I looked at Ken, knowing my face probably held the same look as his as one more of Ed Lloyd’s escape routes closed.
“I think you should come with us right now, to talk to him,” I said, turning back to Maggie. “We’ll call him from the car, and you can call your office and give them some excuse for not coming back this afternoon.”
She nodded silently, apparently no longer having the energy to argue with whatever we suggested.
We made the walk to Ken’s car in virtual silence as well, each of us lost in our own thoughts about just what Maggie’s decision to talk to the police might—or might not—mean, just how much leverage it would provide against Lloyd and Taylor.
As Ken started the car and maneuvered back into the lunchtime traffic, I called the Great Falls police station. Lansing wasn’t there.
“I need you to page him,” I told the dispatcher. “It’s important. Tell him it’s Sutton and that I’m on my way there with a woman from Capitol Hill he’s been wanting to meet.”
Maggie called her office then and told them she had a small emergency at home and would be out for the rest of the day. Then she settled into the backseat and stared quietly out the window throughout the drive to Great Falls. From time to time I saw her lift a hand to wipe her eyes, but whether her tears were for Ann Kane or herself, I couldn’t tell.
* * * *
By the time we arrived at the police station, Lansing was waiting for us. Jimmy, who was manning the desk as usual, didn’t comment when I asked him to call back for us, but his expression said he could hardly wait to hear what this was all about.
Lansing came out immediately and ushered us back to his office. Only then did I make my introductions.
“Detective Noah Lansing,” I said, “this is Ken Hale from the paper. We’ve been working this story together. You may remember Ken from the press conference at the Taylors’ house.” The men shook hands.
“And this,” I continued when they finished showing what good manners they had, “is Maggie Padgett. She has decided to tell you her story about Senator Lloyd.”
Lansing shook Maggie’s hand also, studying her closely.
“Thank you for coming down,” he said. “I know this isn’t easy for you.”
“No,” she agreed, studying him with equal intent. She was about to put herself and her future in his hands, and it was clear she didn’t want to make a mistake in doing so.
“If you’ll have a seat here for just a minute,” Lansing went on, motioning to his guest chair, “I’ll see these two folks out and find us a more comfortable room to talk in.”
Maggie nodded and sank into the chair gratefully. She was looking more drained by the minute, and I knew she still had a grueling afternoon in front of her. Lansing’s “more comfortable room” no doubt would be an interrogation room where his conversation with her would be videotaped, and he would make sure he got everything from her that she had to tell. My heart went out to her at the thought of her having to tell her sordid story again, but I knew she had to if Ed Lloyd was going to be stopped.
Ken and I stepped back out into the hallway ahead of Lansing, who closed his office door as he followed us out.
“How’d you manage this?” he asked, as soon as the door closed.
“You know people just can’t resist telling me things.” I grinned.
Lansing rolled his eyes. Then I gave him a serious answer.
“Actually, I think it was the phone records,” I told him. “I’ve got proof of a whole shitload of calls from Lloyd’s home and office to her apartment over a couple of weeks before the night he showed up with her at Morris’s office.”
“So she decided there may be some evidence to support what she says?”
“That and the guilt trip Sutton put on her over Ann Kane,” Ken chimed in.
“I can picture it,” Lansing said drolly.
“I didn’t say a thing that wasn’t true,” I told them huffily. “And besides, she was already on a major guilt trip of her own before I ever showed up!”
“Well, we’ll take it from here with her,” Lansing said. “With any luck, she’ll prove to be one more nail in the coffin.”
“Speaking of which,” I asked, “anything else on the guy with the flyers?”
“He passed the lie detector test with flying colors. We’ve told him to keep himself available and his mouth shut. But he looks like bad news for Hub Taylor.”
“Good,” Ken spoke up. He was as bad as Lansing and myself about not wanting the guilty to go unpunished—or a prizewinning story to go unwritten.
“Anyway, we’ll be as gentle as we can with Ms. Padgett,” Lansing said. “She looks like she could fall apart any second.”
“Just remember, she’s a victim here, too,” I added.
“I will. And McPhee?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, but you owe me one.”
“Come back about six o’clock. I may be able to even things up a bit.”
I looked at him shrewdly. “What do you have?”
“All in good time,” he replied. “Just be here.”
“Count on it.”
Lansing turned and opened the door to his office to go back inside. Ken and I showed ourselves out of the police station. As soon as we were in the car, Ken turned to me.
“Is there something going on between you and Lansing that I should know about?” he asked.
“No,” I answered honestly while my inner voice made a few references to things like lust and hypocrisy. “In fact, I’m probably one of his least favorite people.”
“That’s not the way he looked at you,” Ken said, a knowing smile coming across his face. He turned and reached down to start the car.
“You have an overactive imagination,” I answered, wishing I could believe otherwise.
“So where to now?” he asked, feigning innocence, as we drove away from the police station.
“Why don’t you drop me back off at the Russell Building? I think it might be time to pay a visit to Ed Lloyd.”
“Be careful with him,” Ken counseled. My hand went to the gradually shrinking lump on the side of my head, and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was, that I had already had my warning.
Twenty-seven
In the Russell Building, I took the elevator up to the third floor. As a powerful Senate figure, Lloyd had what was probably one of the largest and most ostentatious offices I had seen in the building. It was luxuriously furnished in what looked to be either expensive period reproductions or the real things. In this office, unlike Senator Black’s, all the inner-office doors were closed, and quiet prevailed.
There was no one in sight except a middle-aged man in a navy-blue suit who sat on a floral-print sofa, a pad of paper on his lap, making notes with a Mont Blanc pen, and the receptionist, a silver-haired woman in her fifties, who, I could see when she stood up, had a steel beam for a spine and probably made mincemeat of lesser mortals on a regular basis. When I entered, she quickly sized me up as inconsequential. While her mouth smiled at me ever so politely, the smile didn’t touch her eyes. Lloyd couldn’t have guarded access to himself any better with a pit bull.
“Yes?” she said.
“I’m Sutton McPhee from the Washington News,” I told her, and saw her opinion of me drop another couple of notches. “I’d like to see Senator Lloyd if he has a few minutes. It’s urgent.”
“What is it about, please?” the ice queen asked.
“I really think the senator would rather I discussed this in private with him.”
“I’m very sorry,” she replied, without pause, “but the senator is quite busy, and unless you can tell me what this concerns, I just don’t see how we could work you into his schedule for at least a couple of weeks.”
“This is very important”—I looked down at the name-plate on her desk—“Mrs. Rose. I really think Senator Lloyd would want to hear what I have to say.”
“No, it’s just no
t possible,” said Mrs. Rose, who by any other name probably would have been just as unyielding. “Perhaps you should call ahead next time. And talk with Mr. Robbins, the senator’s press secretary. I’m sure he could assist you.”
Just as she finished what was supposed to be her final brush-off, Lloyd came around the corner with another man, left arm around the man’s shoulder, right hand shaking his hand.
“So call me, George,” Lloyd was saying. “Let’s get in a round of golf.” George was nodding happily, his audience apparently having gone well.
When he saw me, Lloyd stopped where he was, hatred and something else—menace, I thought—lancing across the space between us.
“Mrs. Rose?” he said, asking in that short phrase tinged with rebuke what I was doing there.
“Mr. Stevens is here for your next appointment, Senator,” Mrs. Rose said smoothly, as if I didn’t exist. Mr. Stevens, the man on the sofa, got up immediately and walked over to Lloyd, who took him in hand and went back down the hall, but not before casting Mrs. Rose a last, meaningful look. I knew what it meant: Get rid of her. But I decided I wasn’t going.
“Thank you for coming by,” Mrs. Rose said smoothly, turning her attention back to me. “Do call ahead next time.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her, even though I wasn’t, “but I’m afraid I’m going to have to stay right here until the senator agrees to see me.” I sat myself down in Mr. Stevens’s spot and tried to look unruffled.
“Look,” Mrs. Rose said, the steel creeping from her backbone into her voice, “I’ve told you the senator has no time.”
“You tell the senator I think he should make time,” I responded, still keeping my own voice polite but serious. “You tell him I want to talk to him about the woman with the violet eyes. I think he’ll change his mind.”
The outer door opened and an elderly couple walked in. Mrs. Rose studied me for a second and then turned to ask if she could help the new visitors. They told her they were constituents and were hoping to get passes to the Senate’s visitors’ gallery.
When Mrs. Rose had finished taking care of them and had seen them out, Mr. Stevens and the senator returned to the reception area, their brief meeting apparently concluded.
“Charlotte?” Lloyd asked the secretary when he saw me still in his reception area, halting abruptly and looking at me with more than mere annoyance. Mr. Stevens stopped, too, confused.
Charlotte Rose quickly stepped between Lloyd and Stevens and spoke quietly to the senator.
“I see,” he said. “All right, take her back.”
Mrs. Rose came over and said, “Follow me, please.” I did. While Lloyd exchanged good-bye pleasantries with Mr. Stevens she led me down the hall. As we passed, the door to another inner office opened and a blond-haired woman of about my age stepped through, nodded at us, and left. One of the senator’s staffers, I guessed.
Charlotte deposited me on a sofa in Lloyd’s office and left me there without saying a word. I was calculating just what the antique desk and tables and the Italian leather sofa and chairs might have cost the taxpayers when Lloyd returned, closing the door angrily and wheeling to face me.
“What the hell is this?” he barked, his demeanor full of menace and meant to intimidate. All trace of the smooth, genial host who had dealt with George and Mr. Stevens was gone.
“I have some questions to ask you, Senator,” I said calmly. I knew things he didn’t know I knew. His bluster was wasted on me. “I didn’t think you would want to answer them in front of Mrs. Rose or your other visitors once you knew what they were.”
“This had better not be any more of the nonsense I heard at the cemetery,” Lloyd warned, walking over to stand near the sofa. “I told you I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Oh, I think you know exactly what I was talking about,” I told him, smiling. “But first let me ask you about another woman. Maggie Padgett. How well do you know her?”
“In the first place, I don’t know her. In the second place, even if I did, it’s none of your affair!”
“I don’t believe you, Senator. I think you know—or at least wanted to know—her very well. So well, in fact, that you took her to your house for dinner and then drugged her drink.”
Lloyd threw back his head and laughed. I had to give him a gold star for his acting ability.
“Don’t be absurd,” he said. “Do you really think someone in my position has to go around drugging women to get a date?”
“Of course you don’t. That’s exactly what makes what you did to her so sick. You could have plenty of women. But when Maggie and Ann Kane turned you down, you couldn’t take no for an answer.”
“This is slander, of the vilest kind! You don’t have an ounce of proof for any of this. If this Padgett woman told you this, she’s lying.”
“Wrong again, Senator. I’ve got copies of your and Maggie’s phone records. There were repeated calls from you to her apartment and her office.”
“She works for another senator, for God’s sake! Anyone in my office could have made those calls.”
“Most of them were calls from your house. And how do you know where she works if you don’t know who she is?”
Lloyd’s eyes sparked, but he didn’t miss a beat.
“Because I just remembered after all that I was introduced to her somewhere. Some reception, I think.”
“It’s too bad you didn’t leave it at that,” I went on. “If you had been able to keep your pants zipped, Dr. Peter Morris might still be alive.”
“What does he have to do with the woman? Besides, Peter Morris killed himself! The police said it was suicide.” He looked almost smug.
“But you and I know it wasn’t, don’t we? Was it because you figured out he had told me all about Maggie? About the night you had to take her to him for help? Is that why you did it?”
“Are you saying I killed him?”
“Did you?”
“Are you insane? You’re talking to a United States senator!”
“Yes, I am, and it makes me sick to my stomach to think a scumbag like you sits in this office.”
Lloyd’s face reddened, and his hostility ratcheted up several notches.
“You’d better watch your mouth, little sister,” he said, his voice lowering as he dropped the bluster, taking on a tone of truly serious intent. “It’s going to get you in a whole heap of trouble!”
“Oh, you mean like the little love tap you gave me in the parking lot a few nights ago?”
“I mean like trouble there’s no getting out of, no coming back from.”
“Make all the threats you want, Senator. But your sick little peccadilloes are about to bring it all crashing down around your ears. I know you were there when Ann Kane died. I know Maggie Padgett came close to ending up the same way. I know Peter Morris didn’t kill himself. Pretty soon I won’t be the only one who knows.”
Lloyd’s eyes were glittering with hatred. He reached down and grabbed my arm, pulling me half up off the sofa.
“Your mouth just signed a check I’m going to cash for you. Now get out of my office.”
I fell back as he dropped my arm, then stood up and went to the door.
As I opened it he spoke.
“You take care now,” he said with smooth menace.
“You, too,” I replied, hoping my smile was coming somewhere close to matching his in malevolence.
Charlotte Rose ignored me when I got back out to the reception area. I thought for a moment about stopping to bait her, but decided my wit would be wasted on her, and besides, Lloyd had been frightening enough that I really wasn’t in the mood. I let myself out.
I caught a taxi back to the paper’s parking garage, and as I drove out of the District I called Ken to let him know how my chat with Ed Lloyd had gone.
“Do you really think that was such a good idea, Sutton?” he asked in a worried voice. “What if he comes after you again?”
“I’m on my way back out to Lansing’s of
fice,” I told him. “Lloyd would have to climb over a lot of cops to get to me there.”
“But you don’t live there, Sutton. What about the rest of the time?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine,” I said, hoping I sounded reassuring. “I’m forewarned. I’ll be very careful. I promise. I won’t let him get that close to me again.”
“That son of a bitch!”
“I’ll be okay, Ken. Really. But I’ve got to go see Lansing now. We’ll talk later.”
Twenty-eight
Traffic into Virginia was already pretty backed up by the time I got across Memorial Bridge, and the day had turned hot. It made me ask myself for the umpteenth time why I was driving an un-air-conditioned car in the South, but I knew I was far too attached to the Bug and to its low gas and repair bills to trade it in for something newer, cooler, and more upscale. So I rolled down the windows and crept along.
Finally, at 6:10, I pulled into the station parking lot. At the front door, I could see Lansing in the lobby, talking to the evening duty officer. He saw me, too, and crossed the lobby to come outside.
“We’ll take my car,” he said, without any preliminaries. “It’s over here.”
Wordlessly, I followed him over to a gray unmarked sedan, which he unlocked, and we got in. The rolled-up windows made the inside like an oven, but I expected the souped-up police engine would enable the air conditioner to solve that problem in no time.
We were out on Commons Avenue, already-cooling air blowing in our faces, when I decided I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“So, are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I asked. “Or am I going to have to guess?”
“Oh, sorry,” Lansing said sheepishly, his conscious mind surfacing from wherever it had been. “I guess I didn’t tell you, did I? We’re going to see Hub Taylor.”
“Really? Has he decided to talk to you?”
“Yeah,” Lansing said, smiling grimly, “he just doesn’t know it yet.”
“So where are we meeting him?”
“His house. I called him an hour ago at the county building and told him we needed to have a private conversation—completely off the record and no attorneys—and that we could either do it at his office, where people would know who I was, or do it at his house. He agreed to meet me at the house.”
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