Capitol Murder (37 page)

“Excuse me?” Christina said. “We haven’t lost this case yet.”

He shrugged. “Win or lose, the governor has had it. He’s going to call for Glancy’s
resignation. ’Course, Glancy could refuse, but given all that’s been revealed, it puts him in a
pretty tough spot.”

“And if Glancy resigns?”

“The governor gets to pick someone to fill out the remainder of his term.”

“And who do you suppose that will be?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. But I know this—the governor owes Kodiak Oil big time. He’ll make
sure we’re taken care of. He won’t pick anyone hostile to me.”

“Or me,” said another voice from the hallway. This time it was Oklahoma’s junior senator, Brad
Tidwell, and he appeared just as jubilant as Melanfield. “And since I’ll become the senior
senator, I think I can arrange to assume most or all of Glancy’s former committee assignments.”
He squeezed Melanfield tightly on the shoulder. “Steve, I think this is the start of a beautiful
friendship. Alaska or bust!”

“You people are making me sick,” Christina said. “Have you totally forgotten why we’re here?
This isn’t some campaign-headquarters smoke-filled room. It’s a courtroom. A man is on trial for
his life.”

Tidwell was not impressed. “We’re all on trial for our lives, lady. From the moment we declare
our candidacy to the day we die. Todd knows that as well as I do. But he screwed up. Now he’s
paying for it.” He shrugged, then let loose another grin. “No reason why others shouldn’t profit
from his mistake.”

Christina started for the door. “You’re disgusting.”

Padolino held out his hand. “Christina—about my . . .”

“Forget it.” She pushed Tidwell out of her way. “Buy these two jackals a drink. While you’re
at it, buy them a conscience.” She slammed the door behind her.

When Loving awoke, his head was throbbing and he felt as if he was being tortured. It took a
few more moments of consciousness to gather his senses sufficiently to comprehend the reason—he
was
being tortured.

He was strung up, literally, his hands tied together with wire, dangling from the ceiling. His
feet did not quite touch the floor. He’d been stripped bare to the waist. Am I hanging from a
meat hook, he wondered, like that woman back at the S&M palace? Didn’t really matter, not
while his arms felt as if they were being ripped out of their sockets. Regardless of what he was
hanging from, it hurt like hell.

“Ah, Loving, we’re awake, are we? That’s good. I was becoming anxious.”

Loving didn’t have to adjust his vision to know who was speaking to him. “Look who’s here.
Amber’s alleged daddy. Also known as the Sire.”

He smiled thinly. “How smart you are. I suspected you’d find us, eventually. So I made
preparations.” From a rack on the wall, he took the end of a long large fire hose into both
hands, then turned the spigot. Water spewed out—slamming into Loving’s chest.

“Ahhhh!”
Loving felt the harsh blast tearing at him, knocking him backward, putting
even more strain on his aching arms.
“Stoooop!”

The Sire turned off the water. “Since you asked nicely. I just wanted you to get nice and wet.
Water is such a good conductor.”

“You killed Amber,” Loving said, gasping. It was difficult to breathe while hanging like this.
Almost impossible to speak. “And you killed Colleen and Veronica Cooper, too.”

“To the contrary, I never kill anyone.” He smiled through thin, blood-red lips. “I merely
release them from their bodies. But they still live. They become a part of me. A part of my
immortal essence.”

Loving could taste blood in his mouth. He spat it out. “Have you killed Beatrice?”

“And why would I do that?”

“I saw you in there! Your sick little ceremony.”

The Sire stepped closer—though not near enough for Loving to wrap his legs around his throat.
“You misapprehend the nature of our ceremony. We never intended to kill her, at least not there.
What purpose would that serve?” He smiled. “We ate her. We took turns, sucking her dry.”

Despite his pain, Loving felt his temper rising. “She’s still alive?”

“For now. Until she outlives her usefulness to us.” He waited until Loving looked him in the
eyes before he continued. “What have you told the police about me? Or that attorney you work
for?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re lying.”

“Okay, everythin’. They know all about your sick little church. You’d better get the hell out
of here.”

“Again, you’re lying.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he sighed. “I’m sure. How much do you know about my little church?”

“Everything there is to know. Everything those girls knew, and then some. Enough to put you
behind bars for the rest of your life.”

The Sire pondered. “You could be telling the truth. But I don’t think so. Let me ask again.
What do you know about my church?”

“You run a church? Damn. I thought this was an IHOP.”

The Sire frowned. “I can see this is going to be useless. You require persuasion.”

“Listen, creep, you can shoot me with your little hose all night long. It won’t make any
difference.”

“I suspect it would, after a few days. But I don’t have a few days. Dr. Usher?”

Loving heard a door creak somewhere in the darkness. A figure emerged. He was wearing a white
coat, like a surgeon, but that didn’t prevent Loving from recognizing him.

It was Deep Throat. And he was carrying a little black bag.

“Dr. Usher did a residency in surgery. Did you know?”

Loving felt a cold chill envelop his body.

“I think you should start with the scalpel, Doctor. What do you think?”

“As you wish, Sire.” His expression was flat, almost blank. He was like an automaton, a slave
with no choice but to do his master’s bidding.

“Very well. You may begin.”

“Look,” Loving said, “I don’t know what you’re thinkin’, but I’m not gonna—”

In the blink of an eye Deep Throat—or Dr. Usher—lunged forward, scalpel extended. The blade
entered the soft part of Loving’s abdomen, just above the waist, just below the kidneys.

Loving screamed.

As soon as Ben entered the courtroom, he saw that his next witness was already present, which
alleviated one potential worry. On the other hand, his witness was talking to Shawn MacReady, the
congressman from Arkansas and former witness for the prosecution, which tended to create
additional worries.

Ben approached them. “All ready to go?”

His witness was a tall, exceedingly thin man, almost gaunt in appearance, but with a sinewy
strength to him. John Carradine in his prime. Not someone Ben would want to arm wrestle. “I think
so. If you’re sure you want to do this.”

“I’m sure.” He shifted his gaze to MacReady. “Anything I can do for you?”

“No. I was just discussing the possibility of employing your witness. I’ve had a few security
concerns of late. Thought he might be able to help.” He paused. “For that matter, from what I
hear, you’ve had a few security concerns yourself, Kincaid.”

“You could say that. Guard out front told me Darrin Cooper tried to get into the courtroom
again today. Fortunately they stopped him.”

The bailiff brought the court into session and a few moments later, the judge and jury were
back in place. Ben called his next witness.

“The defense calls Max Capshaw.”

The tall man shuffled when he walked, with a slight hunch to his shoulders. He was wearing a
suit that could be described as ill fitting at best: Ben guessed that it was borrowed and that he
didn’t normally work with a Windsor knot pressed against his neck.

Ben wasted no time establishing that Capshaw was a licensed private detective in the District
of Columbia and that he was the man Marie Glancy had hired to follow Veronica Cooper. With great
detail and considerable verve, Capshaw told the jury everything he had witnessed over the course
of six months tailing the woman. Todd Glancy barely figured in the narrative, and when he did,
Capshaw glossed over it quickly. What he spent his time on was Veronica Cooper’s nightlife. Amber
and Colleen and Beatrice. Stigmata. The Chosen. Even Circle Thirteen. Veronica’s addiction to the
designer drug. And her addiction to sex. Lots and lots of sex. Not just with Todd Glancy—not even
primarily with Todd Glancy. With all kinds of men. And women. As Capshaw described her sexual
encounters, they seemed so patternless and indiscriminate that the jury was left wondering if she
had even been aware of what she was doing or who she was doing it with. Padolino objected
repeatedly, but Herndon consistently overruled him, reminding Padolino that only yesterday he had
been allowed to delve into the parties’ sex lives with great abandon. Sauce for the goose.

“During the time that you observed Ms. Cooper, how often would you say that she engaged in
sexual relations?” Ben asked.

Capshaw screwed up his face. “Jeez, I don’t know. Some nights she did it three, four times,
with that many different guys. Some nights in that upstairs orgy apartment she went from one
person to the next, one right after the other. Never even went out for a smoke.” He shook his
head. “I’ve never seen a girl with energy like that. ’Course a lot of that was being fueled by
the drug.”

“So it would be fair to say that Ms. Cooper engaged in sexual activity on a regular basis with
a wide variety of sexual partners.”

“Definitely. Hell, I was telling my friend last night—the big surprise isn’t that the senator
got caught having sex with that chick. The surprise is that he didn’t catch something worse.”

Thank you so much, Ben thought, moving quickly to his next question.

“And you’re certain she was a member of this . . . Circle Thirteen? The vampire club. And the
Inner Circle.”

“You betcha. I saw her there, back at that so-called church where they hold all their
ceremonies. I watched the whole thing with night-vision binoculars through this rose window. She
was wearing robes and chanting and the whole sick nine yards. They even slaughtered a chicken and
splattered its blood all over the floor. Disgusting.”

“And Ms. Cooper participated in these black magic exercises?”

Capshaw chuckled. “Well, she wasn’t Wendy the Good Witch, that’s for damn sure.”

Ben searched for the right words. “And did you ever see Ms. Cooper physically engaged with one
of these . . . vampires?”

“Engaged? I watched one bite her in the neck.”

Ben stared at him. “You mean . . . for real?”

“Hell yes. Some of those guys actually have their teeth filed to a sharp point so they can do
that sick stuff. You remember the Bartmann guy saying how he turned her on? And he didn’t even
have all his teeth. Now imagine her with one of these dudes with the big sharpened canines. I’m
tellin’ ya, she was creamin’. Er, you know—very excited. In a sexual sort of way.”

“I think we get the picture, sir.” Ben returned to the enlargements from the coroner’s report
he had used before. “Earlier we heard Dr. Bukowsky admit under cross-examination that there was a
wound to Ms. Cooper’s jugular vein too small to have been made by a knife.” He held up the
enlargement and pointed. “You’ve seen these men, sir, and you’ve seen how they interacted with
Ms. Cooper. I know you’re not a coroner, but do you think it’s possible this puncture wound was
made by . . . a fang?”

“Objection!” Padolino cried. “The witness has no medical expertise. This whole line of
questioning is becoming ridiculous. Counsel is turning the trial into a Hammer horror show.”

“I’ll allow it,” Herndon said firmly. “Overruled.”

“It’s more than possible,” Capshaw said, not missing a beat. “It would’ve been easy. Some of
those guys had fangs so long and sharp they could rip your whole head off.”

“Based upon your observations, sir, would you say these people with whom Ms. Cooper consorted
could be described as dangerous?”

“I’d say that anyone who has their teeth sharpened so they can bite someone in the neck is by
definition dangerous,” he replied. “And you mix in the drugs and the booze and the loose
sex—well, I’ve heard of living on the edge, but this chick was practically dangling over the
precipice. God forbid she ever did anything to make one of those guys mad. Any of them could’ve
gotten to her. Anything could’ve happened to her. Anything at all.”

“Well, that was all very thrilling,” Padolino said, as he strolled to the podium to
cross-examine. “Almost like watching the late late show, complete with ghouls and goblins and
vampires. But Veronica Cooper wasn’t killed by a vampire or his fangs, was she? She was killed by
a big thick knife. I don’t believe you’re refuting the coroner’s testimony on that point, are
you,
Dr
. Capshaw?”

Capshaw gave him a wry look. “No, I’m not disputing that the girl was killed by a knife.”
Padolino started to move on, but Capshaw cut him off. “The question is, who was holding the
knife. And from what I saw of the girl’s lifestyle, the possible suspects range somewhere in the
four-digit numbers.”

“Move to strike,” Padolino said angrily. “Mr. Capshaw, did you in fact see anyone kill Ms.
Cooper?”

“No, obviously not. Mrs. Glancy ended my employment a few days before Cooper was killed.”

“Did you ever see any of these—” He made a show of suppressing his smirk. “—
vampires
hurt Ms. Cooper?”

“Not as such. Not in a way she didn’t like, anyhow.”

“Did you ever see any of these people threaten Ms. Cooper?”

“No.”

“Do you even know of any reason any of them would have to kill her? Sounds like they were all
one big happy coven.”

“Well, it’s possible that—”

“Excuse me, sir, but I don’t want to hear about possibilities. I asked if you know—note the
word—
know
of any reason these people would have to kill Veronica Cooper.”

“No.”

“And to your knowledge, did any of these vampires have access to the hallways of the U.S.
Senate?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then I submit, sir, that your thousands of mythical unnamed suspects are a smokescreen.
There’s only one person who had a motive to kill Ms. Cooper, much less had access to her or the
place where her body was found.”