Margaret Truman's Internship in Murder

by Margaret Truman

  Flo heard the elevator arrive. And then the cough.

  Brixton’s hand on the doorknob made a noise. The knob turned. As the door opened, Flo shouted, “No! Don’t!”

  McGinnis leveled the Glock and squeezed off a shot. It struck the take-out bag, sending Chinese food flying into the air. Brixton was stunned. He stumbled back, his hand on the knob, slamming the door closed. He righted himself and pressed his back against the wall, simultaneously grabbing his revolver from the holster beneath his left arm. It had all happened fast, but in the few seconds it took for the door to have opened and the shot fired, he’d seen Flo and Mac—and the shooter, the man with the ponytail.

  There was silence from inside Brixton’s reception area, where Flo and Mac Smith waited for McGinnis to make his next move. The door leading to Smith’s office was ajar; the sound of the National Symphony playing “Night and Day” came through the opening. McGinnis appeared to be flustered. His eyes shifted back and forth between Flo, Mac Smith, and the door to the hallway where Brixton lurked, his weapon at the ready as he tried to formulate his next move. He slipped his cell phone from his pocket and dialed 911. When the operator came on the line, he said softly, “Armed standoff taking place.” He gave the address on Pennsylvania Avenue. “Second floor. Killer in an office holding hostages. Need police here fast!”

  He repeated the message. The operator told him to stay out of the fray and that police had been notified and were responding.

  As the standoff continued, Smith tried to analyze the situation from his perspective. The man in the ponytail had seemed to be calm and focused. But he could now see an expression of panic on his square, tanned face. McGinnis looked back into Brixton’s empty office, and Smith thought that if he retreated there they might have an opportunity to slam the door shut and contain him. Although neither Smith nor Flo knew whether Brixton had called for help, they assumed that he had. If so, it was a matter of waiting it out—provided that McGinnis didn’t decide to leave carnage in his wake and kill them both.

  The silence in the room was broken when Brixton shouted, “Give it up in there. Lay down the gun and come out.”

  His message prompted McGinnis to stiffen, and Smith wondered whether he was about to try and shoot his way out. He approached the hall door, his weapon leveled at it. Was Brixton directly behind it? If he was, a shot into the door would strike him. McGinnis locked the door and stepped back.

  Sirens sounded outside the building.

  McGinnis heard them and muttered under his breath.

  The final strains of “Night and Day” were replaced by the beginning of “On a Clear Day.”

  In the hall, a contingent of uniformed police poured from the elevator to where Brixton stood to the side of the office door. Seeing the weapon in his hand caused some of the officers to draw theirs, but Brixton shook his head and held his handgun up in the air. He told the first officer off the elevator, “I’m Robert Brixton, a PI. That’s my office in there. The guy who killed Congressman Gannon’s intern and his press aide is in there. He’s armed and holding the attorney, Mac Smith, and a woman at gunpoint.”

  Other officers came bounding up the stairs; one held a shield, the other a battering ram.

  Brixton holstered his gun and repeated what he’d told the others. As he did, a ranking officer arrived and took Brixton aside. Brixton gave him a fuller explanation than he’d provided the others. “Call Zeke Borgeldt,” Brixton said. “He’ll confirm everything I’ve said.”

  The officer did as Brixton requested. “He’s sending a hostage negotiator,” he said after ending the call.

  “He fired once at me when I came back from getting take-out dinners,” Brixton said, pointing to the mess of food scattered over the hallway floor.

  The ranking officer was handed a bullhorn.

  “This is the police,” he barked. “The building is surrounded by armed officers. There is no way for you to escape. Put down any weapons you possess and come out with your hands high.”

  There was no response from inside the office.

  “You say there’s a woman in there?” Brixton was asked.

  “That’s right. She’s my—she’s my fiancée and my partner in the agency. Name’s Flo Combes. She’s got a brace on her leg. This same guy with the gun in there tried to run us down the other night.”

  “What is he, a psycho?”

  “Not a bad guess,” said Brixton. “What do you suggest?”

  “We wait for the hostage negotiator to arrive.”

  “He’s liable to kill them both while we wait.”

  “And he’s liable to kill them if we try to break in,” was the officer’s reply. “We wait.”

  Brixton knew that was the right call. While a police officer in D.C. for four years, and during his longer tenure with the Savannah PD, he’d been involved in a number of hostage situations. Patience was always the operative policy, although there had been times when patience had backfired and the hostage or hostages were killed. It was a delicate situation, and he’d developed a lot of respect for trained negotiators.

  It seemed hours, although only a few minutes had passed before the negotiator arrived, a veteran FBI agent working under a contract with the Washington MPD. Brixton was asked to fill him in, which he did in as much detail as the negotiator seemed to want.

  “What’s the phone number in there?” Brixton was asked.

  He gave it to him.

  Using a cell phone, the negotiator called the number. It wasn’t answered.

  “Are there windows in there?” he asked Brixton.

  “In my office, at the rear of the suite. The reception area where I last saw them doesn’t have any.”

  He pictured Flo with her leg in a brace and a gun to her head, and a knot formed in his stomach. She didn’t deserve this. Why hadn’t he locked the door before he left to pick up the food? She should have stayed home nursing her injury. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so public in his conviction that Gannon was behind the murders of Laura Bennett and Cody Watson. He’d created the situation that brought the ponytailed killer to his office and threatened the lives of the woman he loved and the attorney who’d become one of the best friends he’d ever had.

  Shoulda, coulda.

  The negotiator walked away, leaving Brixton to deal with his frustration and concerns about Flo and Mac. He moved down the hall until he was in front of the entrance to Smith’s suite and thought of the door separating their offices. That Smith was in the reception area with Flo probably meant that he’d used that door. Had he closed it behind him? Probably not. He seldom did. But how open was it? Fully? Partially?

  He reached down and tried the knob to Smith’s door. It opened. He held it slightly ajar and listened to the music being played on Smith’s stereo system, “Maria” from West Side Story.

  Brixton opened the door just enough to slip through, and gently, quietly closed it behind him. The door linking the suites was halfway open. The only illumination in the room came from a pair of halogen desk lamps that pooled their bright white light on Smith’s desk. Brixton was glad that the music played. It covered any noise he might make.

  He hugged the wall, his Smith & Wesson in his hand, and slowly, deliberately made his way toward the door between the suites. He held his breath to hear more acutely. Mac was speaking to McGinnis, trying to convince him to give up.

  “Shut up!” McGinnis snapped.

  “He’s right,” Flo said. “The police are everywhere. You can’t—”

  Brixton heard a dull thud, followed by Flo’s anguished, painful scream. He was about to enter the reception area when McGinnis suddenly pushed the door fully open and peered into Smith’s office. Brixton was shrouded in shadow against the wall, but McGinnis stood out as a vivid silhouette, backlit by lights from the reception area. It took a moment for him to acclimate to the darkness of Mac’s office. When he had, he became aware of Brixton.

  Brixton didn’t hesitate. He fired off two shots in rapid succession. One struc
k McGinnis in the right shoulder, causing his weapon to spiral into the air and land in the middle of the room. The second shot passed cleanly through the right side of his abdomen. Brixton pounced on McGinnis, who’d fallen face-first. Smith ran in and helped Brixton, who was having trouble keeping McGinnis pinned to the floor despite his wounds.

  “Get the police in here,” Brixton shouted.

  Flo hobbled to the door, unlocked it, and the officers rushed in.

  “Good job, Robert,” Smith said as he got to his feet.

  “Sorry about the blood on your new carpet,” Brixton said.

  Flo joined them and hugged Brixton.

  “You move pretty good for a cripple,” he told her.

  He saw the welt on her cheek. “He hit you,” he said.

  “I’m just glad we’re alive,” she said.

  “Me, too,” he said. “Just wish he hadn’t shot up the Chinese food. I’m starving.”

  CHAPTER

  41

  Smith, Brixton, and Flo watched as EMTs placed McGinnis on a gurney. They’d stemmed his bleeding and stabilized his condition. He wouldn’t die, at least not from Brixton’s shots. The police had manacled his ankles and wrists. A white sheet covered him up to his neck. Mac had never seen such cold eyes, and looked away. Brixton’s thoughts went from wanting to shoot him again to wondering what was going through his mind or, more accurately, what sort of mind would lead a man to such senseless killing.

  Large red stains on the gray carpet in Mac’s office gave testimony to what had just occurred there.

  Zeke Borgeldt had arrived after being alerted. He was accompanied by two other detectives, who’d emptied McGinnis’s pockets before he was taken away. His wallet contained multiple false IDs and two bogus credit cards. Other items gave his address in Clearwater, Florida. There was also a business card indicating that he owned and operated a fishing charter service.

  He had two sets of keys, one containing what appeared to be personal keys, the other from the car rental agency on which the agency’s name and phone number were printed, along with a paper tag with the vehicle’s license plate number.

  “He must have parked somewhere close to here,” Brixton said.

  Borgeldt dispatched officers to search for the car on surrounding streets. They reported back within fifteen minutes that they’d located it.

  Brixton accompanied Borgeldt and the detectives to the car. Borgeldt donned a pair of gloves and opened the door. Seeing nothing of interest, he opened the trunk.

  “Fancy briefcase,” Brixton said of the black alligator case Borgeldt extracted.

  “Get this hauled to the vehicle yard,” Borgeldt ordered. “I want a top-to-bottom sweep of it.”

  They returned to Brixton’s office, where Annabel had just arrived after receiving a call from Mac. “Thank God you’re all okay,” she said as she stood with Mac’s arm around her.

  “Fortunately, Robert’s a good shot,” Mac said.

  “Not good enough to have killed the bastard,” Brixton said.

  “It’s good that you didn’t,” Borgeldt said as he sat at Flo’s desk and opened the briefcase. “We need a lot of answers from him.”

  “I’d like to go home,” Flo said from where she sat on a small couch, her battered leg stretched out.

  “I’m all for that,” Brixton said. He looked over Borgeldt’s shoulder at items that he’d pulled from the briefcase. “Anything of interest?”

  “There’s this notebook, an address book, and his airline tickets. That’s about it. Look at this,” he said, handing Brixton the notebook, its pages containing handwritten jottings.

  Brixton went through some of the pages and stopped at one. “Listen to this,” he told everyone. “He has this entry: ‘LB 35,000. CW 35,000. RB 45,000.’”

  “Initials,” Smith said.

  “Laura Bennett’s initials,” Brixton said. “Cody Watson’s, too. And guess who RB is.”

  “What do you figure?” Mac said. “That the numbers are how much he was being paid for each hit?”

  “Sounds right to me,” said Brixton. His laugh was ironic. “I should be flattered. He was getting more for me than the others.”

  “The question is, who was paying him?” Borgeldt said.

  “Who else?” Brixton said. “Our friend Congressman Gannon.”

  “You have proof of that?” Borgeldt asked.

  “No,” Brixton said. “But wait a minute.”

  “What?” Annabel said.

  “Look at this notation at the bottom of the page.”

  He showed it to Borgeldt.

  “It’s an address,” Borgeldt said.

  “N Street Northwest,” Brixton said.

  “That’s in Georgetown,” Annabel said.

  “Three thousand,” Mac said. “Mean anything to anyone?”

  No one responded.

  Brixton handed the notebook back. The others looked at him as his face reflected the thought process he was going through. “I know that address,” he said. “When I met with Cody Watson at the Hotel Lombardy, he said that Gannon’s chief of staff, Roseann Simmons, lived there.”

  “You’re sure,” Flo said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “What say we swing by there and see why her address is in a killer’s notebook,” Brixton suggested.

  “I intend to do that,” Borgeldt said, “but without you. This is a police matter.”

  “You really know how to hurt a guy,” Brixton said, placing his hands over his heart. “Come on, Zeke. You’ve got your killer because I put myself on the line. The least you can do is let me tag along. I’ve been bird-dogging this case right alongside you and your people. I’ll stay out of your way, but you owe me.”

  “He has a point,” said Mac. “It can’t hurt having Robert with you. Annabel and I will take Flo back to our place at the Watergate. That okay with you, Flo? Robert?”

  Brixton nodded. He went to Flo, kissed her, and said, “I really need to be there, babe, but if you really want me to—”

  “No,” she said, “you go. You’ll be a wreck every minute if you don’t follow through. I’ll be fine. Mac and Annabel run a first-class rehab center. Besides, he makes a dynamite Manhattan.” She returned the kiss and said to Annabel, “Let’s go.”

  Borgeldt acquiesced and told Brixton he could accompany them, but to stay in the background.

  “Count on it,” Brixton said. He took a final look at the bloodstained rug on the other side of the open door and said, “Get some new carpet, Mac. It’s on me.”

  CHAPTER

  42

  Borgeldt had considered calling Roseann Simmons but decided against it. Better to simply show up and catch her off guard. Not that he’d decided that she was guilty of anything. The only reason they were going to her home was that her address was in McGinnis’s notebook. But he also knew that Brixton had been right to question why a U.S. congressman’s chief of staff’s address would even be there. Just to be certain that he had all his bases covered, he dispatched two detectives to the area, with the instruction to stay out of sight unless needed.

  Borgeldt, Detective Morey, a female plainclothes detective, and Brixton rode to the address in Borgeldt’s unmarked sedan. They made a slow pass of the house. Lights were on. Two cars were parked in a cramped cutout in front of a small garage, a silver Lexus and a red Mercedes convertible. They turned at the end of the street and drove back, parking across the street.

  “She has good taste in cars,” Brixton commented. He’d told the detectives on the way what Cody Watson had told him, that Roseann came from a wealthy family in Tampa, its money from questionable sources.

  Borgeldt led the way to the front door and rang the bell. It took awhile for Roseann to answer. She wore a white bathrobe and slippers. She looked past Borgeldt and recognized Brixton.

  “Superintendent Borgeldt,” the detective said, showing her his identification. “We have some questions.”

  She ignored him and asked, “What’s he doi
ng here?” looking at Brixton.

  “You were expecting someone else?” Brixton said snidely.

  “May we come in, Ms. Simmons?” Borgeldt said.

  “I have company.”

  “If you’d like, Ms. Simmons, I can get a warrant,” Borgeldt said, “but I suggest it would be a lot easier for you if you allow us to come in and ask you some questions.” He sounded friendly, but there was steel behind his words.

  Brixton looked past him into the interior of the house, where someone walked quickly from one room to another. Although he had only a momentary glance, he was sure it was Gannon.

  “This is an outrageous intrusion,” she said. “Maybe you’d better get a warrant. Good evening.”

  She tried to close the door, but Borgeldt’s foot was faster. “Last chance, Ms. Simmons,” he said. “You either invite us in or I summon the troops. Having a dozen patrol cars with lights flashing and sirens wailing should draw some press interest, wouldn’t you say?”

  She stood frozen, conflict written on her pretty face. Then, before she had a chance to respond, Gannon appeared behind her.

  “Good evening, Congressman,” Borgeldt said, and went through the introduction again and the presenting of his ID.

  “Let them in, Roseann,” Gannon said. He was dressed in slacks, a blue dress shirt that wasn’t tucked in his pants, and loafers.

  “Hal, they have no right to barge in like this.”

  “They’ll get in one way or the other,” Gannon said. “You heard him. He’ll get a warrant and turn it into a circus. I don’t need another circus.”

  She muttered a curse and stepped back, allowing Borgeldt and the others to enter the expansive foyer that was an art gallery, its walls covered with dozens of what looked to Brixton like original oil paintings—not that he was an art connoisseur. There were a few prints and even an occasional original in the apartment he shared with Flo, a jazz-themed painting by James Vann that Brixton treasured, a Haitian oil that he’d been given in Savannah to pay a debt, some Picasso prints, and an oil painting hanging over the fireplace that he’d picked up for $150 at a yard sale and that he was certain was worth millions if he brought it to Antiques Roadshow. Flo wasn’t so sure about that.