Chapter 4
As Steve was driving to headquarters, he marveled how terrific Maureen had been the night before. Had the threat of jealousy planted by Vanessa’s sexy attitude made her the woman Steve always wanted her to be? As he glanced in his rear-view mirror, he looked into his eyes and realized that she was the only one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. His proposal yesterday afternoon might have been a Freudian slip, but in his heart he now realized he only loved Maureen. She was his girl, and now she illustrated the same loving feeling that he exhibited in his heart for her. From the first day he met her at the University of Buffalo, he desired to have her forever as his wife. It always had been Maureen’s career that held their romance in limbo. Maybe now, with new conditions and circumstances, the Ciminellis may have a start. Steve smiled at that thought—a nice home in the ‘burbs to raise a family.
Linda was busy at her desk when he entered the squad room. She was busy on the phone. As she looked up and spotted Steve, she waved for his attention.
“Our appointment with Anderson is set for today at five this afternoon. A White House staffer will clue us in on the meeting arrangements sometime today,” she whispered to Steve as she hung up the phone. Steve nodded his consent and proceeded to pour himself a fresh cup of coffee. When he settled into his chair at his desk, he noticed a fax on his desk from the corporate headquarters run by Smith-Hughes. He motioned Linda over to his side.
“This is the answer to several inquiries I made yesterday afternoon. Look, the corporate jet flew Jonathan Smith-Hughes to Chicago the day before the murder, but its log states that it returned to Washington National that night. The captain reported no passengers on the return flight. The jet stayed here for a maintenance check and didn’t make plans to return to Chicago to retrieve Smith-Hughes. Funny operation,” Steve declared with a frown on his brow.
“Did you know that Jonathan Smith-Hughes was an experienced licensed pilot, Steve? Our boy sometimes flew that Lear jet himself. The people at Washington National stated that he piloted the jet to Chicago to complete his monthly FAA flying requirement,” remarked Linda.
“He could have rented a plane in Chicago, returned home to knock off his wife, and came back. Let’s see if that happened, Linda, by checking the rental companies in Chicago and around the Washington-Maryland area.”
“You could have something there, Steve,” she agreed. As Steve looked up from his desk, he noticed that the captain was waving for him and Linda to come to his office. When they entered the office, the captain placed their case folders in front of them. He then closed the door and shut the window shades too.
“People, we have a new problem developing in this case. As you know, I.D. dug up somebody that matched those extra prints. They just happened to belong to the first lady, Ms. Nancy Patterson. We believe that they are fresh prints, which places her on the scene the night of the murder, but we don’t know why,” the captain explained in a calm manner, as he leaned back in his chair and chewed on his unlit cigar.
“Our victim sure knew some high-profile people in this town. It’s beginning to look like L.A. or Hollywood,” Linda stated in a disgusted manner. Steve sat in his chair and tried to be comfortable as he glanced through the Smith-Hughes file.
“Boss, we have three bona fide suspects in this case right now. The vice president of the United States, the wife of the president of the United States, and the victim’s husband. I’m willing to bet that several more will surface as we dig deeper into this mess. This lady played around with some high and mighty people in our government, and I don’t intend to bury her death under the carpet for anyone,” Steve commented to the captain, who was now chewing harder on his unlit cigar.
“Will Anders be back to arrange an appointment for Nancy Patterson?” questioned Linda.
“Your meeting this afternoon with the vice president will be held at the Quantico FBI Training Center. He’s there to review a new batch of bureau trainees, and after that, you will have a chance to question him for less than thirty minutes. Make your questions count and don’t waste his time. And please, no mention of the first lady to him on this matter,” said the captain as he placed his cigar in an ashtray.
Steve again was concentrating on the murder file. He picked up the sheets containing the listing of people from Laura Smith-Hughes’s phone directory. He slowly started to scrutinize the names on the list, and as he traveled down the sheet, his mind reached a conclusion. “Linda, we need addresses for some of these names, especially the ones who no longer live in this area.”
“We had trouble with a few dozen names on that list, Steve. They lived in D.C. but are now elsewhere. Our lady changed her affiliation of party with each new administration. She was determined to be the social giant of the Washington scene, or close to it,” Linda remarked as she closed her folder and placed it on the desk.
“Someone silenced our lady because she either knew too much or was a danger to someone high on the ladder of this administration. This isn’t a common mugging or sexual attack. We’ll just have to work harder, and I want this case closed as soon as possible,” ordered the captain. “Because of the high profile on this case, all interviews with the media will be channeled through this office. You two will not, I say again, will not utter a word to them. Send them to me.”
With this warning and explanation ringing in their ears, Steve and Linda returned to their desks and tried to plan their future moves. Steve picked up his phone and dialed Vanessa’s number. It rang for several minutes, but no one answered the call. She must be sleeping the night off in someone’s apartment, Steve rationalized.
“Let’s head over to National Airport and pry some answers out of the Smith-Hughes’ pilot. I want to know why he didn’t fly back to Chicago to bring his boss home,” Steve mentioned as he locked up his notes on the case in his desk.
The ride to National was uneventful, and it took a while to find the hangar where the Smith-Hughes jet was parked. As they arrived, they noticed that a maintenance crew was still working on the plane. A few chosen questions revealed that the plane was getting readied for a flight to the West Coast later in the day. One of the maintenance crew pointed to an office in the rear of the hangar where the pilot and jet crew were at that time.
Upon entering the office, Steve and Linda discovered several members of the plane crew relaxing, watching TV, and drinking what looked like to be beers. The captain was located at a desk checking out weather charts for this evening’s flight to San Francisco.
“Captain, I’m Detective Ciminelli, and this is Detective Hannigan of the Washington Police Department. We would like to ask you a few questions concerning the Smith-Hughes murder that occurred a few days ago,” commented Steve as he and Linda flashed their badges and IDs to the captain.
“Captain Pollard, at your service. How can I help you, Detectives?”
“Last Monday, you flew Jonathan Smith-Hughes to Chicago. May we have a look at the flight log of that trip, please?” Linda asked politely. After glancing at the flight log, they discovered that the Smith-Hughes jet departed National Airport at 2:35 p.m. Monday afternoon and landed at Midway Airport around 4:20 p.m. It also indicated that four passengers were on board.
“Did Jonathan Smith-Hughes pilot the jet on this flight?” asked Steve. “And who were the other three passengers on the trip?”
The captain lit a cigarette and took a deep drag before answering the questions. “Mr. Smith-Hughes clocked his required air time by flying the jet himself. He’s well qualified as a pilot. The three passengers, two men and one woman, were members of his corporate office. I don’t ask questions about who they are before I take off, especially of the boss of this operation. He pays well, sir,” said the captain as he flicked his ashes into an empty coffee cup.
“Any names to go with these passengers, captain?” questioned Linda, as she glanced to find them on the flight log.
“Mike, over there, has them listed on his flight report,” the captain commented. Mike, one of the flight attendants, handed Linda the flight report, and she jotted the names down in her notebook.
“Captain, why didn’t you stay in Chicago and be at Mr. Smith-Hughes’ call if he needed you?” Steve asked.
“The company was scheduled to have its federal regulated maintenance here in this hangar on Tuesday. Mr. Smith-Hughes had scheduled a return flight on Thursday. I notified him Tuesday that the jet couldn’t be used until the maintenance repairs were finished, probably sometime Wednesday afternoon. He informed me that he was taking a commercial flight back,” answered the captain.
“You and the crew were the only people on the plane for the flight back to Washington Monday, right?” inquired Detective Hannigan.
“As far as I know,” replied the captain. “Mike, did we carry anyone back with us from Chicago?” as he turned toward Mike for an answer.
“Yeah,” answered Mike. “One of Mr. Smith-Hughes’ Chicago office staff, a Mr. Peterson, flew back with us.”
“Can you describe him to us, Mike?”
“About five-foot-ten, and he wore a jogging suit with a baseball cap and dark sunglasses. He told me that he was scared of flying, so I let him sit in the rear, and no one bothered him. When we landed at National, he quickly disappeared,” answered Mike.
“You couldn’t recognize him or identify him? Did he ever fly with you before?” questioned Linda.
“With that outfit on, he was a stranger to us, Detective. He had official clearance from the Chicago office to be aboard for the flight. They called and told us that we should expect a Mr. Peterson to be a passenger for our trip back to D.C.,” remarked Mike.
Steve looked at Linda. Both wondered who this Peterson guy was and where he went after the plane landed. “Thanks, gentlemen. You have been very helpful. If we need more, we’ll contact you,” Steve remarked as he and Linda left the hangar office. As Steve closed the car door, he turned to Linda and made this observation: “This Mr. Peterson becomes suspect number four.”
“This case is getting muddied, Steve. More suspects than leads.”
“We need to check out that condo again,” replied Steve, as he proceeded to head for the Watergate Complex. “There must be something that we missed when we were there earlier. Our boy can’t be this clean and perfect. He left something behind; I’ll bet on it.” The drive back in to the capital was silent as both detectives tried hard to rehash all the evidence they knew in their minds.
“I’m hungry, Stevie-boy. How about some buffalo wings and a salad at Pizza Hut?” stated Linda, with a hungry tone in her voice.
“Sounds OK to me, partner.”
• • •
After getting the complex superintendent to open up the Smith-Hughes condo, Steve and Linda stared at the walls and pieces of furniture in the residence. “I’ll take the bedroom and bath, and you take the living room and kitchen,” stated Steve. As he entered the bedroom, the bed was now bare of its bloody sheets, but a large stain still appeared on the mattress. Steve opened the closet doors and walked in to check it out. All of Laura’s dresses and clothes were hung in an orderly fashion, and nothing looked out of place. Steve checked out the dressing table in the bathroom, which was connected to the closet by a sliding door.
Everything on the table seemed to show the style and type of woman Laura Smith-Hughes was. Everything was in large bottles and very expensive; even the combs and brushes were sturdy and large. Steve picked up a comb that women use as a hair pick to style their hair. He noticed that the long, sharp end of the comb had deep scratches on it. He looked at it, and suddenly a thought entered his mind. Could this be the murder weapon? It was long enough and sharp enough to do the damage to the murdered victim’s body.
He showed it to Linda, and she gently wrapped it in tissue to take back to forensic for analysis. “It may be something, Steve. It may be the murder weapon. But if it is, I’ll bet it’s clean. Again, a lead that points to no one,” Linda said in a frustrated tone.
They both walked back into the great room of the condo. Steve sat down in one of the comfortable chairs and started to stare around the room. Linda picked up the phone and made a call. As she made her call, she toyed with the items on the desk. After having a short conversation with someone she personally knew on the other end, she turned to Steve and made the following observation: “Our lady was busy in the activity of high society in this town, but there’s not a single letter—either on the desk or inside it. I’ll bet she received plenty of mail each day.”
“You’re right, Linda; that’s strange. We found no mail on her desk or in it,” recalled Steve. “Let’s check this out with the post office. Her mailman could tell us about the volume of mail our lady received.” Steve glanced at his watch and suddenly rose as if he was late for an important meeting. “We’d better leave now, Linda, or we'll never make it to Quantico by five.”
“Relax, Steve. I just got off the phone with my brother George at the White House. I got him to arrange two seats on the presidential helicopter that’s carrying Anderson to the meeting at Quantico. We leave at 4:15 from the South Lawn.”
“Let’s head back to headquarters and recheck that forensic report. I think we missed something in it that could help us break this case.”
“We need motive, and the only one we have now is the ‘lover-triangle’ one. That leaves us with only Jonathan Smith-Hughes as a suspect,” Linda answered.
The two detectives were ready to leave when Steve walked out on the balcony and looked down into the marina. He spotted Vanessa’s yacht and noticed that no activity was on board. Steve figured that they could check to see if she was in at this time. A few minutes later, the two detectives were quietly approaching the MacGyver boat. They noticed that it was closed up and looked locked up, too. It was. No one answered Steve’s knock on the cabin door.
“We’ll be back tomorrow,” Steve mentioned as he walked off the yacht and the two proceeded back to their car.
• • •
When they returned to their desks at headquarters, Steve and Linda retrieved the case file and closed themselves in one of the interrogation rooms. They started to examine the evidence and reports comprising the file.
“The body was discovered at around eight in the morning by the cleaning lady. This places her demise sometime around one and two in the morning. No forced entry was discovered, so our killer was invited in by our victim,” started Steve as he flipped through the file.
“We'll have more definitive knowledge when we find out the time both Anderson and Nancy Patterson paid Ms. Smith-Hughes a visit,” remarked Linda as she slowly examined the file reports.
“If forensic could establish that comb as the murder weapon, we’ll have a part of the puzzle, but it may be a useless lead. What kind of evidence could we retrieve off of it? Maybe nothing,” Steve fumed in a frustrated tone. Steve rose from his chair and left the room to purchase two cool cans of Diet Pepsi from a dispensing machine in the hallway. As he re-entered the room, he flipped one can to Linda, who caught it in one hand like a first baseman.
“Thank you, Steven. You read my mind.” After drinking their refreshing drinks, they placed the case files in the captain’s cabinet and locked it up.
At that time, the captain informed them that Agent Anders wanted them to be on the press helicopter traveling to Quantico to cover the proceedings of the vice president this afternoon. They both acknowledged the message and headed for the White House South Lawn.
When they arrived at the White House, George Hannigan escorted Steve and Linda to the presidential helicopter and found them two seats in the rear of the chopper. George introduced himself to Steve, and Linda greeted him with a sisterly kiss on the cheek. He sat with them on the trip to Quantico Marine Corps Base in northeast Virginia. It was a short twenty-minute ride, but the procedure of landing lasted longer. Upon landing, the vice president and White House staff were whisked into limos and sped away to the area of the base where the FBI training center was located. Everyone else, including the press, climbed aboard two buses and followed the limos.
The ceremony lasted only thirty minutes, and it was over before you knew it. George Hannigan escorted Steve and Linda into a private conference room somewhere in the training center. They waited there for twenty or more minutes, and finally Vice President William Anderson entered the room with Agent Anders by his side. The vice president politely introduced himself to the detectives and calmly seated himself at the head of the table. Steve and Linda sat on one side, with Agent Anders and a White House staffer on the other. They were the only ones in the room.
The vice president placed a cigarette in his mouth and lighted up. Steve noticed that the brand was “Dukes and Lords,” the same brand discovered on the murder scene. The silence lasted for several minutes, and the two sides stared at each other.
“Mr. Vice President,” Steve opened, “what was your relationship with the late Laura Smith-Hughes, and when was the last time you saw her alive?”
The vice president leaned forward and puffed on his smoke. “Our relationship started six years ago, while I was serving in the Senate. In the beginning we were lovers, but in the last two years, our affair was cooling down. Two months ago, I informed Laura that we were through . . . finished . . . but she never conceded to this decision.”
Steve turned and looked at the vice president straight on, wondering why people considered him a great shot to be our next president. “Mr. Vice President, can you describe to us the events of last Monday when you visited Ms. Smith-Hughes’s condo? Start by telling us the time you arrived.”
The vice president butted his cigarette, exhaled the smoke in his lungs, and then faced Steve and Linda. “Laura contacted me on Sunday and demanded that I see her sometime Monday evening at her condo at Watergate. She made the invitation threatening. I arrived a little after ten and left before eleven. She was alive when I left, Detective.”
“Did you have sex with Ms. Smith-Hughes that night, sir?”
“I think that’s kind of personal, detective,” the vice president stated as he turned to Linda with a frown on his face. “What we said or did was personal. I told you that she was alive when I left the condo.”
“No sir, that answer won’t cut it, unless you want to be considered our number one suspect in this case. We need to know why you were there and what went on while you were there,” Steve blurted out to Anderson and Agent Anders.
“Look, Ciminelli, the vice president has given you his statement, and that’s all it is. Understand?” shouted Anders as he rose from his chair.
“Then we may have to go to a grand jury to get an indictment. Which way do you want to go, Mr. Vice President?” Steve retorted. “And when that happens, it goes public.” The White House staffer reached over and spoke softly into Anderson’s ear. After a moment, the Vice President declared that he would answer the detective's questions.
“When I arrived, Laura was ready to renew our love affair, wearing only a night robe. As she closed the door, she disrobed and threw herself at me. I’m sorry to say that she succeeded and we had sex in her bed, but I realized then that our affair was over. That’s when she threatened me if I didn’t do as she demanded,” he related as he took another cigarette out and lit up again.
“How did she threaten you, sir?” Linda questioned.
“Laura stated that our affair would go public if I didn’t officially divorce my wife and make plans to marry her. You see, Detectives, my wife and I live together for political reasons only. Laura believed that I might someday soon be president, and she wanted desperately to be a first lady,” the vice president stated nervously. The member of the White House staff was even worse than that, indicated by his uneasiness in his chair.
“Did you have a drink or smoke while you were there?”
“Laura had some wine poured, but I can’t remember if I had a smoke. Maybe I did, but I just can't remember,” the vice president mentioned as he butted his cigarette out.
“Did you walk onto the balcony at any time that night?” asked Steve.
“No, Detective. About that I’m sure. I stayed inside in fear of anyone noticing my presence. The drapes were closed at all times. As a matter of fact, I never ventured onto the balcony at any time, even during the last and only other time I was at her place,” the vice president commented as he pushed his statement across the table toward Steve. “Any other questions, Ciminelli? We have given you more time than we intended to,” stated Agent Anders angrily.
“One more, sir,” remarked Linda, as she looked straight at Vice President Anderson. “How did you arrive at the Smith-Hughes condo?”
“I drove my own car, Miss. I still have a license to drive,” he replied.
“Mr. Vice President,” interrupted Steve, “How did Ms. Smith-Hughes react to your decision to turn her down? Did she scratch you in any way?”
“She was very angry and distraught. I told her to do her worst because her threats meant nothing to me. This angered her more, but no, Detective, she didn't scratch me anywhere. In fact, I had to push her back onto her bed when she tried to drape herself on me as I was ready to leave. Again, as I stated before, she was alive and well when I left,” the vice president answered.
“One last question, sir,” blurted Linda. “Do you know of anyone who would wish to harm Ms. Smith-Hughes or want her dead?”
“To be honest, Detective, Laura was a threatening figure to many people in this town, but if she would try to blackmail me, who else did she do it to?” he stated bluntly.
Steve and Linda stood up and both thanked the vice president for his cooperation. They shook hands as a sign of friendliness and cooperation.
“Glad to help in any way,” Anderson stated as he was whisked out of the room by his two companions. As he left the room, Linda’s brother George entered and escorted Steve and Linda to the president’s chopper for the ride back to Washington.