by Rachel Lee
* * *
Jerry looked across the patio table at Grant. Grant's face was drawn. "I fucked up," Jerry said. "That's the bottom line."
"Yeah. You did. Things happen."
"Don't lie to protect me, Grant."
"I didn't lie. Plausible deniability, right?"
It had sounded almost sensible, in the abstract. Now, Jerry realized, it was indefensible. No, Grant hadn't lied. Not outright. Not yet. But to keep up his story, he would have to. And sooner or later the truth would out. It always did. And that would be the end of Grant Lawrence. That was not acceptable.
The doorbell rang like the sword of Damocles, drawn from its scabbard. It was only a matter of time before someone ringing that doorbell would confront them with some piece of evidence that linked Stacy's and Abby's deaths. Grant simply shook his head. Jerry rose and walked into the house, determined to hold the wolves at bay. He opened the door to find Damocles herself.
"Detective," he said.
Her eyes were like ice chips. "Is he in, Jerry?"
He thought for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah. He's out back, on the patio. C'mon in."
"Thank you," she said, almost silently, as he stepped aside for her to enter.
"Helluva goddamned day," he said as they walked back through the foyer to the kitchen. "Helluva goddamned day."
"Yeah," she said.
"Look, before you talk to him. He didn't know."
She turned to face him. Her gaze hurt. "You?"
His shoulders sagged. "He didn't know."
"That's not good enough," she said, cold and hard. "We need to talk. Right now. Let's go."
* * *
The first thing Karen noticed as Jerry escorted her onto the patio was Grant Lawrence. He was sitting with his back to her, suit jacket cast aside, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up. He didn't even look around to see who was there.
There was a slump to his shoulders that troubled her despite her anger. Not even Abby's death had made his shoulders slump that way, as if defeat were a foregone conclusion. Yes, he'd wept and grieved, but he hadn't given up. Right now he looked like a man who wanted nothing more than to give up.
"Grant?" Jerry said, "it's Detective Sweeney."
He didn't turn his head. "I was expecting you, Karen. Have a seat."
She rounded the table, her ire tempered by a sudden awareness of what this was doing to him. She didn't want to feel that. She had to remember she was a police detective on a case, not a woman visiting a friend. She grabbed for her focus and stoked her anger, suddenly aware that with this man, she would never be coolly objective. For the sake of the dead, she had to choose anger over concern.
She pulled out a wrought-iron chair from the table, brushing Jerry away when he tried to do it for her. She sat, facing the two of them across a surface of decorative wrought iron, a thermal carafe and cups between them.
Grant leaned forward. "Coffee?"
"No. Thank you." Her voice was stiff, hard. "Stacy Wiggins was killed in your house, wasn't she? And don't bother lying, because I'm having forensics look for a blood match right now."
Grant's gaze met hers. His eyes were troubled but otherwise opaque. "I suspect she was."
"Suspect? Who do you think you're kidding?"
He gave a little shake of his head and sat back, saying nothing. Of course he would say nothing. He was a damn lawyer, and any lawyer knew better than to say something to a cop.
"He didn't know," Jerry said. "Honest to God, Detective, he didn't know. He doesn't know. Because no one ever told him."
She looked scornfully at Jerry. "You expect me to believe you'd do anything at all without approval from him?"
Jerry's mouth compressed, as if he were holding in some fury of his own. "I do things all the time without checking with Grant first. There aren't enough hours in the day for him to superintend every action taken by his staff members, Detective. That's why he has people like me, people he trusts, to take care of things. This time I failed him."
"But you knew, correct?"
He lowered his head a bit, then lifted his chin. "Yes. I found the bodies. I found Stacy Wiggins dead in Grant's living room. And before I did anything else, I moved her body."
Grant drew a sharp breath, and Karen looked swiftly his way. The anguish she saw written there pierced her own anger again. She grabbed once more for it. "But you suspected, Senator."
"Yes." The word was heavy but clipped.
"Then why didn't you tell me? Do you realize how this affected the investigation? I can't believe your career is more important to you than honesty."
"Wait one minute," Jerry said sharply. "His career had nothing to do with his silence. You'd better get that straight, Detective. If you knew this man at all, you'd know I put him in an intolerable situation. All he had were suspicions, and if he voiced them, I'd go to jail. It wasn't fear that kept him silent, Sweeney, it was friendship."
He seemed to catch himself, then said more quietly, "As a lawyer, Detective, I also need to remind you that Grant was under no legal duty to report a suspicion. And trust me, I made sure he knew nothing that put him under legal obligation of any kind."
With that, Jerry stood up. "You have all you need to know. You can arrest me right now."
"I'm not done here yet."
Grant spoke. "Jerry…could you leave us alone, please?"
"No! I'm not going to have her twisting your words in a way that somehow makes you responsible for what I did."
"Jerry. Just leave us. Karen won't do that."
Jerry's glare bored into Karen, a warning; then he turned on his heel and disappeared into the house.
Alone now with Grant, Karen felt her anger being transformed into disappointment, a disappointment so painful that for a moment she couldn't even speak. She had admired this man for years, had believed him to be a cut above the rest of the political world, and now this.
"I may not have had a legal duty," Grant said, his voice quiet, "but I suppose I had a moral one. Except that morals and ethics can get considerably muddied when speaking out would send a lifelong friend to jail."
Karen marshaled a small measure of scorn into her voice. "Don't worry, he's right. You can't be arrested for failure to report a suspicion. But I thought you cared more for honesty than that. I thought you cared more for Abby than that."
His gaze moved to the gardens, where twilight was slowly wrapping the plants in gloom. It was dark enough now that only a few brilliant blossoms stood out like beacons.
"I loved Abby," he said slowly. "At one time I loved Stacy. And I love Jerry. Maybe I haven't been thinking too clearly since the murders, but I was worried about a number of things. I was worried about what would happen to Jerry. I was worried about what a scandal would do to my daughters. And there would be a scandal, Karen. There is a scandal, the very one I hoped to avoid for the sake of my daughters."
He turned to look at her. "You see, Karen, my political career, while it is important to me, doesn't hold a candle to my girls. I would have sacrificed anything, including life itself, to keep them from harm or shame or embarrassment. I have failed to do that."
In spite of herself, she felt her throat tightening. Professional detachment was now utterly beyond her reach.
"I'm sorry," he said, "that you're disappointed in me. But I will not apologize for protecting my daughters or my friend. Nor will I ever regret it, regardless of the outcome."
"What was Stacy doing at your house?"
"I have absolutely no idea. We broke up months ago. I wondered if maybe somebody got to her and made her let them into the house to get at my files. But I don't know that was the case. All I know is that she shouldn't have been there."
"Tell me about her," Karen said. It wasn't a request. She wasn't sure if she was asking for the sake of the investigation or for some other reason. It didn't matter. She had to know. And he had to tell her.
He drew a breath. "Like I told the press, we met when she volunteered for my campaign. The
re's something else you don't know about me, Karen. About my past. About…Georgie."
"I know that investigation was…quieted," she said. She spun between anger, disgust, pain and hope. "You were behind that, I assume."
"I was." He paused for a long moment, swirling a tumbler of Irish cream. His eyes looked as if gnats were landing in his lashes; he blinked in rapid-fire succession as he studied the fluid clinging to the sides of the tumbler. Finally he looked at her. "I found out she was having an affair. It had been…we had been…distant for years. I felt as if no matter what I did, I could never quite reach her, touch her, hold her, fulfill her. She would look out the window and go inside herself, thinking of…I didn't know what. I was busy, of course. Campaigning for office, then serving in office. Talking to colleagues. Networking. Taking calls from constituents. Answering a lot of their letters personally. I suppose I left her alone so much and so often that she had to go…somewhere else."
Karen listened, fighting between professional duty and her own feelings. The night was suddenly too dark, too damp, her blouse clinging to her skin.
"I tried to be everything for her," he continued. "The perfect provider. The perfect husband. The perfect father. The perfect public figure. I performed for her. And it wasn't enough. After the accident, when I was at the hospital, the doctor told me she was gone. I was in shock. It wasn't possible that she was gone. And I did a stupid, stupid thing. I thought maybe if I read the emergency room report, if I could see something, anything, a way to bring her back…Or maybe I just needed to see it, in cold, clinical, medical terms, to believe it was real. I don't know. I asked to read the report."
He paused, closing his eyes, the struggle evident on his pained features. "The doctor refused at first. But I kept insisting. Finally he gave in. One of the nurses had made a notation. An irrelevant observation, she'd probably thought. Just something she'd seen because she was trained to look and had written down because she was trained to chart everything.
"There was semen in her panties."
"Oh God." Karen's heart felt as if it were in a vise. "Oh, Grant."
After a long, shuddering breath, he continued. "She was having an affair. Was on her way home from sleeping with someone else. And I didn't want the girls to ever know that. I wanted them to remember her as a beautiful mother, as the angel I'd always seen in her. Whatever she'd done, she deserved that. And whatever she'd done, the girls deserved that.
"So yes, Detective. I talked to the doctors, and later to the investigating officers, and asked them to leave that part out of their reports. It wasn't relevant to how she'd died. Making it public would serve no purpose except to hurt my girls. They understood."
Of course they had, Karen thought. It was the kind of decision good detectives often made. She would have done the same thing. But what he'd done this time, or what he'd countenanced Jerry having done, that was something else again. She wrestled back to her focus. "And Stacy?"
"Georgie's death was a double blow. I'd lost my wife. And I'd also found out that I'd…already lost her. I was grieving for her. I was grieving for my girls. And I felt…" He seemed to search for the right words. "I felt like a failure. As a husband. As a man. And then I met Stacy."
She nodded. She could see in her mind's eye how it had happened. A beautiful, young, vivacious woman, in his thrall to the point that she volunteered for his campaign. A new light. A new hope. "Were you in love with her?"
He studied her eyes. "I thought I was. For a while. Then we both realized we weren't. I helped her with the loan for her studio. It's…ironic. It's almost like we were closer after we stopped being lovers. I could talk to her. I liked listening to her. I liked what I felt when we went out to dinner or sat around talking about her next recital, or some deal I was working on or my girls or…whatever. I wasn't in love with her. But I loved her."
"What you said in the press conference, about not having seen her for months. Was that true?"
He nodded. "I'd been busy here in Washington, with S.R. 52. She'd been busy down in Tampa, with her studio. We'd talked once or twice on the phone, but not for a couple of weeks, I guess. And I honestly have no idea why she was at my house that night."
Karen thought back to something Alissa had told her. "A friend of hers said she'd said something about an old client who'd been bothering her. Did she say anything about it to you?"
He thought for a moment. "No."
"But you were close friends. Why wouldn't she tell you if someone were stalking her?"
"I don't know, Detective. Maybe she knew I'd get involved and she was trying to protect me. But I just don't know."
It made sense. Stacy must have known how the press would have pounced if Senator Grant Lawrence had flexed some muscle on her behalf. Yes, Karen thought, that fit.
She wondered if she were trying to make things fit as a cop—or as a woman. Was she searching for the truth? Or for any tiny glimmer of logic and reason to reassure herself that she hadn't totally misjudged him, that her heart wasn't being taken for a ride? That he truly cared for her, and wasn't simply using his charm and charisma to short-circuit her investigation?
She fixed him with her eyes. "What exactly did you know, Senator?"
His shoulders slumped. "The night Jerry called me, to tell me Abby was dead, he told me Stacy had been killed, too. He didn't say where or how or anything, although I assumed she'd been there in the house, too. But I could never pin him down on it. And I tried, Detective. He's one of the few people I've ever met who is more stubborn than I am. And he was stubbornly determined to protect me, even at his own expense."
She would have to arrest Jerry. That much was certain. Or was it? She realized that if she arrested Jerry for tampering with evidence, she would have to distance herself from Grant. If she didn't, people would notice. Simpson would notice. The press would notice. And they would ask the obvious question: Why had she believed Grant's assertion that Jerry had acted alone? And they would find the obvious answer: because she was involved with him. Subtext: because she was a woman, and she was leading with her emotions. Not cut out to be a cop. Just like her father had said all those years.
If she arrested Jerry, she would have to cut herself off from Grant. She was stunned to realize that thought hurt to her very core. As a cop, she had no choice. As a woman, she had to find one.
Because she believed him. And she believed in him.
He seemed to see the thoughts play over her face and reached for her hand. She drew it away, closed her eyes and shook her head.
"I have to sort this out, Grant."
He nodded. "I understand."
"I'm in an impossible position here."
He nodded again. "I'm sorry."
She looked at his face and felt the weight of her father's derision, the weight of her professional duty, the weight of her innermost hopes and dreams and fears, crush down on her.
"So am I, Grant."
"What now?"
Gone was the cool, confident statesman. Before her was a lost, hurting man, seeking redemption.
"I don't know." She reached for a kernel of false courage. "But I'll find a way."
19
Art Wallace called Grant Lawrence midafternoon and left a message for him that the girls were fine, that the doctor recommended only some Tylenol and another day off from school. He said he would have the girls call late that evening, after he took them to a movie they wanted to see. He didn't talk to Grant directly, and that was as he intended. He figured the man was up to his ears right now in the scandal of those photographs.
Humming, Art left the pay phone and returned to the car. He could have used his cell, but he didn't want the girls to know what he was telling Grant. Right now they appeared to be napping, but you could never be sure of them. Sometimes they slept like the dead, and other times a pin drop would waken them.
They were all excited and happy. As far as they knew, they were headed for a vacation at Art's cabin in the Catoctin Mountains in faraway Maryland. T
he excuse given was that Grant missed his daughters too much, so they were all taking a road trip. Even the school, which knew Art as a trustworthy father and stand-in for Grant when he was out of town, accepted the excuse of a few days off, especially in the wake of Abby's death.
Art would have preferred to fly, but with airport security what it was these days, he didn't want to be so easily traceable. Not yet. Sixteen hours to his cabin, half of them already behind him. By the time Grant realized his girls were gone, later tonight, he would be only hours away from the hideout. And Grant didn't know where it was.
The thought gave him a rare sense of satisfaction. Very little in life had satisfied him, and getting even with the man who had always been a step ahead of him, the cause of his misery, made him feel better than anything had in a long, long time.
He was grinning into the twilight as the ribbon of highway extended before him, unrolling like a carpet. Senator Grant Lawrence, the man who had turned Art's life into a disaster. The man who had been first with Georgina. The man who had taken Stacy away from him. The man who had caused Art's own wife to leave, because he couldn't measure up to a senator, for chrissake. The man whose life was blessed by all the beneficent gods.
The man who was about to learn that even the charmed eventually had to face the gritty misery of reality.
Art laughed, keeping the sound under his breath.
Just wait until he told Grant the truth. The truth about where Georgina had been the day she died. The truth about Belle and Cathy Suzanne.
Then he would have the pleasure, the utter sweet pleasure, of watching Grant Lawrence dragged down.
How sweet it was.
* * *
Jerry reappeared on the patio, his steps loud in the silence that had grown between Grant and Karen. "Are you taking me in? Because, if you are, I'd like to get this over with."
"I'm out of my jurisdiction," Karen said, her voice even. "I'm not taking you anywhere. Nor was the crime committed in this jurisdiction."