Murder at Ford's Theatre Page 32

  But that wasn’t the worst of the CPAs’ findings.

  Two bills from jewelry stores, and a round-trip airline ticket to Florida purchased through a travel agent, had been paid directly with Ford’s Theatre’s checks bearing Clarise Emerson’s signature. When shown them, she told the auditors that she’d never signed such checks; they were forgeries.

  Obviously, Crowley had been embezzling funds from the theatre’s coffers, which was bad enough. But one of the items purchased from the jewelry store, and the airline ticket, had been delivered not to Crowley but to a house on N Street, off Dupont Circle. The store manager, and travel agent, dug out their records, which showed that both purchases were sent to N. Zarinski, care of Mark and Laura Rosner at the N Street address.

  Mac and Annabel had decided that while those facts uncovered by the auditors were startling, they didn’t provide conclusive proof in and of themselves that Bernard Crowley was Nadia’s killer. Mac and Yale Becker decided during their phone conversation to assign a private investigator to dig into the possibility that Crowley killed Nadia Zarinski, and to devote the next few days to seeing whether they could build a case sufficient to present to the U.S. Attorney and the court.

  But Annabel didn’t have any doubt at that moment, in that cramped office, standing next to the limp body of Clarise Emerson. The controller, with the pleasant facade and who’d earned Clarise’s unbridled respect and admiration, was a killer, and Annabel knew he wouldn’t have the slightest reservation about killing her, too.

  Keep him talking, she silently told herself. He said he was sorry. Ask about that. “Why did you do this to Clarise?” she asked. “Was it an accident?”

  “No, I—”

  “You said you were sorry.”

  He looked away, eyes focused on the floor, and slowly shook his head. He wheezed with each exhalation, sounds from deep in his chest, expressions of the emotional pain he was feeling at that moment. He looked up with watery eyes: “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” Annabel said, more concerned with the role she needed to play than with her veracity. “You had an affair with Nadia?”

  “You could call it that. She was—I never had affairs with pretty women like Nadia. You can look at me and know why. I’ve always had to pay for female companions, and she was no different. ‘Buy me this, buy me that. Give me more or I’ll never see you again.’”

  A flash of pity came and went. Annabel looked down at Clarise, who’d moved.

  “We have to get her help,” Annabel said. “Please. I’m sure this can all be worked out, but if we don’t get her to a hospital, you’ll have her death on your conscience.” She made a move toward the door, but he blocked it again.

  “What had Nadia done to make you so angry that you hit her, Bernard?”

  With eyes to the floor again, he muttered, “She said she’d tell people about me taking money from here.”

  “Clarise?”

  “Yes. And others.”

  “And so you had to hit her to keep her quiet. Is that it?”

  “She told Clarise.”

  “She—when did she tell her?”

  “The day she—the day she died.”

  “But Clarise was shocked when the auditors discovered you’d been taking money from the theatre.”

  “She pretended to be. She’s a good actress. She told me to take care of Nadia. She told me to clean up my own litter box.”

  The accusation hit Annabel in the stomach like a physical punch. He had to be lying. It was inconceivable to Annabel that Clarise would do such a horrific thing. It had to be a lie.

  Clarise groaned and twisted in the chair; her hand went to the wound on her temple. Annabel reached down and grasped her wrist. “It’ll be okay, Clarise,” she said, not taking her eyes off Crowley, who leaned against the door frame as though the skeletal structure inside his big body were failing him. His chest heaved, and his eyes expressed, at once, anger and confusion.

  “Bernard, don’t you think it would be best for everyone if—?”

  Annabel saw a shadow fall across the landing behind Crowley, and knew it was Mac. Her immediate concern was for him, although the fact that Crowley didn’t appear to be armed provided some comfort. She wondered what Mac would do. Attack Bernard? She assumed he could see beyond the controller to where Clarise was slumped in her chair. He had to know something was terribly wrong.

  Mac answered her questions by asking in a firm, even tone, “Are you all right, Annie?”

  Crowley flinched at the sound of Smith’s voice and turned in the doorway. Mac approached him and looked inside the office. “We need a doctor here, Bernard, and we need one now!”

  Annabel had all she could do to not break down in tears and run to her husband. But she knew that might unsettle Crowley. Mac was steadying him by behaving normally.

  “Get out of my way,” Smith said, pushing past Crowley and coming to Annabel. “I’m fine,” she said. He leaned over Clarise and said, “It’ll be okay, Clarise. We’ll get a doctor here and you’ll be fine.”

  Mac and Annabel looked up to see Crowley leave the office and waddle toward the stairs.

  “He killed Nadia, Mac, and attacked Clarise. He said—”

  “He won’t get far,” Mac said, noticing the phone on the floor. “Grab a phone from another office and call 911. Tell them a murderer is leaving Ford’s Theatre, and describe him. And tell them we need an ambulance here fast!”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  MAC SMITH HAD COFFEE with Rick Klayman and Mo Johnson on Saturday morning following his Lincoln-the-Lawyer class at GW. He’d devoted the session to Lincoln’s rise to preeminence as one of the nation’s top lawyers when it came to resolving an increasing number of suits spawned by the rapid expansion of the railroads. Lincoln was comfortable taking either side of these disputes, and began earning enough to finally provide decently for his family. Still, he took on smaller cases for minimal fees when he felt a decent, honest citizen had been cheated.

  But conversation over coffee didn’t linger on Lincoln. The events of Thursday night dominated talk at the table.

  “Crowley confessed right away,” Johnson said. “Rick and I did the interrogation yesterday. I think he was glad to get it off his chest.”

  “What about his claim that Clarise Emerson told him to take care of Ms. Zarinski?” Smith asked. “In effect, he’s saying she ordered the killing.”

  “He was still claiming that yesterday,” Klayman replied. “You know her pretty well, Mac.” They were on a first-name basis at Smith’s request. “Think she’s capable of doing that?”

  “No,” he said, “but that doesn’t count for much. I’ve had clients over the years who did terrible things that I never would have suspected they were capable of. My wife and I prefer to think it’s Crowley’s attempt to shift blame.”

  Smith looked down at a copy of yesterday’s Washington Post. An unnecessarily large photo of Sydney Bancroft, taken as a publicity shot years ago during his heyday as an actor, dominated the front page. Mac shook his head and smiled. “Who ever would have thought?” he said, standing. “I have to go. My wife is home packing. We’re planning a trip to Paris later this fall, but we—she—decided we needed a long weekend away. We’re driving out to White Post, Virginia. There’s a lovely inn there, L’Auberge Provençale. Great restaurant, hot tub, no kids under ten, the perfect getaway.”

  “Sounds great,” Johnson said.

  Smith left them on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop.

  “What’s up for you this weekend?” Johnson asked his partner.

  “Not much left of it, is there? Rachel and I are having dinner tonight. I thought I’d spend Sunday trying to locate witnesses in the Marshall case, see if I can get them to remember things they might have forgotten first time around.”

  “It’s your day off, Rick.”

  “I know. Been an interesting couple of days, huh?”

  Johnson’s laugh was low and rumbling. “
You might say that. I told you Bancroft was nuts.”

  “Slightly skewed, that’s all. See you Monday.”

  “Yeah. See you Monday.”

  HAD IT NOT BEEN for Sydney Bancroft’s apparent attempt at assassination—since the president wasn’t in attendance, it was assumed America’s first female vice president was his target, a second-best victim compared to John Wilkes Booth’s success at killing a president—and his spectacular failure in that leading role, the arrest of Bernard Crowley would have received considerably more media coverage on Friday. But Bancroft had succeeded at being center stage once again, his name on the tip of virtually every person’s tongue. Crowley’s arrest in the Zarinski case was Page Three news.

  The corpulent controller had barely made it to the corner of Tenth Street before being apprehended in front of Honest Abe’s Souvenirs, with dozens of Lincoln masks in the windows witnessing the event. Crowley offered no resistance, and was seen crying as the police placed him in the rear of a patrol car. He was held that night for his attack on Clarise Emerson; charges in the Zarinski murder would come later, after he’d confessed and other evidence had been processed and presented to the U.S. Attorney.

  Clarise was rushed to the nearest hospital. Crowley’s blow had fractured bones in her skull. Emergency room physicians stabilized her, and the prognosis, according to a neurosurgeon called in to operate that night to relieve pressure on her brain, was for a full recovery—with a headache now and then to remind her of her encounter with the controller in whom she’d invested so much trust. Once she was sufficiently recovered to travel, she sold the Georgetown house and flew to California, where she established a small production company to produce documentaries for public television. Annabel’s contact with her quickly trailed off to virtually none. Clarise’s former husband, Senator Bruce Lerner, abandoned his plans for a presidential run and was easily reelected to another Senate term.

  Bancroft was held in a maximum-security cell and placed on suicide watch, which necessitated taking everything from him, including his shoe laces and belt. He was allowed to read the morning papers on Friday, and seemed pleased with the photograph of himself on the Post’s front page and the lengthy and detailed history of his career in the theatre that accompanied the picture. He looked every bit the leading man in the photo, and it appeared in newspapers across the country and around the world, as well as on TV screens in millions of homes. While court-appointed attorneys prepared his insanity plea—which they were confident would prevail—Sydney collected his press clippings and dutifully catalogued them in large scrapbooks. His British agent, Harrison Quill, interviewed by the London Times, stated, “Sydney Bancroft was a fine Shakespearean actor in his day. But I’m afraid he’d become a bit dotty in his old age and had lost his grip on reality. Sorry he’s ended up in such a pickle. Dreadful shame, it is. Dreadful shame.”

  Once the police had Crowley’s confession in the Nadia Zarinski murder, charges were dropped against Jeremiah Lerner. Because his mother faced a lengthy hospital stay and even longer convalescence, he’d spent a few days at his father’s house before returning to his apartment in Adams-Morgan. He didn’t accompany his mother to California, and seemed to drop out of sight in Washington, which to Mac and Annabel seemed only fitting. Whether he was the son of an ambitious U.S. senator, or a demented, aging British actor—or whether he was ever even made aware of the possibility that the senator wasn’t his natural father—remained unknown to Mac and Annabel, nor did they wish to know. It didn’t seem to matter.

  IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for other events in the nation’s capital, and abroad, to render that Thursday night at Ford’s Theatre a dim memory in a city filled with memories, triumphant and tragic. But the publicity surrounding it was good for business at the theatre. Its shows were standing room only, and the number of tourists visiting the historic site reached all-time highs. Park rangers who conducted tours added something to their fifteen-minute spiel about Sydney Bancroft and the havoc he created the night he took the stage and fired that errant shot. “He thought he was John Wilkes Booth,” the rangers said, usually adding a laugh when they said it. “But let’s get back to Lincoln and the night he was shot. That’s what’s important about this historic theatre.”

  Bancroft was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was confined to a mental institution where, it was reported, he entertained other inmates with material he would have included in his one-man show.

  A jury found Bernard Crowley guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced him to life; he would be eligible for parole in thirty years. It came out during his trial that he’d been dismissed from his former employment with the movie theatre chain in the Midwest for theft of funds, although no formal charges had ever been filed. Fearful of being sued for libel, the theatre chain’s management would only confirm his dates of employment when asked for a reference. Ford Theatre’s board of trustees contemplated suing the theatre chain for having foisted Crowley on them, but eventually dropped the idea.

  THEATRE, or real life?

  It is often hard to tell the difference in Washington, D.C., where “real” people hide behind theatrical masks and speak the words of others more gifted in drafting them, and actors expose their souls on bare stages and assume roles other than those into which they were born.

  Shakespeare said, a bit verbosely, through his character Hamlet, that theatre should closely imitate life.

  “. . . Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature; for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the timehis form and pressure.”

  In Washington, it’s too often the other way around, life imitating theatre. The “play” that is the nation’s capital never closes, high drama and low comedy, villains and heroes, all the stuff of compelling theatre. And in true theatrical spirit, the show must, and hopefully will, go on.

  A Ballantine Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 2002 by Margaret Truman

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Truman, Margaret, 1924–

  Murder at Ford’s Theatre / Margaret Truman.—1st ed.

  p. cm.—(A capital crimes novel)

  1. Reed, Annabel (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Smith, Mac (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Ford’s Theatre (Washington, D.C.)—Fiction. 4. Women art dealers—Fiction. 5. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. 6. Law teachers—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3570.R82 M74 2002

  813'.54—dc21

  2002074748

  eISBN: 978-0-345-45870-4

  v3.0