Stabbing in the Senate

by Colleen J. Shogan

  That’s what bugged me about Mandy. Pretty much everyone else who worked for Langsford had a “do-good” look in his or her eyes. He was famous for hiring people with small egos and a strong work ethic. I never figured out how Mandy had slipped through the cracks. Somehow she had managed to pull the wool over the senator’s eyes. Unless … perhaps Langsford could see perfectly well, given she was a silhouette size-four redhead who sauntered around the office in stiletto heels and skirts stretched tautly over her toned behind.

  A moment later a chunky, middle-aged guy with a bald spot entered the hallway and checked in with the uniformed officers. They nodded and pointed in my direction. As the only person standing around in handcuffs, I was hard to miss.

  The man walked over and introduced himself. “Hello, Kit. My name is Detective O’Halloran. I understand you have some information about what happened here. I need to get a statement from you, and the sooner, the better. In about ten minutes this story is going to leak. So how about we sit in a conference room here, and you tell me what you know?”

  I hesitated. I wasn’t a lawyer, but on television shows, the dumb suspects never ask for legal counsel and usually end up saying something incriminating. But I was innocent and had nothing to hide. One side of my brain said to take him up on his offer so I could clear my name. The other side said I needed to wait to hear from my boyfriend and the lawyer he would soon be dispatching.

  If I could just get someone to listen to me for more than two seconds, I could probably clear up the confusion on my own. I needed a moment to collect my thoughts. That was impossible with crime scene investigators rapidly arriving, along with every other uniformed cop who could possibly fit into our office suite.

  “Detective, I’d like to tell you what happened,” I told O’Halloran. “But first, I need to use the ladies room.”

  O’Halloran sighed and fixed a steely stare on me. “Rodriguez, come over here,” he called out. “Escort Ms. Marshall to the nearest women’s facilities on this corridor. Do not, I repeat, do not let her out of your sight.” He pointed at two male cops. “Randolph and Jenkins, secure the perimeter of the restroom while Rodriguez enters with Ms. Marshall.” Never had going to the bathroom been such a production.

  Officer Rodriguez placed her hand on my arm to guide me out of the foyer toward the office exit. As we headed down the hall, Meg walked toward us, still intent on her BlackBerry. As she passed, she whispered, “Doug’s on it. Don’t worry.” She kept walking without looking up from her phone. Damn, she was good.

  I sure hoped Meg was right. The enormity of the events of this morning was beginning to sink in. Senator Langsford was dead. The world I had known for the past four years had vanished.

  The only thing worse than having a murdered boss was being named the prime suspect.

  Chapter 3

  I glanced quickly in the restroom mirror. My hair was a mess and perspiration had ruined the makeup I had hastily applied earlier this morning. I saw no way to fix my coiffure with hands in cuffs.

  Instead, I took several deep yoga breaths to restore a modicum of calm to my brain. The fog started to lift, and an immediate plan of action materialized. My answers to the police would be brief and honest. This was a clear instance of the less said, the better.

  I had followed the police officer out of the bathroom and was headed toward the office when a swarm descended on me. Flashes of light blazed across the dimly lit hallway, and someone shoved a microphone close to my mouth. Frowning, I blinked to avoid the bright flickers. When my eyes adjusted, I found myself in the middle of an old-fashioned Washington, D.C., press assault. Questions flew in staccato rapid fire:

  “What’s your name?”

  “Why did you murder Senator Langsford?”

  “Are you having an affair with the senator?”

  “How many years have you worked for him?”

  “What weapon did you use?”

  How did the press learn so quickly a salacious story was brewing? I might have been delusional, because I thought I caught a glimpse of Matt Drudge in the crowd that assaulted me.

  My police escort whisked me away quickly, but not before the damage had been done. Maybe if I could clear up what happened with the police, no one would run with the story. That hope was delusional, too.

  Back in the safety of the office, Vivian, the senator’s wife—now his widow—had arrived. Her gray hair was perfectly styled and she was dressed in an impeccably tailored suit, matching handbag in tow. Vivian was a hard woman to understand. Always polite with the senator’s staff, she had given us no obvious reason to dislike her, but we still did. She wasn’t overtly interested in legislation or policy, but was invested, literally and figuratively, in her husband’s political career. For more than twenty years she had been the wife of a senator. Independently wealthy, she had funded Langsford’s initial run for elected office and had kept the money flowing ever since.

  The rumor around the office was she wanted Langsford to finish his current term in office, retire, and then accept a lucrative job with a lobbying firm on K Street. Vivian had played her part well during the many years of public service. Now, she wanted a big payout.

  Langsford had given no indication he was willing to grant Vivian her wish. All senators possessed a healthy ego, and Langsford was no exception. The prospect of growing the family fortune did not motivate him. In fact, he relished his new role as a political maverick. He also liked the attention it attracted. Sources within the office reported that if he thought he could win reelection, then he would run for office again, whether Vivian liked it or not.

  I took a long look at Vivian. Never rumpled, she always looked as if she’d just stepped off the cover of Vogue. Now was no exception. It took a moment to register what was bothering me. Her face showed expected signs of strain; her brow was appropriately furrowed. Sniffling, she used a monogrammed “V” handkerchief to dab at her eyes and nose. The slight tearing and congestion might be attributed just as well to summer allergy season as to the unexpected death of her husband. Studying her closely, I decided Vivian was trying to muster up a façade of sadness.

  Nobody else was looking at her. Instead, everyone was looking my way as O’Halloran led me into one of our conference rooms. The place had quickly morphed into a communications and operations center to handle the crisis. The Capitol Hill police captain on duty joined O’Halloran for the interview. Before I had much time to consider Vivian’s apparent charade, Detective O’Halloran began hitting me with questions. My head was pounding. I pleaded for coffee.

  O’Halloran sighed and narrowed his eyes as if to express his disapproval of spoiled Capitol Hill staffers. First I had asked to go to the bathroom. Now I wanted coffee. To put the situation into perspective, I reminded him I was talking without the benefit of a lawyer.

  The captain nodded. Before long, a “Lovin’ Lyndon” campaign mug was placed in front of me, and another officer removed my handcuffs. I massaged my wrists, eagerly picked up my coffee, and took a long sip. O’Halloran waited politely, then read me my rights and asked me to recount exactly what happened, for the record this time. Despite my earlier resolve, I’d never considered brevity my strong suit. I explained in detail the events of the morning. Both O’Halloran and the captain wrote in their notebooks.

  O’Halloran asked the inevitable question: “What possessed you to remove the murder weapon from the senator’s body?”

  Having been a mystery reader since the second grade, I felt like a fool. My answer was simple. A tear running down my face, I said, “I thought maybe I could save him. I’m sorry.”

  O’Halloran asked me to stay put while he talked to his boss. As the minutes dragged on, I noticed I was the only staffer inside the conference room, now filled with uniformed police officers and law enforcement types in business suits, likely from the FBI or some other federal law enforcement agency. There were so many conflicting law enforcement jurisdictions in Washington, D.C., that it was hard to keep them all straight. />
  A few minutes later, O’Halloran returned without the captain and said I was free to leave the conference room as soon as I wrote out my statement and signed it. My story had apparently checked out, since the Senate’s public corridors were recorded on video cameras. Video recorded my entry into the office building less than ten minutes before Kara had called the police.

  “The timeline is problematic,” admitted the detective. “If you were our perp, this would be a slam dunk, and I could plan on having the semblance of a normal life in the foreseeable future, but the medical examiner says the temperature of the body tells us the senator died at least an hour before you arrived. So you’re free to go.” I breathed a sigh of relief. O’Halloran must have heard my sigh. He added quickly, “For now.”

  I stood and turned toward the door, but O’Halloran wasn’t finished. “Ms. Marshall, do you have any plans to leave the D.C. area in the next several days?”

  I shook my head and answered automatically, “The Senate is in session, and staff must stay in town when the Senate is legislating.”

  “Don’t leave town until we get to the bottom of this. Do you understand?” I nodded and walked out the door.

  After the session with O’Halloran, I had a new worry. I was effectively unemployed and my days in the Senate were numbered. Capitol Hill jobs had coveted perks, yet one of the biggest downsides was a complete lack of job security. I served at the pleasure of Senator Lyndon Langsford. Most staff terminations followed after a failed reelection bid. Murder, while outside the norm, also killed the job.

  I returned to an office suite in chaos. Some people were crying; others were stoic. No one sat at desks or cubicles, and the staff was not alone. Police filled the office, conducting interviews or chatting with one another. Controlled pandemonium was one way to describe it. I moved through the din to reach my cubicle.

  On my way I found my pal Meg, who grabbed me by the arm.

  “Kit, I’ve been trying to get confirmation from Doug that one of his family’s lawyers can come and help. But he’s at the vet with Clarence, and he can’t access the phone numbers he needs. Are you okay? What happened?”

  I heaved myself into my ergonomically approved chair and put my head in my hands. Thank goodness Clarence, our considerably overweight beagle, had distracted Doug. If Doug had sent a lawyer immediately, I might not have been able to get away with just an interview in our conference room. Instead, my next stop would have been downtown for a full-scale interrogation.

  I recounted the story, and my best friend listened intently. One of Meg’s finest virtues, besides her impeccable taste in fashion, was her ability to remain unruffled under pressure. I finished my tale, and she whistled softly. “Do you think they believed it? Or are you still a suspect?”

  There were some obvious problems with my status as a suspect. First, I had no discernible motive. Second, as the detective had said, the timing was off. Nonetheless, I had emerged from his private office with the murder weapon in my hand. That might be hard for the police to forget.

  I shrugged. “They can’t believe I did it; the evidence doesn’t support it. But they may think I’m involved somehow. Let’s face it. None of us is going to rest easy until they find the person who did this. What if it’s someone we know?”

  Meg nodded. I dug in my purse and found my hand mirror. “Here,” I said, holding it out to her. Her makeup was streaked from the tears she shed after learning about the murder. “Friends don’t let friends look smudged.”

  “Oh no,” she said, using a Kleenex and a cup of water to repair the damage.

  We had met four years ago when Langsford had been in a tough reelection fight. We both worked on the campaign and had spent a lot of time together marching in parades, visiting senior centers, knocking on doors, dialing for dollars, sharing crappy motel rooms, and indulging in unhealthy fast food. Since then we had worked together in the Senate office. We both knew this was the end of an era.

  “Excuse me, I’m trying to work,” said a whiny male voice. We instinctively recoiled. The interruption came from the staffer who sat directly next to my cubicle in the rear of the office, Trevor.

  In many ways, working in a congressional office was like returning to high school, or even kindergarten. There were popular people and not-so-popular people, and Trevor fit into the latter category.

  He was a skinny, short guy with mousy brown hair who looked more like he should be learning to drive rather than working in a Senate office. As far as we knew, Trevor had no life outside work. He was extremely smart, and the long hours he put in had won him favor with the senator and our boss, Matt.

  Meg was the self-appointed social organizer of the office, coordinating happy hour sessions and other events. Much to her surprise, Trevor always rebuffed her invitations. Her numerous attempts to lure him out of the office had consistently failed and his lack of interest in her escapades aggravated her. Meg was the office social butterfly, and Trevor was her lost cause.

  She turned toward him. “Trevor, our boss was murdered today and we’ll be out of work in a few weeks. What could you possibly be working on?”

  Trevor wrinkled his nose in distaste. “You may not know that even with our boss deceased, Megan, our work continues until the governor selects a replacement. Our constituents deserve our undivided attention.” He looked curtly at her from behind horn-rimmed glasses with superior disdain. His use of her full name made the insult worse. “If you can move your chair, I need to get to the printer to retrieve the document I have been working on.” He gave us a curt nod. Meg rolled her eyes and squeezed in closer to me to clear the aisle.

  Meg turned toward me, lowered her voice, and jerked her thumb in Trevor’s direction. “If you ask me, the police should take a hard look at that one.”

  “He’s a nutcase,” I murmured.

  “Our boss was murdered today, and all he cares about is a memo. Who is he writing a memo for, anyway? The senator isn’t even alive!”

  Trevor was a nuisance, and I despised sitting next to him. Meg had asked for the cubicle next to me a long time ago and Matt had refused. I couldn’t blame him. Sitting next to each other, we would have accomplished little. As a result I got stuck with Trevor, who had all the personality of an Elmer’s Glue Stick. “Do you really think Trevor could kill anyone?” I asked. “Besides, why would he do it?”

  Meg narrowed her eyes and whispered, “I heard Langsford hasn’t been interested in Trevor’s ideas lately. Trevor wanted Langsford to wage a coup within the party. Langsford felt he could do more by pushing the envelope but staying within the fold.”

  The rumor was in line with Trevor’s character. Besides shunning all social advances, Trevor drifted outside of the office’s political mainstream. Sitting next to him, I had overheard his frustration over disagreements with the senator. But could Trevor get angry enough to kill?

  I glanced at his empty cubicle. Nothing was on his desk except a few neatly stacked folders, two pens placed side by side, and exactly five paperclips.

  I wondered if I had been sharing office space with a killer. But if not Trevor, then who did kill Lyndon Langsford, and why?

  Chapter 4

  My phone started ringing, shaking me from my thoughts. I checked the caller ID. It was Doug, who must be wondering if I had been arrested. In the midst of the pandemonium, I had forgotten to let him know the lawyer wasn’t necessary, at least right now. I picked up the phone.

  “Kit, are you okay? What’s going on? CNN is reporting Senator Langsford was murdered this morning. While Clarence and I were at the vet I got messages from Meg saying you might need a lawyer.” Doug’s voice sounded frantic. My brilliant boyfriend, extremely accomplished for someone in his early thirties, had recently received tenure from the history department at Georgetown. His first book on early American presidents had earned favorable reviews in top scholarly journals. Academia was the perfect fit for Doug. He didn’t like the unpredictable and appreciated routine more than anything. Something li
ke this was bound to throw him for a loop. If I didn’t calm him down, he’d need a stiff shot of whisky and a Xanax.

  “Everything’s fine. Don’t worry. But that’s right. The senator is dead.” Saying those words out loud made me choke back a sob. “He was murdered. But I talked to the police and I’ve been released, at least for the time being.”

  “Why would the police consider you a suspect?” Anxiety escalated in his voice.

  There was no way around it; I had to tell Doug I’d been the one to find the senator. I braced myself for his reaction. “Well, I walked into his office this morning and discovered his body.”

  His voice roared. “You what?”

  “It gets worse. I also pulled the murder weapon out of him.” Better he heard it from me than read about it later in the Washington Post.

  He was silent, which wasn’t exactly what I expected. It was too much for Doug to process at once. “Doug, are you still on the line?”

  Finally, he said quietly, “Yes, I’m here. Are you sure I shouldn’t call my father and have a lawyer come to the office to meet you?”

  I paused. Doug came from a wealthy New England family with deep roots and strong political ties. I already had a complex that his connections had helped me get the job with Langsford. It was inevitable his family would find out I had stumbled across the body. Hopefully, that revelation could be delayed as long as possible, and in the meantime, the police would find the real killer.

  “No, I’m sure the police will find who did this quickly. I mean, you can’t just murder a United States Senator in a congressional office building and get away with it, right?”

  The line went silent again for a moment. Doug finally said, “I guess you’re right. It’s not like you can just carry a knife or gun into the building.”