Next morning, I called police headquarters and put in a request for a meeting with Michael. Within the hour, Michael’s secretary was escorting me into his office. It was a dreary place with dark paneled walls and old furniture more suited for a curb. The secretary’s bracelets jingled as she pointed me toward a sofa, where I sat between two punctures in the vinyl, careful not to snag my stockings. As soon as she left, I got up and went straight for Michael’s desk.
Photos stood at attention on its top, each in matching silver frames: Michael at the helm of his boat; Michael with a marathon race number pinned to his chest, crossing a finish line; Michael with the movie star who rode along with him for months, studying how to play a detective from the expert. My stomach twisted at the pictures of his two small children, a boy sporting a cowlick and glasses, a toddler with Michael’s pale gray eyes. There were no photographs of the woman he’d recently divorced.
Evelyn’s case jacket would be somewhere among the files on his desk. Not that I’d go digging through them. It was unthinkable to rifle through a police official’s desk. I wound my arms around my waist and bent over the desk, and there it was. The mud-brown jacket with Evelyn’s name and case number typed in the corner. It was on the top of one of the stacks, in plain sight. I opened it.
Clipped inside, the picture of Evelyn on the missing persons poster, as well as a wedding photograph of Evelyn and Peter Carney on a dance floor. Peter seemed so young, bulky with a corn-fed wholesomeness, and he was smiling broadly, at ease with himself and his place in the world. Evelyn was in profile, her arms clinging to his neck as if trying to lift herself from the drowning layers of her dress.
It was an odd picture for a case jacket. It showed more of the husband than the woman that police were searching for. I wondered why it’d been chosen.
The door banged open, and Michael strode in. He stopped midway, hands in his pockets, rattling coins. For a long moment, all I could hear was Michael with his money.
“You haven’t changed at all,” he said.
But he had. Vertical lines were dug deep between his eyebrows. The arrogant line of his jaw had fallen. He appeared tired and unhappy, maybe even worried, and then I reminded myself, Michael Ledger’s moods were not my concern.
“I see you found the file,” he said.
“I’d like to read it. With your permission, of course.”
He laughed.
“Will you talk to me about Evelyn Carney?” I said. “I need help.”
He went to the sofa and plopped down, sprawling his legs. He patted a spot on the vinyl next to him. “Come. Sit.”
I crossed the room and chose the farthest spot on the sofa, teetering on its edge. The smell of his musky cologne was strong. When he’d been with me, he’d never worn it. Even after he’d come home from the Medical Examiner’s Office and had to scrub himself down with lemon soap and steam clean his pores and shampoo his hair twice, he’d gone without cologne, knowing I didn’t like it. I preferred men to smell like men, for better or worse.
“You look prosperous,” he said, smiling. “I hear you’ve done well. Aren’t you some big-shot producer now?”
My heel tapped impatiently. I caught him staring at my legs and stopped tapping.
“I wanted to call you after the chief’s press conference,” he went on. “But I was afraid you’d slam the phone in my ear. Maybe you held a grudge?”
“You mean, for the way you dumped me.”
It gave me great satisfaction to see him so uncomfortable in his beautiful suit, yanking at his silk tie. “Well, I wouldn’t say—”
“If this has to be done before we can get to business, let’s be accurate. You dumped me and married another woman within six months. You had a wedding that took at least a year to plan.”
“And a marriage that took several more years to fall apart,” he muttered under his breath, and then: “Look, I know how it seemed.”
“That you were duplicitous or that I was an idiot to trust you? Both seemed that way because that’s how it was, but the past bores me. I’m here about Evelyn Carney. What’s your working theory of her disappearance?”
He nodded once, as if to say, okay, if that’s how you want to do this.
“Could be a robbery gone bad,” he said, scrubbing at the stubble on his jaw. “More likely a street snatching with intent to defile. Probably by a predator.” He paused. “No evidence of that. Just my gut.”
“You see any connection to the open cases of sex assaults on joggers in Rock Creek Park?”
The lines between his eyebrows deepened, as he considered it. “Different MO,” he said as his eyes unfocused and he slipped into his Zen mode and talked softly, as if to himself: “Rock Creek suspect lurks in the remote parts of the park, away from cars. He uses a knife. Not impulsive, he waits patiently, choosing his ambush at a blind turn in a path, places accessible only by foot, far from help. This eastern section of the park he knows well, feels comfortable in. Probably lives or works east of the park, close to where he hunts his victims.”
I imagined his thoughts traveling across the separate crime scenes, flying from the lonely park paths to the busy street in Georgetown from which Evelyn had disappeared, searching for coincidence, intersection, clues investigators might have missed.
“Now, a snatching on a busy street,” he went on softly, “that’s an entirely different thing. Daring. Decisions made quickly. No time to lurk. Not when there could be witnesses, security cameras. A victim fights back, cries for help, and someone would hear her. Most of all, a Georgetown abduction would require a vehicle. We don’t know if this guy has one.”
“But you’re not ruling him out?”
He got up from the sofa and started pacing. “If this is the same guy, there’s been a change in his needs, more risk taking—an escalation.”
The security cameras interested me. There were thousands of cameras across the city, some owned by the feds, others by the District, but most were owned by private companies—paid for by the merchants. For years, police had argued for their full access to private cameras, to no avail. The merchants had dug their heels deep. I asked Michael if there was security video showing Evelyn that night.
“Not that anyone’s shared,” he said sourly. “There seems to be a distinct lack of trust in authority these days. Cooperation tends to go hand in hand with trust.”
My palm slid across my press passes. The thumb drive with video of Evelyn was still on the lanyard around my neck. “Is it a coincidence that Evelyn Carney attended a meeting in Rock Creek about the attacks?”
“What meeting?”
“Some task force question and answer with the community. The mayor was there. Ian Chase, too.”
“Intriguing, this rumor—”
“Not rumor. Fact.”
“That Evelyn was at that meeting? Who’s the source?”
“Don’t need a source,” I said. “Not when I have video.”
It was subtle, the faint pink spreading across his cheekbones. “I’d like to see this video.”
“Not a chance,” I said, and then: “So tell me about the US Attorney’s Office. They involved in Evelyn’s case yet?”
He was watching me silently, steadily, with a cunning look. I could almost hear his thoughts. Finally, I burst out laughing. “You’re trying to figure out how to compel my video.”
“Wrong,” he said with a sly smile. “I already know how to get it. Is it worth my time? Describe it.”
“Not until I hear an offer.”
He asked what I wanted, and I told him everything, what I could report and what I could not, details both important and those seemingly irrelevant. I wanted to know the players, who Evelyn knew and loved and hated, and especially those who loved and hated her. I wanted to know about Peter Carney and the marriage and about the investigation.
“That’s a lot of wanting,” he complained.
“Not really. Start with her workplace. Anything suspicious about the firm?”
His e
yebrows went up. “Simmons, McFadden & Ryan? The gold standard, extremely well regarded from what I’m told, and yes, we’ve checked.”
“Any creeps or stalkers or weirdo clients?”
“We’ve done interviews, routine stuff. So far, everybody checks out.”
“All right,” I said. “How about Ian Chase?”
He gave me a surprised look I’m not sure I bought. “I thought we were talking about Evelyn.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, I’m not the right guy to ask. Ian and me, we don’t exactly move in the same circles.” But he shrugged as if to say, if you wanna waste your time, fine by me. “Word is, he comes from loot and clout with judges and politicians on both sides of the Chase family tree, and you know how that plays around here. Golden boy was born with the keys to the kingdom, and all the ass kissing that accompanies it. It’s only gotten worse since he’s up for US Attorney.”
“But not you? You don’t kiss his ass?”
He frowned. “His coattail is not my ride.”
“You don’t like him?” I prodded.
“Didn’t say that.”
“Then why withhold information about Evelyn’s case from him?”
Again, a look of surprise, and this seemed genuine. “You got a bad source on that one.”
Or Michael’s investigators were keeping him out of the loop. I’d have to look into that later. “Ian Chase attended Evelyn’s vigil last night, because he knows her, right?”
“He does?”
I always admired how he answered a question with a question, as if he were truly puzzled. He made it so believable.
“I have video of them at that meeting, remember?” Not that I had video of them together, of course, but when fishing, sometimes it was hard to get off the boat.
“Christ, I need caffeine to keep up with you,” he complained, crossing the room to some shelves where an old coffeepot sat. He carried the empty pot to the door. “I have to step out for water. That file does not leave this office, understand? You disappear with it, I’ll arrest you.”
————
I opened the file. Among the first pages, a curriculum vitae in neat block type:
Peter Lawrence Carney, age thirty-one, native of Oneida, New York, currently residing at 600 A Street SE, Washington, DC. College grad, Syracuse University. Upon graduation, officer candidate school, four years active-duty USMC, enlisted USMC reserves (see career below).
No arrests, no convictions, no records of calls to present or preceding home addresses.
Status: Married to Evelyn Marie Sutton Carney. (Marital separation requested by Evelyn Carney on March 8, night of disappearance, see statement attached).
Career: Currently working in Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation, USAID, at Reagan Building. Active-duty reservist, Captain USMC, attached to civilian affairs unit at Headquarters Marine Corps. History: multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan; six months deployment, expeditionary crisis response force. Civilian and work patterns fluctuate: tends to follow six- to nine-month deployment overseas followed by year of civilian work in States.
Comments: Since return from Afghanistan January 17, Carney reports insomnia and frequent headache, some weight loss. No prescription or illegal drug use or abuse, uses alcohol for insomnia but “not excessively.” No history of domestic abuse, says he has never struck Evelyn Carney or any woman. Does not believe he suffers from PTSD, but says he’s not been tested. No physical ailments or injuries. To this detective, Peter Carney appears in good overall mental and physical health. His demeanor is direct, forthright, and exhibits worry for Evelyn Carney’s well-being and willingness to assist investigators—
The next page highlighted part of the interview of Peter Carney by Detective Miller dated Tuesday, March 10, at 2:45 p.m.
I waited for her at the restaurant. She showed up sometime around 9:30. She looked nervous. I held out my hand and asked what was wrong. She said she had to leave me. This time, for real. I told her she didn’t. There’s always an adjustment when I get home, but we always worked things out. She put her head down and cried. Here we were in the middle of this restaurant with all these people pretending not to watch the spectacle of my wife with her face in her hands. I lost my temper. I told her to stop crying. It was bad form. Get ahold of yourself, I said. She got up and left.
From beneath the door, I could hear Michael talking to his secretary. I put my head down as the audio guys do when they need to focus. Other sounds registered—a door opening and closing, light steps across the tiles, water pouring into a carafe and glass striking a metal plate, and finally, there was Michael moving quietly across the room to me. He took the file from my hands and closed it. From the top drawer of his desk, he pulled out a brown leather notebook.
“Needless to say, everything’s off the record,” he said.
I tilted my head. “What does ‘off the record’ mean to you?”
“Ha, nice try.” He balanced himself on the edge of the desk, tapping the little notebook, and listed his demands: I could report nothing unless he okayed it beforehand, and if I did have something to report, he was to be described as a source with knowledge of the investigation, nothing more specific. If I used his information to get someone else to talk, he wanted a heads up. “You don’t agree to everything, you might as well leave now,” he said. “No video in the world is worth my ass.”
I agreed, for now. We could renegotiate at a later time.
“Tell me about Evelyn,” I said.
“First the video.”
“Uh-uh, nope. Don’t want to prejudice you. I’ll email you the clip and you tell me what you see. Now Evelyn.”
“Seriously good-looking woman,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. What does she do? What is she like?”
“Like the kind of sexy that smacks a man in the face.” He pursed his lips, more serious now. “One thing everyone agrees on, she’s smart and ambitious. Worked her way through law school, landed a great job. She and the hubby have known each other all their lives, high school sweethearts who married out of college. If you can believe people still do shit like that.”
“Sounds all right to me,” I said, and then frowned. “Unless he killed her. You think he killed her?”
“Hope not. The guy’s damn near a freaking war hero.” He slapped his thigh anxiously, the brown notebook making a thud thud thud. “Besides, a restaurant full of witnesses place him at the table for a good half hour after Evelyn left, zoned out.”
“What about the man she left him for? There was another man, right?”
“So Carney says,” he said dryly. “We don’t know where she was going that night. We certainly don’t know where she ended up. Our witness saw her walking to the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and heading south. After that, she’s gone, poof, into thin air.”
Sighing, he got up and moved to the window, where he opened the blinds to his view of Indiana Avenue from five floors up, quite impressive for a former detective. The brown book was thudding against his thigh again. When he turned back to me, he wore a humble expression that didn’t suit him. “I’m not a guy who wallows in the past, but the other day when I saw you—well, let’s just say, I don’t feel right how it all went down with you. Maybe I have . . . regrets.” Regrets, as if he was just discovering the word. “I’d like to make it up to you. If you let us, we could be friends.”
That was impossible. In many ways, the District is a small town. Everyone knows everyone else, and they’d all known Michael was in love, but not with me, long before I did. The rumors had swirled. When Michael’s engagement announcement was made public, my colleagues had treated me with kid gloves. Some had even pitied me.
“You can be my source,” I told him. “See how that plays out.”
He nodded once. “All right, how does this source keep you from airing that video of Evelyn?”
“You don’t.”
“What if I asked you to wait?”
“I’d need
a compelling reason, an issue of public safety, or if the video compromises Evelyn’s life or the investigation in some way. Whatever it is, you have to articulate it.”
“You couldn’t just trust me?”
Suddenly I understood. “This case has you worried.”
“What if I offered you a deal?” he said, gazing down at the brown book. He held it out to me. “Take a look. Tell me if you want it.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE BOOK HAD been recovered from the glove box in Evelyn’s Volvo, still impounded at the police lot off of South Capitol Street. It was small and covered in soft textured leather, and fit my hand as if made for me. Best I could tell it was some sort of journal.
The red satin ribbon opened to a page filled with wild loops pressed hard into paper. Evelyn’s handwriting, presumably. There were descriptions of marble buildings against a gunmetal-gray river and boats that raced on long white wakes. The best views were from across the river, this writer believed—the spires of Georgetown University reaching heavenward, the star-shaped lanterns illuminating the Key Bridge, and farther still, the Kennedy Center like a tidy shirt box nestled along the river.
Favorite haunts were mentioned: an upstairs room at a speakeasy, a piano bar in a club with no name, dinner parties she couldn’t imagine attending—and yet, here she was, in the famous wine cellar, no less—a private room at a steakhouse on Pennsylvania Avenue, where she charmed clients—
“This is Evelyn’s writing? You’re certain?”
“Certain as we can be,” he said dryly. “You want to deal or what?”
I wanted the journal. What I got was its copy. In return, I promised to email him the video of Evelyn at the meeting with Ian, and give him a few days before we put the video on air. Why he’d dealt so fiercely for that reprieve, I didn’t much care. I got my glimpse into Evelyn.
After leaving headquarters, I walked the block to my car, which was parked across the street from the US Attorney’s Office. I tossed my satchel and the journal copy onto the driver’s seat and called up to Ian’s office. No answer on his line. No room to leave a message on the voice mail, either. His spokesperson said that Mr. Chase was out of the office, and no, she couldn’t say when he’d be back. The office had no statement regarding the Evelyn Carney case. All inquiries were being handled by the DC Police.
The Cutaway Page 6
