Free Murder at the National Cathedral by Margaret Truman Page B

took Rufus for a long walk before going to his class. Rufus needed the exercise and Smith needed to think. They wandered Foggy Bottom, an area of Washington defined by Eighteenth Street on the east, Constitution Avenue on the south, the Potomac River and Twenty-sixth Street on the west, and Pennsylvania Avenue on the north. Originally a malarial marsh incorporated as Hamburg but called Funkstown after Jacob Funk, who’d purchased the original land, it eventually became known as Foggy Bottom, an unkind reference to the foul emissions produced by the many industries that once had been settled within its boundaries. Today, it is an attractive neighborhood that is home to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, George Washington University (the second-largest landholder in Washington after the federal government), and the departments of State and Interior. It had been Mac Smith’s home ever since his wife and son were killed and he’d left his luxurious Watergate apartment suite and bought the narrow two-story taupe brick house on Twenty-fifth Street, its trim, shutters, and front door painted Federal blue, its rooms devoid of painful memories that had started to suffocate him as a Watergate widower.
    He returned Rufus to the house, and after carefully checking his briefcase, which he had checked and repacked the night before (he could not go to sleep without having prepared his briefcase for the following day), and taking his raincoat from the closet, as rain was predicted, headed for Lerner Hall. A reporter from the
Post
was waiting on the front steps, along with two uniformed officers from the MPD.
    “Mr. Smith, could I have a word with you?” the reporter asked. One of the officers motioned Smith to approach them. Smith excused himself with a word to the reporter and went to where the officers stood. “Mr. Smith, we tried you at your home, but your wife said you’d left.”
    “Yes, I took a walk. My dog and I, that is. What can I do for you?”
    “Chief Finnerty would like a word with you.”
    “Now? I have a class to teach.”
    “He said for us to bring you to him as quickly as possible.”
    “You’ll just have to tell him I won’t be available for the next two hours.”
    “I’ll call in,” the other officer said. He returned from the squad car and said, “The chief says we should wait for you, Mr. Smith. He says you should teach your class, but that he would like to see you right after it.”
    Smith looked at his watch. “All right, but you have two hours to kill.”
    “No problem, Mr. Smith.” Of course not, Smith thought. Cops were experts at killing time. They had to be.
    Smith headed for the door, but the reporter intercepted him again. “Mr. Smith, I’m Mark Rosner from the
Post.
Give me a few minutes?”
    “Sorry, I can’t. I’m already running late for my class. Besides, I have nothing to talk about.”
    “The Singletary murder,” Rosner said. “Aren’t you serving as counsel to the cathedral?”
    “No.”
    “But it’s my understanding that—”
    Smith flashed a broad smile. “I think you should find better sources. I’m a college professor who happens to be a personal friend of the bishop of the cathedral. Excuse me, I don’t want to be rude, but I’m afraid I’m about to be.” He walked away, leaving the reporter with an expression on his face that indicated both annoyance and ambivalence.
    When Smith entered the lecture hall, most of his students were in their seats. They were a decent lot for the most part, with a few exceptions. That they were bright went without saying; you didn’t get into GW’s law school unless you could demonstrate as much. The problem, Smith often thought, was that, as with medical schools, intelligence and grades were virtually the sole determining factor for admission to law schools. But how do you judge a young man or woman’s sense of humanity, commitment to decency, to social justice, to using an excellent legal education to give something