Capitol murder

by Philip Margolin

  The man stood slowly, unwinding like a cat stretching after a comfortable nap.

  “You fucking deaf?” he asked.

  Dana ignored him and talked to Cronin. “Talking to me now will let you give our readers your side of the story.”

  Cronin looked at the man and nodded toward Dana. “Jeff.”

  Jeff stepped around the desk and reached for Dana’s arm. Just before his fingers touched her, Dana’s elbow shot into Jeff’s nose with enough force to break it. Blood sprayed out of both nostrils. Dana hit Jeff in the crotch. He started to crumple, but Dana grabbed a clump of the bodyguard’s hair and yanked his head up before grinding the barrel of a snub-nosed pistol into his temple.

  “I’m off my meds, Mrs. Cronin, so I advise you to call off your dog before I start hallucinating that he’s someone who could actually hurt me.”

  Suddenly Cronin didn’t look so tough. She showed Dana the palms of both hands.

  “Let him go, please. We don’t want any trouble.”

  Dana backed out of the office and hurried to her car. She didn’t think Jeff would come looking for trouble, but she didn’t wait around in case he had a gun in the office. She was frustrated by her failure to get any information from Cronin, and it looked as though her investigation was at a dead end. Then, halfway back to the hotel, Dana got a brainstorm.

  The woman standing in the corridor outside Dana’s room was breathtaking. Her figure was all curves, her hair was silky blond, her eyes were bright green, and her lips were pouty and a marvelous shade of red. If Dana were a lesbian, as she had implied when she’d ordered her “escort,” she would have started panting as soon as she opened the door to her hotel room.

  “Mrs. Gorman?” the woman asked with a warm smile. This was a natural mistake, as Dana had used her employer’s credit card to pay, after explaining to the woman who answered the phone that she was on a business trip without Patrick, her hubby, and was interested in hiring a female escort who wouldn’t mind being a companion for a lady.

  “Come in,” Dana responded, flashing her own smile. The woman gave the room the once over. Then she did the same with Dana.

  “What’s your name?” Dana asked.

  “Cindy.”

  “Any last name?”

  “Crawford.”

  “Like the model?” Dana asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Exactly.”

  “What a charming coincidence.”

  The woman laughed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said. “I understand you want me to keep you company at dinner.”

  “We can cut the euphemisms, Cindy. Didn’t the service tell you that you were meeting a married woman with tastes her husband wouldn’t understand?”

  Cindy laughed again. It was a great laugh, and it made Dana really regret that she was heterosexual.

  “I’m an Executive employee who is employed frequently in these situations,” she answered. Then she looked at the bed. “Are we going to dinner?”

  “I was thinking more of room service,” Dana said.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Dana was beginning to enjoy hiring a high-class call girl. Cindy was so agreeable. Not like Jake, who always argued about where to go for dinner or what show to watch on TV.

  Dana handed Cindy the room-service menu. “What would you like?” she asked.

  “I’ll just have a salad.”

  “Oh, come on. That won’t fill you up, and we’re going to be talking awhile. I don’t want you to be hungry.”

  “Talking?” Cindy said, suddenly suspicious.

  “I guess it’s time to come clean. I’m afraid I got you up here under false pretenses. I’m a reporter, and I want to talk to you about Dorothy Crispin.”

  Cindy’s facade dropped and she looked stricken. “That’s the girl who was murdered.”

  Dana nodded. “She worked for Executive Escorts. Did you know her?”

  “Look, I’m not paid to talk to reporters.”

  “I did pay for several hours of your time.”

  “I’ll make sure you get your money back.”

  Dana took out her phone and snapped a picture.

  “Why did you do that?” Cindy asked anxiously.

  “I thought some of my friends at the DA’s office might like to see what a high-priced call girl looks like. They can probably figure out your real name, maybe even ask you out on a date to a real live grand jury.”

  “Shit. Give me that phone.”

  Cindy took a step forward. Dana tossed the phone behind her onto the bed to free both hands.

  “I hope you’re not thinking of resorting to force, Cindy, because I have a history of very violent behavior. Make one aggressive move and I will break your nose and jaw and make you look so unattractive that no one will want to date you for some time.”

  The escort hesitated.

  “That’s better, and you can trust me to delete your picture after we chat.” Then she smiled. “I’m also serious about dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Suit yourself. So, Cindy, did you know Dorothy Crispin or Jessica Koshani?”

  “I’m not talking about Koshani.”

  “Why not? She’s dead. She can’t hurt you.”

  “The people she was fronting for can,” Cindy said.

  “Who are they?”

  “Look, I’ll tell you what I know about Dorothy, but I’m not going to discuss anything else. I don’t want to end up dead. If what I know about Dorothy isn’t good enough, it’s too bad. You can do your worst. It’s nowhere near what these people can do.”

  Dana studied Cindy for a moment. She looked frightened, and Dana was pretty sure she wasn’t faking. Dana asked Cindy what she knew about Crispin.

  “There’s another girl. We work together if the customer wants a threesome. One time she got sick. She was in a bad way. There was no way she could date. So she called Dorothy and she did it with me. That’s the only time I met her.”

  “What was your impression?”

  “She was smart, nice.” Cindy shrugged. “We really didn’t talk much. This guy kept us busy.”

  “Give me the name of the woman who hooked you up with Dorothy Crispin, and I’ll delete the photo and forget we ever met.”

  Cindy hesitated.

  “I’m just going to talk to her, Cindy. I might not even use her name,” Dana lied.

  “Elsie Teller. She lives in a condo in the Pearl.”

  “Condos in the Pearl are pricey. She must do okay.”

  “She has family money.”

  “Then why work as an escort?”

  “Elsie likes to live on the edge.”

  “And you?”

  Cindy blushed and broke eye contact. “I’m not smart like Elsie or Dorothy.” She ran her hands down her body. “This is all I’ve got to work with.” She looked up and embarrassment was replaced by determination. “And I do okay with what I’ve got.”

  E lsie Teller lived in the Pearl, a former warehouse district that had been redeveloped into an upscale section of Portland populated by people with enough money to afford the restaurants, art galleries, and six- to seven-figure condominiums that had sprung up overnight. When the door to Teller’s apartment opened, Dana was expecting to see another glamorous version of Cindy Crawford, but Teller looked like hell. She was barefoot and dressed in a faded Stanford sweatshirt and a pair of equally faded jeans. Her hair looked as though she’d run a comb through it haphazardly without looking in the mirror, she wasn’t wearing makeup, and there were dark circles under red-rimmed eyes.

  Teller stood aside and ushered Dana into the living room of a spacious corner apartment. While she waited for Teller to close the door behind her, the investigator admired Teller’s breathtaking view of the city. Then she studied the apartment. The modern decor looked like something conceived after much thought by an interior decorator who had been told that money was no object. Either the escort business paid really well, or Cindy had hit the nail on the head when she said
that Teller’s family was wealthy. Colorful abstract oils hung on stark white walls, glass-topped coffee and end tables stood before or next to furniture upholstered in soft pastels. It wasn’t Dana’s taste, but she knew enough to know that the apartment was decorated in very good taste.

  “Francine said you wanted to talk about Dotty,” Teller said. Dana guessed that Francine was Cindy’s real name and deduced that Teller was too upset to care about call girl protocol.

  “I do. I met Dotty. We talked for some time. She seemed like a good person.” Dana paused. “I also discovered her body.”

  Tears welled up in Teller’s eyes, and she wiped them on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

  “Was it bad? Did she suffer?”

  “Do you want me to be honest?”

  “Please.”

  “You’ll get this from the papers eventually. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. She would have suffered.”

  Teller threw her head back and wailed. Dana helped her to a sofa and held her while she bawled. It took a lot to touch Dana, but Teller was doing it. She wished there was some way she could absorb Teller’s pain.

  “I’m sorry,” Teller said when she could finally speak.

  “No need to apologize.”

  Teller stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

  Dana watched her disappear around a corner. When she came back, she looked as though she had splashed water on her face, and there was a telltale trace of white powder under her nose.

  “You two were close?” Dana asked when Teller settled back on the sofa.

  “I loved her,” Teller answered defiantly.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Teller seemed to have run out of words. She looked around for a moment. Then her eyes came to rest on the wet bar.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked, fighting her sorrow by morphing into the role of host.

  “I’m fine, but feel free,” Dana answered.

  Teller opened a liquor cabinet and poured a healthy glass of very good scotch.

  “Why are you here?” she asked when she was seated.

  “Have you followed the news stories about Senator Carson’s disappearance and reappearance?”

  “That pathetic pig!” Teller answered vehemently.

  “You know Carson?”

  “Dotty did. She used to tell me what she did with him.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Dana said. “Dorothy Crispin knew Senator Carson in a professional capacity?”

  Teller laughed harshly. “Jesus, you can say that again. He hired her to fuck him, only that’s not what they did, according to Dotty.”

  “I’ve heard that Carson had odd sexual needs.”

  “If I tell you things, I want a promise that my name won’t be mentioned and you’ll try to keep Dotty’s name out of it. It would kill her folks if they learned she was hooking and she was a lesbian.”

  “I’ll try to keep Dotty’s identity hidden, but I won’t promise I won’t write about the senator’s sexual habits.”

  “ ‘Sexual habits.’ ” Teller laughed harshly. “The senator begged to be treated like a slave, a dog. He was into leashes, obedience training.” Teller shook her head and laughed again. “Can you believe, the same guy that’s deciding our nation’s fate likes being told to roll over and sit up and beg?”

  Dana listened to a detailed description of Dorothy Crispin’s sessions with the senator. She felt queasy by the time Teller finished.

  “Is there any way you can prove anything you’ve told me?” Dana asked.

  “There might be. Dotty never met a date at her apartment. Executive Escorts owns a condo a few blocks from here where we meet tricks who have special needs. There are hidden cameras in all the rooms.”

  “For blackmail?” Dana asked.

  “No, Executive doesn’t go in for that. It makes too much money playing it straight. If it ever got out that we were blackmailing our clients, no one would use us.”

  “Then why the record?”

  “Protection. If a john doesn’t want to pay or gets angry and threatens to go to the cops, one look at the way he looks in a hood and dog collar is usually enough to dampen his enthusiasm.”

  “And there’s a record of Senator Carson’s sessions with Dorothy?”

  “Definitely, only I don’t know where it is. The equipment was voice-activated. As soon as anyone entered the apartment, the camera and sound equipment would turn on, but Dorothy had no idea where it was. Neither did I. On the occasions I used the place, I always left with the customer. I’m sure someone got the tape or DVD or whatever they use, but I never saw it, and I don’t know where they’re kept.”

  “If you never saw the equipment, how do you know it was there?”

  “We were told about it. We were also instructed to make sure the john was facing in a certain direction in each room so his face would show up on camera.”

  “I would love to get my hands on the recording of Carson’s session.”

  “I can’t help you.”

  “And there’s no other way you can think of to prove he had a professional relationship with Dorothy?”

  “I’m not testifying or talking to the cops, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Without the tape or DVD, your tale of what Dorothy told you would be inadmissible hearsay.”

  “A professional call girl wouldn’t make much of a witness, anyway,” Teller said with another humorless laugh.

  Dana talked with Teller a little longer. Then she told her again how sorry she was about Crispin. Teller nodded. Dana guessed that she was too choked up to speak.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The next morning, Dana called Brad at work.

  “I’ve found a link between Jessica Koshani and Dorothy Crispin,” Dana said as soon as Brad took her call. “Koshani is rumored to be the owner of Executive Escorts, an upscale call-girl service. Dorothy Crispin was a law student, but she was also a prostitute who turned tricks for Executive.”

  “Can you prove this?” Brad asked.

  “Right now I don’t have anything that would fly in a court of law or anything Exposed can print without getting hit with a huge libel suit, but multiple sources have told me that your boss was one of Crispin’s customers and that he had some pretty kinky fetishes, S and M, bondage.”

  “That’s something I’d rather not know,” Brad said.

  “I was also told that Executive secretly recorded their customers’ sex acts as protection in case one of them tried to do something that would threaten the business. If Koshani had that type of leverage on your boss, there’s no telling what she could force him to do. Blackmail is a pretty good motive for murder.”

  “That’s a stretch, Dana. And wasn’t Carson with Dorothy Crispin when Koshani was killed?”

  “The medical examiner knows she was killed sometime on Sunday between noon and the early evening, but she can’t pin down an exact time.”

  “I know for a fact that Carson didn’t kill Crispin. He was in D.C. Clarence Little is a much better bet for both murders. He’s an engineer, and he made pretty good money. He could afford an upscale escort service. Maybe Crispin was the call girl Executive provided. Maybe there was something Koshani recorded in one of his sessions that could be used to convict him of murder.”

  “Good thinking, but I still can’t exclude the possibility that your boss was involved in Koshani’s murder. Do you think you can find a connection between Carson and Koshani? Maybe she gave him campaign contributions personally or through her businesses.”

  “Can’t you get that information from public records?”

  “I might, but you may be able to dig around in your office computers for records of back-door contributions.”

  “I won’t do it, Dana,” Brad said firmly. “Senator Carson is my boss, and I’m not going to betray his trust to help you get dirt on him for an article for Exposed. I’m surprised you asked me.”

  Dana didn’t respond right away. When she did, she sounded contrite.<
br />
  “Forget I asked. You’re right. I’ll try to get the information some other way.”

  “You know I appreciate all you’ve done for me and Ginny…”

  “Don’t apologize. Working as a vice cop and digging up dirt for Pat Gorman has given me an odd view of humanity. Sometimes I forget that there are people who aren’t sleazy and try to act ethically.”

  Brad laughed. “I’m no saint, Dana.”

  “You come close, Brad. And you better not change. Say hi to Ginny for me.”

  Brad hung up just as his intercom buzzed and the senator’s secretary told him that his boss was ready to discuss the testimony of a witness who was going to appear before the Judiciary Committee in the morning. Brad wondered if there was any way he was going to get through the meeting without imagining United States Senator Jack Carson bound, gagged, and naked.

  D ana Cutler parked in the shadows up the street from Jessica Koshani’s house. She wasn’t worried about being seen in Koshani’s upscale neighborhood. There were no lights on in any of the houses at two in the morning, and the mansions stood well back from the street, surrounded by walls. As soon as Dana got out of the Rover, a frigid wind forced her to pull her watch cap tight over her ears and hunch her shoulders. According to the readout on her dashboard, the air temperature was 39, but that didn’t take the wind-chill factor into account.

  Dana jogged down the street. She didn’t see any lights in Koshani’s house. When she was a few feet from the gate that guarded the property, she noticed a keypad. Bummer. She eyeballed the wall on either side of the gate to gauge whether she could scale it. When she turned her attention to the gate for the same reason, Dana noticed that it was slightly ajar. She breathed a sigh of relief. Dana bet that Portland police officers had been through the house at the request of the D.C. police and had forgotten to close the gate. Dana pushed the gate inward, slipped through the opening, and hurried toward the front door hoping that it, too, was unlocked. It wasn’t.

  Dana circled around the back of the villa to a large covered patio. On the other side of a brown winter lawn was the Willamette River, coal black except for the patches of water that reflected lights from homes on the shore. Dana was about to try one of the French doors when she noticed that a pane of glass had been knocked out of the next door. Dana frowned. Would the police break in this way?