Fugitive: A Novel Read online

  “This is John Walsdorf, Charlie,” Sally said. “He manages the club.”

  Behind the club manager were two hefty security guards dressed in blue blazers, black turtlenecks, and gray slacks. They fixed on Delmar and Werner, who paid no attention to them.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Sun,” said Walsdorf, a short, balding man with a narrow mustache, whose paunch was hidden under a buttoned suit jacket. He eyed Charlie’s bodyguard and Gary’s scary companion nervously.

  “It’s a privilege to be invited to speak at this august institution,” Charlie brown-nosed.

  “We’ve already got a good crowd,” Walsdorf told him.

  “Great,” Mickey Keys chimed in.

  “Why don’t I show you where you’re going to speak?” Sally offered.

  She started toward the front door of the clubhouse, then froze. Walsdorf followed her gaze and saw a tall, broad-shouldered man bearing down on them from the direction of the parking lot. He recognized him immediately.

  United States Congressman Arnold Pope Jr. was an ex-Marine and he looked like he was still in training. His stride was purposeful and his brown eyes were fixed on his wife. The open top button of his dress shirt, the tie that hung at half-mast, and the congressman’s flushed face were hints that Pope was not in full control of his emotions.

  “Is this the latest boyfriend?” Pope barked angrily.

  Sally stared at him with disdain. “I didn’t know you planned to join us, Arnie.”

  “Caught off guard?” Pope said.

  “Not in the least, dear. You know you’re always welcome to join me. The only surprise is that you’ve shown up at something I’m hosting. I see so little of you.”

  Pope shifted his attention to Charlie. “You’re the guru, right?”

  Charlie laughed nervously. “That’s what the newspapers are calling me.”

  “What does your religion say about adultery?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You heard me, you little prick.”

  “Do we have to do this here?” Sally asked.

  “Where do you want to do it, in our bedroom or this punk’s hotel room?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sally answered coldly.

  Pope pulled an envelope from his suit jacket’s inside pocket and took a stack of photographs out of it. Pope held up a snapshot that showed Charlie and Sally groping each other in the foyer of the Popes’ home. Seconds after Sally realized that the shot had been taken through one of her front windows, Pope threw the photographs at her. Then he punched Charlie in the face.

  The limo driver rushed out of the way. Charlie staggered into Delmar. Delmar pulled Charlie behind him and hit the congressman in the solar plexus. Pope dropped to one knee seconds before one of the security guards slammed into Delmar, who brought his knee up between the guard’s legs. The guard turned pale and Delmar swung him into his partner, who crashed into Werner Rollins.

  John Walsdorf scurried to safety and tripped, tumbling to the ground. Delmar and Werner Rollins were fighting with the security guards in the area between the turnaround and the parking lot. The crowd cleared a space around them. Charlie and Gary Hass backed around the traffic circle until they were far enough from the fight to be cloaked in shadow. Walsdorf saw Rollins knock one of the guards to the asphalt, making sure the guard was down, before joining Gary and Charlie.

  Seconds later, Walsdorf saw Delmar Epps deliver a high karate kick to the head of the other security guard. Delmar watched the guard crumple to the pavement, then joined the group standing in the shadows just as Arnold Pope swore at Charlie and charged.

  “Don’t, Arnie!” Sally yelled.

  The club manager saw flame flash from the general area where Charlie was standing just before Sally reached the congressman. An instant later a gunshot silenced the crowd. Arnold Pope stopped moving. He looked stunned. Then he staggered forward a few paces, wobbled in place, and stared at his shirt-front, which was slowly turning red. Pope dropped to his knees. A woman screamed. Sally ran to her husband. Delmar yelled, “Go, go.” Walsdorf heard car doors slam. Seconds later, the limo drove away but Walsdorf didn’t look to see where it was going. He was staring at Arnold Pope Jr., who showed no signs of life.

  Twenty-five minutes later, John Walsdorf learned that one of the officers had found an ivory-handled Ruger .357 Magnum Vaquero revolver lying in the shadows where Charlie Marsh had been standing.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Westmont Country Club complex straddled two counties. Most of the members lived in populous, urban Multnomah County, but most of the club grounds, including the clubhouse, were in Washington County, where sprawling bedroom communities, high-tech companies, and large areas of farmland coexisted uneasily. Karl Burdett was an athletic thirty-two-year-old with sandy blond hair and a confident smile. The newly elected district attorney for Washington County, a staunch conservative, had narrowly defeated a moderate candidate in last fall’s election. His most important backer was Arnold Pope Sr., and Burdett had jumped into his car as soon as the wealthiest man in the county summoned him.

  Of course, Pope had not summoned the DA himself. The call had come from Derrick Barclay, Pope’s personal assistant, a pompous little man whose presence set Burdett’s teeth on edge. Barclay had not told the district attorney why his employer wanted the audience and had not bothered to inquire whether the suggested time was convenient. He had assumed—quite correctly—that Burdett would cancel any conflicting appointments.

  Even though Barclay had not stated the reason for the meeting, Burdett knew why Pope wanted to talk to him. The district attorney was charged with convicting Arnold Pope Jr.’s killer, and the old man was going to demand to be involved in the prosecution. Senior would never be put off by the quaint idea that the manipulation of the justice system by a private citizen was highly improper.

  Senior had constructed his manor house of slate-gray Tenino sandstone on a high bluff overlooking the Columbia River. With its roof of red tile and parklike grounds, the mansion looked friendly and noble and had none of the personality of its owner. The grounds were surrounded by an ivy-covered brick wall that kept out the riffraff. Burdett used the call box at the gate and was admitted to the grounds. Derrick Barclay was waiting at the carved-oak front door. He was five feet eight, narrow, and had a pale complexion. Barclay’s lips were forever pursed, as if to let the world know that he found everything he encountered distasteful.

  “Mr. Pope will see you in the study,” he said in a clipped, British accent. Burdett was tempted to answer, “Jolly good,” until he remembered that Barclay had the ear of his biggest campaign contributor.

  Arnold Pope Sr. was pacing back and forth on a Persian rug when Barclay showed the DA into a high-ceilinged, book-lined room. A stone fireplace occupied one wall and a leaded-glass window looked out on a garden. Pope was a bear of a man, who had invested the money he made in timber in several fledgling high-tech companies that were now industry leaders. When the timber industry took a nose dive, Senior didn’t blink.

  “Do you have him?” Pope asked without preamble.

  “No, sir, but every law enforcement agency in the country is looking for Marsh. He won’t stay lost long.”

  “What about that woman? Is she in custody?”

  Burdett’s brow furrowed. “What woman?”

  Pope stopped pacing. “That gold-digging bitch he married, the person who’s responsible for my son’s murder.”

  “Sally Pope?” Burdett asked, puzzled by the suggestion that Junior’s wife had anything to do with the murder. “A number of very credible witnesses saw her when the congressman was shot. No one saw her with a gun.”

  Pope glared at the district attorney. “Please don’t play stupid, Karl. You do know about ‘aiding and abetting’ and ‘conspiracy,’ or didn’t you pay attention in your criminal-law class?”

  Burdett flushed. “I know you’re upset but you don’t have to insult me.”

  “I’ll do more than ins
ult you if the people who killed my boy escape justice.”

  “I can’t just arrest Sally, Mr. Pope. There’s no evidence indicating that she’s guilty of murder.”

  “Then you haven’t heard about the note?”

  “What note?”

  “The one found in my son’s Washington, DC, office.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “You do know about the photographs?”

  “Of course. We collected all of them from the crime scene.”

  “They were sent to Arnold along with a note. His aide delivered the envelope. My son left the note on his desk when he rushed to the airport. The FBI has it.”

  Burdett didn’t bother to ask how Senior knew about an ongoing FBI investigation about which he—the head law-enforcement official in the county and the person in charge of the murder investigation—knew nothing. Senior didn’t just contribute to local political races. His tentacles reached to the top tiers of the Washington hierarchy.

  Pope pressed a button on his desk and Barclay hustled in, carrying a fax. Pope nodded toward the district attorney and Barclay handed the document to Burdett. It was a photocopy of a note constructed from letters cut out of magazines and pasted onto a piece of paper. The note read: THEY’LL BE TOGETHER AT THE WESTMONT TOMORROW NIGHT AT THE GURU’S SEMINAR.

  “I don’t see how this note implicates Sally Pope,” Burdett said after studying the fax. “The pictures show her having an illicit relationship with Marsh. Why would she send it?”

  Pope smiled, but there was no humor in his smile. “You don’t know my daughter-in-law very well, Karl. She is a devious, scheming whore. She knew you would see it this way. Who could suspect her of tipping off her husband about her affair?”

  The smile disappeared. “Think, Karl. She used the note and the pictures to enrage Arnold, knowing he would rush back to Oregon to confront her. They set him up to be killed. And she set up Marsh to take the fall for her.”

  “That’s an interesting theory, but I can’t arrest Sally without proof.”

  Pope’s smile reappeared. “Oh, there’s proof that she was a conspirator in the plot to kill my boy. There’s more than enough proof. The FBI found fingerprints on the note. Guess who they belong to?”

  CHAPTER 17

  In his youth, Frank Jaffe had been a brawler and carouser; a man’s man with a ruddy complexion and the thick muscles of a stevedore. He believed wholeheartedly that a woman’s place was in the home, where she did womanly things like cooking and raising the children. Men, on the other hand, worked long hours to support their families and played with their children when time permitted. Then his world turned upside down.

  Samantha was twenty when she died giving birth to Amanda. How did a man raise a baby—and a girl baby at that—when he didn’t even know how to change a diaper? That was just one of a thousand questions Frank had asked himself during the grief-filled days that followed his wife’s death and his sudden plunge into fatherhood. Frank had to answer these questions quickly. When a baby is screaming there’s not much time for in-depth research.

  Frank was a great father, even during the insane years when he was attending law school at night, working all day, and thanking God that his parents were overjoyed to babysit Amanda. When he started Jaffe, Katz, Lehane and Brindisi with some classmates from law school, he had nothing in his life except work and his daughter. Frank never remarried, because he’d never had the time for a serious relationship and he’d rarely found anyone who could measure up to Samantha. On the one occasion he’d come close, his devotion to his work and his child had created a rift that could not be mended.

  Frank had written off romance by the time he entered the fourth decade of his life. Then his secretary ushered Sally Pope into his office and Frank felt like a virginal teenager who has just been introduced to the head cheerleader.

  “I assume you know who I am,” Sally said as soon as they were alone.

  Frank smiled. “Anyone who watches television or reads a newspaper knows who you are, Mrs. Pope. You are notorious.”

  Sally laughed and Frank heard church bells chime. Her eyes laughed, too. Her caramel-colored hair shimmered.

  “I guess I am notorious,” Sally said. “The papers talk about me as if I’m one of those femme fatales from the old black-and-white films.”

  “Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon or Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity,” Frank agreed.

  Sally looked directly into Frank’s eyes. “There is one difference between me and those ladies of the cinema, Mr. Jaffe. I am not a murderer.”

  “Does someone think you are?”

  “My father-in-law, Arnold Pope Sr., is doing everything in his power to see that I’m charged with murdering my husband. And—before we go any further—I need to know if that’s a problem.”

  Frank was confused. “If what’s a problem?”

  “If you take my case, you’ll have to go up against Senior. He’s a formidable opponent. I know that from experience. He also owns a lot of people. I need to know if he owns you or if you’re afraid of him.”

  “I barely know Mr. Pope.” Frank smiled. “We don’t exactly run in the same circles. And, from what I’ve heard, I doubt I’d like him very much if I did get to know him.”

  “Then you’ll take my case?”

  “Is there a case? Have you been charged?”

  “Not yet. But I have friends who have friends and I’ve been warned that Karl Burdett has convened a grand jury with me as its target.”

  “Have the police or a prosecutor tried to speak to you?” Frank asked.

  “I was interviewed at the club when Arnie was shot. It never entered my head that I’d need a lawyer, then. A detective came to my house yesterday but I’d been alerted to the investigation so I refused to talk to him. That’s when I asked around and got your name.”

  “Before we go any further, we need to discuss the business side of my representation. Are you aware of the expense involved in defending a murder case?”

  “I don’t care about the expense.”

  “I’ll need a $100,000 retainer for my fees, investigation, and expert witnesses,” Frank said. “The case could get even more expensive.”

  “That won’t be a problem. I’ll bring in a cashier’s check tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Now that you’re officially my client, it’s time for me to give you my lawyer speech. I give it to every client and you shouldn’t take anything I say personally. But you should take what I say to heart because misunderstanding our relationship as attorney and client can land you in a lot of trouble.

  “Now, anything you tell me is confidential with only a few exceptions which we can talk about later. So, if you tell me you did kill your husband…”

  “Which I did not.”

  Frank nodded. “But if you did and you confessed to me, I would never tell anyone what you told me. On the other hand, I’m an officer of the court, so I can’t let you commit perjury. If you tell me you did kill Congressman Pope I can’t let you get on the stand and swear you were in Idaho at the time of the shooting. I wouldn’t tell on you, but—if you refused to recant—I’d be forced to drop your case and I will keep your retainer.”

  “Mr. Jaffe, let’s get this out of the way once and for all. I did not kill my husband or have anything to do with his death. Anyone who says I did is lying. If any evidence implicates me, you can be certain it’s been fabricated. I am completely, one hundred percent innocent.”

  “Then why is Karl Burdett convening a grand jury?”

  “I honestly don’t know. All the newspapers say that Charlie Marsh shot Arnie.”

  “Maybe Burdett is working on a conspiracy or aiding-and-abetting theory. If Charlie Marsh fired the shot that killed your husband but you assisted him in his plan, the law considers you to be as guilty as the person who fired the shot.”

  “Charlie and I never discussed murdering my husband.”

  “Then you know Marsh?”

  Sally paused. “I’m not a
good person, Mr. Jaffe. I’ve cheated on my husband many times. I was cheating on him with Charlie Marsh. But I loved Arnie. I know that sounds contradictory but our relationship was complicated, and Senior is responsible for that.”

  “Why don’t you explain what was going on.”

  “I’m what people of breeding call trailer trash.” Sally laughed bitterly. “The description is pretty accurate. A good part of my early years was spent in trailer parks. My father was someone passing through town, so I have no idea who he is. My mother was a drunk, but in a dark tavern, after a guy had downed a few, she was an attractive enough drunk to catch a few men before they realized how bad a bargain they’d made. Then she’d be out in the cold again, looking for shelter and the next bottle.

  “I grew up fast. I know now that I’ve got a pretty good mind, but while I was growing up the boys were never interested in that part of my anatomy.” Sally laughed again, self-consciously. “My mother was my role model. I was the high school slut and a high school dropout, and I used sex to get what I wanted. The one thing I did right was waiting to get knocked up until I met someone with money. And that’s where Arnie comes in.

  “Senior convinced him to enlist after college because being a Marine would look good when Arnie ran for office—something Senior started working for on the day Arnie was born. But Senior screwed up. When Arnie went into the Marines it was the first time in his life that he was out from under his father’s thumb.

  “Arnie was at Camp Pendleton completing his Marine Infantry Training. I was working in a restaurant near the base. He came in a few times on leave and we started dating. Freud might say that our courtship was Arnie’s way of rebelling against his father. I was a waitress with no education to speak of, someone he knew his father would loathe.”