“You should move in with me.”
She grinned. “My dad doesn’t leave clothes when he visits. He and my mom aren’t all that far away. They don’t sleep over often. You’ll have to pack and bring your own things.”
He leaned toward her. “He’s obviously watched you—followed you. Knows where you live. He may know where I live, too, but... I think my place would be better.”
They stared at each other and suddenly both smiled.
“It isn’t a pissing contest, I swear,” he told her, leaning back and grinning. “Nothing to do with the fact that I’m the senior agent. It’s just a professional precaution.”
“You have a point, but I think I do, too. First, Marty may well come and commit physical damage to you if you take what she sees as her safety net—me—out of that house. And here’s another point. If he does know about me and has some diabolical plan, have you considered the possibility of baiting him at my place?”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
She looked at him warily. “You’ll come to my place? That easily?”
He grinned. “I didn’t really care where—I just wanted you to agree with not being alone. So, now, back to plan. We’re on to see the congressman.”
He stood and waited for her. For a moment, she didn’t move. She just stared at him, and then she said.
“But we missed the appointment!”
He smiled. “The right people got it changed.”
“Really? You’re just telling me about it now? And what was all that about my apartment? You jerk!”
“Manipulation,” he said. “Good to use in interrogation as well. Jackson went ahead and tried to get Colin Smith to come in to answer some questions. Smith put him off, saying that he knew nothing, and he wasn’t coming into any law-enforcement agency—his constituents wouldn’t like it. Jackson told him he understood, and that’s why he had made an appointment that had to be adjusted. I believe Smith knows that if he didn’t cooperate, Jackson would have gotten a judge to issue him a subpoena to show up to answer questions in court. I’m sure Jackson was polite when they spoke—but that Smith knew he had to see us. We were a bit waylaid this morning—now it’s time we go to him.”
“Yes, it’s time we see the congressman. But, still, wait! You just wanted—”
“You to agree to not being alone. It’s fine with me if I move in with you for the time. We’ll clear it with Jackson. But yes, it’s me or another agent. You can take your pick. But—not being sexist—I don’t think we should single out any other female agents. In fact...”
He paused, a curious look on his face.
“What?” Stacey demanded.
“He hasn’t killed any males. Not in this manner, at any rate. But...the city is equally filled with healthy males.”
“Maybe he has killed males, too?”
“We’ll have Angela do a search of male murder victims in the area—DC, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.”
“Not just those who have been murdered. We need those who have been reported missing as well,” she added. “Though, if he is taking males...”
“He might have started with the homeless, the down-and-out men, just as he prayed on down-and-out women. Until Billie.” He shook his head. “That’s...off.”
“Off,” she agreed at nearly the same time. They were finishing one another’s thoughts. That was, hopefully, a good thing.
And yet she was irritated at how easily she’d been manipulated. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to have someone watching her back—until the monster was caught.
Except that Keenan Wallace would be in her home. So close.
Nope. Don’t think that way.
Surely, she could handle being in the same space as an extremely attractive male.
Aargh! She just couldn’t think that way. At least he didn’t find her as annoying as shoe-gunk anymore, but that didn’t mean that he had come to think of her highly. Or sexually in any way.
She gave herself a mental shake. “All right, let’s go. It’s one horrific game,” she said, “but...the game is afoot.”
He nodded gravely. “We’ll check in with Jackson and head on out.” He started for the door and then paused and said, “He wasted a kidney. If he’s selling organs...”
“I think we’ll find that it was damaged or diseased in some way,” Stacey finished grimly.
“We’ll known soon enough,” he said.
Eight
“I know you had an appointment, but it was supposed to be this morning. The congressman tried to fit you in—he wants to cooperate with and help the FBI, of course. But I’m afraid that Congressman Smith is busy now,” the woman behind the reception desk at the DC offices of Colin Smith told them.
Keenan had expected that Colin Smith would balk when it came time for their interview with him.
Smith was a public figure. A married man with a bad reputation he insisted was unearned. Stories spread quickly, tossed about by opposing candidates and rival politicians, whispered about between staff members, but remained hard to prove. However, he had been accused often enough, on social media mainly, of being a womanizer and an adulterer.
In Keenan’s mind, so much smoke surrounded Smith that, while many of his colleagues tried to cover for him, there just had to be fire.
“I believe he was informed that we were coming,” Keenan said. “He was asked to come down to my unit’s headquarters, and he refused. We understand. We’re here. But we’re not here to chat—or to complain about road construction. You can’t have missed the fact that a known associate of his was brutally murdered. We’re hoping he might know something that could help us catch a serial killer.”
“He’s—just busy. You should call his attorney,” the receptionist said, offering Keenan a card.
Keenan tried not to show his annoyance.
All field agents were given customary lessons in the art of interrogation. Keenan knew that a successful interrogation didn’t necessarily mean a confession, but a successful interrogation could provide some of the truth. Human behavior could give away so much.
Smith didn’t want to talk at all. That could imply guilt—or that if he wasn’t guilty, he did know something.
Keenan was already damned sure that Smith knew something.
The way someone waited in an interrogation room might mean something. The innocent often paced with confusion, wanting to know why they were there, and why they were brought in and then made to wait. The guilty sometimes became so anxious that they paced, twitched and knee-bounced until the adrenaline burned through them—and they fell asleep on the table.
Causing a suspect to wait and observing their behavior could give an agent or officer a direction to go with their questioning.
In Colin Smith’s case, the man would probably consider himself smarter than any officer or agent.
Keenan smiled dryly. Smith would enjoy turning the tables. Refusing to see them, or keeping them waiting. He couldn’t arrest or even detain the man—not for rumors or suspicion, no matter how rampant both might be, and not even on Tania Holt’s word that Smith was the “Coffee Boy” from Billie Bingham’s diary.
Keenan forced an easy smile, determining how to proceed, when Stacey slipped closer to the desk.
She gave the receptionist a sweet smile, leaning closer across the desk, her tone quiet and yet urgent. “Can you see if you have any sway with him? He really needs to speak with us.” She appeared distressed as she added, “The press is going to go wild with all this. And if it’s shown that the congressman has been nothing but completely happy to speak with the FBI, we’ll be able to say that he’s cooperating—which you just said he really wants to do. I mean, if it should be discovered that he was hostile and uncooperative—”
“He’s not being hostile. He’s busy,” the secret
ary said. But she appeared to be growing uneasy.
Stacey remained pleasant and concerned, her tone worried. “I’m sure I’ve stressed to you how much it means that we just have a quick interview with him,” Stacey told her.
The woman stood up, staring at Stacey. “I’ll see what I can do. I just know...that he’s busy.”
She walked toward her boss’s door, but it opened before she reached it. Congressman Colin Smith came out of the office with a young woman. She was about thirty, slim to the point of skinny, blonde and wearing a harried look. She clutched a tablet tightly to her chest.
Colin Smith, on the other hand, was on the portly side, with brownish hair—thinning, but he tried to hide it. He might have been reasonably attractive in his youth, but that youth was fading. He had become popular for a jocular charm, but even among his constituents—who hoped to ignore his behavior—the charm was fading as well.
He started to give an order to the blonde woman, but his mouth formed a silent O instead as he noticed Keenan and Stacey.
He looked at his secretary who looked helplessly back at him.
He turned his attention to the blonde, his voice booming as he said, “Thank you, Miss Bronsen. Now, if you’ll go and get started right away on that project for the animal shelters, I will greatly appreciate it. And now...well, are these visitors from my beautiful district?” he asked his secretary, before turning his attention back to Keenan and Stacey. He seemed to force his charming smile.
“No, sir,” his secretary answered with lightning speed. “I told them you were busy. They’re from the FBI.”
Smith tried hard not to change his expression. Despite his savvy, his smile did appear to be plastered in place.
“Well, goodness! A visit from our finest. I do have a terribly busy day and you were scheduled earlier, but, thankfully, some matters can be handled quickly. Please, agents, come on into my office. Let me see how I can help you today.”
Stacey glanced at Keenan. They’d gotten lucky. The skinny blonde woman scurried away; the secretary went back to her desk.
Smith held open the door to his office as if he was welcoming them into his home.
They walked in. He followed them and indicated they should take the chairs in front of his desk.
Keenan caught Stacey’s eye and she nodded subtly toward a credenza in the office. On it sat a very fancy espresso machine. Keenan raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment.
“To what do I owe this visit?” Smith asked. He didn’t bother with the pretense of including the pleasure of. He sat behind his desk, left hand resting upon it, and leaned back in his chair. He looked at them guilelessly.
“We do hate to bother you, Congressman Smith,” Stacey said easily.
“But your name has been linked with that of Billie Bingham,” Keenan said.
“And you’ve heard about her horrific murder,” Stacey put in.
“Of course, of course,” Smith murmured. “Those poor, poor women. And Miss Bingham. Yes, I know the woman. We’ve met on occasion. She did receive invitations to the darnedest places! I wish I knew something. I do. This killer must be stopped. I’m going to assume that you and others are spending every waking hour determined to stop this scourge. Not that we don’t have other matters of national and personal safety to be considered. Now, I do know others who would say good riddance to bad rubbish. But every man and woman born on this earth has a soul. So, if I can help you in any way whatsoever, I am certainly eager to do so.”
“You did know Billie Bingham, correct, sir?” Stacey asked. “I’ve seen you with your arm around her in a picture, I believe, in a magazine.”
Smith waved a hand in the air and managed a laugh. “Why, I don’t even remember what event it was at—but yes, I did meet her. I thought she was one of my constituents, just wanting a picture with me!”
“Well, of course, sir, everyone would want their picture with you,” Stacey said, leaning forward a bit. “I’m just curious, because the tabloids took off with it. Did you see her after, try to get her to...well, deny the allegations that there was anything going on?”
“No, no, no... You just can’t help what people say. I’m a public figure. There are always opponents in the political field—people who want to egg things on, you know?” Smith said.
“We were hoping that you might know of someone who was with her or did know her well. If you could help us in any way that might help catch the killer,” Keenan said.
He shook his head.
Keenan noted that Smith’s fingers were moving, one, two, three, four. Not tapping audibly but moving nervously on his desk. And he could just see past the desk that Smith’s leg was twitching.
“You’re looking for some whacked-out madman!” Smith said. “I don’t know any...insane people like that!”
“You’ve never been to Bingham’s mansion?” Stacey asked.
Smith turned to her with wide eyes.
“We just ask because a car like yours was seen there,” Keenan told him.
He didn’t really know if Smith’s car had been seen there or not—but it drew his desired reaction.
“You can ask my wife. I was home the night that woman was murdered. Can you really imagine me butchering someone in that manner?” Smith demanded.
Stacey quickly assured him. “Oh, no, sir! We were just hoping you could point us in a direction that you might know of someone who might know something. We have a witness who saw you at the house.”
She was sure that his face paled, but he gave nothing away in his expression.
The man was the ultimate politician.
“I don’t know what your witness thought she saw. But I’ve tried to help you. Now I’m done with this. If you want to speak with me anymore, I want my attorney present. And I suggest that you be very careful with your accusations.”
He shook his head stubbornly.
Keenan rose, saying “As you wish,” and thanking him for his time. Stacey rose along with him.
They left through the reception area; his secretary pretended to be working as they came out of the office, but she had been watching the door. She gave her attention to her work, as if she wasn’t watching them leave and it didn’t matter in the least to her whether they stayed or left.
When they were out into the hallway of the building, Keenan noted the other doors that were part of the congressman’s DC suite of offices.
“He’s lying,” Stacey murmured. “I’d hoped to get something more.”
“You did great in there,” he told her.
She looked up at him, as if surprised by the compliment.
“We probably went through a lot of the same training—Adam is big on his agents taking classes in every possible aspect of law enforcement. If you go in somewhere expecting a confession, you’re going to be disappointed nine times out of ten. If you go in looking for grains of truth, you’ve gotten something. We got some bits of truth.”
“And the truth?”
“Is that he’s a liar, and he knows more than he’s telling us.” He hesitated, looking at the various doors in the hallway.
“You want to speak to the blonde woman, right?” Stacey asked.
“I do,” he told her.
“We can open doors as if by mistake?”
“We can,” he said, smiling. “First or second?”
She was already heading for the first door. Before she could touch it, the door opened.
The blonde woman was standing there. She froze, staring at Stacey in pure panic.
“It’s all right,” Stacey whispered.
The woman shook her head, then nervously licked her dry lips.
“You’re afraid he’ll find you talking to us,” Stacey said. “That’s okay. We’ll go. You come on down. We’ll wait for you at the coffee shop on the corner.”
The woman nodded. She looked an
xiously around the hall.
But Colin Smith wasn’t coming out. He was probably busy making sure that his secretary warned him should the FBI be in his office again.
And his secretary was just busy being thankful they were gone.
“We’ll be there,” Keenan said. Not thinking, just in a hurry, he reached for Stacey’s hand, drawing her quickly to the stairway.
She didn’t protest; they hurried down the stairs together.
They didn’t speak again until they were headed down the street. He awkwardly released her hand, apologizing quickly.
“Not to worry,” she told him.
They walked on quickly to Cathy’s Coffee, a gourmet pastry shop on the corner.
“Let’s get some food while we’re here,” he said, surprised to realize that they hadn’t eaten and that she was probably as hungry as he was.
“Anything with meat and cheese and bread,” she told him. “There’s a table in the back, kind of concealed by a post. I’m going to grab it. Coffee—no, ice tea, please—and anything that looks good and not too weird.”
She headed to the table in back; he ordered.
As he waited, Keenan’s phone rang. It was Fred Crandall.
“I’ve been going over the video from that pawnshop,” Fred told him. “You can see the street, a car—and a man. I’m going to meet you at the station. Jackson Crow called me in to your offices along with Jean. Both departments are good with us teaming up for this—it is a task force, after all. He doesn’t want the info on the kidney Stacey received getting out—even among anyone who is immediately involved. We’re not giving this Jack the attention he craved from that. If it was attention he was after. It won’t make it to the media. I’m heading to your offices; we’ll get your tech to see what they can do with the footage from the pawnshop.” He took a breath and hurried on. “Your technical unit is better funded than ours, even if we are one of the most...well, prominent police departments in the country. Where are you?”
“We just saw Congressman Smith; we were approached by one of his staff. We’re going to talk to her, then we’ll be right in,” Keenan said. “You’ve seen the video from the surveillance camera, right? Can you see the victim?”
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