Fatal Accusation (The Fatal Series)

by Marie Force

  “Don’t forget I’m armed at all times and know how to take care of myself.”

  “Samantha... Your former boss is on trial for wrapping you in razor wire. We both know that no one can take care of themselves all the time.”

  “That was a onetime mistake in judgment on my part.”

  “You’re in no way responsible for what happened to you that day, but the thought of some random dude attacking you when there’s no one there to help you...” A shudder went through his big body. “Unbearable.”

  “I’m sorry. I hate that you worry the way you do. I swear that ninety-nine percent of the time, I never feel unsafe or in any kind of actual danger.”

  “The one percent is all it takes.”

  “I fended him off, but we need to make sure his alibi holds up.” She reached for her phone, which she kept close at hand ever since the night Arnold was killed while she was off the grid. Every part of her buzzed with the certainty that she’d missed something with Bryce.

  She found the text from Isabel, the intern, and put through a call to her.

  “This is Sam Holland.”

  “I never thought I’d hear from you.”

  “Sorry to call so late, but I have a question regarding the World Bank.”

  “Oh, um, sure. Happy to help if I can.”

  “Bryce Massey’s assistant, Janice. She said he was in meetings all day and that neither of them left the building. What I want to know is if she’d be with him at his meetings, or if there were times she wouldn’t know for sure he was in the meetings.”

  “I’m not sure if she goes or not, but I have a friend who works on their floor. I can call her to ask. She’d know.”

  “Do it and call me back?”

  “I will. Right away.”

  “Thank you.” Sam closed her phone and tried to be patient in the two minutes it took for Isabel to call her back.

  “She said Janice never attends meetings with him.”

  Sam wanted to shout hallelujah. “This was extremely helpful, and I won’t forget it. Let’s have coffee in the next few weeks.”

  “I’d love that.”

  “Shoot me a text, and we’ll set it up.” Sam ended the call and put through another to Carlucci.

  She answered on the first ring. “Hi, LT, what’s up?”

  “What’s the latest with Bryce Massey?”

  “Funny you should ask. We’re preparing a report for you now in which he’s the star.”

  “Give me the highlights.”

  “We found a connection between him and Delany Russo.”

  Sam’s backbone buzzed with sensation. “I’m on my way in.” She slapped the phone closed and started to get out of bed when an arm around her waist stopped her.

  “Where do you think you’re going at midnight, my love?”

  “To get justice for Tara and to save us a move to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  “As much as I don’t want to make that move, you need rest.”

  “I need this more.” She kissed him. “Please?”

  He let her go, albeit reluctantly. “Be careful with my wife. I love her madly.”

  “I will. I promise. Thank you for an amazing night.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Sam flew out of bed, grabbed her robe, put it on and tied it as she went down the stairs. She hated leaving him but this was the best lead they’d had yet, and she would never sleep wondering what was happening at work. Besides, she didn’t get to work with her two third-shift detectives very often, and this was a good opportunity to give them some attention—and some overtime.

  She nodded to the agent in the hallway and ducked into her closet to get clothes and then crossed the hall to her room, making a beeline for the shower.

  Fifteen minutes later, she was on the way to HQ, zipping through the Secret Service checkpoint and across town in record time. Maybe she ought to start working overnights again to avoid the traffic. She’d done third shift early in her career, and it’d been a bitch. Her body’s internal clock had never fully made the adjustment, meaning she’d walked around in zombie mode for two full years before she’d been mercifully moved to days.

  The other benefit of showing up to work in the middle of the night was no press staked outside the front door. She parked in the main parking lot and walked into the building, enjoying the freedom to come to work without being stalked by reporters. The first person she encountered inside was the last person she expected to see there at that hour.

  “What’s up, Chief?”

  “Vice did a big sweep on the gambling ring tonight. A lot of unhappy people in lockup, all of them claiming to be innocent bystanders, of course.”

  “Of course. Did Public Affairs get the word out about the arrests?”

  “They’re working on it now.”

  “Good. We need all the positive publicity we can get.”

  “You mean I need all the positive publicity.” Though he looked tired, he seemed measurably better than he had the last time she saw him. “Celia’s statement has really helped to calm things.”

  “That’s great. I’m glad to hear it.”

  “I really appreciate it, and I’ll tell her so when I see her. We’re having lunch the day after tomorrow.”

  “It’s good of you to do that.”

  “She’s my friend as much as he was.”

  Because there was no one else around, Sam hugged him. “You’re the best.” She let go of him before she could lose her composure and headed for the pit.

  “What’re you doing here?” he called after her.

  “Pulling a thread,” she said over her shoulder.

  In the pit, she found Dani Carlucci and Giselle “Gigi” Dominguez working in their side-by-side cubicles. While Dominguez was a petite, curvy Latina, Carlucci was tall, blonde and stacked. “Ladies, what’ve we got?”

  “Let’s go in the conference room, and we’ll draw you a picture,” Carlucci said. With two more years on the job, she was the senior partner.

  Sam clapped her hands. “Oh, I love pictures!”

  In the conference room, Sam noticed the large dry-erase board that’d recently held the details of her father’s case had been wiped clean.

  Case closed.

  She took a deep breath and fought through the wave of grief that came over her when she hadn’t been expecting it. That’s how grief worked, or so she’d been told. Always there, waiting to surge to the surface to remind you that your loved one is gone forever, even when you’re in the middle of something else.

  Dominguez dragged the empty dry-erase board closer to the table and wrote Bryce Massey’s name at the top. She drew a line to Tara Weber and another line to Delany Russo and then connected the two women to each other.

  “We believe that Bryce paid Delany to keep tabs on Tara for him,” Carlucci said after Dominguez had completed the drawing.

  “Holy bombshell, Batman,” Sam said. “Do tell.”

  Dominguez produced financials for both parties with various transactions highlighted. “Note that the dates of the withdrawals from his account match the dates of deposit for the same amounts in hers.”

  Sam’s spine buzzed with sensation, which is what happened when they closed in on murdering scumbags. “Tell me more.”

  Dominguez placed text message records on the table in front of Sam. “This came from Detective Green’s review of the phone data. The first set of messages is between Tara and Bryce. We went back to the week in early February when the baby was most likely conceived and found that Tara was in close touch with Bryce and they spent time together.”

  Sam scanned the text exchanges that showed Bryce pleading with Tara to see him so they could talk.

  At first, Tara put him off, claiming she was busy and only in town for the week before traveling for work again.

&n
bsp; After some more back-and-forth, she agreed to let him come over for a short visit on January 31.

  “Do we have any way of knowing how long he stayed?”

  “Until noon the next day,” Carlucci said, handing another page to Sam.

  I’ve just left you and I already miss you. I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to have this time with you, babe. I still think we can put things back together.

  The message had been sent at 12:12 p.m.

  “What was her reply?”

  “She didn’t reply. As far as we can tell, she never again replied to a message from him. We’ve gone through her emails and calls as well. While he reached out to her repeatedly, it appears she never replied. Shortly after that, he starts texting Delany, reminding her they have a deal. So we went back to when he and Tara first broke up and found that he’d started paying Delany around that time. We found multiple exchanges between them about Tara and a few that indicate there might be more to their ‘friendship’ than just spying.”

  Sam mulled over the information, spinning it around in her mind every which way.

  “Any clue about how the building video might’ve gotten wiped? The two of them don’t seem capable of thinking it through to that extent.”

  “We didn’t see anything about that,” Carlucci said.

  “Let’s pick him up.”

  “Now?” Carlucci asked.

  “Right now.” Sam told them what she’d learned from Isabel about Bryce’s so-called alibi. “And while we’re at it, I want to bring Delany in too.” Adrenaline rushed through her system the way it did when they were close to closing a case.

  She called for backup from Patrol, asked them to pick up Delany and to keep her separate from Massey at HQ so they didn’t know the other was there. Sam drove Carlucci and Dominguez to Massey’s house near Rock Creek Park. As they drove, she talked out the case with her detectives.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking. Massey broke up with Tara because she wanted to get married and he didn’t. But he never expected her to really move on from him. He expected her to stay in close touch, to continue the dance they’d done for the previous six years while she held out hoping for more, which he never intended to give her. Then they reunite for a night, things are like they used to be, and he believes he’s got her back where he wants her—taking the scraps he’s willing to give her, filled with hope that he might change his mind about a future together. Except this time, she’s wise to him. Maybe she feels weak for letting him back in her bed for that one night, but she’s upset that things didn’t work out with Nelson. After spending that time with Bryce, she’s more resolved than ever to move on without him. Maybe she decided after being with Massey again and realizing he was never going to change that she wanted a baby more than a relationship. She has the nights with Wilton and Finley. And when she gave the story to Finley, she was sending a huge ‘fuck you’ to Massey, letting him know that she was done with him and had moved on to much bigger fish, and she was sending a massive ‘fuck you’ to the president, for whom she may have developed an emotional attachment until he blew her off after the affair and refused to acknowledge her child could be his.”

  “Why would someone so media savvy bring this firestorm down on herself though?”, Carlucci asked.

  “Because she was sick of being dicked around by men and wanted them all to suffer.”

  “I like it,” Dominguez said in her usual low-key way.

  “I freaking love it,” Sam said. “Well, except for the part about Tara being dead.”

  “My question is still who killed Tara though,” Carlucci said. “Massey has an airtight alibi. He was at work all day.”

  “I’m going to bet that he left for a time, perhaps when his airtight alibi was at lunch.” The more she delved into this line of reasoning, the more she liked it. “And I’m going to bet that Delany let him in, perhaps not knowing that he intended to kill Tara, but we’re going to use her to get to him.” Sam pounded her hand on the steering wheel. “Sometimes I fucking love this job.”

  The other two detectives laughed.

  “You’re a weirdo, Lieutenant,” Carlucci said.

  “That’s a compliment to me, as you know. The thing that makes me mad is that I should’ve looked harder at him after he tried to intimidate me on the street.”

  Dominguez looked at her with surprise. “What? When did that happen?”

  Sam filled them in on the incident with Massey. “I just thought he was being a typical tool, trying to show me how big his dick was. After his assistant put him at work all day, I sort of wrote him off. The thing on the street should’ve been a heads-up to me, but I didn’t take it that way.”

  “You needed more info before it made sense to you,” Dominguez said. “Nothing wrong with that. In the end, that and the phone data helped to lead us to him.”

  As they pulled onto his street, Sam zeroed in on his townhouse, which is how she saw him coming down the stairs carrying a box. She stopped the car in the middle of the street. “He’s running. Let’s go.” After taking one minute to contact Patrol to tell them they were moving in, Sam got out of the car and left the door open, so as not to alert him to their presence.

  Because Carlucci and Dominguez had connected the dots that led to him, Sam gestured for them to go ahead and make the arrest.

  He was so focused on what he was doing, the detectives were able to walk right up behind him.

  Carlucci pressed her weapon into his back. “Freeze.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  MASSEY’S BODY WENT rigid and then sagged against the back of his car.

  “Going somewhere, Mr. Massey?” Dominguez asked.

  “I’m getting ready to move.”

  Carlucci looked around him into the back of the SUV, which was packed full of stuff. “Mr. Massey, you’re under arrest for the murder of Tara Weber. You have the right to remain silent—”

  “I didn’t kill her! I loved her! I’d never hurt her.”

  “You have the right to an attorney.” As she recited his rights, Carlucci cuffed him and turned him over to the Patrol officers. “Take him in and get him booked.”

  He blanched when he saw Sam.

  “We meet again, Mr. Massey.”

  “I want my lawyer!”

  “Call his lawyer and have the ME on duty get a DNA sample,” Sam said to the Patrol officers who hauled him away, while hoping he wasn’t the baby’s father. She checked to make sure Massey’s car and townhouse were locked before returning to her car. “That was awesome. Very well done, ladies.”

  “Sometimes this job really is fun,” Carlucci said.

  “The Patrol officers told me they’ve got the assistant and they’re bringing her in,” Dominguez said.

  “Outstanding. Totally worth losing a night of sleep to watch this go down.”

  “You’re a little giddy, Lieutenant,” Carlucci said.

  “Yes, I am. We needed a win, and these arrests take care of a rather massive problem for me at home too.”

  “Ah yes, a pesky little problem called the potential resignation of the president.”

  Had she ever noticed before that Carlucci shared her snarky sense of humor? “Exactly. With these arrests, we’ll hopefully be able to show that while Nelson committed adultery at the worst possible time, that was as far as it went.”

  “What’s the plan for interrogation?” Dominguez asked.

  “We’re going to get Delany to tell us how it went down in exchange for the possibility of leniency.” Sam put through a call to Malone. “Wake up.”

  “I’m awake.” He sounded anything but.

  “We’ve made arrests in the Weber case.”

  “Talk to me.”

  Sam ran through the connections Green, Carlucci and Dominguez had made between Bryce and Delany. “They put all the pieces together and di
d some fine work tonight.”

  “That’s excellent.”

  “Put in a call to Faith Miller, if you would, and let her know we’ll have them in interrogation within the hour.”

  “I’ll make the call and be in shortly.”

  “Thanks, Cap.”

  “Tell the ladies I said great job.”

  “Will do.” Sam slapped her new phone closed, loving the extra loud cracking sound it made when the two halves came together. It was even better than the old one. That, too, made her giddy. “The Captain says job well done.”

  “We share the credit with the day team,” Dominguez said. “We picked up where they left off.”

  “Take the credit where you can get it. You did good work.”

  “Thank you, LT,” Dominguez said. “It feels good to get justice for her—and her son.”

  “Justice is always a good feeling.”

  “Have you heard anything new about Stahl’s trial?” Carlucci asked.

  “Just that it’s with the jury.” Sam shrugged. “Out of my hands.” It rankled her that the jury was taking so long to arrive at what should be a slam dunk conviction.

  “There’s no way they won’t convict him,” Dominguez said. “He was caught red-handed.”

  “That’s my feeling as well, but you never know.” She thought about Dr. Trulo warning her to be prepared to not get the outcome she deserved and expected, but she couldn’t go there. She just couldn’t conceive of that possibility.

  At HQ, they were forced to cool their heels for more than an hour waiting for Massey and Russo to be processed and delivered to interrogation rooms. Then they had to wait for Massey’s attorney to arrive.

  Once all the players were in place, Sam briefed Assistant U.S. Attorney Faith Miller, who wore yoga pants and running shoes for the middle-of-the-night mission, as well as Captain Malone and Chief Farnsworth, who’d never gone home.

  “What’s the plan?” Malone asked.

  “We’re going to talk to Delany first. If we’re right about this theory, she’ll be the one to tell us.”

  “Agreed,” Faith said. “I heard she’s been hysterical since the cops showed up to arrest her.”