“Or with one of her girls. Gives us another cause for the warrant.” But Barry was right—it was going to be hard to convince the AUSA that they needed a warrant when their probable cause was so thin.
Barry opened the door. “Kincaid, we have to go. Now.”
He looked worried, and Barry had the straightest face of any of the agents Lucy had worked with. Something was wrong.
She thanked Tia and Stu, then followed Barry out of the building. “What happened?” Lucy asked.
“Shit if I know, but we’ve been summoned to headquarters immediately for a meeting with Naygrew and Juan. Zach’s the one who called, he didn’t know what it was about. Said it was urgent and to drop everything.”
Lucy’s phone vibrated. It was a message from Sean. She immediately showed the text to Barry.
The FBI planted the bug in Worthington’s office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
As soon as they stepped into the headquarters they were directed to go immediately to SAC Ritz Naygrew’s office. If the meeting was connected to the bug that Sean had found—and the FBI techs had identified it as one of their own—then she wasn’t worried. Juan had approved the operation and would cover for them if they inadvertently had stepped on another agent’s case.
But when she walked through Naygrew’s door and saw one of the men who had been at Adeline’s house that morning, the one she thought she’d seen before, she knew that this was something else entirely.
“Agents Crawford, Kincaid, thank you for coming in so quickly,” SAC Naygrew said. “Please sit.”
There were two chairs on the left side of Naygrew’s large desk. Lucy took the one farthest from Adeline’s staffer, which afforded her the best angle to watch him. Barry sat next to her. Juan was already seated directly across from Naygrew, like a mediator between the two sides.
Naygrew waited until Lucy and Barry had both sat before he started. “Introductions—my agents, Barry Crawford and Lucy Kincaid, who have been working on the murder of HWI CEO Harper Worthington. Crawford, Kincaid, meet SSA Logan Dunbar out of our Washington, D.C., office. I learned late this morning that two separate investigations, out of two different offices, have collided. I’ve asked Agent Dunbar to come in to brief you, and then hopefully we’ll come out of this meeting with a mutually agreeable game plan.”
Dunbar. D.C. office. That’s why she recognized him. They’d never met, and she didn’t recognize his name, but she must have seen him during the few months she’d worked out of the D.C. regional office before she left for Quantico last year.
Lucy began to piece together what was happening. Dunbar worked out of the D.C. office, which often took the lead on cases of political corruption in Congress. He’d been at Adeline’s house; he must be investigating Adeline Worthington for political corruption.
“You’re undercover,” Lucy said.
“I was afraid you’d blown my cover, Kincaid. You don’t lie well.”
“Excuse me?” Why was he so hostile?
“When you saw me at Adeline’s house, you gave me a look and I thought for certain you were going to out me.”
She straightened her spine. “If I had recognized you, I would have figured it out immediately. I’m pretty good on my feet.”
“Let me make one thing clear: Adeline Worthington did not kill her husband.”
Barry said, “We haven’t said that she did. We simply asked for permission to pursue a line of questioning with her because there are inconsistencies in her initial statement, as well as our follow-up this morning.”
“The night Worthington died, Adeline went to a charity event, then spent hours in a meeting with her campaign team, which included me. I drove her back to her house at one thirty in the morning.”
“We don’t believe that she personally killed her husband, but she may have a motive to have had him killed,” Lucy said.
Dunbar shook his head. “We have access to all her phone records and emails. I have staff in D.C. rechecking everything we’ve gathered, and nothing suggests that she hired a hit man. So, respectfully, I’m asking you to back off. I am very close to taking this woman down on political corruption and bribery, and your investigation is hampering mine. She’s naturally paranoid; your constant questioning is making her more so.”
“If our investigation is having an impact,” Barry said, “that should tell you she might have something more to hide.”
“I’ve been working on this case for more than a year. It didn’t start last weekend,” Dunbar snapped. “It’s not just me—I have several UCs working in different areas, and I can’t have you jeopardizing them, either.”
“A man was murdered,” Lucy said. “Murder trumps bribery.”
Dunbar glared at her. “If it was anyone but you pushing this, I wouldn’t even be here.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
Lucy had no idea what he was talking about.
Juan cleared his throat. “This isn’t productive. Agent Dunbar, please explain to my team what you told Ritz and me earlier.”
Logan Dunbar took a breath, then nodded. Formally, he said, “Sixteen months ago, an informant in the Congressional Interior Committee alerted my office about suspicious activity involving a staff member and a potentially illegal land transaction. A large parcel of land in southern Texas was purchased by the government for three times the market rate because of a supposed environmental protection consideration. Upon further review, the report had been doctored, so we looked deeper and learned that the seller of the land then bought another parcel from Adeline Reyes-Worthington at an inflated price. Under federal campaign law, individuals are strictly limited in political contributions that they can give to a candidate, but candidates can spend their own money with no limit.”
Dunbar leaned forward in his chair. “It took us months, but we found several other similar transactions. For a while we thought that her husband was involved because he has the technical skill to bury these types of financial crimes, but when we began our undercover operation, it became clear that the two of them keep their finances almost completely separate. Still, I wasn’t positive—he could have been helping her.”
“Which is why you bugged his office,” Lucy said.
“Your boyfriend tampered with a legal federal wiretap.”
How did Dunbar know that Sean was her boyfriend? Or that he was even involved?
“You listened to our call,” Lucy said, putting it together. Dunbar had the wiretap, it made sense that he would get a transcript or tape of all calls.
Juan interjected, “As I explained to you, Agent Dunbar, Mr. Rogan was hired by HWI and since we had no knowledge of your investigation, we agreed to track and remove the bug to determine if that had something to do with Mr. Worthington’s murder.”
“But you don’t even know that he was murdered!” Dunbar said.
“He was,” Barry said. “The ME held the report so we could pursue a line of inquiry, but now that we’ve informed Mrs. Worthington, it’ll be released tomorrow. He was poisoned with curare.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You’re welcome to contact the Medical Examiner yourself,” Barry said coolly.
“I mean, if Adeline killed her husband, don’t you think that there are a dozen easier ways to kill him than using an exotic drug?”
“Are you aware that the subject of your investigation has hired a private security detail at her house? A half dozen armed men?”
Dunbar hesitated. “I saw an increase in security. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. If she had been threatened, I would have known about it. She would have contacted Capitol Police, or told her staff.”
“She’s not acting innocent.”
“Because she’s not innocent! She’s a corrupt public official, not a killer. We’re developing an iron-clad case against her. She probably thinks you’ll uncover something about her illegal campaign activity while investigating her husband’s murder.”
Dunbar made a good point, Lucy thought, but maybe Adeline’s white collar crimes led to her husband’s murder, even if she didn’t order a hit.
“If you have all this evidence, why haven’t you indicted her?” Barry asked.
“At first, it was conjecture, and we didn’t have enough to make what we had stick. We needed to get inside, get her to incriminate herself. Once I got in, six months ago, I started getting close to everyone on her campaign and congressional staff. Her campaign manager, Rob Garza, is neck-deep in everything—he’s a piece of work. Not only does Adeline help her friends get rich at taxpayer expense through these inflated land deals, but she punishes her enemies by having the committee she controls seize private land at pennies on the dollar, or declare a parcel environmentally sensitive, which can cost the landowner hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and fines. Often, they’ll sell the land on the cheap to one of Adeline’s friends and then—surprise!—the environmental protections are lifted.”
“That’s an elaborate corruption scheme,” Naygrew said. “She would need multiple people to pull it off, and conspiracies are hard to maintain the more people involved.”
“Yes, sir,” Dunbar concurred. “She needs people in different agencies to pull this off, and it’s going to be her downfall. But to her credit, no one—except maybe Garza—knows anyone else who’s involved, or the extent of the scheme. I have a UC in the EPA and am this close to flipping someone else to turn state’s evidence. She’s up to something bigger than the land deals, but your investigation has made her nervous. I didn’t want to come here because I feared she’d have me followed. Fortunately, I’m good at being discreet.”
Dunbar looked from Lucy to Barry. “What I want you to do is tell the congresswoman that you’re pursuing another line of investigation and stop talking to her. Just go away.”
Lucy stared at him. She didn’t know where to start. But Barry spoke first. “Juan? This is really your call.”
Lucy cringed. She didn’t want to give up this case, but Barry was right. Neither she nor Barry had any real authority in this room.
Juan said, “Barry, tell us what you know about Harper Worthington’s murder.”
“An underage prostitute by the name of Elise Hansen was in the room with Worthington when he died,” Barry said. “We know he was killed with curare, a paralyzing agent that essentially suffocates the victim. The ME has determined that it was injected into Worthington’s system and he died almost immediately. While the room was set up to make it look as if he died while having sex, the ME and crime scene techs have determined that it was staged. He was undressed after he died.”
“So clearly,” Dunbar said, “the hooker killed him.”
“Why?” Lucy said.
“Maybe she’s a psychopath,” Dunbar said. “Isn’t that your specialty, Kincaid?”
She bristled. It was his tone, which told her he didn’t like her. And she didn’t even know him! “Or she was hired by Adeline to kill Worthington,” she snapped. “Because the one thing we don’t know is why Worthington went out of his way to be in that motel at that time.”
“Because he’s a pervert?” Dunbar suggested with a snide tone.
“We believe he had a meeting with someone with the initials G.A.,” Barry said. “We’ve identified him as ‘Gary,’ no last name, a white male between the ages of fifty and sixty who was in a serious accident that left him scarred and with a limp. We’re trying to track him down now. But our witness didn’t see anyone matching that description in or around the motel.”
“It could be,” Lucy said to Barry, “that he only thought he was meeting with Gary.”
“And he was surprised by the girl?” Barry nodded. “Could be, but wouldn’t Worthington be suspicious?”
“Not if Gary and Harper did everything via email.”
“But there was a phone call—we have the phone records before Worthington made the flight arrangements.”
“Maybe Gary set him up.”
Dunbar watched the conversation between Barry and Lucy. “And I’ve said Adeline has done nothing to make me think she had anything to do with her husband’s death. She was surprised when she found out she’d been cut out of the will—and that’s the only motive you could possibly have.”
“Or she’s a good actress,” Barry said.
“Elise was shot by whoever hired her to set up Worthington,” Lucy said. “She claimed that she thought she was giving Worthington a knockout drug so that she could take explicit photos of him having sex with a prostitute, which she assumed were to blackmail him.”
“This is getting wilder and wilder,” Dunbar said, as if he didn’t believe their story. Lucy was already irritated with his attitude, but he was getting worse. As if his investigation was worthy and theirs wasn’t.
“On the contrary,” Barry said, backing Lucy up, “in the course of our investigation, we’ve learned several things that we believe are connected to Worthington’s death. For example, four weeks ago—around the time you planted the bug in Worthington’s phone—he stopped using his desk phone and his computer. He used another office. He had a tablet that no one knew about, and on it were spreadsheets and notes that appear to be related to land transactions.”
“You need to turn that over to me now,” Dunbar said.
Naygrew spoke up. “Juan will see to it that you get a copy of all our documents. Go on, Agent Crawford.”
“According to multiple sources, Worthington began to act preoccupied four weeks ago—about the time he returned early from a four-day trip to Washington with his wife.”
“What if,” Lucy said, “Harper realized what his wife was doing? He’s an accountant, one of the best in the business from what we’ve learned. Maybe she said something, or he saw a financial statement that made him think his wife was doing something illegal? And the fact that he was obsessed with the BLM audit suggests that he did know something, but maybe couldn’t prove it.”
“If he accidentally tipped his hand, that would have given her motive,” Barry concurred.
“That still doesn’t explain why he traveled out of his way to a seedy motel for a meeting,” Lucy said.
“Maybe Gary was his informant,” Barry said. “There were three meetings that we know of, all in equally seedy places.”
“And Adeline found out about the meeting and sent a prostitute to kill him?” Lucy shook her head. “There’s something more to it than that. And Gary is a real person. He has to factor in somehow.”
“Juan,” Barry said, “we’re in the middle of our investigation. We have Elise Hansen under guard at the hospital. SAPD Detective Tia Mancini is lead, and she’s a good cop who knows about the sex trade. We have extensive evidence that we’re in the middle of analyzing, and several people we need to interview or re-interview. Hansen admitted that she took pictures of herself with Worthington, as well as implied she might have taken photos of another client, a developer named James Everett. We want to re-interview him to see if he’s being blackmailed. That could point us to Worthington’s killer.”
Dunbar reacted to the name Everett, but didn’t say anything.
Was Lucy the only one who saw it? Barry was about to continue, but Lucy said, “Dunbar, what do you know about James Everett?”
“It’s not relevant.”
“We’re sharing everything we know, it would help if you did the same.”
Dunbar snorted and looked away.
Naygrew looked pointedly at Lucy, then at Dunbar.
“Agent Dunbar, has the name James Everett come up in your investigation into Adeline Worthington?”
It was clear he didn’t want to answer, but because this was the SAC asking, he did. “He is a person of interest in several of the illegal land deals.”
“So he was working with Congresswoman Worthington?”
“Everett and Adeline were partners before she married Worthington. She left the partnership before she ran for public office, but Everett handled many of these s
uspicious transactions. However, they appear to have had a falling out recently—over the last couple of months—and he endorsed her opponent.”
“Do you know why?” Naygrew pushed.
“No, sir.”
But he wasn’t looking directly at Naygrew. Lucy’s instincts twitched. “He’s one of your informants, isn’t he?”
Dunbar reddened. “I’m not at liberty to discuss any of our confidential informants.”
Which meant yes. Everett was an informant and he didn’t want his reputation to be tarnished when Adeline went down for bribery and political corruption.
“Why did you bug Worthington’s phone only four weeks ago?” Lucy asked. “Especially since you’ve been here for six months. That was right when he came back from D.C., right about the time he started acting out of character … Did Worthington talk to someone on your team?”
“I can’t—”
Naygrew leaned forward. “Logan, I understand you’ve put a lot of time and effort into this investigation, but my team is investigating the homicide of a federal contractor who had access to confidential financial information that involved national security. It helps us to know what he was doing during his last weeks of life.”
“Yes,” Dunbar said shortly. He glanced at Lucy, anger etched in his face, then turned away. “Mr. Worthington came into the D.C. office on May seventh and spoke to my boss. He came with information that we already knew, but we didn’t know his motive, and we had far more information about his wife’s activities than he did. We determined that we could not bring him into the investigation because of spousal privilege—we didn’t want to give Adeline any leverage against us when we bring down the hammer. So we put him off. Told him we’d look into it.”
“Then you tapped his phone,” Barry said.
“So we could keep tabs on him. It was done legally.” He glanced at his watch. “I really need to get back to the campaign. I’ve already been gone nearly two hours.”
Juan said, “Barry, Lucy, I think you’re on to something with Worthington. But there is no evidence that the congresswoman was involved in his murder. And honestly, there would be easier ways to kill him than to set up a scene that is potentially embarrassing to her and her reelection. However, Harper Worthington could have found something in one of his audits that got him killed, and the manner of his death was simply to embarrass him or divert attention. And it wasn’t very professional—DNA and the other evidence at the scene all led you to the prostitute. You need to work her, find out who hired her, and then we’ll see where that goes. You have my permission to continue pursuing the investigation wherever it may lead.”
Best Laid Plans Page 25