House Arrest

by Mike Lawson

  At any rate, after he got the text he apologized profusely to Carol, put her in a cab, and walked over to the Capitol, cursing Mahoney every step of the way.

  When he got to the Capitol, however, Mahoney never showed up. DeMarco waited almost an hour and finally called Mahoney to ask him where he was, and the way Mahoney answered the phone, he sounded as if he’d been sleeping. He also sounded drunk, although Mahoney being drunk was not unusual; Mahoney was an alcoholic. He asked why in the hell DeMarco was calling him after ten at night and said that he’d never sent DeMarco a text message. All DeMarco could surmise was that Mahoney had sent the message to him by mistake—but he was still puzzled because, again, to the best of his knowledge, Mahoney didn’t send text messages.

  But when the FBI agent had asked him what he’d been doing in the Capitol when Canton was killed, he’d lied. He told her that he’d been there to pick up a book he’d left in his office—the first excuse that popped into his head. He did this only because he didn’t want the bureau bugging Mahoney. He figured there was no way the FBI would know about the text—not unless they got a warrant—and why would they get a warrant? Mahoney texting him had no bearing on Canton’s murder. Still, it made him nervous, lying to the bureau.

  Just as he had this thought, his cell phone rang.

  He didn’t recognize the number, just that it had a 202 area code. He thought for a moment about ignoring the call, then answered it, saying, “Hello. This is Joe.”

  “This is Special Agent Russell Peyton, Mr. DeMarco. FBI. I’m standing outside your house with a dozen other agents, all of them armed. I’m here to arrest you for the murder of Congressman Lyle Canton.”

  “What!” DeMarco said.

  “Look out your front window, DeMarco.”

  DeMarco left the kitchen and walked to his living room—and when he looked out the front window he saw the street lit up like the national Christmas tree, with all the blue and red lights coming from the grilles and dashboards and roof racks of SUVs. Headlights were aimed at his front door.

  “What the hell’s going on?” DeMarco said.

  “Your house is surrounded, DeMarco. If you fire a weapon at us, we will return fire and blow your house into kindling with automatic weapons.”

  “This is nuts!” DeMarco said. “I didn’t have anything to do with Canton’s death. I didn’t even know the man.”

  “Mr. DeMarco, if you don’t come out of the house immediately with your hands on top of your head, we’re going to fire tear gas into your house and fight our way in. I don’t want to have to kill you. So come out the front door with your hands on your head. If you’re carrying a weapon, we’ll—”

  “I don’t have a fucking weapon!” DeMarco screamed. “I don’t own a weapon.”

  “Mr. DeMarco, are you going to surrender peacefully?”

  DeMarco hesitated, not knowing what to say. The whole situation was insane. How could they possibly think he had anything to do with Canton’s death?

  “Mr. DeMarco—”

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said. “I’m coming out. But I’m telling you, this is fucked up.”

  DeMarco put his phone in his pocket and opened his front door slowly. He stood for a moment in the doorway, his hands above his shoulders, palms facing outward so they could see that he didn’t have a weapon, and then stepped onto his front porch. He placed his hands on his head, as Peyton had instructed, turned in a circle so they could see he didn’t have a gun in the back of his pants, and began to walk down the sidewalk toward the cars that were blinding him with their headlights.

  Peyton yelled, “Get down on the ground, DeMarco.”

  “Fuck you,” DeMarco said. “You can see that I’m not armed. I’m not getting on the ground.”

  “Get down on the ground,” Peyton said.

  “Fuck you,” DeMarco said again. “What are you going to do? Shoot me if I don’t?”

  Two agents in body armor and holding M16s stepped out in front of the SUVs, taking up positions where they had clear shots at him. A third agent—the same female agent who’d questioned him—walked directly toward him, pointing a pistol at him. She held the pistol in a two-handed grip, and it was aimed at his face. He figured she’d shoot him right between the eyes if he so much as twitched.

  When she was about five feet from him, she said, “Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”

  DeMarco did, and she holstered her weapon and handcuffed him.

  DeMarco said, “I’m telling you, you’re making a big mistake. I didn’t have anything to do with—”

  “You have the right to remain silent,” the agent said. “You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford …”

  10

  DeMarco was taken to the Alexandria city jail. He didn’t realize it, but that particular jail had been home to several high-profile federal prisoners awaiting trial: CIA spy Harold James Nicholson; the D.C. snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo; John Walker Lindh, an eighteen-year-old American captured fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan; and Judith Miller, the reporter who’d refused to reveal her sources during the investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. And now Joe DeMarco, the accused killer of Lyle Canton, the House majority whip.

  DeMarco was strip-searched, fingerprinted, and photographed, then given flip-flops and an olive green pullover shirt with matching pants held up by an elastic waistband. The pants and shirt resembled hospital scrubs except for the word PRISONER stenciled in white letters on the back of the shirt. While he was being processed in the jail, Agent Peyton stood by watching but never said a word to him. The FBI had made no attempt to question him since his arrest, because DeMarco had said he wouldn’t talk to anyone without a lawyer present. Or there could have been another reason the agents didn’t question him: maybe they had enough evidence that they didn’t need to hear anything he might have to say.

  After he was dressed DeMarco told his jailers he wanted to make a phone call to arrange for a lawyer. His jailers—guys dressed in neat white shirts and gray pants—worked for the Alexandria Sheriff’s Office, but they looked over at Peyton, and Peyton nodded his approval. The guards took DeMarco over to a wall-mounted phone and stepped back a couple of paces, pretending they were giving him privacy; DeMarco had no doubt the phone was monitored.

  DeMarco didn’t have a lawyer. The last time he’d hired one had been when he got divorced—and the lawyer he’d hired then had been a moron, and his ex-wife’s lawyer had cleaned his clock. He hadn’t even used a lawyer when he’d prepared his will. He’d just printed off some online forms, figuring they’d be good enough. Consequently, he didn’t call a lawyer; he called the only person who could help him, praying she’d answer her phone. She often ignored phone calls; he just hoped she didn’t ignore this call tonight.

  She answered the phone saying, “Yes?”—which was the way she usually answered the phone.

  “Emma, it’s Joe. I’ve been arrested for murdering Lyle Canton. I’m at the Alexandria city jail. I need a lawyer.”

  His statement was greeted by several seconds of silence, before Emma said, “Okay.” Then she hung up.

  DeMarco thought: She could have at least acted surprised that I’ve been accused of murder.

  After the phone call, two burly deputies led DeMarco to a six-by-ten-foot box that contained a cot and a stainless-steel toilet. There was no window in the room, and the door was solid steel except for a small sliding panel that could be opened so his jailers could peer in to see if he’d slashed his wrists or hanged himself. The cot was bolted to the floor and had a mattress less than two inches thick, a single sheet that was more gray than white, and a pillow that was like a sack filled with rags. Down the hall from him was a lunatic who howled something incomprehensible about every ten minutes.

  DeMarco stood for a moment in the center of the room, then lay down on the cot and placed his forearm over his eyes.

  He was scared out of his mind.

  One thing he knew ab
out the FBI was that the bureau didn’t go off half-cocked. The FBI would investigate for months, and sometimes years, before making an arrest, and they didn’t make the arrest until they were about 100 percent certain that they had enough evidence to support a conviction. But what evidence could they possibly have to make them think that he was Canton’s killer? He was pretty sure they wouldn’t have arrested him just for lying about getting a text message from Mahoney.

  An hour after he was placed in the cell, the door opened. It was the same two jailers who’d placed him in the cell. One of them said, “Your lawyer’s here. Come with us.”

  He thought they would handcuff him or put manacles on his ankles, but they didn’t. Walking beside him, they led him to an interview room, opened the door, and let him in. Inside the room, sitting at a small table that was bolted to the floor, was a woman in her fifties.

  The woman was slim, had short dark hair, a longish nose, and a wide mouth. She was wearing a dark blue suit. She was attractive yet at the same time had a face that said she didn’t take crap from anyone. The only thing on the table in front of her was a yellow legal tablet, and nothing was written on it.

  “Close the door when you leave,” she said to the jailers, and they did.

  “Sit down, Joe,” she said, and he took a seat across from her. “My name’s Janet Evans. I’m a friend of Emma’s. Regarding my credentials, I’ve practiced criminal law for twenty-five years, fifteen years as a federal prosecutor. I was an assistant U.S. attorney. For the last ten years, I’ve been a partner in a D.C. firm.”

  “Okay,” DeMarco said. “But you don’t have to convince me that you’re competent. Emma wouldn’t have sent you if you weren’t. About your fee—”

  “Don’t worry about my fee. At least not now.”

  But DeMarco was worried about her fee. She would probably charge a minimum of a hundred grand to defend him against a murder charge—and he didn’t have a hundred grand. But as she’d said, this wasn’t the time to sweat the small stuff—like going bankrupt. If she couldn’t get him acquitted, bankruptcy would be the least of his problems.

  “Have you talked to the FBI at all since your arrest?” Evans said.

  “No. The only thing I said to them was that I wanted a lawyer.”

  “Good.”

  “But I have no idea why they arrested me. They didn’t tell me anything.”

  “I’ve seen the arrest warrant, Joe. They have a strong case.”

  “What! How the hell could they possibly have a strong case? I didn’t kill Canton. The only thing that connects me to his death is that I was in the Capitol around the time he was murdered.”

  “They have more than that, Joe. A lot more.”

  Evans laid out the case against him. There was video footage showing a man of his height and weight, and with his hair coloring, walking to Canton’s office. The man was wearing what appeared to be the uniform of a U.S. Capitol policeman, but the uniform had an insignia patch that was not an exact match to the real patches worn by the Capitol cops. The killer had apparently had the patch made to match the rest of the uniform he was wearing, but the patch wasn’t perfect. The kicker was that the uniform the killer wore, including the gun and silencer used to kill Canton, was found inside a ventilation duct in DeMarco’s locked office.

  “You gotta be shittin’ me,” DeMarco said.

  Evans went on. Ballistics tests had already confirmed that the gun was the one used to kill Canton. The most damning piece of evidence was that inside the cap the killer had apparently worn were two strands of hair, and preliminary DNA testing proved that one of the hairs was DeMarco’s.

  After she said this, DeMarco said, “How the hell could that be?”

  She didn’t answer the question. She just kept driving the stake deeper into his heart.

  “Furthermore, a hundred thousand dollars was wired into your savings account the day of the murder. The money came from an account in the Cayman Islands.”

  DeMarco, now looking as if he’d been hit between the eyes with an ax handle, said, “The last time I checked my account balance was three weeks ago when I got a statement from the bank. There was only about twenty grand in my account.”

  As if he hadn’t spoken, Evans said, “Then there’s the fact that you lied to the FBI about why you were in your office.”

  Before DeMarco could ask how the FBI knew he’d lied, Evans said, “They obtained a warrant to look at your phone records and saw you’d received a text from a cell phone belonging to John Mahoney. Then, after Canton was murdered, you placed a call to Mahoney. The FBI doesn’t know what was said on that phone call, but they know what the text message said. It said, ‘Go to your office immediately. Be there in fifteen minutes.’ They think the call you made to Mahoney might have been to tell him that Canton was dead.”

  “I’m telling you that I didn’t kill Canton. The only reason I didn’t tell the FBI about the text from Mahoney was because I didn’t want them bugging him. And the reason I called him was that when he didn’t show up, I called to ask him why. That’s when Mahoney told me he never texted me. And how does the FBI know what the text said?”

  “After they arrested you, they looked at your phone. You didn’t delete the text from Mahoney.”

  Well, shit!

  “Is there anything else?” What else could there possibly be?

  “No. Or at least not that I know of.”

  “Will I be granted bail?”

  “No, you will not,” Evans said, the statement sounding like a door being slammed shut. “I will argue for bail, but considering who the victim was and the evidence against you, I’m positive you won’t be granted bail.”

  DeMarco leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He was fucked.

  He opened his eyes and said, “You’ve probably heard clients say this before, but I’m being framed. I didn’t kill Canton.”

  “Joe, I’m your lawyer. You don’t need to convince me of your innocence.”

  “Yeah, I do. Because I didn’t do this, and you have to believe that I didn’t. And if I’m not granted bail, I’m not going to be able to find out who’s done this to me. I need someone to start investigating to see who set me up.”

  “Someone is already investigating, Joe.”

  She meant Emma.

  That was the only good news DeMarco had heard since meeting his new lawyer.

  The following day DeMarco was arraigned at the U.S. District Court on Constitution Avenue in D.C. He wasn’t granted bail. After the arraignment, he was returned to the Alexandria city jail to await trial for the first-degree murder of U.S. congressman Lyle Canton.

  11

  John Mahoney was in his office drinking coffee laced with bourbon. He’d been shocked by Canton’s death but wasn’t shedding any tears for the man. He’d despised Canton. What had shocked him was that somebody had had the audacity to kill a United States congressman in the Capitol. What had shocked him even more was DeMarco being arrested for Canton’s murder. Canton was a devious prick, and the fact that somebody had killed him at least made sense, but there was no way that DeMarco had killed the guy.

  Mahoney didn’t know what to do about DeMarco, however. He’d always kept his relationship with DeMarco very low-key, if not exactly secret. He wasn’t about to step into the limelight and publicly defend him. If he did, then he’d have to explain his connection to DeMarco and the sorts of things DeMarco sometimes did for him, and he wasn’t about to do that. But he had to do something. He couldn’t let DeMarco go to jail for a crime he was positive he hadn’t committed, no matter what the evidence might show.

  The phone on his desk rang. It was Mavis, his secretary. Like him, Mavis had known DeMarco for years and was also stunned by his arrest. She wasn’t, however, totally convinced he was innocent—and that was because she knew about some of the things he’d done for Mahoney in the past.

  “There’s an FBI agent here to see you, Congressman. A Special Agent Russell Peyton.”

  Shit. “Se
nd him in.”

  Mahoney had met many FBI agents during his time in Washington. Some were white, some were black; some were male, some were female; some were short and some were tall—but they were basically all the same. He was convinced they had some sort of human cookie cutter over at the Hoover Building that stamped them out. Like Peyton, they were usually in good shape. Like Peyton, the men almost always wore their hair short and dressed in conservative suits and ties. But it wasn’t their appearance that made them similar; it was their attitude. They were always polite and formal when dealing with the public, but beneath a thin veneer of civility was a core of arrogance. They made it clear, without ever saying so, that they were members of the most powerful federal law enforcement organization in the land, and if they were out to get you … Well, they’d get you.

  Mahoney pointed Peyton to a chair in front of his desk. He noticed that Peyton barely glanced at the photos on the wall behind him, photos of Mahoney posing with presidents and generals and athletes and movie stars. If Peyton was impressed that John Mahoney was a former Speaker of the House, currently the House minority leader, and arguably the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill, he didn’t show it. Mahoney knew the man would be respectful—but not the least deferential. Fuckin’ FBI.

  “What can I do for you, Agent?” Mahoney asked.

  “I was hoping you’d be able to help me with a couple of things, sir. I’m trying to figure out who Joe DeMarco is. We’ve looked at his personnel file, and it’s amazingly, well, skimpy is the only word I can think of. About all it says is that he’s an independent counsel who serves members of the House. As you can imagine, we’ve asked a lot of people about DeMarco. Representatives and their staffs, Capitol policemen, administrative personnel in this building, and no one we’ve spoken to seems to know what his job really is or who he works for. However, a few people we’ve talked to say they think he works for you. They’ve seen him with you or going in and out of your office. Can you explain your relationship to DeMarco, sir?”