Murder at Ford's Theatre - Margaret Truman [40]
“Oh, by the way,” Klayman said, “I also spoke with the deceased’s faculty adviser at American. Kind of interesting what she said. She says Ms. Zarinski wasn’t much of a student, just managed to get by. This adviser says she couldn’t understand how Zarinski ever landed an internship in any political office, let alone with a senator like Lerner. The school’s got a great reputation in political affairs and international service, and lots of good students in them. But Ms. Zarinski almost flunks the only courses she took in those disciplines, and never bothers to register with the internship department. But she ends up with Senator Bruce Lerner—”
“And with a paid internship, too,” Johnson added.
“Right.”
“I’m interested in what Johnson got out of the parents,” Hathaway said. “She’s getting paid by Lerner’s office, but she lies to her parents and says she isn’t getting paid. So they keep sending money, pick up the rent, who knows what else?”
“The jewelry?” Johnson asked. “I should have asked how much they gave her every month. Enough for the baubles?”
“Ask ’em,” Hathaway said. “They’re still around. Just keep the mother away from me. She’s been breaking my chops since they got here. Okay. Run down the Lerner kid and see what he has to say.”
“How do we handle him?” Klayman asked. “Is he a suspect?”
“If you mean do you have to read him his rights, the answer is no. Nobody’s a suspect yet, at least officially. I’ve got a warrant out for the Partridge character to be picked up as a material witness.”
“Why?”
“To cover our rear ends.” Klayman’s and Johnson’s glances at each other were swift and discreet. Our rear ends? they thought in concert. Hathaway was the one who’d decided to release the old drunk.
“Maybe we run a lineup for Partridge with this Cole guy, or Lerner, or anybody else,” their boss said. “For the record.”
“Good idea, Herman,” Johnson said.
The answer to Jeremiah’s address was close at hand. He had a rap sheet, which gave his address, an apartment in the Adams-Morgan section of the city, and phone number—at least as of the date of his last arrest, which was three months ago. A girlfriend had brought charges against him for assault and battery, claiming he struck her during a domestic dispute. He’d spent the night in jail but was released the following morning after the young woman chose to not press charges. The incident had received a small mention in the Washington Times. Two earlier arrests involved a bar fight, and marijuana possession. Both charges were summarily thrown out; the arresting officers in each instance were never told why, although the popular assumption was that political pressure had been brought. The D.C. police prided themselves on not bowing to pressure by the highly placed; whether internal reality matched up with that public posture was conjecture. This was Washington, D.C., where almost anything was possible.
A male answered sleepily, “He’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
“Work.”
“Where does he work?”
“The Millennium Arts Center, over in Southwest.”
“He’s there now?”
A loud, prolonged yawn preceded, “Five o’clock. He goes to work at five.”
Hang up.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TOPPER SYBERS, senior senator from Alabama, slipped the mask over his mouth and nose and drew in the cold, pure oxygen. The delivery unit was on a stand next to his massive desk in his office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, at First and C Streets. The eighty-six-year-old senator had the largest office in the building, and over the years it had turned into a museum of sorts, chockablock with mementos of his eight terms in the senior congressional body.
An aide poked her head through the door. “Senator Lerner is on his way, Senator,” she said.
Sybers removed the mask. “Send him in soon as he gets here.”
A lifetime of heavy smoking had taken its predictable toll on Sybers’s lungs and heart. He’d “officially” quit smoking twenty years ago, but was an inveterate cheat. One of his office workers had, among other duties, the responsibility of delivering to him an occasional