by Linda Howard
She began to cry again. “I keep waiting for John to come bounding in here asking why we’re all sitting around.”
“I know. Me, too.”
“I actually had a few people ask me today how this affects their jobs,” she said with disgust.
“Well, you can’t blame them. They have families to support.”
“Couldn’t they have waited a day or two to bring that up?”
“Apparently not. I’ll talk to them about it tomorrow and tell them we’ll do our best to get them placed somewhere in government.”
“What’ll you do?” she asked.
“Shit, I don’t know. I can’t think about that until after we get through the funeral. The two of us, maybe a couple of others, will be needed for a while until the governor appoints someone to take John’s place. Whoever it is will want to bring in their own people, so we’ll help with the transition and then figure out what’s next, I guess.”
Christina looked so sad, so despondent that Nick felt his heart go out to her. “Why don’t you go home, Chris? There’s nothing more we can do here tonight.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be going soon, too.”
“All right,” she said as she got up. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Try to get some sleep.”
“As if.”
He walked her to the door and sent her off with a hug before he wandered into John’s office. The desk had been swept clean and the computer removed. If it hadn’t been for the photo of John with his niece and nephew on the windowsill, there would’ve been no sign of him or the five years he’d spent working in this room. Nick wasn’t sure what he hoped to find when he sat in John’s chair. Swiveling to look out the window, he could see the Washington Monument lit up in the distance.
Resting his head back, he stared at the monument and finally gave himself permission to do what he’d needed to do all day. He wept.
*
Sam arrived home exhausted after a sixteen-hour day and smiled when she heard the whir of her father’s chair as he came out to greet her.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Late tonight.”
“I’m on O’Connor.”
The side of his face that wasn’t paralyzed lifted into a smile. “Are you now? Farnsworth’s got you right back on the horse.”
She kicked off her boots and bent to kiss his cheek. “So it seems.”
Celia, one of the nurses who cared for him, came out from the kitchen to greet Sam. “How about we get ready for bed, Skip?”
Sam hated the indignation that darted across the expressive side of his face. “Go ahead, Dad. I’ll be in when you’re done. I’ve got a couple of things I want to run by you.”
“I suppose I can make some time for you,” he teased, turning the chair with his one working finger and following Celia to his bedroom in what used to be the dining room.
Sam went into the kitchen and served herself a bowl of the beef stew Celia had left on the stove for her. She ate standing up without tasting anything as the events of the day ran through her mind like a movie. Under normal circumstances, she’d be obsessed with the case. She’d be thinking it through from every angle, searching out motives, making a list of suspects. But instead, she thought of Nick and the sadness that had radiated from him all day. More than once she had wanted to throw her arms around him and offer comfort, which was hardly a professional impulse.
Deciding it was pointless to try to eat, she poured the rest of the soup into the garbage disposal and stood at the sink, her shoulders stooped. She was still there twenty minutes later when Celia came into the kitchen.
“He’s ready for you.”
“Thanks, Celia.”
“He’s been kind of…”
“What?” Sam asked, immediately on alert.
“Off. He hasn’t been himself the last few days.”
“The two-year anniversary is coming up next week.”
“That could be it.”
“Let’s keep an eye on him.”
Celia nodded in agreement. “What do you know about Senator O’Connor?”
“Not as much as I’d like to.”
“What a tragedy,” Celia said, shaking her head. “We’ve been glued to the news all day. Such an awful waste.”
“Seemed like a guy who had it all.”
“But there was something sort of sad about him, too.”
“Why do you say that?”
“No reason in particular. Just a vibe he put out.”
“I never noticed,” Sam said, intrigued by the observation. She made a mental note to find some video of O’Connor’s speeches from the Senate floor and TV interviews.
“Go on in and see your dad. He so looks forward to his time with you.”
“The stew was great. Thank you.”
“Glad you liked it.”
Sam went into her father’s bedroom where he was propped up in bed, a respirator hose snaking from his throat to the machine on the floor that breathed for him at night.
“You look beat,” he said, his speech an awkward staccato around the respirator.
“Long-ass day.” Sam sat in the chair next to the hospital bed and propped her feet on the frame under the pressurized mattress that minimized bedsores. “But it feels good to be doing more than pushing paper again.”
“What’ve you got?” he asked, reverting to his former role as the department’s detective captain.
She ran through the whole thing, from the meeting with Chief Farnsworth to reviewing the tapes the Watergate had finally produced. “We only got traffic in the lobby. Nothing jumped out at us, but I’m going to show them to his chief of staff in the morning to see if he can ID anyone.”
“That’s a good idea. Why do you get a funny look in those blue eyes of yours when you mention the chief of staff? Nick, right?”
“I went out with him once.” She spared her father a deeper explanation of what “going out” had meant in this case. “A long time ago.”
“But it was hard to see him?”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I found out he did call me after that night. Guess who took the messages and never gave them to me?”
“Oh, let’s see, could it be our good friend Peter?”
“One and the same, the prick.”
Skip’s laugh was strained. “You able to be objective on this one with your Nick from the past part of the mix?”
Surprised by the question, she glanced up at him and found him studying her with sharp, blue eyes that were just like hers. “Of course. It was six years ago. No biggie.”
“Uh-huh.”
She should have known he would see right through her. He always did.
“You need to get some sleep,” he said.
“Whenever I close my eyes, I’m back in that crack house with Marquis Johnson screaming. And then I break out in a cold sweat.”
“You did everything right, followed every instinct.” He gasped for air. “I wouldn’t have done it any differently.”
“Do you ever think about the night you got shot?” She had never thought to ask that until she’d been haunted by her own demons.
“Not so much. It’s all a blur.”
Her cell phone rang. Sam reached for it on her belt and checked the caller ID. She didn’t recognize the 703 number. “I need to take this.”
“Go on.”
She kissed her father’s forehead and left the room. “Holland.”
“Sam, it’s Nick. Someone’s been in my house.”
Her heart fluttered at the sound of his deep voice. This was not good. “Has it been ransacked?” she asked, making an effort to sound cool and professional.
“No.”
“Then how do you know someone’s been there?”
“I know. Stuff’s been moved.”
“Where do you live?”
He rattled off an address in Arlington, Virginia.
Even though it was out of her jurisdiction, she grabbed her coat.
“I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER 7
Thirty minutes later, Sam stormed up the stairs to Nick’s brick-front townhouse.
He waited just inside the door and held it open for her. “Thanks for coming.”
“Sure.” She stole a quick glance around a combined living room/dining room where it appeared nothing was out of place. In fact, the space seemed better suited to a furniture showroom rather than someone’s home. “How can you—”
He grabbed her hand. “Come.”
Startled, she let him lead her into his office, which was as neat as the other rooms but more lived in than what she had seen so far.
“See that?”
Following the direction of his pointed finger, she studied a small stack of books on the desk. “What about it?”
“It’s at an angle.”
“So?”
“It’s not supposed to be.”
“Seriously? You called me over here at eleven o’clock at night because your stack of books isn’t anally aligned?”
With a furious scowl, he grabbed her hand again and all but dragged her upstairs to his bedroom. Now we’re talking! Relax, Sam, he’s not dragging you off to bed, as much as you wish he were. Reminding herself that she was investigating a breakin at the home of a player in a homicide investigation, she pushed aside her salacious thoughts and tuned in to what he was showing her.
Pointing to the dresser, he said, “I didn’t leave it like that.”
A tiny scrap of white fabric poked out through the closed drawers. Deciding to humor him, Sam leaned in to inspect the cloth. “It’s not possible your tighty whities got caught in the drawer and you didn’t notice?”
“No, it’s not possible,” he said through gritted teeth.
She stood up and studied him like she had never seen him before, as if she hadn’t once seen him naked. “Have you always been so anal?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.”
“What does that mean? Hmm? Aren’t you going to call someone?”
“To do what?”
“To figure out who’s been in my house!”
“Nick, come on.”
“Forget it. Go home. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
His eyes, she noticed, were rimmed with red. She ached at the thought of him alone and heartbroken over his murdered friend. “Fine. If you really think someone’s been in here—”
“I do.”
“I left my phone in the car. May I use yours?”
He handed her his cell phone.
“This is Detective Sergeant Sam Holland, MPD. I need a crime scene unit,” she said, giving the address.
When she hung up, she turned to find him watching her intently.
“Thank you.”
She nodded, unsettled by the heat coming from his hazel eyes. Had she caused that or was it the fault of the person who had supposedly invaded his private space?
*
An hour later, Sam sat with Nick on the sofa, out of the way of the Arlington cops who were dusting for prints.
“How do you think they got in?” Desperate to maintain some semblance of distance from him, she spoke in the clipped, professional tone she used to interview witnesses.
“I have no idea.”
“Does anyone have a key?”
“John had the only other one.”
“Where did he keep it?”
“I’m not sure. I gave it to him in case I ever locked myself out.”
“Which probably never happens.”
“It hasn’t yet.”
“You don’t use the security system?” she asked.
“It came with the place. I’ve never had it turned on.”
“You might want to think about that.”
“Really? Gee, thanks for that advice, Sergeant.”
She shot him a warning look.
“I’m sorry,” he said, dropping his head to run his fingers through thick dark hair.
Sam licked her lips, wishing she could do that for him.
“I don’t mean to snap at you. It’s just the idea of someone in my home, going through my stuff…It has me kind of skeeved out.”
“Any idea what they might be looking for?”
His shoulders sagged with fatigue. “None.”
Sam’s heart went out to him. He’d had a horrible, painful day, and she wished she could find an appropriate excuse to hug him. She made an effort to soften her tone. “Is it possible someone is trying to find something here they couldn’t find at the senator’s place?”
“I can’t imagine what. Neither of us ever took anything sensitive out of the office. There’re all kinds of rules about that.”
“What kind of sensitive stuff was he involved with?”
“After the midterm election, he was appointed to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, but most of his work was in the areas of commerce, finance, children, families and the aged. None of that was overly sensitive.”
Watching his tired face with much more than professional interest, she was dying to address the elephant in the room—the six years’ worth of unfinished business and the tension that zipped through her every time she connected with those hot hazel eyes of his. “Is it possible he was involved in something you didn’t know about?”
Nick scoffed. “Highly doubtful.”
“But possible?”
“Sure it is, but John didn’t operate that way. He relied on us for everything.”
“You alluded earlier to him being high maintenance for the staff. Other than having to wake him up in the morning, how did you mean?”
Nick was quiet for a long moment before he glanced at her. “This is all for background, right? I won’t read about it in tomorrow’s paper?”
“I think we’ve missed the deadline for the morning edition.”
“I’m serious, Sam. I don’t want to say or do anything to cause his parents any more grief than they’re already dealing with.”
“It’s for my information now, but I can’t guarantee it’ll stay that way. If something you tell me helps to make this case, it’s apt to come out in court. As much as we might wish otherwise, murder victims are often put on trial right along with their killers.”
“That’s so wrong.”
“Unfortunately, it’s just the way it is.”
Nick made an A-frame out of his hands and rested his chin on the point. “John was a reluctant senator. He used to joke that he was Prince Harry to Terry’s Prince William. Terry was the anointed one, groomed all his life to follow his father into politics. While Terry always lived in the public eye, John had a relatively normal life. For some reason, the press took an unusual interest in Terry’s comings and goings. His name was mentioned on the political and gossip pages almost as often as his father’s, and this was long before his father announced his retirement.”
“It must’ve been tough to deal with all that attention.”
Nick laughed, which chased the tension from his face. “Terry loved it. He ate it up. He was Washington’s most eligible bachelor, and he took full advantage, let me tell you.”
“That doesn’t sound like a smart political strategy.”
“Oh, it wasn’t. He and the senator—his father, I mean—had huge, knock-down brawls over his lifestyle. I witnessed a few of them. But somehow Terry managed to stay one step ahead of the scandalmongers—that is until he got arrested for drunk driving three weeks before he was supposed to announce his candidacy for his father’s seat. No amount of spin can get you out of that.”
“Ouch. I remember this. It’s all coming back to me now.”
“Graham was devastated. Before today, I’ve never seen him so crushed. That this son he’d placed all these hopes and dreams on had so totally let him down…”
“How did Terry take it?”
“Like a wounded puppy, like it was someone else’s fault. He was full of excuses. John was totally disgusted by him. At one point, he said, ‘Why doesn’t he just be a man and admit he made a mista
ke?’”
“Did he say this to Terry?”
“I doubt it. They were never really close. Terry loved all the attention, and John did his best to stay well below the radar.”
“Until Terry forced him into the spotlight,” Sam said, starting to get a clearer picture of the O’Connor family.
“Yes, and forced is the right word. John wanted nothing to do with running for the Senate. In fact, I remember him grousing about how ‘lucky’ he was that he’d just turned thirty, which is the minimum age to run for the Senate. He was sitting atop a nice little technology firm that made a chip for one of the DoD’s weapons systems. He and his partner were very successful.”
“What happened to the company when John ran for Senate?”
“His partner bought him out and later sold the company.”
“Would he have any reason to want John dead?”
“Hardly. He made hundreds of millions when he sold the company. The last I knew, he was living large in the Caribbean.”
“What about Terry? Is he still harboring resentment that his younger brother got the life he was supposed to have?”
“Maybe, but Terry wouldn’t have the stones to kill him. At the end of the day, Terry’s a wimp.”
Regardless of that, Sam made a note to look more closely at Terry O’Connor.
“Sergeant?” The lieutenant in charge of the crime scene unit approached them. “We’re just about done here. We didn’t find any sign of forced entry at either door or any of the ground-floor windows.”
“Prints?”
“Just one set.” He glanced at Nick. “We assume they’re yours, but we’ll have to confirm that.”
Nick swore softly under his breath.
“Thanks, Lieutenant.” Sam handed the other officer her card. “I’ll write up what I have if you’ll shoot me your report as a courtesy. There may be a connection to Senator O’Connor’s murder.”
“Of course.”
After a perfunctory clean up of the dust left over from the fingerprint powder, the other cops left a short time later.
“Do you want some help cleaning up?” she asked Nick when they were alone.
“That’s all right. I can do it.”
He stood and extended a hand to help her up.
Sam took his hand, but when she tried to let go, he tightened his grip. Startled, she looked up at him.