“What?” Willingham cried.
“That is not true,” Barnes said.
“But it is, and we’ll get back to that in a few minutes,” Mahoney said, tapping his file. “Right now, it’s important to know that Kay was released from West Briar and finally called Belinda Jackson, who had just broken her hip at age ninety-two.”
I said, “She was on painkillers and out of it, but she managed to tell Kay about the notes and their location. It was late in the last campaign cycle. It could explain Kay’s meltdown as the election approached.”
Barnes said, “I want to see these documents. I have no idea where you could have heard thirdhand about Belinda Jackson’s crazy fantasy, but — ”
“From Belinda Jackson herself,” Mahoney said. “She lives in a rest home in Tallahassee. Hip’s good. Not on meds. Sharp. Another interesting thing? Someone else talked to Mrs. Jackson before we did.”
“Who was that?” Vice President Willingham asked.
“Kelli Ann Higgins,” I said. “A dealer in political dirt.”
“I know who she is,” Willingham said.
“Was, sir. She was beaten to death in her apartment not long ago.”
He looked shocked, then glanced at Barnes. “How did I not know that?”
“You were in Cambodia, sir,” Barnes said, shifting uncomfortably in her chair.
I said, “But you weren’t, Ms. Barnes?”
“No. I, uh, was here, working.”
Mahoney looked at the two Secret Service agents. “Were you part of the overseas detail?”
Special Agent Breit hesitated, then shook his head. “Not that trip.”
His partner, Price, the stocky one, said, “I remained behind as well.”
Mahoney said, “That helps.”
“With what?” Barnes asked.
He opened a file and pulled out a still shot of Special Agent Price walking down a sidewalk.
“That’s from a security surveillance camera down the street from Kelli Ann Higgins’s town house,” Mahoney said. “The day she died.”
CHAPTER 91
PRICE LOOKED CORNERED, BUT THEN he said, “Like eight hours before she died. I went and knocked on her door. Got no answer.”
I said, “Why were you knocking on Higgins’s door?”
Price glanced at Barnes, who said, “Because I asked him to. Because Kelli Ann was dropping hints that she had something potentially damaging to the vice president. If that was true, we wanted to know what this information was so we could prepare.”
Willingham stared at her. “You never told me that.”
She smiled at him a little coldly. “Sometimes my job is to not tell you, sir.”
“What else haven’t you told me?” he demanded, looking at Barnes and then his Secret Service agents.
Breit and Price appeared ready to say something, but before they did, Mahoney asked Barnes, “Have you told the vice president about your arrangement with Bobby Carson and the good doctors of West Briar?”
Willingham’s chief of staff swallowed hard. “I have no arrange — ”
“They’re all under arrest,” I said. “You didn’t think they were going to talk?”
Barnes said nothing but I could see the fight-or-flight reflex kicking in.
Mahoney looked at Willingham. “It was her idea to use Kay’s visits to West Briar to get Bobby Carson named as the heir of the old Sutter plantation.”
“That’s a lie!” Barnes cried.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “They’ve all turned against you, Ms. Barnes, said you were the one who thought the land should be logged and then subdivided for trophy homes. They also say you hired the professionals to take out Althea Lincoln because she was the one closest to Kay, the one who heard everything. She just didn’t count on Special Agent Mahoney and me being there when they tried to kill her.”
“Absolutely not!” Barnes said. “This is preposterous and I want a lawyer.”
“You’re going to need one,” Willingham said, looking at her coldly.
“You don’t believe them, do you?” she said.
“If he doesn’t now, he will in a moment,” Mahoney said, sliding another file across the table to the vice president. “That’s the formation papers of a Delaware shell company that owns two other shells within shells that all lead to the original partners of Sutter Development Ltd. They’re listed on the last page. You’ll see Robert Carson Jr. and Claudette Barnes as the senior partners.” Willingham rifled through the pages to look at the last one. Then he glared at his chief of staff. “I believe them.”
“Walter,” she said. “Mr. Vice President — ”
“Did you kill Kay and Randall Christopher?” he demanded and then he smashed his fist on the table so hard, several of the coffee cups tipped over.
“What? No!”
“You weren’t there?” he shouted. “You can prove it?”
“Prove it?” she shot back. “Of course.”
“What about these papers? Do you deny knowing about them?”
Barnes stared at the documents, now stained with coffee. “I know about them. I was part of it, and it was Bobby’s idea. But I had nothing to do with Kay’s death and nothing to do with whatever happened to Althea. Nothing!”
“I don’t believe you,” Willingham said. He turned to his Secret Service agents. “Since you two seem more loyal to Claudette than to me, I’ll ask you once. Did she kill them? Or were one of you two there in that schoolyard on her behalf? Or both?”
Breit held up his hands. “We didn’t kill anyone, sir. We followed them that night — Kay and Christopher — at Claudette’s request but ended the surveillance when we saw them drive into that schoolyard around three thirty that morning.”
“It’s true, sir,” Price said.
“Why in God’s name were you two following them?” Willingham demanded.
The Secret Service agents looked like they wanted to crawl away from the question and said nothing.
The vice president turned his glare back on his chief of staff, who said coldly, “Because you would not have done it yourself, Walter. Because you always had a blind spot when it came to Kay. But I didn’t. I saw Kay for who she was from the get-go: a threat to you, your eventual presidency, and the future of this country.”
Willingham tried to interrupt, but she waved him off angrily. “Wake up, Walter! Your socialite ex-wife was a loose cannon on her best days. And then Kelli Ann came calling with supposed whispers from Kay about your past prosecutorial misconduct. That’s why they were following her.”
Willingham stared at the table, drumming his fingers.
I took the opportunity to say to Price and Breit, “Two men in hoodies were seen running from the murder scene.”
“Not us,” Breit said sharply. “No way. There have to be videos of our Suburban in the streets around that school. We drove right past the school a good thirty minutes before they were killed, and we never went back.”
CHAPTER 92
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, BREE SAT on a bench in the hallway of juvenile court reading a newspaper article, Clive Sparkman’s big scoop on the arrest of Vice President Willingham’s chief of staff for conspiracy to commit murder and fraud in Alabama.
Sparkman’s article also described the letter from Kay to her father and other evidence that might have proved Napoleon Howard did not murder Jefferson Ward.
Willingham had told Sparkman, “My heart breaks for the families of Napoleon Howard and Jefferson Ward. Had I known about this evidence, had the grand jury known about this evidence, Howard might not have been convicted so easily and might not have died in prison. My heart also breaks for my late ex-wife, Kay, and for myself because she died believing I had willfully ignored evidence that would have benefited Howard, which is fundamentally not true. As for my chief of staff, Claudette Barnes, I will let the justice system in Alabama do its work before commenting further.”
“Bree?”
She looked up from the article, which I’d rea
d earlier, to see the cup of coffee I was holding out.
“Careful,” I said. “I don’t think I got that lid on tight enough and it’s hot.”
Bree set the paper down and took the cup. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” I took a seat beside her on the bench.
Bree tapped the paper with her knuckles and whispered, “Are you the anonymous source saying Barnes is also under suspicion for Kelli Ann Higgins’s murder and her own husband’s death?”
“Not me, but it makes sense,” I said. “If she hired hit men to take out Althea Lincoln, maybe she’d hire someone to beat Higgins to death. And maybe she was the one who hit her husband while he was out riding his bike.”
Sampson walked up. “Ned says they’ve agreed to talk.”
We got up and followed him into a conference room where Devon Monroe and Lever Ashford sat flanked by their mothers and public defenders. Bree sat beside Ann Dean, the prosecuting attorney. Sampson and I stood at the back with Mahoney.
Devon Monroe looked haggard and resigned to his fate after a night in custody. Lever Ashford, the taller of the two, had his head up and was taking it all in, acting almost cocky.
The boys told us that they snuck out after their mothers were asleep and went to a friend’s house on Fourth Street. Her mother had been away for the weekend and the girl decided to host a party. The boys did not leave until four fifteen a.m. and decided to take a shortcut through the school grounds on their way home.
“Who was the girl?” Bree asked.
“Dee Nathaniel,” Monroe said. “We were both kind of wasted, and we cut through the campus diagonally across the football field and went under the stands. That’s where we were when we heard, like, faint thuds. Four of them.”
“Like, they could have been anything,” Ashford said. “Not real loud, but enough that you could hear them.”
The boys said they continued walking out.
Monroe said, “I look way down the field and I see the front end of the car sticking out behind the dumpsters, kind of a little in the light, but not under it. So we walked toward it ’cause we had to go that way.”
Ashford said, “Straightest way to the alley and home. We were maybe forty yards from the dumpster, and we both saw this person moving in the shadows way off to our right.”
“Male? Female?” Bree said.
“Couldn’t tell,” Ashford said.
Monroe said, “But not a big, big person, you know.”
Remembering that Elaine Paulson had also claimed to have seen someone moving in the shadows near the football stands headed northeast, I said, “If the school was to your east and this person was to your west, what direction was this person moving in?”
Ashford thought about that, curved his right hand hard right, said, “Like, circling back away from us. North, I guess.”
“Northwest toward Dee’s home? Or straight north? Or northeast?”
Monroe said, “Headed back toward the football stands. I guess that’s northeast?”
Exactly where Elaine had said the person was moving. But did it matter when the gun that killed her husband and his girlfriend belonged to her?
“Back up,” Sampson said. “Did you see the bodies before you saw this person?”
Both boys shook their heads. Monroe said, “That wasn’t until we heard the car engine still idling and we came around the dumpsters to see them.”
“Close enough to see two dead people and decide to take their jewelry?” Sampson growled. “One of them your high-school principal?”
Ashford squirmed in his seat but didn’t look or sound re-morseful when he said, “I don’t know. Mr. Christopher … he — they were dead. They couldn’t use their glitter no more.”
His mother swatted his head, said, “Should have kept you in Sunday school.”
Sampson said, “It seems awful convenient, you two seeing someone flee the scene just before you decide to go grave-robbing.”
“No way,” Ashford said. “That’s for real, man. Tell ’em, Dev.”
“We saw someone going northeast, for sure,” Monroe said. “And, like, after we took the stuff, we were leaving, going through the fence to the alley, and we most definitely saw someone coming from behind the north end of the school. That’s when we ran.”
Ashford nodded. “Because we knew her.”
Bree asked, “Who?”
“Tina and Rachel’s mom,” Monroe said. “Mr. Christopher’s wife.”
Ashford said, “It didn’t make sense to us. I mean, I know she’s in jail for it with the gun and all. But why would she come back like that after she just shot two people?”
CHAPTER 93
OUTSIDE THE COURTHOUSE a half an hour later, Ned Mahoney chewed on the inside of his lip when I said, “They have a point.”
“And I have a murder weapon that you took from the hands of the killer!” Mahoney shot back. “Explain that.”
“I can’t,” I said, feeling my cell phone buzz in my pocket. “Can you explain how two reluctant witnesses describe the events of that night the same exact way, with the same third person in the shadows circling around to the northeast?”
“Elaine Paulson was lying,” he replied. “She was describing herself. She wasn’t by the side of the school when the shots went off. She was right in front of the Bentley and then she snuck around west and then northeast to get around the boys.”
Bree shook her head. “Why come back?”
“To make sure they’re dead.”
Sampson shook his head this time. “No. I can’t see that, not if she shot them at close range like an assassin would. If she’s the killer, she gets out fast and does not return.”
Mahoney said, “But other parts of her story don’t match. She told you she came onto the campus from the northeast. I looked at the bodega security footage last night. I saw the Bentley turn onto the school grounds at three forty-six a.m. and the Suburban with the two Secret Service agents go by a few moments later. But I did not see Elaine Paulson run by at all.”
Sampson said, “I didn’t see her either.”
“We’ve got the right person in custody facing trial,” Mahoney said.
My cell phone buzzed again. I pulled it out, saw a number I did not recognize and this text: Dr. Cross. Can you call me, please? It’s urgent. Gina Nathaniel.
Bree said, “Home?”
“Let me make a call first,” I said, dialing.
Gina picked up. “Dr. Cross?”
“I was just about to call you,” I said.
“Then you found her?” she cried.
My stomach sank a little. “No.”
“Dee went to bed last night around ten,” Gina said, frantic again, on the verge of crying. “When I got up this morning, she was gone. Not a trace. And she’s not answering her phone. I called the police, but they say they can’t do anything until she’s been missing twenty-four hours. Tell me this isn’t like Maya Parker, Elizabeth Hernandez, and the others! Please, Dr. Cross, she’s the only child I have!”
“Mrs. Nathaniel, I am on my way to you right now. Do not touch her room. And I promise you, we’ll find her.”
CHAPTER 94
THE STORY OF DEE NATHANIEL going missing exploded and went viral because she was yet another young woman to vanish in Southeast Washington, DC, in the past fifteen years and she was also a longtime friend of the most recent victim, Maya Parker. The media played up the fact that in the past, the killer had dumped his dead victims within forty-eight to fifty-six hours of grabbing them. If Dee had gone missing after midnight, she had between a day and a day and a half to live.
By four p.m., Verizon had given us Dee’s most recent data. Just as her mother had said, the GPS in the phone had Dee at home at seven. She’d texted friends and surfed the internet until 10:45, when her phone was shut off in the Nathaniels’ home.
She got on her laptop in her room five minutes later but used a private browser that gave us no history of what she did between 10:50 and 11:20, when the laptop was
put to sleep.
Sampson and other officers had gone in search of security footage and discovered that every camera in a two-block radius around the Nathaniels’ home had been smeared with Vaseline, distorting the footage.
“That’s the same play the killer made with Kay and Christopher,” Sampson said in the middle of the afternoon. “Maybe we’ve got it wrong, Alex. Maybe Christopher and Kay were shot by the serial killer.”
That threw us. Were they killed by the same person responsible for the deaths of Elizabeth Hernandez, Maya Parker, and now, possibly, Dee Nathaniel?
Sampson had to leave to pick up Willow around five and deliver her to Jannie, who was arriving at his house around six. We went outside the mobile command post to where Bree was talking to a crowd of people over a mega-phone.
“If you are interested in helping us search, go to Detectives Newton and Martin here to give them your name and phone numbers,” she said. “They will assign you a specific area to go and knock on doors. And thank you. Metro PD and Mrs. Nathaniel deeply appreciate your help.”
Sampson left and I waited for Bree. She came over to me, took a deep breath, and blew it out. “I don’t know how Gina Nathaniel is holding up the way she is. I’d be a basket case if I knew someone was going to kill my daughter sometime in the next two days.”
“So would I,” I said. “But she has hope and so do we. And I’m leaving.”
“Oh?” Bree said.
“I don’t think I lend much to a door-to-door search,” I said. “And I think Sampson might be right. The same person who’s got Dee might have killed Kay Willingham and Randall Christopher.”
“Where are you going?”
“To see the only person in this case who I absolutely know did not put Vaseline on security cameras and grab Dee Nathaniel last night.”
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