The Strategist (18 page)

“Delusional?”

“Yes delusional. I don’t think you have any idea what you’re saying right now. Because if you really stopped to think about it, you would realize just how detrimental it could be and you would immediately stop talking.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I have a
lot
more to say. You’ve made it abundantly clear that I have no future with you aside from a weekly blow job. As much as that kills me, I’m a big girl and I’ll eventually get over it. But knowing now that you think so little of me, what incentive could I possibly have to keep protecting you?”

Julia’s words hung in the air for a long time, almost as if Elliott didn’t know how to respond. As he walked up to Julia and put a finger in her face, Camille knew that he
had found that response.

“You know what your incentive is? Actually living long enough to get over it. Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t possibly think of a better reason to keep your mouth shut. Could you?”

Camille gasped at the exact same moment as Julia did.

“So you’re threatening my life now?”

“You’re threatening mine.”

“Unless you’re prepared to act on that threat right this instant, you’re going to regret you ever said it. Trust me. Now do yourself a huge favor and get the hell out of my house. And pray you don’t see yourself on the ten o’clock news tonight.” She pointed at the bedroom door with a fully extended arm.

Elliott slowly backed away from her and made his way out of the room. “There will definitely be regrets at the end of all this, but they won’t be mine.”

“Keep walking, dipshit!”

“Trust me!” Elliott shouted off-camera.

Julia stood frozen in the middle of the room while the sound of fading footsteps gave way to a door being slammed and the subsequent sound of barking dogs. After a few moments, she turned toward the camera, then stared directly into it. “I wonder if anybody else who happens to see this would take him as seriously as I do?” She shrugged her shoulders and turned away. “I guess we’ll see.” She started to walk out of the room then glanced back at the camera. “For the record, I wasn’t serious. But he doesn’
t have to know that, does he?”

After that, the monitor went black.

Camille sat motionlessly in front of the computer, staring at the screen long after there was nothing left to see. There was so much to process in that hour-long video that she didn’t even know where to begin. But she did know one thing right away: everything Julia had written on that paper suddenly made perfect sense, none of it more so than the line that Camille had not been able to get out of her head ever since she first read it.

‘
He did this to me
.’

And now Camille knew exactly who
he
was. He was the husband of Sonya Richmond, the mayor of the city. Camille read about her when she picked up the Post at the airport. She had learned that Mayor Richmond was currently in the middle of a U.S. Senate campaign against the state’s Attorney General, a man whose name she didn’t pay attention to. In fact, the story as a whole meant nothing to her when she first read it.

But now it meant a whole lot. Not only because the mayor’s husband was sleeping with her best friend, but also because the mayor’s husband quite possibly murdered her best friend. Though she had no direct proof of that yet, the video she just watched provided
some pretty damning evidence.

It was now up to her to do with that evidence what Julia couldn’t.

But how? There was no smoking gun. Short of that, anything she took to the police, including this video, would be viewed as strictly circumstantial. Even if there was enough evidence in Julia’s files to connect Elliott Richmond to some kind of political or financial wrongdoing, there is nothing that ties him directly to her murder. Camille could give a damn about his political life. Richmond deserved to hang, not spend fifteen years in a country club with prison bars.

There was also the small matter of Richmond bein
g the mayor’s husband. Camille could very well find someone in the department willing to listen to her, but there would be two hundred others ready to laugh her and her video right out of station.

From what she read in the article, Mayor Richmond was a popular incumbent; a two-term Democrat who also happened to be a former state judge and city council member. Her law and order background undoubtedly garnered respect with the police who called her boss. It also meant that Camille would need a lot more than this video and a few Excel spreadsheets to convince anyone in the DPD that the husband of his popular
mayor was capable of murder.

Unsure of her next move, Camille decided to find out more about Elliott Richmond. A Google search yielded endless references to him as Denver’s ‘First Man’. As Camille dug deeper, she learned that he has been his wife’s senior political strategist since she took office, and was currently managing her senate campaign. Prior to his wife’s election as mayor, he was a Senior Vice-President for Guaranty Bank & Trust, as well as a board member of the Schumann Investment Group, a high profile financial investment firm. Various websites also touted his philanthropic efforts – one even pushing for his appointment as the next superintendent of the Denver public school district, based on his “unparalleled dedication to the educational advancement of the city’s children.”

Camille looked hard, but there was not a single word about Elliott Richmond the philandering murderer. That news story had yet to break.

If Camille had her way, it would very soon.

But she had to proceed with caution. There were still too many unknowns, including how Julia came upon the files in the first place. Neither the video nor Julia’s copious notes provided any clues. The last thing Camille wanted to do was make this information public without understanding the full extent of exactly what she was making public.

Then there was the video itself and the inherent issues that came with releasing it. The fact of the matter was that none of it made Julia look good, and Camille feared that the further it went, the more likely it would be that Julia the victim would morph into Julia the villain; portrayed as some bitter, conniving home-wrecker who made videotapes with the men she slept
with in order to blackmail them. Camille knew she could never let that perception take hold.

As much as she wanted to honor Julia’s privacy, Camille needed to bring someone else into this. Her father was the smartest cop she had ever known, and if anyone would know how to work through this, it would be him. But he was too close to the situation to be of any objective use. The same went for Julia’s sister.

That left only one viable option.

Though she still had questions about Detective Sullivan, one thing Camille couldn’t deny was her desire to solve this case. Unfortunately, she w
asn’t sure if she could say the same about Graham, and that made her nervous. In reality, she wasn’t sure if she could trust either of them as far as she could throw them. But right now she didn’t have much choice.

She kept her thoughts on Sullivan as she searched the house for her card. Despite a rocky first impression, Camille felt a connection with her almost immediately. It was the kind of connection that can only exist between cops who were cut from the same cloth, though she speculated that Sullivan was made of much tougher stuff than she ever was.

When the detective answered on the first ring, Camille could only pray that her speculation was true.

CHAPTER 29

F
or the second time in a week, Camille found herself in the detective bureau’s conference room. When she walked in behind Sullivan and Graham she noticed a small camera hanging from the ceiling just above the door. She hadn’t noticed it before, then she realized that was probably by design. This conference room most likely doubled as an interrogation room. Camille had seen more than her share of those, but she never had the full experience of sitting in the other chair until today. She didn’t like the feeling one bit.

This time around, Graham didn’t offer any doughnuts, though Sullivan did offer a diet Coke from the vending machine, which Camille accepted. She opened the can and took a couple of sips, waiting for one of them to say something.

“First off, thank you for contacting us,” Sullivan began. “How have you been holding up through everything?”

Even though Sullivan’s question seemed to come from a place of genuine concern, Camille could only answer with a shrug.

Sullivan communicated her understanding with nod then looked at Graham.  

“So I understand you have some new information regarding Julia,” he said flatly. There was no manila folder in front of him now, nor did he pull out his notepad. If Camille didn’t know any better, she would think he was completely disinterested.

She pushed the thought out of her mind and unzipped the messenger bag she brought with her. From it she pulled out her own manila folder and set it down on the table.

“It’s hard to even know where to start,” she said as she opened the folder.

Sullivan eyed it closely. “Just start from the beginning.”

Camille took a long breath, giving herself the time to find the right words. “This morning I got a phone call from Julia’s lawyer following the reading of her will. Apparently she had left some things for me and I needed to go to his office to claim them. When I got there I learned that she had also left something that was not an official part of the will, but was only to be opened
by me in the event of her…” Camille couldn’t even finish the sentence in her mind.

Sullivan leaned forward in her chair as Camille took the envelope out of the folder. “What was it?” she asked.

Camille explained Julia’s instructions, the note, the safe deposit box key, and the fact Julia had given them to her lawyer less than twenty-four hours before her murder.

Sullivan looked Graham who had noticeably perked up, then asked Cam
ille: “What did the note say?”

Camille pulled it out of the folder. Even though Graham was sitting right next to her, she slid it across the table to Sullivan.

She eyed it closely. “You’re positive this is her handwriting?”

“Absolutely.”

When Sullivan finished reading, she let out an audible sigh and passed the note to Graham.

“What did she mean when she said ‘I never wanted you to read it. Because if you are, it means only one thing’?” Sullivan asked.

Camille hesitated. The words were in her head but she was afraid to give voice to them. “Do you want me to be completely honest?” Camille knew that was a silly thing to say. She was stalling again.

“Obviously we do,” Graham said as he looked up from the note.

“I think she knew something was going to happen to her.”

“She knew something was going to happen to her? Like what?” Sullivan asked

Camille pressed her palms against the edge of the table. “Like she was going to be killed.”

The two detectives shifted in their chairs at the same time. Sullivan looked at Graham with concerned eyes, while Graham appeared to roll his.

Sullivan leaned forward even further. “Say that again?” 

“I think she knew this was going to happen to her, or at least she was wo
rried enough about it to leave this note as an insurance policy.”

“Insurance against what?”

“Hold on a second. I’m confused,” Graham cut in. “The first time we talked you said that Julia was hesitant to talk to you. Yet she writes you this mysterious note? Which she just happens to leave with her lawyer less than a day before she’s found dead? That seems very coincidental, and frankly very strange. It would seem to me that if she genuinely feared for her life, she wouldn’t hesitate to tell you or the police. Instead she chooses to tell you after the fact through some cryptic note that she didn’t even give to you directly. Call me crazy, but something about that just doesn’t wash.”

As much as Camille loathed Graham right now, she couldn’t deny the logic of his argument. The unfortunate reality was that she had thought many of the same things.

“I can’t pretend to know what Julia was thinking, Detective Graham,” she said. “All I have is what she wrote down. And her words are pretty clear.”

Graham sat back in his chair, a look of frustration overwhelming his face.

“What about the safe deposit box?” Sullivan asked in her usual calm tone.

“That’s the main reason I’m here,” Camille answered as she pulled Julia’s second note from the folder. This time she gave it to Graham.

He began reading. “What is this?” he asked with a glazed expression. “I can’t make heads or tails of any of it.”

“The set of instructions I was telling you about.”

“Instructions for what?” Graham asked.

“For the computer disk.”

“Computer disk?” Sullivan said.

“The only two items in the safe deposit box were those instructions and a flash disk. The bullet items on that list are in reference to certain files on the disk.”

Graham looked at the note more closely.

“What kind of files were on the disk?” Sullivan asked as she craned her neck to see what Graham was looking at.

“Hundreds of Excel spreadsheets with tables, graphs, voter demographic information, things like that. Lots of Word documents that looked like internal memoranda items. The letterheads were from the Schumann Investment Group and Springwell Technologies.”

“Do either of those companies mean anything to you?” Sullivan asked.

“I’ve never heard of either one.”

“So why did she leave the disk with you?” Graham asked

“I asked myself the same question. It didn’t make much sense, even with the instructions that she left.” Camille paused to gather herself. This was the part she was dreading from the moment she decided to make the call to Sullivan. “But there was another file on the disk. A movie file. Once I saw that, everything else began to make sense.”

“The same movie file that Julia mentions in the note?” Sullivan asked. Then she started reading. “Even though it’s the last thing I want you to see, make sure you watch the movie file first. Very painful and embarrassing,
but it’s also very important.”

C
amille swallowed hard. “Yes.”

Graham jumped in. “But wait, what does the rest of this mean?” He also read
from the note. “You may recognize the man in the video, but if you don’t, all you have to do is turn to the political section of any Colorado newspaper. He did this to me Camille.”

Camille looked at Graham, then back at Sullivan. Both of their faces carried the same bewildered expression. She knew she couldn’t skate around this any longer. “On the disk, there was a video file of Julia with a man. For the first half of the video, they were having… they were intimate. During the second half they were arguing.”

“About what?” Sullivan asked.

“At first
it was about their relationship. Julia wasn’t happy with how it was going and she let him know that. But then it escalated. They both started yelling and there were… threats.”

“What kinds of threats?” Graham asked.

“The man is married, and Julia threatened to tell his wife about the affair they were having. He told her she would regret it if she did. There was a lot of back and forth between them. It got pretty scary.”

“Okay, let’s back up a minute,” Sullivan said. “You’re saying that Julia was involved in a relationship?”

“Apparently so.”

“Do you know the man in the video?” Graham asked. 

“I’d never seen him before.”

“So she
kept him a secret from you.”

Graham had insinuated as much during their first go-around here. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right, but she had to. “Yes she did.”

“How did the video end?” Sullivan asked.

“It ended with him threatening to kill her if she didn’t keep her mouth shut about their relationship.”

Sullivan pulled out her notepad. “Did he say that explicitly, that he would kill her?”

“He didn’t say it explicitly, but anyone watching the video woul
d know exactly what he meant.”

“Why don’t you let us see the video so we can judge for ourselves,” Graham said with eyes that registered considerably more interest than before.

“I can’t do that.”

“What do you mean you can’t do that?”

Camille looked Graham square in his eye. “Because I’m not positive that I can trust you with it.”

Graham looked back at Camille with disgust. “You can’t trust us? Are you friggin’ kidding me? If you can’t trust us then why did you come here?”

Camille looked at Sullivan. Her expression was much more measured. “I came here because I think the man in that video is the one who killed Julia.”

Graham got up from his chair, and for a second Camille thought he was going to storm out of the room. Instead he buried his face in both hands and began rubbing his forehead. “Am I in the Twilight Zone or something?” he said to Sullivan.

“Ms. Grisham, why do you think he killed her?” Sullivan calmly asked.

“Look at the second note, the paragraph where she talks about the man in the video. What does the last line of that paragraph say?”

Sullivan read it, then took a moment before she repeated the line out loud. “It says ‘He did this to me.’”

“That could mean anything,” Graham barked. “Nowhere in this note does it say ‘he threatened to kill me’ or even ‘I’m afraid of him’. If she had written that, then we could possibly draw a different conclusion. But if all you have is ‘he did this’, then I’d have to say that you don’t really have anything. Not w
ithout the context of the video anyway; the video you don’t trust us with.”

“There’s a very good reason why I don’t trust you or anyone else with it.”

“Do tell,” Graham said sarcastically.

“Because of the man in the video.”

“Who is he, Camille?” It was the first time that Sullivan had displayed frustration.

The cards were basically out on the table now. Time to go all in. “Elliott Richmond.”

Graham’s face could not have dropped any faster.

“Elliott Richmond, as in Sonya Richmond’s husband?” Sullivan asked with a look that went beyond dumbfounded.

Camille nodded.

“Oh my God,” Sullivan said.

Graham started pacing. “You have to be mistaken about that.”

“I’m not,” Camille said firmly.

“Yes you are,” Graham said just as firmly.

This was exactly the reaction that Camille expected from Graham. But it didn’t stop the anger from swelling up in her chest.

“Camille, you realize what you’re saying, right?” Sullivan said.

“I’m saying that the mayor’s husband killed my best friend,” she answered without a moment’s hesitation.

Graham stopped pacing. “Well, if this isn’t the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard, then I don’t know what is.”

Sullivan put her hands up. “Okay, let’s all just keep calm. We have to talk through this rationally.”

“Seems to me that rationality has gone right out the window,” Graham said as he sat down. “You’ve just made one of the most outrageous claims that I’ve ever heard in all my years of law enforcement. It’s an insult to Mr. Richmond, to the mayor, and to the citizens of this city who voted for her. And now you’re going to insult Detective Sullivan and I by telling us that we’re not trustworthy enough to see the video that you base these claims on? Right now I don’t care that you’re Paul Grisham’s kid or that you washed out of the FBI, I have half a mind to escort you the hell out of here right now.”

“Detective Graham, that’s enough.” Sullivan angrily responded.

Camille sat stone-faced, her eyes burning into Graham’s. “At least now I know my lack of trust is justified.”

“Camille, what could we do to
make you comfortable enough to–”

Graham interrupted his partner. “Enough of the games. If we think you’re withholding evidence vital to our case I can get on the phone and have a search warrant within ten minutes. And if you still want to be cute I can have you arrested for obstruction of justice.”

Camille tried to keep calm, but her resolve was cracking. “You’re a bigger hack than I thought, Detective Graham. These little
Law & Order
-style scare tactics might work on the average nineteen-year-old crack dealer you bring in here, but I’ve forgotten more law than you can ever hope to know. You can’t arrest me for anything. And the idea of you even trying to get a search warrant is flat-out ridiculous.” She turned to Sullivan. “You asked me what you could do to make me comfortable enough to give you the video. The answer right now is nothing.”