Willowicz led her back around to the front. “As you can see, the victim has been stabbed, not once or twice, or even a half-dozen times, but repeatedly, beyond…” He turned back to her. “A preliminary count has taken us past fifty. I’m quite certain there are more.”
“That’s why he bled to death?”
“No.” Willowicz pointed. “The vast majority of the cuts are superficial, barely scoring the subcutaneous layers. But they were all near nerve ganglia.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Alli said, “You’re saying that Billy was tortured.”
She did not miss the sharp glance exchanged by the detective and Commander Fellows.
“Do you think he was tortured, Ms. Carson?” Willowicz said.
“Well, the evidence points to it, doesn’t it.” She paused, her terror, horror, and grief once again threatening to overwhelm her. At once, she was cast back into the nightmare of her weeklong imprisonment. Then she took a mental step back, as Jack had taught her to do, disengaging herself from the intimacy of emotions. It was imperative now for her to think clearly and reason the situation out, which she was unable to do when overcome with emotion. Billy was dead, she had to accept that. All death is terrible, but this was beyond comprehension. Why would anyone torture Billy, and then attempt to frame her? “However, that theory leaves one question unanswered.”
Willowicz put his hands behind his back. “And what might that be?”
“I don’t know,” Peter McKinsey, Naomi Wilde’s partner, said. “You seem awfully cool for someone whose lover of five months has been brutalized and killed.”
“If you’ve got nothing constructive to contribute, fuck off,” Alli said. Addressing Willowicz, she said, “You said he bled to death. None of these subcutaneous cuts, even en masse, would have done the trick.”
Again, that sharp look was exchanged by Willowicz and Fellows.
“So how did poor Billy die?” Alli said.
Willowicz beckoned with a crooked forefinger. Something about his demeanor reminded Alli of a Grimm’s fairy tale witch or ogre, anyway someone delighted to be up to no good. “Come closer.”
She walked over the uneven ground. The crunch of even her light weight pierced the paper-thin layer of ice, and with each step she seemed to sink farther into the boggy ground beneath.
A sickly smell enveloped Billy, of rotten meat, ice cream, and fecal matter. She gagged once, and then, because everyone’s attention was on her, caught hold of herself and fought down her rising gorge. Billy’s eyes were so swollen and bruised she had first thought they were covered in flies. Deep contusions showed around the spiderweb of cuts like dark clouds gathering around the heart of a storm. His face was so distorted that, close up, she scarcely recognized him. There could be only one reason why he had been slowly and systematically taken apart.
“What did he know?”
“Well, that’s certainly one way to look at it,” O’Banion said. “The other is that there was a single killer. A crime of passion.”
“You’re still at this angle,” Alli said.
“We go by the odds,” said Willowicz. “In these cases, the person closest to the vic is the perpetrator.”
“Not this time.”
Both detectives regarded her stonily.
Naomi Wilde, never far from her since she had stumbled, said, “We thought you might be able to shed some light on what happened here.”
Alli said nothing, but delivered an Et tu, Brutus glower. Then, she turned to the corpse and looked into Billy’s face, trying to stare past the terrible beating he had sustained, into the mind of the boy she had known, briefly but wildly. Even before she had been traumatized by her kidnapping and brainwashing two years ago, she had had difficulty with intimacy. She was embarrassed and ashamed of her body, which was small and immature. Now, through first Jack’s and then the academy’s help with physical training, her arms and legs were toned. But to her they still looked like a girl’s limbs, totally lacking the womanly curves of her contemporaries.
Naomi wrapped an arm around Alli’s shoulders. “Whatever you know, you have to tell us.”
“All I know is that I had nothing to do with this monstrous … this atrocity.” She shook her head. “It’s beyond me how anyone could do this to another human being.” If Jack were here he’d know that for a lie. During her time with him and Annika in Russia and the Ukraine she had witnessed examples of the hatred and contempt for human life some people harbor deep in their hearts or just beneath their skin. And with the Russian agent Annika, at least, she had discovered depths of human betrayal she had not even been able to imagine, even growing up in the snake pit of American politics.
“Ms. Carson,” Willowicz said, “no one believes you don’t know what happened here.”
Alli felt her heart constrict. “How can you say that?”
“You and the victim were having an affair—illicitly, as it happens, on the grounds of the academy. But two days ago something happened. The two of you were seen in an argument—rather violent, from all reports—in a bar in town. Harsh words were exchanged. As a result, he stalked out.”
“So, what, you think I tortured him and strung him up like an attic ham in revenge?”
“The theory tracks,” O’Banion said. “It hits closest to home.”
Alli shook her head. She had fallen down the rabbit hole, and now was sinking deeper and deeper into Nightmareland.
“Maybe he had another girl on the side and you found out. Maybe he was fed up with you.” O’Banion shrugged, as if whichever motive it turned out to be made no difference to him.
Alli stared at him. “You’re an idiot.”
When he took a step toward her, Naomi intervened. O’Banion’s eyes were yellow and feral as he squinted over the agent’s shoulder. “You think because you’re the president’s daughter you can talk to us like that? Fuck you!”
“Now, hold on,” Naomi said.
“And, by the way,” he said to Alli, “your old man was a dickhead.”
McKinsey became a shield between the detective and Alli. “Calm down.”
“And fuck you, too, sonny! You better tell her to watch her mouth.”
“Back off, Bluto,” Naomi said.
“Screw you, nanny dearest.”
When the detective remained rooted as a tree, she lowered her voice. “I said back the fuck off, or I will take you in for disobeying an order from a federal agent.”
A pulse beat furiously in O’Banion’s temple, then he turned his head and spat onto the ground. “Remember what I said.” He pointed to Alli as he returned to his previous position.
Willowicz, who had observed the escalating emotions through skeptical eyes, now stepped up. “This is a homicide—a civilian homicide. As I see it, you and the woman are here to ensure the safety of the late president’s daughter. My partner and I appreciate your role in this matter, really we do. But the fact remains that this crime is in our jurisdiction and is under our purview. I control the crime scene, I control the interrogations.” He flipped open an old-fashioned notebook. “Now here’s how I see matters falling out. We have a murder of both premeditation and deep emotion, but we have no witnesses. Commander Fellows here has assured us that no outsider has breached the academy’s perimeter tonight.”
“Billy had no trouble—”
“We have filled that breach, Ms. Carson,” Fellows said icily. “I can assure you that there are no others.”
Willowicz looked from Alli to Fellows, as if they were combatants, before he continued. “So, no interlopers. But your roommate, Ms. Carson, was drugged … at about midnight, Fearington’s doctor estimates.”
“I was asleep,” Alli said.
“Well, the problem there is the only person who could corroborate your claim can’t.” Licking his fingertip, he turned a page in his notebook. “Which means that at any time after lights out you could’ve stolen out of your room and, if you were careful enough—well, pretty much gone anywhere on the grounds unobs
erved, am I correct?”
He was looking directly at Alli, but she said nothing, principally because an idea was dawning on her, and the horror of why these people were so insistent on pinning Billy’s murder on her literally took her breath away.
“So you had opportunity. Tell us a little about the victim.”
She took a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to regain her composure. “Billy worked at Middle Bay Bancorp. He was a loan analyst.”
“Sounds like a snoozer.” O’Banion looked her up and down. “Still waters, yeah.”
Willowicz pursed his lips. “How’d you hook up with him?”
Alli tried to ignore the insinuation, but found herself rising to the bait anyway. “We met at a bar.”
“Uh-huh. Which one?”
“Twilight. In Georgetown.”
Willowicz made a notation. “Yeah, been there for twenty years.”
“The bar for vampires.” O’Banion guffawed.
Willowicz ignored him. “What did he do when you approached him?”
Alli’s cheeks flamed. “He came up to me. I was dancing and—”
“What?” O’Banion interjected. “Like pole dancing?”
Alli’s cheeks continued to flush. “He came up to me, like I said.”
“Was he drunk?”
“Maybe. A little. I don’t know.”
Willowicz nodded. “Then what?”
“We danced … together.”
“And things progressed from there.”
“Oh so very fast.” O’Banion leered.
“And this first meeting was how long ago?”
“About five months.”
“And you’ve been seeing the victim ever since.”
“Yes.”
“When did you see him last?”
A slight hesitation, for which she could have bitten her tongue. “This evening—well, yesterday, now.”
Willowicz’s head came up like a pointer scenting game. “When, exactly?”
“After dinner. About eight.”
“Did you have permission to leave Fearington?”
Alli shifted from one foot to another. “No.”
“So you sneaked out.”
Alli stared at him, unflinching. She had no wish to look at Commander Fellows. “Billy begged me. He said it was urgent.”
“Uh-huh.” Willowicz was scribbling some more. “And?”
“And that’s it. I never found out what he wanted to talk to me about.”
Willowicz’s eyebrow arched. “Why was that?”
“I was supposed to meet him at Twilight. Just as I came around the corner, I saw him walk off with someone.”
“Who?”
“I have no idea.”
“Man or woman?”
“The person’s back was to me.”
“Tall, short, thin, fat?”
“The figure was in shadow.”
“So it could have been a woman.”
Silence.
“Your contention is that you never spoke to the victim at any time yesterday?”
“No, as I said, he and I had a brief phone conversation.”
“You never spoke face-to-face.”
“No.”
In typical interrogator’s style, Willowicz now switched subjects without warning. “And so you had motive.”
“Motive,” Alli said, taken aback. “What motive?”
Again, Willowicz turned a page. “As it happens, the victim had met someone—a week ago. Her name is … let’s see, Kraja. Arjeta Kraja.”
“Fucking foreign names.” O’Banion snickered. No one else moved or said a word.
Willowicz looked up from his notes. “You know this Arjeta Kraja, Ms. Carson? Ever met her?”
“No,” Alli said. “No, I haven’t.”
“Interesting.” Willowicz held out his hand and O’Banion placed something in it.
When Alli saw that it was a photo, her heart sank. Reluctantly, she took it when Willowicz handed it over, a surveillance photo of three people talking casually outside a local bar.
“Man, she’s smokin’ hot,” O’Banion said.
“Ms. Carson,” Willowicz said, “would you be good enough to identify the young woman with you and William Warren.”
Of course it was Arjeta Kraja.
* * *
ON THEIR way out of the hospital, Henry Holt Carson said, “Mr. Secretary, I believe your phone’s about to ring,” just as Paull’s phone buzzed.
Paull gave him a sharp glance.
“I think you’d better answer it,” Carson said with a perfectly straight face. The gloating was all in his voice.
Paull thumbed on the cell phone and put it to his ear. He listened for close to ten seconds before he said, “Yes, sir,” and closed the connection. “Jack, go on ahead. I’ve got an appointment at the White House.”
“At this hour?” Jack said.
“This president never sleeps,” Carson said. Then, turning to Jack, he said, “Why don’t I give you a lift?”
“I have my own car—”
Carson waved a hand. “I’ll have someone come and fetch it.”
Jack recognized a summons when he heard one. He watched his boss cross the parking lot and approach his car. Stars were blurred by the city’s artificial dome of light and the slow creep of dawn. A chilly wind blew off the Potomac with a dampness that pierced his thick coat like a spear.
Jack turned back to Carson. “What’s going on?”
Carson shrugged his meaty shoulders. “Why ask me?”
“Because,” Jack said, “you seem to have orchestrated this entire scene.”
Carson appeared unperturbed.
Jack hurried to Carson’s Navigator and they climbed into the backseat. Carson’s driver turned the SUV around and drove away from the hospital.
Jack turned to Carson. “Now what the hell was that all about?”
Carson held up a finger. “Excuse me.” He punched in a number on his PDA. After a moment, he said, “Harrison, it’s Henry.… Yes, damnit, I’m well aware of the time. Get dressed and haul your ass over to Fearington Academy.… Nothing, I hope, but on the other hand my niece seems to be in trouble.… What sort? I’ve no damn idea.”
After he closed the connection, he sat brooding and silent.
Jack said, “Who are you bringing on board?”
“My lawyer, Harrison Jenkins.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“I hope not, but the world doesn’t run on hope.”
They drove on in a fulminating silence. Sitting next to Henry Holt Carson was akin to living near a blast furnace going full bore.
“You never answered my question about orchestrating that scene back there with Dennis.”
“Persistent little fucker, aren’t you?”
“That’s no answer.”
“I’ve been around politicians all my life.” Carson stared straight ahead, his arms folded across his chest. “Say, I don’t have to be worried, do I?”
“About what?”
“You being able to read the street signs, that’s what.” He glanced in Jack’s direction, though not directly at him. “Dyslexia’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
“Especially,” Jack said, “if you know nothing about it.”
Carson laughed with his teeth bared. “You’re a fuckup, Jack. I’ll never forgive you for my brother’s death.”
“That’s your choice,” Jack said. “But in the same way you’re ignorant about dyslexia, you know nothing about Edward’s death or the circumstances leading up to it.”
“I’m uninterested in your litany of excuses, McClure.”
“We’re like oil and water,” Jack said, “destined never to inhabit the same space.”
Carson grunted. “What the hell my brother saw in you is beyond me, McClure. And the fact he allowed you unlimited access to Alli was a grave mistake.”
“Alli is an adult. She can make her own decisions.”
“She’s a psychological train wreck and
you know it. Kidnapped, brainwashed, traumatized further by her father’s sudden death and her mother lingering on in a vegetative state.” He shook his head. “No, what she needs is the firm guidance of an adult who cares about her.”
“She has me.”
“And how’s that going?”
They had drawn up to the front gates of Fearington Academy, which was ablaze with the blinding dazzle of cop cars and unmarked vehicles. After showing their credentials to three different police in ascending order of rank, they were directed and waved through. The car crunched the gravel as Jack headed toward the obstacle course to the left of the main building.
Henry Holt Carson leaned over slightly. “My brother allowed you too much control over Alli, McClure. That’s a mistake I aim to correct tonight.”
THREE
“WELL, HERE’S something you don’t see every day.”
The ME, a tall, rangy man in his midfifties with skin like a lizard and eyes like burnt-out pits, was crouched just to the right of Billy Warren’s corpse. His name was Bit Saunderson; he viewed corpses the way a philatelist views stamps. His forensic people had snapped photos from every conceivable angle, taken shoe prints from the crime scene area, and had departed as silently as clouds drift across the sky.
“Look here.”
He was speaking to Willowicz, but no one stopped Alli from having a look herself. Saunderson’s knees creaked like masts at sea as he moved to give them a view of the side of the corpse’s neck.
“Yeah, we noticed,” Willowicz said, “but what the fuck is it?”
“It’s a bit of a plastic straw. See, it’s pink-and-white striped.” Saunderson touched the protruding end with the tip of his gloved finger. “Neatly punctured the carotid, too. This is how your victim exsanguinated.”
Willowicz scratched his razor-burned jaw. “That speaks to a working knowledge of the human body.”
“Anatomy is a first-semester class at Fearington.” Commander Fellows had begun to look green around the gills.
“Aced her courses, she said,” O’Banion growled as he took up position directly behind Alli.
Naomi Wilde frowned as she bent over for a look. “But why a straw, of all things?”
O’Banion was virtually breathing fumes from his sour stomach down Alli’s neck. “Why don’t you ask her?”
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