Capitol murder

by Philip Margolin

  After Reynolds explained to Ali how to attach the dynamite, detonators, and battery so that the tray would be primed to explode, he slid aside two panels on opposite sides of the outside of the tray revealing two red buttons.

  “Each of you must push both buttons at the same time to set off the explosives,” he told the four men. “This way, no tray will explode accidentally.”

  Reynolds’s features hardened into a mask of hate. “During the game, you’ll carry your tray into the stands and inflict horror on the infidels. Remember, this game will be televised to American troops in their bases around the world. They will see the cost of their unholy crusade. We will bring their war home. We will make them suffer.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  After days of being raped and beaten, Dana was numb to almost all sensation. She no longer smelled the dank odor of mold on the basement walls or the stench from the foul water that pooled against them. She didn’t shiver when the chill air stroked her naked, battered body. She was dead to the pain caused by each thrust of the meth cook who was inside her.

  There were, however, sensations she was capable of experiencing. There was the tactile pleasure she got from holding the smooth, cool rounded glass of the broken beer bottle the meth cook had foolishly discarded in his haste to satisfy his sexual desires. There was the joy she felt when she drove its jagged edge into the meth cook’s face and watched blood erupt from his eye socket. And there was the rage that gave her the strength to slash his face and throat until he was dead.

  As the biker fell toward Dana, his lacerated head on a collision course with her face, she shot up in bed and screamed. It took a few seconds for her to realize that she had been dreaming. Dana fell back on the bed. Her breathing was ragged, and she was soaked with sweat. If Jake had been home, he would have comforted her until her night terrors smoothed out, but Jake was in Afghanistan, and she had to deal with her personal demons alone, in the dark.

  During her yearlong stay in the mental hospital, Dana had learned how to deal with the horror of her captivity and the insane violence that had characterized her revenge against the men who had imprisoned her. She doubted that she would ever shake loose the graphic memories of her days in captivity, but those memories no longer had the power to paralyze her.

  The nightmares had come less frequently by the time she was released from the hospital. For a while, she thought there might be a time when she was completely free of them, but they kept coming. At first, the nightmares had terrified her, because dreaming about the rapes was like being raped again. After a while, the nightmares made her furious, because the bikers were stealing a part of her life each night and she could not kill them again. Now the night terrors depressed her. They robbed her of sleep and left her exhausted.

  Dana walked into the kitchen. She was tempted to unscrew the cap from the bottle of scotch Jake kept in their liquor cabinet, but she knew better than to go there. Instead, she filled a glass with ice-cold water and carried it into the living room. She sank down on the couch, closed her eyes, and held the glass to her forehead. The cold felt good.

  Dana’s flashbacks and nightmares were usually triggered by stress. So what had triggered her dream? Was it her fear that something would happen to Jake? She loved Jake. For a long time, she could not tolerate even the thought of a man touching her. Jake had understood that, and he had been there for her anyway. It had taken her a long time to open up to him and admit that she loved him, because love made you vulnerable. Jake’s assignments were usually in places where violent death was common, and Dana suffered until he was home again and safe.

  And then there was her business, which was not going well. All of the notoriety she had gotten from the articles in Exposed about the incidents involving President Christopher Farrington and Supreme Court Justice Felicia Moss had worked to her disadvantage. She was too well known to go undercover, and she heard that some potential clients worried about the fees someone as famous as Dana would charge.

  The loss of income bothered Dana. She could not tolerate the idea that she wouldn’t be carrying her own weight in her relationship with Jake. For a good part of that relationship, Dana had lived in her own small apartment and stayed in Jake’s spacious house when she chose to. Jake had given her space after she was released from the hospital, and she had not let go of her apartment and moved in with Jake until she was able to admit to herself that she loved him. Although it wasn’t necessary, she insisted on splitting all of the expenses, and she worried that she might not be able to do that if the money from her private-investigation business dried up.

  Dana forced herself to think about Brad and Ginny to take her mind off subjects that were making her anxious. Dana had been a policewoman, and she was used to danger. Brad and Ginny were ordinary citizens who had become involved in nation-shaking scandals due to forces beyond their control. What she admired most about her friends was their normalcy. They both came from loving families and had been raised in middle-class comfort. Until the Farrington affair, their biggest problems had been grades, dating, what college or law school would admit them, and what job choice they should make.

  Dana’s mother had walked out on the family when Dana was a sophomore in high school, and her father had died of a stroke while working on a carburetor in the garage he owned. Money was always tight in Dana’s family, and she’d worked in high school and paid her way through community college by waitressing. She thought she’d found her niche when she joined the police force, but she’d left the force after being kidnapped and tortured while working undercover.

  Dana was exhausted, but she doubted she could get to sleep right away, so she turned the television to CNN. Two talking heads were discussing a story that she gathered had led off the evening news programs. From late afternoon until eleven, Dana had been working surveillance for an insurance company and had not watched any TV. The newscasters paused while they replayed a clip of a press conference that had been held by United States Senator Jack Carson.

  “Senator,” one of the reporters shouted, “didn’t you think about coming back to Washington when you heard about the murder in your town house?”

  “Our cabin is in a remote area in the mountains, and I go there to decompress. Cell phones don’t work up there, we don’t have a television or radio, and I’m miles from a store that carries newspapers. So I had no idea that Miss Koshani had been killed.” Carson broke eye contact with the camera. “I guess I picked the wrong time to go on vacation,” he said with an embarrassed smile.

  “Why was the murder victim staying in your town house?”

  “We’re getting into areas of national security here, so I can’t respond to that question. And now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  When the clip of the press conference ended, Dana was frowning. Something didn’t feel right. Brad had told her that Koshani was going to be a witness before a committee on which Carson sat. He put her up at his town house. Why would he leave before she testified? Then she shrugged. Whatever the reason, it was none of her business.

  D ana had gotten back to bed at three thirty. The phone rang at seven. Dana struggled out of a deep sleep and managed to find the receiver after the third ring.

  “Cutler?” a familiar voice said.

  Shit! Dana thought.

  “Cutler, wake up,” Patrick Gorman barked.

  Dana struggled into a sitting position. “You called at a great time, boss. I ran into Elvis last night pumping gas at a Shell station in Bethesda, and he said he’d tell me how he was abducted by aliens if I slept with him. This could be a big scoop. You want me to wake him up?”

  “Have a little respect for the fine newspaper stories that make it possible for me to pay your exorbitant fees,” Gorman answered, trying his best to sound like a gruff, old-time editor from a responsible newspaper. Patrick Gorman was the publisher of Exposed, D.C.’s most outrageous supermarket tabloid, and he couldn’t care less that he made his money by printing stories that only the most gullible readers wou
ld believe. He had also made a few pennies by running exclusives based on Dana’s inside knowledge of President Christopher Farrington’s involvement in a serial murder case and the attempts by an ex-CIA bigwig to rig the result in a case before the United States Supreme Court.

  “If you didn’t know I was screwing Elvis, why did you wake me up?”

  “Have you heard that Senator Jack Carson has surfaced?”

  “Yeah,” Dana said as she rubbed her eyes.

  “He says he was exhausted and went on vacation in a remote mountain cabin in Oregon to, open quote, ‘recharge my batteries,’ close quote.”

  “And you’re calling me because…?”

  “I don’t believe a word of it, so I want you to fly to Oregon and check out his story.”

  A few days in Oregon’s spectacular mountains, all expenses paid, sounded like a great cure for the blues.

  “My usual rates?” she asked.

  “Yeah, and I’ll have the corporate jet fly you there. I’m probably not the only newspaper editor with this idea. When can you leave?”

  “When can you fuel the jet?”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  A quick check of property records was all it took to locate the senator’s cabin. It was a few hours east of Portland and several miles up in the mountains on back roads, so Dana called ahead and rented a Range Rover with all-wheel drive. It was waiting for her when the jet touched down just before sunrise.

  Dana was wearing jeans, hiking boots, a flannel shirt, a cable-knit sweater, and a parka, because snow and freezing temperatures were expected in the mountains. She was also carrying a selection of concealed weapons, even though she wasn’t expecting trouble. Ever since her kidnapping, Dana never went anywhere unarmed, and her precautions had paid off on several occasions.

  Dana threw her duffel bag in the backseat of the Rover, set the GPS, and drove out of Portland toward the wilderness. The sun was up by the time she left the airport, and the sky was clear even though the temperature was hovering around 32 degrees. The ride down the interstate was boring, and she had time to think about Jake and how much she missed him.

  The scenery was spectacular once Dana got off the interstate, and it proved enough of a distraction to take her mind off of her troubles. Suddenly Dana was surrounded by a forest still bright green because of all the Douglas firs scattered among the leafless deciduous trees. Runoff from the mountains created unexpected waterfalls. Every once in a while, the road would curve and Dana would be treated to a brief glimpse of a towering snowcapped mountain through a break in the foothills. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the mountain would vanish at the next turn in the road, like the object of a spectacular magic trick.

  The elevation increased as she drove through the pass that took her over the Cascades, and a light rain turned to snow. In no time, the state highway looked as though it had been dusted with powdered sugar. Dana drove through a one-street town with a cafe, a general store, and a garage with a sign announcing that this was the last place to gas up for fifty miles. Fifteen minutes later, the GPS told her to make a left onto a narrow road that curved up into the mountains. The road was paved for a few miles, but the snow was falling fast and there were only a few spots where the asphalt could be seen beneath the accumulating flakes.

  Trees towered over the road on both sides, and the canopy and thick storm clouds made midday seem like dusk. Dana was glad she wasn’t claustrophobic. A slight dip signaled the end of the pavement and the beginning of a one-lane dirt road. The temperature was dropping as the elevation increased, and the thermometer on the dash put the weather outside in the high twenties. The Rover skidded twice, but Dana got it under control before any damage was done. The snow in the forest covered the bases of the tree trunks, and it was clear that it had been snowing at this altitude for a while.

  The GPS spoke again seven miles after Dana turned off the highway. She had to squint through the windshield to see the road because the pelting snow was fighting the wipers to a draw. If it weren’t for the GPS telling her to turn, Dana would have missed the slight gap through the trees on her right. A quarter mile later, a log cabin appeared.

  The trees had been cut back on either side of a wide driveway that led uphill to the house. Dana was not expecting problems, but one of the adages she lived by was “Better safe than sorry,” so she parked the Rover in front of the driveway in the direction of the highway so she wouldn’t have to turn if she was forced to make a fast getaway.

  Dana got out of the car and cursed when she stepped into a pile of snow. A frigid wind raked her cheeks. She threw up the hood of her parka and focused on the cabin. The driveway looked pristine. Dana thought of several reasons why there might not be footprints or tire tracks on it. Carson might have parked on the road, as she had, or the new snow might have covered the tracks. Still, shouldn’t there be some furrows in the snow?

  The senator was telling the truth when he said there was no reception, but Dana could still use her cell phone to photograph the driveway. When she was through, she trudged up to the covered porch in front of the cabin. Dana stamped her boots to shake off the snow that had accumulated on them. Before trying the door, she looked through the front window into a large living room with a high stone fireplace. There were no lights on inside, and the light from the sun was starting to fade, so Dana couldn’t make out any fine details. She walked to the door. It was locked. Dana took out a set of tools and picked the lock.

  As soon as she was inside, Dana sniffed the air. A musty odor pervaded the living room, the type of smell caused by dust and disuse. There were no cooking aromas, no scent left by burning logs.

  Dana found a light switch and flipped it on. The living room had a homey atmosphere. An Afghan had been flung over the back of a sofa that faced the fireplace, and a blanket graced the back of a chair. Throw rugs covered the wood-plank floor. There were no mounted animal heads, not surprising, given the senator’s dot-com, high-tech background, but there were original oils depicting forest and mountain scenes.

  Dana walked over to the fireplace. It looked as though it hadn’t been used in a while. She turned slowly, surveying the room. A thermostat was attached to a wall by the stairs that led to the second floor. The senator might have used the heater instead of the fireplace, but the air in the cabin was very cold. Dana could see her breath when she exhaled. How long did it take for warmth to dissipate in weather like this?

  Dana inspected the kitchen. The refrigerator was bare except for a half-full bottle of ketchup and a few cans of soda. The freezer section was stocked with two cartons of Rocky Road ice cream and a bag of frozen peas. She walked over to the sink. There were no dirty dishes in it or clean dishes in the dishwasher. She looked under the sink. There was no trash in the garbage can. It looked as though a housekeeper had done a thorough cleaning. In fact, the whole downstairs looked as though it had undergone a thorough cleaning. The senator could have cleaned up before he left, but it was hard to imagine that a cleaning crew had come up in this snow between the time the senator left and the time Dana arrived without leaving tire tracks.

  Dana went upstairs. The master bedroom and its bathroom did not look as if they had been used. Neither did any of the guest rooms. Dana decided she had seen enough. She took pictures of every part of the house. Then she locked the door behind her and returned to the Rover. On the way down to the highway, Dana thought about what she had seen. She decided that either United States Senator Jack Carson had a compulsive cleaning disorder or he had not been in the cabin lately.

  D uring her drive from the cabin to Isolation Creek, the one-street town she’d driven through, Dana caught a weather report on the radio and learned that the pass had been hit by heavy snows. Dana filled her tank at the garage on the outskirts of town and asked the attendant to help her put on chains for the trip back to Portland. While they worked, Dana turned the conversation to Senator Carson. The attendant knew the senator from his previous visits to the cabin but said he hadn’t seen him re
cently.

  Dana drove into town and parked in front of the grocery store. She asked the proprietor questions about Carson while she paid for the candy bars that would fortify her during the return trip to Portland. He hadn’t seen Senator Carson since the summer, and neither had any other shopkeeper to whom she talked. There was a cafe with Internet access at the far end of town. While she waited for her cheeseburger, fries, and black coffee to arrive, Dana set up her laptop and e-mailed the photos she’d taken at the cabin to Exposed. Then she called Patrick Gorman.

  “Did you get the photos?” Dana asked.

  “I did.”

  “I’m in a cafe in Isolation Creek, the nearest town to the cabin. Most of the people I talked to know the senator. He shops in town when he’s at the cabin. No one has seen him in months. I’d bet every penny you have that no one has been in that cabin for a while.”

  “Where do you think he was?” Gorman asked.

  “Beats me, but it wasn’t here. What do you want me to do?”

  Gorman was quiet for a moment. “Send me your report, and I’ll have one of my intrepid reporters write the story.”

  “Do you want me to fly back to D.C.?”

  “Not yet. If the senator were in Oregon, he’d have left a trail. Check into a hotel in Portland and do some sleuthing. See what you can turn up.”

  “Will do.”

  The waitress carried Dana’s food to her table, and Dana rang off. She typed her report between bites, then e-mailed it. By the time she finished, the sun had begun its descent, but the snow had stopped. Dana paid the check, slipped on her gloves, and trudged toward her Range Rover. When she had the motor going and the heater cranked up, she headed west.