Murder at Ford's Theatre - Margaret Truman [114]
“See you in the morning?” Klayman asked.
“Sure. Hathaway’s putting us on that drug rubout that went down yesterday in Southeast.”
Klayman didn’t voice his displeasure at being assigned to another case. He was an MPD soldier, not a general. He took orders, didn’t give them. But there would be other days off, and other nights to pursue the truth in Nadia Zarinski’s murder.
“Glad you enjoyed the Swamp Thing, Mo. I had pasta. It was delicious.”
“You’re all meat and potatoes, Rick. Bye.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CLARISE WAS DRAINED of energy and emotion as she walked through the door of her home, locked the door behind her, dropped her bag and shed her shoes in the foyer, and walked numbly into the living room. Monday was the housekeeper’s night off. Although Clarise welcomed the solitude, the live-in maid’s absence cast a cold, empty pall over the house as though no one had ever lived there, an empty shell without the smell or heat of another human being. She looked at the furniture, and the drapes, down at the carpet and up to a chandelier. What were those things? They silently surrounded her, mute, inanimate witnesses to the hollowness she felt.
She fell on a couch and stared up at the ceiling. She’d dreaded the press conference but had managed to get through it. She resented her former husband’s aristocratic, staunch stance at the microphone, in charge and cocksure, the practiced inflection of his voice honed by thousands of speeches over the course of his political career. She was aware of Annabel’s presence but realized asking her to be there had wasted her friend’s time. No distant moral support could have helped ease her fears and anxiety, nor her anger at having been placed in such an untenable position.
Once they were in the house, she’d suggested to her former husband that they visit Jeremiah in the jail, but he dismissed the notion as having come from a demented mind. “That’s all we need,” he’d said, “having our pictures splashed all over front pages going into a jailhouse. Stop and think, Clarise. Damn it, stop and think before you say or do anything.”
Now, at home, she closed her eyes and was on the verge of unconsciousness when the phone rang. She hadn’t bothered checking the answering machine, although she’d thought about it. There would be dozens of messages, most from the press, and from others with whom she had no interest in speaking.
Her eyes snapped open, and she absently reached for an extension near her head.
“Clarise. It’s Sydney.”
She couldn’t stop the words: “Oh, my God, what do you want?”
“To see you.”
“Sydney, I—”
“Don’t put me off, Clarise. Do not do that.”
Was he drunk? She’d never heard him use that tone of voice.
“What do you want, Sydney? Can’t it wait?”
“No, Clarise, it cannot wait. Your confirmation hearing looms, does it not?”
“Wednesday.”
“I’m certain you don’t want to do anything to lessen your chances of confirmation.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I’m speaking common sense, Clarise, giving you good advice. Is anyone there at the house with you?”
“No. The maid is—”
“I will be there in twenty minutes.”
He hung up hard.
A sense of panic consumed her. She wouldn’t let him in. She turned off the lamp and stood in darkness, in the middle of the room. Lights from the street played on the drapes; muffled car horns could be heard—the nighttime sound of a freight train behind the family farm in Ohio came and went, as though she were a girl again lying