Capitol Murder Read online

  Chapter Forty-nine

  When Dana got home, she found copies of the Washington Post piled up on her doorstep. She dropped them on the kitchen table with the mail. Then she went to the bedroom, stripped off her clothes, and took a shower. Hot water pounded her body. She luxuriated in the steamy confines of the stall until she began to feel like a prune.

  Dana dried off, dressed in sweats, and went back to the kitchen. She poured a mug of coffee and checked her answering machine, smiling for the first time in days when she heard Jake tell her he was headed home. She missed him terribly, and she had worried about him constantly since he’d left for Afghanistan.

  Dana was about to look at her mail when she remembered the idea that had occurred to her just before her release. She looked up the number for Ben Mallory, Bobby Schatz’s investigator.

  “Mr. Mallory, thanks for taking my call,” Dana said when she was put through. “My name is Jaime Pavel. I’m a reporter with the Post, and I’m researching an article about the way people who lost relatives in the Twin Towers on 9/11 are coping, years after the disaster.”

  There was dead air for a second. When Mallory spoke, he sounded confused.

  “Why are you calling me, Miss Pavel?”

  “I was led to believe that you had a brother who was working in the World Trade Center on 9/11.”

  “You’ve been misinformed,” Mallory said. “My brother manages a Walmart in Kansas.”

  Dana apologized for taking up the investigator’s time and ended the call. She looked at the clock. It was the middle of the afternoon. Ginny was probably still at the DOJ. They needed to speak, but Dana didn’t want to call her at Justice, so she decided to wait and call after Ginny got home.

  Dana shuffled through her mail before opening that day’s edition of the Post. The headline TERROR SUSPECT MURDERED jumped out at her.

  According to the article, the body of Ronald Tolliver had been discovered by a jogger on a footpath bordering the C&O Canal. He had been shot, and his wallet was missing. Robbery was the presumed motive. Because there was no immediate way to identify the victim, it wasn’t until late last night that the authorities had discovered that the dead man had been arrested in connection with the attempted bombing at FedEx Field and released because of lack of evidence.

  Dana wasn’t surprised that Tolliver was dead, but who had killed him? Was it Imran Afridi or someone working for him? Was it the people who had kidnapped her? What did it matter? Tolliver deserved to die.

  What with following Tolliver and then her abduction, Dana had not read a paper or heard news reports for the past three days, so she was shocked when she noticed another front-page article about the murders at Senator Jack Carson’s estate. The story said that United States Senator Jack Carson, Carson’s chief of staff Lucas Sharp, and Brad Miller, a legislative assistant, had been attacked by burglars in Carson’s home. Dana’s jaw dropped when she read that Brad and the senator had been rescued by escaped serial killer Clarence Little, who had killed the three burglars before calling 911. Lucas Sharp had died during the encounter, but it was not clear who had killed him.

  Dana was thoroughly confused. Why had Little left Brad and the senator alive? Hadn’t Little killed Jessica Koshani and Dorothy Crispin to terrorize Brad or the senator or both? Dana grabbed the phone and punched in Brad and Ginny’s number. The answering machine told her to leave a message, and she told Ginny or Brad to call her. She was about to hang up when Ginny came on the line.

  “Dana, it’s me. The press has been driving us crazy, so we’re screening our calls.”

  “Is Brad okay?”

  “Not really. He’s out of a job, for starters, and he’s also the star witness for the prosecution in the murder and treason cases against Jack Carson.”

  “Carson is accused of murder and treason?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I’ve been out of touch, and I just found out what happened.”

  “Where have you been? This has been the lead news story for the past two days.”

  Dana ignored Ginny’s question. “Is Brad with you?” she asked.

  “No, he’s at FBI headquarters, giving a statement.”

  “Why are you home?”

  “Crawford accused me of leaking the transcript, and I’m on administrative leave.”

  “We have to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Can I come over?” Dana asked, ignoring another question because she didn’t know if someone was listening to the call.

  “Don’t. I’m besieged by reporters.”

  “I can get into the basement through the back door that opens into the alley behind your apartment building if you open it for me. I’ll call when I’m a block away.”

  “Tell me what happened to Brad, and what’s this about Senator Carson committing murder and treason?” Dana asked when they were in the apartment.

  “This isn’t public knowledge yet,” Ginny said before relating what Brad had told her.

  “Is Carson going to fight the charges?” Dana asked when Ginny was through.

  “Who knows, but regardless of how the verdict comes out, Carson is ruined. Little put the DVD on the Internet yesterday evening. I watched a few minutes before turning it off. It’s really gross. If that was me, I’d lock myself in my room and hide under the bed for the rest of my life.

  “Now it’s your turn to answer some questions. Why did you want to see me?”

  “I followed Ron Tolliver when he left the jail,” Dana said.

  Ginny’s eyes widened. “Did you see who killed him?”

  “No. I was abducted before I could.”

  “Abducted? By who?”

  “I don’t know. But I suspect the CIA or Homeland Security. I also think we’ve been used by the same outfit that grabbed me.”

  “Used how?”

  “Did Crawford act like a complete dick every time you dealt with him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He really made you dislike him, right?”

  Ginny nodded. Dana switched gears.

  “Doesn’t it bother you that you were transferred to the Counterterrorism section of the DOJ when you’d only been at Justice for a short time and have no qualifications to work in that section?”

  “It was strange, but a high school graduate would have been overqualified for the work Crawford had me doing.”

  “Collating 302s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Which put you in a perfect position to discover a transcript of an illegal recording authorized by someone you’d grown to despise.”

  Ginny frowned.

  “About the same time you moved to Counterterrorism, Bobby Schatz offered me the position of investigator in the Tolliver case at an obscene rate of pay. Before he made the offer, I had never met the man. And to get me on board, Schatz lied about why he couldn’t use his regular investigator.

  “Why was he so desperate to hire me, Ginny? And why did Crawford invite you to sit in on his meeting with Schatz and me? I think Crawford wanted that transcript delivered to the defense team. He knew how honest you are. He knew you were so new to the job that you wouldn’t have formed a hard and fast loyalty to Justice. He also knew that we were good friends.”

  “Hold on, Dana. Terry Crawford is in a lot of trouble because of that taping. He could lose his job.”

  “But he hasn’t, has he? And I’m betting he won’t.”

  “What you’re saying makes no sense. Why would Crawford risk his career to set a terrorist free? And what if I hadn’t given the transcript to you?”

  “If you didn’t leak the transcript, I’m betting there was a backup plan. Your other question is harder to answer, but I have a suspicion as to what the answer might be.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Ginny said.

  “You read the 302s. Why did the plot to blow up FedEx Field fail?”

  “The detonators didn’t work, so none of the explosives went off.”

  “Did the agents arrest the suicide
bombers before they got their trays or when they were in the stands preparing to blow themselves up?”

  “They arrested them in the stands.”

  “Why did the authorities let the game go on? Why did they let their agents go after the suicide bombers when they would be facing certain death?”

  Ginny got it. “They must have known in advance that the bombs wouldn’t go off.”

  “Which means that the detonators were meant to fail from the get-go. And that means that the FBI knew about the plot in advance, which means that there was a mole in the terrorist organization.”

  “Ron Tolliver?” Ginny said.

  “That’s my guess.”

  Ginny paused and mentally reviewed everything she’d read about the case.

  “Do you know how Tolliver was caught?” Ginny asked.

  “No.”

  “It was blind luck. One of the suicide bombers had a head for numbers, and he memorized the license plate of Tolliver’s car. That led the FBI to Tolliver’s house. But here’s the weird thing: After he was in custody, Tolliver wasn’t taken to the place they were keeping the other members of the cell. That’s some secret facility. I have no idea where it is. Instead, Tolliver was brought to the DOJ for interrogation. Bobby Schatz would not have been able to get to Tolliver if he was being held at a secret prison, but locking him up at the DOJ makes perfect sense if we were set up.”

  “The people running Tolliver had to figure out a way to get rid of the charges so he could get back on the inside of Imran Afridi’s organization,” Dana said. “Schatz never told me who hired him in the middle of the night and told him Tolliver was being held at the DOJ. I’m betting it was someone in the government who knew Tolliver was the mole, and I’m betting the government made a deal with Schatz.”

  “The plan to get Tolliver out worked, but they miscalculated, and he was killed,” Ginny said.

  Dana sighed. “That’s probably what happened, but we’ll never know the truth unless someone writes about the case in his memoirs.”

  “Not necessarily,” Ginny said. “Let’s see what happens to Terry Crawford. If he’s hung out to dry, we’re probably wrong and he taped the attorney-client conference out of zealousness. If good things happen to Counselor Crawford somewhere down the line, we’ll know we’re right.”

  Chapter Fifty

  One advantage of being from old wealth and a graduate of the best schools was the ease with which one was able to gain membership in the best clubs. Terrence Crawford had graduated from Princeton and Yale and had been born into a family that traced its roots to the winning side of the American Revolutionary War, which explained why he was a member of one of New York’s most exclusive clubs. The brownstone was three quarters of a block off Fifth Avenue on a side street near the Guggenheim Museum. There was no plaque affixed to the door. If you were a member of the club, you knew where it was located. If you were not a member, you did not need to know.

  A servant opened the front door. It had snowed in Manhattan, and Crawford stomped on the welcome mat in the vestibule to shake off the snow that adhered to his shoes.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Crawford. We haven’t seen you in a while,” the doorman said.

  “I’ve been too busy to get up, Frederick.”

  “Well, it’s good to see you again. Your guests are waiting in the library on the second floor.”

  It would have been too risky for the three men to get together in Washington, D.C. Meeting at Crawford’s club assured that they would be shielded from prying eyes. Crawford handed Frederick his overcoat and took the stairs. Portraits of a few of the club’s more venerable members graced the walls of the second-floor corridor. There were two past American presidents, a former Supreme Court justice, and the founders of two of America’s largest corporations. Halfway down the hall, Crawford opened a door into a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

  Crawford’s guests were sitting in high-backed armchairs upholstered in maroon leather, warming themselves in front of the fire that had been laid in a stone fireplace.

  “Sorry, my flight was delayed,” Crawford said. “The weather.”

  There was a carafe of aged Cognac and an empty glass standing on an end table. Crawford saw that his guests had been imbibing, so he filled his glass and settled in a third armchair.

  “To a successful end to a brilliant plan,” Bobby Schatz said as he and Crawford raised a glass toward Dr. Emil Ibanescu, the deputy director of national intelligence.

  “A plan that could not have succeeded without your cooperation,” Ibanescu said as he raised his glass of amber liquid and returned his companions’ salute. “The United States owes a debt to both of you, although, Terry, you may have to wait to receive the praise you deserve.”

  “I’m a patriot, Emil. I was never in this for a reward. But I know Bobby’s making out like a bandit. I hear Senator Carson hired you, and I bet he’s not the only scumbag who is going to throw a retainer at you, now that the media is reporting your part in gaining a dismissal for one of history’s most heinous traitors.”

  Schatz smiled. “Come on, Terry, give me a break. There’s no one here but us coconspirators.”

  Crawford laughed. “I’m yanking your chain, Bobby. If you hadn’t come in with us, we could never have pulled this off.”

  “Are you certain your man is safe?” Schatz asked Ibanescu.

  Ibanescu shrugged. “We can never be sure. Things go wrong all the time. I fed Carson misinformation at the meeting of the SSCI to make him think we didn’t know that FedEx Field was Afridi’s target. We wanted Koshani to think we were in the dark. Who knew Lucas Sharp would kill her? And who knew Ali Bashar had that kind of mind? All I do know is that we’ve done everything we can to make sure our man is still in place. His information saved thousands, but Afridi will try again, and we can only pray he’ll come through for us the next time.”

  Crawford was about to respond when Frederick held open the door for a visitor.

  “Your investigator, Mr. Schatz,” the doorman informed the defense attorney. “She said it was urgent.”

  Dana walked into the room.

  “What the fuck?” Crawford yelled as he jumped to his feet.

  Suddenly, Frederick looked unsure of himself. He turned to Crawford. “She gave me a card. It says she works for Mr. Schatz. Is there a problem, sir?”

  Crawford looked as though he was going to say something. Then he changed his mind. “It’s okay, Frederick. Thanks.”

  “What are you doing here?” Crawford demanded as soon as the door closed.

  “I’m here to give you gentlemen a chance to clarify a few points in my story before it goes to press in Exposed.”

  Crawford looked horrified, Schatz frowned, but Ibanescu’s face betrayed no emotion.

  “What might this story be about?” Ibanescu asked.

  “Right now, it’s about a conspiracy between a deputy director of national intelligence, a defense attorney, and an assistant attorney general to fix a case so a notorious terrorist would get out of jail. Then there’s my personal angle; the part about how a reporter was assaulted and kidnapped by intelligence agents when she got too close to the truth. I think my story will cause a stir, don’t you?”

  “I think any reporter who published a story like that would end up broke and discredited, or worse,” Crawford said.

  “Now, now, Terry,” Ibanescu said. “I don’t think threats will work with Miss Cutler. They might even make her more determined to publish her story. Besides, I don’t think she would be talking to us if she really wanted to have her tale see the light of day.”

  Ibanescu turned toward Dana. “Why are you here?”

  “To make certain that my friend, Ginny Striker, doesn’t take the fall for you.”

  “How did you figure it out?” Schatz asked.

  “You screwed up, Bobby. You told me Ben Mallory wouldn’t work on Tolliver’s case because his brother was killed in the World Trade Center bombing, but Ben’s brother is alive and we
ll and was never anywhere near New York on 9/11. Once I knew that, I also knew why a new lawyer at Justice was suddenly transferred to the Counterterrorism unit. You wanted Tolliver out of custody because he’s a spy for American intelligence. That, Dr. Ibanescu, is why you convinced Schatz to take Tolliver’s case and made sure Tolliver was held at a place where Schatz could get to him.

  “And that’s why you intentionally recorded Schatz’s attorney-client conference, Terry.”

  “I told you we had to be careful,” Schatz said after barking out a laugh. “She’s too fucking smart.”

  “I don’t think she’s smart,” Crawford said to Schatz. “If she was smart, she would have learned not to fuck with us after we disappeared her.”

  Crawford turned to Dana. “Unless you have a death wish, you’ll kill your story and never tell it to another soul.”

  Dana glared at the prosecutor. “I think you’re a chickenshit who gets his jollies from pushing your subordinates around. But I don’t work for you, and I do not like to be threatened.”

  “Hey, Dana, calm down,” Schatz said.

  “Tell us what you want,” Ibanescu said calmly.

  Dana continued to stare at Crawford. Then she turned away and answered Ibanescu.

  “I have no problem with what you did. If it was up to me, everyone involved in the plot to blow up that stadium would be dead. But I’m not going to stand by and see Ginny Striker turned into a sacrificial lamb. You fix her problems at the DOJ and no one will ever learn how Tolliver really got out of custody.”

  “That’s it?” Ibanescu asked.

  “That’s it. You fixed my parking ticket, so I’ve got no gripe with the CIA anymore.”

  Ibanescu laughed and Crawford said, “What parking ticket?”

  “I’ll talk to someone tomorrow,” Ibanescu said. “Your friend will be fine.”

  “Then so will you three,” Dana said.

  “It’s been a pleasure,” Ibanescu answered with a smile. “And I mean that.”

  Schatz lifted his glass to toast Dana. “You are a real piece of work, Cutler.”