Deadly Politics

by LynDee Walker

  “Cameras,” he said, turning back to me. “Your pal Charlie from Channel Four and a few of her closest friends, it looks like.”

  “Oh shit.” My hand flew to my mouth, and I backed away from the door almost involuntarily.

  Of course. This was the biggest story of the day by far, and their job was to get both sides. I’d be looking for Charlie if that Louboutin were on the other foot.

  I got it. But that didn’t mean I was talking to them.

  Striding back to my bedroom, I pulled a pair of soft, well-worn jeans and a light, muted-gray sweater with three-quarter sleeves from the closet shelf, and my favorite understated black Stuart Weitzman wedges from my shoe armoire. Dressed, I turned to the mirror and smoothed my hair back into a high ponytail I threaded through the back of a Generals cap, adding a pair of wide sunglasses that covered half my face. No time for makeup.

  The door rattled for the third time in five minutes. “Nichelle, open the door. It’s not like we don’t know your car is here,” Charlie called, three walls between me and the porch not muting her enough for me to miss that.

  “And just because I’m home, doesn’t mean I’m answering the door,” I muttered, grabbing my bag and spinning for the kitchen.

  “How can I help?” Joey handed me a full travel cup of hot coffee when I crossed the kitchen threshold. His dark eyes were worried, but I saw no trace of doubt. I swallowed hard and put the coffee on the counter, throwing my arms around his neck and squeezing tight.

  “You help just by being you,” I said into his neck. “Thank you for believing me, and trusting me.”

  He nodded, his prickly face rubbing against my cheek. “I’m not sure I’m built for sitting around while you chase murderers, but I’m giving it my level best. Take my car. Call me when you’re leaving White, okay?”

  I nodded, pulling away and taking his keys off the hook by the door. I paused with my hand on the knob. “Making a break for it.”

  “Don’t run over any of your colleagues.”

  I flashed a smile. “Maybe just the really irritating ones?”

  He laughed. “Go get ’em, princess.”

  I patted Darcy’s silky head and rushed out the door—smack into Dan Kessler.

  I sucked in a sharp breath and jogged sideways down the steps.

  “I knew you weren’t coming out the front,” Dan said, signaling to his cameraman to start rolling. “What gives, Nichelle? Of all the people I’ve ever known in this game, I’d have put you at the very bottom of the list for making stuff up.”

  I clamped my teeth around the inside of my jaw.

  The only way to win—or even push—in this game was to keep my mouth shut. For now. Any answer I tried to offer could be edited and spun to make the paper look stupid and me look like a liar, and I knew it. I shook my head and spun on one heel, pressing the button to unlock the car. It chirped just as Charlie rounded the corner of the house. “Damn, Kessler was right,” she said, breaking into a run and hollering for her own photographer. “Nichelle! What made you decide to go with that story?”

  I didn’t turn around, pulling the door open and sliding into the car. So much for a quick incognito exit. Revving the engine, I put the car in reverse and shot Charlie and the new new girl from Channel Two (she made four in the past two years) a Don’t test me glare as I laid my foot on the gas.

  They jumped back, Charlie nearly knocking Dan to the concrete, and watched me peel down the drive before they scrambled for their trucks.

  Dammit.

  I reached for my phone, dialing Aaron again. “You okay?” he asked.

  “We’re going to have to rethink this unless we want an audience,” I said. “The coffee shop will be overrun with the reporters who were on my lawn when I left in half a tick. We need somewhere they can’t follow.”

  “I figured that when your doorbell rang before you hung up. You know where the Cavalier Club is?” he asked.

  Swanky and private, it was on the top floor of the tallest building in the city. The kind of place power brokers made million-dollar financial and political deals over aged bourbon and Cuban cigars. I was surprised Aaron knew where it was. “Can you get us in there?”

  “They extend special courtesies to local law enforcement,” he said. “The elevator code is five nine six one—push those buttons in sequence and it’ll bring you to the top floor. I’m already here waiting.”

  I hung up and checked my rearview, Charlie’s van closing in from behind me on the left, Dan’s not far behind her on the right. I slammed on the gas when the light at Monument and Boulevard turned to yellow, leaving them stuck as I turned to weave through side streets. I sped past houses and cars and gorgeous fall reds and yellows drifting from the oaks, keeping my eyes on the road and hoping the light cycle was long enough. I just needed time to get into the building before they caught up.

  Swinging into the parking lot four minutes later, I didn’t see a news van for blocks. Point Nichelle.

  I kept my head down as I scurried inside, tapping one block-point toe as I waited for the elevator to creak and rattle down to me. The place was gorgeous—all striking dark tones of walnut and hunter green accented with white marble and copper—but carved-wooden-doors-on-the-elevators old.

  They slid apart with barely a whisper, an invitation into a secret society. I stepped in, pushed the buttons as Aaron instructed, and watched them slide closed just as Charlie made it up the sidewalk to the one-way-glass front doors. I sent up a silent thank you for small favors.

  Soft music, classical of course, floated from a speaker somewhere above my head, the scents of expensive cologne, rare cigars, and old, well-oiled wood seeping from the walls of the tiny box around me. Elevators weren’t built for moving people efficiently back in the day, or people were built smaller, one of the two. This thing might fit five adults, and only if they were all in decent shape.

  The doors slid apart to reveal a long, dim hallway lined with deep-green jacquard wall coverings, shiny, scarred walnut wainscoting, and the occasional painting of one of the half-dozen Founding Fathers who called the commonwealth home.

  I stepped out, the cigar and wood smell fading into wafts of good booze laced with a touch of cinnamon.

  “You made it.” Aaron stepped out of the corner next to the elevator.

  “Beat Charlie through a light and wove through Carytown. But yes.” I smiled. “This place is gorgeous. And just the right touch of creepy.”

  He chuckled. “They throw the best Halloween party in town.” He started down the hall, waving for me to follow. Neither of us spoke again until he’d ushered me into a burgundy box of a room with five round felt-topped card tables dominating the center of the floor and a bar in the back right corner. Not unlike the basement where I’d first met Lakshmi.

  Shutting the door behind us, Aaron waved me to a chair facing the windows at the nearest table and took the one next to me. I swiveled mine so I could look at him. “I would never—” I began, and he held up one hand.

  “I have always trusted you, Nichelle. When I shouldn’t have, when it got me in trouble, when it didn’t make sense to. But I’m not sure you have a firm grasp of what you’ve done here, or the trouble you’re about to cause yourself and a handful of people you’re supposed to care about. I consider you more friend than colleague, which is why I’m here at all. Exactly what in the blue hell were you thinking?”

  I drummed my fingertips on the table, the felt muting any noise from them.

  “She mattered,” I said finally, looking up to meet Aaron’s striking baby-blue eyes. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Where did you even get her name?” he asked.

  “I can’t reveal my source.”

  “Miller?” He cocked an eyebrow skyward. He was a good detective, after all.

  I kept my face blank. “I can’t tell you that, I’m sorry. But you know I’m not lying, because I listened to the four of you discuss her yesterday. Which I also haven’t told anyone else, just for th
e record.”

  He opened his mouth. Shut it. Shook his head. “Nichelle, there’s more going on here than anyone can tell you. This is an extremely delicate situation. There are a lot of important things, and important people, involved in this. You can’t make assumptions or flip decisions based on your personal sense of justice here.”

  “I saw her mother yesterday. Read the research she was working on. She mattered. And everyone’s acting like she didn’t.” I met his eyes. “She was almost the same age as Alyssa, Aaron.”

  “That’s a cheap shot and you know it.”

  “I’m not throwing shots. I’m trying to give you a way to see the other side of this.” I closed my hands around the arms of the chair. “You’ve worked hundreds of murder cases in some capacity. What’s the focus of any murder case? From the minute someone is missing or a body is found. What do you look at first?”

  “The victim,” he said. “The quickest way to the killer is somewhere in the victim’s story.”

  “Exactly. And the victim is always the center of my story. Except this one. This one has been all about the governor and his son from where you sit and all about the place the victim was found from where I sit. That doesn’t strike you as odd?”

  He twisted his mouth to one side. Paused. Steepled his fingers under his chin.

  He was weighing his words.

  “It’s not normal,” he said finally. “But nothing about this is normal. There are special considerations.”

  “Why? Because the guy is the governor, or because he’s your friend?”

  He flinched. “I thought I’d earned more credibility with you than that. I wouldn’t let a murderer walk because of personal feelings.”

  “I’m not saying the governor killed her,” I said. “I think she was found where she was found because someone wanted her lost in a bigger story. And I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a bigger story than this.”

  His silver-speckled brows drew down.

  “I’m going to need you to elaborate.”

  I tapped the unlock code into my phone and pushed it across the table. “Search her name.”

  He picked it up and poked at the screen, sitting back in the chair after a few minutes, his eyes staying on the screen. “Explicit content? Why are you showing me this?”

  “She was a brilliant, published statistician. She was twenty-six years old. Friday morning, the top hits were her social media accounts.”

  He put my phone on the table. “How would someone even go about changing that?”

  “Her social media has been deleted, across every platform. Which makes sense for this since those are always the top hits when you search a name, unless the person has a website. All someone would need is her password to take care of that.” I sat back in the chair. “It seems that someone didn’t just want her dead, they wanted her dismissed. I didn’t break a confidence for the hell of it, and I damned sure didn’t do it to beat Charlie. I did it because she mattered, Aaron. And whoever has masterminded this thing doesn’t want her to matter. I’m not giving up until I figure out why.”

  He leaned one elbow on the table, resting his chin on his palm and curling his fingers over his mouth. “I thought it was a political stunt. Someone out to disgrace Tom—even the timing works, the president is coming here day after tomorrow.” I watched his face, the way his eyes were on the window. He wasn’t talking to me.

  I stayed quiet.

  He sighed, shaking his head and gesturing to my phone.

  “So you thought when people started looking for her name . . .”

  “They’d label her a whore and that’s all she’d ever be. Unless someone got in front of the story. Made her a person. Brought her to life for readers and made them care about her and what happened to her.” My voice was soft, my throat scratchy.

  “You do excel at that,” he said.

  “This isn’t about beating Charlie.” I shook my head.

  “But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re in a hot mess of trouble. The governor’s media spin people are running around like the damned sky is falling.”

  I nodded. I had expected that. “But what do they think lying is going to get them, exactly? I know I don’t usually cover government, but it’s not like these people don’t read the paper from front page to obits every day. I’ve built a reputation for being stubborn. Why would they think I’m going to just let this go? He looks worse when he gets busted for lying on top of having the call girl on his desk.”

  Aaron reached across the table and laid a hand on my arm. “That’s part of why I came to see you. They’ve already talked to your publisher, Nichelle. You don’t work at the Telegraph anymore, effective immediately. And the attorney general is drawing up papers as we speak to have a restraining order placed on you to keep you away from any state-owned buildings, or any room the governor is in. They also want to petition the court to force you to reveal your source. If you won’t . . .”

  “It’s as good as admitting I’m lying,” I said, letting my eyes fall shut, his words hitting like he was talking about someone else until my temper rose to meet them. So much for avoiding Rick Andrews.

  First Lakshmi, now me. Every bit of this was about controlling the story. Yesterday, they thought they had it in hand. This morning, I disrupted that.

  They were pushing back harder than I thought. But they weren’t as smart as Kyle gave them credit for if they thought I was just going to give up, either.

  “They could put you in jail,” he said softly. “Miller wouldn’t want that.”

  I studied Aaron through rapid-firing lashes.

  He was my friend. He said he owed me. But that was the second prod at getting me to admit Kyle gave me Lakshmi’s name. Did he ask me here to talk through the case, or to pump me to reveal my source for his buddy Baine?

  I swallowed hard, the increasingly familiar feeling of not knowing who to trust wrapping its tentacles around me with suffocating precision.

  Subject change.

  “I thought you said you knew this guy. You asked me to help him.” I shook my head. “I hate to have to break it to you, but your old pal Baine is kind of an asshole.”

  Aaron’s lips tipped up at the corners. “He’s a politician. I think that automatically means he’s not an angel. But . . .” He let it trail off, shaking his head.

  “But what?”

  He sighed. “He’s a good egg, as political types go. He’s invested in doing as much good as he can for as many people as he can.”

  “Present company excluded?” I raised one eyebrow.

  “Come on, Nichelle. If you thought it’d help a thousand homeless people for you to give up your job, you’d quit in half a second. I know you. This is no different. Politics is entirely about weighing risk and reward. Sacrificing one thing to gain something bigger.”

  “Not entirely. But either way, actually being the lamb makes a person feel a little differently about those sacrifices, it seems. And you’re not counting all the people I help, either.”

  “You’re not saying you have bigger reach than the governor?” His baby blues popped wide, smoothing the creases at the corners.

  “Of course not. Simply pointing out that putting my career on this altar comes with a higher collateral damage bill than the loss of one person’s job and credibility. Nothing personal or pouty about that. Just a fact.”

  He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head.

  I knew Aaron. That told me he was thinking.

  Sitting forward again, he steepled his fingers under his chin. That told me he was uncertain.

  “You don’t have much of a choice,” he said. “If you don’t give up your source, you’re giving up everything you’ve worked so hard for.”

  I met his eyes.

  He didn’t want me to do this. Which left only one reason he would ask me to.

  I shook my head. “Giving up my source will cost me more than a job, Aaron,” I said, standing. “At least this way, I walk away
still proud of who I am and what I do.”

  He smiled around the next words, the face fitting his sharp tone like Chuck Taylors fit a little black dress.

  “Pride isn’t going to pay your rent,” he said.

  I nodded. He couldn’t help me. But he’d decided he didn’t want to be there, too. Loud and clear.

  I put one hand on Aaron’s shoulder, my fingers resting over a scar I’d never forget, because I’d held blood inside him and prayed for paramedics who liked to speed after he’d been shot last year. Leaning in, I spoke straight into the collar I’d seen him tape a mic under a hundred times. “Governor Baine is a powerful man, and he has some powerful friends. But burning a source to cover my own ass isn’t in my DNA. He can continue to deny the truth. I’ll go look for it. We’ll see which one of us is on our game.”

  Before he could get another word out, I turned and strode out the door.

  I was on my own. Likely without a job. Chasing the cleverest killer I’d ever come across. My brilliant, burly cops were afraid to tread where I was headed.

  But I would figure it out, because I had to.

  Backwards in high heels, if it came down to it.

  19

  My legs carried me all the way to the car before they started shaking. Two knock-kneed blocks away, I glanced in my rearview—and almost plowed into a parked catering van.

  “Kessler! Are you kidding me?” I choked out when I could breathe and the car was pointed in the right direction again.

  “What gives, Nichelle?” He didn’t even blink, like he broke into people’s cars every day. Which I knew damned good and well he didn’t—he’d beat me to stories way more often if this were part of his regular playbook.

  I swerved into the empty parking lot in front of the biggest law firm in town, my knuckles going white around the steering wheel as I tipped my head back, staring at the towering gray marble building and inhaling for a slow ten count.