Supreme Justice (7 page)

The house smelled of sweat and urine, the latter probably courtesy of the barking terrier that came charging from the kitchen. The dog sprinted past her, as if to attack Reeder, but instead darted between his legs and outside.

As Rogers fanned her pistol around the room, a woman’s voice from the back of the house called, “Who is it? Butch, is that you? Damnit, don’t let
Yanni
out!”

The little dog, a vapor trail now, did bear a slight resemblance to that long-haired ancient musician.

“
Federal agents!”
Rogers announced, and the back of the house went still.

Then she heard a screen door slap shut somewhere back there. She turned to say something to Reeder, but he was already gone. Circling the house, she supposed, with his no gun and superior attitude.

Nothing to do but follow him, but when she got to the back of the house, Reeder was already three houses away, running through backyards, chasing a youngish long-haired white male in a wifebeater T-shirt and blue basketball shorts and Nikes.

She joined pursuit.

Cutting through yards, keeping them in sight, Rogers pushed herself to close the distance. The guy kept running, lank dark hair flying behind him, the older Reeder staying with the guy—hell, closing in on him.

Rogers was narrowing the distance, as well, but as they neared the end of the block, the guy abruptly stopped, turned to face Reeder, and was pulling something small and dark from the waistband of his shorts—
a revolver.

Yet Reeder still ran at the guy, suit coat flapping.

Didn’t he see it?

Feet planted, Rogers brought up her pistol, ready to take this prick down; but she couldn’t get a clear shot, not with Reeder between her and the target.

She tried to will Reeder to take one step to either side, so she could drill the guy, but he didn’t, and by the time she moved into a better line of fire, it would be too late to do anything for Reeder except maybe avenge him.

Then the ex–Secret Service agent took three more quick steps as the guy was bringing up the gun. Reeder made a whipping motion with his right hand, and something appeared there, like a magician producing a wand.

And it really was a wand, only there was nothing magical about it beyond its stopping power—Reeder had been carrying an ASP telescoping baton the entire time!

Just as the perp was about to squeeze the trigger, the baton struck. Reeder brought the thing down, and, even at this distance, she could hear the guy’s forearm snap; and then the perp was screaming, a wail that prefigured the police sirens that would surely follow. The revolver plopped to the grass as Reeder kept plowing forward, driving a shoulder into the perp’s gut, taking the man off his feet, going down with him, and landing with a
whump
, Reeder on top.

Rogers was running again, sprinting across a backyard to catch up. When she got there, Reeder was already pulling the guy to his feet, the perp’s wail replaced by moaning as he cradled his broken forearm.

Where had that baton come from? How had Reeder managed all that?

Rogers vowed that she would watch her new partner much closer from here on out.

She was getting cuffs out when Reeder said, “We won’t be needing those.”

“What the hell were you thinking?” she asked, surprised by her own shrillness.

Reeder was hauling the whimpering perp along by an elbow. “He took off, I took off.”

“You’re a
consultant,
remember?”

“Yes, and right now I’m consulting with Mr. Charles Granger here. That
is
you, isn’t it, Charles?”

“Fuck you, man! I ain’t done shit. I wanna doctor and a lawyer!”

“How about an Indian chief?” Reeder asked cheerfully, then shook him by that elbow like a rag doll. Granger’s eyes rolled, and he howled in pain.

“
Are
you Charles Granger?”

“Yeah, yes!
Gee
-sus!”

Reeder gave her a bland look. “Agent Rogers, meet Mr. Granger. Now I’ve consulted. Happy?”

“Delighted,” she said.

Nudging Granger back the way they had come, Reeder said to her, “Collect his gun, would you?”

Frowning to herself—
why was he suddenly in charge?
—she holstered her pistol and slipped on a latex glove, then bent down, picked up the revolver, and followed her partner and their catch.

With Reeder in the lead now, she wondered if her temp partner was going to cause her any real problems—like maybe get her killed. And she had thought Gabe
Sloan
was a handful of a partner . . .

Yet, for some reason, she was smiling. Pain in the ass or not, Joe Reeder was why they were heading back with, just possibly, one of Justice Henry Venter’s assassins.

And he had done this because she had spotted the key clue that brought them here.

Maybe they would make decent partners at that.

“Laws are made to protect the trusting as well as the suspicious.”

Hugo L. Black, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, 1937–1971, fifth-longest serving Supreme Court Justice.
Section 30, Lot 649-LH, Grid W/X-38.5, Arlington National Cemetery.

SEVEN

Through the one-way glass of the darkened observation room of the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, Reeder took stock of Charles Granger.

Slumped in a straight-back chair, right forearm in a cast, left hand cuffed to a metal ring in the scuffed metal table, the suspect flexed the fingers of both hands. He presented a blank mask of a face, though shifting eyes betrayed anxiety.

Given Granger’s hippie hair, this was not likely the “Butch” his mother had called out to, though of course it might be a childhood nickname.

The suspect had been given painkillers at the ER, but nothing narcotic—FBI orders. That meant Granger’s forearm would be throbbing like Reeder’s shoulder had that day he had taken a bullet for a president he despised.

Maybe he’d used excessive force with Granger—or what used to be considered such, before law enforcement had been granted so damn much latitude. He almost felt pity for the perp—
almost
.

This was, after all, an armed robber, a three-time loser circling the drain on the tavern holdups alone—a small-time stickup artist with the face that went with it: eyes crowding a frequently broken nose (boxing background or just bar fights?), his teeth crooked and yellowed from smoking and lack of care.

But was Charles Granger a murderer?

Wasn’t as if a hired killer couldn’t be a lowlife piece of scum. Few paid assassins were the glamorous figures of espionage fiction or even the real-life cold-blooded, blue-collar hit men who did contract work for organized crime.

No, Charles Granger did not seem to be somebody you might hire to kill a justice of the Supreme Court. Rather, he was the kind of slimeball you met in a bar and offered a few hundred bucks to, to kill your ex-wife who lived in a trailer.

Rogers entered the interview room, her eyes unreadable, her mouth a straight line. She tossed a folder onto the table before sitting opposite the suspect. She opened the folder, glanced at its contents, letting Granger know she was going over his rap sheet. Then she closed the file, placed both her hands flat on the table, and just looked at him, as if waiting for him to start the conversation.

Good
,
Reeder thought.

Granger tried to hold her gaze, but his defiance wilted, and he looked away.

Finally, in a voice as casual as a bored waitress taking an order, Rogers said, “You do know you’re screwed here, Charlie, don’t you?”

Granger was trembling, just a little, his mouth twitching. Just a little.

“Never mind repeat offender,” she said. “We’re talking murder . . .”

Granger straightened, his eyes flaring, as he reflexively drew his shackled arm closer, rattling the cuff chain.

“. . . and a
Supreme Court justice
at that. We’re talking a very special kind of screwed.”

“Wait, what?” Granger said, as alert as a deer about to get splattered by a truck.

Reading this guy’s surprise and alarm didn’t take kinesics training.

“You mean that shit on TV?” Granger asked. “Okay, that was a tavern stickup, but I didn’t have diddly to do with that one. Must be one of them copycats.”

Reeder smiled. This was a tacit admission that Granger was part of the two-man crew hitting bars in a multistate area.

“Okay, Charlie,” Rogers said. “If you had nothing to do with the Verdict robbery, you must have an alibi, right?”

“When . . . when was that?”

“Two nights ago.”

“. . . Home watching TV with my mom.”

“That’s what you want to go with? Your mom as your alibi?”

He raised the hand attached to the shackled wrist. “As God is my witness, it’s the goddamn honest truth, so help me God.”

That was a hell of a lot of
God
s.

But Rogers clearly didn’t buy it. Still, Reeder had been impressed by the relatively quick, confident way the suspect produced his for-shit alibi.

Hearing the observation booth door open, Reeder turned as Sloan and a shaft of light came in.

“Anything?” Sloan asked, letting the door close, returning Reeder to darkness as the SAIC took position next to him.

“Says he’s innocent,” Reeder said.

Sloan snorted a laugh. “Till we prove him guilty, he is.”

Rogers was saying, “No one else saw you that night? Just your mother?”

Glumly, Granger nodded.

Sloan said, “His mother is his alibi.”

Reeder wasn’t sure if that was a statement or a question.

“Yup,” Reeder said. “Bishop and Pellin get anything from her?”

“Old girl had the same story as her baby boy. They were watching
Forrest Gump
on TCM. Mom can barely get out of bed by herself. But Charlie is really a great, great help.”

“Our DC Homicide contingent get anything out of the visit, besides a worthless alibi?”

Sloan grinned that very white smile of his. “How about an AK-47 in a closet? Mom said Charlie must be holding it for a friend. Couldn’t possibly be his—he’s such a good boy. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“You sure they weren’t watching
Psycho
on TCM?” Reeder laughed, once. “I wonder if she thought he was a good boy when he went to juvie, or later, when he went to jail?”

The rhetorical question drew half a smile from Sloan. “Oh, she blames the bad crowd Charlie got in with for her boy’s troubles. That’s his only fault, you know—too trusting.”

“Ah,” Reeder said. “Her dog’s name is Yanni, but she called out for Butch. Do we know who that is?”

Sloan replenished his smile. “Mrs. Granger claims you heard her wrong. Says she never said ‘Butch.’ ”

“Gee, maybe it was my imagination. And Patti’s.”

“I’ve already turned Miguel Altuve loose on Granger’s known associates, cell mates, and so on to see if there’s a Butch in the mix.”

As if she’d been psychically eavesdropping on them, Rogers asked Granger, “Who’s Butch?”

Granger’s eyes narrowed, his ankles crossed, and he shrank into his chair as much as possible, cuffed to the table. His expression, open before, became guarded.

“I asked for a lawyer,” Granger said.

“I didn’t catch that.”

“Hell you didn’t! I told that asshole that fucked me up, by my house? That I wanted a doctor and a lawyer, and he just made a dumb-ass joke out of it.”

“No, we got you a doctor.” She smiled at his cast. “Remember?”

“I wanna lawyer up,” he said. “I’m no fool. I can tell when the shit’s gettin’ deep.”

“That right?”

“Hey, lady, people like me still got a
few
rights left in this country.”

Rogers picked up the folder, stood. “If I walk out that door, there’s no deal—not now, not ever. You get a lawyer, Charlie, we go to trial.”

Granger stared at her in silent sullen defiance.

“Okay,” she said pleasantly, “but here’s the thing: I’m FBI working with DC Homicide, and do you think we won’t figure out who Butch is? That we don’t find him, bring him in, and offer
him
a deal to roll over on
you?
First-degree murder of a Supreme Court justice. That’s a federal crime, Charlie—slam dunk lethal injection.”

She went to the door, taking her time, and was halfway out before Granger cracked.

“Goddamnit, god fucking
damnit
!
” Granger yowled. He slammed his cuffed fist on the table. “I’ll talk. I’ll empty out the damn bog for you bastards. But I want
full
immunity first. I won’t say a word more till I got it in writing.”

If Granger and Butch were in fact the Verdict bandits, then Rogers was about to make a very good deal, since
Butch
was the suspected shooter. And Granger’s eagerness to talk was damn near a confession . . . and yet . . . and yet . . .

Rogers was back at the table in an instant, ready to deal.

Sloan’s cell chirped. He withdrew it from his jacket pocket, listened for a moment, then his eyes widened. He rapped on the glass, hard, and Rogers’s head snapped toward the sound behind the mirrored surface.

“What?” Reeder asked his friend.

But Sloan, still on the phone, raised a dismissive hand; listening, he made his way out into the hallway. Reeder exited the booth just as Rogers left the interview room, abandoning a pop-eyed Granger to wonder what the hell was up.

Soon, in the corridor, an impromptu conference was under way.

“Gabe,” Rogers demanded, “what the hell? I
had
him. He was just about to give us Butch!”

Sloan shook his head. “He was about to enter into a negotiation that means hours of lawyers and paperwork.”

“Okay, but then we would have
had
his accomplice.”

Sloan was as calm as a priest giving communion. “We’ll have him anyway. We don’t need Granger. Altuve has identified Butch.”

She frowned. “How?”

“Tracked him through Granger’s file. He and Charlie go way back, clear to juvie days.” Sloan showed them both a mug shot on his cell phone, a baby-faced man with a Curly Howard haircut. “Meet Dwight Brooks—‘Butch.’ ”

Rogers was shaking her head. “But I made a deal with Granger—”

“You haven’t made any deal. It wasn’t even an offer yet. And now that we know that we don’t need him? Good-bye, Charlie.”

“Gabe, we just
can’t
—”

“Patti,” he said, voice sharper, “if we don’t have to do an immunity deal with the accomplice to Justice Venter’s killer, that’s a good thing. That’s a
great
thing.”

She was still not sold. “I am just not
comfortable
with—”

Sloan’s blue eyes, usually so calm, flashed. “Do you think the public will be comfortable, seeing one of this pair walk, even if it does put the Justice’s literal killer away? Now
both
Granger and Brooks can feel the full measure of the federal government’s displeasure. Understood?”

A vein pulsing in her neck, her entire body rigid, she said, “Understood.”

Sloan gave her a businesslike smile. “You stay with Granger. Keep at him. Tell him we can’t accept any kind of plea bargain without knowing more.”

“He’ll probably go back to demanding a lawyer.”

“Then get him one. Patti, we don’t need his ass. Not anywhere except in a cell. As for Brooks, we have an address, and Peep and I will go calling.”

This was rightly Rogers’s duty, but she said nothing.
She’s good at suppressing rage,
Reeder thought.
Till the day her heart explodes.

Reeder said, “You should take Patti, Gabe—hell, I’m not even armed. No way I want a repeat of what happened this morning.”

Sloan shook his head. “I want you along to give me a preliminary read on Brooks when we haul him in.”

“Then don’t waste Patti’s time here. We all
three
should go.”

“No,” Sloan said. “I want an FBI presence here with Granger.” He withdrew a Glock from his suit coat pocket and handed it to Reeder. “Now you’re armed.”

“Thanks, no. I’ve got my baton.”

“Take it.”

Reeder sighed, accepted the weapon, checked the safety, then slipped it into his waistband.

“We’ll take backup,” Sloan said reassuringly. “Patti, stay at it.”

Rogers nodded, expressionless, and headed back into the interview room.

Sloan drove Reeder back to the Huntington section of Fairfax County, the same mostly low- to middle-class white housing area where Granger’s mother resided. Brooks rented half a duplex on Virginia 241, less than ten miles south and west of Granger’s home.

On the way, Sloan contacted the two Homeland Security agents to back them up—Jessica Cribbs and Walter Eaton, the former that attractive brunette friend of Rogers’s, the latter the jackass who hated Reeder’s guts.

Great.

But when they pulled up, there was no sign of Cribbs and Eaton. Reeder and Sloan sat in their unmarked Ford for a while, taking stock of Butch’s homestead. The contractor had apparently run low on funds after erecting the brick first floor, an aluminum-sided second story seemingly set on top by mistake. While the apartment on the duplex’s right had a nice white-railed front stoop, the left side had an aluminum-sided front porch slapped on as an afterthought.

Sloan nodded. “Brooks is in the shithole on the left.”

“He in there?”

Sloan opened his door. “We’ll know soon enough.”

Reeder, who had thought they were awaiting the arrival of the Homeland Security agents, lagged a little getting out, before falling in at Sloan’s side as they headed toward the Brooks half of the duplex. Both men got out their pistols.

Reeder whispered, “Where the hell are Cribbs and Eaton?”

Sloan said, “They’ll be here—there’s an alley behind the house. Hell, man, this morning really shook you up, didn’t it?”

Reeder said nothing.

“Anyway,” Sloan was saying, “you ever know one of those Homeland guys to be late for anything?”

“I know one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Eaton is a prick.”

“Ah, but a punctual prick,” Sloan said, waving his cell as it beeped. “That’s his text—he and Cribbs are in position.”

“They coming in from the back?”

“Yeah,” Sloan said. “They’ll take the first floor. You and I will go in and make sure our guy isn’t in the living room, then head upstairs and clear the second floor.”

They approached the front door carefully, Sloan in front, pistol up. Reeder kept his gun pointed down.

Unlike this morning, no screen protected Brooks’s front door, nor was it unlocked. But it was ancient enough that a credit card could open it, and that’s what Sloan used.

Nodding to a silent beat, Sloan mouthed,
one, two
. . .

On
three,
the SAIC opened the door wide, barging into the living room, Glock leveled before him. Falling in behind, Reeder was greeted by the smell of day-old pizza. A second-floor stairway was immediately to the right as you came in, while the living room was home to assorted scattered crap, including fast-food bags and piled pizza boxes.

Seconds later, Cribbs and Eaton came in from the back.

Eaton drew very close to Sloan and whispered: “His car’s in the alley. Probably home.”