“Wait. What are you saying?” I almost laughed, it seemed so absurd. “Paige Linden slipped you a date rape drug?”
“I can’t prove it,” he said. “Which means no one will believe me. No one.”
We stared at each other in silence.
“You must find this ironic,” he said bitterly.
It was ironic. It was also cruel.
“You, of all people,” he said. “The keeper of my secrets.”
“Yeah,” I told him gently. “Me.”
“Can I give you something for your silence?”
He was a victim now, and victims deserved privacy, if that’s what they chose, and I would have given my silence for free. But he wouldn’t trust it. Michael Ledger wasn’t a man to accept kindness.
I kept it all as normal as I could by listing familiar demands: “Keep me in the loop with the investigation. I want to be first everywhere, all the time, and my photographers get special access—”
“Done.”
“If by some stroke of luck you find Paige Linden, I have to be there for the arrest. No matter where or when, I want it exclusively.”
“You have my word.” His eyes glittered with malice as he stared out into some vision of a future bleak and vindictive. “And Virginia? It’s not going to be luck when I find her.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
LATER THAT DAY, the police found my car in a suburban commuter lot within walking distance to a train station and Baltimore-Washington airport. There were no signs of Paige Linden. My money was on Paige jetting from BWI to some exotic island. I imagined her reclining on a lounge chair beneath the equatorial sun, reading the latest police procedural. Not e-book, though. She’d forgo Wi-Fi and cell towers for some time.
Michael disagreed. There was no way she’d gotten so far so fast and certainly not through airport security or its watch list. But what did Michael really know of Paige’s capabilities? He’d been as close to her as a man could be to a woman, and he’d missed it all. Michael Ledger, the great investigator, had seen Paige Linden as nothing more than an object for his pleasure, even as she slipped a drug in his drink and made him her alibi and used his blindness as her shield.
He had no clue why Paige killed Evelyn Carney. Nobody did.
I went over the timeline again: Evelyn had an extramarital affair with Ian Chase, whom she met last August. By Ian’s account, the two fell in love, and she promised to leave her husband. When Peter Carney came home from deployment, he was suffering from what appeared to be a form of PTSD or a related anxiety disorder—or perhaps exhaustion that anyone might get from returning again and again to foreign war zones with no end in sight. In any case, Evelyn broke it off with Ian and stayed to help her husband. In the five or six weeks that followed, Ian and Evelyn had no contact with each other.
Until the morning of March 8, when Evelyn called Ian out of the blue, asking to meet with him that evening, no reason given. That night, Paige tracked her to the Key Bridge and hit her with Evelyn’s blackjack and threw her over the bridge.
It was the morning call to Ian that started everything in motion. I was nearly certain of it. Which suggested the call posed a threat to Paige—but what kind? Why did Paige have to keep Evelyn from meeting Ian? Evelyn was a first-year associate, a young woman who, after breaking it off with Ian, had no one who might help her, except an ill husband who had too many problems of his own to notice hers.
Or was Ian Chase the threat? In his role as a federal prosecutor, or as someone who’d protect the woman he loved? Why was Paige afraid of Ian and Evelyn together?
I called Isaiah. “Can you run a background check on Paige Linden?”
“Your . . . source?”
“Yeah, and a full background on immediate family. Any available financials, property tax and vehicle records, business partnerships outside the firm, employment and education history—the whole shebang. See if you can work your magic with medical and psych records, and yes, I know HIPAA bars it, but give it a shot. Oh, and court records. I’m especially interested in criminal—”
“Slow down,” he said. “You want criminal and psych records for Paige Linden? What’s going on, Virginia?”
“Actually, scratch that. She wouldn’t have been admitted to the DC bar with a criminal record, you’re right. Listen, I’m working on a script now. Don’t tell anyone until I send it to you and Ben to file. Just know it’s an exclusive and should lead the show. If Ben has questions, tell him to call me at home. I’m working here today and all weekend.”
“Why are you being so secretive?” His voice had gone wary. “And you sound angry.”
“Nope, just focused.” But along with the wariness, I’d picked up something unexpected. He sounded . . . guilty? “Is there a reason I should be angry?”
He paused. “What’s the deadline for the research?”
“Yesterday.”
Later, a flurry of calls to anyone I could find from Paige’s past, looking for hidden criminality everyone had missed. Childhood schoolmates gave the same description of Paige as a fearless kid who excelled in academics and played sports on the boys’ teams and seemed to lead every group she ever joined. People joked about the girls she ran with, what they called the “cult of Paige” and whispered her name with reverence. A few people hated her guts.
One long-ago neighbor, Estelle Becket, described Paige as a bold girl who adapted to the roving lifestyle of her parents, who moved from one cheap apartment to the next, following a trail of lost jobs and failed business ventures, not to mention a few outstanding warrants. She told of one summer morning when a gun went off in Paige’s apartment. “Poor child was no more than thirteen, fourteen at the time. Her mama was shouting how she’d heard every stupid thing Paige’s daddy was ever going to say and then bam, a gunshot. Her mama missed from not even ten feet away. The old man was pouring whiskey into his morning coffee and didn’t spill a drop.”
Maggie Loftman of Wichita, Kansas, had been touring the District several years ago when her third-grader fell into the Potomac near the Tidal Basin. When everyone else froze, Paige dove in and rescued the kid. Maggie tried to reward her, but Paige wouldn’t hear of it. She was a strong swimmer. The river presented a challenge, not a threat.
Which was untrue, and Paige knew it. The brackish Potomac with its wild undercurrents had a hundred ways to pull you under. What had she said? I found the quote: I didn’t want the boy to wash away.
She knew he’d disappear.
————
The first hint of possible motive came from the family financials Isaiah emailed me. Paige’s father owned an auto repair shop, for which he’d filed bankruptcy six months ago. Soon after the filing, the papers were withdrawn, the business suddenly solvent. During that same time, property records showed a home purchase for Paige’s parents. It appeared to have been paid by cash, no mortgage.
Who could write a check for a house? Especially since Paige must have been worrying about funds for that campaign she promised to run. Unless she was using outside funding? Bernadette had refused to back her, Paige had said.
I called Bernadette Ryan’s office. While waiting for the callback, I researched the firm. Simmons, McFadden & Ryan was at the forefront of election law. Bernadette provided “top-notch expertise representing corporations in the ever-growing field of political law” and had “an impressive roster of clients including top corporations and nonprofit organizations.”
Of Bernadette’s life outside the firm, there were a few links, and those showed how quietly she moved through the upper echelon of Washington society, among administration officials and powerful legislators. There was a rumored sighting, but no picture, of Bernadette at the Washington Opera, chatting with a Supreme Court justice at intermission.
A long-form article about campaign financing laws referenced “powerhouse Bernadette Ryan” cozying up to a member of the Senate leadership at the Capitol Grille. This time, there was a picture: a tall, white-haired senator arm in arm with Bernade
tte Ryan.
My palms went flat on the table as I leaned in. Of course I recognized her. She’d been in the cutaway shot next to Evelyn, an older, elegant woman, perfectly coiffed with chin-length blond hair. She’d worn a gold brocade jacket that shimmered in the light.
And she’d been with Evelyn the night she met Ian Chase.
————
Bernadette was ducking my calls. I left messages, and over the weekend, staked out her home from outside the gated community she lived in. That was particularly miserable in the cold March rain. My injured shoulder stiffened up, and my arm ached endlessly. I got nothing but wet shoes.
On Monday morning, I called the Federal Election Commission and left a message asking for any filings from Bernadette’s firm, especially those that referred to or otherwise named Evelyn Carney. An hour later, there was still no return call. I drove down to E Street and announced myself in the small lobby of FEC headquarters and waited. And waited. I called back to the press office, and again no one picked up, so I settled in.
Around noon, a woman darted past me, as if she wore blinders. She had bright red hair and wore a plum-colored pantsuit and sneakers, a combination that struck me as quirky, maybe eccentric. She stopped at the door and turned back suddenly, looking me full in the face, and gave a quick wave she hid from the security officer, before she rushed into the hallway.
I followed her, calling out a hello as she passed the elevator and went into the stairwell. It was a long way down, nine floors, and since she was wearing Converse and I was wearing heels, she made better time than I did. The stairwell door slammed at the lobby level, and I still had another flight to go.
At the corner of E Street, I caught her flash of red hair as she entered the Hard Rock Café. The restaurant was packed with tourists, but the bar was empty, except for the redhead now sitting at the end farthest from the door. I left an empty seat between us, and said hello again and waited. She didn’t acknowledge me.
“I’d like a hurricane, please,” she said to the bartender.
My eyebrows lifted, but I said nothing.
She turned her head slightly my way and talked out of the corner of her mouth, saying, “That’s so I can tell my boss I was too drunk to remember how you cornered me against my will.”
“I did . . . what?”
“This is so not nice of you. There was a much better way to do this. That’s the first thing I’d like to make very clear.”
“You’re from the press office, right?” I said, confused. “I’m the press. What’s all the drama about?”
“If I didn’t call you back, it was because I couldn’t talk. Obviously.” She huffed with indignation. “And then you just show up at my office. For everyone to see! So now, when you get something to report—and you people always get something to report—it’s going to look like I did it. And yes, it’s true, I hate my job, but I have these normal human needs, like a roof over my head, food on my table, that kind of thing, and even though it’s not a great salary, it’s my salary, and I need it. That is, until I find another job.” She turned and looked me full in the face and gave me a wary smile. “You wouldn’t know of anybody hiring on your side of the fence, would you?”
I was struggling to keep up with her. “Why would you get in trouble? I’m asking for public information, any documents that are part of the public record.”
Her drink arrived. It was a red monstrosity with skewered fruit clipped to the edge of the curved glass. She pulled the cherry off the skewer and chewed it.
“Seriously, aren’t we both doing our jobs, here?” I said.
“You can’t go dropping names like Bernadette Ryan on a phone line that everyone has access to. You’re asking about Bernadette Ryan, queen of political fund-raising, who, by the way, is very friendly with half our members. The other half, of course, thinks she’s evil incarnate, but that’s the split personality we’ve got going. Half the office wears a red cap, the other wears blue, and nothing gets done. That’s the mandate to the press officers, too. Dodge and dissemble, if we have to. Do anything to hold off questions from people like you.”
Her shoulders slumped, as her frantic mood seemed to crash. “It was so sad, though. Poor Evelyn Carney.” She sighed and put her hand over her heart, whispering: “Did you know we went to the same school? Although she was quite a bit younger. But really, to think one of our alums could be . . . murdered. And she also worked in political fund-raising? Same school, same business, and I can’t help but think: wow, if that could happen to her, it could happen to me.”
That was my opening. “You could help.”
“Why else am I here?” She took a long sip from her straw, surveying the restaurant with the straw between her teeth. She picked up a drink menu that was long and built like a book and set it on her lap. “What I have here is a public document that you could get from anyone,” she said as she reached into her handbag and pulled out a thick envelope and slipped the envelope between the pages of the drink menu. She slid the menu across the bar. “So pick any name, except mine.”
I let it sit there for a moment. “This is what I need?”
She laughed suddenly. “You don’t even know what you need, do you? I figured you were clueless to call me like that. This is the copy of a 990, an IRS form filed by a political nonprofit called the Order First Fund. You’ll find all the basic information: fund officers, purpose of the fund, its revenues and costs. An attached schedule lists donors, but I had to redact the names. It’s illegal to release the names of donors for these funds, and I am sorry for Evelyn Carney, but not enough to get hauled in front of some congressional hearing, or good heavens, go to prison. Take a look on page six. That’s where the keeper of the books is named—Evelyn Carney.”
“Evelyn was in charge of the fund?”
“Yes.”
I slipped the envelope into my satchel. “When I have questions, can I call you?”
“Oh gads, no.” She scribbled a name and number on a cocktail napkin and slid it across the bar. “This is my friend, a counterpart over at the IRS who works in the section that handles these nonprofits. He’s been crazy busy, though. Justice came through and had the whole office working through the weekend. He had tickets to the tournament, too. Boy was he pissed.”
That set my news ping off. “Justice?”
“Department of,” she said, looking at me quizzically. “How do you think I got your doc so fast? He’d already pulled it for the prosecutors.” She leaned forward to take a sip of her drink and stopped suddenly, snapping her finger. “Ohhhh darn it, I almost forgot to flag you to the important thing. The diversion of assets.”
“The what?”
“Money missing from the fund,” she said. “Looks like Evelyn Carney embezzled a whole lot of money. If the poor thing hadn’t been killed, surely she’d have gone to jail.”
————
I got out of the Hard Rock in a hurry. No way in hell was anybody blaming Evelyn Carney. The feds could make a fall guy out of every lawyer on K Street and half of Capitol Hill for all I cared, but Evelyn?
Hell, no. Not if I could help it.
As I ran, my thumb skipped across my phone, through its contact list until I got to Ian Chase. When he picked up, I started talking, “Evelyn’s being set up. You have to help me. Give me a name, whoever is investigating—”
“Miss Knightly?” he said soothingly. “Slow down, it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” Christ, I sounded rattled. Emotional. When I sounded emotional, people disregarded what I said even though it was real, so I could not be emotional. I stopped and leaned against the wall of an office building and forced myself to start again, from the beginning. “There’s money missing from the fund Evelyn oversaw, but she didn’t do it. Paige got into the fund, I’m nearly certain of it, and she set up Evelyn. That’s why Paige killed Evelyn and tossed her over the side of the bridge into the river. She said Evelyn had been a pawn, that it’d been a mistake to kill someone so lowly as a pawn.�
��
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and then: “Have you recovered from your injuries, Miss Knightly?”
So he knew about the fight; good. I had no time to talk about it.
“This isn’t about me getting hit in the head,” I said. “It’s about people getting washed away in the river. When Paige saved that boy all those years ago, she said the Potomac is so wild, brackish, bodies get washed away forever. Don’t you see? She planned for Evelyn to wash away—disappear—and everyone would think Evelyn took the money and ran. She was laying the groundwork for that story the first day I met her. She was using me.”
“She used a lot of people,” he said gently, in that soft southern lilt.
“But the police started looking into you, and CID got involved. And then Evelyn’s body washed up in the cove with that head trauma. Paige had a backup plan for that, too,” I said, talking over him, when he tried to interrupt. I was panting now. “If the ME ruled it a homicide, she could always pin it on Michael Ledger. She actually thought ahead like that. Who the hell thinks like that?”
“Someone who enjoys it,” he said calmly.
Christ, my head was throbbing.
“You have to help me,” I said. “Evelyn was coming to you that night about Paige—well, I don’t think she knew it was Paige, but she knew there was money missing and she was in trouble, and you—that was your expertise, right? You prosecuted the mayor’s cronies over improper use of campaign funds, right?”
“It was embezzlement, and yes, I’d know how to spot it. I could have helped her.”
“So you knew?”
“Not that day. She never told me why. But now that I’m vindicated—if that’s what you call this—I’ve been able to think more clearly and piece things together with the help of my friends.” There was bitterness in his drawl. “You know how tribal the city is. My tribe never stopped believing in me, they swear it. Of course, they weren’t going out on any limb for me, either. But they’re making it up to me. They’ve let me back in the loop again.”
The Cutaway Page 26
