The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2003

he awkward position of the body lying on the floor. A knife protruding from his back. Curiously little blood. I froze in the doorway, a strangled cry stuck in my throat. “Liza, did you find that ass- hole Fleet yet?” The annoyed voice calling loudly from the other end of the hallway was apparently past caring whether the members of the General Council would hear. “Over this way,” I said. Then realizing he hadn’t heard me, I cleared my throat and repeated more loudly, “Jay, come here now! Something awful has happened!” Worse than awful. The World Trade Organization’s first meeting of the season was opening in 10 minutes with a keynote speech from the U.S. under secretary for eco- nomic affairs — and the head of his advance team was lying dead at my feet. S ix hours later, I remained ensconced in a small side office at World Trade Organization head- quarters in Geneva with the other two members of the U.S. delega- tion. The police had come and gone, the under secretary and his entourage had been whisked back to the hotel, and most of the other delegations had left for the night. Without the bureaucratic hum that normally filled the WTO’s halls, the building seemed oddly silent to me. I slouched back in a leather armchair with my eyes closed, badly wanting to sleep. Jay, on the other hand, was turning ghoulish. “The body was still warm, so the police think Fleet was murdered just a few minutes before you found him. You and the killer must have been this close.” Jay held his hand up, thumb and forefinger pinched together. “Don’t be such an ass; I’ve already told you I didn’t see any- one,” I snapped. “I walked up and down the hallway opening up doors looking for Fleet. The cor- ridor was empty. No one even went by me. Everyone was already in the main hall waiting for the meeting to start.” “If no one else was there, you must be the police’s main sus- pect.” I opened my mouth to protest, but Jay was already talk- ing again. “You’d be the perfect murderer. You’re methodical, calm under pressure, and you hold a grudge.” I didn’t like Jay’s description, but he wasn’t far off the mark. “But I didn’t have a motive,” I said, draining the last of the coffee out of my mug. It was cold. There was a brief pause. “I did,” said Ellen. Both Jay and I looked over at our soft-spoken office assistant in surprise. T E RIC F LEET WAS A VERY ANNOYING MAN . B UT WHO DISLIKED HIM ENOUGH TO KILL HIM ? B Y N ANCY N ELSON J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 21 F O C U S D EATH OF A P UBLIC S ERVANT Janet Cleland