“Christ, Julia! What the hell am I not telling the truth about?” It was the first time he had raised his voice. Camille recoiled as much as Julia had appeared to. “You know I’m married! You know I have children! You know the public position I’m in! I’ve never hidden a single thing from you!”
“You’ve hidden a lot from your wife though. Haven’t you?”
“Do not mention her again. You’ve said enough already. Do you understand? Keep her name out of her mouth.” Camille felt tense as he approached Julia again.
“You mean her full name – Mayor Sonya Janice Richmond?” Julia said with a sneer. “I certainly wouldn’t want to piss off a mayor, especially one who is less than two months away from becoming a United States Senator. I doubt you would either. What do you think would make piss her off more? You fucking me or you fucking the voters of this state in order to get her there?”
Camille felt like she was watching a movie and the woman on screen was an actress doing a terrible impersonation of her friend. Nothing about it seemed real.
But the next thing Camille saw reminded her of just how horribly real this was.
Elliott grabbed Julia by the arm and pulled her close. “So you want me to threaten you? Is that it?”
“Let go.” Julia’s back was to the camera now, but Camille could still sense the fear on her face.
“You’re going down a road that you really don’t want to go down, Julia. I suggest you back off.” Elliott let go of her arm and she staggered backward.
Julia sniffled and dabbed at the corner of her eye. “You’ve been so concerned about not hurting your wife and children. Did you ever once stop to think about the consequences of hurting me? Or continually lying to me? Or putting your goddamn hands on me?”
Elliott was silent.
“You obviously know what your wife can do to you,” she continued. “But you should be just as worried about what I can do.”
Elliott crossed his arms. “And what exactly can you do?”
Camille felt short of breath. This was no longer a video she was watching on a computer. This was Julia’s life unraveling in front of her eyes. She found herself praying that Julia would not answer the question and simply walk away.
“You probably should have thought about that before you asked me to be in your videos. You definitely should have thought about it before you started talking to me about Springwell Technologies.”
“Do you honestly think you can–”
Julia put her hands up. “Just don’t take me for granted, Elliott. And I’m not talking about from a relationship standpoint, because you’ve clearly shown me that you don’t give a damn about that. I’m talking about you thinking that I’m just going to allow you to hurt me time and time again without ever striking back at you. I have plenty of ways I can strike back at you.”
Elliott shook his head. “All of this because I’m not going home to tell my wife of twenty-six years that I’m leaving her? You’re sadder, and a hell of a lot more delusional, than I thought.”
“Delusional?”
“Yes delusional. I don’t think you have any idea what you’re saying right now. Because if you really stopped to think about it, you would realize just how detrimental it could be and you would immediately stop talking.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I have a lot more to say. You’ve made it abundantly clear that I have no future with you aside from a weekly blow job. As much as that kills me, I’m a big girl and I’ll eventually get over it. But knowing now that you think so little of me, what incentive could I possibly have to keep protecting you?”
Julia’s words hung in the air for a long time, almost as if Elliott didn’t know how to respond. As he walked up to Julia and put a finger in her face, Camille knew that he had found that response.
“You know what your incentive is? Actually living long enough to get over it. Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t possibly think of a better reason to keep your mouth shut. Could you?”
Camille gasped at the exact same moment as Julia did.
“So you’re threatening my life now?”
“You’re threatening mine.”
“Unless you’re prepared to act on that threat right this instant, you’re going to regret you ever said it. Trust me. Now do yourself a huge favor and get the hell out of my house. And pray you don’t see yourself on the ten o’clock news tonight.” She pointed at the bedroom door with a fully extended arm.
Elliott slowly backed away from her and made his way out of the room. “There will definitely be regrets at the end of all this, but they won’t be mine.”
“Keep walking, dipshit!”
“Trust me!” Elliott shouted off-camera.
Julia stood frozen in the middle of the room while the sound of fading footsteps gave way to a door being slammed and the subsequent sound of barking dogs. After a few moments, she turned toward the camera, then stared directly into it. “I wonder if anybody else who happens to see this would take him as seriously as I do?” She shrugged her shoulders and turned away. “I guess we’ll see.” She started to walk out of the room then glanced back at the camera. “For the record, I wasn’t serious. But he doesn’t have to know that, does he?”
After that, the monitor went black.
Camille sat motionlessly in front of the computer, staring at the screen long after there was nothing left to see. There was so much to process in that hour-long video that she didn’t even know where to begin. But she did know one thing right away: everything Julia had written on that paper suddenly made perfect sense, none of it more so than the line that Camille had not been able to get out of her head ever since she first read it.
‘He did this to me.’
And now Camille knew exactly who he was. He was the husband of Sonya Richmond, the mayor of the city. Camille read about her when she picked up the Post at the airport. She had learned that Mayor Richmond was currently in the middle of a U.S. Senate campaign against the state’s Attorney General, a man whose name she didn’t pay attention to. In fact, the story as a whole meant nothing to her when she first read it.
But now it meant a whole lot. Not only because the mayor’s husband was sleeping with her best friend, but also because the mayor’s husband quite possibly murdered her best friend. Though she had no direct proof of that yet, the video she just watched provided some pretty damning evidence.
It was now up to her to do with that evidence what Julia couldn’t.
But how? There was no smoking gun. Short of that, anything she took to the police, including this video, would be viewed as strictly circumstantial. Even if there was enough evidence in Julia’s files to connect Elliott Richmond to some kind of political or financial wrongdoing, there is nothing that ties him directly to her murder. Camille could give a damn about his political life. Richmond deserved to hang, not spend fifteen years in a country club with prison bars.
There was also the small matter of Richmond being the mayor’s husband. Camille could very well find someone in the department willing to listen to her, but there would be two hundred others ready to laugh her and her video right out of station.
From what she read in the article, Mayor Richmond was a popular incumbent; a two-term Democrat who also happened to be a former state judge and city council member. Her law and order background undoubtedly garnered respect with the police who called her boss. It also meant that Camille would need a lot more than this video and a few Excel spreadsheets to convince anyone in the DPD that the husband of his popular mayor was capable of murder.
Unsure of her next move, Camille decided to find out more about Elliott Richmond. A Google search yielded endless references to him as Denver’s ‘First Man’. As Camille dug deeper, she learned that he has been his wife’s senior political strategist since she took office, and was currently managing her senate campaign. Prior to his wife’s election as mayor, he was a Senior Vice-President for Guaranty Bank & Trust, as well as a board member of the Schumann Investment Group,
a high profile financial investment firm. Various websites also touted his philanthropic efforts – one even pushing for his appointment as the next superintendent of the Denver public school district, based on his “unparalleled dedication to the educational advancement of the city’s children.”
Camille looked hard, but there was not a single word about Elliott Richmond the philandering murderer. That news story had yet to break.
If Camille had her way, it would very soon.
But she had to proceed with caution. There were still too many unknowns, including how Julia came upon the files in the first place. Neither the video nor Julia’s copious notes provided any clues. The last thing Camille wanted to do was make this information public without understanding the full extent of exactly what she was making public.
Then there was the video itself and the inherent issues that came with releasing it. The fact of the matter was that none of it made Julia look good, and Camille feared that the further it went, the more likely it would be that Julia the victim would morph into Julia the villain; portrayed as some bitter, conniving home-wrecker who made videotapes with the men she slept with in order to blackmail them. Camille knew she could never let that perception take hold.
As much as she wanted to honor Julia’s privacy, Camille needed to bring someone else into this. Her father was the smartest cop she had ever known, and if anyone would know how to work through this, it would be him. But he was too close to the situation to be of any objective use. The same went for Julia’s sister.
That left only one viable option.
Though she still had questions about Detective Sullivan, one thing Camille couldn’t deny was her desire to solve this case. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure if she could say the same about Graham, and that made her nervous. In reality, she wasn’t sure if she could trust either of them as far as she could throw them. But right now she didn’t have much choice.
She kept her thoughts on Sullivan as she searched the house for her card. Despite a rocky first impression, Camille felt a connection with her almost immediately. It was the kind of connection that can only exist between cops who were cut from the same cloth, though she speculated that Sullivan was made of much tougher stuff than she ever was.
When the detective answered on the first ring, Camille could only pray that her speculation was true.
CHAPTER 29
For the second time in a week, Camille found herself in the detective bureau’s conference room. When she walked in behind Sullivan and Graham she noticed a small camera hanging from the ceiling just above the door. She hadn’t noticed it before, then she realized that was probably by design. This conference room most likely doubled as an interrogation room. Camille had seen more than her share of those, but she never had the full experience of sitting in the other chair until today. She didn’t like the feeling one bit.
This time around, Graham didn’t offer any doughnuts, though Sullivan did offer a diet Coke from the vending machine, which Camille accepted. She opened the can and took a couple of sips, waiting for one of them to say something.
“First off, thank you for contacting us,” Sullivan began. “How have you been holding up through everything?”
Even though Sullivan’s question seemed to come from a place of genuine concern, Camille could only answer with a shrug.
Sullivan communicated her understanding with nod then looked at Graham.
“So I understand you have some new information regarding Julia,” he said flatly. There was no manila folder in front of him now, nor did he pull out his notepad. If Camille didn’t know any better, she would think he was completely disinterested.
She pushed the thought out of her mind and unzipped the messenger bag she brought with her. From it she pulled out her own manila folder and set it down on the table.
“It’s hard to even know where to start,” she said as she opened the folder.
Sullivan eyed it closely. “Just start from the beginning.”
Camille took a long breath, giving herself the time to find the right words. “This morning I got a phone call from Julia’s lawyer following the reading of her will. Apparently she had left some things for me and I needed to go to his office to claim them. When I got there I learned that she had also left something that was not an official part of the will, but was only to be opened by me in the event of her…” Camille couldn’t even finish the sentence in her mind.
Sullivan leaned forward in her chair as Camille took the envelope out of the folder. “What was it?” she asked.
Camille explained Julia’s instructions, the note, the safe deposit box key, and the fact Julia had given them to her lawyer less than twenty-four hours before her murder.
Sullivan looked Graham who had noticeably perked up, then asked Camille: “What did the note say?”
Camille pulled it out of the folder. Even though Graham was sitting right next to her, she slid it across the table to Sullivan.
She eyed it closely. “You’re positive this is her handwriting?”
“Absolutely.”
When Sullivan finished reading, she let out an audible sigh and passed the note to Graham.
“What did she mean when she said ‘I never wanted you to read it. Because if you are, it means only one thing’?” Sullivan asked.
Camille hesitated. The words were in her head but she was afraid to give voice to them. “Do you want me to be completely honest?” Camille knew that was a silly thing to say. She was stalling again.
“Obviously we do,” Graham said as he looked up from the note.
“I think she knew something was going to happen to her.”
“She knew something was going to happen to her? Like what?” Sullivan asked
Camille pressed her palms against the edge of the table. “Like she was going to be killed.”
The two detectives shifted in their chairs at the same time. Sullivan looked at Graham with concerned eyes, while Graham appeared to roll his.
Sullivan leaned forward even further. “Say that again?”
“I think she knew this was going to happen to her, or at least she was worried enough about it to leave this note as an insurance policy.”
“Insurance against what?”
“Hold on a second. I’m confused,” Graham cut in. “The first time we talked you said that Julia was hesitant to talk to you. Yet she writes you this mysterious note? Which she just happens to leave with her lawyer less than a day before she’s found dead? That seems very coincidental, and frankly very strange. It would seem to me that if she genuinely feared for her life, she wouldn’t hesitate to tell you or the police. Instead she chooses to tell you after the fact through some cryptic note that she didn’t even give to you directly. Call me crazy, but something about that just doesn’t wash.”
As much as Camille loathed Graham right now, she couldn’t deny the logic of his argument. The unfortunate reality was that she had thought many of the same things.
“I can’t pretend to know what Julia was thinking, Detective Graham,” she said. “All I have is what she wrote down. And her words are pretty clear.”
Graham sat back in his chair, a look of frustration overwhelming his face.
“What about the safe deposit box?” Sullivan asked in her usual calm tone.
“That’s the main reason I’m here,” Camille answered as she pulled Julia’s second note from the folder. This time she gave it to Graham.
He began reading. “What is this?” he asked with a glazed expression. “I can’t make heads or tails of any of it.”
“The set of instructions I was telling you about.”
“Instructions for what?” Graham asked.
“For the computer disk.”
“Computer disk?” Sullivan said.
“The only two items in the safe deposit box were those instructions and a flash disk. The bullet items on that list are in reference to certain files on the disk.”
Graham looked at the note more closely.
&
nbsp; “What kind of files were on the disk?” Sullivan asked as she craned her neck to see what Graham was looking at.
“Hundreds of Excel spreadsheets with tables, graphs, voter demographic information, things like that. Lots of Word documents that looked like internal memoranda items. The letterheads were from the Schumann Investment Group and Springwell Technologies.”
“Do either of those companies mean anything to you?” Sullivan asked.
“I’ve never heard of either one.”
“So why did she leave the disk with you?” Graham asked
“I asked myself the same question. It didn’t make much sense, even with the instructions that she left.” Camille paused to gather herself. This was the part she was dreading from the moment she decided to make the call to Sullivan. “But there was another file on the disk. A movie file. Once I saw that, everything else began to make sense.”
“The same movie file that Julia mentions in the note?” Sullivan asked. Then she started reading. “Even though it’s the last thing I want you to see, make sure you watch the movie file first. Very painful and embarrassing, but it’s also very important.”
Camille swallowed hard. “Yes.”
Graham jumped in. “But wait, what does the rest of this mean?” He also read from the note. “You may recognize the man in the video, but if you don’t, all you have to do is turn to the political section of any Colorado newspaper. He did this to me Camille.”
Camille looked at Graham, then back at Sullivan. Both of their faces carried the same bewildered expression. She knew she couldn’t skate around this any longer. “On the disk, there was a video file of Julia with a man. For the first half of the video, they were having… they were intimate. During the second half they were arguing.”
“About what?” Sullivan asked.
“At first it was about their relationship. Julia wasn’t happy with how it was going and she let him know that. But then it escalated. They both started yelling and there were… threats.”
“What kinds of threats?” Graham asked.
The Strategist Page 19