Extreme Exposure (36 page)

It was interesting information. More interesting was the fact that Senator de la Peña hadn’t seen fit to include among the materials Kara had requested the fact that his younger brother worked for Northrup. Reece was his close friend. Did Reece know?

Kara picked up the phone and dialed Tom’s desk. “Hi, it’s McMillan. I’ve got—”

“Have you heard from your mother today? How’s she doing?”

“What? No, I haven’t spoken with her yet today.”

“Well, when you do, tell her I said hello.”

Kara bit back a groan. Her editor had the hots for her mother. It was enough to make her ill. “Actually, I’ve called with some interesting information relevant to my investigation. Senator de la Peña’s brother works as a shift manager at Northrup, but somehow the good senator didn’t see fit to account for this fact in my open-records request.”

“That is interesting. What do you know about the brother?”

“I know he’s spent almost as much time in prison as out of it, mostly drugs. He served a five-year sentence in Cañon City in the nineties and spent most of this decade so far in Leavenworth.”

“Leavenworth? Hold on. Let me get Novak in here.” He bellowed for Tessa. “I’m going to put you on speakerphone. Tell Novak what you just told me.”

Kara recapped the details. “He was released from Leavenworth in July 2004, and somehow he managed to land a job as a shift manager at Northrup. I don’t know if he has any prior experience in—”

Tessa interrupted. “When did you say he entered Leavenworth?”

“It says here February 2000.”

“That places him in Leavenworth at the same time as John David Weaver. Hellfire and damnation, Kara, you found the missing link.”

CHAPTER 27

J
OHN
D
AVID
Weaver.
The man who’d tried to kill her.

Kara was glad she was already sitting down. “You’ve been investigating him.”

“Of course!” Tom sounded indignant. “Someone tries to take out one of my reporters, I’m damned well going to find out everything I can about him!”

It was perhaps the most caring thing she’d ever heard Tom say. Except, of course, that it was all about him.
His
reporter?

“I’ve been following every lead I have, trying to kick this dead man’s ass for you,” Tessa said. “I’ve been hoping to tie him to Northrup or TexaMent, but so far all I’ve been able to prove conclusively is that he was a lifelong loser. He’s been in and out of prison since he was fifteen. Seems he liked to hurt women.”

When I’m done with you, you’ll do anything I tell you to do. Or maybe I should let you die with me inside you.

His voice, steeped in hatred, filled her mind.

Kara squeezed her eyes shut and blocked out his words. “Yeah. I’ve got no trouble believing that. Is there any way Sophie can use her prison contacts to find out whether he and Juan de la Peña knew each other? Anything we can do to prove the connection will help.”

“I’ll have her get on it.” Tom bellowed for her. “Alton! Get in here!”

“So what’s this mean for your investigation?” Tessa asked.

“I’m not sure. We’ve already got a paper trail tying Devlin to TexaMent. Maybe it’s just coincidence that Senator de la Peña has a brother working there. And even if his brother is caught up in this, it’s possible that the senator is clean.”

Tom made a sound of disgust. “He needs to explain why he failed to disclose his family ties to Northrup when he responded to your open-records request. I refuse to believe it was just an oversight on his part. Time for you to give him a call and play indignant reporter. In the meantime, I’m going to have Novak here see if we can persuade Irving to give us a crack at his case file in exchange for this bit of information you’ve unearthed. Someone had to be paying your buddy Weaver, and the cops are the only ones who are going to be able to access his accounts.”

Her
buddy?
Tom had the sensitivity of a rock.

Kara let it roll off her. “The Senate’s in session today, so there’s not much chance that I’ll catch de la Peña until late this afternoon, but I’ll call now and leave a message.”

In the background, Tom was telling Sophie to look into any in-prison ties between Weaver and Juan de la Peña.

Tessa spoke, the tone of her voice changing from professional to personal. “How are you doing, Kara?”

“Better.”

“We all miss you. You need to come back before Holly drives Sophie and me nuts. She called me last night at almost midnight to ask—”

Tom’s voice interrupted. “We’ll fire you an e-mail if we find anything new. Otherwise, we’ll have an I-team meeting by speakerphone tomorrow morning at nine. I want this story in the bag in forty-eight hours.”

“Got it. And Tessa—thanks.”

“My pleasure. We’re a team, remember?”

Kara hung up and dialed Reece’s cell phone. Something told her she needed to warn him.

A
S HIS
fellow senators filed past him for their lunch recess, Reece packed his briefcase, a feeling of grim satisfaction in his gut. The bill was dead, consigned to eternal legislative limbo. Although there was no way to prevent someone from carrying a similar bill next year, at least he’d proved to Stanfield and to himself that he was not for sale, no matter what the price.

He shut his briefcase, reached into his trouser pocket for his cell phone, hoping Kara had left him a message, but his cell phone wasn’t there. He grabbed his coat off the back of his Senate seat and reached into its pockets, but his cell wasn’t there either. He’d used it to check messages this morning on his way into the Capitol, so he knew he hadn’t left it in Kara’s hotel room. Deciding it must be upstairs on his desk, he picked up his briefcase, draped his coat over his arm, and strode up the steps of the Senate chamber toward the door.

He needed to grab a quick bite to eat, but first he wanted to call Chief Irving and send Kara an e-mail to tell them both what he’d learned from Devlin. The bastard had all but admitted to working for Stanfield and to forcing the health department to back off its enforcement action at TexaMent. And although he’d denied having anything to do with the memo, the attack on Kara, or Alexis’s death, he’d admitted that he’d gotten Stanfield’s call the night of the murder.

Reece was so deep in thought that the crush of reporters waiting for him in the hallway outside the Senate chamber took him by surprise. The moment he opened the door, they rushed in on him, firing questions like bullets, cameras clicking, their flashes flaring like strobes. Unable to hear through the chaos, he held one hand up for quiet. Then, as he would do in a classroom of noisy teenagers, he spoke so quietly that everyone fell silent to hear him. “I can’t answer your questions if you shout all at once. One at a time, please.”

“Is it true you and Ms. Ryan had a sexual relationship?”

“Yes.” Out of respect for her family, he refrained from pointing out that there was hardly a lawmaker at the Capitol who hadn’t.

“What do you feel this scandal has done to your chances for re-election?”

“Ultimately, there is no scandal, because I had nothing to do with Ms. Ryan’s murder. Right now the only thing that concerns me is seeing her killer brought to justice. I haven’t given a single thought to being re-elected.”

“Do you feel that passing the polygraph test ought to vindicate you in the court of public opinion?”

“Although we’re all innocent until proven guilty, I realize people sometimes rush to judgment based on media reports. I suspect that those who’ve already judged me and assumed that I’m guilty won’t be satisfied until I’m fully cleared.”

Down the hall behind the media throng, Miguel paced back and forth, looking agitated. Reece hadn’t yet had time to talk with him, as he’d gone straight from his confrontation with Devlin back to the Senate floor.

“Is it possible that the murder of Alexis Ryan was in some way connected with the failed attempt on reporter Kara McMillan’s life?”

Reece hesitated. “That’s a question best answered by the police. Thanks for your interest, and now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get some work done before session reconvenes.”

He pasted what he hoped was a friendly smile on his face, ignored the burst of additional questions, and made his way through the crowded hallway toward Miguel, who glared at him.

“It’s about damned time! What do I have to do—make an appointment?”

It wasn’t like Miguel to be hostile or sarcastic. Reece studied his friend’s face. “What’s going on?”

“We need to talk, and it can’t wait.”

Reece glanced over his shoulder. “Well, we can’t do it
here unless you want every word we say to be in tomorrow’s paper.”

“Let’s go up to the observation gallery. It’s usually pretty private up there, and I need air.”

They stopped by Reece’s office so he could drop off his briefcase—a quick glance revealed no cell phone on his desk, either—and then took the marble stairs past the presidential portraits on the third floor of the rotunda to the uppermost level just beneath the dome. A jumble of voices echoed up from the busy ground floor of the rotunda, more than one hundred feet below. French doors opened onto a narrow balcony that wrapped itself around the building, offering spectacular views in all directions.

Reece automatically gravitated toward the west and its view of the distant snowcapped mountains. He opened the door and stepped into the late February sunshine, Miguel following after him. Two hundred feet below them, people walked their dogs in the park, stood in groups talking, or hurried to their cars.

Reece heard Miguel’s breathing behind him and felt an odd prickling down his spine. He turned to find Miguel standing there, a strange expression on his face. “What’s going on? Has something happened with Hilaria or one of the kids?”

Miguel flinched, stepped back, and looked away. “It’s my brother.”

“Luis?” The last Reece had heard, Luis, who’d been a bit on the wild side in his younger years, was newly married and awaiting the birth of his first child.

“No. Juan.” Miguel couldn’t seem to look him in the eye, and Reece realized his friend felt ashamed.

“I’m sorry.” From what Reece remembered, Juan was the fourth of Miguel’s six brothers and had spent most of his life in and out of prison. Miguel rarely mentioned him. “Is he in some kind of trouble?”

Miguel looked down at the ground below and nodded, sweat beading on his upper lip and forehead, his breathing rapid.

Reece had never seen him like this before. He reached over and placed a reassuring hand on Miguel’s shoulder. “Whatever it is, Miguel—”

“Stop it!” Miguel pushed his hand away and stepped back from him.

It took Reece a moment to realize Miguel was pointing a pistol at him and a few seconds more for the adrenaline to kick in. “What the hell?”

The gun shook in Miguel’s unsteady hands. “I told you not to get involved! I warned you to stay out of it! Why didn’t you listen?”

Reeling between disbelief and soul-deep shock, Reece looked up from the barrel of the H&K nine-millimeter semi-auto to the look of hellish anguish in his friend’s brown eyes. He wondered if this was the gun that had killed Alexis and fought back the rage that surged from his gut. If he wanted to live through this, he needed to keep his mind clear. “Tell me what’s going on, Miguel.”

“Juan works for Northrup. He’s a shift manager. I helped him get the job when he got out of prison. I thought it would help him straighten out his life.”

“And it didn’t.”

“At first it seemed to. Then he got busted by his supervisor for dealing on-site. Mike Stanfield would have turned him over to the cops, except that he was my brother.”

“So they didn’t report him.” Reece itched to turn on the digital recorder in his pocket but didn’t dare move.

Miguel shook his head. “No. Stanfield even offered to get him treatment. Then when the health department came down on them, Stanfield told me I owed them a favor. I made a few phone calls, wrote a memo, got Owens to drop it. I didn’t like it, but it seemed only fair, especially because Juan was one of the workers they cited.”

Miguel had written the memo? This had to be a joke. It was anything but a joke. “But then Kara started digging, didn’t she?”

“I didn’t know anything about her connection to this until
she stormed in and took the health department records. I told Stanfield there was nothing I could do about it.”

“Did you try to have her killed?”

“No! God, no! I had nothing to do with that!” But the look on Miguel’s face told Reece exactly who did.

“Juan set it up, didn’t he?”

Miguel swallowed, a convulsive jerk of his throat, then nodded. “The man the cops killed was a friend of his from Leavenworth.”

“And Alexis?”

“Believe me, I’d have stopped him if I’d have known. When I heard she’d been killed and you were the prime suspect, I knew. Dear God, Reece, he killed her and then he used information about you that Stanfield had gotten from me to set you up.”

The memory of Miguel staring at his gun flashed through Reece’s mind. “You told Stanfield that Alexis and I had been lovers, and you told him I was carrying a gun.”

Miguel nodded, lifted his chin, but sweat was running down his face. “Juan is my brother, Reece. I have to get him out of this.”

“And getting him out of this includes killing me?” And then he understood. “You were going to push me off, weren’t you?”

“Y-you turned around too fast. I couldn’t.” Miguel took a step toward him, gun trembling in his hands. “So now you’re going to jump.”

Reece laughed, a harsh sound. “I see. My death will look like a suicide. Everyone will think I nixed myself because of Alexis’s murder, and what I know will die with me. Is this your idea, friend?”

Miguel flinched at the word
friend,
his face an image of torture. “No!”

“Well, that’s some comfort. I suppose it’s Stanfield’s idea then?”

“He wanted me to push you, but I can’t. I can’t!”

“Too bad, Miguel, because I won’t jump, and I won’t let
you push me off. If you want me dead, you’re going to have to shoot me. You’re going to have to pull that trigger.” Reece took a step forward.