Collision (5 page)

The sergeant nodded and looked as if he was about to throw up.

Mosley softened her voice, saying, “This your first mass homicide, Mike?”

“Not exactly, ma'am. I was first on the scene for those three kids in Anacostia a couple of months ago,” he replied. He had seen many—too many—bodies. Nearly all of them Young Black Males, as they were tabulated on the crime reports—kids lying in their blood, sprawled on the sidewalk, in a go-go club's parking lot, in a bus-stop shelter. And all of them across the Anacostia River, the other Washington.

“Those kids, that was the usual Anacostia drug deal gone wrong,” Mosley said.

“Yeah,” the driver said. “This one is all-white … well, mostly white … and downtown. And it looks like it's going to be complicated. Very complicated.”

 

9

Falcone and the two
officers who had first encountered him were now joined by a SWAT officer. The M16 was still on the floor in front of Falcone. A few partners had ventured out of their offices around the atrium. Mosley stepped to the middle of the corridor and, shouting across the atrium, said, “I am Assistant Chief Louise Mosley of the Metropolitan Police Department. This is an active crime scene. A shooter is still at large. Please return to your offices. You will be asked for statements. Thank you.”

Mosley pointed to one of the officers and said, “Update me.” He briskly repeated Falcone's account of the shootings.

“Where's the other body?” Mosley asked.

Falcone led Mosley to Harold Davidson's office. They stood for a moment on the threshold. The office was well lit and eerily neat. What was left of Davidson was behind his glass-and-chrome desk, his face blasted away. Three .223-caliber bullets had tumbled through his skull and then into the floor-to-ceiling window behind him, shattering it. Blood, flesh, and bones covered the portly man's white shirt, maroon tie, and red suspenders.

Molsey, a handkerchief in her right hand, closed the door. “Nobody ought to see this who doesn't need to,” she said. She looked into Falcone's face. “Glad to have a witness who's still alive.”

They walked back to the elevator. Pointing to the weapon on the floor, she asked, “That's the shooter's gun?”

“Right,” Falcone said.

“We'll leave it there until the crime-scene guys get here,” she said. “What about that bag he had?”

“What bag?” Falcone asked.

“It's still on the floor over there, a big canvas bag,” she said. “You didn't notice it? You're a pretty observant guy.”

“When I had him down I was focused on the gun. But, yes, there was some kind of bag. I remember now. When I first saw him walking into the office, he was carrying it.…”

“It says ‘Al Jazeera' on the side, written on by something like a Sharpie. Any ideas about that?”

“No, Chief. Except it was big enough to hold the M16.”

“Yes. Thank you, Mr. Falcone.” She noticed that Falcone was in some pain and kept squeezing his left hand, which was bright red and raw. “I'll have the ME put something on that hand of yours.” She turned to the officers and, with a wave of her hand, said, “You three check with Captain Jefferson in the lobby and join the hunt for the other guy.”

As the trio approached the elevator, the doors opened and two men stepped out, police-badge holders jutting from their suit-coat breast pockets.

“Detective Lieutenant Tyrone Emmetts and Detective Sergeant Samuel Robinson of the Homicide Branch,” Mosley told Falcone. She paused, and shifted to her command voice: “Tyrone, I want a formal statement from this man, Falcone, who killed the guy on the lobby floor. Sam, the usual drill. Get identities and contact information of everybody here. There are a lot of people. We'll need statements from all of them. Get help from the branch if you need it. A lot of big-time lawyers, so good luck. Most of them were behind closed doors and didn't see anything. But they may have heard something. We'll also need to know what those people on the couch were doing here. And if anybody knows anything about that guy who wound up on the lobby floor. Do the usual paperwork. I'll keep closely in touch with the Branch. This is a big one, Sam.”

Falcone pointed toward the end of the corridor and said, “I need to go there.”

Mosley looked at him quizzically.

“Toilet. I need to…”

“Okay,” she said. “Which office is yours?”

He pointed and said, “‘Falcone' on the door.”

“I'll meet you there.”

Falcone walked off, and in the restroom went over Mosley's questioning. She was good, the kind of interrogator who makes you feel guilty.
Al Jazeera. What the hell is that about? Those guys didn't look like any television journalists.

When Falcone entered, Mosley and Emmetts were seated in front of his desk in the burgundy wingback chairs that usually contained his clients. “First of all, Mr. Falcone,” Mosley began, “this seems to be an interrupted mass shooting of lawyers. Our strategy in shootings like this is to anticipate. I've ordered a general warning about the second shooter. Maybe he's going after lawyers. So this is urgent. Any idea why this firm? This floor?”

“No, Chief. None at all,” he said. He had a theory about the crime, but he decided not to share the theory with Mosley.

“Did you feel you were … disrupting something?” Emmetts asked. “That there would have been more shooting if you hadn't stopped them?”

“Yes. I felt … I felt that we were all sitting targets.”

“But
why
? What were they doing? Why shoot up a law firm? Why—”

Someone simultaneously knocked on his door and entered. A tall man strode over to the chair that Mosley occupied, reached out his right hand, and said, “I am Paul Sprague. I am greatly sorry that I'm disobeying your reasonable request to remain in my office, Chief Mosley. But I came here because I am obliged to find out what happened. I'm Sullivan and Ford's managing partner, and I am responsible for the lives of the men and women in this building.”

Sprague then pulled up a wooden chair from a corner and sat down. In his perfectly tailored gray suit with a
L
é
gion d'honneur
rosette in the lapel, he conveyed the confidence of a patrician, a man born to deference and accomplishment.

“I've … I've seen the bodies—Ellen, the couple on the couch,” Sprague said. “Horrible. Horrible. And I understand that Harold Davidson…” He paused. “We can directly identify one of the other … victims, of course. Ellen Franklin. As to the man and woman on the couch … I assume that they carried identification … and that they had some business with someone on the tenth floor … but…”

“The crime-scene techs will handle the obtaining of their ID documents, Mr. Sprague,” Emmetts said, “and then we'll handle the notifying of their next of kin and making positive identification. Naturally, we will want to find out why they were here.”

Sprague, ignoring Emmetts, pivoted toward Mosley. “Naturally, we will cooperate, Chief Mosley. But I am sure that you understand our need to adhere to the common rules of client-lawyer confidentiality.”

Mosley did not respond. She rose and, ignoring Sprague, said, “I'm heading back to headquarters. But I'll be in constant touch with the investigation. Goodbye, for now, Mr. Falcone.”

Sprague reached across Falcone's desk and picked up the yellow pad while saying, “Thanks, Sean. I'll just turn to a fresh page and make some notes.” He looked toward Emmetts and smiled. “I'd like to start at the beginning. Is it possible to…”

Emmetts shrugged, looked down at his notes, and gave Sprague a sketchy account of what Falcone had said so far. Falcone then finished his description of what had happened.

“Thank you, Mr. Falcone,” Emmetts said. “Now, one other matter. You killed a man, Mr. Falcone, and we are all glad you did. But you're going to have to make a separate statement about that unknown male's death. And we will have to ask you to come to headquarters. Your prints are on the murder weapon, and we'll need to fingerprint you.”

Sprague turned to Falcone, again ignoring Emmetts. “Mind if I represent you, Sean?”

“Well, I might really need a good defense lawyer,” Falcone replied with a tight smile. “But I guess you'll have to do.”

Sprague nodded and smiled back. He was a tall, slim man in his early sixties. His bearing and diction proclaimed privilege and a probable New England–Choate–Yale–Yale Law biography. But that was only part of his biography. He was born and brought up in a trailer in a little town on the Oklahoma panhandle and had known hungry days and lonely nights. He attained his scholarships because he was brilliant and polite, and he had attained his senior partnership not only because of his career as a superb lawyer but also because he had an uncanny ability to drain fear, fraud, and even greed out of a dispute, leaving only the purity of reason and common sense. He was Falcone's favorite squash opponent, but Falcone would not like to have him as an opponent in court. Falcone's hand, now thankfully dressed with an antiburn cream and bandaged, was still throbbing. His head ached, and he felt blood trickling down his left cheek. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, and held it against a cut on his forehead. He longed to go home.

Sprague stood, and now clearly in charge, addressed Emmetts: “I assume you'll need an operating base for interviewing people and so forth. I've arranged for the police to have an empty staff office on this floor. It's Room 1038, just off the conference room on the north corridor.”

Emmetts's radio crackled. He stepped out, closed the door, and then stuck his head in to say, “Crime scene and a team from the medical examiner's office. Have to brief them. Please remain in your office, Mr. Falcone. And then I'll get you an escort for the trip to headquarters. Goodbye, Mr. Sprague.”

“We have a lot of talking to do, Sean,” Sprague said as soon as the door closed. “And you need something for that cut.” He reached for the phone, pressed the button for his interoffice phone, and said, “Ursula, please bring the first-aid kit to Mr. Falcone's office—and your laptop. Thank you.” Looking at Falcone, he added, “I'll be right back for our talk.”

Still clutching Falcone's yellow pad, Sprague left.

 

10

Back in his corner
office, Sprague summoned three associate partners from the eighth floor. Working from a list on a yellow pad, he assigned one to write a draft of Davidson's obituary, which he would sign off on and send to the
New York Times
and
Washington Post.
Sprague also told the associate to start working on arranging a memorial service for Davidson at the National Cathedral.

The second associate was to go to Ellen's mother, give her the condolences of the firm, help her make funeral arrangements, and offer to help with Ellen's insurance and pension account. He was also to prepare the draft of “a short message about the incident” to be sent to all Sullivan & Ford offices around the world. He would also sign off on that.

He told the third associate to organize a meeting of the Senior Partners' Executive Committee in the conference room. At nine a.m. tomorrow. But she pointed out that people were still streaming out of the building and that many tenth-floor occupants, after being questioned by police, would want to go home and not come in tomorrow. Sprague, acting as if nothing notable had happened, shrugged and told her to call the meeting for the day after tomorrow. And he told her to immediately send out the kind of all-personnel message used for holidays, making tomorrow “a day of remembrance.”

He instructed Ursula Breitsprecher, his executive assistant, to take charge of incoming phone calls, keeping track of condolences and clients' concerns. She was to politely inform every reporter or television producer who called that because of the ongoing police investigation there would be no comment from Sullivan & Ford.

Sprague, accompanied by Ursula, then went to Falcone's office. Falcone was sitting at his grand old desk, back to the door, staring at the Capitol dome and the graying sky. He turned to Sprague and felt that his cool and methodical behavior had somehow produced a shield of reason that held off the madness of the shootings. Sprague matter-of-factly told him about his instructions to the associates.

“And now for you. You okay?” Sprague asked, as if, Falcone thought, Sprague had been practicing triage and now had come to treat a case that needed immediate, specialized treatment.

Sprague took out his cell phone and clicked three images of Falcone's wound. Then Ursula handed him a small blue box with a red cross on its lid. He took out a cotton swab, wiped Falcone's wound, squirted antiseptic on it, and applied a large Band-Aid.

“Now we talk about the killing,” he said. “I have asked Ursula to check out recent and classic homicide cases in which the killer claimed self-defense or justified homicide.” Ursula sat at the corner chair and opened her laptop.

She moved gracefully and surely. He had heard that she had been a teenaged ballerina in the Leipzig Ballet when the Berlin Wall fell. Traveling alone, she managed to track down a distant relative in Philadelphia. She worked her way through the University of Pennsylvania by teaching dance. Office gossip, which Falcone usually ignored, said she was having an affair with a South Carolina congressman.

“We go with justified,” Sprague continued. “Self-defense is a bit risky. There's no ‘stand and defend' law on the books in DC. This isn't Florida, Texas, or a dozen other states that give you a license to kill. In real life, self-defense rarely ends in homicide. And when it does, some wise-guy prosecutor always asks, ‘Why was it necessary to
kill
John Doe? Why not just restrain him until the police arrive?'”