Corruption of Power

by Brenda English

  “Like Ann Kane, this woman worked on Capitol Hill. That’s what he called her, a piece of ass he found up on the Hill. Someone he could have met there but who wasn’t at a level to have any power over him. Someone very much like Ann Kane.”

  My hopes were dashed. Was this all he had?

  “Is that it?” I asked, sitting forward in the chair. “You’re accusing Ed Lloyd of having a role in Ann Kane’s death because you think he drugged another woman who also probably works on the Hill? That could be nothing more than coincidence, Doctor.”

  “No, there’s more,” Morris answered tiredly. “There’s the fact that Ann Kane also had been given Demerol, something the police don’t believe she would have taken herself because she was on an MOA. And there’s the sperm. The police said that based on the sperm they found in her, one of the men who’d been with Ann Kane had AB-negative blood. That’s a rare blood type, Sutton. But Ed Lloyd is AB-negative. I know none of this is proof, but you tell me, how far can coincidence stretch?”

  I let it sink in. Peter Morris was right. None of it, not even the blood type, was proof, not by a long shot. But it was a connection—and one that all my instincts told me was real. I saw Ann Kane’s body again, lying naked in the woods at Mason Neck, surrounded by yellow police tape and a cadre of patrol cops and homicide detectives, her blue lips, the thin trail of blood and vomit dried down the side of her chin, her chestnut hair a tangled mess, her hazel eyes staring sightlessly into the spring morning.

  I sagged back in the chair, my posture echoing Morris’s. He was right. I knew he was right. It’s a feeling that good cops and reporters alike get when, even though a trail of solid evidence doesn’t yet exist, something in a part of the brain that operates outside logic and fact sits up and says, “Pay attention. This has the imprint of truth.”

  Ed Lloyd. No, damn it, Senator Edward Lloyd! What a story. I could hear the fame sirens singing. The kind of story that makes a career, they sang. If you can nail it down, if you can prove it without getting eaten alive in the process. What a nightmare it would be to prove, though. What a slimy son of a bitch! I felt the adrenaline. And then I felt a brush of air moving across my forearms, raising the hairs, like a wispy tendril of fear.

  Eight

  I studied Peter Morris for a minute or so as the hamsters that turned the wheels in my brain went into wind sprints, sorting through the possibilities, looking for the most productive way to go after this story.

  “So what do you think of all this, Sutton?” Morris asked me finally.

  “I think that it’s very possible you could be right about this. I think that Ed Lloyd certainly has one of the busiest zippers on the hill. But this—this is absolutely creepy. And if you are right, that he drugged the woman you met and that Ann Kane might have been another victim of his, it’s going to take some hard, and very careful work to prove it. Ed Lloyd isn’t somebody to take lightly.”

  “I know,” he answered, “all too well.”

  “Dr. Morris, I need to know everything you can tell me about the woman Lloyd brought to your office, anything you can remember about her that might help me track her down. She may be the key to this whole thing and the only way to corroborate what you’ve already told me. Tell me everything, no matter how trivial.”

  Morris’s gaze focused on the plate-glass window facing the parking lot as he went back again to the night Ed Lloyd had called him.

  “I remember how she looked,” he said eventually, his voice in that faraway near monotone of someone concentrating hard on a memory. “She looked terrible, of course, but I could tell she actually was very lovely. Long, dark hair, down just below her shoulders. Full red lips. Pale skin, naturally pale, not just from being ill, with a beautiful texture, very fine pores. And when she finally was recovering, she opened her eyes and I could see that they were a striking violet color. Almost like Elizabeth Taylor’s.”

  I was jotting it all down in my mental notebook, not wanting anything on paper to connect Peter Morris with any story I might eventually do. It was an added risk for me and for the paper, should someone decide they had grounds to sue, but one I was willing to take to protect a source.

  “And she was tall,” he went on. “Maybe five-eight or five-nine, and slim. Very nice figure. And, as I said, well dressed. She was wearing a deep magenta woven dress, like a sweater. Cashmere. It was a mess, of course, but expensive and ordinarily very lovely.”

  “Did she say anything, to you or to Lloyd, anything that might give us a clue?” I hesitated to interrupt his thoughts, but a surreptitious glance at my watch told me we were running out of time.

  “Not really,” Morris answered, focusing on me again. “After I got the Demerol out of her, she roused somewhat, became more aware of what was going on. That was when she opened her eyes. She looked terrified and confused. I quickly told her I was a doctor, that she was sick and was in my office. She began to cry, and I realized Ed had walked up behind me. She started to cry when she saw him.

  He reached around me to pat her arm and said, There, there, my dear, you’ll be just fine. But I think it’s better if you don’t try to talk now.’ You should have seen the way she flinched when he touched her. Maybe that was what set off the first alarms in my mind. I could see she was afraid of Ed.”

  “But she never said anything to you, anything at all?”

  “Nothing. She was exhausted, of course, and I told her just to close her eyes and sleep, that I would sit there with her for a while to make certain she was okay. She actually reached out and took my hand and held on to it until she drifted off.”

  Dr. Morris looked as if the thought that she had trusted him just made him feel worse instead of better.

  I could see that Morris was giving me everything he could remember. I decided he probably wasn’t going to remember anything else at the moment, even if there was more to remember. Sometimes thinking hard about something is the least productive way to get at it. Morris thought then to look at his own watch.

  “Oh my,” he said, “it’s getting late, and my staff could be back anytime. I’m sorry, but I think you’d better go now.” He stood up and so did I.

  “That’s fine, Dr. Morris,” I told him. “I’ve got to go anyhow. But thank you for telling me all this. I’ll do the best I can with it, and I promise to keep your name out of it.”

  “Thank you, Sutton,” he said, standing up straighter, as if a weight had been partially lifted from his shoulders. “I don’t want to think about the consequences should Ed Lloyd find out what I’ve told you. I don’t want to think about the medical ethics I’ve violated. I don’t want to think about Ann Kane either, but I keep doing so. I finally decided I had to tell someone, someone who might be able to do something about it.”

  I reached the door and put my hand on the knob. I looked at Morris hard.

  “We know for a fact that Ed Lloyd has risked at least one woman’s health for whatever sick reasons of his own,” I said sternly. “We suspect he may have killed a second, even if he didn’t intend to. No one else, including the police, seems to have any idea that he may be connected to Ann Kane. Until someone puts it all together and stops him, he’s free to do it again. And he will. He’s a man who wields tremendous power, and I think somewhere in his mind, that power has pushed him over a line. Screw the ethics, Dr. Morris. You did the right thing.”

  Morris’s face colored and he looked down at the floor momentarily. When he raised his face again, his eyes looked clearer than at any time since I had walked in the door.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “I think it was the right thing.”

  I smiled at him and opened the door.

  “Call me if you remember anything else—anything—no matter what time of day or night. You have my office number, and I’m in the phone book,” I told him as I stepped outside.

  “I will,” he agreed, “and thank you, again.”

  I turned and headed over to my car, hearing him close the office door behind me. Once inside, I
just sat behind the wheel, trying to absorb what Dr. Morris had told me. It wasn’t until the black Jeep Wagoneer pulled up beside me and three of Morris’s office staff got out to go back to work that I remembered I still needed to go down to the police station to find out what had happened with Hubbard Taylor. The possibility that Ann Kane might have died at the hands of a U.S. senator threatened to put Janet Taylor’s death farther down my list of story priorities.

  And either way, you’ll still have to deal with the cute detective who doesn’t like you.

  Thanks a lot for the news bulletin, I thought back. Now tell me something I don’t already know.

  Nine

  Driving from Vienna to Great Falls, I tried to put my conversation with Peter Morris in the back of my mind, to clear my head for another conversation with Noah Lansing about Janet Taylor. I was no longer under any illusion that I would be able to charm my way into his good graces. Even if I had known about his wife’s death when I met him, it still would have meant I would have been going in with one or two strikes against me. But his first impression of me—as a smart-ass reporter who found other people’s pain amusing—pretty much sealed my fate as far as he was concerned. It was doubtful if I ever would be able to redeem myself in his eyes. Add to that the fact that he was the lead investigator on my biggest story—whichever of my two murder stories that turned out to be—and the fact that I found myself drawn to him as a man, and it was clear… well, it was clear that my friend Bill Russell was going to be highly amused at my expense for quite a while. And it also was clear that I didn’t like the position into which I had put myself. It looked like I was going to have to endure a lot more lectures from my little voice.

  At the moment the thing that kept going through my mind was what Cheryl had said the autopsy had shown: Janet Taylor hadn’t died right away, but in fact had died of a skull fracture, not strangulation. That meant she had been attacked earlier than everyone first thought. And she hadn’t tried to defend herself. Which probably meant she had felt safe with the person who killed her. Hubbard Taylor was at a board meeting when she died. That was beyond question. But where was he when she was attacked, possibly as early as 12:30? At the government center? At home? Elsewhere? Did he have an alibi for that time? Relatives, particularly spouses, and significant others are, after all, usually the first people police look at in a murder like this one.

  But why would Taylor kill his wife? She had gone far beyond the call of love or duty to support him. She apparently loved him. He apparently loved her. Could their marriage have been less sound than it had seemed on the surface?

  A lot of questions for which I had no answers. But I knew Ken Hale might very well have some of them, or could get them. I swung into a gas-station parking lot and used the pay phone to page Ken, dialing in the pay-phone number for his return call. While cellular phones are a wonderful invention, the transmissions also can be picked out of the air, both inadvertently and, if you have the right technology, deliberately. I try never to pass along sensitive information on the car phone.

  Three minutes later the pay phone rang. I answered it quickly.

  “Ken?”

  “Sutton, is that you? I didn’t recognize this number.”

  “It’s a pay phone. Listen, I got my hands on the autopsy results for Janet Taylor, and I think there’s something there for you to follow up on.” I told him what the medical examiner had found and the way my mind was working. “I’m almost at the police station now to find out what Hub Taylor has said, if anything, and to confirm the autopsy results with them.”

  “Way to go, Sutton,” Ken said, with what I could trust was genuine admiration. I could hear excitement rising in his voice. “The board meeting yesterday didn’t start again after lunch until two. I’ll see what I can find out about where Taylor was until then. And I have a couple of secretaries here who know more about these guys’ personal lives than the supervisors themselves do. If there was anything going on with the Taylor marriage, they’ll know. I’ll see you back at the paper.”

  “Thanks, Ken,” I said, hanging up and turning back to my car.

  Ken had great sources at the county government center, I reassured myself as I turned onto Route 7. I could stop worrying about that part of the puzzle for the moment.

  Instead I had to figure out how I was going to get anything worthwhile out of Noah Lansing, especially considering the number of other reporters I saw outside the Great Falls substation when I drove into the parking lot. I shouldn’t have been surprised. The police interrogation of a county supervisor in his wife’s murder is news, whether he’s a suspect or not.

  No sooner had I gotten out of my car than several people appeared inside the building at the glass front door, and the reporters and photographers all began to move in closer. The door opened, held, I noticed, by Bill Russell. Hubbard Taylor, these days carrying a couple of dozen pounds too many on his middle-aged frame, his face grim and red-eyed, walked out uncertainly and accompanied by a very well-dressed older man with silver hair and pale blue eyes, who carried an expensive leather briefcase. Taylor had seen the pack of reporters and looked like he wanted to turn around and go back inside. His elegant companion—probably his attorney, I realized—stopped, took Taylor by the arm, and turned to face the wolves.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, in a deep, courtroom-polished voice, “while we understand your interest in the death of Mrs. Taylor, there is very little we can tell you. My client has spent the better part of two hours with the police, telling them everything he knows that might be of assistance in finding the animal who did this to his wife. But because her death is an open police investigation, we really can’t say more than that at this time. Thank you very much.” With that, he skillfully slipped through the surrounding reporters, guiding Taylor out to a black limousine now waiting at the curb. Although several reporters continued to call out questions, Mr. GQ just smiled at them and got into the limo with Taylor. The closing door cut off the questions, and the limo moved smoothly out onto Crimmons Avenue and into the flow of traffic.

  Although Bill Russell had remained inside the station while Taylor and his attorney negotiated their path to the limo, he knew he wouldn’t get off as easily as Taylor had. He stood watching in the lobby, waiting for the reporters to turn their attention to him. As soon as the press pack lost Taylor as a source of answers, their heads and cameras swung back to the police. I watched, amused, as Bill quickly stepped outside to intercept them before they could enter the station and irritate anyone inside. I also listened to what he had to say, but I knew it would be perfunctory, almost a replay of the comments of Taylor’s attorney. I would have to wait awhile to get anything of value, until the rest of the reporters had gone, and I could talk with Bill and, I hoped, Noah Lansing in private.

  “No,” Bill was saying, in answer to a question, “Mr. Taylor was here for routine questioning, in hopes that he might have seen or heard or remembered something that would help us in the investigation.”

  “Is he a suspect? Do you have any suspects?” That was Hugh Granham of the Fairfax Record, one of a chain of small suburban daily papers. They tried to cover the local suburbs in ways the larger papers couldn’t, but their smaller circulations—and thus, their smaller advertising base—meant less money and often a very young and inexperienced staff. Hugh Granham was no exception. Early twenties, new on the Record staff after a year at a small daily in Pennsylvania, Hugh had good intentions, but he still frequently was at a loss about how to find out what he needed to know.

  Bill, in spite of whatever private doubts he might have about the savvy of certain members of the press corps, publicly accorded all of us the same treatment, except, of course, when he was giving me a hard time.

  “Let’s just say that while we don’t expect to make any arrests today, we are following several important avenues in the investigation,” he told Granham. I knew that meant they probably had very little, if anything, in the way of evidence or suspects and were hopi
ng someone somewhere would remember something suspicious or get nervous and make a mistake. Or it meant that even if they had a suspect, they couldn’t prove anything yet. Hugh, bless his heart, busily scribbled down Bill’s every word.

  “What about the autopsy report?” I asked, knowing already what it said. The other reporters tensed for the answer.

  Bill looked at me sharply, realizing I probably knew something about those results, but he smoothly did his usual masterful job of giving the police as much investigating space as possible without lying.

  “We are still waiting for the official report,” he answered. Translated, that meant the written report. A phone call wasn’t official. We smiled at each other thinly, and two more reporters called out questions. You’re quite a dancer, Bill, I thought to myself in admiration.

  “I’m sorry,” Bill was saying. “That’s really all I can tell you at this point. The Fairfax County police are taking this case very seriously, and we are investigating it with every resource we have. But there’s just nothing more specific I can say right now. Thank you.” He quickly turned and was back inside the station and through the inner door. Knowing they wouldn’t get past Jimmy the Desk Officer, the reporters shrugged and began to pack up their equipment and notebooks, some of them muttering about how closemouthed the police could be. I slowly walked back to my own car and got in as if I were leaving, too, but when the last of them had driven away, I got out again and went inside, where I asked Jimmy to call back to Bill and Noah Lansing and ask if they could spare a few minutes for me.

  Ten

  Jimmy hung up the phone and reached for the buzzer to open the door to the inner sanctum.

  “They’re in Lansing’s office,” he said, grinning. “You know the way.” Obviously, the word of my little set-to with Lansing that morning was making its way around the station grapevine.