by Mike Lawson
“Where do I meet the helicopter?” Baker said.
Libby Baker was a short, plump woman with brassy blond hair, an impressive bosom, and sharp brown eyes—eyes that tried to take in every detail of Peyton’s command center. With her stout figure and her head swiveling, her eyes darting from papers on the conference table to the writing on a whiteboard on one side of the room, she reminded Peyton of a pouter pigeon, searching for bread crumbs to snatch off the ground.
Peyton took her to an office down the hall from the conference room/command center. He offered her a bottle of water, then took a seat behind a desk that belonged to some congressman’s aide who’d been ejected from the office.
“I’d like you to talk to me about the article you wrote about the Cantons and Sebastian Spear,” Peyton said.
“Did you read my story?” Baker asked.
“I read it quickly online while I was waiting for you,” Peyton said, “but I didn’t read it at the time it was published. Whether or not Mrs. Canton had an affair with Mr. Spear was of no interest to the Federal Bureau of Investigation until Congressman Canton was killed.”
“So you are saying that Sebastian is a suspect,” Baker said.
“Ms. Baker, anything said here today is off the record.”
“I won’t agree to that,” Baker said.
“If you don’t agree, then I’ll terminate this discussion and have someone drive you back to Richmond.” No more helicopter rides for you, honey. “On the other hand, if you’re cooperative, I’m willing to give you a preview of the press conference that I’ll be holding this evening, and your paper will have a two-hour lead on the story.”
“Will give you me an exclusive if you arrest someone?”
“No,” Peyton said emphatically. “Now are we off the record or not?”
Peyton again knew exactly what Libby Baker was thinking: an off-the-record conversation with the FBI was better than no conversation at all, and there was no way she could pass up getting a two-hour jump on the other reporters. Peyton had been playing the media for years, and he’d played against much stronger opponents than Libby Baker.
“Yeah, all right. We’re off the record,” Baker said. “For now, anyway.”
“Good. Now to answer your question, Sebastian Spear is not a suspect at this time. He was in China when Congressman Canton was killed.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Baker said. “With his money—”
“That’s true,” Peyton said. “But right now we have nothing to indicate that Mr. Spear conspired with or paid someone to kill Congressman Canton.”
Sebastian Spear was chairman of the board and CEO of Spear Industries, a publicly traded company that specialized in the manufacture and installation of almost anything having to do with the generation and transmission of electricity. It operated internationally, and anywhere in the world where a hydroelectric dam or a power distribution system was being built or upgraded, there was a good possibility that Spear Industries was the lead contractor. Sebastian Spear’s father had founded the company, and Sebastian had taken over at the age of thirty, when his father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. His net worth was estimated to be about three billion dollars.
To get things rolling, Peyton said, “I understand that you went to high school with Spear and the Cantons. Is that true?”
“Yeah, and elementary school,” Baker said. “My family had money back then, and I lived in McLean, where Sebastian Spear, Lyle Canton, and Jean Mitchell all lived. My father managed to drink and gamble away his fortune, but I guess you’re not interested in that.”
“I’m not,” Peyton said.
“Anyway, we all went to the same private schools in McLean. Sebastian’s family was the richest, of course. And as I’m sure you know, Lyle Canton’s father was Senator Eric Canton. The senator died the same year Lyle was elected to the House. Jean Mitchell’s father was a professor at George Mason, and her mother wrote children’s books. She was quite successful. I’ll bet if you have kids, your wife read to them from Mary Mitchell’s books.”
Peyton smiled slightly. “She did, actually.”
Libby Baker began her story: “Sebastian Spear probably fell in love with Jean Mitchell when he was twelve years old.”
The tale Baker told was as old as teenage love, older than Romeo and Juliet.
Sebastian Spear was a studious, dorky kid as a teenager. Jean Mitchell was pretty and shy. They began dating in freshman year of high school, and Sebastian took Jean to every dance, every party, every football game. Everyone who knew them was certain they’d get married eventually. And while Sebastian and Jean were totally committed to each other, Lyle Canton played the field. He was a handsome, athletic kid—not a good student like Sebastian or Jean—and he dated cheerleaders and young ladies of questionable virtue. The three all went to college at the University of Virginia, Sebastian majoring in electrical engineering, Jean Mitchell in creative writing, and Lyle studying for an eventual law degree—but spending most of his time partying with his fraternity brothers.
Baker said, “Sebastian’s dad had wanted him to go to MIT because it’s a more prestigious engineering school than UVA, but Sebastian went to Virginia because that’s where Jean went. And what happened is that he basically lost Jean because of engineering.”
“I don’t understand what you mean by that,” Peyton said.
“I mean electrical engineering is an academic ballbuster, and he was taking courses like calculus and differential equations and had to study his ass off. And while he was cramming for exams, he wasn’t spending much time with his girlfriend.
“The other thing was, in high school Jean was this skinny, awkward, wallflower type, but she blossomed in college. She grew into a beautiful woman, and Lyle Canton finally took an interest in her. He was charming and handsome and funny, and he just swept her off her feet.
“And I’ll tell you another thing,” Baker said, “although I’m just guessing about this. I think, even back in college, Lyle probably figured that Jean Mitchell would make the perfect politician’s wife. Anyway, sophomore year at UVA, Jean broke up with Sebastian and started going out with Lyle.”
Baker took a sip from the bottle of water Peyton had given her. “Now here’s the interesting part, and three of my sources confirmed this. When Jean broke up with him, Sebastian had a nervous breakdown. He’d been in love with her since puberty, and when she started dating Lyle, he stopped going to classes and started drinking and began stalking her all over the campus. Two people told me that they were convinced he was going to commit suicide. Eventually, someone told his parents what was going on, and his mother came down and got him, and the next year, after he spent some time with a therapist, he was attending MIT. And three years later, Lyle Canton married Jean Mitchell and stayed married to her for the next twenty years. So what I’m saying is, Sebastian had a good reason to hate Lyle even before he killed Jean.”
Peyton said, “What do you mean by that, Ms. Baker? Jean Canton died in a car accident.”
“That may be true, but Sebastian believed it was Lyle’s fault she got drunk that night and ran her car off the road. And that’s basically what he said at her funeral.”
Peyton had no idea how Baker could know what Spear was thinking or whether it was Canton’s fault that his wife got drunk the night she died, but didn’t say this. Instead he said, “Tell me about the affair between Sebastian Spear and Jean Canton. Your article said it began three months before her death.”
“It did. Sebastian never got over Jean and—”
“How could you possibly know that?” Peyton asked.
“Well, for one thing, he never married. And I’ve seen photos of some of the women he’s dated, and all of them looked like they could have been Jean’s twin sister. He probably broke up with them when he finally figured out that none of them were ever going to be Jean Canton.”
Peyton hated dealing with people who mixed facts, gossip, and speculation all into the same narrative
without making a distinction. “What about the affair?” Peyton said.
“During the twenty years Lyle and Jean were married, Sebastian never contacted Jean. Ever. She was the one who took the initiative by attending a charity event at the Smithsonian just to see him. At this point, her marriage to Canton was dead and—”
Peyton had had enough. “Ms. Baker, please. How could you know all this? How could you know that Spear never contacted Jean Canton for twenty years? How could you know about the state of the Cantons’ marriage?”
“I told you I’m not going to name sources, but one of them was extremely close to Jean. She was her confidante, and they spoke almost daily. This person hated Lyle because of the way he treated Jean, and that’s why she agreed to speak to me. She was hoping my article would destroy his political career.”
Peyton would look at Jean Canton’s phone records later and find out whom she spoke to on an almost daily basis. To Baker, he said, “Okay. I’ll assume for now that your information’s accurate. You were saying that Jean’s marriage to Lyle was dead. Why was that?”
Baker said, “Because he treated her horribly. He was abusive and—”
“Abusive? Physically abusive?”
“No. He never hit her, or anything like that. He couldn’t afford the political consequences of her walking around with a black eye. He mentally abused her. He emotionally abused her. He wanted Jean to be his political partner, to give speeches when he was campaigning, to wheedle money out of potential donors, but Jean was terrible at that sort of thing. She was an introvert. She wasn’t comfortable speaking in public and didn’t have the, the guile for raising money. He was constantly telling her she was useless.
“And Lyle wanted children. But that wasn’t because he really wanted kids. He wanted a campaign poster of him posing with his beautiful wife and two beautiful children. You can’t talk about family values if you don’t have a family. But Jean couldn’t get pregnant, and he made her life a living hell for years, with fertility clinics and in vitro fertilization and all that shit. He refused to adopt, and when he finally gave up on her giving him children after three miscarriages, he beat her over the head with that, too.”
“I see,” Peyton said.
“Jean wanted to become a writer, like her mother, and Lyle crushed those dreams as well. He told her she wrote like an addled teenager and that she’d never be published. He refused to use any of his contacts to help her get an agent. I think he was afraid she was going to eclipse him in some way if she became successful, or he was afraid her writing might embarrass him politically. Whatever the case, he did everything he could to discourage her, and she stopped writing.”
Baker shook her head. “In public, that prick was always holding her hand and giving her all these lovey-dovey looks, but in private he was an absolute bastard to her—always putting her down, constantly criticizing her. And because of the way he treated her, she became an alcoholic. You’d never know it to look at her, but she was one of those women who would start hitting the wine bottle about noon every day, and by seven or eight at night she’d be completely stewed. And that’s usually when she talked to my source, in the evening, when she was drunk and crying about the way Canton treated her.”
“So why didn’t she divorce him?” Peyton asked.
“I have no idea. Some women stay in abusive relationships their entire lives. Whatever the case, one day Jean found out that Sebastian was attending this Smithsonian event, and she went to see him, and their affair began that night. They went to the bar in the Mandarin Oriental and talked for two hours, and when Jean asked him to get them a room, he did. If he used a credit card to check in, I’m sure you can confirm that. Anyway, he’d been in love with Jean all his life, and after twenty years they were finally back together again. After that first night, they met two or three times a week, usually at his home in McLean. I know they once spent a weekend together in Hilton Head.”
“Wasn’t Mrs. Canton worried about being recognized?”
“Apparently not,” Baker said. “And it’s not like she was a public figure. She didn’t campaign with her husband much and she never appeared on talk shows. I mean, you know what the president’s wife looks like and maybe the vice president’s, but I’ll bet you wouldn’t recognize the wife of the Speaker of the House, much less the wife of the majority whip.”
That was true, Peyton thought. He didn’t think he’d be able to recognize the wife of any congressman. Well, there was that one congressman from California who had married a woman who’d once posed in Playboy, but other than her—
“The night Jean died,” Baker said, “she called my source. She was drunk. She and Lyle had attended a dinner party with people Lyle was trying to impress, and apparently Jean didn’t comport herself appropriately. When they got home, he started into his usual rant about how useless she was to him politically, but that night she fought back. She told him she hated him and was leaving him. When she called my source, she was in her car on her way to be with a man who loved her unconditionally.” Baker closed her eyes briefly, as if mourning the tragedy of Jean Canton’s death. “That day at her funeral when Sebastian said it was Lyle’s fault that she died, he was absolutely right. Lyle may not have literally killed her, but he drove her to do what she did.”
Peyton didn’t agree. Jean Canton was responsible for her own behavior, and it wasn’t her husband’s fault that she’d decided to drive drunk and make phone calls while driving.
“I couldn’t get Sebastian to talk to me,” Baker said, “but a week after Jean died, there was a board meeting that he would have normally chaired. I asked one of the people who attended how he behaved at the meeting, and he told me that Sebastian didn’t show up. He hadn’t been to work since Jean died and nobody had been able to reach him. He was obviously in mourning. Jean’s funeral was a week after that board meeting and you know what happened there, how Sebastian showed up drunk and tried to attack Lyle. So you may claim that Sebastian isn’t a suspect, but I think when he said he was going to kill Lyle, he meant it. I’ll bet you anything that he hired some … some hit man to do it.”
“Jean Canton’s funeral was almost four months ago,” Peyton said. “Why would he wait so long to kill Lyle?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was trying to figure out a way to do it where he wouldn’t get caught. Maybe it took him a while to hire a killer. Now it’s your turn, Mr. FBI. What are you going to say at the press conference?”
“I’m going to say that we have evidence—video footage—that someone wearing the uniform of a U.S. Capitol policeman may have killed Congressman Canton.”
“My God,” Baker said, and started scribbling in a notebook.
“Cameras in the Capitol show this person walking toward Canton’s office at the time of the murder. He is five feet eleven inches tall, has dark hair, and weighs approximately one hundred and eighty pounds. We’re following up a number of leads at this time.”
“Such as?”
“I’m not going to divulge those details, but we do have leads we’re following.”
Peyton meant such things as trying to figure out who made the fake insignia patch and where the killer purchased a uniform, but he wasn’t going to tell the media that.
“I’ll also say that we’re planning to polygraph-test Capitol Police employees, but so far have no direct evidence that a Capitol policeman was involved and believe that Canton’s killer may have been an imposter.”
“An imposter? Why do you think that?”
“I can’t tell you at this time.”
“What are you going to say when one of the reporters at the press conference asks if Sebastian Spear is a suspect?”
“I’m going to say what I’ve already told you. That Sebastian Spear is not a suspect at this time and that he was in China at the time of the murder. Now can I have someone drive you back to Richmond, Ms.
Baker?”
“Nah, that’s okay. I’m gonna stick around for a few days to see how things prog
ress.”
5
Peyton had an agent take a look at Jean Canton’s phone records to see whom she called almost daily. It turned out to be her younger sister, which made Peyton think that Libby Baker’s information on the state of the Cantons’ marriage and Jean Canton’s affair with Spear was most likely correct. He would have someone interview the sister later.
Peyton called his boss and relayed what he’d learned from Libby Baker and went over what he planned to say at the next press conference.
“So Sebastian Spear is still your primary suspect,” Director Erby said.
“Yeah, and I still don’t have anything to connect him to the crime.”
The director said, “I can understand Spear hating Canton, but do you think he would actually pay to have someone killed?”
Peyton thought the question was stupid, but was tactful enough not to say so. Instead, he said, “I don’t know, sir. We’ll just have to see where the evidence leads us.”
The Sebastian Spear that Libby Baker had known in high school—the fragile kid who became suicidal and had a nervous breakdown when his girlfriend broke up with him—was not the man that Spear appeared to be today, at least not according to everything Peyton had read.
Spear was an intensely private man, and he didn’t give interviews or appear on talk shows. He never spoke to the media personally; he let his company spokesperson and his lawyers do all the talking. But according to articles that had been written about him in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, Spear was a ruthless businessman who cared only about the bottom line and would do anything to best the competition. Some of things he had done to beat his rivals were not only unethical but also illegal—or so his rivals’ lawyers claimed. No one to date, however, had ever won a major legal battle against Spear’s lawyers.