by Marie Force
“And when you’re not working?”
“I sleep.”
“No one—not even me—is that boring.”
He flashed her a funny, crooked grin that she caught out of the corner of her eye. “I try to get to the gym a couple of times a week.”
Judging from the ripped physique she had been pressed against the night before, he put those gym visits to good use. “And? No wives, girlfriends, social life?”
“No wife, no girlfriend. I play basketball with some guys on Sundays whenever I can. Sometimes we go out for beers afterward. Last summer, I played in the congressional softball league, but I missed more games than I made. Oh, and every other month or so, I have dinner with my father’s family in Baltimore. That’s about it.”
“Why haven’t you ever gotten married?”
“I don’t know. Just never happened.”
“Surely there had to have been someone you might’ve married.”
“There was this one girl…”
“What happened?”
“She never returned my calls.”
Shocked and speechless, Sam stared at him.
“You asked.”
Tearing her eyes off him, she accelerated through the last intersection before the turn for the public safety parking lot. “Don’t say that to me,” she snapped. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do.”
She pulled into a space and slammed the car into park.
He grabbed her arm to stop her from getting out. “Calm down, Sam.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” She tugged her arm free of his grasp. “And save your cheesy lines for someone who’s buying. I don’t believe you anyway.”
“If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be so pissed right now.”
“Do you want to know what happened to your friend?”
With one blink, his hazel eyes shifted from amused to furious. “Of course I do.”
“Then you have to stop doing this to me, Nick. You’re winding me up in knots and pulling my eye off the ball. I need to be focused, one hundred percent focused on this case, and not on you!”
“What about when you’re off duty?” The teasing smile was back, but it didn’t steal the sadness from his eyes. “Can I wind you up in knots then?”
“Nick…”
Fixated on the drab-looking public safety building, he sighed. “We’re about to go in there and take John’s parents to see him laid out on a cold slab, and yet, all I can think about right now is how badly I want to kiss you. What kind of a friend does that make me? To him or to you?”
His tone was so full of sadness and grief that Sam softened a bit. “You were a great friend to him, and in the last twenty-four hours, except for the whole kissing thing, you’ve been helpful to me, too. Can we keep it that way? Please?”
“I’m trying, Sam. Really I am, but I can’t help that I feel this incredible pull to you. I know you feel it, too. You felt it six years ago—as strongly as I did—and you still do, even if you don’t want to. If we had met again under different circumstances, can you tell me the same thing wouldn’t be happening between us?”
“I have to go in now.” Her firm tone hid her seesawing emotions. “His parents are probably waiting for me, and I don’t want to drag this out for them. Are you coming?”
“Yeah.” He opened the door. “I’m coming.”
Freddie met them inside. “We’ve got the O’Connors in there.” He pointed to a closed conference room door. “And the Dems from Virginia the senator had dinner with the night he was killed are in there.”
Sam glanced back and forth between the two closed doors. “Will you take Mr. Cappuano and the O’Connors to see the senator, please?” she asked Freddie.
“No problem.”
She rested a hand on Freddie’s arm and looked up at him. “Utmost sensitivity,” she whispered.
“Absolutely, boss. Don’t worry.”
To Nick, she said, “I’ll catch up to you.”
He nodded and followed Freddie into the room where Graham and Laine O’Connor waited with their daughter and another man who Sam assumed was Royce Hamilton. With a brief glance, Sam noticed that both O’Connors had aged significantly overnight.
“Senator and Mrs. O’Connor, my partner, Detective Cruz, will take you to see your son. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
“Thank you,” Graham said.
With a deep breath to change gears and force her mind off the intense conversation she’d just had with Nick, Sam entered the room where two portly men sat waiting for her. She judged them both to be in their late sixties or early seventies.
Upon her entrance, they leapt to their feet.
“Gentlemen,” she said, reaching out to shake their hands. “Detective Sergeant Sam Holland. I appreciate you coming in.”
“We’re just devastated,” drawled Judson Knott, who had introduced himself as the chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party. “Senator O’Connor was a dear friend of ours and the people of the Commonwealth.”
“I’m not looking for a sound bite, Mr. Knott, just an idea of how the senator spent his last few hours.”
“We met him for dinner at the Old Ebbitt Grill,” said Richard Manning, the vice chairman.
“How often did you all have dinner together?”
The two men exchanged glances. “Every other month or so. We offered to reschedule that night because he had the vote the next day, but he said his staff had everything under control, and he had time for dinner.”
“How did he seem to you?”
“Tired,” Manning said without hesitation.
Knott nodded in agreement. “He said he’d been working twelve- and fourteen-hour days for the last two weeks.”
“What did you talk about over dinner?”
“The plans for the campaign,” Knott said. “He was up for re-election next year, and although he was a shoo-in, we take nothing for granted. We’ve been gearing up for the campaign for months, but now…” His blue eyes clouded as his voice trailed off. “It’s just such a tragedy.”
“What time did you part company after dinner?”
“I’d say around ten or so,” Knott said.
“And where was he headed from there?”
“He said he was going straight home to bed,” Knott said.
“Who will take his place in the Senate?”
“That’s up to the governor,” Manning said.
“No front-runners?”
Knott shook his head. “We haven’t even talked about it, to be honest. We’re all just in a total state of shock right now. Senator O’Connor was a lovely person. We can’t imagine how anyone would want to harm him.”
“No one in the party was jealous of his success or bucking for his job?”
“Only his brother,” Manning said with disdain. “What a disappointment he turned out to be.”
“Was he jealous enough to kill the senator?”
“Terry?” Knott said with a nervous glance toward the door, as if he was afraid the O’Connors might hear him. “I doubt it. It would require he get his head out of his ass for more than five minutes.”
“The O’Connors had their problems, like any family,” Manning added. “But they were tight. Terry might’ve been jealous of John, but he wouldn’t have done this to his mother.” Shaking his head with dismay, he said, “Poor Laine.”
“We saw them outside,” Knott said. “Our hearts are broken for them.”
“Thank you for coming in.” Sam handed each of them her card. “If you think of anything else, even the smallest thing, let me know.”
“We will,” Manning said. “We’ll do anything we can to help find the monster who did this.”
“Thank you.” Sam saw them out and headed for the morgue.
Chapter 11
Following the O’Connors into the cold, antiseptic-smelling room, Nick thought he had properly prepared himself. After what he had seen yesterday, he should have been able to handle anything.
&
nbsp; However, nothing could have prepared him for the sight of John lifeless, waxy, and so utterly gone. Nor could he have prepared for Laine’s reaction.
With one look at her son’s face, John’s mother fainted into a boneless pile. It happened so fast that no one was able to reach her in time to keep her head from smacking the cement floor.
“Jesus, God!” Graham cried as he dropped to his knees. “Laine! Honey, are you all right?”
“Mom,” Lizbeth said as tears rolled down her face. “Mom, open your eyes.”
Several tense minutes passed before Laine’s eyes fluttered open. “What happened?”
“You fainted,” Lizbeth said. “Do you think you could sit up?”
“I need to get out of here. Take me out of here, Lizzie.”
Lizbeth and Royce helped her mother up. Without another glance at the body on the table, they escorted her from the room.
“Are you all right, Senator?” Nick asked when they were alone.
His complexion gray, his hands trembling, Graham O’Connor fixated on the white bandage covering the neck wound that ended his son’s life. “It’s all so wrong, you know?” the older man said in a hoarse whisper.
“Sir?”
“Standing over the body of your child. It’s wrong.”
Nick’s throat tightened with emotion. “I’m sorry. I wish there was something I could say…” He kept his voice down so Detective Cruz, who was minding the door, wouldn’t hear them.
Graham reached out haltingly to caress John’s thick blond hair. “Who could’ve done this? How’s it possible someone hated my John this much?”
“I just don’t know.” Nick looked down at John, wishing he had the answers they so desperately needed.
“Do you think it could be Terry?”
Shocked, Nick whispered, “Senator…”
“He never got over what happened. He resented John—maybe even hated him—for taking his place in a job he felt was his.”
“He wouldn’t have killed him over it.”
“I wish I could be so certain.” Graham looked up at Nick with shattered eyes. “If it was Terry… If he did this, it’ll kill Laine.”
Nick could only imagine what it would do to Graham.
“Um, excuse me,” Sam said from behind them. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
Nick wondered if she had heard them speculating about Terry.
“Can I get you anything, Senator? Would you like to sit for a minute? I could get you a stool—”
Graham’s expression hardened as he turned to Sam. “You can tell me you’ve found the person who did this to my son.”
“I wish I could,” she said. “I can tell you we’re working very hard on the case. If you want to come with me to the conference room, I can update you and your wife on what we have so far.”
The senator turned back to his son and stroked John’s hair. Tears pooled in Graham’s already-bloodshot eyes. “I love you, Johnny,” he whispered, leaning over to press a kiss to John’s forehead. Graham’s shoulders shook as he clutched the sheet covering John’s chest.
Nick had never seen such a raw display of grief. After a moment, he rested a hand on Graham’s shoulder. The older man remained hunched over his son until Nick gently guided him up.
“Oh God, Nick,” he sobbed, pressing his face to Nick’s chest. “What’re we going to do without him? What’ll we do?”
Nick wrapped his arms around Graham. “I don’t know, but we’re going to figure it out. We’re going to get through this.” He glanced up to find Sam watching them with an expression of exquisite discomfort. Embarrassed by his own tears, he returned his attention to the senator. “Why don’t we let Sergeant Holland fill us in on the investigation?”
Graham nodded and stepped out of Nick’s embrace. With a long last heartbroken look at John, Graham headed for the door.
Swiping at his face, Nick followed him.
Sam directed them to the conference room where Lizbeth and Royce sat on either side of a pale and drawn Laine. Someone had gotten her a glass of water and an ice pack for her head.
Graham went to his wife, reached for her hands and drew her up into his arms.
Nick couldn’t look. He simply couldn’t bear to witness their overwhelming agony. Turning from where he stood in the doorway, he stepped out of the room.
“I’ll…ah…give you a moment,” he heard Sam say as she followed him.
In the hallway, she joined Nick in resting her head against the cinderblock wall. “Are you all right?”
“I was,” he said with a sigh. “I was doing a really good job of convincing myself, despite what I saw yesterday, that he was in Richmond or at the farm. But after that, after seeing him like that…”
“Denial’s not an option any more.”
“No.”
Soft words and sounds of weeping drifted from the conference room.
“I’ve never before felt like I didn’t belong with them. Not once in all the years I’ve known them, have I ever felt I didn’t belong…until in there…just now…” His voice caught, and he was surprised when her hand landed on his arm.
“They love you, Nick. Anyone can see that.”
“John was my link to them. That’s gone now.” His head ached, his eyes burned. Hating the uncharacteristic bout of self-pity but needing her more than he’d needed anyone in a long time, he sighed. “He’s gone…my job…everything.”
Sam squeezed his arm and then removed her hand abruptly when Freddie came around the corner.
Seeming to sense he was interrupting something, Freddie paused and looked to her for guidance.
“They needed a minute after seeing him,” she said. “Could you do me a favor and find Mr. Cappuano some water?”
“That’s not necessary,” Nick protested.
A nod from Sam sent Freddie off.
“You didn’t have to—”
“It’s water, Nick.”
“Thank you.” He glanced over at her. “How’re you holding up?”
“I’m tired.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Something else.”
She cast her eyes down at the floor and kicked at the tile with the pointed toe of her fashionable black boot. “I’m pissed. Seeing those people,” she nodded toward the conference room. “Others like them. Something like this happens to them and their lives are permanently altered. That bothers me. A lot.”
“You care. That’s what makes you such a good cop.”
“I don’t know too many who’d call me a good cop lately.”
Taking her hand, he saw that he’d startled her with his public display of affection. “There’s no one else I’d rather have on John’s case. No one.” He surprised her further when he kissed the back of her hand and released it.
Before Sam could chew him out for the risky PDA, Freddie returned with a cold bottle of water for Nick.
“Thank you.”
“May I have a word, Sergeant?” Freddie said.
“Of course,” Sam said. To Nick, she added, “Tell them we’ll be right in.”
Sam followed Freddie into the conference room across the hall and closed the door. “I know what you’re going to say, and it’s not what you think.”
“Guilty conscience, Sergeant?”
Since his question was accompanied by a teasing smile she didn’t remind him that she outranked him by a mile and an insubordination complaint wouldn’t look good on his record. “Not at all.”
“The financials came back on all the principal players.”
“And?”
“Royce Hamilton is up to his eyeballs in debt.”
Sam’s heart reacted to the burst of adrenaline by skipping in her chest. “Is he now?”
“There’s a lien on their house, which is mortgaged to the hilt.”
“And his kids were O’Connor’s likely heirs. Very interesting, indeed.”
“We also found a regular monthly payment of three thousand dollars from t
he senator’s personal account to a woman named Patricia Donaldson. I ran the name and came up with hundreds of hits, which I’ve got some people checking into.”
“We can ask his parents who she is.”
“Third thing, the tox screen on the senator was clean, except for the small amount of alcohol we already knew about. No drugs, prescription or otherwise.”
“Okay, that’s good,” she said, starting for the door. “One less thing to figure out.”
“Wait,” he said. “I wasn’t done.”
She waved an impatient hand to encourage him to proceed.
“They found porn on his home computer. A lot of it.”
“Kids?”
“None so far, but what’s there is hard core.”
She smoothed her hands over her hair. “Christ, can you believe a United States senator would take such chances?”
Freddie frowned at her use of the Lord’s name. “What do you suppose it means for the case?”
“I don’t know. Let me think about it. Any word on the warrant to search Christina Billings’s car and apartment?”
“I just checked when I went back to get the water and nothing yet.”
“What the hell is taking so long?” she fumed. “If we don’t have it by the time we finish with the parents, I’ll get the chief involved.”
“What about Hamilton?”
“After we get the wife and in-laws out of there, we’ll go at him.”
Freddie’s eyes lit up with anticipation. “Good cop, bad cop?”
“If necessary.”
“Can I be bad cop this time? Please?”
She shot him a withering look that said “as if.”
“I never get to be bad cop,” he said with a pout. “It’s so not fair.”
“Grow up, Freddie,” she shot over her shoulder as she crossed the hall to where the O’Connors waited. Before she opened the door, she took a moment to collect herself, to take her emotions out of the equation. She appreciated that Freddie knew her moods well enough by then not to question what she was doing or why. “Ready?”
He nodded.
Sam opened the door. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting.” She did her best to avoid looking directly at the four faces ravaged by grief as she took them through what the police knew so far, leaving out anything that would compromise the integrity of the investigation.