“Gee, Bill, you must have drawn the short straw.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, it’s obvious, since you got stuck being the one who had to call me and ask me to hold off on a story. I can’t imagine you volunteered for it. So what’s it worth to you?” I had a reason of my own for wanting to sit on the story, but I wasn’t going to ruin the fun I was having torturing Bill by telling him that.
“You’re a hard woman, Sutton,” Bill said, sounding reconciled to not getting off easily. “How much of my blood is this going to cost me?”
“I don’t want your blood, Bill,” I answered sweetly. “I can hold off on the story for a day or two on one condition.”
“Which is?”
“That you promise me it absolutely, positively isn’t going to find its way to the competition in the meantime. Not from your shop, and not from the Alexandria P.D., either. I’m holding you personally responsible for keeping their mouths shut as well.”
“Jesus,” he said, groaning, “why am I still in this job? All right, it’s a deal.”
“No ifs, ands, or buts?”
“No ifs, ands, or buts.”
“And Bill?”
“What?”
“If you screw it up, your butts will be the least of it.”
Bill was laughing when he hung up, but he also knew I meant it.
* * * *
“I assume the fact that you’re alone means you’ve completely gotten rid of your police escort?” Rob asked when he came into the newsroom and walked over to my desk. While he understood my qualms about having a cop at my side and agreed with them, he also had encouraged me to consider it anyway, since he didn’t want anything to happen to me. At least not before I got my stories done.
“They couldn’t find anybody who would agree to take the assignment,” I said, not wanting to have to have another discussion about it.
Rob laughed. “That’s probably truer than you know,” he responded. He gestured at the story on my computer screen. “I read Sy’s latest piece on the feds’ Coleman investigation, for tomorrow’s paper. You got anything from the police angle to go with it?”
“I’m sure you heard they found his car this morning, down in Woodbridge,” I said as Rob pulled up a chair from the vacant desk next to mine. “I’ll do a brief on that. There’s not much else to say until the evidence guys go over it or unless they manage to find a witness who saw the person who left the car there. Which they haven’t yet.”
“Okay, I’ll let Mark know there’ll be a sidebar on it to go with Sy’s piece,” Rob said. “Now, what about your other stuff? Anything new on the Magruder shooting?”
I told him about the telephone records Lansing had gotten.
“Although they won’t officially cross him off the list yet,” I added, “we can say that Terry Porter probably isn’t much of a suspect anymore. It’s probably worth six or eight graphs.”
“All right, we’ll find a place for it on the metro front,” Rob said. “Anything else?”
“Well,” I answered, “there is one other thing I’ve found out, but we can’t go with it yet.”
“Oh? What?”
“Dan Magruder and Robert Coleman were shot with the same gun.”
Just for a second, Rob looked at me, openmouthed.
“The hell you say!” he got out finally. “The same guy killed them both?”
“It looks that way.”
Then he began to glare at me.
“Let’s step into my office for a minute,” he said and turned to cross the thirty feet between my desk and his office. Clearly, he expected me to follow without protest. Which I did.
“You mind telling me,” Rob said when he closed the office door behind me, “why we can’t do a story on it now? Obviously, you got this from the police, based on ballistics comparing the bullets.”
So I told him the rest. My theory of why Dan Magruder really was killed and why my car had been rigged with a bomb. And that Lansing and Peterson had been convinced enough when the ballistics evidence supported my hypothesis that they now were talking to Detective Moore about the car bombing.
“Christ almighty!” Rob said when I finished. As he considered all the implications, he sat down on the edge of his desk and took off his already-loosened tie. I had noticed a long time ago that the more Rob had to think about something, the more constricting he found the suit and tie he wore to the office every day. By each evening’s final deadline, he would long since have gotten rid of his jacket, loosened and eventually removed his tie, unbuttoned his collar and cuffs, and rolled his sleeves up a turn or two. Ken Hale, a fellow reporter who covers the Fairfax County government, and I have a running bet on how long it will take for Rob to completely forget where he is some night and drop his trousers as well.
“You sure we can afford to hold all this?” Rob asked finally.
“We’ve got at least a day, probably two, before the police are going to say anything about this to anyone else from the press,” I told him. “They need time to bring in Detective Moore and figure out how to work these cases together. Since it’s almost the weekend, that probably means we’ll really have until at least Monday before we have to go with something on it to stay ahead of the competition.”
“I don’t know, McPhee,” Rob said, clearly not comfortable with sitting on such a story. “The connection to your car bombing is hypothesis as this point, so yeah, I can see why we might wait on that. But the match between the two bullets is fact.”
“The cops don’t want the rest of the press getting onto this yet any more than I do,” I said, “not until they’ve gotten their act together with Alexandria. And I need a couple of days to run down some information from Tallahassee that I’m hoping will help me make some of the missing connections to the bombing. If I can get even part of what I’m after, we can go with a real story early next week that would be more than supposition.”
Rob leaned back in his chair and looked at me over the top of his reading glasses. I knew that look. It meant I was being weighed and measured, metaphorically speaking.
“Okay,” Rob said finally, apparently deciding that perhaps I could be trusted to know what I was doing for the moment. “You’ve got until Monday. But that doesn’t mean I can keep this from Mark and Sy. We’re the ones who yelled about sharing information, after all. And they’re going to go through the roof when they hear we want to sit on this over the weekend. But I’m telling you right now, if the story turns up someplace else between now and Monday, it’s going to be both our heads on a platter. And you know how happy I’ll be about that, don’t you?”
Oh, I knew all right. If that happened, I knew Rob would find a way to reattach his own head long enough to chop mine up into little pieces. But it was a chance I was going to have to take if I was going to get at the real story behind the Coleman and Magruder deaths.
“Thanks, Rob,” I said, meaning it. “Will you handle telling Sy and Mark so I can get these two briefs done? I’ve got to be at an interview at six.”
“You think they pay me enough for that?” Rob asked as he stood up from the desk and reached to open his office door for me.
“Of course not,” I responded. “I know you’ll do it out of love.” Then I went out the door toward my own desk before he could think of a response.
Eighteen
A quick scan of the bar at the Mayflower Hotel showed me Judge Henry Bryant, nominee to the United States Supreme Court, sitting at a table toward the rear, facing to my left and talking with a second man who was looking in my direction as I approached them.
“Judge Bryant?” I asked as I reached where they sat. Both Bryant and his companion stood up. “I’m Sutton McPhee,” I said, offering my hand to be shaken.
“Pleasure to meet you, Ms. McPhee,” Bryant said, as he nodded his head of prematurely silver hair in my direction and took my hand, giving it a gentle shake. “And this,” he continued, gesturing to the man at his right, “is Dell Curl, my personal assistan
t, to whom you spoke on the phone.”
Dell Curl, who said nothing but also shook my hand, was a tall, almost gaunt man, with light brown hair that was cut in a military-looking crew cut, and sallow skin that was at odds with the rest of his coloring. His hazel eyes looked at me unwaveringly, obviously assessing me in a way that I thought had nothing to do with his hormones. The tan jacket he wore over dark brown slacks was taut across his shoulders, leaving me with the impression that he worked out regularly and probably was in very good shape for a man who otherwise looked to be in his midforties. He also towered over Bryant, who was probably within an inch of six feet tall, by a good four inches or more. I had to wonder if Curl’s “assistant” duties didn’t come under the category of bodyguard and decided it was a sad commentary on the times when a judge has to worry about needing that kind of protection.
“Please have a seat,” Bryant said, pulling out the chair in front of me. I took it and then waved away the waiter who had hurried over to ask what I would like to drink.
“So what is it you think I can do for you, Ms. McPhee?” Bryant asked, getting immediately to the point. He apparently didn’t want to take any chances on missing whatever appointment he was going to once we finished talking. “I’ve spoken regularly with Ms. Lane, your colleague, and she seems to have done a very thorough job of covering all the bases.”
“Actually, Judge Bryant, I need to ask you about another matter entirely, not anything to do with your Supreme Court nomination.”
Bryant gave me a puzzled look.
“What matter would that be?” he asked.
“I’m one of the reporters working on the stories about the murder of Robert Coleman,” I said. “I’ve been checking into his background prior to his coming to Washington, and I understand you actually handled an investigation of him when he was with Three Rivers Development in Tallahassee and you were with the state attorney’s office.”
“Ah, yes, Robert Coleman,” Bryant said, sitting back in his chair now that he knew the agenda for our conversation. “Well, that certainly goes back a ways. So what was it you wanted to know?”
“I understand that the investigation was halted and that Coleman was never prosecuted for anything. Can you tell me about that?”
Bryant templed his hands together, apparently searching his memories.
“I can’t go into details, you understand,” Bryant said, “but actually, I never got very far into the investigation, not far enough to bring charges, when it was stopped. There’s no way to know if I would have found enough to file charges eventually.”
“Why was the investigation halted?” I asked.
“Not at my request, I assure you,” Bryant said. “It was halted by Ford Truesdale, the state attorney for that area and my boss. I went in one day to give him my first report on the investigation, and he told me he was shutting it down for lack of evidence.”
“But you say you were only in the initial stages,” I pointed out. “How could he know yet just how much evidence there would be?”
“Exactly what I said to Ford,” Bryant agreed. “But he clearly already had his mind made up. He told me to close the case, close the file, and get on with something else. I had never seen him before the way he was that day. He wouldn’t discuss it any further, wouldn’t tell me why, no matter how I argued with him. And he was very angry at me for questioning his decision.”
It certainly sounded like the man Lawson Thomas had described to me as well, I thought. Bryant would have been sticking his neck out to have done any more.
“How did the investigation get started in the first place?” I asked.
“Someone from the community had come to us with a complaint about losing his money after investing it in one of Three Rivers’s projects. If memory serves, he had been convinced to invest by Coleman and then, when he changed his mind, he couldn’t get either his money or a straight answer out of Coleman.”
“How did Coleman avoid getting sucked into the later investigation that went on after Art Williams’s suicide?”
“I would have to guess that he made sure, when he left Tallahassee for Washington, that there was no sort of paper trail that could link him to anything that had gone on,” Bryant said, “but that’s strictly a guess. I was sitting on the county court bench by that time, so I don’t know any details of what was found when the company failed. In fact, I left the state attorney’s office for the judgeship shortly after Ford closed the Coleman case. And I believe that Ford already had died by the time Three Rivers collapsed. So I don’t know what kind of investigation was conducted then.”
“I’ve been told that the case file for your investigation of Coleman is now missing,” I said. “Did you by any chance take it with you when you left the state attorney’s office?”
“Why, no,” Bryant said, his eyebrows knitting together in surprise at that news. “Although we often took material home when we were working a case, once an investigation was closed, everything had to go back into the files. Much of it is confidential information, especially in a case that never was prosecuted. And I had no use for it anymore.”
“And you still have no idea, even after all this time, why Truesdale stopped the investigation of Coleman?”
“Nothing concrete I can point to,” Bryant said. “And with all of them—Coleman, Art Williams, and Ford—all dead now, I can’t see that my speculating publicly would benefit anyone.”
I was stumped. Again. And I didn’t like it worth a damn. But before I could collect my thoughts enough to try to find another avenue for questions, Bryant and Curl stood up in unison, as if some silent signal had passed between them.
“It’s been a pleasure talking with you, Ms. McPhee,” Bryant said, looking down at me with a smile. “I’m sorry I’ve been no help to you at all, but that’s really everything I can tell you on the subject, and I’m afraid we do have another appointment to get to. So we’re going to have to take our leave now.”
I stood up as well and took one of my business cards out of my purse.
“If you think of anything else that might be helpful, anything to do with your Coleman investigation, would you call me?” I asked, giving Bryant the card.
“Certainly,” he said, taking it from my hand. “I’ll be happy to, but don’t expect too much.”
Dell Curl put a twenty dollar bill on the table to cover their bar tab, nodded in my direction, and followed Bryant out of the bar and out the hotel’s front door.
* * * *
In the cab on the way back to the parking garage down the block from the News building, I used my cell phone to check my voice mail. There was a brief message from Noah Lansing.
“I’ll be home by six-thirty,” I heard him say. “I’ll be looking for you there. And if you’d like me to come pick you up someplace, just call.”
Right, I thought. Like I’m going to get into the habit of asking Lansing to cart me around because somebody has a grudge against me.
That would be a full-time job, wouldn’t it?
Too bad you don’t have one, I thought in answer, as I instructed the cabdriver to go right on into the parking garage. Then you wouldn’t have time to nag me twenty-four hours a day.
At the parking space where I had left the rental car, I gave the driver enough money to cover the fare, his tip, and the parking garage fee, and asked him to wait for a minute while I got into the Pontiac and started it, which he did.
I drove behind him to the exit booth, where he stopped to pay the basic fee for his drive through the parking garage, and then I pulled up, rolled down my window, and put my gate card into the electronic reader. The yellow metal arm went up in front of me, allowing me to leave the parking garage, but at the street I stopped again, not only to look for oncoming traffic, but also because I realized that I still hadn’t decided what to do. Do I turn left, I asked myself, and head across the Fourteenth Street bridge to I-395 and my Alexandria apartment? Or do I turn right and take the Memorial Bridge in the direction of Fairfax
? Was I ready to face a night alone in my apartment, knowing that someone who disliked me a lot knew exactly where I lived? Was that preferable to another night in the intimacy of Noah Lansing’s home?
A car horn blew loudly behind me and, before I could make a conscious choice, I found myself turning right, as if the decision had been made for me. As I crossed the Memorial Bridge a few minutes later, I was still wondering if I hadn’t chosen the more frightening alternative.
Nineteen
As I pulled into Lansing’s driveway behind the Explorer, the front door opened and David came out, running across the yard in my general direction. Behind him, his father stopped in the doorway, where he smiled just as broadly as his son. The usual flutterings started in my chest again at the sight of Lansing, and David’s obvious enthusiasm at my arrival just added to the feeling that all my avenues of escape rapidly were being cut off.
Christ, I thought, as I opened the car door and got out, what am I doing here? This is scaring me out of my wits.
Before I could even begin to answer my own question, however, David reached me and threw his arms around my legs.
“Sutton, Sutton,” he said, looking up at me and trying to jump up and down at the same time. “Are you spending the night again?”
“I think I must be,” I said, looking up and across to where Lansing was walking toward us. The heartbeat picked up another notch.
“David,” Lansing said sternly, his voice belied by his smile, “turn Sutton loose before you knock her down!”
“Okay, okay,” David said, letting me go so quickly that I took a stumbling step anyway.
“Sorry about that,” Lansing said, reaching me and putting out a hand to grasp my arm. “He gets a little carried away sometimes.”
“He’s only six,” I said. “At least he has an excuse.”
That earned me a quizzical look from Lansing at the same time that my cell phone rang in my purse, which still was lying on the front seat of the car. I reached in to get the purse, and Lansing took the car keys out of my left hand.
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