“I was told I’m a witness.”
“You’re a reporter,” he accused.
“Look, either I’m the press, which means you let me go so I can work the story, or I’m a witness, kicking it here until Homicide makes its way from downtown. You tell me.”
This seemed to confuse him. Eventually, he decided I needed to be separated from the teens at a point several feet away—no, no a few feet farther, he said—which was as silly as admonishing me for talking to a witness. Of course we talked to witnesses. How else did you get the story? What I’d never done was identify a witness. I would’ve explained all this, except that he was too busy making me dance.
“All right here?” I said sweetly.
“I’m calling headquarters to deal with you.” He walked off to join the group of officers who had congregated among the cluster of cruisers and emergency equipment shutting down Connecticut Avenue. Yellow crime scene tape crossed the entrance to the parking lot. Behind that tape, the gawkers had arrived en masse. A crime scene tech in her blue MPD windbreaker lifted the tape over her head and ducked under it in a smooth, practiced rhythm.
With the lieutenant gone, I went back to the teens. “Either of you see the gun?”
“Probably a nine,” Darius said.
So much for the hope of an exotic weapon. In the District, a nine millimeter was the most commonly carried weapon by criminals and law-enforcement officers alike. “You know guns?” I said.
Darius jerked his chin upward. He knew them. This one he’d seen a little too close and personal. “Dude walked right past us, like we weren’t even there, hops the wall beside the Pathfinder, raises the nine, and bam! bam!”
I jerked back, more rattled than I’d realized. “What did it seem like? Robbery or attempted carjacking?”
“That piece of shit?” Hal was incredulous. “When the killer has his choice of Benzes all around? Nah, it was like a hit.”
The blood left my face.
Bradley Hartnett, constitutional law professor at George Washington University, a man I had set up a meeting with, the source in a story of a murdered woman, had been the target of . . . a hit? It was unbelievable, and yet the rational part of my brain was already sorting through the idea.
Overhead, a police chopper circled. Its search beam swept across the parking lot to the Pathfinder and slid across the shiny faces of the officers. That first officer even now was watching me out of the corner of his eye, sly, suspicious. One of the crime scene techs, the woman in the windbreaker, was leaning in the open door of the Pathfinder. The dome light was dimmer now, and I wondered sort of vaguely if the battery was failing.
The passenger door, I realized. It had been open the whole time. Why was it open? “Was something taken from the Pathfinder?” I asked them.
“Oh yeah, laptop bag,” Darius said. “Remember, Cuz? Like that bag I got for my Mac. Killer grabbed it and ran.”
The chopper was directly over us now, the whamp-whamp-whamp of its blades making Hal shout: “Dude fired his gun—bam, bam—then he opens the door, grabs the bag. Matter of seconds, he was ghost. Like an assassin.”
My mouth went dry. If it happened that fast, the killer had to have known to look for a bag. Did he know what was in it—screen shots of Evelyn’s phone and documents from her computer? Did he know Brad was coming to meet me?
Was he out there now, watching me?
I forced myself to walk, not run, toward the yellow tape, ignoring the lieutenant shouting and an officer striding toward me, waving his hands. I ran smack into Michael Ledger.
He was dressed for the cameras, soft black shirt open at the collar and neat gray slacks set off by the gun at his hip. It was such a relief to see a familiar face—until I remembered what the professor had told me.
A conspiracy. Police surveillance. So they could track her. So Ian could kill her.
I took a step back. “I have to get to my live shot.”
“In a minute,” he said, frowning. “First you’ll give me a statement.”
So I gave him one that was truthful, if not complete: I’d stopped on Connecticut Avenue for a bite to eat, and had just arrived at the diner when I heard gunshots. I ran out of the diner to find the teens freaking out beside the Pathfinder.
“Lieutenant was supposed to keep you from those witnesses,” Michael said. “Witnesses that get named get killed.”
“That’s why I’m quoting you, not them.”
“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”
“I do,” I agreed. “Can I go now?”
“Another minute. So those boys you’ve been talking to, they saw a motorcycle leave the scene. They get a good look, I suppose?”
“They don’t know make or model, but they’re good witnesses, very observant. I’d bet they could pick it out of a photo spread. It was gone before I arrived, so unfortunately I can’t help.”
He slid his hands into his pockets and bounced back on his heels. “You can attribute to me everything those boys told you, except for the motorcycle. We can’t have you reporting the motorcycle.”
“Come again?”
“Everything else, fine. No vehicle description.”
This made no sense. Investigators always wanted the suspect’s vehicle look out in the news. That was how they tracked down their suspects.
“Why not?” I said suspiciously.
“We need a couple of days before we’re willing to release the description.”
“That’s an eternity to withhold a critical element of the story.” It was also an eternity for a suspect to get away. “What do you need a couple of days for?”
“Play ball on the motorcycle, and I’ll reward you with the Carney case. We expect a development soon.”
“What kind?”
He gave me a smile I’d seen before. It was meant to make me stop thinking about what might be hidden behind it. Naturally, it only made me more suspicious.
“The kind I’ll give only to you,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE LIVE SHOT was set up south of the crime scene. Golden girl Heather Buchanan was standing cluelessly in the klieg lights when I arrived. It was bad enough to work a story like this without Ben. Now I had the boss’s assistant, a newbie, which meant lots of hand-holding on a skintight deadline, when what I really needed was someone who could pull their own damn weight.
It was a hastily thrown together script, but somehow we got through the live shot. After the control room gave us our good night and the equipment was broken down, I went home and poured a very large drink. Tonight required Jameson, my go-to for the best and worst of nights. It was also Ben’s drink of choice, and with that first sip, I wished so suddenly and ardently for him that I imagined his being conjured by the force of my thoughts—or the allure of his favorite whiskey.
If Ben were here, I wouldn’t worry about missing some important detail. He had a great eye. So often he caught what I missed. He was also calm when everyone around him was freaking out. I could have used some of that calm tonight.
I wanted Ben. There, I said it. I wanted him and couldn’t have him, but maybe I could hear his voice. The clock on my phone showed it was long past midnight, too late to call. If he wasn’t asleep, he was probably at some bar with women fawning over him.
That idea didn’t make me happy. I dialed his number and left a message about tonight’s story: “The victim was a friend of Evelyn’s. He was trying to find out who killed her. The shooting, it’s not a coincidence, I don’t think—” and I don’t know how to say I need you. You make me feel stronger. Not to mention, you’re so damned good at your job, you make me better at mine, and I need that, too—
Instead, I joked: “You would’ve been all over that story, you big screen hog. So, um, when are you coming back, anyway?”
————
Early the next morning I called into work and went over Heather’s script with the morning show producer. When everything seemed in good shape, I searched the newspape
rs and websites for reports of Brad’s shooting. His name hadn’t been released, pending next-of-kin notification, so the articles were thin with detail. If anyone knew about the motorcycle, they weren’t reporting it.
When the sun rose a little higher, I called Peter Carney. I asked him about Evelyn’s mental state in the weeks leading up to her murder. Had she seemed anxious? Afraid? He hadn’t noticed. He’d been distracted by his own difficulties adjusting to civilian life.
“So you don’t know if she was being stalked?”
“What?” he said. “Stalked? No.”
“Did she mention run-ins with law enforcement or talk about being under surveillance? Any fears that someone might have been monitoring her phone?”
“Is this some kind of joke?” he said, sputtering with disbelief, and then: “Or maybe you’re talking about some other Evelyn Carney?”
He had no idea what kind of phone his wife carried, since her employer had provided it, and he’d never heard the name Bradley Hartnett, either. I was starting to wonder what—if anything—he did know about his wife. Was he that clueless? Or was he lying to me now?
“Where were you last night, Peter?”
“I flew in from Syracuse,” he said brusquely. “Landed at Reagan National after ten. Took a taxi to my house, got home maybe eleven. It might be on my taxi receipt.” After a long pause: “Why? What do you suspect me of now?”
————
More caution would be needed with Paige Linden. She’d been Brad Hartnett’s friend, and since the authorities hadn’t yet released his name, she probably didn’t know he’d been killed. When she answered the phone, her lovely voice trilled across the line, a joyful sound.
So she didn’t know.
This was the terrible part of my job. I asked if we could meet privately. She was headed out for a quick run and had a late-morning appointment, but had a window in about an hour. She suggested we meet at the coffee shop.
I arrived ahead of her, choosing a table in the far corner where I could keep my back to the wall, a good vantage point. A man came in holding a motorcycle helmet in the crook of his arm, and I froze. He paid the cashier and picked up his drink and left without a glance my way. I let out a long, slow breath.
Soon, Paige powered through the door. That’s really the only way to describe how she moved through space. She wore running clothes, a bright yellow jersey and sleek black leggings. She was rosy cheeked and vibrant with good health, and everyone in the shop turned to look at her.
From across the room she raised her water bottle in greeting and strode toward me. “So,” she said, tapping the bottle against the back of the chair. “What’s going on?”
“Would you like to sit down?”
She gave me a shaky smile. “Do I need to?”
I told her there’d been a shooting last night. She merely shrugged. “Saw it on the news,” she said. “You’d think that part of town would be safe.”
“The victim was Brad Hartnett.”
She looked me in the eye steadily. She said nothing.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Please. Sit.”
Her palm moved across her mouth and wandered to the back of her chair, where her long fingers plucked the spokes. “Brad?” she said, shaking her head. “You must be mistaken.”
“The authorities will probably release his name later today, after they’ve made their notifications, but I thought you might want to hear it from a friendly—”
“Excuse me,” she said before rushing off to the restroom.
I waited for some time. Paige reemerged with her face scrubbed rosy and glowing again. Whatever storm of emotion she’d suffered was gone.
She dropped into the chair. “I c-can’t think,” she said. “This must be shock I’m feeling. Why would anyone . . . Brad’s just the nicest man . . . I mean, first Evie, now Brad . . .”
“Yes,” I said meaningfully. “Evelyn and Brad.”
She glanced up at me quickly, her attention now focused. “He asked me to give Evie an interview, so I did . . . for him. Now he’s dead, too, and there’s a connection?” She lifted the water bottle to her mouth and held its spout between her teeth and gnawed at it anxiously. “Do you think he’s in over his head?”
“Who?”
“Michael Ledger,” she said. “He was on TV again last night. For him, this is all about getting attention, isn’t it?”
“That’s not quite fair. Last night he was interviewing people, working the scene.”
She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “You ever read that profile Washingtonian Magazine did of him a few years ago? Total suck-up piece. More about Michael’s purported heroics than the poor victims.”
I hadn’t read it. It’d been published during my Michael blackout period, that time during which I refused to acknowledge all evidence of his existence. In the interest of full disclosure, I explained: “A very long time ago, we . . . dated, I guess he’d say. For me, it was more. He has that Detective Hollywood allure you mentioned, and he really can be brilliant, when he’s not a complete jackass.”
“Brilliant?” she said with scorn. “These detectives are utterly lost. How many people are going to die before Michael Ledger gets a goddamn clue?”
Before last night, such a statement would have been absurd. This morning, I felt the clock ticking. So I made an instinctive decision. The bartering of information required trust. I’d have to give a little to get what I needed.
“Brad Hartnett was killed en route to a meeting with me,” I told her. “He believed Evelyn’s phone had been monitored, and thought the likely culprit was law enforcement.”
“Why would the police have an interest in Evelyn? She didn’t have time to commit crimes. All she did was work and sleep.”
I reminded her gently: “She had time for a sexual relationship with an assistant US attorney.”
“Not his style.”
“What’s not?”
“Using the power and reach of his office to stalk a woman. Maybe he’s edgy in his intimate relationships, but when it comes to work ethics, Ian Chase is incorruptible.”
“Maybe it had something to do with Evie’s work, not her personally?” I said. “Brad had documents that belonged to Evie. He was going to show me, but they were stolen from the crime scene.”
She paused, gnawing at her lip as she thought about it. “The last time I saw Evie, she was in the coffee room at work,” she said slowly, thinking about it. “I asked how she was doing, and she said fine, everything was fine, even though she did seem stressed. But I thought nothing of it. She was working for Bernadette Ryan, after all. Being stressed out is par for the course if you’re unlucky enough to be assigned to her team. Bernadette works her people to death, which is ironic, since she doesn’t even practice law anymore. She bundles lots of political money for her big-name powerhouse clients who like to push their weight around.”
“You really don’t like her,” I observed.
“You’ve got it backward,” she said. “Bernadette Ryan doesn’t like me. After I made partner, I went to make nice with her. I told her I’d been approached to set up an exploratory committee to run for DC delegate and wondered if she’d share her expertise. More than anything, I was trying to connect with her. You know what she said?”
She leaned forward, her shoulders hunched and arms across her chest in an attitude so like mine that I found myself leaning toward her, too.
“She told me I’d lose,” she said. “It would be bad for her to support a loser. That’s the kind of person Evelyn was working for.” She gave me an intense look. “Let me nose around. If Bernadette had anything to do with what happened to Evie, by God, I’ll get your proof.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I WAS LATE getting back to the station. Our intern was at the reception desk, a phone to one ear, as she held up a finger, making me stop on my way through the newsroom. She hung up and blew out a breath that lifted her bangs.
“Remember how I lost a call for you
my first day here?” she said. “When everyone said there was no hope for me, forget about it, you were going to kill me dead?”
“People said I was going to kill you?”
“Or get me escorted out of the newsroom forever. Anyhow, part of the problem is sharing this pigsty of a desk. Every day I do a little more cleaning. Like I don’t know when somebody spilled soda under the keyboard without wiping it up, totally gross—”
I made an impatient circle with my finger. Yeah, yeah, get on with it.
“But that’s where I found this.” She handed me a pink sticky note, crumpled and stained but the writing still legible. It noted a caller named Lil’ Bit with a District phone number.
“Refresh my memory,” I said. “How is this important?”
“She was that drunk girl who saw Evelyn Carney the night she disappeared.”
“This person saw Evelyn?” I looked down at the note and back at her and grinned. “Great job. Order yourself lunch on me.”
When I turned toward my office, she ran around her desk and stopped me. “I don’t know why I was afraid of you,” she said. “You’re so much nicer than everyone says.”
“Well, for God’s sake. Don’t tell anyone.”
————
Lil’ Bit was a street name. Her real name was Sarah Harden, and this Lil’ Bit—Sarah—was telling me how she’d changed her mind about talking. She launched into a tirade about the police (the poh-lice, she called them), how they refused to give her reward money, and all they ever do is harass, except when they ignore her.
“So tell me,” I said. “I’ll listen.”
“If you pay me.”
“That’s not how things work. Tell me what you saw, and maybe we’ll put you on TV.”
She blew out air. “I need money.”
“We don’t pay for news,” I said, and she hung up. I redialed and let it ring until she picked up again, cursing me until I cut in: “Just tell me this. Did you see Evelyn Carney that Sunday night or not?”
“That girl on y’all’s news? Yeah, I seen her.”
“After she left the restaurant on Prospect Street?”
The Cutaway Page 18