girl. The story was false, of course, but it was made to withstand normal fact-checking by any good journalist.

It was also designed to fall apart when a dedicated, high-powered investigator dug into it. The story was made to collapse, to discredit both the journalist and the website. That had been my role. To undermine the story.

So that no one would ever believe anything this journalist ever wrote again. Or anything that appeared on this website.

It had almost worked.

“So what happened, Gideon? One night you and Jeremiah Claflin put away a bottle of Old Overholt between you, and it comes out. Anacostia. This incident from all those years ago...?”

He stared impassively. A pause. “WhistlePig.”

“Sorry?”

He spoke almost mechanically. “It wasn’t Old Overholt. That’s not my brand. The bottle in my office, that was a gift.”

“And a few years later, Claflin’s now the golden boy. He’s the one being put up for the top job. You’re not in the inner circle of consideration any longer. How’d that happen? Did Claflin whisper to one of the kingmakers that Gideon Parnell had a dark spot on his biographical X-ray?”

I waited. Gideon was silent for a long time. At last he said, his deep voice hushed, “I can’t be sure. I’ve always wondered.”

“And it ate at you, I’m sure. Which is why Claflin’s name had to be dragged through the shit before he was vindicated. In your campaign to bring down Slander Sheet. And you know, the thing is, Gideon — you’re probably too old to be named to the court. After all that.”

Gideon just looked wounded. I thought of what my father had said. It’s always your friends who do you in . Maybe that wasn’t about himself after all.

“Vogel had probably done investigations for the firm, right?”

Gideon nodded. But his mind was somewhere far away. “The evil that men do lives after them,” he said. “The good is oft interred with their bones.”

I’d heard that before. “If you mean killing your sister’s rapist, I think people will understand why you did what you did. You did a bad thing for a good reason.”

“Do you know who Wilbur Mills was?”

“Yeah, vaguely. A congressman. A stripper named Fanne Foxe, the Tidal Basin, a sex scandal.”

“And all anyone remembers about him is the sex scandal that ended his career. Then there’s Clark Clifford.”