An Officer and a Gentle Woman Page 6

  “He likes you.”

  Alicia closed her eyes.

  “Well, he does.”

  “Maizie, my husband is just dead.”

  “He was never a husband to you.”

  “That’s not the point. He was murdered and everyone thinks I killed him!”

  “Not everyone,” Maizie said primly, sitting on the sofa next to Alicia. “Not Mrs. Green, not me, and not that detective.”

  “He’s investigating me, and something tells me he is very good at his job,” Alicia said flatly.

  “What could he possibly find to implicate you, since you didn’t do it?”

  “What could he find?” Alicia demanded, rising and throwing her hands into the air. “Clothes, a gun, not to mention an impersonator dressed like me who shot Joe in front of several of his closest aides? Who could possibly believe my claim of innocence? I can hardly believe it myself!”

  “I think Detective Lafferty knows you didn’t kill Joe.”

  Alicia shook her head. “He just wanted to warn me that Grandma Green came to his apartment to have a talk with him. Oh, and they had a phone chat, too.”

  Maizie was stunned into silence.

  Alicia nodded.

  “You’ll have to stop her from doing things like that,” Maizie finally said quietly.

  Alicia snorted. “I plan to speak to her, of course, but you know Grandma.”

  “Was she trying to intimidate him?”

  “I don’t think he intimidates easily.”

  “I wish I’d been able to listen in on those conversations,” Maizie remarked. “Something tells me that policeman and your grandma might be an even match.”

  Alicia sighed. “I don’t want to find out, so I’m going to have to give Hannah a piece of my mind.”

  “How about some lunch?” Maizie asked.

  Alicia shook her head and closed her eyes.

  “I’ll bring you a tuna sandwich, anyway,” Maizie announced, and went off on her errand.

  Alicia opened her eyes and looked around the room, as if seeking aid among the fine appointments it contained.

  But there was no help anywhere.

  Lafferty slid into the chair behind his desk and picked up a sheaf of papers from the blotter. From ten feet away, he could feel Chandler’s eyes on him, gazing over the rim of a cup of coffee, the older man’s rumpled shirt and bleary eyes telling the tale of a long night on the street.

  “What are you doing here?” Chandler asked.

  Lafferty glanced over at him casually, picking up a pen. “What do you mean?”

  “Isn’t this your day off, junior?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “I take it that you feel an overwhelming desire to see all of our ugly mugs when you are away from this place?” his partner inquired sarcastically.

  Lafferty shrugged. “I just wanted to see what was doing on the Walker murder.”

  Chandler smiled thinly. “I thought so.”

  “You thought so?”

  “You’re obsessed with Lady Macbeth,” Chandler announced with satisfaction.

  “Why don’t you lay off the Jack Daniels bottle you have stashed in that drawer?” Lafferty inquired disgustedly.

  Chandler put down his cup and swiveled around in his chair. “I may like a nip now and then, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re here looking for a way to get Mrs. Walker off the hook.”

  “I just came in to see if you goofballs had made any progress on the case.” Lafferty dropped his pen in resignation. “Doesn’t look like it.”

  Chandler drained his cup and tossed it smartly into the trash can under his desk. “Not much of a case, Mike. She done it.” He stood and picked up his coat from a chair. “I understand she’s getting a new lawyer.”

  Lafferty looked at him.

  Chandler winked. “She filed for a change in her attorney of record. But seems like you already knew that.”

  Lafferty said nothing.

  Chandler slipped into his sleeves and shrugged the coat onto his shoulders. “Kid, she can hire herself Clarence Darrow back from the grave and she will still walk that long, lonesome highway.” Chandler chuckled to himself and kicked the bottom drawer of his desk shut. “Don’t go sipping on any of my prime stuff while I’m away, I got the level marked on the bottle with invisible ink.”

  Lafferty watched him walk out of the staff room, then began to punch the keyboard of the PC on his desk. He barely glanced at the screens as they went by, logging into the department information file and waiting for the Search space to appear. When it did he typed “Alicia Green Walker” into it, and then sat back as the Waiting for Page sign came up and the number of bytes flashed rhythmically at the top of his screen.

  He was going to find out everything there was to know about the fragile little lady in the big house, her relatives, her friends, her mailman and her dog.

  And then maybe he could be as objective as his jaded, world-weary partner.

  Lafferty switched off the computer and rolled his chair back from his desk. He glanced at the clock and realized that the squad room was almost empty; it was nearing midnight.

  He had been reading for six hours, and now knew more about the subject of the Walker murder investigation than he had ever dreamed possible. Newspaper articles had made up the bulk of his study, and from them he had formed a pretty good picture of the woman whose house he had visited earlier that day.

  Alicia Walker had been raised in luxury, an only child, in posh Hunterdon County, New Jersey, by a millionaire businessman, Daniel Green, and his wife Margaret. Alicia had been given all the advantages money could buy, and up to the time of her marriage had led a sheltered, cultured existence. She had met Joe Walker, the eldest son of a Midwestern publishing giant, at a college mixer between Radcliffe and Harvard and married him two weeks after graduation.

  And right there, Lafferty reasoned, Alicia Walker’s charmed life began to change. Lafferty had his own opinion of Walker, a prepackaged politico who had been groomed from toddlerhood to be a head of state, the ride to that goal cushioned for him by his family’s money. Joseph Walker III, 42, Chairman of the Board of FlameTree Publishing, had been running the many-faceted company founded by his grandfather, a minister, to publish Bibles—called FTGolds for the gold edged pages and gold stamped lettering they featured—when his advisers decided the time was right to launch him into the political arena. Walker had used his family’s history to form a “back-to-basics” campaign founded on religious values and right-wing politics, gaining his support from traditional conservatives as well as reactionary voters disgusted with drugs and crime.

  But Lafferty knew that Walker’s private life was nothing like the image he projected. Policemen have access to information the general population never learns, and Lafferty had heard stories for years about The Chairman, as he was known. The cops knew that Walker had been picked up more than once during raids on brothels and paid his way out of the charges, then switched to call girl services, which posed less risk and provided better cover. He was, in fact, a dissolute who ignored his family and yet expected his wife to play the role of loving spouse necessary for his image.

  To all appearances, Alicia had complied. But Lafferty had noticed that in the file photos she looked more fragile and wan with each passing year, and now she was almost gaunt. The charade has taken its toll as her grandmother had said. Lafferty could only imagine why she hadn’t divorced Walker—the usual story in such cases was the threat to cut off access to the children, and Lafferty knew the possibility was real. He had seen it happen. Alicia’s family had serious money, but the Walkers had a lot more. Attorneys and judges could be bought, induced to repay favors or go into debt for future ones. A woman like the fragile wraith accused of the murder would have little chance against the Walker machine, and no one would have known that better than Alicia herself.

  Lafferty rubbed his eyes and stretched, nodding at a detective who wandered past him, stubbing out a cigarette in a metal ashtray.
Lafferty didn’t want to consider the picture that was emerging, but it was unavoidable. The bottom line was that Alicia Walker had ample private reason to wish her husband dead. He had treated her, and her children, like props in a performance he was staging for himself. Had she finally snapped and shot him? But why would she do it in front of onlookers, with no hope of concealing the crime? Was she deranged, suicidal, detached from reality? Lafferty could not reconcile the rational woman he had met with the kind of complete insanity necessary to shoot a public figure in front of witnesses. Alicia was worn out, depressed and now fighting for her very life, but she certainly did not appear to be crazy.

  The double doors to the squad room opened and Captain Cramer strode through them briskly, stopping short when he saw Lafferty sitting bleary-eyed in front of the computer.

  “No extra pay for unscheduled overtime,” he said to Lafferty, who smiled thinly.

  “The Walker case?” the captain asked.

  Lafferty nodded and looked away.

  “What’s the problem?” Cramer asked.

  Lafferty shrugged. “Too easy, I guess. She goes berserk and plugs the unfaithful husband with a handful of his buddies watching at ringside? Why? She could have poisoned his coffee, for God’s sake, she didn’t have to sign her own death warrant at the same time. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Maybe she flipped out. It certainly looks that way.”

  “She doesn’t seem nuts.”

  “Neither did Ted Bundy. Go on, kid, go home. Get a life. Get a girlfriend.”

  “I don’t want a girlfriend.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she might become my wife, and I had a wife,” Lafferty said dryly, rising.

  “All right, so marriage didn’t work out for you the first time around. Is that any reason to become a monk?”

  “I’m not a monk,” Lafferty replied, smiling. “I’m just particular.”

  “You’re too particular. Keep it up and you’ll wind up alone, playing cards with the boys on Friday night and sporting an enormous beer gut.”

  Lafferty grinned. “Thanks for that inspiring vision of my future,” he said.

  “Hey, it’s a warning. If you eat and sleep this job, it’ll bury you.” Cramer grabbed a stack of folders from a desk and went back out the way he had come, whistling.

  Lafferty kicked his chair under his desk and sighed.

  He had been divorced for three years and hadn’t had a date in six months.

  Maybe the captain was right.

  Alicia stepped out of the car and looked warily at the imposing facade of the Peninsula Hotel.

  “I’ll call you on the cell phone when I’m ready,” she said to the driver, who touched his cap and then pulled into the stream of traffic The limo disappeared quickly amidst the yellow taxis, transit buses and other vehicles which quickly enclosed it, and Alicia turned to face the fate awaiting her.

  During the two days since Lafferty had visited her she had spent most of her time on the phone, arranging the meeting she was about to have. She looked up as she went into the building using the employee entrance, wondering if when she came back out again it would be with the knowledge that her last hope had been exhausted.

  A hostess was waiting for her just inside the door. With the aplomb displayed by the management of expensive hotels everywhere she smiled and greeted Alicia quietly and then led her through the employee lounge to a narrow hall. There was a small staff conference room at the back of the ground floor, with two windows facing a brick wall across an alley and a single table surrounded by six leather chairs. One of the chairs was occupied

  “Thank you for agreeing to host this meeting surrep-titiously,” Alicia said to her escort.

  The woman smiled again. “A waiter will be with you shortly,” she said, and left.

  “How do you do, Mr. Kirby,” Alicia said, walking into the room and shaking hands with the distinguished-looking older man who rose to his feet to greet her.

  Oswald Kirby nodded and pulled out a chair for Alicia. When she was seated, Kirby sat also and said, “Mrs. Walker. I’m sorry that our introduction is happening under these most regrettable circumstances.”

  Alicia nodded. “Thank you for arranging to see me here, Mr. Kirby. I really did not want to go to your office and then see my arrival there featured on the evening news.”

  Kirby gestured dismissively. “I often make these considerations for clients in, ah, special circumstances. Someone may have seen you come here, of course, but the likelihood of the media hounds tracking you to the employee wing of this restaurant is far less than if you showed up at my place of business. And I can offer my guarantee that the staff here is extremely discreet.”

  “Yes.” Alicia was sure he had done whatever was necessary to make them so. “You will understand that I have not yet made a decision about your representing me, and I didn’t want to give the impression of trolling the waters for a compliant attorney.”

  Kirby inclined his graying head. He understood.

  “You are familiar with my previous representation?” Alicia asked as the waiter arrived with long-stemmed water glasses and hovered anxiously.

  “Come back in half an hour,” Kirby said to the waiter. “We’ll order then.”

  The boy vanished.

  Kirby made a small moue of distaste to Alicia. “Harry Landau. I know him, as does everyone who owns a television.”

  “My grandmother’s idea,” Alicia said, sighing.

  “I trust I will be dealing with just you, then?” Kirby asked.

  “Yes. I have instructed my grandmother to confine her future efforts on my behalf to prayer.”

  Kirby smiled slightly. “Well, since we are sharing confidences, I should say that I was not an admirer of your husband’s, or of his politics, Mrs. Walker,” he said flatly.

  “Neither was I, Mr. Kirby,” Alicia replied wearily.

  Kirby lifted his briefcase from the floor. Alicia examined the man sitting opposite her, who was removing a notebook and a small recorder from his bag.

  Oswald Kirby was a well-proportioned man of medium height with graying dark hair and a thin, ascetic face. He was an old line Boston brahmin who practiced law because he loved the profession and was dedicated to its ideals. He was the antithesis of what her husband had been, the genuine article as opposed to the poseur, which was one of the reasons Alicia wanted him to represent her. He also had a reputation for absolute, faultless integrity, which was the other reason for her decision.

  She realized that he was looking at her inquiringly

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Perhaps you’ll give me your version of the events in question, Mrs. Walker.”

  Alicia took a deep, cautious breath. “I didn’t kill my husband, Mr. Kirby.”

  Kirby eyed her steadily. “I have never thought that you did, Mrs. Walker.”

  Alicia stared at him. He was the first person to say this to her since Joe was murdered.

  Kirby shrugged. “My problem with your case is not that I don’t believe you, Mrs. Walker. I do. My problem is to convince a jury that you didn’t do it, and that is an entirely different matter.”

  Alica exhaled. “Why do you believe me? No one else seems to doubt that I shot Joe in cold blood.”

  “I opposed everything your husband stood for, Mrs. Walker. I can assure you that I know what he was really like.”

  “I’d think that would convince you I killed him,” Alicia said despairingly.

  Kirby shook his head. “No. It is apparent to me that you coped by adopting a stance of ignoring your husband’s transgressions and keeping your life separate from his as much as possible. I assume there were threats of losing the children if you attempted to divorce him?”

  Alicia nodded.

  Kirby pressed his lips together. “I would also guess that you had a long-range plan of divorcing Walker once the children were older, when he had achieved his political goals and no longer needed the window dressing of a smi
ling wife.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why would you suddenly rebel now and kill him in a manner which would remove both parents from your children’s lives at the same time?”

  Alicia looked back at him steadily. “I wish other people accepted your reasoning,” she said. “I didn’t think I would even make bail. The district attorney kept talking about how easy it would be for me to flee the country.”

  “I read the transcript. Apparently the hearing judge was unpersuaded.”

  “She felt that I would not go anywhere without my children, but DA Woods argued that I would do just about anything to save my own skin.”

  Kirby sat back in his chair and took a sip of his drink. “You have to understand that you will be taken at face value and resented by a certain proportion of the population just because you are young, beautiful and wealthy. They don’t know what your personal life was like—you were seemingly living in the lap of luxury without a care in the world. They will want to fry you just because they saw you on the news walking into the Hotel Pierre wearing a Scaasi dress.”

  Alicia looked away from him uncomfortably. She knew he was right. “So your job will be to find jurors who don’t feel that way?” she asked weakly.

  “I won’t be able to find jurors who don’t feel that way to some degree,” Kirby replied. “My job will be to find jurors who aren’t overwhelmingly prejudiced against you.”

  “And how will you convince them that I didn’t kill Joe, when eyewitnesses ‘saw’ me do it?” Alicia asked.

  “That’s what we will discuss today,” Kirby answered. “Do you know of anyone who looks enough like you to pass for you in a situation like that?”

  “No.”

  “Relatives, even distant ones?”

  “Nobody. Several of my husband’s associates who knew both of us for years swear that it was me—I am just dumbfounded by the depth of their conviction about it.”

  “Any axes to grind there?”

  “Oh, possibly some of them were not fond of me, but I can’t think of anyone who hated me enough to want to see me convicted of a crime I didn’t commit.” Alicia took a sip of her water and added, “I suppose someone could have searched out an actress who looked like me, but why, and could the resemblance have been close enough to fool Joe’s colleagues?” She shook her head.