Damage Control: A Novel

by Denise Hamilton

  Paxton gave Anabelle a tentative look. He ignored me, but I got the feeling he was playing to me too.

  Anabelle had stopping banging her head. She stood very still, forehead pressed to the stucco.

  Paxton said, “For a long time the doctors prescribed pain meds, but your tolerance grows, and you need more and more.”

  I noticed he’d switched to the impersonal pronoun.

  “Oh, Daddy, you got addicted.”

  “That’s right,” the senator said cautiously.

  “Does it still hurt?” Anabelle asked, her voice high and soft as a little girl’s.

  “Yes. It’s hard to admit that. After all, I’m a war hero. A successful businessman. A congressman.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “So why can’t I whup this one small thing?”

  His shoulders sagged. “It really got out of control during the campaign. Sitting in planes and cars and airports. Sleeping on beds that were too soft or too firm. Always on the run. When my regular doctors finally cut me off, I found new ones.”

  Paxton ran a finger along the window, where a single ray of sunlight fell, illuminating the motes of dust.

  “I nearly got caught last year, when one of my Dr. Feelgoods was arrested for supplying drugs to a celebrity who OD’d in the Bahamas. Imagine the scandal if I’d been caught. Your uncle Simon had to fly out to Florida and pay everybody off.”

  The senator winced at the memory.

  “Simon was furious. He threatened to quit if I didn’t get it under control. We talked about rehab but it wasn’t a good time, politically. I told him I would do it on my own. I have an iron will. I’ve succeeded at everything I ever put my mind to. How hard could this be?”

  A long shudder shook the senator.

  “By this time it was getting almost impossible to find doctors to write the prescriptions I needed. But it had its claws in me. I was desperate. I wondered whether I’d have to buy drugs on the Internet like a common criminal. Would it leave an electronic trail?

  “One night after everyone at work had gone home, I locked myself in my office to count my dwindling supply and screw up the courage to go online. The door opened and Emily Mortimer walked in. I was so distracted I hadn’t locked the door.”

  He grimaced. “She told me later that she recognized the look in my eyes. Gloating over my little hoard. She’d had a boyfriend with the same problem.”

  “Jake Slattery?” I said.

  “She didn’t mention a name. But you can’t imagine the relief I felt having someone to talk to. She urged me to go into rehab, but I was too scared. What would voters think? My political enemies would attack me. And the party . . . My name had been brought forth as a potential veep nominee in the next election. How could I torpedo that? And most of all there was you, Anabelle. I feared it could derail your sobriety. I didn’t feel I could admit . . .” The senator hung his head. “What a hypocrite I’ve been.”

  “Go on,” I said. “About Emily. And how she knew your secret.”

  “I think in some weird way, she felt sorry for me, because when I ran out of pills, she offered to get me more.”

  “Weren’t you afraid she might blackmail you?” I said.

  The senator shook his head. “She didn’t have it in her. She was a good girl. She believed in me and she had contacts in that world through the boyfriend. Eventually it became an unwritten part of her job description.”

  I put a hand to my mouth as I played back the stricken faces of Emily’s parents in the car.

  “So Emily Mortimer wasn’t the drug addict?” I said. “Those pills in her bedside drawer, they weren’t hers, they were yours?”

  For a moment, Senator Henry Paxton’s eyes blazed like a supernova. Then he nodded.

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “Because we’ve all heard the rumors that Emily led a secret life—congressional aide by day, low-life druggie slut by night. Yesterday I read online that she was killed in some kind of drug deal gone awry. And I have a horrible feeling that Blair is behind these rumors. A little black op to defame a dead girl who can’t defend herself. All to distance Emily Mortimer from you.”

  “You can’t defame a dead person,” the senator said, almost reflexively.

  “But her parents! They’re shattered. Not only is their daughter dead, her reputation is in pieces.”

  “I’m sorry,” Paxton said. “But what can I do?”

  You can tell everyone the truth, I thought. But I wasn’t yet brave enough to say it out loud.

  “Could Emily Mortimer’s murder be connected to the drug deals she did for you?” I asked.

  The senator shrunk in distaste and shook his head. “She’d just given me my monthly supply. Besides, she was found naked in bed, not buying drugs in an alley.”

  “Maybe her dealer dropped by unexpectedly and something happened,” Anabelle said slowly. “An addict never has enough. That’s why you stole Randall’s pills. As insurance. And you hid them here in my old bedroom.”

  Paxton had the grace to look embarrassed. “I can’t exactly keep them in my bedside table. You know how your mother gets into things.”

  Anabelle refused to be drawn in.

  “Maybe Emily and her dealer argued about money and it turned violent,” she said. She gave her dad a disgusted look. “My own father! I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

  “I gave Emily plenty of money each month for the pills,” the senator said. “It wasn’t that.”

  “Then what was it?” I asked.

  The hand on the windowsill clenched. Henry Paxton pounded a fist against the white wood.

  “I don’t know.”

  For a moment, no one said anything.

  It wasn’t that, the senator had said. As if he knew the real reason Emily Mortimer had been killed. Was I imagining things?

  But something else had caught my ear.

  “Senator, where did the money to pay Emily come from?”

  Paxton gave me a cool, appraising look. “It wasn’t government money. No one’s going to charge me with misuse of public funds.”

  No, Henry. Just murder.

  “May I ask how you paid for the pills, sir? So I can be prepared in case it comes out.”

  “There is nothing to prepare, Maggie. It was private funds, transferred from an offshore bank account in Palau.”

  Here was the origin of the secret savings account that Fletch had unearthed.

  I wanted to drive away from that house and never return. I’d get to the office and tell Faraday everything and beg him to stop the smear campaign against Emily Mortimer, now that we knew the truth.

  But I could already anticipate the answer: Our client was Senator Paxton. Emily Mortimer was dead and gone. Better that she take the fall.

  I felt sick.

  Paxton pulled an ancient halter top from his daughter’s top drawer and methodically wiped down the bottle.

  “I’ll get rid of these,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to find this out, Anabelle.”

  “Where are you going to get your pills from now?” Anabelle asked.

  “Bernie Saunders knows about my little problem. He’s working on it.”

  So that accounted for Saunders’s particularly haunted look in recent days. His job now included procuring drugs for the boss.

  “And once this all dies down, I promise I’ll check myself into rehab,” the senator announced.

  I wondered if I’d be there too, and we’d wave as we passed in the hallway. The black humor of all this struck me and I suppressed the urge to laugh hysterically.

  Instead, I said, “So you’re not going to tell Blair that Emily was buying pills for you?”

  “I thought I’d made that clear,” Paxton said, frowning.

  Panicky butterflies fluttered up my throat, threatening to choke me.

  “You realize this puts me in an awful predicament,” I said.

  The senator’s upper lip twitched. “I suppose you’ll have to choose sides, Maggie.”

  I buried
my head in my hands. “It’s like I’m being pulled in two.”

  Then his hand was on my shoulder.

  “Go ahead and tell your bosses if it feels right,” he said softly. “You people are already spinning Emily as a sleazy young woman who consorted with drug dealers. You’re doing exactly what I pay you for, which is to control the damage and make me look good.”

  The senator paused. “And I’d imagine Mr. Blair will want to continue that strategy, so long as this doesn’t leak.” His grip tightened. “There’s no danger of that, is there?”

  My brain was a hollow, echoing void. I couldn’t look at either of them. I studied the floor.

  “I’m not going to tell anyone,” I said at last.

  “Dad’s right, you know,” said Anabelle, and there was steel in her voice.

  I looked at her, mouth agape. Not you too?

  Anabelle said, “It’s important for Dad to distance himself from Emily Mortimer. It’s too late for Uncle Simon, but he brought that upon himself. Dad’s fired him and hired new advisers, but of course Uncle Simon hasn’t really gone away.”

  “Of course,” I said, recalling Simon Paxton giving orders from the senator’s study.

  “If the police are investigating a drug link to Emily’s murder, all the better. That’s a dangerous world—I should know. People die all the time.”

  And what about your murdered husband, Anabelle? Are you closing ranks as a family about that too? What do the two of you know?

  “So can we count on you, Maggie Weinstock?” Henry Paxton asked, with false joviality.

  I looked at their sharp, expectant faces.

  Finally, I nodded.

  “That’s my girl,” said the senator.

  * * *

  I was sitting downstairs a half hour later when I had an idea.

  Opening my laptop, I typed in Raven’s name. Within seconds, there she was, my Corvallis nemesis, up on my screen.

  Rachel looked great, much better than she had in high school. She’d let her hair go back to its dark brown and she looked toned and healthy. And she was smiling. I couldn’t recall her smiling once in four years at Corvallis. On impulse, I went to Facebook and sent her a friend request. Then I read on.

  Rachel lived in Echo Park and had a large shepherd mix dog and was not currently in a relationship. She was a multimedia artist who showed at various Eastside galleries, and she made her living playing Roller Derby on a team called the Dollfaces. When I clicked further, I found that it was possible to buy glossy photos of Rachel, coffee mugs, pendants, and silk-screened T-shirts. The new ones were $17.95 and the used ones were more expensive, topping out at $39.95 for shirts with smears of blood from particularly energetic bouts.

  Reading her Twitter feed, I learned that she’d been offered a lot of money to sell her panties as well. She’d just returned from a tour of Japan, where the Dollfaces had battled the top teams of Osaka and Tokyo. Next week, she would fly to Europe.

  Suddenly, it seemed important to see Raven before she left town. Maybe she could shed some light on the Paxton kids. I composed a note congratulating Raven on all her success and asking if we could have coffee before she left on tour.

  28

  The LAPD released its autopsy results that afternoon, which brought the press out to the Paxton home in droves.

  And my fears from the day before came to pass as I found myself doing a stand-up outside in my clothes from the previous day that I’d quickly sponged and pressed with a hot iron before walking out. Faraday would have told me to borrow something of Anabelle’s, but I’d brought only casual clothes from her home and Miranda Paxton’s outfits didn’t fit. I could have killed him.

  “Seeing as how traces of the narcotic Vicodin were found in Emily Mortimer’s body, was there any suspicion inside Senator Paxton’s office that Emily Mortimer was using drugs?” shouted a reporter.

  “We can’t speculate,” I said. “Besides, you know that it’s a confidential, personnel matter.”

  “Come on, Silver, she’s dead.”

  “We are not going to get dragged into commenting on speculative gossip about Emily Mortimer’s life and death. What I can do for you, ladies and gents, is to read the senator’s latest comments.”

  I launched into Paxton’s statement, which I’d drafted, describing his congressional aide as a brilliant, kind, caring employee.

  “Was Emily Mortimer carrying Simon Paxton’s child?”

  “I’m not handling Simon Paxton’s case. And I’d like to make it clear that Simon Paxton was not a government employee. He was not employed by Senator Paxton, the U.S. Congress, or any other official agency. He was strictly an informal adviser to the senator. For a comment about Simon Paxton, I can put you in touch with Samantha George.” I rattled off her phone numbers and e-mail. “She will be happy to help you.

  “What I can say is that every man in Senator Paxton’s office—including the senator himself—has agreed to take a paternity test. We are awaiting those results.”

  Faraday bustled up to the mike and yanked it from me.

  “That’s all for today, folks. We’ll have more as things break. We’re doing our best to meet your needs.”

  Some of the press retreated to upload video and audio. Others, hopeful of some kind of exclusive if they curried favor, crowded around Faraday.

  With relief, I slipped inside the wrought-iron gates and began the long walk back up to Villa Marbella.

  I’d never experienced a bigger credibility gap between what I said and what I knew and felt.

  29

  When day turned to evening, Faraday took pity and said I should go home and get a good night’s sleep and a change of clothes.

  As I made my way along the hushed residential streets, I noticed a car following me. It was dark so I could see only the headlights, but it kept pace, hanging back at stop signs, then catching up.

  Was the Adderall making me paranoid? Maybe I should switch to a newer class of drug like modafinil. I loved the way the name rolled off my tongue, reminding me of an Italian Renaissance painter. The air force offered it to pilots on long missions, so how bad could it be?

  I took a quick right, then a left, and the headlights behind me did the same. They were high off the ground, which made me think of a Hummer or Ford Expedition. If the driver was running to the Village for dry cleaning or a bottle of Grüner Veltliner, it wouldn’t zig and zag after me. And there were more direct routes to the freeway.

  I sped up and the headlights did too. Now I was really spooked. The streets were shrouded in shadow up here in the Palisades, the perfectly landscaped lawns deserted, the houses hidden behind hedges and walls. Someone in a high-riding vehicle could easily force my little Toyota off the road. I’d probably be decapitated if it hit me, the cab plunging straight through my window.

  I drove faster, bulleting down Chautauqua, where there would be other cars. Safety in numbers. I made another left and plunged east on San Vicente. The traffic surrounded me now, commuters braking, inching along, talking on phones, tossing bagels to kids in the backseat, cursing the lights. I kept my eyes on the rearview and watched the cars turning right onto Bundy. Was one of them my tail?

  Fifteen minutes later, I pulled into the Blair parking lot with relief and killed the engine. I’d meant to go directly home, but what if my pursuer followed me there? I was safe here, protected by layers of security. No one could get to me. I’d run upstairs and grab the Holloway and Salazar files to reread tonight, then drive home after I made damn sure no one was behind me. I was just unbuckling my seat belt when a huge RAM pickup pulled in a few aisles away. Tyler was behind the wheel. He got out and hurried toward the elevator, then stopped, as if seeing me for the first time.

  “Maggie!”

  I locked my car and walked toward him on shaky legs. “Why are you driving that?”

  “Huh?”

  Tyler followed my index finger and his face creased into a smile. “It’s my brother’s. He had to go up to San Francisco
for a few days and wanted to borrow my car because it gets better mileage. So we traded. Pretty terrifying, isn’t it?”

  You have no idea.

  “Where are you coming from?” I asked, trying for a jaunty tone.

  “Sam and I had a meeting at Lambert’s to go over Simon Paxton’s case.”

  My eyes narrowed. “So why isn’t Sam with you?”

  He looked mildly affronted at my tone. “She wanted to take her own car. What’s going on, Maggie? You sound really pissed off.”

  “Did you follow me here from the Paxton house? Tell me the truth, Tyler.”

  “Whaaaat? I just told you, I was at Lambert’s office for a meeting.”

  “It’ll be easy enough to find out if you’re telling the truth,” I said, hurrying off.

  But not fast enough that I didn’t see Tyler shaking his head.

  “Jeez,” he called. “You better lay off that caffeine.”

  I hurried on, unwilling to admit he might be right. I also realized it wouldn’t be that easy to check up on Tyler. He might have had plenty of time to drive from Century City to the Palisades. But why would he want to shadow me?

  “Maggie?” Tyler called. I heard the slap of his shoes. But I was in the elevator already, and as the doors slammed shut on his fine-boned face, I felt a mean twinge of satisfaction.

  Upstairs, I sat in the office—still bustling at eight p.m.—wading through hundreds of e-mails and feeling that something had gone very wrong. Feeling fuzzy, I popped an Adderall. Only fifteen milligrams. The mist cleared. I wondered whether Thomas Blair knew what his VP was up to. Hacking into computers, staging publicity stunts, concealing information from the cops. Blair’s corporate mantra was “First, tell no lies,” but it seemed to me that Faraday and Tyler were violating it daily. Had Blair signed off on these tactics, or was my boss embarked on some rogue operation that would get us all fired, or worse? Imagine my distress, then, when an e-mail from Thomas Blair appeared on my screen.