Capitol Threat

by William Bernhardt

  The crowd screamed. Ben craned his neck to see who it was, what had happened, but the body fell too fast. All he could tell for sure was that it was a woman—and that she was covered with blood. Once she hit the ground, she did not move, and it was readily apparent why.

  Her throat had been cut, deeply. A pair of garden shears protruded from her back.

  The press moved six different ways at once. Some panicked and ran, some raced forward for a closer look. Talking, screaming, running. Minicams readjusted their focus from the podium to the fallen figure in the grass. Commentators all talked at once. The network reps shouted into their cell phones, urging their bosses to interrupt the regularly scheduled programming.

  And standing in the doorway, just beyond the opening, Ben spotted Ray Eastwick.

  9

  Ben felt Christina appear at his side. “Do something,” she urged. “These reporters will destroy the crime scene.”

  Ben moved forward to block their way, but he could see already that he would be inadequate to stanch the flow of the hundred or so press reps bearing down on him. Fortunately, two Secret Service agents emerged from the wings and stopped the traffic. Ben had to admire their quick-witted professionalism. They were here strictly on a ceremonial security detail, never dreaming they would have to take charge of a murder.

  “Who is she?” Christina asked.

  “Don’t know,” Ben answered, trying unsuccessfully to sneak another glance at what was now clearly a corpse. “I only saw her face for a fleeting instant. But she didn’t look familiar.”

  Ben moved toward Roush, who was in turn moving toward Eastwick, who seemed stunned, dazed. Roush started to embrace him, then stopped. Whether it was because he was undoubtedly being filmed, or because Ray had been found in such a compromising location, Ben wasn’t sure.

  Just beyond them, through the door, Ben noticed that the illegally parked red Ford SUV he had noticed earlier was gone.

  “What happened?” Roush asked.

  Eastwick just stared at him, eyes wide. “I…I don’t know.”

  Hammond emerged from the doorway and made a beeline toward Ben. “You’ve got to take charge of him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Hammond pointed toward the house. On the street, red flashing sirens created an eerie strobe-light effect.

  “The local police will be here any minute. I expect the feds will show shortly after that.”

  “Good,” Ben said. “They need to take charge—”

  “No, you need to take charge. Of them.” He pointed toward Roush, who was holding his partner by his arms. His eyes were wide and moist.

  “Me? Why me?”

  “That’s what you do, isn’t it? In real life? Represent the accused.”

  “They haven’t been accused of anything.”

  “And I expect that condition will last about another five seconds. Go.”

  Ben sidled toward the couple, who were still staring at each other speechlessly. “Look,” Ben said quietly, “the police will be here any minute. The press are still watching. Do not, under any circumstances, say anything.”

  Roush frowned, obviously confused. “What?”

  “The press will be asking you questions. Exercise your Fifth Amendment rights. Say nothing.”

  Slowly, Eastwick seemed to come around. “They’ll arrest me.”

  “They can’t arrest you just because you were standing in the doorway at the wrong time.” Unless, Ben thought, you were there because you just murdered the woman.

  Roush’s voice cracked. “But—all that blood—”

  “Stop!” Ben said. “Don’t you see those huge boom mikes?” He jabbed a thumb behind himself. “They can pick up a baby’s gurgle from three hundred feet. When I said say nothing, I meant say nothing.”

  Roush drew himself up. “You want me to take the Fifth. Like some sort of…pimp or something. I won’t.”

  “Do you know what could happen to Ray? Even if they don’t arrest him, they could make his life a misery for—”

  “Excuse me. Lieutenant Fink, Montgomery County PD.” He was a small man, but muscular and tidy, every hair on his receding hairline exactly where it should be. “Which one of you is the judge?”

  An hour later, the local police had the crime scene more or less under control—just in time to thwart the efforts of the FBI to take over. The FBI claimed that the presence of so many congresspersons and executive branch staffers mandated federal involvement, while the police argued that it was a state crime that wasn’t committed on federal property and didn’t involve any element that would trigger a federal crime statute.

  The crime scene investigators scrutinized the doorway and the surrounding garden while detectives quizzed everyone present. The garden teemed with hair and fiber experts, soil samplers, blood spatter consultants, coroner’s office interns, and videographers—not that there was any lack of videotape of the crime scene before the officials arrived. Both Eastwick and Roush claimed they did not know the victim. For that matter, neither did anyone else. A housekeeper recalled letting the victim on the premises, but said she didn’t follow the woman around, didn’t get her name, and didn’t tell anyone she was there. A gardening apron was found stashed behind some hedges—covered with blood. Eastwick maintained that he had seen the woman from a distance, her body pinned to the back side of the door by the garden shears. He had approached rapidly but, before he arrived, Roush opened the door.

  All around him, Ben could hear various reporters doing live remotes from the scene of the crime, talking about “yet the latest bizarre turn of events” regarding the Roush nomination. Some reported that unidentified senators were already calling for Roush to step down. Roush had no apparent connection to the crime. But his partner was another matter.

  Ben was desperate to talk with Roush, or Eastwick, or both, but the police were keeping them incommunicado—and since he had not been asked to represent either of them, he had no basis for interference.

  Not that he’d ever let that stop him in the past…

  “I guess she’d probably been stuck to that door for some time, huh?” Ben said casually, as he watched Lieutenant Fink examine the body with an infrared scanner.

  “Don’t think so. Blood was still fresh.”

  “Looked to me like she was killed somewhere else, right? Probably planted on that door by someone hoping to disrupt the press conference.”

  Fink pushed up on one knee. “Senator Kincaid…how can I put this? Do I look like a stupid man?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then don’t treat me like one.” He returned to his work. “I’m positive she was D.R.T.—Dead Right There. The killer slashed her throat, then pinned her to that door. What’s your interest in this, anyway?”

  “I’m just a friend of Thaddeus Roush. Hope this doesn’t interfere with his nomination.”

  Fink gazed up at Ben with a seriously arched eyebrow. “We’ve got no reason to suspect Roush was involved. Anything’s possible, but I’d like to think he wouldn’t have opened the door on national television if he’d known there was a corpse there. Now his little snuggle bunny—that’s another story. Far as we can tell, he was the only one in the rear garden.”

  “You can’t know that. There are several ways back there.”

  “Eastwick himself said he saw no one.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “Not saying it does. I’m just saying…it’s a good thing Eastwick hasn’t been nominated for anything.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “Which one? Roush? Sure—we’ve got nothing on him. Eastwick is going to be spending a lot of time downtown.”

  Ben found Roush sitting on the periphery of the action, out of the way, but not so far the police couldn’t question him whenever they liked. “You realize,” Ben said quietly, “this changes everything.”

  “I won’t give up,” Roush said. His chin trembled a bit, but his expression was resolute.

>   “I’m not suggesting you should. But you have to realize—this was an uphill battle from the start. Maybe an impossible one. And it just got about a thousand times worse.”

  “Do you—do you think that’s what this murder is about? My nomination?”

  Ben shrugged. He was tired, and he hated pretending he had answers when he didn’t. “I don’t know. Hell of a coincidence if it isn’t.” He paused. “I got a friend back home in Tulsa, a cop. Mike Morelli. He doesn’t believe in coincidences. Says that’s the word we use when we don’t know enough to discern the connections. I tend to agree.”

  “But—why?”

  “Again, I don’t know. But that’s what we have to find out. Because it looks to me as if someone wants your nomination to fail bad enough to kill for it.”

  10

  If it hadn’t been for the reflection in the silver lenses of the hooker’s sunglasses, Loving never would have seen the barrel of the machine gun emerge from the rear window of the black sedan in time. As it was, he barely had a second to react, but that second was the difference between staying alive and becoming as porous as an SOS pad.

  “Duck!” Loving shouted, but the poor hooker, her reflexes undoubtedly slowed by whatever she was taking this week, didn’t obey. The machine gun fired, a sweeping rat-a-tat-tat that cascaded across the sidewalk and ricocheted against the brick buildings behind them. Two bullets hit her in the back and she fell.

  Loving caught her in his arms. She was already dead. Blood poured out of her wounds, spilling onto his arms and face. Damn! She was a junkie and a hooker and it was entirely possible she was HIV-positive. Before he had a chance to worry about that, however, he noticed that the sedan was still within firing range. Another shower of gunfire burst out of the rear window. He held the woman’s body up to shield himself until the sedan was out of range. An awful thing to do, but it wasn’t as if the bullets could hurt her anymore.

  Two men emerged from opposite sides of the backseat of the sedan, both of them wearing dark pants, dark T-shirts, and long dark dusters. One of them, like the woman he held in his arms, was wearing sunglasses, even though the sun had set and the Georgetown street lamps barely emitted enough light to see ten feet in front of your face. He was tall, purposefully nondescript, and carried what appeared to be a Sig Sauer with a silencer. He was a professional, an enforcer. Loving could tell just by looking at him; he was the spitting image of Leon in that movie. The other man was shorter, fair-haired, pretty, hair combed back and every lock in place. He wasn’t an enforcer; no professional would use an automatic weapon on the streets of Georgetown. Probably a personal representative of the client, tagging along to make sure the job got done.

  They were moving toward him.

  Loving dropped the corpse and ran. Hated to be unceremonious about it, but under the circumstances, he figured God would understand. As soon as he moved, a hail of lead cascaded down all around him.

  He dove, flinging himself flat on the pavement. That wouldn’t get him anywhere fast, but it would get him out of the line of fire. For a little while. He hugged the concrete, hoping the darkness would give him a few seconds before they adjusted their aim.

  It worked. The gunfire stopped, and the instant it did, Loving dove into the alleyway to his left. Out the corner of his eye, he saw the two men moving toward him, Leon on the left, Pretty Boy on the right. They were maybe fifty feet away—more than close enough to connect with either of their weapons.

  Loving raced down the alley, kicking empty soda cans and up-ended trash cans all the way. For a man as large as he was, he could still move fast when he needed to, which was a good thing, because his pursuers were not far behind. Loving had used this passageway to meet the hooker, who supposedly had a lead on a friend of the woman who was murdered at the Roush press conference. He knew it would lead to the NorthPoint shopping mall, where Loving had left his car. If he could only get there in time, there was some slim chance he might survive. On foot, he was a dead man. It was only a matter of time before one of those slugs connected, and then—game over.

  Another round of gunfire sent splinters of brick and mortar flying past his head. Guess they’d figured out where he went, not that he was surprised. He’d thought he was running at top speed, but somehow he managed to triple it as soon as he heard the bullets dancing about. Funny how that worked.

  It was a long, dark, narrow stretch. The dark part worked to Loving’s advantage; the narrow part did not. Even if his two assailants couldn’t see exactly where he was, all they needed to do was spray the width of the alley and wait to get lucky. He had to get out of there.

  Ahead of him, Loving saw, both literally and metaphorically, the light at the end of the tunnel. He focused his eyes and ran hard—so hard he didn’t see the trash can lying across his path. He hit it full speed and went flying, landing in a pile of refuse and human waste. His head banged against the brick side wall. He could tell he was getting woozy. Consciousness was fading…

  The clanging sound of bullets riddling the trash can brought him back around. The damn thing might have practically crippled him, but it had undoubtedly saved his life. Loving supposed that made it a draw. He pushed himself to his feet and resumed running.

  He bolted across the street and made a beeline for the side entrance to the mall. Surely his pursuers wouldn’t be insane enough to fire when there were so many innocent bystanders. Maybe he could even lose them. All he needed was enough time to get to the parking garage…

  He burst through the glass-paned doors and headed toward the escalator. There were still people in the mall, but it was far from crowded, damn it. Too close to closing time. He pushed past several people, muttering his regrets, and jumped onto the fancy acrylic-sided escalator.

  Leon and Pretty Boy opened fire. All at once, the mall was blanketed with screams. Shoppers dove one way or the other to get out of danger. Panic seized everyone in the vicinity. The people on the escalator—those who weren’t wounded—began stampeding to the top amid the frenzied cries. Loving ducked, but there was only so much he could do, stuck on the escalator with two assassins at the bottom. He was swept along by the rising tide of humanity, unable to do anything to help or escape. In effect, they were creating a barrier around him—but a barrier that might well cost someone their life.

  At the top of the escalator, he almost crashed into a blond woman in her early thirties pushing a stroller. The baby girl inside couldn’t have been older than six weeks. The mother was in shock, frozen in place.

  “Get outta here!” Loving shouted, checking over his shoulder to see if Leon and Pretty Boy had made it to the top.

  The woman did not move.

  Loving slapped her. A bit brutish, even for him, but it always seemed to work in the movies, right?

  She didn’t budge.

  Like he had time for this. Loving grabbed the handlebar of the stroller. That seemed to snap her out of it a bit.

  “Are you gonna push this thing, or am I?” Loving shouted.

  “I—I—”

  Loving pointed the stroller toward a nearby shoe store and gave the mother a push. “If you stay in there, you should be safe. They’re following me.”

  The mother moved rapidly toward the shoe store. Loving bolted in the opposite direction. Leon and Pretty Boy announced their arrival on the second floor with another round of gunfire. Loving dove into a nearby department store occupying a corner slot. The display window smashed into pieces and Loving was almost buried beneath a shower of safety glass. He kicked a mannequin out of his way and kept running. The store had another entrance on the opposite end of the mall. From there, it was a short sprint to the parking garage. His only hope.

  He raced down an aisle of perfumes he didn’t have time to sniff. Bottles and display items crashed and exploded all around him. He’d been lucky so far, but he knew that couldn’t last forever. The two men were stalking him, and at least one of them knew what he was doing. Loving would never make it to the parking garage at this rat
e. He had to take them down or get the hell away from them. The trouble with taking them down was—there were two of them, and they had guns. The trouble with getting away from them was—

  A bullet creased Loving’s thigh. Searing pain radiated through his body. He cried out, stumbled, then rolled to the floor. He clutched his leg and took another roll, dodging behind a makeup counter. The wound didn’t feel serious, but it would make it seriously difficult for him to outrun two thugs determined to kill him, regardless of who got hurt along the way.

  In one of the overhead security mirrors, Loving saw the two men round the corner. They were barely twenty-five feet away. A panicked shopgirl came too close and Pretty Boy whipped the butt of his gun across her jaw. She screamed and fell to the floor.

  Loving clung low to the carpet, gritting his teeth. That was unnecessary. She was no threat to them. Pretty Boy was not only unprofessional—he was cruel.

  That made Loving mad.

  No more running. Not that he could anyway, with his leg screwed up. He tore a strip off his T-shirt, wrapped it around his hand, found the largest shard of shattered glass on the floor, and waited.

  He was still somewhat hidden by the makeup counter, and Leon and Pretty Boy had their attention focused upward, still looking for an upright runner. They’d figure it out soon enough, but with a little luck, not until…

  When they came parallel to the opening between the wall and the makeup counter, Loving lunged. He jabbed the jagged glass into Leon’s stomach. He knew Leon was the pro, the tougher of the two; he had to take him out first. Pretty Boy whirled and fired, but in his haste his aim was far off the mark. While Leon reeled from the blow, Loving grabbed his gun and pounded the butt against Pretty Boy’s hands, making him drop his own gun. Loving followed with another blow to his face, shattering his nose. Blood spurted in all directions. Loving raised his wounded leg and kicked the man in the solar plexus, sending him crashing to the floor, unconscious.