Meredith Fletcher - Vendetta

Three days later, still working in the borrowed office and aware that David Gracelyn and Christine Evans were getting a little impatient despite their best efforts, Winter was starting to think that she was on a snipe hunt. Marion Gracelyn had angered a lot of politicians over the years, and one of them had finally killed her in a fit of pique. He’d been the only real enemy Winter had turned up.

Her inability to find anything was wearing at her confidence. Maybe she wasn’t the person for the job. Maybe David Gracelyn didn’t have anything to worry about.

Then the word Murder on a news clipping caught Winter’s eye. She reached down into the box where a notebook had fallen open to reveal a news story.

The notebook wasn’t actually one of Marion’s. It belonged to Adam Gracelyn, her husband. Some of his things had evidently gotten mixed up with his wife’s over the years.

Winter placed the notebook on the desk and leafed through the pages till she came to the news story she’d spotted. It was dated Thursday, May 16, 1968. The headline screamed:

Vietnam War Hero Found Murdered

Early this morning Thomas Jefferson Marker, a decorated ex-Army colonel in the Vietnam War, was shot to death by an unidentified woman in the Kellogg Motel near Laveen.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office responded to calls reporting gunfire at the motel but officers arrived too late to save Marker’s life. Deputies took the unidentified young woman into custody at the scene.

Many people across the United States know of Colonel Marker’s heroic efforts in Vietnam to bring back American soldiers held in prisoner-of-war camps.

“He was a great man,” Beverly Sorensen, a Cincinnati mother, said when interviewed this morning. “He brought our son home to us when we thought he was lost to us forever. He brought a lot of sons and daddies home from that awful place.”

In their war on crime, the district attorney’s office had their newest recruit, Miss Marion Hart, in the field last night. Ms. Hart, a life-long resident of Phoenix, arrived shortly after the murder.

“We’re working leads now,” Ms. Hart said at the scene. “The district attorney’s office will get to the bottom of it.”

A picture accompanied the story. It showed Marion Hart standing in front of a low-rent motel. Behind her, two men rolled a sheet-covered body out on a gurney. Deputy sheriffs holding shotguns flanked her.

According to Winter’s timeline, Marion had been twenty-eight years old. She hadn’t yet married Adam Gracelyn. But the two had known each other. According to the news story, Adam Gracelyn had become the woman’s defense attorney.

That must have been some meeting.

Intrigued, Winter kept reading.

Outside Laveen, Arizona

Thursday, May 16, 1968

The Past

The ringing blasted Marion Hart into wakefulness. She groaned and rolled over in bed, then reached for the phone on the nightstand. As she pulled the receiver to her ear, her brain kicked to life.

The soft green glow of the uranium-tipped hands of the alarm clock showed the time was 3:41 a.m.

She’d gotten two hours of sleep. She sat up with her back against the headboard and said, “Marion Hart.”

“Marion, did I wake you?”

She recognized District Attorney Geoffrey Turnbull’s gravelly voice immediately. Adrenaline thudded through her body. During the seven weeks she’d been with the district attorney’s office, Turnbull had never called her in the middle of the night.

They’d attended one of the mayor’s political campaign functions earlier. No, she told herself. That was yesterday.

But God help her, that didn’t feel like yesterday. It felt like minutes ago.

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

“Sorry,” Turnbull said. He was in his fifties and had held the office of district attorney for seven years. He’d been an A.D.A. before that and was a fishing buddy of Marion’s father. According to the local gossip, that was one of the main reasons Turnbull had hired her into the D.A.’s office.

“It’s all right,” Marion said. “I was only…sleeping.”

Turnbull chuckled. “I was, too, when I got the call.”

“What call, sir?”

“Stop calling me ‘sir.’”

“Yes, sir.” Marion had tried. She didn’t automatically give a lot of men respect, and she didn’t give many offices immediate respect, either. Turnbull was a lot like her dad, though, and she gave men like that respect.

Turnbull sighed. “I hate to ask this, Marion, but I need you to handle something. I hadn’t planned on a murder taking place when I spent last night drinking. Driving over to cover this is out of the question. I’m still half in the bag.”

Marion wanted to say, Only half? But she didn’t. Turnbull was well-known for his drinking proclivity, though he’d never let it interfere with his job. A lot of deals were made over drinks and cigars. Marion knew that from waiting tables to put herself through law school.

“And I damn sure didn’t think a celebrity would go and get himself killed,” Turnbull added.

“‘Celebrity’?” Marion repeated. The part about the killing didn’t surprise her. A phone call late at night had already brought that possibility to mind. No one called the D.A.’s office at night to ask legal questions.

“An honest-to-God war hero.” Papers rustled. “His name’s— was—Tom Marker. He was a colonel in the army. Have you heard of him?”

“Yes.” It would have been hard not to have heard of the man. Marker had brought back Brian Ellis, the scion of the Ellis airline empire, only a year or so ago. The story of the father and son’s reunion after nearly eighteen months in a Vietcong war prison had been in all the papers and on television. “Who killed him?”

“A woman. The sheriff’s office caught her at the scene.”

Marion switched on the lamp next to her bed. The bright light hurt her eyes. She opened the nightstand drawer and took out a notebook and pen.

The notebook was a five-by-seven bound edition. All the pages were numbered. That had been one of the things Turnbull had insisted on when she accepted the job. Everything was written in bound notebooks and with a pen. The notebooks were part of the evidence chain the prosecutor’s office might have to provide.

Marion turned to a clean page and made a notation of the day and time. She wrote Tom Marker’s name, then Death Investigation.

“Do we know who the woman is?” Marion asked.

“Not yet, A.D.A. Hart,” Turnbull replied. She heard the grin in his words. “That’s going to be one of the first things you need to let me know. In the morning. I’m going back to bed. From what Fred Keller says, this thing should be a slam-dunk. If you need anything, try to wait till morning. I’m going to be hungover as hell and I have to be in front of Judge Ferguson at ten o’clock for an arraignment.”

“All right. But what am I supposed to—”

“Just get to the Kellogg Motel, Counselor. Talk to Fred. He’ll walk you through the crime scene. Oh, and take your camera. The sheriff’s office will have a photographer there taking pictures, but I always like to have our own photos in a murder investigation. Especially if it involves celebrities. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Turnbull hung up before Marion could say anything. She took the phone from her ear and stared at it for a moment.

Then the shock wore off and excitement flared again. A murder. And Turnbull was letting her handle it. Grinning, she cradled the phone and climbed out of bed. She grabbed a suit from the closet on her way to the apartment’s tiny bathroom.

It was her first murder case. And she’d take a slam-dunk any day. Court cases were all about the win.