Law of Attraction (13 page)

Ashton wondered what the guy would do. Was he a jumper? The distance between this roof and the next one was about seven feet. A narrow alley ran between this set of row houses and the next. They were three stories up. A fall from this distance could kill a man. As they reached the edge of the rooftop, D’marco didn’t slow down, and Ashton knew what the other man would do a few seconds before he did it. D’marco sprang off the edge of the roof.

Ashton pulled himself to a skittering stop at the edge of the roof, and held his hands up to make the other officers stop. He held his breath as D’marco flew over the abyss. D’marco landed with a crashing thud, half on, half off the other rooftop. His chest and arms were on the roof,
but his legs dangled off the side of the building, kicking without finding purchase. D’marco grunted and tried to scramble up. His fingers reached for something to grab, and found nothing. For a moment, Ashton thought the man was going to fall to the alley below. But then D’marco somehow leveraged his huge arms and heaved himself onto the roof. He lay there, crumpled and panting, for a moment. Then he picked himself up with effort and kept running away from them, limping now.

The three officers stood at the edge of the roof, panting, watching the suspect trot away in a jerky, uneven lope. They were a good team, these officers, but they weren’t insane. This was an alley you jumped only if your life or your freedom depended on it. Theirs did not. And they each had twenty pounds of police gear strapped onto their bodies. Sergeant Ashton wouldn’t risk his own or his men’s lives foolishly.

There were men below who might still be able to catch D’marco when he went down. And they had other tools. Ashton brought his radio to his mouth. “I need a helicopter,” he barked.

•  •  •

Back in D’marco’s building, the remaining SWAT officers were leaving the apartment to help their colleagues search for D’marco. Anna heard the radio traffic and understood that D’marco had gotten away. The officers would keep searching the neighborhood, but from the sound of the grumbling officers in the apartment, it didn’t seem like anyone thought the prospects of catching him today were good. Anna felt a shiver of unease run down her spine, knowing Laprea’s killer was still on the loose.

Jack and McGee took off their bulletproof vests. McGee gestured for her to do the same, but Anna hesitated. Seeing her face, McGee smiled. “Don’t worry, Counselor,” he said. “There’s one place that D’marco Davis won’t be coming today, and that’s right here.” She took a deep breath and unfastened her bulletproof vest. They handed their vests to the last SWAT officers heading out the door.

“Come on.” Jack beckoned McGee and Anna into the hallway outside of D’marco’s apartment. “It’s gonna be a long day.”

McGee turned to Anna. “We’ll talk to the neighbors, see if anyone heard anything on Saturday night. We’ve gotta do it now, before people start forgetting. Memories are short around here.” Anna nodded, it made sense, but she couldn’t believe they were doing this with
D’marco lurking out there somewhere. She glanced nervously around the hallway.

McGee caught the nervousness in Anna’s glance and smiled. “It’s a homicide case, sweetheart, not a bake sale.” His voice was joking, and his eyes were kind. “Don’t worry.” He patted a lump under his lime pinstripes. “I’m a good shot. Most of the time.”

Jack knocked on the door to apartment 215, the unit right next to D’marco’s. The walls in this building were thin; the resident who lived here might have heard some of D’marco and Laprea’s fight. Anna stood behind Jack and McGee. She could hear somebody shuffling around the apartment, but no one answered the door. Jack knocked again, more forcefully this time. Finally, the door opened two inches. A single brown eye peered at them suspiciously from the crack. The chain lock was still fastened.

“What?” the eye’s owner asked. From the sliver that Anna could see, it was an older woman, with slicked-back gray hair and smoke-stained yellow teeth. The single eye was bloodshot, and its owner had dragon breath. The woman had obviously lived a hard life; she looked like she was in her sixties, but was probably just pushing forty.

“Good morning, ma’am,” Jack said with quiet authority. “I’m Jack Bailey, from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I was hoping to talk to you about an incident that took place Saturday night.”

“I don’t know nothin’,” the woman said. She started to push the door shut. McGee stepped forward and jammed his foot against the door, his enormous body easily bracing it open.

“Hey now, purty lady. Ain’t no call fo’ that.” McGee smiled as he slipped into a perfect Southeast street dialect. “How’m I supposed to ax you out, if you be slammin’ this door in my face?”

The woman favored him with a small smile, which turned to a frown when her eye flicked to Anna. But Anna hardly noticed. She was looking at the detective in surprise. When he’d spoken to Anna and the other police officers, McGee had used a newscaster-bland accent. She realized he had the capacity to effortlessly switch dialects. He sounded like a different person here, and she wondered which was the real McGee. Both, she concluded after a minute. McGee was a little bit of both worlds. That was part of what made him a good detective.

“Many witnesses don’t realize that the little bit they do know is important,” Jack said pleasantly. “I don’t expect you’ll be a star witness.” No one who lived in this building would want that. “But if you have
time to talk for just a moment, it would be very helpful.”

“I ain’t gotta talk to you.”

“That’s true, you don’t. But I would appreciate it.”

“No.” She turned to McGee. “And getcho damn foot out my door.”

Jack sighed. “Just a moment.” He pulled a form out of his briefcase and quickly scribbled on it. He handed the paper through the crack in the door.

“Waddis?” she asked angrily.

“A subpoena. It’s a court order telling you to come to my office this Thursday to testify in the Grand Jury. You don’t have to talk to me now, but you will have to answer some questions there.”

“I ain’t comin’ down to the snitch building!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Jack said quietly, “but you don’t have a choice. If you don’t come, they’ll send the marshals to arrest you.”

“This’s fucked up! I ain’t done nothin’, and you harassin’ me!”

“We’re sorry for the inconvenience. You’ll get forty dollars to compensate you for your time and travel expenses.”

“Yeah?” Her voice softened. “I know lots a things ’bout a lot of people. I might have to come down a coupla times.”

“I’ll look forward to seeing you on Thursday. Have a good day.”

Jack nodded at McGee, who pulled back his foot. The door slammed in Jack’s face. He looked down the long hallway and sighed. They would knock on every door in the building “One down, fifty to go.”

“Hope you brought a lot of subpoenas,” McGee said.

“Do you want me to take some?” Anna asked Jack. She was over her nervousness, or at least she wasn’t going to let it slow her down. If this had to be done, they might as well do it efficiently. “I could knock on some of the doors.”

Jack considered her offer for a moment. She could see the calculations in his head: dozens of doors to knock on, hours saved, versus giving this responsibility to an unseasoned prosecutor.

“No,” he said at last. “Thank you, though. Just stick with me.” She was an unproven quantity. He might be forced to have her tag along, but he didn’t have to let her do anything.

They moved to the next door.

•  •  •

It was almost seven by the time they finished at D’marco’s building. No one had let them into their apartment except Ernie Jones, who
seemed to feel guiltier than Anna, if that was possible. They gave the rest of the residents subpoenas through doors that differed only in how far they were cracked open. Ernie would be a great witness, McGee told Anna, but they shouldn’t expect much out of the other residents’ testimony.

And they would have to work with the warrant squad to help find D’marco. A few hours earlier, Sergeant Ashton had called Jack to say that D’marco had gotten away. He could have hidden on a rooftop, or jumped to another building, or gone down into someone’s house, or just slipped off a fire escape that wasn’t being guarded. SWAT would get him, the Sergeant promised—eventually. The prosecution could help by questioning witnesses about his friends, family, and hangouts. The SWAT team would use the information to locate him. Anna was doubtful. They were having a hard enough time convincing anyone to talk to them at all, much less to disclose where their murderous friend was hiding out.

As they piled back into McGee’s car, Anna looked around the street half expecting to see D’marco behind a dark tree or a parked car. But the street seemed to be empty. She settled into the backseat, feeling more exhausted than she ever had in her life.

“Can I drop you at your home, Counselor?” McGee asked her from the rearview mirror as he started the car.

Although he had been engrossed in his work throughout the day, McGee had made a point of being nice to her, explaining things as they went along. She got the impression that now that she was on his team, McGee would look after her like a loyal watchdog.

“I should go to the office,” Anna answered. “I’ll start a chain-of-custody log for the evidence you seized today.”

“No,” Jack cut in. “It’s been a long day. Go home. The evidence will be there tomorrow.”

“I want to get started,” she protested. It had been a long day, but she hadn’t done much except watch the officers search. She knew she had a long way to go to prove herself.

Jack turned to face Anna in the backseat and shook his head. “This is a marathon, not a sprint. I expect another long day tomorrow.” Jack turned to McGee. “Can you swing by Anna’s house, and then mine? I need to relieve the nanny.”

McGee nodded and eased the car onto I-295. Anna sat back and closed her eyes, secretly relieved that Jack insisted that everyone go
home. She was bone-tired, emotionally drained, and dreading the next thing she would have to do.

As they crossed the bridge back into Northwest, Anna’s cell phone vibrated silently with a new call. Speak of the devil, she thought. It was Nick. He had called several times today. She pressed the button to decline this call, too. A minute later, the phone buzzed with a new text message. She opened it. Nick had written: “Call me as soon as you get this. It’s important.”

She glanced up. Jack was gazing out the window; if he’d noticed her buzzing phone he gave no indication of it. Anna flipped the phone closed and slid it back into her purse. She would wait until she left the police car to face the looming crisis in her personal life.

13

A
n hour later, Anna sat at her kitchen table, staring at the phone in her hand. The microwave beeped for the fifteenth time, vainly trying to remind her that the dinner she reheated was getting cold. Anna tried her sister’s number yet again, but there was still no answer. She had hoped to talk to Jody before confronting Nick, but she’d run out of time. She would have to figure this out herself. Nick would be here any minute.

Raffles rubbed against Anna’s leg and mewled for attention. Anna picked up the cat and scratched him behind the ears. She once had a case where a woman threw a cat out of a sixth-story window after the woman learned that her husband’s lover had given it to him as a gift. Not what you’d think of as a federal crime. Because Washington, D.C., was a federal city, federal prosecutors handled the street crimes that would have gone to the local District Attorney’s office anywhere else. Before Laprea’s death, Anna thought that the Washington U.S. Attorney’s Office held the best of both worlds: she could have the prestige of being a federal prosecutor while fighting violent crime. Now, Anna wished she was an AUSA in any district except D.C., just a regular federal prosecutor handling a tidy Medicare fraud case rather than a player in this horrible bloody world where nice women were killed by the men who were supposed to love them.

There was a knock at her front door. Anna wished she had more time to think, but this was it. She put her hand on the doorknob, steeled herself, and opened it.

Nick stepped into her living room and pushed the door shut with his elbow. He wore a suit and a tortured expression. He immediately wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair.

It felt both natural and completely wrong to be in his arms. She stood frozen as he held her. He inhaled deeply at the nape of her neck.

“Oh, Anna,” he whispered.

She let him embrace her for a moment. She hadn’t planned to, but it
was such a comfort to be held. She wondered how to start. Before she could, Nick pulled back and looked at her. He held her arms steadily.

“I have to tell you something terrible,” he said softly.

“I know,” she said, and started crying.

Once she started, she couldn’t stop. Her shock and grief from Carla’s announcement this morning, the frustration building throughout the day as D’marco’s neighbors slammed their doors in her face, her guilt and regret—all of it came pouring out in noisy, hacking sobs. Nick gently drew her closer. Anna cried into his chest as he stroked her hair. She cried like her heart was breaking—because it was, and because she knew it was only going to get worse.

When her crying finally subsided, Nick cradled her head in his hands, and kissed her gently. She let him—or, rather, she let herself. For a moment, she savored the taste of his mouth, sweet through the saltiness of her tears, his clean scent, the warmth of his chest pressed to hers. She consciously took in every part of him, trying to memorize each detail, knowing she would play them through her head in the months to come. Then she drew back.

“I heard about Laprea’s murder this morning,” she said. She took a step back and drew a deep breath. “I’m prosecuting the homicide case.”

“What?” Nick was stunned. He didn’t seem to know where to begin. “You can’t, you’re in the misdemeanor section.”

“I’m second chairing. It’s because I know the family. From our case.”

“No, no, no.” Nick ran his hand through his dark hair and turned from her. “Fuck,” he whispered. He paced across her small living room. There wasn’t much space; his long legs covered the length between the sofa and kitchen table quickly before he stood in front of Anna again. He put his hands on his hips and looked at her with grim determination.