Murder at Union Station - Margaret Truman [115]
Interesting, Smith thought as he turned off the set and went to his office, where a sizable pile of paperwork awaited him. He’d never met Chet Fletcher, but from what he’d heard about the man, he wasn’t the sort to run from a fight, to bail out when the going got tough. To spend more time with his family. Where had he heard that before?
The large reel-to-reel tape recorder in the FBI’s Com Center turned slowly and often for the next few hours. Every call to Marienthal’s apartment was dutifully recorded.
Simultaneously, calls to and from Mac and Annabel Smith’s Watergate apartment were taped. Intercepting calls involving an attorney was problematic, should any of the conversation involve the discussion of legal issues. The agents on duty had been warned to turn off the recorder and their earphones in the event that happened. Whether those monitoring the calls would heed that admonition was conjecture.
Tired of looking for Marienthal on the streets surrounding Union Station, Stripling dumped his car in a parking garage and entered the station, where he took a small table in the bar area of America, a street-level restaurant affording a view of the front of the station on Massachusetts Avenue. He ordered a burger, fries, and a Coke and gazed out the window at people milling about, mostly tourists from the look of them and their silly hot-weather clothing, taking pictures of each other in front of the Columbus statue or the large yellow fountain, whose dancing waters had been turned off for reasons unknown. Fountains in Washington, D.C., seem always to be off on the hottest days.
He’d just finished his lunch and ordered a triple-scoop butterscotch sundae when the cell phone on the table rang.
“Yeah?”
“We have an address for you.”
He wrote down the house number on upper 16th Street and other information, pressed End, and asked for a check. Minutes later he was on his way out of Union Station and headed for the garage, the sundae just wishful thinking.
Stripling wasn’t the only one with upper 16th Street as a destination.
Kathryn Jalick had just started removing materials from the first box of the physician’s papers at the Library of Congress when a colleague summoned her to a phone.
“Kathryn, it’s Rich. Can you leave now?”
“I—I’ll just have to. Where are you?”
“At Winard’s house.”
“Is that where you’ve been all along?”
“Yeah. He left on a tour with a band. Can you come right now?”
“Yes. He’s on Sixteenth, right?”
“Right. You’ve been here before.”
“I know where it is. What are we going to do?”
“Fill you in when you arrive. Make sure nobody follows you.”
“Follow me? I don’t think—”
“Just be sure nobody does. See you in a few minutes.”
She went into her director’s office and announced she had to leave.
“Is everything all right?” the director asked.
“Yes, I’m okay,” Kathryn answered.
“Does it have to do with Richard and his book?”
Kathryn nodded. “It’ll be over soon.”
“I hope so. Take care, Kathryn.”
“I will. And thanks for understanding.”
Geoff Lowe’s level of understanding of anything had reached its nadir. Upon arriving at the Library of Congress, he’d taken a seat at a table in the main reading room and looked for Kathryn Jalick to emerge from behind the scenes. He saw her a few times as she passed from one area to another, and covered his face with a magazine he’d taken from a rack. Although the air-conditioning was welcome, he was uncomfortable sitting there