Kitabı oku: «With Malice»

Detective Karen Sweeney recognized him the minute he climbed out of the cab in front of the crime scene.

Senator Grant Lawrence was sometimes referred to by the media as the next John Kennedy, and Lawrence really did have that magic. Karen, a lifelong Republican, somehow always found herself voting for Grant Lawrence, Democrat. He made sense.

She liked his attitude. And it didn’t hurt that he could give a younger Robert Redford a run for his money.

And that bundle of talent, looks and potentially huge problems was walking her way right now, being passed through the police cordon as if he were king. Nobody even asked him to wait.

This was Lawrence turf, even for the cops.

With Malice
Rachel Lee

www.mirabooks.co.uk

WITH MALICE

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Epilogue

Prologue

Abigail Reese was dreaming of passionate sex. She was not the woman in her dream, however. The woman in her dream was someone else, someone she knew, but whose face she could not quite place. The woman grunted and moaned, making sounds of mock resistance, her body bucking on something hard.

Then the dream shifted, in the way of dreams, and it was no longer passionate sex. It was no longer sex at all, and the woman was struggling, kicking, crying out in a weak, strangled voice. Abigail was paralyzed in her dream, unable to help the woman, nor even to open her eyes to see her face. The woman’s struggles grew more frantic and less controlled, panic and terror in the face of imminent death. Somehow gasping in a ragged breath, the woman’s voice screamed out her name.

“Abby!”

Abigail shuddered awake. For a moment she fought her body’s urge to drift back to sleep, knowing the nightmare would return. Her thin cotton nightgown clung to her damp skin like a shroud. She threw the covers off as the woman tried to call her name again.

“Ab—”

The sound died away in a gurgle.

It was not a dream.

Had she been fully awake, Abigail might have done the smart thing. She would have remembered that the children were with their father this weekend, locked her door and dialed 9-1-1. But in the manner of a woman who had cared for children for sixty of her seventy-five years, her first thoughts were not for self-protection. Adrenaline surged into her system, and she bolted out of bed with a fluid strength that would have surprised someone who looked upon her wiry, slightly bowed frame.

The horrible sounds continued, not at all passion but stark terror, and she grabbed for the first thing she could find, a heavy glass ashtray, the last remnant of a long-dead habit, before opening the door and moving toward the screams that were growing fainter by the moment.

Bile rose in her throat as she came to the bottom of the stairs and rounded the corner into the living room. The sounds from the woman reached a new if almost silent intensity, the nylon stocking—nearly invisible in the flesh of her neck—choking off all sound. But her eyes…

Abigail had seen a lot in her three score and fifteen years of life. She had watched a young boy scream as the doctors tried to reset the shattered bones in his lower leg, ending his dreams of college football. She had seen the boy grow into a man and the pallor in his face as he asked her whether he should propose to the woman he loved. She had watched him nearly faint at the news that his new wife was pregnant, and beam at the birth of their first child. She had watched his face, his entire countenance, sink like a gutted ship when he heard that his wife had been killed. She had seen children quiver in fear of punishment, in fear of shots, in fear of first haircuts. But she had never seen eyes like this.

They bulged from the sockets, blotched with red from burst capillaries, and they were looking into the face of eternity. The bloodied lips beneath them mouthed a word: “Abby.”

It was only then that Abigail noticed that the woman was naked, her shredded nightgown protruding from beneath her back, apparently wrapped around her wrists. Her legs, though free, made only futile kicks, easily resisted by the man who was bent over her breast. With an ugly, wet, ripping sound, his face rose from her chest. He spat, and a chunk of flesh landed on the woman’s face. Then he seemed to see through her eyes and turn to Abigail.

His was the face of a monster, smeared with the woman’s blood, white teeth and eyes glistening in a red mask of rage and fury.

Abigail’s nostrils flared with the fight or flight response. She should have flown. Instead she charged him, the ashtray raised high in her hand, the lioness protecting her pride. She closed the distance between them in four steps, swinging the ashtray down at his head with all her still considerable strength. But she was an old lioness, and her reflexes were not those of the younger woman who had snatched children from the throes of danger for decade upon decade.

He turned and caught the blow on his shoulder, grunting in pain, and then his arm flashed up. It was only then, in that last instant, that she saw the gleaming blade in his gloved hand, in the last instant before it plunged into her throat and savagely ripped across.

For a moment she thought he had missed, for there was no pain. But then she saw the pulsing explosion of red splash over his face, and in the fast-dimming light she realized it was her own blood.

She dimly heard a voice. “I’ll get him, too!”

Abigail Reese was once again dreaming, running through a tunnel, trying to escape the gurgling, wet sound that propelled her. The light at the tunnel seemed to dim, then exploded into brightness and swallowed her.

1

Senator Grant Lawrence grunted in disgust as he paged through the proposed amendments to Senate Resolution Fifty-Two. Whenever he thought about the bill he’d sponsored, he forced himself to think: clams have lips.

That reminded him of the first time he’d snorkeled in the Florida Keys, as a teenager, and had seen the beautiful coral through water so crystal-clear that he’d felt he could see forever. On that bright April day, during Easter vacation, he’d been gliding through the water when he’d seen a squiggly, bright red line in the sand beneath him. He’d reached down toward it, and the line had split down the middle, the clam opening its shell to test the disturbances around it. Apparently deciding his finger was not appetizing, it had closed its shell again, leaving only that squiggly, bright red line.

Clams have lips. And, Grant had decided, they wore lipstick.

He forced himself to remember that day because he could not repeat it. The water of the upper Keys was now cloudy and thick with sea grass, choking out the coral, hiding or chasing away the clams. The grass was the product of nitrogen in the water, the runoff from fertilizers used by sugar growers in the Everglades. The problem was not limited to his native state, of course. All along the eastern seaboard and Gulf Coast, nitrogen-laden runoff was feeding sea grasses that had replaced the native underwater flora and displaced fisheries.

S.R. 52 was an attempt—a feeble attempt, his critics said—to slow the damage. It wasn’t perfect, but it was based on the best scientific evidence and advice his staff could assemble. And it would be reasonably cost-effective to implement. Many of his colleagues in the Senate agreed, and his staff had negotiated with, cajoled and arm-twisted enough of the others that the bill seemed likely to pass.

Thus, he was not surprised by the pork amendments that had grown like barnacles on the hull of an ocean liner. Most were only vaguely related to the bill itself but would instead funnel some money into authors’ home states. Some of them were amendments he’d pledged to support, bartered in order to secure a colleague’s vote on the primary bill. However distasteful it might seem, it was the way of politics, and he accepted it as a necessary and sometimes beneficial fact of life.

Others were not so benign.

Amendment Nineteen, for example, would strike the paragraph that authorized additional funds to the EPA to monitor and enforce S.R. 52. Creating unenforceable law was an old political trick. The idea was to allow law-makers to pad campaign literature about how they’d voted on popular issues without sacrificing campaign contributors whose interests ran the other way. To the voters: I voted to protect your environment. To the contributors: But I knew this bill wouldn’t upset your apple carts.

And he knew who was behind that amendment. Randall Youngblood, head of the cane growers’ association, now lobbying for a loose coalition of agriculture associations nationwide. Randall Youngblood, old friend, now nemesis.

Clams have lips. Grant used that image to maintain his focus as he waded through the swamp of cynical motives and opaque language. He scrawled NO!!! through the text of A.19, then tossed the folder aside. He would slog through the rest of it later.

He took another minute to flip through the news digest, circulated to members of Congress by e-mail. Compiled daily from wire services and newspapers from around the world, it offered a quick précis of the day’s events. A humanitarian relief convoy had been ambushed by guerillas in Colombia, the second such ambush in a week. Two Americans were among the thirty-one casualties.

Grant scanned the rest of his e-mail. The only one that mattered was the notice of a meeting of the Central and South American Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The meeting was set for 10:00 a.m. He had no doubt that the situation in Colombia would be first on the agenda. He logged off and shut down. Colombia would have to wait. It was two in the morning, and he’d promised to take his daughters to breakfast.

While he loved having the girls in D.C. with him when they were off from school, they did make for longer days. Still, burning the midnight oil was a small price to pay for the time he had with them. He switched off the desk lamp and took a few moments in the comfortable darkness to massage the hair at his temples.

At least in the darkness he didn’t have to notice that his formerly raven black hair was turning gunmetal gray. His advisors had turned to an image consultant, who had pronounced it “statesmanlike” and “dignified.” Grant thought it simply made him look old. But within a week the advisors had tromped in with focus group research. His daily jog, trips to the Senate gym and a healthful diet had kept him trim and lean. The focus group felt that the gray streaks softened his otherwise chiseled, youthful face. “The energy of youth, tempered with the wisdom of experience,” one woman had said.

That sounded much grander than he felt about himself. He’d spent the day in the company of the energy of youth, chasing his girls around the Smithsonian. They had speed-walked him into the ground, giggling when he’d begged them to “slow down for the old man.” Energy of youth? Not.

Letting out a sigh, he rose from his chair just as the phone rang. It was his private line, and the caller ID display flashed the name.

“What’s up, Jerry?”

Jerry Connally’s voice was thick with tension. “Grant…shit, I don’t even know how to say this. It’s Abby. She’s…dead.”

“Oh no.” Grant felt the bottom fall out of his stomach and sagged back into his chair. “Oh no.”

“She was…murdered.”

Abby? Murdered? Shock froze him, caught him in an endless instant of incomprehension and disbelief. He had known the day would come when her body failed her, but this…this was beyond imagination. “Oh God. Oh God. This isn’t…it couldn’t have…”

Jerry’s voice softened. “I’m sorry, Grant. I am so, so sorry.”

Abby had been his nanny, raising him practically single-handedly while his parents had rubbed shoulders with the wealthy and powerful. It was Abby who’d taught him the difference between glitter and gold, that the wealthy were not always worthy of the privilege they enjoyed. And when his wife had died, it was Abby who’d stepped in to raise his girls. It was simply not possible that she was gone.

He had to lean forward, to put his head between his knees as he clung to the phone. The world around him swirled, and there was a faint buzzing in his ears. “Where? How?”

“She was here at home, Grant. Stabbed.”

No. It was not possible. His mind rebelled, even as the words came out on autopilot. “A burglary?”

“I don’t know,” Jerry said. “It gets worse.”

“Worse?” Grant asked. He gripped the phone so tight that his fingers ached, but that pain was a distant thing, barely scratching the surface of his horror.

Jerry paused for a moment. “They killed Stacy, too. It was…it was really ugly.”

The room spun in the darkness, shadowy images swirling, closing in on him. Grant reached out, turned on his desk lamp to hold them at bay. He had to lift his head to do it, and the room spun a little once again. The light seemed to pierce his eyes. “What was Stacy doing there?”

“Don’t worry about it. I…took care of it.”

“What? How?” He wouldn’t have thought his horror could have grown any deeper, but it did.

Jerry’s voice grew chilly. “Senator, you don’t want to know.”

Karen Sweeney looked at the body in the alley again, then looked away. “God, what a mess.”

Corporal Terry Ewing nodded in agreement, his face ashen. “Someone was really pissed at this woman.”

“Looks that way,” Karen said. She tore her focus from the horror in front of her and found a procedural routine. “Okay, Corporal, start logging the scene. ID anyone who’s been in this alley, starting with whoever found the body. Seal the scene. Nobody comes in except the M.E.”

“Should I call for the P.I.O.?” he asked.

She shrugged. “You can try, but he’s already up to his ears in College Hill.”

It would be better if the public information officer handled the press. But that wasn’t going to happen here tonight, not with a black woman and her two children gunned down in a drive-by. The College Hill project had convulsed under escalating street gang violence, the ironic and tragic aftermath of a major drug bust that had left the formerly dominant Dark Angels decimated and leaderless. Three other gangs had flooded into the void, warring over control of the lucrative turf, where ecstasy, crystal meth, crank and smack flowed like deadly, golden water in neighborhoods where hope was dim and life was cheap. The P.I.O. would be there, trying to sound cool and authoritative as he dispensed what little meaning could be found in such mayhem. Detective Karen Sweeney was on her own.

She sighed and looked at the patrolman. “Who’s your backup, and where is he?”

He nodded toward the end of the alley. “Patrolman Stan Barnes. Fresh out of the academy and he walked into this. He’s in the car.” Ewing pointed at a pale yellow puddle splashed down a wall opposite the body. “He lost it.”

Karen looked at the stain on Ewing’s cuff and realized he’d been standing with the other cop when it happened. Unlike the horror that had been visited upon the woman at her feet, Karen could see that scene clearly. Ewing standing there, patting the young cop’s shoulder, offering whatever supportive words there were, while the man lost both his dinner and his pride. “Tell him it’s okay. It happens to most of us the first time or two.”

“I did,” Ewing said simply.

Karen nodded. “Okay. You’re logging. Tell…Barnes, is it? Tell Barnes we’ll use his cruiser as a command post until downtown gets us a crime scene van. I’ll be out to brief the press when I know something. In the meantime, all he knows is that we’ve found the body of a young, white female, and the investigation is ongoing.”

“The usual spiel,” Ewing said. “It’ll give him something to do. Good idea, Detective.”

“Thanks.” He nodded, jotted her name and badge number on a clipboard, and strode to the end of the alley.

Karen unslung the bag on her shoulder and set it atop the lid of a crusty Rubbermaid trash can a few yards down from the body. She pulled out a dozen of what looked like dinner place cards and numbered each with a black magic marker. She then stooped and put the card numbered “1” on the yellow stain and spoke into a microcassette recorder.

“Item one, yellow-brown stain at base of north wall, opposite victim, vomit of Patrolman Stan Barnes.”

She continued in a slow, methodical pattern, first working her way to the end of the alley along the north edge, marking and noting an oil stain, two sodden and faded cigarette butts, and a half-dozen other bits of debris, all of them probably meaningless. Once at the head of the alley, she pulled out a fat yellow piece of chalk, drew an arrow pointing back into the alley and crouch-walked her way back to her evidence bag, dragging the chalk on the concrete in a wavy, sometimes broken, but clearly visible line. This demarked the “safe” path into the alley, so the medical examiner and any other officers who responded could get to the body without disturbing evidence.

With that first task completed, she had banished the horror from her mind, at least temporarily. Now she could turn her attention to the body and its immediate environs with cool, professional detachment. She lifted the recorder to her lips as her eyes swept the scene.

“Victim is a white female, apparently early-to mid-twenties. Bruising and diffuse ligature marks on wrists indicate that the hands were bound at some point, although no matching material is immediately visible at the scene. Nylon stocking tied around the victim’s neck, along with pitecchia in the eyes and teeth indicate strangulation as the probable cause of death. Missing tissue on breasts, lower abdomen and upper thighs, with torn edges. Probably bitten away. Extensive bloodstains on skin and partial clotting indicate this was probably pre-mortem.”

Forcing herself to take a mental step backward, she took in the overall impression of the victim. No prostitute, she decided. This woman looked too well-conditioned for that, and in no way blowsy. That helped, because it was likely she would be reported missing before too long.

She turned away again as humanity pushed aside objectivity, took a slow, deep breath, and forced herself to continue. She looked again, clinically. Something was wrong. “Lividity is noticeably uneven, greater on the left shoulder, arm, hip, outer thigh and calf, although victim was found on her back. Victim may have been…”

Switching off the recorder, she called to the end of the alley. “Ewing. C’mere a minute.”

The patrolman approached along the path she had marked. “What’s up, Detective?”

“I think the body was moved. Have Barnes clear the street around the end of the alley and photograph any tire tracks. Make sure he shoots my car, yours and his for negative comparison.” She looked up at the overcast sky. The Florida air was thick with humidity. “And tell him to hurry it up. It looks like it’s going to rain soon.”

Ewing nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Karen then returned to her bag, tore off a long strip of waxy paper towel and laid it over the left side of the body, weighting it at each end with spare boxes of film. She carefully pulled the paper back a bit and studied the ruddy skin of the woman’s left hip and shoulder. The dimples were faint but visible, fading down the arm and thigh. Atop the woman’s thighs, Karen saw faint blood smears that mirrored those on her abdomen. She switched the recorder on.

“Remind the M.E. to check for carpet fibers. Victim was probably transported to the scene in a fetal position, on her left side. Probably in the trunk of a car.”

Two hours later, Karen watched as the M.E. techs zipped up the black vinyl body bag and hefted it onto a stretcher. The crime scene techs had arrived a half hour ago, and she had long since determined that the homeless woman who’d stumbled over the body was too disconnected from reality to offer any useful information. There was little left for her to do, and she walked back to her Jeep Wrangler, took a long swig from a lukewarm bottle of water, and began to scan Ewing’s and Barnes’ initial reports for anything they might have caught that she had missed.

She was still reading when her cell phone rang. It was the familiar voice of Sergeant Laura Aranchez, the overnight dispatcher for robbery-homicide.

“You’re going to hate me, Karen.”

“Don’t even go there, Aranchez.”

Karen heard the sigh and knew what was coming before the woman spoke.

“Afraid so, Detective. Black female, Tampa Palms.” Aranchez read off the address.

Karen fought down the anger. Yes, College Hill was important, but so was the single white female, mid-to late-twenties, whose mutilated body lay ten yards away in an alley. “I’m still working this scene, Aranchez. Can’t they free up someone from the gang-banger?”

“The lieutenant says you’re it,” Aranchez answered. “And he wants you there an hour ago.” There was a pause. “That address is Senator Lawrence’s house.”

Well, shit, Karen thought. That explains a lot. “I’m on my way.”

It was going to be a long night.

Karen surveyed the bustle of activity with more than a bit of disgust. It had taken her ten minutes to reach the Tampa Palms address, and the crime scene techs were already unloading their van as she pulled in. Death might be the great equalizer, but the rank of the living still held sway in the passage of the dead.

A middle-aged man in blue suit pants and a white dress shirt intercepted her on the way to the door and extended his hand. “Jerry Connally,” he said, as if the name ought to mean something.

She shook his hand briefly and stepped aside. “Detective Sweeney, TPD. If you’ll excuse me.”

He didn’t step into her path, didn’t move at all, yet his posture said I’m not finished with you yet. She met his eyes. “What is it you need, Mr. Connally?”

“I’m special counsel to Senator Lawrence.” He nodded over his shoulder. “You’re aware this is his home.”

Oh God, she thought. So it’s starting already.

“Yes, I am. It’s also a crime scene, and I’m the lead detective. And I’ve just been yanked off another homicide scene because they wanted me here in a hurry. So again, if you’ll excuse me…”

He moved aside, as if to give her entry, but his posture was such that she paused and looked at him again. He reminded her somehow of a broody hen protecting a chick. It was as if he wanted to tower over her, tower over everyone and everything to protect his charge. She wondered if Senator Lawrence liked that…or if he was even aware of it. But something clicked in her mind, making a note she was hardly aware of.

Then she dismissed him with a glance and brushed past him into the foyer.

These were the houses of the rich, out here, and space was generous. The foyer was large, tiled in green marble that framed the sweeping rise of a staircase. The activity she was interested in, however, was in a room off to the right. She could see the criminalists poring over the scene like a hive of ants with a fresh kill. The kill lay on the floor, covered by a sheet. Arterial spray across one wall and the sofa, along with the huge puddle on the floor around the covered corpse, told a great deal of the story.

The room itself was very much not Florida. It might have been taken from the home of British nobility of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, except that it was dominated by cream and ecru. Cream everywhere. And blood. As least half the blood that filled an average human body. Red on cream. Screaming.

With the criminalists all over everything, there wasn’t much she could do except ask to see the body and find out what they knew so far. She raised an eyebrow in the direction of Millie Freidman, the lead technician on the scene. Millie nodded, spoke a few words to one of her team members, and came over to her, taking care to stay within the taped-out pathway.

“What have we got?” Karen asked.

“Ugly. Very ugly. The senator’s seventy-five-year-old nanny had her throat slashed.”

Karen winced. Violence against the elderly always seemed so inexcusable. How much more harmless could a human being be?

“Yeah,” said Millie, reacting to Karen’s expression.

“Robbery?”

“It doesn’t look like anything else was disturbed. I have some people checking the rest of the house, though.”

“Any other wounds on the body?”

“None that I can find.”

Karen nodded, feeling like a fifth wheel. “Who found the body?”

Millie showed her teeth in an unpleasant smile. “The senator’s watchdog.”

“Connally?”

“You got it.”

Karen glanced at her watch. “This early in the morning?” She hated the very idea, but it appeared she was going to have to go talk to Jerry Connally.

One of the many reasons she was getting bone weary of this damn job.

He was careful not to show it, but Jerry Connally was as nervous as he’d ever been in his life. He was a man totally in control of himself and most of the world around him, but at this moment he felt his control might be slipping.

In law school he’d taken an advanced prosecution clinic. The professor had told him something he’d never forgotten. Criminals don’t get caught because cops are brilliant. Criminals get caught because they’re stupid. For every one thing they think of, the professor had said, they forget five others. And those five others bury them.

Jerry had tried to think of as many things as he could in moving Stacy’s body. And he thought of himself as a smart guy. But that only meant that for every one thing he’d thought of, he’d probably forgotten two or three or four others.

The bottom line, though, was that Grant Lawrence was worth the risk. And if Jerry’s neck ended up in the noose to save Grant’s…that was just how things would have to be. Grant deserved no less.

He waited in the foyer for a few moments, glancing in the large, ornate mirror near the door to make sure he looked like himself and not like some criminal with something to hide.

His open, Irish face looked back at him, unnaturally somber but otherwise normal. A little edginess, he assured himself, was okay under the circumstances. After all, he’d discovered a brutal murder. So it didn’t matter that his tie was loose or his remaining hair disheveled. It fit the moment.

Then, shoving his hands in his pockets to still their sudden inclination to fidget, he stepped back outside. He didn’t want to hear what the crime scene people were telling that detective. What was her name? Swanson, Swenson, something. Sweeney, that was it. Someone he had a feeling he wasn’t going to be able to control all that easily. He might have to do something about that.

Just then she appeared at his side. Damn, he hadn’t been paying attention. He offered a smile.

“What can I do for you, Detective?”

She regarded him with gray eyes that seemed devoid of any color whatever, save for the tiniest slivers of green around the pupils. Predatory eyes.

“I understand you found the body?”

He nodded.

“It’s, what, 3:00 a.m.? What were you doing here?”

This part was easy. It was the truth. “The senator left a message for me last evening. I was out with my wife at the time. He needed some papers faxed up to his office, for a bill that’s pending. We got home around 1:00 a.m. I got the message and came right over.”

“Couldn’t it have waited till morning?” she asked.

“Yes. It could have. But I was planning to take my kids fishing today. I wanted to wrap it up tonight so I’d have the day to myself.” He sighed. “Best laid plans.”

The woman seemed to look right through him. “I’m sure Abigail Reese didn’t plan on getting killed, either.”

It was at best a sarcastic remark, and he could have argued the point. But for the moment, at least, she held the power. Better to let that lie, wait for her to realize she’d stepped out of line, and be ready to take advantage when she apologized.

“Point taken, Detective.”

But she didn’t apologize. She didn’t even seem to care that she might have crossed a line. Dangerous woman. She continued looking right through him and asked, “Weren’t you afraid that coming into the house this late at night would wake the nanny?”

He shook his head, fists clenching inside his pockets. “Abby didn’t have the best hearing. She wasn’t stone deaf or anything, but I’ve come and gone before while she was sleeping.”

“And you have a key, and you know the alarm code.”

“Yes, exactly for purposes like this. The senator has an office at the back of the house.”

She didn’t say anything but simply turned to look at the brass dead bolt. Damn! He hadn’t thought of that. There was no evidence of tampering. Shit!

She turned to him again. “Was the alarm on when you got here?”

He thought rapidly, then decided the truth was best on this one. “No.”

“Did you find that odd?”

“Not necessarily. Abby sometimes forgets about it.” That, too, was true. Grant had complained about it once, because he was concerned that she forgot it when his children were home.

“And you know that how?”

“Because the senator complained to me about it once.”

She nodded, for the moment giving him the feeling she was accepting his explanations. “How did you enter?”

“Through the front door. As I always do.”

“And then?”

“I turned on the foyer lights and headed back toward the office. But as I was passing the living room—” He broke off, and this time he wasn’t pretending anything. His throat tightened, and his face stiffened with the memory. “I…smelled it.”

She nodded again. She knew what he meant, apparently. “Then?”

“I turned on the lights, and…my God…” He couldn’t continue. He honestly couldn’t continue as he recalled those first few minutes when he had stared into an abattoir and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. It had been so alien to his experience that for a while the images wouldn’t even resolve into anything recognizable. And then…

He turned sharply away from the detective, forcing himself to draw steadying breaths, not wanting her or anyone else to see him break down. The ugliness. The horror. There were no words.

“Mr. Connally,” said the woman behind him, “how long was it before you called us?”

2

Grant watched the water drip from his face into the sink. The bitter taste was still strong in his mouth, despite two rinses of mouthwash. The face he saw in the mirror had neither the energy of youth nor the wisdom of age. It was pale, drawn, eyes red-rimmed.

He drew a deep breath. He had to do something.

What would he tell the girls? They’d called Abby last night, before bed, just to say hi, they’d said. He couldn’t remember a night when they’d been away from Abby and hadn’t called her. It was as much a part of their bedtime ritual as hugs and brushing their teeth and him tucking them in. What would he tell them?

He had to get back to Tampa. That much was certain. Call his parents. That was the next step. Tell them what had happened and ask them to take the girls. One thing at a time, he told himself. One thing at a time.

His father’s voice was thick with sleep.

“Dad,” he began, and stopped. Saying that one word broke the last wall of reserve. Sobs tore from his chest.

“Son? What’s wrong?”

“Abby…Abby.”

His father knew. His father had always known. “Oh, son. Oh.”

In the background, Grant heard his mother stirring, asking what was wrong. “Dad, can I bring the girls home?”

The answer was immediate and reassuring. “Come home, son. Bring the girls. Your mother and I will start getting ready now.”

“I loved her,” Grant said, his voice breaking.

“We all did, Grant. Bring the girls. We’ll be ready.”

Jerry Connally shook his head. “I honestly don’t know, Detective. I mean, I know it’s the wrong thing to do, but I looked through the house first, to see if he— I’m guessing he’s a man—was still here. I could tell she was dead, but I checked anyway.”

“Before or after you checked the house?” Karen asked.

“I think before. I’m not sure.” He paused. “It’s funny. I’ve seen in a hundred TV shows where someone finds a dead body and panics and does something stupid. I always thought it was a bad plot device. And I guess I went and did the same damn thing.”

“So you approached the body?”

“Yes. I tried to find a pulse.” He looked down at his hand and shuddered. He met her eyes. “You check the pulse in the neck. That’s where it’s strongest. Easiest to find. I…”

Karen watched his ashen features. It wasn’t hard to see what had happened. Looking at a horrific wound was bad enough. Touching it would turn even the strongest of stomachs. She merely nodded and let him talk.

He seemed to study the floor for a moment. “I guess I checked her and then the house. Those footprints would be mine. Some of them, anyway. Maybe some of his, too. I just don’t know, Detective. I wish I did.”

He was a man transformed, Karen thought. Either he was a hell of an actor or the scene really had horrified him. Neither would prove his guilt or innocence. But the emotions rang true.

“You checked the house and then called?”

She saw the pause flicker over his face. Something he was keeping back. Something he wasn’t sure he wanted to say. “I think I tried to call Senator Lawrence first. I don’t know what time that was, but my cell phone records would show it.”

“You called the senator before you called us?”

He threw up a hand, a gust of breath escaping him. Even to Karen’s alert gaze, there was no question that this was a man in distress.

“I may have. Detective, I’m not real clear on the order of events. I remember hardly being able to comprehend what I saw. I remember checking the house. I remember checking Abby to see if she was still alive. And when I knew she was dead… All I could think of was Grant and his children. They love that woman. They’ve loved her all their lives. And when I knew she was dead…well, it’s possible I thought of telling him first.”

His gaze suddenly fixed on her, intense with emotion. “What difference does it make, Detective? The woman was dead. Abby was dead.”

Karen refused to give him even a moment to collect himself. Instead she pressed him. “It made a difference in how fresh the crime scene was. We might have found the killer in the vicinity.”

He shook his head, his eyes growing hollow. “Like I was even thinking of that. A woman I’d known for years was dead, brutally killed. And people I love were going to be torn up by it. Do you think I was even thinking about what you might need?”

Then he turned and walked away, making it clear he was done with her.

Karen paused, thinking, then decided to let him go. There were questions yet to be asked, but something about Jerry Connally… Some instinct told her he wasn’t the killer. She pushed away the niggle at the back of her brain that insisted Connally was withholding something and went back into the house. Unlike many cops, she had never believed that the most obvious suspect was the likeliest one in a case like this. She wasn’t going to allow herself to get misled. She would find the killer, but she wasn’t going to close off any avenues by making assumptions.

Karen found Millie dusting a heavy glass ashtray. Millie glanced up. “From the floor by her feet. Looks to have prints. Probably the vic’s.” She turned it over. “There’s a bloody smear on the bottom, but that’s from the carpet fibers.”

“So okay,” Karen said. “She’s in her nightgown and a bathrobe. The ashtray doesn’t have bloody fingerprints. Only smears from the carpet. Sounds to me like she’s asleep or falling asleep, hears something, grabs an ashtray from her bedroom, comes down and surprises the killer.”

Millie nodded, her trained eyes sweeping the room. “That would fit, yeah.”

“So what was the killer doing when she came downstairs? Burglary? So far as Connally can tell, nothing’s missing.” Karen nodded toward a lacquered end table where a sectional serving dish held jelly beans and other candies. “That’s silver. There’s other stuff right here. Even if the perp panics after he kills her, why not grab stuff that’s right here in the room?”

“I’m a criminalist, Karen.” Millie shrugged. “Not a profiler. Don’t ask me to explain how criminals think. I just look at what they leave behind.”

“Your people photographed the spatter patterns?”

Millie nodded. “And logged the footprints and all the rest.”

Karen checked her watch. It was nearly five-thirty. “I’m going to go canvas the neighbors. Maybe somebody saw something.” She shook her head. “This case is going to suck.”

Millie smiled sadly. “They all do, Karen. They all do.”

Out on the street, though it was still dark and most people ought to be in their beds sound asleep, a crowd had begun to gather. It wasn’t a big crowd; after all, this was an upscale neighborhood where gawking at misfortune was probably a solecism.

But the ghouls had gathered nonetheless, a handful. All looking as if they had climbed out of their beds and dressed in a rush. Probably the nearest neighbors, and most likely concerned that their own families might be in danger. That was the rational explanation.

But something else stirred inside her, the memory of a Ray Bradbury short story, The Crowd. In the story, the same group of gawkers had appeared at every fatal traffic accident. And in the pre-dawn stillness, Karen could almost see that story taking place. The faces before her, concerned and questioning and peering as if to look through the darkness and the crime scene tape and even the walls of the Lawrence home, could have been the same faces she’d seen around dozens of homicide investigations before. The face of society’s collective guilt and shame and morbid fascination with the depths of evil.

She’d seen too many of these crowds. Crowds around a house where a drunken husband had finally beaten his wife into eternal silence. Crowds around a playground where a drug deal gone sour had ended in gunfire. Crowds around a bar where fists and bottles had flown in the wake of angry words. Always the crowds. Always the same faces. Always the same questions.

Karen shook her head to clear her thoughts. It was late and she was tired. This was no time to let herself get spooked. These weren’t phantasms. They were just people. Curious, worried people.

Sliding her hands into the pockets of her slacks, she ambled in their direction. The houses here were on large lots that were carefully landscaped to provide the illusion that the residents were alone in the universe. These people might or might not have been friends and acquaintances before, but right now they were drawn together by a tragedy.

“Hi,” she said as she reached them. They had gathered by the tape barricade, politely out of the way. “I’m Detective Sweeney.”

“What happened?” one of them asked her, a man who was probably in his midforties, with the well-coiffed, well-built look that came from a combination of money and the time to spend with a personal trainer.

“Who are you?” she asked him.

“Wes Marlin. I live across the street. And I want to know what happened.”

“I’m sure you do.” Karen gave him a polite smile and pulled out her pad and pen, scrawling his name. “Phone number?”

“Why? I didn’t see or hear anything. I’m just worried. I have a wife and kids, you know.”

“Yes, of course. I can get your phone number, you know.”

So he gave it to her, along with his address. Then she turned to the others. “Did anyone hear or see anything at all?”

Most of the heads shook negatively, almost in unison, as if the crowd had become one entity. Muted calls of “What happened?” rippled out, indistinguishable one from the next.

Then another man spoke. “I heard a car,” he said.

Immediately Karen’s gaze snapped to him. “Your name?”

“Art Wallace. I live next door.” He pointed over his shoulder to the right. “The Lawrences are like family to me. We’ve been friends for ten years, at least. Our kids play together. So could you please just tell me if Abby is okay?”

“Abby?”

“The nanny. Oh, hell, she’s not a nanny anymore, she’s part of the family. Grant took the girls to D.C. with him, so she’s the only one home. Is she all right?”

He was a good-looking man in his midforties, a little thin in the hair, and wearing an expensive pair of glasses, but he had the kindest face among all the plastic faces around him. “Do you know Abby well?”

“Of course! Like I said, she’s part of the family.”

“When did you hear a car?”

“Hell, I’m not really sure. I was asleep and woke up a bit. It had one of those noisy mufflers that some people like so much. I remember thinking that if the driver lived around here, I was going to have some words with him. Then I fell back to sleep until I heard all the commotion out here. What about Abby?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wallace.”

He looked at her; then his face seemed to crumble. “Oh, God,” he said, his vice tight. He turned away and walked off into the darkness.

Karen let him go for now. She looked at the others. “Did any of you hear a noisy muffler?”

She was answered by more shakes of the head. She could see the crowd wasn’t really attending her anymore, though. They were—it was—thinking about the fact that a neighbor had been murdered. Piece by piece, person by person, the crowd broke apart and melted into the dawn.

Grant eased Belle, his six-year-old daughter, into his father’s arms. Behind him stumbled his nine-year-old, Catherine Suzanne, carrying Belle’s teddy bear and her own secret vice, a fuzzy blanket from her babyhood. Both children were utterly exhausted, having been rousted out of their beds at three in the morning to catch a red-eye flight home.

Belle had finally fallen asleep fifteen minutes before landing, running out of the nervous energy of excitement at the strange situation. Cathy, older and a little wiser, seemed to sense something was wrong, but so far she hadn’t asked. And she hadn’t slept. But that was Cathy. She kept things inside, not exactly brooding, but more reflecting and waiting.

Bryce, Grant’s father, reached out with an arm and squeezed Grant’s shoulders before accepting the small burden of the sleeping Belle. “What have you said?” he asked Grant, his eyes filling in the unspoken, what have you told the girls?

“Nothing. Later. The girls need sleep, Dad.”

Bryce nodded, hugging Belle tightly to his chest. He smiled at Cathy. “How’s my pumpkin doing?”

“Fine, Grandpa.” The answer, tired as it sounded, carried Cathy’s usual reserve.

“Well, let’s get you home and snuggled into your comfy beds,” Bryce said heartily. “And later, Grandma’s planning pancakes.”

Melinda Lawrence drew her son aside as Bryce tucked the girls into the car. Her eyes were red-rimmed, too. Abby had been as much a fixture in their lives as she had in his, and they felt her loss every bit as deeply. He felt his face sag.

“Mom.”

She drew him into her arms. It was a familiar embrace, despite the media stories of his having grown up at the shadowy fringes of his parents’ glittery world. Yes, Abby had raised him. Yes, his parents had worked long, grueling hours, often on location, producing films. They’d wanted him to have the stability of attending the same school, living in the same house, replacing Lego castles with posters of sports figures and, eventually, his own high school trophies. Of having a home. So Abby had always been there.

But they’d been there, too, in their own ways, and as often as they could. As Grant had entered his teens, his parents had cut back to a movie every other year, telling the media they wanted more time to devote to each project, when in fact they simply wanted more time with their son. His mother’s embrace had never been uncomfortable, had never been unfamiliar. And now he found some tiny measure of solace in her arms.

“Abby’s learning angel songs,” his mother whispered in his ear.

“And teaching them how to make corn bread.”

“Yes, son. And teaching them how to make corn bread.”

She held him at arm’s length and studied his face. “You need sleep, too, Grant.”

He nodded sadly. “I know, Mom. But I also need to know what’s going on. Jerry’s holding down the fort, but I need to…I need to see.”

Her grip on his arm tightened a bit. “Jerry Connally can see for us. He’s a fine man. You come home and get some breakfast, at least.”

He started to speak, but she cut him off. “I don’t want to hear it. None of us is hungry. But you need food, son. And by God, you’re going to eat.”

The glint in her eye told him it was okay to smile, that he didn’t have to fall and keep falling forever. He struggled to make the corners of his mouth lift a bit.

“No, Mother. I’m going to the house first. I’m going to speak to the police first. Then I’ll come over and talk to the girls. In the meantime, make sure they don’t see or hear the news.”

She nodded, giving him the space to make his own decisions, which she still sometimes found hard to do.

He watched them drive away, then went back into the terminal, heading for the taxi stand.

Action was what he needed now, more than food, more than sleep. Even if action would save no one and nothing.

Karen Sweeney recognized him the minute he climbed out of the cab in front of the house. She almost sighed. She’d been about to leave the scene, to go home and grab a couple of hours of sleep. Now she had to do another interview and probably answer questions herself, questions for which she had no answers yet.

Grant Lawrence was sometimes referred to by the media as the next John Kennedy, and Lawrence really did have that magic. Karen, a lifelong Republican, somehow always found herself voting for Grant Lawrence, Democrat. He made sense. But more than making sense, he made the impossible seem possible, made the heart soar with hope that the world could be a better place. Like Kennedy, he never said it would be easy. He admitted to all the obstacles, then made you feel as if surmounting obstacles was the entire point.

She liked his attitude. And it didn’t hurt that he could give a younger Robert Redford a run for his money in the looks department. Dark hair dashed with gray, perfectly chiseled features, a determined jaw, and a stride that said, you can knock me around but you can’t knock me down.

And that bundle of talent, looks and potentially huge problems for her was walking her way right now, being passed through the cordon as if he were king. Nobody even asked him to wait.

This was Lawrence turf, even for the cops.

It struck her that all she thought she knew about him was public image, and that all her admiration for him wasn’t going to make her job one iota easier. She suddenly wished someone else had been called on this case.

One of the cops pointed her out to him. Otherwise she was sure he never would have noticed an Irish wren with colorless eyes and her dark hair drawn impatiently back. Karen Sweeney had always been one to blend and never one to stand out.

But he was looking at her, straight at her, with electric blue eyes, bluer than she ever would have guessed from seeing him on the news and in the paper. He was also thinner than she had thought, and while tall, not quite as tall as he looked on the tube. He looked…not quite as imposing, yet somehow more powerful. Weird. And she needed to focus her sleepy brain before this politician ran roughshod over her and got information she wasn’t supposed to give out. Before she forgot that she was the one who was supposed to be in control of the scene.

“Senator,” she said simply.

“Detective,” he answered. Then said nothing, as if waiting for her to fill in the missing pieces.

This close, she could see the fatigue and sorrow weighing down his features. The raw eyelids and cheekbones. In a moment he was no longer Senator Grant Lawrence, leading political light.

He was simply a man broken by violence.

“Jerry Connally told me he called you. I’m very sorry.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Can I see her?”

She shook her head. “They’ve taken her away already. I hate to ask this, but I do need to go through the house with you. It looks like she surprised a burglar. Mr. Connally didn’t notice anything missing, but…it’s your house.”

He simply nodded, and she continued.

“We can do it later. But it would help the investigation to know as soon as possible. If there was something stolen, finding it might help us find out who did this. A homicide trail goes cold fast.”

“I understand, Detective.” He glanced around. “Is Jerry here?”

He wanted the comfort of a familiar face, she could tell. And she couldn’t offer it. “I’m sorry. He went downtown to fill out a statement. Procedure.”

“Yes. Procedure.” He ran a hand through his hair, momentarily appearing utterly lost. Then he squared his shoulders. “Okay, Detective. Show me my home.”

3

Grant Lawrence paused in the doorway and realized his house had become an alien land. It wasn’t just the strangers who were everywhere, the police in their uniforms, the technicians with their cases and clipboards. No, it wasn’t that his house was full of strangers. For Grant Lawrence, a stranger was merely an opportunity to make a friend or an ally, and he met with many new people right here in this house.

But the house was changed forever. It was no longer his home. It had become the place where Abby had died. It felt different. It smelled different. He stepped into it as if stepping in a mausoleum.

He had been so shaken by the news of Abby’s and Stacy’s deaths that he hadn’t given much thought to how they had happened. He wasn’t spared the knowledge for long. He turned toward the living room, that large, over-decorated space where he often entertained, the creation of his late wife’s opulent taste, and he saw.

The sight knocked the wind from him, and he spun away. It wasn’t that he’d never seen bloody horror before. The memory of jagged white bone protruding from his right shin, of bright, hot blood pulsing between his fingers as he grabbed the wound, was still vivid. He knew exactly what he was seeing. But this time it had been Abby, his lifelong second mother. And Stacy, a woman he had once thought he might be in love with.

Oh, God! He leaned against a wall, hot and cold by turns, pressing his forehead against cool plaster, closing his eyes, trying to banish the image of what he’d just seen.

A hand touched his arm, a small hand with surprising strength. It gripped him. “Senator?” said the smoky voice of Detective Sweeney. “Do you need to sit?”

“I’ll be all right.” He had to be all right. As had happened so many times in his life, he had no choice but to be all right.

He drew a steadying breath, regaining his self-command. A line from one of his father’s favorite poems floated unbidden through his consciousness. If you can meet with triumph and disaster/And treat those two imposters just the same. Rudyard Kipling’s idealized “Man” would have known how to handle this.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have warned you.”

He raised his head, pushed himself away from the wall and looked at her. “Why? That would have deprived you of the opportunity to see my initial reaction.”

He thought she flushed faintly, but if so, it was nearly invisible. “Senator, you were in Washington. You’re not a suspect.”

He knew better. Jerry had found Abby and Stacy, and had called him before he called the police. This detective didn’t look like the type who would overlook or ignore the obvious possibility of complicity.

He had to be careful not to mention Stacy, at least until he knew what the hell Jerry had done. He wasn’t going to betray his friend over something that was relatively unimportant. If it was unimportant.

He shook himself. He would have to deal with Jerry later. That would be then. This was now. “How did it happen?”

“Her throat was cut.”

“My God!” He closed his eyes for a moment, absorbing the enormity, trying not to think of Abby’s last few moments. Abby. Far more important to him than Stacy in so many ways. But both were dead. Both.

“Look,” said Detective Sweeney, “you don’t have to go into that room. It’s obvious the valuables in there weren’t taken. But I need to know about the rest of the house.”

He nodded, clamping down on the horror he felt. “Fine, let’s go.” He would have time later for feelings. He’d learned that long ago. There were a lot of things better put on hold until he had privacy to think about them and feel them. Otherwise, it was as his mother had once said: if there’s one other person who can see you, you’re on camera.

Why hadn’t Jerry warned him about what he would see?

The rest of the first floor was undisturbed. The farther he got from his living room, the more he could almost lull himself into thinking everything was normal. Until he reached his office. A file drawer, almost but not quite closed, a discrepancy that most people might not have even noticed, alerted him.

“Detective, those cabinets were locked.”

“Mr. Connally said he came for some papers.”

He looked at her, noticing again that her eyes were almost colorless, but now they had taken on an almost preternatural focus. As if she had picked up on something. He wondered if he imagined the way her delicate nostrils seemed to flare, testing the breeze.

He spoke. “I called him last night to pick up some things for me and express them to Washington. But he wouldn’t have left the files open.”

She nodded and moved forward, coming within inches of the cabinets. “It looks like this lock was picked.” She faced him. “What’s in here?”

“Background information on a conservation bill I authored. Scientific reports, mostly, the stuff I brought down from D.C. to study while I’m here. Some from independent research firms, some from the EPA.”

She looked at the lock again, then moved down the row of file cabinets. “They’ve all been jimmied. By someone in a hurry. Who would want these papers? Sugar growers?”

He gave her marks for environmental awareness. “They’re opposed to the bill, yes. Among many others in agriculture. But I find it hard to believe they would kill to get a look at these documents.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” She looked his way again, her gray eyes opaque. “Anyone else who might be on the list?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes, and tried to focus on what she needed, reminding himself it was all he could do to help Abby and Stacy now. “I have all kinds of political enemies, Detective. Any man in my position does. But it’s hard to imagine them committing murder.”

“I agree. But the murder may have been purely incidental.”

Something in him flared, and his voice grew deadly quiet. “There’s nothing incidental about what happened here.”

Her expression never wavered. “Poor choice of words, Senator. I merely meant that murder was probably not the intention, but rather the result of panic on the part of the intruder. Except…”

Her voice trailed off, and she began to walk around the room, studying the bookshelves, the neat desktop, the view out the back window over well-tended gardens, now a riot of fresh April color. What a sorry ending to his daughters’ spring vacation.

“Except what?” he demanded when she said nothing further.

“Except,” she said finally, “I wonder how it was that Ms. Reese came upon him in the living room.”

His head snapped up a bit as he realized what she was saying. “I don’t keep anything of importance out there. Nothing of political importance, anyway.”

“I would think not. Well, it might have just happened that way. Maybe he heard Abby coming and darted in there to hide.”

Or maybe not. Grant felt his neck chill with a premonition of ugliness yet to be found. Stacy had been here, too. But he couldn’t tell her that. What if Stacy had had something to do with the break-in? What if she’d brought someone here to give them access to his papers, then had been killed to keep her silent? And what if that was what Abby had stumbled into?

He felt, suddenly, as if he were standing on the narrow tip of a very windy precipice, barely maintaining balance. He understood from Jerry’s cryptic remark on the phone that Jerry had removed Stacy from the house. He could have meant nothing else. And so far the police had only mentioned Abby, so they knew nothing about Stacy. God, he didn’t want to think about the legal ramifications of that for Jerry.

But it also put him in a precarious position. He had information that might be relevant to the investigation, information he couldn’t share without getting his closest aide into trouble, without exposing his children to the kind of scandal he’d been protecting them from for years. And protecting his daughters came first, came before everything else. Including his presidential aspirations.

“I’m going to have the file cabinets dusted for prints, Senator. Afterwards, I’d like you to tell me what, if anything, is missing from them.”

“Very well.”

“What’s in the desk?”

“Just stationery, pens, pencils, pads, things like that. All my papers are in the file cabinets.”

She nodded and gave him what he supposed was meant to be an encouraging smile. “Could your computer have been tampered with?”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t think so. It’s password protected. But even if it were…I don’t keep much on it. Drafts of speeches I’m thinking of making, little things like that. When I’m in town, Detective, I’m usually busy with constituents, and any private time I have is largely for thinking, not doing. That computer is full of a lot of quick notes and thoughts, but little else. If someone were going to commit electronic theft for political gain, he’d be better off hacking into the network server at my office, in Washington. That’s where we do the real grunt work.”

She looked at the monitor and keyboard sitting on his desk. “Then I doubt anyone got into it. I’ll have someone check to make sure it hasn’t been physically tampered with. But given that our perp was clearly in a hurry, it’s not likely.”

She turned to him again. “Let’s take a look upstairs now.”

He followed her up the sweeping staircase, one of the features that Georgina, his late wife, had loved about this house. To him it had always seemed pretentious, something better suited to an antebellum mansion. But Georgina had had her eye even more firmly fixed on the presidency than he had. Sometimes he thought this house had been his wife’s rehearsal for the White House.

He dreaded what he might find up there. Signs of Stacy’s presence? What had she been doing here? They’d broken off months ago, in mutual realization of the cost. Stacy had been a wonderful woman, but both he and she had seen the handwriting on the wall.

He’d met her on the rebound from his wife’s death—strangely enough, not at the club where she worked, but in his local office, when she came to help stuff envelopes during his last campaign. But rebounds can only bounce for so long. Their parting had been amicable. Understanding. And he’d long since quietly found a way to make sure Stacy could open the dance studio she’d always dreamt of, rather than baring her body for strange men in a dark, noisy, impersonal bar.