Turned out we were both more interested in work and our careers than we were in each other. We talked about it and decided it was a mistake for which neither of us were to blame. Just one of those things that didn’t work, so instead of ending up miserable and disliking each other, we’d call it a day…’ She giggled. ‘Barry did the divorce for free and I abandoned any claim for alimony.’
‘Just like that!’ said Parnell.
‘It was a good deal. We end up friends, even go out together sometimes. His folks are dead, like mine are now, and we spent last Christmas together at Aspen. Barry paid.’
‘All very grown-up and civilized,’ said Parnell. He wasn’t going to discover the great unsaid – maybe there was nothing to learn.
‘Waste of time being any other way.’ She looked around her, at an obvious exodus. ‘About time we made a move, don’t you think?’
They didn’t bother to go to the bar at the intermission, and afterwards Parnell declared himself a fan of big band. ‘Do you feel like a drink now?’
‘Not in a bar.’
‘I guess I’m going to have to get used to this directness.’
‘That’s if you want to.’
‘I think I do.’
They went to Beverley’s apartment at Dupont Circle without discussion. They did open wine but neither finished their first glass, although when they got into the bedroom and Parnell realized his nervousness he wished he had, because it might have helped. They kissed a lot and began exploring and searching each other, which initially made it worse for him. But Beverley was very patient, relaxing, stopping, quietly caressing, and gradually his tension eased away and they joined in perfect rhythm and climaxed together to her tiny, sobbing mew.
When he was able, Parnell said: ‘I didn’t think…’
But she put her fingers gently against his lips, stopping him, and said: ‘But you did and it was wonderful.’
The lighting that night was much better outside Beverley’s apartment than it had been at Washington Circle, and the photographs of their entering together were much better and the prints were timed, too. They were again timed, at ten thirty-three, when Parnell and Beverley left again the following morning, and sharper still in the bright daylight.
‘So, what did Dingley say?’ Beverley asked as they got into her car.
‘It was going slowly but he was hopeful,’ replied Parnell. ‘He called it a step at a time.’
Thirty-One
C riminal investigation – particularly interrogation – is surprisingly a near-science of routine: comparing one person to another, one answer against another, overlaying one human template on top of another, seeking out the misplaced word, the displaced fact, the slightest chink in the protective wall that people who see themselves in danger try to build. That is the psychological ethos inculcated at Quantico and which Howard Dingley and David Benton religiously observed with Dubette research vice president Dwight Newton, although they were never professionally to know how effective it was.
It required, as it had with the others, that Newton be brought into the FBI field office and unsettlingly accompanied by lawyers, as always Dubette’s Peter Baldwin and Gerry Fletcher, whom Newton loyally elected to retain. It was Fletcher who immediately challenged the FBI demand for their being summoned into Washington – as well as the use of a tape recording – Newton having already co-operated fully at the first interview, for which the FBI agents had courteously travelled out to McLean, and beyond which neither he nor his client could imagine any further help was possible.
‘We most definitely do not – did not – intend any discourtesy,’ said the soft-cop rehearsed Dingley. ‘There’s a lot coming in at us, from every which way – we’ve imposed upon your good nature in asking you to come here.’
‘You’re getting somewhere?’ quickly asked Newton. He hoped his suit jacket was as effective as his white laboratory coat in covering the sweat rings. They had to have something (what, for Christ’s sake!) to bring him in like this.
‘Still trying to fit pieces together,’ said Benton, the placating cliches arranged in his mind like cards in a poker game. ‘That’s how we hope you will be able to help us.’
‘How?’ said Fletcher, on behalf of his client.
‘That flight number’s our biggest problem,’ insisted Dingley. ‘I know we talked about it before, Professor Newton, but have you had any thoughts – recollections – since our first meeting, how it came to be in Rebecca’s purse?’
‘I told you then, absolutely not.’
‘You most certainly did,’ agreed Benton, as if in sudden recollection. ‘We didn’t know then that you’d accessed Richard Parnell’s personnel file the day after he was arrested. Why’d you do that?’
‘Professor Newton had every right and authority to access the records, as Richard Parnell’s immediate superior,’ said Baldwin.
‘We’re not doubting that he had,’ said Dingley. ‘Our question is why.’
‘Dick had been arrested – I’d tried to arrange his legal representation,’ said Newton, itching around his back and sides from the soaking perspiration, and exaggerating the shrug in an effort to relieve it. Not feeling able to explain that it had been personally to discover from the log – not the file that had been his excuse for consulting it – whether the omnipotent Johnson had examined it prior to the encounter in Showcross’s office, Newton desperately extemporized: ‘I wondered if there might have been anything there that could have helped.’
Dingley and Benton went through their look-exchanging formula, as if each was inviting the other to ask the obvious question. It was Dingley who spoke. ‘Mr Parnell already had independent legal representation the day after he was arrested. By noon there were newscasts indicating that the case against him might collapse. You’re not registered as having taken the records out until two ten that afternoon.’
‘And only looked at them for just under ten minutes,’ added Benton.
‘That’s how long it took me to realize that it was a stupid idea – that there couldn’t possibly be anything there,’ said Newton. ‘I was
…’ There was another irritation-relieving shoulder twitch. ‘… just trying to help. Like I said, until it was obvious how pointless it was
… I was casting around… a well-respected and loved member of Dubette had died…’
‘You were there, in Burt Showcross’s office,’ said Dingley. ‘Tell us about the arrest.’
‘I don’t understand.’ said Newton. He was being sucked down again, the water coming in more quickly to engulf him.
‘Did you get the impression there had been a lot of discussion between Harry Johnson and the two Metro DC police officers before you all got together in Burt Showcross’s office?’ asked Benton.
Yes, which was why I looked at the personnel records, thought Newton. He said: ‘I didn’t think about it… I guess there was… what
…? An affinity, I guess. They were all police officers – Harry was, once. They have a way of behaving… talking…’ He had to get out, stop this sort of questioning! He was going to be dragged down. Destroyed. He didn’t want to be destroyed by a system and an environment and people – a person – who believed himself to be God. All he wanted – the only thing he wanted – was to escape, to run away somewhere, anywhere, and hide and never be found again.
‘Think about it now,’ urged Dingley. ‘Parnell’s arrest doesn’t seem right to us – almost as if it had been decided upon in advance.’
‘Is that a focus of your investigation?’ demanded Fletcher. ‘That’s surely a matter for the separate enquiry initiated against the two officers by Mr Parnell?’
‘Difficult not to cross boundary lines,’ smiled Benton, in empty apology. ‘We’re troubled by what seem to have been assumptions, without obvious evidence to support the action that was taken.’
