by Ana Barrons
“I didn’t say that.” Sweat stains had appeared under Sadler’s arms. “They claimed to be concerned that the public would jump to conclusions before we knew whether Blair Morrissey had been murdered or what. So I, uh, did what they wanted, like a good little civil servant.”
“And what did you get out of this ‘deal’?”
Sadler’s face was ashen. “We all have secrets, don’t we, Joe? Secrets that would hurt other people, if they were made public.”
Bingo. “So it was a personal deal. You were being blackmailed.” He ran his hands through his hair. “So how did you manage to keep Ackerman and everybody else off your ass while you made good on your part of the deal?”
“Let’s just say a few things never quite made it into evidence, and I made some personnel changes when I took over from Hawkins.”
Joe was silent while he ran it around in his head. So that was why the police hadn’t followed up on leads—Sadler had either removed them from the record or never entered them in the first place. And then he shifted people around to make it less obvious.
After a few moments he said, “Which undermined the investigation and gave you exactly what you needed in case the blackmailer got greedy and didn’t stop. And nobody knew about it but you.”
“That’s what I like about you, Joe. You’re quick.”
“No, you like me because you know all this is leading to a much better story than a little police corruption, and you know I’ll protect you because you’re my only source. Of course, I’ll have to verify all this with someone else.”
“When I’m out of the country.”
Joe didn’t answer. He finished his beer and Sadler went to the refrigerator for two more. They drank for a couple of minutes in silence before Joe spoke. “So who’s blackmailing you? Or are you going to make me figure it out?”
Sadler stared at nothing, one hand holding a beer, the other stroking his scar. “All I want is enough money to make a break. Buy a place in the islands. I’m sick of this fucking job anyway. Once the Herald has it, it’s over. I get my money, I leave the country, you win the fucking Pulitzer and the perp gets nailed. Sounds like a win-win to me.”
“Yeah, unless someone gets killed in the meantime. Who is it, Sadler? I know too much for you to hold out on me now.”
Sadler snorted. “And let you run with the story without giving me my money? Uh-uh. I’m not giving you the name until I see cold, hard cash. Two million dollars.”
“What?” Joe shouted. “The Herald is never going to hand over that kind of money. And even if they would, you’d have to give me more than this crazy story to bring back to my editor.”
Sadler leaned forward, his eyes shining. “You know fucking well I’m telling you the truth, Rossi. And I happen to believe the Herald will pay serious bucks for the biggest story since Watergate.”
There it was again. Watergate. “So who called you—the president? The secretary of state? Or was it someone a little lower on the food chain. Somebody like Ned Campbell?”
“Just get the money, Joe. Your editor won’t be disappointed.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Joe drove around the block three times before he felt confident they weren’t being watched or followed. A fine mist was building up on the windshield but he didn’t flip on the wipers, as though by not acknowledging the rain it would simply not fall.
“Why did it have to rain tonight?” Catherine’s voice was low, tense. “We should get in as fast as possible so we don’t get the floors wet. Maybe we should park closer.”
Joe had already parked. He stared straight ahead, searching his mind for any detail they may have forgotten that could sabotage their mission. The mist was picking up in intensity. There was no time to go over it again with her. She would use the key to get in, he would pick the lock to Doc Campbell’s office, they’d search around for some kind of damning evidence on Sadler and get the hell out before Ned got home. From the corner of his eye he saw Catherine staring at him.
“Last chance,” he said. “Give me the key and wait out here until—”
She opened the passenger side door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He sighed and followed suit. Stubborn. They walked the two blocks in silence, the only sounds the hum of Georgetown traffic and the gentle tapping of raindrops hitting the leaves overhead. Most people closed their windows at the end of May, cranked up the AC and wouldn’t shut it off until mid-September. The chances of a neighbor watching through a window were small, but he continued to scan the houses all the same. Fortunately, Ned’s townhouse was at the end of a block. Just in case, both of them were dressed in black—long pants and long sleeves—despite the muggy, oppressive heat.
They walked up to the front door as though they owned the place and Catherine fit the key into the lock. He heard her take in a choppy breath and he laid a hand on her arm.
“We don’t have to go through with this,” he said.
She turned the key and pushed the door open. “Take off your shoes,” she whispered when he stepped inside. She pulled out a wad of tissue from a pants pocket. “I grabbed these to wipe up behind us.”
He slipped off his shoes as she had, and she bent down to wipe up the splatters. The air-conditioning felt great against his clammy skin.
Catherine sneezed. “It’s freezing in here.”
They opened the door to the sitting room and crossed through to the library. When they closed that door behind them Joe switched on his tiny flashlight and walked to the double oak doors. He frowned. The lock was old-fashioned, the keyhole wide. He tried the doors but they fit so tightly that they didn’t budge a fraction of an inch. He got down on all fours and shone the light through the tiny crack between the bottom of the door and the floor. “Damn,” he said. “I was afraid of that.”
Catherine was on her knees beside him. “What is it?”
“Bad news.” He sighed. “Both doors are latched to the floor on the inside. There’s no way we can get in there from here.”
“How is that possible?”
He flipped off the flashlight and stood. “There’s got to be another way in. We’ll find it, but we have to be quick.”
Catherine made a sound of exasperation. “Well, let’s check the adjoining rooms.”
They left the den and tiptoed down the hallway, which led to a small powder room and the kitchen. They stepped inside the powder room, shut the door and flipped on the light. It only took a couple of seconds to see that there was no doorway. Joe glanced at the image in the mirror—the two of them so close, dark hair, black clothes—and met Catherine’s gaze. The color rose in her cheeks. God, he wanted her. He brushed a wet tendril of hair off her cheek.
“Let’s go,” she whispered. She fumbled with the doorknob until she got it open. Joe followed her into the kitchen. On the wall adjacent to Dr. Campbell’s office were double-levered doors leading into a pantry. Joe stuck the flashlight inside. Three walls were lined floor to ceiling with canned goods and other nonperishables. He pushed on the far wall, but it didn’t budge, and he couldn’t spot a doorknob or handle of any kind.
“Damn,” he muttered. His elbow struck a can and it tumbled to the floor. “Shit.”
Catherine tugged on his shirt from behind. “You’re too big to be in there. Give me the light.” Joe backed out and handed her the light. She knelt down and shone the light as he had in the den. “There’s a gap,” she said excitedly. “I have to find the latch.” She unloaded cans onto the floor, searching for a way through. She pushed at the wall. “Come on, damn it.”
“Try pulling.” It was ingenious, really. Dr. Campbell could pop into the kitchen for a snack or a cup of coffee or to take a leak without entering the waiting room. His young patients would never have to know he was a mere mortal.
Ned had to have seen him go in and out, and no doubt did the s
ame.
Joe glanced at his watch. Ten-forty. Ned would be out for another couple of hours, but they still had to hurry. Finally she found the latch, hidden behind a row of Campbell soup cans, no less, and in moments they were inside the office on the other side of a large painting of a mother and child lazing in the grass by a river. Perfect for evoking strong emotion in his patients.
They checked that the curtains were tightly closed and decided to risk turning on a lamp. Towering bookshelves filled nearly every inch of wall space. Doc Campbell’s massive oak desk and leather chair were directly in front of them. A burgundy leather couch and matching chairs sat catty-corner on a vibrant Oriental rug that covered the polished oak floor. The subtle, sweet smell of pipe tobacco was embedded in the furniture and forest green velvet draperies.
Searching every bookshelf would take them all night, and then some. “I’ll start with the desk,” Joe said.
Catherine turned in a circle, then pointed to a couple of oak filing cabinets against the wall to the left of the desk. “I guess I’ll start with those.”
To Joe’s surprise, the desk was unlocked and the small keys to the filing cabinets were in the most accessible spot—the middle drawer. The large file drawer in the desk held folders labeled “utilities,” “phone,” “home repair,” “insurance.” He reached for the phone records and laid the manila folder on the floor beside him. He flipped through and discovered phone bills for the preceding eighteen months. Apparently there were three landlines in the house, plus Ned’s cell phone. His heart was pounding. If Ned had called Blair’s apartment, he would know.
He went straight for the September and October bills, but they weren’t where they should have been. Damn. As he examined them one by one he realized that the bills for the previous June through October were missing. Maybe he started seeing her in June. It wasn’t what he had hoped for, and it didn’t prove a thing, but it was a piece of information he didn’t have before.
Had Ned’s phone numbers been in Blair’s phone records? No one would ever know—Sadler had made damn sure of that. Ned had probably told Sadler exactly what evidence to permit other people to examine and what he should examine personally. Bastards. Both of them.
Joe searched through every folder he could lay his hands on and went through every drawer, finding nothing useful. Catherine was moving more slowly than he was, being more cautious about each piece of paper, each folder going back in exactly as she’d found it. She let out a long sigh after she’d sifted through most of the contents of both large file cabinets.
“I’m not finding anything like patient files,” she said.
“I’ll start searching the bookshelves.” Joe said, feeling as dejected as she sounded. It was after midnight and they’d struck out so far. “I’ll take this side of the room.”
Twenty minutes later, Catherine whispered, “Joe!” He slipped some notebooks back onto a shelf and crouched beside her in front of a low oak credenza. She was smiling in a way he hadn’t seen before, her expression full of hope.
“Audio tapes,” she said. “Check out these names.” Joe moved closer and began scanning the names written on the spines, in his excitement jumping from left to right, bottom to top.
“Zedlar, Ann,” he read. “Daughter of the Secretary of State?”
“Could be. Keep going.”
“Byrd, Julian Jr. His father’s a partner at Venable, Byrd and—Son of a bitch. Sadler, Andrew. That’s Sadler’s kid.” He tugged the tape out of the slotted holder. “There’s a date on it. February 10. Doesn’t say what year.”
“Must be a single session. There are probably master tapes around here somewhere.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t have time to search for them. Let’s take this and get the hell out of here.”
Catherine grabbed the tape out of his hand. “One more minute. There’s a recorder right here.” She stuck the tape in and hit Play.
“No, there’s no time. We can—”
A boy’s angry voice broke in. “And she was crying in her pillow. She didn’t know I could hear her, but I heard her lots of times.”
“How did that make you feel, Andy?” Doc Campbell’s voice. Calm, understanding, encouraging.
“I wanted to kill him!” the boy said. “I wanted to take his belt and whip him and whip him. Just like he did to her. I wanted him to bleed until...until...” The boy was sobbing, hiccupping. “I wanted to kill him.”
Joe felt a surge of anger at the boy’s helpless fury. Sadler, you piece of shit.
“She found out about the girls,” Andy went on.
“What girls?”
“They were so young! He beat her up for catching him.”
Joe wanted to puke.
When Catherine hit the off button, Joe assumed she was as disgusted as he by what she’d heard, but then she made a shushing noise, scurried on her knees to the desk and flicked off the lamp. They were silent for a moment, listening.
“I heard something,” she said in a low whisper. “We have to get out. Put the tape back.”
“No, it’s all I have to—”
“Put it back. If he notices it’s missing, he’ll know someone’s onto him. If we need it we’ll get it another—” The sound of voices reached them. Joe flipped on the flashlight and replaced the tapes, then quietly closed the cabinet doors. Still on his knees, he crawled to where he’d left the phone records, slipped them back inside the folder and shut the desk drawer.
“Our shoes,” Catherine said from behind him. “They’re in the pantry. And the cans of food.”
“Shhh.”
Laughter floated in from somewhere in the house. Joe’s mind flipped into high gear. “If Ned and his date are in the living room we might be able to sneak into the kitchen and out the patio doors.”
Catherine shook her head. “The patio’s right off the dining room and you can see it from the living room.”
“Okay, so we go out through the den and out the side door.”
“No. From the living room you can see across the foyer and into the sitting room. If the door’s open, they might be able to see the side door. You can see every door from the living room.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll take her upstairs sooner rather than later.”
Joe pushed open the door into the pantry and stuck his head through. The voices were louder, but they were definitely coming from the front of the house rather than the back. Good. He motioned for Catherine to follow him and they slipped inside the pantry and pulled the door behind them until they heard the soft click of the latch. Catherine bent to pick up a can of soup she had left on the floor but lost her balance. Her arm shot out to keep from toppling forward and accidentally pushed one levered door open. Joe steadied her and pulled the door quickly back in place. The voices in the other room stopped. Shit.
He wrapped his arms around her, instinctively wanting to protect her in case they were discovered. She was trembling. Footsteps headed in their direction. He debated slipping back into the office but decided he’d rather be caught in the kitchen than in the inner sanctum. That way he could say he’d insisted on coming inside while Catherine collected whatever it was she thought she’d left there, and they’d both freaked when they heard him come in with a woman. They had hidden rather than go through the awkwardness of a surprise encounter.
Right. And if Ned believed that, Joe had a bridge to sell him.
Catherine slipped her arms around his waist and buried her head in his chest. He heard Ned unlock the patio door and step outside.
They waited.
Ten seconds passed. Twenty.
He squeezed Catherine tighter. Ned stepped back inside and announced that either an animal had knocked some things over or a branch had fallen. Neither of them breathed until they heard Ned’s footsteps heading back to the living room. Joe pres
sed his lips close to Catherine’s ear.
“I say we try the side door,” he whispered.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was wobbly. Frightened.
Joe stroked her back to comfort her. “Okay. I know. There’s a back staircase right around the corner from the kitchen. It’s off the inner hallway, so they can’t see it from the living room. It takes us upstairs.”
“But that would be worse.”
“There’s a guest room right at the top of the stairs. We can hide in there until he goes to bed and then sneak down and out the front door. If he brings his date up to his bedroom, we can make a break for it sooner.”
“Okay,” she said.
A minute or two later, Catherine crept out of the pantry, peeked around the corner to the side hall and waved Joe forward. They tiptoed down the hallway, up the steps to the second floor and through the open door to the guest bedroom. Unlike the master bedroom, it didn’t open onto the balcony that overlooked the living room.
“Too bad the door wasn’t closed,” Catherine whispered. “I’d feel a whole lot better behind a closed door.”
In the dim light filtering up from downstairs, Joe scanned the room for hiding places. To their left stood a large, mahogany four-poster bed with a canopy and filmy draperies that trailed to the floor. A two-step stool stood beside the bed to assist anyone but the very tallest person onto the mattress, the top of which must have stood five feet off the floor. A turquoise patterned bed skirt that matched the puffy comforter and shams ran around the bottom of the bed.
“Well,” Joe whispered, “we could always hide under the bed. The frame must sit at least three feet off the floor.” He bent over and lifted the skirt. “Christ, you could house an entire village of Smurfs under here.” When he straightened he saw that Catherine had gone still and was holding one finger in front of her mouth. The eyes that met his were wide and frightened.
Someone was climbing the steps they had been on less than a minute before.