Fatal Affair (10 page)

Chapter 15

Sam corralled her hair into a ponytail, strapped on her shoulder holster, clipped the badge to her belt, and adjusted her suit jacket over the same scoop-necked top she’d worn yesterday. When she was ready, she took a long look around to make sure she wasn’t leaving behind any sign that she had spent the night for the team she planned to send in there later that day. Satisfied by the quick sweep of the room, she emerged to find Nick waiting for her in the living room. Somehow he managed to appear pressed and polished in yesterday’s clothes. His face was smooth and his hair still damp from the shower.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

Wrapping her coat and his arms around her, he hugged her from behind and pressed kisses to her neck and cheek before he finally let go.

The spontaneous demonstration of affection caught her off guard. Unless it was leading to sex, Peter had never bothered with the random acts of affection that Nick doled out so effortlessly. Nick seemed to
need
to touch her if she was near him. That she liked it so much was just another reason to keep her distance.

The O’Connors’s home was located two miles up the main road from John’s cabin. Once again, Carrie met them at the door and was surprised to see them out so early.

“Are they up?” Nick asked.

“They’re having breakfast. Come on in.” She led them into the cozy country kitchen where Graham and Laine sat at the table lost in their own thoughts. Neither of them seemed to be eating much of anything.

Both had dark circles under their eyes. Weariness and grief clung to them.

“Nick?” Graham said. “You’re out early. Sergeant.”

Carrie handed mugs of coffee to Sam and Nick.

“Thank you,” Nick said.

“I’m sorry to barge in on you so early.” Sam stirred cream into her coffee and wished it was a diet cola. “But I have something I need to ask you.”

“Of course,” Laine said. “Whatever we can do to help.”

Sam retrieved the photo from her bag. “Who is this?” She placed the photo on the table between them.

They looked at the photo and then at each other.

“Where’d you get this?” Graham asked.

“At the cabin,” Nick said. “The photo was tucked into the essay book you had made for him.”

“It’s John’s cousin, Thomas,” Laine said, glancing up at Sam with cool patrician eyes. “His father is Graham’s brother Robert.”

“I don’t remember John mentioning a cousin that young,” Nick said.

Laine shrugged. “There were almost twenty years between them. They were hardly close.”

“He looks an awful lot like your son,” Sam said, testing for reactions.

“Yes, he does,” Graham said, his expression neutral. “Is there anything else?”

“Do you know where I can find Terry?” Sam said.

The question seemed to startle both O’Connors.

“I believe he’s working in the city this morning,” Graham said.

“The address?”

He rattled off the name and K Street address of a prominent lobbying firm, which Sam wrote down in the small notebook she pulled from her back pocket. “If you have no objection, I’d like to send a team into the cabin today to make sure we’re not missing something that could help with the case.”

“Strange people in John’s home?” Laine asked, visibly disturbed by the notion.

“Police,” Sam clarified. “They’ll be as respectful as possible.”

“That’s fine,” Graham said with a pointed look at his wife. “If it’ll help the investigation, do it.”

“Can you tell me, Senator, who might still have keys to the apartment at the Watergate from when you lived there?”

Graham pondered that for a moment. “Only my family.”

“No staffers or aides?”

“My chief of staff had one, but I distinctly recall him giving it back to me when we left office.”

“Any chance he might’ve had others made, given them to other people?”

“No. He was a guard dog about my privacy. He didn’t even like having the key himself.”

“Are you aware, either of you, that John spoke with Patricia Donaldson in Chicago several times a week for an hour or more each time?”

Again the O’Connors exchanged glances.

“No, but I’m not surprised,” Graham said. “They were close friends as children.”

“Just friends?”

“Yes,” Laine said pointedly, so pointedly in fact that it raised Sam’s hackles and her radar. There was more to this story. Of that she had no doubt. She’d be speaking to Patricia Donaldson as soon as she could arrange a trip to Chicago.

“John is still due to be moved today to Richmond?” Laine asked Nick.

He nodded. “The motorcade is leaving Washington at noon.”

“We’ll be going down to Richmond this afternoon,” Graham said. “The state police are escorting us and clearing the way for us to get in and out before they open it to the public.”

“The staff will have a private viewing in the morning,” Nick said.

“You got the clothes they needed?” Laine asked.

“Yes. I’m heading to the funeral home from here. Um, about the funeral… Have you decided who you want to have speak on behalf of the family?”

“You do it,” Laine said with a weary sigh.

“Are you sure? You wouldn’t rather have a family member?”

“You
are
family to us, Nick,” Graham said. “You’ll do him proud. We know that.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said softly. “We should let you get back to your breakfast.”

“We’ll see you Monday, if not before,” Laine said.

Nick leaned over to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be in touch.”

She squeezed the hand he rested on her shoulder. “Thank you for all you’re doing. I know it can’t be easy for you.”

“It’s an honor and a privilege.”

Patting his hand once more, she released him.

Nick hugged Graham and kissed Carrie on his way out of the kitchen. With his hand on the small of her back, he steered Sam to the front door. Once they were outside, he took a deep, rattling breath of cold air.

Since there was little else she could do to comfort him, she held his hand between both of hers all the way back to Washington.

After fighting their way through rush-hour traffic, Nick pulled up to the Watergate with fifteen minutes to spare before Sam’s appointment with Senator Stenhouse.

“So much for going home to change first,” she grumbled. “Freddie will have a field day with this.”

“Tell him you worked all night. Won’t be a total lie.”

“It’ll be a good excuse to remind him that I outrank him and can order him to shut up. He likes that.”

Nick smiled and reached for the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He withdrew a small leather case and handed her his business card. “Call me? My cell number is on there.”

She took the card, stuffed it in her pocket and reached for the door.

He stopped her before she could get out. “Talk to me before Monday so we can arrange to go to the funeral together if you still want me to help you ID people.”

“I do. I’ll be in touch.”

“Remember to eat and sleep, will you?”

“Yeah, right,” she said on her way out the door.

Nick waited, probably to make sure her car started because he was polite that way, and then pulled into traffic just ahead of her.

On the way to Capitol Hill, Sam called Gonzo and asked him to oversee the sift through John O’Connor’s cabin.

“It’s not a crime scene, so I’m not interested in fingerprints or DNA. I’m just looking for anything we don’t already know about him.”

“Gotcha. So we got confirmation that the blood in Christina Billings’s car was her own.”

“Well, I guess that closes that loop,” Sam said. “There’s no way she made it across town, killed him, showered, cleaned up the bathroom and got back with Chinese food in twenty-eight minutes. Not in this town with this traffic, even at midnight.”

“No way is right,” Gonzo agreed. “I’ll get a team together and get out to Leesburg this morning.”

“You’d better notify Loudoun County, too, so we don’t have jurisdictional trouble.” She paused before she added, “Full disclosure—I crashed in the guestroom there last night. I needed to see his parents in the morning, and it saved me some time. Cappuano slept in the senator’s room.”

“Okay.”

“If you could keep that tidbit to yourself, I’d owe you one.”

He laughed. “I like having you indebted to me. Just let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

“There is one thing,” she said, playing the hunch. “Do a run on Graham O’Connor’s brother, Robert. I need the deal on his family, offspring in particular. If you can get photos, even better.”

“Will do,” Gonzo said. “I’ll call you with what I find out. So, um, you saw the papers this morning I assume…”

Sam’s stomach took a queasy dip that reminded her she hadn’t eaten or had either of the two diet colas she usually relied upon to jumpstart her day. “No, why?”

“Destiny Johnson is calling you a baby killer.”

“Is that so?” Sam growled, the dip in her stomach descending into the ache that dogged her in times of stress. Two doctors had been unable to determine the cause. One had suggested she give up soda, which simply wasn’t an option, so she lived with her stomach’s annoying ability to predict her stress level.

“Don’t take it to heart, Sam. Everyone knows that if she’d been any kind of mother, her kid wouldn’t have been hanging out in a crack house in the first place.”

“But she has the nerve to call
me
the baby killer.” Of all the things she could’ve said, that hurt more than anything.

“I know. She made some pretty serious threats about what she’d do if you testify against her deadbeat husband next week. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from the brass about it.”

“That’s great.” She rubbed her belly in an effort to find some relief. “Just what I need right now.”

“Sorry. You know we’re all standing behind you. It was a clean shoot.”

“Thanks, Gonzo.” Her throat tightened with emotion she couldn’t afford to let in just then. Clearing it away, she said, “Call me if you find anything useful at the cabin. I did a surface run last night, but I was operating on fumes. I could’ve missed something.”

“Leave it to me. I’ll let you know when we finish.”

She gave him the O’Connors’s phone number so he could get a key to the cabin from them and signed off. Weaving her way through traffic, she made it to Capitol Hill with minutes to spare and took off running for the Hart Senate Office Building.

Freddie was pacing in the hallway outside Senator Stenhouse’s office suite. “There you are! I was just about to call you.” His astute eyes took in her day-old suit and landed on her face.

“I worked all night, I haven’t been home to change yet, and yes, I’ve heard about Destiny Johnson,” she snapped. “So whatever you’re going to say, don’t bother.”

“As usual, a night without sleep has done wonders for your disposition.”

“Buzz off, Freddie. I’m truly not in the mood to go ten rounds with you.”

“What were you doing working all night? And why didn’t you call me? I would’ve come back in.”

“I went through O’Connor’s place again and then his home in Leesburg.”

Freddie raised an eyebrow. “By yourself?”

“Nick Cappuano was with me. He told me about the place in Leesburg and took me there. Otherwise I never would’ve found it. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Me?” Freddie raised his hands defensively. “I’ve got no problems, boss.”

“Good. Can we get to work then?”

“I’m following you.”

“Nice digs,” she muttered under her breath as Stenhouse’s assistant showed them into a massive corner office that was triple the size of that assigned to the junior senator from Virginia.

Stenhouse, tall and lean with silver hair and sharp, frosty blue eyes, stood up when they came in. He dismissed the assistant with orders to close the door behind her. “I’m on a tight schedule, Detectives. What can I do for you?”

Wants to play it that way?
Sam thought.
Well, so can I
. “Detective Cruz, please record this interview with Senate Minority Leader William Stenhouse.” She rattled off the time, date, place and players present.

“You need my permission to record this,” Stenhouse snapped.

“Here or downtown. Your choice.”

He glowered at her for a long moment before he gestured for her to proceed.

“Where were you on Tuesday evening between ten p.m. and seven a.m.?”

“You can’t be serious.”

Turning to Freddie, she said, “Am I serious, Detective Cruz?”

“Yes, ma’am. I believe you’re dead serious.”

“Answer the question, Senator.”

Teeth gritted, Stenhouse glared at her. “I was here until ten, ten thirty, and then I went home.”

“Which is where?”

“Old Town Alexandria.”

“Did you see or speak to anyone after you left here?”

“My wife is at home in Missouri preparing for the holidays.”

“So that’s a ‘no’?”

“That’s a ‘no,’” he growled.

“How did you feel about the immigration bill Senator O’Connor sponsored?”

“Useless piece of drivel,” Stenhouse muttered. “The bill has no bones to it, and everyone knows that.”

“Funny, that’s not what we’ve been told, is it Detective Cruz?”

“No, ma’am.” Freddie flipped open his notebook and rattled off the statement the president had issued days earlier, calling the immigration reform bill the most important piece of legislation proposed during his first term.

Stenhouse’s glare could’ve bored a hole through a lesser cop, but Sam barely felt the heat. “Were you irritated to see Graham O’Connor’s son succeeding in the Senate?”

“Hardly,” he said. “He was nothing to me.”

“And his father? Was he nothing to you as well?”

“He was a prick who overstayed his welcome.”

“How did you feel when you heard his son had been murdered?”

“It’s a tragedy,” he said in a pathetic attempt at sincerity. “He was a United States senator.”

“And the son of your longtime rival.”

Awareness dawned all at once. “Did he tell you I did this? That bastard!” He stalked to the window and stared out for a moment before he turned to them. “I hate his fucking guts. But do I hate him enough to kill his son? No, I don’t. I haven’t given Graham O’Connor a thought in the five years since we saw the last of his sorry ass around here.”