“I’m moving in with Dad,” Emily said.
Breach!
“Okay, time-out,” he said, extending his arms. “Each of you, back off to a neutral corner and hold your breath for a minute. Renee, to preempt your question, no, this was not my idea. Em, to preempt what you were going to come back at Mom with, this is not a lily-white city where a redhead is the closest thing to a minority. If you think about it, you’ll realize there is more cultural diversity here than there is in my neighborhood. Okay, breathe.” Lou looked from mother to daughter. The tension between the two of them seemed to have lessened a tick.
“This so unfair!” Emily said, slumping down onto the kitchen’s wide-plank cherrywood floor. “I can’t even have a pet.”
“A pet?” Lou asked.
“Steve’s son, David, is allergic,” Renee said.
Lou found himself considering Emily’s request to move in with him, even though such a change would be a logistical nightmare. Now, it appeared he wouldn’t have to take sides. Renee was a mother for the ages, always ready to cart Emily to track or play rehearsal, or even to adjust her work schedule to monitor a field trip. Emily’s demands were a phase—a reaction to having things not go the way she wanted them to. But they still had to be handled carefully.
Gratefully, Emily had just given them an opening … a pet.
“Hey, why don’t we compromise here?” Lou offered.
Emily rose up from the floor. “What kind of compromise?”
Renee appeared suspicious.
“I’ll get a pet,” Lou said, holding up his hands in a way that implied the scales of justice were now in balance.
“Mom?”
“If a pet would make you happy, and you can’t have one here,” Renee said, “then it seems fair for you to have one when you visit Dad’s, provided there is no more talk about switching around your living arrangements.”
“A pet is hardly a multicultural inner-city experience,” Emily said, brushing aside the suggestion with her words, but not her eyes.
“It’s called a compromise,” Lou said.
“What kind of pet?” Emily asked.
“How about a flea.”
“Very funny.”
“Okay, a guinea pig.”
“How about a dog?” Emily countered.
“How about I have a job and you’re at my place only on the alternate weekends and one weekday.”
“Then what about a cat?” asked Emily, homing in with the accuracy of a Sidewinder missile.
“A cat?” Lou’s voice cracked.
“A cat,” Emily said, grinning now at what amounted to absolute victory.
Lou’s mind raced through alternatives from aardvark to zebra, but came up with nothing more practical. “Okay, okay,” he said. “We’ll get a cat.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Rescued from a shelter,” Emily added. “And I’ve got to pick him out. And he’s got to be neutered.”
“But of course,” Lou said, feeling his throat tightening at the ease with which he had been beaten.
Emily bounded over and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m sooooo super excited! Bye! I love you.” She made a delighted little squeal on her way out.
“So what are we going to do about these text messages?” Renee called after her at the moment her bedroom door slammed.
“Gone,” Lou said. He was gazing blankly at the staircase when he realized that he was wondering if Sarah Cooper was allergic to cats.
“You’re really going to have to go through with this cat thing, you know,” Renee said.
“We had a cat at the halfway house. As I recall, it tweren’t much of a problem.”
Renee smiled inscrutably and mumbled something that sounded like “You wish.”
Before Lou could ask her to repeat the remark, his cell phone rang. The caller ID was just the number.
“Hello?”
“Dr. Lou Welcome?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yes.”
“My name is Jeannine Colston. I believe you wanted to speak with me.”
CHAPTER 9
Lou had seen the hollowed-eye look before—many times before. Jeannine Colston was beaten down, pummeled by exhaustion, loss, and the malicious snipings from her family and friends as well as the media. News of her affair with Gary McHugh, the man accused of brutally murdering her husband, had exploded in the press like a land mine. In some ways, Lou sensed, she was as dead as Elias.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Colston. I know it can’t be an easy thing for you to do.”
They faced each other across the front foyer of the Colstons’ rambling colonial. Jeannine, whose striking patrician beauty was gray and tight-jawed, eyed him coolly. Despite the ravages of what she was enduring, it was still easy to see why McHugh could have lost his heart to her so absolutely. Out of reflex, it seemed, she dusted the light snow off Lou’s coat, hung it in the closet, and motioned him to a sofa in the living room. There was an uncomfortable chill in the air, as if she had not bothered to turn on the heat.
“Given your friendship with Gary, I wasn’t even going to return your call,” she said.
“I understand. First let me extend my deepest condolences. I’m so very sorry for your loss and everything else that’s been happening.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that. Tea? Coffee?”
Lou shook his head and gestured to the dozens of luxurious floral arrangements engulfing the room. “Impressive,” he said.
“I’ve thrown at least this many out. It’s been almost a week, but they keep coming.”
“The congressman was very popular.”
“In case I didn’t know that, so many reporters and former friends have gone out of their way to remind me.”
Inwardly, Lou groaned. What in the hell am I doing here? According to McHugh’s attorney, he was putting the man’s defense at risk, and according to Colston’s widow, he was sticking a salted knife into an open wound and turning the blade. Lou had seen the security cameras that filmed McHugh coming and going. He knew about the forensic evidence linking the man to Colston’s murder. No other suspects had been approached or arrested, no new persons of interest identified. Open and shut. What other explanation can there be? How can this not be the case of an alcoholic in a blackout bender, and a love affair gone horribly wrong? Gary McHugh was sitting in a Baltimore jail, denied bail at his arraignment, and Lou was having a hard time convincing himself that his friend and client did not belong there.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Colston. That was insensitive of me. I like to think empathy is one of my strengths as a doctor. I didn’t demonstrate much of it just now.”
“I have been told by Gary that you are, in fact, quite empathetic. That’s one of the reasons I agreed to see you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand. Did Gary speak about me very much?”
“Quite a bit, actually. But I saw you at the funeral. You were one of the very few there whom I didn’t know, so I asked a close Washington friend who knows everyone, and she told me about you. After you left me those messages, I did some checking.”
Lou gazed across the heavily furnished room at the large, empty fieldstone fireplace. If Jeannine Colston asked how he got into the funeral, he had decided not even to try for any answer other than the truth—that Gary had called in a favor from a judge in D.C. As it turned out, she never asked, possibly because the truth was the only logical explanation.
“Anyway,” Jeannine went on, “you looked me in the eyes, and then you just turned and left me alone. I thought you had a very kind, interesting face.”
“Thank you. I wasn’t there to make any trouble. I just wanted to get a better sense of your husband and the people who were associated with him. I thought it might help me help Gary.”
“I’m afraid Gary is beyond helping,” she said.
The funeral for Elias Colston had been held at the National Cathedral in Bethesda, Maryland. The media had gotten hold of the story of Je
annine’s affair with the congressman’s friend and physician, and turned the somber rite into a circus. Over a thousand were in attendance, including many of the military’s top brass, who had come to pay their last respects to the man who oversaw their funding as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
“I’m assuming you want to know what I think happened,” Jeannine said to Lou.
“If it’s not too difficult for you.”
“Difficult … not difficult. What difference does it make now?”
“I understand.” Lou forced himself not to avert his eyes.
“Well, I think Gary did it,” Jeannine said matter-of-factly.
“I know the police are certain that’s the case, but why are you?”
“Because I ended our … relationship. Because he was drinking and getting more and more desperate to make things right between us. I can play you the messages he left on my mobile. I saved them after I shared them with the police because, as you probably know, Gary was a hunter and a gun nut. He’s been on expeditions and hunting trips in the Rockies and Canada, and even a safari in Africa.”
Lou nodded, thinking, There it is again: motive, method, and opportunity. It seemed that Gary was just a weapon away from spending the rest of his life in prison, or from becoming the first execution in the state in years.
“Do you feel like talking about why you ended things?” he asked.
“Is that why Gary sent you to see me? To find out why?”
“No,” Lou said. “It’s me who wants to know. Gary is steadfast that he didn’t kill your husband. He knew I might be the only one on earth who would believe him and asked if I’d look into things. He’s right that I tend to accept what I’m told by my friends until I have ironclad reasons not to. So I’d like to understand as many of the events leading up to your husband’s murder as possible.”
Jeannine nodded. “Well spoken,” she replied. “Put simply, I had a change of heart. Elias came to me the evening before he … was killed. He took me in his arms and kissed me in a way he hadn’t in years. I felt it. I really and truly felt it like an electric charge shooting through my body. I’ll remember that kiss for the rest of my life. It was like our first kiss, the kiss after he proposed to me, and the kiss on our wedding day all rolled into one. I had been having misgivings about Gary—thoughts about pulling out. Guilt. Having my husband kiss me that way and tell me how much he loved me and needed me made up my mind.” She began to sob.
Lou waited. “It’s okay,” he said finally.
“No … no, it’s hardly okay. My surviving children despise me now. They blame me for their father’s murder. If I wasn’t having … having an affair—” Another gut-wrenching sob cut her words short.
Surviving children …
Lou had researched Mark Colston’s heroic death in Afghanistan. The twenty-seven-year-old’s platoon had come under attack by a group of Taliban fighters in the Ghazni Province, dubbed by many as being the most dangerous region in the country. Five members of the platoon were badly wounded in the ambush. Medical help could not reach them, because of heavy suppressing fire.
From the accounts Lou had read, Mark Colston strode into the line of fire with the calmness of Gary Cooper in High Noon. He shot and killed all but one of the Taliban militiamen. The one he did not kill, he mortally wounded. However, before he died, that Taliban fighter was able to toss a grenade at the fallen U.S. soldiers. Mark immediately fell on the grenade, saving the lives of five men, while sacrificing his own. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery above and beyond the call of duty.
“I’m sure things will work out with your children,” Lou said. “Nine years ago, my wife divorced me while I was in rehab from an amphetamine and alcohol addiction. My daughter, Emily, was young then, but not so young that she didn’t understand I had done something very bad. She blamed me completely. But things change. Now she’s thirteen, and the two of us are as close as a parent and child can be. I have her nearly half the time, but just two days ago, she asked about moving in with me.”
“What did you tell her?”
“She loves her mother as much as she loves me. It’s just a teen thing. I said that if she left matters as is, I’d get us a cat.”
For the first time since Lou’s arrival, Jeannine Colston managed something of a smile. “Good luck,” she said. She paused, her expression wistful, possibly recalling cats in her family’s past. “Now, then,” she asked finally, “are there any other questions you have? Anything else you want to know about?”
“Congressman Colston was shot in your garage.”
“That’s right.”
“And his study is above the garage.”
“Right again.”
“Would you mind if I had a look around there?”
“As long as you don’t need me to do it. I don’t like being in either place. Besides, I feel a migraine coming on, and the only thing that ever really works at this stage is a nap.”
“No problem.”
“The code for both doors is five twenty-nine eighty-two, our wedding date.”
Lou repeated the number, thanked her, and agreed not to stop back on his way out unless something came up that was important. “I assume the police are done here,” he said.
“From what I could tell, they were done almost as soon as they started. They knew they had their man, and so did I.”
CHAPTER 10
Sarah Joyce Cooper was on a partner track, or at least that is what she had been told by the firm’s founder, Grayson Devlin. She was known for her intellect and composure in the courtroom, but when Devlin summoned her to a conference in his office, her nervousness was understandable.
The conference area, half the size of the one by the library off the main suite, was designed by one of Washington’s most prestigious architectural firms to evoke feelings of regality and power. It was a legal sanctuary, featuring rich mahogany paneling and a floor adorned by one of the most beautiful Oriental carpets Sarah had ever seen. There were leather couches and chairs positioned with a designer’s flair, bookcases filled with impressive legal tomes, and of course, a well-stocked bar. On one wall was a gas fireplace, and before it, an oval mahogany table with seating for eight.
When Sarah arrived, five of the firm’s seven partners were at the conference table. She had no idea how long the partners had been there, and indeed, it was possible they did not know themselves. There were no windows in Devlin’s private space, and no clocks. As Sarah found out during her first year on the job, the business of the senior partners of Devlin and Rodgers ended each day only when it had to.
She took her appointed seat and glanced at the papers set out for her, a stack considerably smaller than those in front of the others. She could see they had been reviewing the Gary McHugh case. It seemed a bit early for a strategy meeting of this magnitude, but she felt prepared. Still, she took a sip of lemon water against the raspiness in her throat. There were no prolonged greetings. The firm billed by the minute, and the senior partners’ philosophy was to charge only for time spent serving their clients.
Grayson Devlin spoke first. A tall and lean silverback with a full head of hair and a love for designer suits, Devlin, even in his seventies, could intimidate as equally on the squash court as he could in the courtroom.
“Sarah, I see that Dr. McHugh is still in jail.”
“The DA is certain he’s the man. They don’t want this to turn into a circus.”
“He’s been a good citizen. Any chance we could get him out?”
“He was having an affair with the victim’s wife, and he was on the scene intoxicated at around the time the murder took place.”
“Point taken. How is your defense shaping up?”
Sarah took another drink of lemon water. “Until we turn something else up, we’re going directly after the evidence,” she said.
Heather Goddard, the only female partner, made a disapproving sound. “I’ve read your brief, and that seems like a risky
play to me,” she said.
Sarah loved Heather’s thinking, and did not feel at all on the defensive by having her question the strategy. The partners of Devlin and Rodgers were sharp and ethical, and they understood the critical nuances of the law. They also knew that in cases like McHugh’s, their job was not to judge a client’s guilt or innocence but, rather, to cast enough reasonable doubt to win an acquittal. When called upon, they functioned as a team to mount the best defense possible. If Heather had any concern, it was Sarah’s job to address it.
“The evidence builds a circumstantial case at best. Without a murder weapon, I don’t see any risk in attacking it,” Sarah said. “But that’s not to say I don’t share your concern, Heather, which is why it’s not my only strategy.”
Sarah was pleased to see Heather smile. Next to Devlin, she was the partner Sarah most wanted to impress. Five years before, Heather’s husband of twenty-six years had unexpectedly died in his sleep. Two years after that, following the death of Sarah’s husband, David, Heather became one of her closest confidantes.
“What else do you have in mind?” Heather asked now.
“It goes without saying that politicians make enemies, especially ones with the longevity on Capitol Hill that Elias Colston had. I’ve got an investigator checking around to see whose feathers he might have ruffled over the years.
Gordon Rodgers, the most senior partner after Devlin, appeared pleased by the plan. “Do you think a jury would buy that?” he asked.
“Without the murder weapon, anything is possible. The surveillance tape shows Dr. McHugh parking on the drive and leaving his car. But the cameras aren’t positioned to show him actually entering the garage or even going around the house. The next time we see him, he is more or less stumbling back to his car. Then he drives away. The crime scene people are fixing the time of death between eleven and two. That window would include Dr. McHugh, but it leaves room for someone else as well.”
“Someone else?”
“It’s a bit of a long shot, but I think we have an opportunity to focus some attention on Jeannine Colston.”
(2012) Political Suicide Page 6
