happened: You and the senator argued. I came in and the argument stopped.”
She looked at the small window. Blue light thumping.
“We left and came here,” Jessup continued. “Listen to me. We talked about Julian-”
“What’s happening, Jessup?”
“We talked about art for your husband.”
But she wasn’t listening. She pulled herself free and went to the window. The room was partially underground, so the window was high. She stood on a stool, looked out.
Cops were in the drive.
“It’s okay,” Jessup said. “Abigail. Trust me.”
“Jessup.” The voice was tiny and scared.
“You did nothing wrong. You and the senator argued-”
“Jessup?”
A lot of cops were in the drive.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Michael went to ground at a hotel in Chapel Hill, and it played more or less how he thought it would. A night maid found the dead senator shortly after the cops found the bodies at the farm. The police kept quiet about the farm. It was too explosive, too much to get their heads around in the space of a day. But the murdered senator was a different story. They came respectfully at first; they did their preliminary workup, and then went after Abigail with a vengeance. Randall Vane was a billionaire, and he’d been shot dead in her room. Her alibi was the man who for twenty-five years had been her bodyguard and driver. The cops saw the same tired motives they’d seen a hundred times before, but Jessup circled the lawyers like a seasoned professional. He kept her out of custody for a full day, then the cops came with a warrant. They hit her hard for six hours of custodial interrogation, but Jessup had her prepped by then, and the cops eventually had to let her go. Michael got the call an hour later. The man was distraught.
“She’s breaking. She thinks she did it.”
“What do you mean, she
“Oh, Jesus.” Jessup sighed deeply. “It’s complicated.”
“I can handle complicated.”
“This is killing her.”
Michael weighed his options. “I think it’s time we talked.”
“I can’t leave her right now. Julian is still missing. You’ve seen the news. Even the staff is avoiding her.”
“Okay, okay. Tomorrow, then. Or the next day.”
“Michael, listen. Nothing’s happening the way you said. They’re all over her. You understand? They’re eating her alive. Cops. Media. You’ve seen the things they’re saying?”
“I’ve seen.”
And he had. They were saying she’d killed him for the money. They showed pictures of her and Jessup, and speculated on the nature of their relationship. It was a perfect story: bodies in the lake and the senator dead, sex and money and hired help. The woman was beautiful, her driver handsome, and they chose the pictures carefully: Abigail with her fine, pale skin and arched brows; Jessup holding her arm; a diamond the size of a quail’s egg on her finger. With a phalanx of lawyers around her, she came off like a black widow, came off guilty.
“I don’t know how much longer I can keep her together.”
“Give it a day,” Michael said.
“She might not make it that long. She’s undone.”
“A day,” Michael said.
It took less than that. Someone in the police department leaked the farm, and the story exploded to a whole new level. Organized crime and a crooked politician. Blackmail and torture. Links to the violence in New York. The media went ballistic; lead story in every outlet. When the body bags rolled off the farm, camera crews caught it; they caught the feds, too. There was a small army of them: panel vans and black Suburbans, serious people in dark suits and stenciled Windbreakers. Abigail’s real break, though, came unexpectedly from a quiet, diminutive lawyer that no one had yet thought to question.
His name was Wendell James Winthrop, an estate attorney who very quietly put the senator’s will into probate. A junior detective took the time to check it out, and discovered that Abigail was not even in it, not for a dollar or a dime. She could spend a year in the house, and then leave with clothing, jewelry and personal effects. Even Julian was excluded. A billion dollars, and they got none of it.
Yet, it did this wonderful thing.
When the police learned there was no financial motive for murder, their case against Abigail evaporated. They had combed through the file a hundred times by then, and knew more about the dead senator than they would ever need to know.
He’d been blackmailed for years; he was dead.
Most or all of his blackmailers were dead.
The murder weapon was found with all the dead blackmailers.
In the highest circles of law enforcement, there was talk of another hitter, a cleaner who came in and took out everybody involved. Some of the organized crime people at the FBI whispered about Otto Kaitlin and the enforcer whose identity he’d worked so hard to keep secret, but even the whispers were quieter than most. No one had ever established the existence of such an enforcer. They had no name, no photographs, no description. To some, he was a myth fabricated by a very clever gangster, a bogeyman to scare grown men. In the end it was decided, very quietly, that the full truth might never come out.
While this was happening, Michael watched the news in his hotel room. He took long walks in Chapel Hill, ate dinner out and thought constantly of Elena. He wondered where she was, and if she would call or not. He fretted over her injuries, worried about the baby. He waited to hear from Julian, but that didn’t happen, either. Two days after the farm story broke, Jessup finally called. “She’s sleeping for the first time,” he said.
“Is she okay?”
“Like a weight’s been lifted. Like she finally believes she didn’t do it.”
Michael was silent, then said, “That’s the second time you’ve made a reference like that.”
“I know. It was intentional.”
“Perhaps it’s time you explained some things,” Michael said.
“Perhaps it is.”
They met in Raleigh because it was big and anonymous, and because old habits died hard. Michael watched him roll in and waited a full thirty minutes to make sure he was alone.
He was.
The restaurant sold ribs and beer and was empty at three o’clock in the afternoon. They took a table in a small back room; ordered a pitcher of beer and asked to be left alone. When the beer came, Michael poured two glasses and waited for Jessup to meet his eyes. When the wait got long, he decided to start easy. “Any word from Julian?”
Jessup dipped his head, relieved. “He came home yesterday. The medicine finally leveled him out. He’s thinking straight.” Jessup sipped, got foam on his lip and wiped it off. “Apparently, he’s taken up with Victorine Gautreaux. She was watching after him.”
