by Carr, Lauren
The door to the interrogation room opened so abruptly that all three men instinctively reached for their guns.
The slender man in the doorway wore a gray suit that had seen better days. He would have appeared much taller if he didn’t slouch.
Mac felt his stomach tighten at the sight of his former boss, Lieutenant Harold Fitzwater.
Sam pursed his lips to conceal a chuckle—in anticipation of what, Mac was not sure. The detective’s thick mustache wiggled up and down and side to side in a comical fashion while its owner directed his attention to a report in a folder.
“Faraday,” Lieutenant Fitzwater snapped. “I want to talk to you.” Leaving the door open for Mac to follow, he disappeared down the hallway. His demeanor made Mac wonder if he had forgotten that the retired detective no longer worked for him.
Sam and David mentally waged a bet. Would Mac follow or would he not?
As if the lieutenant’s order had never happened Mac asked Sam, “What does the DA in Arlington say about the shootings last night?”
Fitzwater stepped back into the room. “If you have a minute?” A note of courtesy found its way into his tone.
His face void of emotion, Mac looked up at him.
“Please.”
“I guess I can give you one minute.” Mac strolled out into the corridor.
The chief of homicide’s office consisted of a cubicle in the corner of the squad room. Its thin walls contained windows that looked out over his domain.
Once inside, Harold slammed the door so hard that his office walls shook. His eyes narrowed to slits. “Did you make a visit to Internal Affairs on your way out of here?”
Mac chuckled when he answered, “No.”
“You’re lying, Faraday!” The lieutenant slapped his inbox from the corner of the desk to the floor. Mac sensed that he wanted to hit him instead of the papers.
“I don’t lie, even when my career is being threatened, as you surely know.” Mac fought the urge to smile. “What happened, Harold? Internal Affairs catch up with you and Steve about the Gibbons case?”
“You did rat me out!”
“As much as I wanted to, I kept my mouth shut and trusted that they would get wind of you and a certain assistant district attorney helping a serial rapist escape prosecution.” He laughed. “They’re not stupid. Everyone knew that something dirty happened. It wasn’t a coincidence that the Gibbons kid got on that plane when he did. They caught up with you, didn’t they? What are they going to do?”
“The DA is prosecuting me for accepting a bribe.” He added in a low, threatening tone, “When I find out who ratted me out…”
Mac looked out into the squad room. He had been tempted to go to Internal Affairs. He spent months putting the Gibbons case together. He wondered at the time why the lieutenant kept urging him to look for the Rock Creek Park serial rapist somewhere other than where the evidence led him. Until Archie connected the dots between Steve Maguire, Harold Fitzwater, and Gibbons’s father, it never occurred to him that his boss was dirty. He had been too close to see it.
Mac watched through the window as Sam and David returned to the detective’s desk in the squad room.
Mac said, “Don’t you remember? Even the media speculated that someone on the inside must have given Gibbons the heads up.”
While the other detectives glanced curiously at the closed office door, Sam didn’t look up once. Mac recalled that Sam had transferred to homicide from uptown less than a month after Freddie Gibbons Jr. got away.
“You’re a dirty cop, Harold.”
“I’m not dirty.” The lieutenant said, “I was simply playing the game—the same game everyone else plays.”
“Bull! Haven’t you figured it out yet? Your political game-playing with Steve put a bullet in your career. Even if you manage to get out of this, none of them—” Mac gestured at the detectives on the other side of the office walls, “are ever going to trust you again. They aren’t going to be watching your back because you didn’t watch mine.” He grinned. “I wonder what Freddie Gibbons is doing right now. How many European girls has he raped since you let him go?”
“You son of a bitch,” Harold hissed, “standing there in your five thousand dollar suit. You brought me down for what? Revenge?”
“I didn’t bring you down, Harold. You brought yourself down when you cut the deal.” Mac opened the door. “By the way, this isn’t a five thousand dollar suit. It’s a fifteen thousand dollar suit. I paid more for this jacket than your car is worth.”
David stood up when he saw Mac leave his former boss’s office. “Ready to go?”
“I am if you are.” Mac offered Sam his hand. “Thank you for all your help.” Gripping his hand, he whispered into the detective’s ear. “You’re IA, aren’t you?”
Sam answered with nothing more than a grin.
* * * *
“Okay, Bogie,” David said into his cell phone. “Let us know if they do anything suspicious. And be sure to tell the guys not to do anything to let Herman and Marlstone know that we’re onto them.” He flipped the phone shut and turned to Mac.
They were waiting for Ron Goldstein, Katrina’s estate lawyer, at an outdoor café nestled between two high-rise office buildings on a corner of M Street.
By Saturday afternoon, patrons would crowd the downtown eateries to fill each other in on the week while planning for the weekend ahead. There was so much to do, and so little time to do it.
Two tables away, a party of young women drank Bloody Marys while gaily recounting the events of happy hour the night before. One with short dark hair and huge eyes laughed with delight when David accepted a Bloody Mary that she had sent to him.
After snagging a table at the eatery, David called Bogie with the news about their mayor and police chief. Detective Groom and Mac had warned that they couldn’t arrest the fugitives until the police were positive that Mayor Mason was indeed Peter Marlstone and Roy Phillips was Roy Herman. Pete Mason didn’t resemble Peter Marlstone enough for Mac to make a positive identification. While waiting to get the proof they needed, David enlisted his friends on the Spencer police force to keep an eye on both of them to ensure they didn’t escape.
When he turned to report on his conversation with Bogie, David found Mac staring into space. “What are you thinking so hard about?”
Blinking, Mac’s thoughts snapped back long enough to answer him. “Everything.”
Their server refilled Mac’s coffee while David paused to sip his Bloody Mary.
“Who’s Pay Back? Why did he pretend to be Lee Dorcas? Did Dorcas play any role in this other than patsy?” He seemed to be muttering more to himself than David. “Niles’s murder. That wasn’t a professional hit. Pros don’t leave witnesses. If Peter Marlstone was behind Niles’s murder, Katrina would have been tossed off Abigail’s Rock along with him.”
He sat up straight when he spotted a man with thick curly hair craning his neck to search the faces of the customers. His clothes were so wrinkled, he looked as if he had worn them to bed. Seeing Mac, he scurried toward their table.
“Here’s Ron Goldstein to give us the goods on Katrina and Chad.” Mac stood to shake the lawyer’s hand and introduce themselves.
“Nice to meet you,” the attorney said. “I’m glad you called.” He sat across from them while straightening his clothes. “These last few weeks have not been easy ones.” He tucked his shirt into the waistband of his pants.
Mac asked, “Were you close friends with Katrina?”
“Lawyers don’t have friends. They have connections.” Ron caught the server’s attention and pointed at Mac’s cup to signal an order for coffee. “I was Katrina’s connection until she married Holt’s millions.”
The server had finished filling the lawyer’s cup, which he snatched to gulp. After letting out a sigh, Ron said, “I guess you came to the right place if you’re looking for someone who knew her. I knew both her and Chad before, during, and after they scored their respective fortunes.”
“Then let’s start with the obvious,” Mac said. “Who had the most to gain by Katrina’s death?”
Ron replied, “That’s easy. Chad. He charmed Katrina into changing her will to make him her beneficiary before the ink dried on their marriage certificate.”
“I assume they had a pre-nup,” Mac said.
“That, too. In the case of divorce, Chad would have gotten one hundred thousand dollars for every year they were married.”
David said, “But Katrina had an appointment scheduled with you to change her will and file for divorce.”
“Katrina wasn’t as stupid as Chad liked to think,” Ron said. “Everyone knew about Rachel. They’ve been together since forever.”
“If she knew about Rachel, why did Katrina marry him?” Mac wanted to know.
“Because Katrina wanted him,” Ron answered. “Katrina liked to have things. They started at the firm at the same time. Chad is a good-looking man. Katrina liked good-looking men. She pursued him, but got nowhere because he already had a gorgeous, but poor, girlfriend.”
Mac started to ask, “If Rachel and Chad were an item—”
“Chad wanted money,” the lawyer interjected. “Rachel had everything except that. They have both been digging for gold since they hit Washington. You should have seen some of the rich widows and divorcees Chad courted. Rachel knows first-hand which congressmen and senators are unfaithful to their wives. Chad finally struck gold with Katrina after she became Niles Holt’s widow. He seduced her into thinking that he was always in love with her. I guess she wanted it enough to believe him—until after the nuptials.”
Mac sat forward in his seat. “Is it possible that Katrina and Chad started seeing each other before Niles Holt died?”
“Only casually,” Ron answered without hesitation. “I’m sure Katrina got off on screwing around with Chad behind Rachel’s back. But he had no intention of making a commitment to Katrina until after she became a rich widow.”
“Do you recall Chad being there when Lee Dorcas had that altercation with Katrina over the money missing from his grandmother’s estate?”
“I couldn’t swear to it.”
David asked, “Did you witness it?”
Ron nodded his head quickly. “The whole thing. I thought Dorcas was going to kill her then and there.”
“Did Ingram and Henderson investigate his claim of embezzlement?” Mac asked.
“We had no choice. He sued us.” The lawyer signaled the server for more coffee. “We settled out of court.”
After the waiter refilled their cups and moved on to another table, David told him, “Katrina told me that the judge threw the case out due to lack of evidence.”
“That’s not the first lie Katrina told,” Ron laughed. “We threw Lee Dorcas a bone to go away and he did.”
Mac asked, “How much money did Katrina steal from his grandmother?”
“I didn’t say that she did.”
“Ingram and Henderson has the biggest, baddest lawyers in DC working for them. If Katrina didn’t do anything wrong, then you would have fought the suit to protect the firm’s reputation.”
After glancing around to ensure no one could hear, Ron confessed, “We did find evidence of wrongdoing. Like you said, we have the highest-paid attorneys with the most impeccable reputations working for us. We could have dragged his suit out in the courts until Lee Dorcas was old and gray. But he wanted money for his music career and he wanted it now. So we settled.”
“For how much?” David wanted to know.
“We gave him back what Katrina had stolen, plus a hundred thousand dollars for restitution. He got half a million dollars. That’s a pretty big bone, if you ask me.”
“But you didn’t file any charges against Katrina for embezzling his grandma’s nest egg,” Mac noted.
His eyes wide with fear at the suggestion, Ron shook his head. “That wouldn’t have done our firm’s reputation any good. Katrina resigned and the case was quietly settled.”
David wondered, “Was Lee Dorcas satisfied with the settlement?”
“He got everything he lost and then some,” Ron reminded them. “What more could he want?”
“Maybe he wanted a pound of flesh,” Mac suggested.
Ron stared down into his coffee mug. His eyes took on a faraway look.
“What are you thinking about?”
“After Dorcas filed his suit, I was assigned ass-kissing duty.” Ron chuckled. “I actually managed to get Dorcas to bring his accounts back to Ingram and Henderson as long as I handled his money.”
“You must kiss ass with the best of them,” Mac said.
“A couple weeks after Niles Holt died—less than a month for sure,” Ron recalled, “Dorcas came into my office with a cash deposit. One hundred thousand dollars.”
David interrupted him to ask, “Why’d he bring it to you and not a bank?”
“Good question,” Ron said. “The most obvious answer is that it came from a less than up-and-up source. You take a hundred thousand dollars in cash up to a bank teller and eyebrows will raise, tongues will wag, and questions will be asked. By bringing it to me, the money was quietly deposited into his account without a lot of questions.”
Mac asked, “Where did the money come from?”
“He never told me,” Ron answered, “but he had the biggest grin I ever saw.”
“It couldn’t have been a payoff for killing Holt,” David said to Mac. “Dorcas had an alibi.”
Mac pointed out, “Unless he had chartered a private plane to get him to Deep Creek and then to his singing gig. Jackson’s not the only pilot in the world. But I doubt if he would have done Katrina any favors by killing her husband so that she could inherit forty mil.”
Ron held up his hands. “I’m only telling you what happened. The guy was a no-talent musician living off his inheritance. Money always went out of Dorcas’s account. It never went in except that one and only time. That’s why it stood out in my mind.”
They drank their respective drinks in silence while considering the possibilities.
Ron broke the silence. “Katrina never ran for Miss Congeniality. Other people probably wanted to kill her for reasons besides money.”
“Who else would want her dead?” David asked.
“More than one associate at the firm,” Ron said. “Katrina stole other people’s ideas, as well as her clients’ money. She’d charm new associates to do her work for her and then take the credit. She screwed over more than one lawyer to move up.” He added, “Niles Holt was my client. She wined and dined him—stabbed me in the back a few times—until Niles switched his account to her.”
“How long ago was that?” Mac asked.
“Four years ago.” Ron laughed. “Don’t go looking at me. In spite of Katrina’s crap, I’m now a partner, thanks in part to cleaning up her messes after she left.”
When Mac inquired if Katrina had any clients connected to the Marlstone syndicate, Ron bristled. “We don’t knowingly represent drug dealers or anyone involved in organized crime. We didn’t know what Peter Marlstone was until Katrina had us in deep.”
David asked, “Did Katrina steal from them?”
Ron’s face flushed. “After the Dorcas case, our bookkeeping department went over her accounts with a fine-tooth comb. Peter Marlstone had already withdrawn his money and disappeared by the time the feds came looking for a paper trail. Two years ago, when bookkeeping went through Katrina’s accounts from then, they found half a million dollars missing from his account. It’s weird. He never filed a complaint about it.”
“Probably because he didn’t have time to stick around to litigate.” Mac went on, “What about Chad? Where did he fit in the firm?”
“Chad kissed butts and stabbed backs, but he wasn’t that good a lawyer. He knew how to look more important than he really was.” He added with a small grin, “Rachel may be gorgeous, but she is nowhere near as smart as Katrina was. She believes everything Chad says and does. I can’t be
lieve she stood still to let him marry Katrina, even if it was only supposed to be temporary.”
David asked, “How did Rachel expect him to end his marriage if he was only going to get one hundred thou per year?”
Ron cleared his throat. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think Rachel is smart enough to think that far.”
“Do you think she would have married Chad if he was planning murder?” Mac asked.
Ron shrugged. “You got me.”
“Do you think she’s capable of arranging to have Katrina killed to free Chad to marry her?”
The lawyer paused. “I don’t know. Rachel isn’t very bright, but now that you mention it, it could be an act.”
David saw Mac sit up straight.
Ron seemed to see it, too. “What did I say?”
“An act,” Mac muttered. “It could be just an act.”
* * * *
“Oh, this is such a lovely home,” Debra Gerald gushed to Archie while gazing across the grounds from Spencer Manor’s front porch. “I would love so much to work here.”
According to her resume, this applicant fit the bill. Debra was clean, well-spoken, polite, and had experience both as a cook and housekeeper in some of the finest homes in Charlotte, North Carolina. She also claimed to like dogs.
Unfortunately, Gnarly didn’t like her. Soon after Debra arrived, he began barking and pawing at the oversized handbag she clutched under her arm. He became such a nuisance that Archie had to lock him in her cottage before giving the applicant a tour of the house.
Other than Gnarly, the interview went well. All Archie had to do before offering Debra the job was to check her references and schedule an interview with Mac.
“I’ll call you tomorrow with a time that Mr. Faraday can see you,” Archie said while she escorted Debra to the car.
Suddenly, Gnarly tore around the corner of the house. Somehow, he had escaped the cottage.
“Gnarly! No! Stop!” Archie shrieked when the large dog charged toward the prospective housekeeper.
In mid-air, Gnarly grasped the corner of Debra’s bag in his jaws.
“Stop it!” Debra pulled on the bag by the straps.
Growling, Gnarly held onto the bag for all it was worth.
