by Leigh Adams
Brayde threw his arms around Kate’s shoulders one more time and began to stagger toward the drink table.
“We’ve got to get you caught up,” he said. “You should’ve primed yourself before coming over. Put a little something in a coffee mug.” He waved his coffee mug. Kate caught the little whale on one side of it.
They reached the drinks table. The tuxedoed bartender stared at both of them without expression.
“Give the lady a white lightning,” Brayde said.
The bartender started to work.
“What’s a white lightning?” Kate asked.
Dalton Brayde laughed. “It’s a secret recipe. Looks just like water.”
The bartender had finished pouring what looked like an ocean of vodka into the mug and started on the gin.
“Is there anything in that besides alcohol?” Kate asked.
“Why’d you need anything in it besides alcohol?” Dalton demanded. “Christ, I don’t know what’s wrong with people these days.”
The bartender had started on the rum.
“Couldn’t I just have a martini?” Kate asked. She didn’t want a martini, but it was the only cocktail she could think of. She just didn’t want that—thing.
The bartender had the top on the mug and shook it vigorously. When he was done, he handed the mug to Kate.
“Drink up!” Brayde said cheerfully.
Kate had no idea what to do next.
Then help came from an unexpected quarter. The unknown woman had disappeared into the crowd, but Chan hadn’t. Chan walked directly up to Brayde and shoved him. She shoved him hard enough that he let go of Kate and stumbled backward. He fell flat on his ass.
“What the fuck,” he said.
“Leave the woman alone. You invited her to a party. You invited half the universe to a party. Let people have a party.”
Brayde got to his feet slowly and awkwardly. “Fucking bitch,” he said. He turned to Kate. “Channie’s here to find out what’s up with her boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend, Dalton,” Chan said.
“I’m her boyfriend,” a deep voice said.
Kate had been so engrossed in Brayde’s behavior and Chan’s anger that she hadn’t noticed Paterson coming up behind them. Now that she did notice, she was more and more sure she would never want to be anywhere alone with him.
Except—Kate tried to get him straight in her mind. Paterson was a terrifying man. Just standing in the middle of a field holding a drink, he looked poised to kill. His eyes were both cold and laser-focused. They were also a bright, brilliant green.
“He’s a fucking basket case is what he is,” Brayde said.
“There’s only one reason to put you on a criminal case, Dalton,” Chan said, “and that’s if you want to lose it. And that’s fine with me. I want to see him in jail. But I also want to know what I’m in for.”
“How the hell am I supposed to know what you’re in for?” Dalton said. “I haven’t gotten my marching orders from St. Reggie.”
Paterson took a long swig of his St. Pauli Girl. “I think the issue at hand, Brayde, is that this is beginning to look like a setup. It looks like so much of a setup, we’ve decided we want to know what kind of defense you’re going to put on.”
“You mean you want to know,” Brayde said to Paterson. “You’re jerking Channie around like she’s a rag doll.”
“Nobody jerks me around,” Chan said.
“You can screw up a defense so badly, the verdict gets set aside,” Paterson said. He was very patient. Kate didn’t think he’d blinked the entire time he was staring at Dalton Brayde.
Brayde shrugged. “He’s going to throw himself on the mercy of the court.”
“Is this my father’s idea?” Chan demanded. “Is this one more of his twisty little games?”
Paterson put a hand on Chan’s elbow. Chan stopped talking immediately.
Paterson turned his attention to Kate. “It’s an interesting question—as is what you’re doing here.” he said.
Kate started to repeat her story about Facebook, but Paterson was staring at her so steadily, she found herself losing all sense of reality.
“I think you’re right,” Chan said, turning to Paterson. “I think there is something going on here.”
“I’ve got a call coming in from Washington,” Paterson said. “I have to take it on the landline.”
“That’s fine. I can take care of this,” Chan said.
Then she grabbed Kate by the wrist and started pulling her away.
It was only at the last moment that Kate was able to figure out what was going on between Chan and Paterson: sex and hatred. They were so sexually attracted to each other, the air between them was explosive, but they also couldn’t stand each other.
Kate was thinking frantically, trying to figure out what she was supposed to do next, how to talk to Chan, when Chan said, “Where is your car?”
“It’s in this little parking lot on the edge over there,” Kate said.
“Good,” Chan told her. “Mine is out in front of the clubhouse. It’s not convenient, and besides, everybody on the planet can recognize it. We’ll use yours.”
“Use mine for what?”
Chan stopped. They were well away from the drinks table now, and Brayde had lost interest in them. He was staggering around through the little crowd of female guests.
“I know who you are,” she said. “I don’t know your name, but I know who you are. You were in court with that police detective, the one who was the first person running the case. I asked my father. You work for Almador.”
“Kate Ford,” Kate said.
“Let’s go.”
***
Seeing Chan up close was not like seeing her in pictures or even in person from afar. Her body language was stiff and cold and more than a little angry. Her posture was straight and unyielding. Her clothes were so expensive, they almost smelled like money. Then there was the tennis bracelet, a thin circlet of diamonds set in platinum with a little ruby heart at the clasp. Kate was willing to bet the stones were all real, just as she was willing to bet that the thin, red hairband holding back Chan’s short, black hair hadn’t been picked up at Target for $2.95.
But it wasn’t the money that held Kate’s attention. It was the thin bead of bruises just along the underside of Chan’s right jaw. The dots were so tiny, it was almost impossible to see them, but Kate knew exactly what they were. She’d seen dozens of photographs of women with those marks in every domestic violence report to hit the local news.
“Somebody hit you,” she said.
She hadn’t noticed how fast they were walking. Chan stopped dead, and Kate realized they had already made it all the way out to the little parking lot.
Chan looked out over the cars and sighed.
“Crap,” she said. “You’re going to be a pain in the ass.”
“There are bruises on your jaw,” Kate said. “Little bruises. You couldn’t get bruises like that in that place by falling down. Someone had to—”
“Which one is your car?”
Kate gestured to her spot along the edge near the road, and Chan marched her along.
“It’s incredible the things people try to get away with,” Chan said. “It really is. Get your keys and open up.”
They were right next to the car. Kate got out her keys and opened the front passenger door.
“Go ahead,” Chan said. “Go get in behind the wheel. I’m not going to drive this thing.”
“Why are we driving?” Kate demanded.
“I told you. My own car is in the front lot. You’re going to drive me to the front lot. So get in and drive,” Chan said. “I don’t have time for this.”
Kate got behind the wheel. The entire situation seemed surreal. First Chan had saved her from the clutches of Brayde, who’d turned out to be even more of a jerk than he was rumored to be. Then Paterson had shown up. Now Chan sat in the passenger seat of Kate’s car, quietly furious and loaded for bear.
Hostile, Kate thought. That was the word. And it fit. Chan was widely reputed to be a hostile witness for the prosecution in the kidnapping trial, which was one of the things that had fed the media frenzy about the trial. Why would a kidnap victim be hostile to the idea of trying her kidnapper? Especially when she so obviously wanted the man convicted.
Kate put the keys in the car and started it up.
“You’ve got to give me directions,” she said.
Chan did not say anything. She stared out the windshield at the line of trees that made the barrier between the parking lot and the road.
Kate had read once that people find it very hard to sit in silence when another person is present. She now found that she couldn’t stop talking.
“I was really surprised to see you there,” she babbled, feeling like an idiot. “I should have realized you’d know Brayde. I mean, he works for the law firm that handles some work for Almador, doesn’t he? And—”
“We grew up together,” Chan said.
“Pretty amazing coincidence. I mean—”
“For God’s sake,” Chan said. “Stop saying ‘I mean.’ You sound like you’re in junior high. Of course it isn’t a coincidence. Everybody knows everybody out here. Don’t you know that? We all go to the same schools. We all belong to the same clubs. We all go to each other’s deb parties. And yes, we all get hired by each other’s fathers. Which is a damned good thing for Dalton, because he couldn’t get hired by anybody else.”
Kate felt miserably embarrassed. “He did seem—I mean—”
There was an exasperated snort from Chan.
“I mean,” Kate said again, “well, he didn’t seem to me to be your type.”
“Dalton Brayde isn’t anybody’s type,” Chan said. “Except maybe for cheap girls who think they’ll be able to get hold of some of his money, which they can’t, because Dalton’s father is not an idiot. You don’t look like one of those kinds of girls to me.”
“Oh,” Kate said, “no, of course not. I just got the invitation and I thought I’d—”
“You thought you’d what? Come see how the other half lives? Never mind. You don’t care how the other half lives. I can tell. You thought you’d come out and see if you could pump Dalton about the trial.”
“I was just curious,” Kate said. “It’s a big deal, and it’s got connections with my boss, and—”
“Oh, stop it,” Chan said. “You didn’t just get curious. You were with that cop, the one who kept saying there was something wrong. I’m rescued from a kidnapping and the man is telling me there’s something wrong. Like I made it all up. My father said you were in a reserved seat. That means you must have some kind of connection. I just don’t know what that connection is.”
Kate hardly knew where to start. “I was just curious,” she insisted. “I only met Tom there at the courthouse on the first day. And then, I don’t know, everything just seemed odd. Ozgo had these expensive attorneys, pro bono, but only the second string—”
“Brayde isn’t second string,” Chan said. “Brayde is bottom of the barrel. You only send Dalton to court if you want to lose.”
“I thought I could find out about the trial,” Kate said. “I just thought he’d be easy to talk to.”
“That he’d be so drunk, he wouldn’t notice he was telling you things he shouldn’t tell anybody?”
“Something like that,” Kate said.
“Well, you’re shit out of luck,” Chan said. “I thought the same thing. And he’s drunk enough today to give away the nuclear launch codes if he had them. Except he doesn’t have them.”
“You were pumping him, too,” Kate said.
“For an hour before you showed up,” Chan said. “So was Jed, and nobody holds out on Jed, no matter how much they want to. Dalton is a void. And a jackass. And worse.”
“I’m beginning to get that impression,” Kate admitted.
“I bet. Get the car in gear. Turn right when you come out of the parking lot and follow the road.”
Kate bumped carefully through the parking lot, which was only sort of graveled. When she got to the road, she turned right as Chan had directed her, then picked up speed until she was going forty. The road was clear of traffic. The surrounding land was free of people.
“It’s a bit of a drive,” Chan said. “But all you have to do is follow this road and always veer right. You came out here to pump Dalton, and that means you’re up to something. I want to know what you’re up to. I want to know who you’re working for,” Chan said. “It has to be my father or that cop. How much do you know about that cop?”
“You mean Tom? I don’t know him much at all. He took pity on me and let me use his spare reserved seat. He gave me a ride when I needed to help my father. There really hasn’t been anything else.”
“How well do you know Bill Flanagan?”
Kate was astonished. “The police detective? The one who just died?”
“Did you know he was building a house? Brand new, great big house, out over on the other side of Montgomery County. Fifty-five hundred square feet. An octagonal deck. A hot tub that seats fourteen. He bought the land just two weeks after he was put in charge of Kevin’s case. Don’t you think that’s interesting?”
“I don’t know.”
“Want to know the name of the architects?” Chan said. “Holloway and Maine. Funnily enough, they’re the same architects who are going to rebuild my house. They’re not a low-rent operation. In fact, I think they’re the most expensive architects in the entire DC region.”
“You think Flanagan was taking bribes?” Kate said. “Or blackmailing someone? Your father? But if Ozgo is actually guilty, your father wouldn’t have to bribe Flanagan to arrest him.”
Chan leaned forward. “The entrance is going to be on your right, and it’s hard to see. No gates until you come up the drive a little. When you get to the gates, stop.”
There was a curve within a curve. She turned right as directed and found herself on a broad gravel drive, broad enough for three lanes of traffic, except that there were no lanes. There were trees on either side, though, tall ones that bent in toward each other over the road and made a leafy tunnel.
The gates came soon enough, but they also seemed to come out of nowhere. Kate pulled the car up to them and stopped.
Chan opened her window and stuck her head out and waved. “Jackson? It’s me with a friend. If you could just—”
Jackson made no sound. He did not come out of the booth Kate assumed he was occupying. She could see the booth but not the man. The gates opened as if by themselves. She put the car back in gear and rolled through.
“When you get to the end of this, there will be a roundabout. My car’s in the big lot to the left. Just drop me at the front entrance and leave.” Chan paused. “I don’t know whose side you’re on.”
“I don’t know whose side you want me to be on,” Kate said.
“Jed told me all about it,” Chan said. “Maybe Kevin has PTSD now, but he didn’t then. He should have known what he was doing. Instead, he was out there, screwing off and not following orders, and Raf got killed because of it.”
“Jed told you Ozgo wasn’t following orders and that was why Rafael was killed?” Kate asked, a little confused. “You mean you know that Jed was there the night Rafael died?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Chan said. “Jed was in the military. They all hear these things.”
“Okay,” Kate slowed as she approached Chan’s parking lot, and Chan spent no more time waiting. She was out of the car and striding away before Kate had time to stop.
Fifteen
The first surprise of that Monday morning was Tom pulling into the driveway just as Jack was headed out the door. By then, Kate had been up for an hour puttering around, unsure what to do next.
The good news was that she had not been awakened by one of Evans’s campaign vans. Granted, she’d gotten up at four thirty, which was far too early for all but the most insane campaign vehicle
, but no van had shown up in the hours since. That had been an unalloyed blessing.
No one else was up when she first came out of her bedroom. She stopped for a moment to look at the plywood still covering the living room window. It looked just as ugly as before. Thankfully, the glass people were coming to install a new window today.
She walked by it and went into the computer room. Then she changed her mind, went into the kitchen, and made coffee. Only after she had a full cup of absolutely black coffee did she go to the computer. She put the coffee cup down on the little side table and brought up the home screen. Frank had left her several bookmarked pages concerning the members of Ozgo’s class at basic, but Kate bypassed those for a moment to give herself a chance to poke around and wake up while she was doing it.
The news sites were largely uninteresting, both nationally and locally, except for more of the usual nothing-in-particular about Flanagan’s death.
There was news about the Ozgo trial, but it amounted to announcing that the case was supposed to go to the jury today or tomorrow, depending on how long summations took.
Kate gave just a moment’s thought to whether she ought to go out to the courthouse right that minute and see if she could get one of the public seats. Then she remembered the crush of people on the first day and dismissed the idea as lunacy.
Feeling at a loss for something to do, she began to look at the material her father had left her. Most of it was second or third hand, blogs, websites, and Facebook pages posted by parents, siblings, wives, or lovers. Kate had seen most of it yesterday, both before she went to that wretched bonfire and after.
Kate couldn’t stop being amazed at how similar all these websites and blogs were: lots of pictures, lots of promises of love and support, practically no specifics on the soldiers themselves. It was possible there were no specifics to post, since a lot of things about deployment to a war zone would be classified. But were these people deployed to a war zone?
She hit a Facebook page for a man named Robert Edward Lawrence Jr., known to all his friends as Flip. The page had been put up by Flip’s girlfriend, who called herself Sil. Flip and Sil. It made Kate’s head ache.