“Yes, the President was eloquent, but then my stepfather was such a good man. It wouldn’t be difficult for anyone to say wonderful things about him.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Eliza said, then again, looked as if she might say something more—but then she reached for the phone, gave them a small wave, and turned away. Callie heard her say, “Justice Califano’s chambers. Eliza Vickers.”
Ben said, “We’re only about ten minutes from the Vietnam Memorial. You ever been there?”
“Yes. It’s always a two-handkerchief occasion, no matter how many times I go there. I think the Wall is the most moving memorial in all of Washington.”
“Yes, I agree with you. Nearly everyone lost someone in Vietnam. One of my father’s best friends managed to ship home with two shattered legs that healed in time, but his psychological wounds were more difficult. My father came here right after the Wall was finished. He saw his friend in a wheelchair in front of the Wall, looking for other friends who’d been lost over there. My father told me they spoke for some time, but he never saw him after that.”
It took them eight minutes to get to Constitution Gardens, a beautiful open space that pointed east to the Washington Monument and west to the Lincoln Memorial. Callie looked around the vast empty space as they pulled into a parking place on the street. “Well, it is January, cold, and the only tourists likely to be here have to be from North Dakota.”
They walked down the path toward the Wall. They saw Fleurette immediately, standing at the middle of the Wall, completely still except for a single finger she was tracing over a name.
Ben cleared his throat as they came down the walk so as not to startle her. There were only three other people scattered along the Wall, three older men who looked cold and determined. Even from ten feet, Ben could see a sheen of tears in their eyes and hear their low voices. He knew they were talking about young men who hadn’t come home, but who’d left their names on a beautiful granite wall.
“Fleurette? It’s Detective Raven and Callie Markham.”
She seemed completely unaware of him for a moment. Then she slowly turned and straightened. “Is something wrong? What’s happened now?”
“Nothing. We wanted to speak to you.” He nodded to the Wall. Even though he knew, he asked, “Who is here for you?”
“My uncle, Bobby LaFleurette, my dad’s younger brother. He’d be in his fifties now, not young anymore.” She turned back, traced her fingers over his name. “He died in 1975, just months before the troop withdrawal. He was only twenty-one years old. I’m twenty-six. Isn’t that the strangest thing? He was so very young, and in many ways he’ll be young forever.”
Her finger traced again over the name, Robert R. LaFleurette. “His name comes right before Robert Petit and right after Douglas Mahoney. I’ve always wondered how they knew exactly who died in what order—that’s how they’re all listed, you know, in order of their death.”
Callie said, “Why do you come here, Fleurette?”
“Because Bobby was so young, because my father never stopped talking about him, how fun and wild he was, how he would have been such a hotshot in the business world, if only he’d survived the war. My father brought me here when the Wall first opened, back in 1984. I was six years old, and I remember it so very clearly.”
Callie said, “Fleurette, remember when we talked on Sunday? You said that Danny O’Malley had looked smug last Friday morning.”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“Smug how, exactly?”
“Like he knew something that neither I nor Eliza knew, and it tickled him. He looked—pleased with himself. I remember he was nodding, like he was having this sort of internal conversation with himself, and he liked what he was hearing.”
Ben said, “Think back, Fleurette. Do you remember if Danny looked at Justice Califano when he left his chambers to go to the meeting?”
She closed her eyes a moment, then they popped open. “Yes, Danny did do that. Yes, he did look at Justice Califano. It was a bit of a smirk, really. It all happened so fast it really didn’t settle in when it happened. But when I close my eyes now, I can see Danny sitting there, tapping his pen against his desk pad, and a smirk passing over his face.”
“Did Justice Califano notice? Did he look over at Danny?”
“I don’t—”
“Close your eyes again, Fleurette. Think back.”
Fleurette closed her eyes. She swayed a moment, leaned against the Wall for support. “Justice Califano’s back was to me when he passed by Danny’s desk, but he glanced at me before he left—and he looked suddenly tired.”
“Tired?”
“Yes, he looked tired, like something was too much for him. There was something on his mind, something he knew he had to deal with, but he looked tired. Maybe I’m reading too much into it now. You want me to see something and so I’m trying too hard to cooperate with you.”
“But you don’t think so?” Ben asked.
Slowly, she shook her head. She looked up at the gray sky. “It’s going to rain soon. I wonder if it will turn to snow again. I hope not. Everything becomes such a mess.”
Callie said, “Fleurette, why are you scared?”
“Scared? Me? I’m not scared.”
“Yes,” Callie said slowly, “you are. On Sunday, I could see it very plainly. You are scared. Why?”
Fleurette looked off toward the Lincoln Memorial, then back again at Callie. “Look, two people close to me have been murdered. If you saw any fear in me, it’s because of that.”
“Nothing else?”
“No, nothing else. I’d sure tell you if there were.”
Ben said, “Bobby Fisher—one of Justice Alto-Thorpe’s law clerks—”
“Yeah, I know the little creep.”
“He said you and Danny went out to lunch on Friday. You didn’t mention that to us.”
“That’s because we only walked to the corner together. Danny was in a mood, preoccupied, snarly—I suppose it makes sense now—but then I thought,
“Bobby said you two had your heads together, a real chummy conversation,” Ben said.
“No, that’s Bobby being a creep again. He probably wanted you to focus your attention on someone else. He disliked Justice Califano, probably because he and Alto-Thorpe weren’t on good terms.”
“Bobby Fisher and Eliza—what did you think about that? You knew he wanted her to go out with him?”
Fleurette shrugged. “Oh that. Fact is, Eliza couldn’t have cared less. Bobby didn’t really come into her line of focus, you know what I mean? She put up with him. What she really wanted to do was drop-kick him out of the building.”
“Do you think Eliza really disliked Bobby that much? Do you think he hated her because she kept turning him down?”
“Who knows? When he finally ran out of there on Friday, she looked at me, rolled her eyes, and said, ‘Well, maybe that’s the last time I’ll have to tell him to take a hike.’ ”
“So she never really took him all that seriously.”
“No,” Fleurette said. “The only person she took seriously was Justice Califano.”
“So what did Danny say to you before you told him you were going shoe shopping?”
“Nothing really, just something like ‘Women and shoes, that’s all you think about.’ Then he said he was going to see a foreign film with Annie that night, that he had something going—listen, Danny was always on the make. Usually whatever he said didn’t mean anything.”
“Except this time it did, didn’t it?” Ben said.
Before Ben and Callie left her by the Vietnam Wall, next to her uncle’s name, Ben remembered to ask Fleurette what color her toenail polish was last Friday. She looked startled, then laughed. “It’s called ‘I’m Not Really a Waitress Red.’ ”
