Deadly Politics

by LynDee Walker

  My hand closed over the folder as the elevator binged down the hall. Shit.

  I yanked it free, plopped it on the desk.

  Footsteps. Slow, not quick. One set. Maybe he was looking at his phone.

  I fanned the papers wide, and fired off a dozen or so photos with mine.

  The steps paused.

  Sweeping the papers back into a pile, I closed the folder and dropped it into place. The steps picked up pace, stopping outside the door.

  Sprinting, I fell into my plastic chair and hit the “Close” button as I picked up my pen. Adams tucked his phone into his pocket as he strode back in.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “Busy, for a Sunday. I hope you got everything you needed. Did you think of any more questions for me while I was gone?”

  Yep. What the hell is a u 233?

  I didn’t say that.

  Smiling, I shook my head. “I really appreciate you taking time out of your weekend to talk with me.”

  I stood, hoping my legs weren’t shaking enough to be noticeable.

  I didn’t know what to make of anything I’d heard or seen in the past hour and a half, but surely there was something in all this that would be helpful when I had a bit of time alone with Google.

  He smiled, gesturing a Ladies first toward the door.

  “Anytime. I’m a big fan of your work, Miss . . . Clarke.”

  23

  So much for my clever cover story.

  Spinning slowly, I tipped my head to one side.

  He folded his hands behind his back, rocking up on his toes.

  “Did you really think a ball cap and some jeans would do it?” he asked. “I’m a total news junkie. I’ve been following your stories since that boat crash on the James two summers ago. I’ve seen you on TV a dozen times.”

  I didn’t have time to think.

  I folded my lips between my teeth and nodded. “I’m flattered. I think?” My hand went into my bag, closing around my pepper spray.

  “I’m not interested in hurting you,” he said, his eyes on my wrist. “If I was, I’d have ratted you out to Wyatt. His boss is none too happy with you today. Ballsy, dropping his name when you called me.”

  “I’m trying to . . . figure something out.” I sighed. “I needed to speak with you, and I didn’t think you’d consent to an interview if there was nothing in it for you.”

  He backed up two steps, pulling his glasses off and pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “But there is something in this for me,” he said. “Because I’m hoping if you figure out what the hell is going on at the capitol, you’ll find Hamilton.”

  I stepped toward him, the raw anguish in his voice catching me off guard.

  “He can’t be dead. Not yet. I would know.” His whole body shuddered with a sob. “He’s my soul mate.”

  Oh.

  Boy.

  I couldn’t stop my hand from clapping over my mouth.

  Adams looked up, wiping at the corners of his eyes under his glasses. “Don’t tell me I’ve shocked you. Surely after everything you’ve seen, the governor having a son who swings both ways doesn’t even rate as the most shocking today.”

  I shook my head, letting my hand fall back to my side. “Not even close.” Every word true. And I didn’t give one damn who Hamilton Baine wanted to sleep with as long as it was consensual.

  “When was the last time you talked to Hamilton?” I tried to keep my voice calm. For the first time in two days, I had someone in front of me with a seemingly pure interest in the truth. Maybe he would tell it, too.

  “Thursday night. We met for drinks at a little place we like down south of the river. Pretty safe for us to be seen at if we’re careful. Drinks turned into dinner. We went down to the water and walked a while. Talking.” He shook his head. “I was stupid. Demanding more than he could offer. I knew that. But I couldn’t help it. I love him. I know he loves me. Have you ever been in love and done something dumb?”

  Like telling Joey I didn’t want to live with him? Every fight we’d had over that in recent weeks played in my head on fast-forward. I was afraid of getting too close. He thought my job was more important than him. But watching Stacy tear up over Hamilton, I finally got it: it didn’t matter. Live with him, don’t live with him—I loved him, and my address wasn’t going to change that.

  Holding Stacy’s watery gaze, I just nodded. This wasn’t the time to dwell on my romantic issues.

  He sniffled. “He liked Lakshmi. A lot. And he’s not exactly big on the ladies as a general rule. But I mean, hell, I liked Lakshmi. She was gorgeous and so fucking smart . . . the kind of girl you could talk to for hours. Marriage material, Hamilton’s dad always says. Brilliant. Interesting.”

  So Baine really didn’t know about Lakshmi’s past. Interesting. Because if Wyatt worked with Grayson, he sure did.

  “But Hamilton didn’t want to marry her,” I said.

  Adams shook his head. “His parents pushed him to propose. Hamilton was stuck. He said he wasn’t sure he could be happy forever with her, and they damned sure wouldn’t be happy with me.”

  “But—” I began, and he laughed.

  “There’s a big difference between walking in the pride parade for the cameras and standing up with your son while he pledges his heart to another man. Which I’m sure you realize, now that I’ve made you stop to think about it. It’s not personal. It’s political. Bad optics, you understand.” He deepened his voice and stuck his chest out in a half-decent imitation of the governor on the last.

  “I see. Where did he go when you left dinner? Do you know?”

  Adams shook his head.

  “I never asked. I told him we were through if he was so ashamed of me. And now all I can think about is how much I want to talk to him, put my arms around him . . . and they’re not telling me anything. Wyatt knows how crazy this is making me, and he shut down when I asked him just now.” He shook his head. “Why I cared what those fucking rednecks thought, anyway . . . like it was worth it.” The words fell so softly I wasn’t convinced I heard him right.

  “Rednecks?”

  I stepped closer, letting go of the pepper spray before I pulled my notebook back out, clicking my pen.

  “They came into the parking lot in a big pickup as we were walking back up from the water. Three guys. The one who was driving spotted us and called out to Hamilton. He knocked my hand away from his arm like I’d sprouted vipers for fingers.”

  Huh. “And you didn’t recognize them?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you remember anything else about these guys? It might be helpful if I could talk to them.”

  “Why?”

  “They were among the last people to see Hamilton before he disappeared, right?” I lifted one brow.

  He shrugged. “Those guys weren’t smart or strong enough to do anything to him. The one who seemed to know him, I mean, I could break that guy in half over one knee, and I’m not exactly the poster child for the gym. Overconfident, for a scrawny little balding dude. What hair he had was stringy and limp, but he didn’t look old enough to be losing it.”

  The plastic of my pen bit into my fingers as a picture formed in my head.

  No way.

  “Oh, and he stuttered. Pretty bad. I thought maybe he’d already been drinking.”

  Oh. My. God.

  I scribbled.

  “The other guys?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I was pissed and they didn’t come over. I didn’t really get a good look at them.” He paused. “Except, one was a big dude, with a stupidly unruly beard that was missing big patches. Looked mad, his face was all red when they got out of the car. And the other was dressed like he was trying out for a Vineyard Vines ad. Didn’t fit in with the other two. He even had a bow tie.”

  I made sure I didn’t miss a detail, tapping my index finger on the side of the pen when I stopped scribbling.

  “Anything else?” I didn’t want to wonder if I’d led him i
nto remembering something wrong. The human brain is an imperfect thing. “I don’t suppose you saw a plate number or anything definitive.”

  He snorted. “Better. Their pickup is painted like the General Lee. You know, from The Dukes of Hazzard? No shit.”

  Leaping Louboutins. I reached for my phone and clicked up my story from yesterday. Double-tapped the picture of Jake Stickley. “This guy?” I asked, passing Adams the phone.

  He took it, his eyes widening when he held the screen up to the end of his nose. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s him. That’s even the same shirt he was wearing, but he didn’t have the tie. Who is he? How did he know Hamilton?”

  I took my phone back before he could zoom out to the rest of the story, ignoring his first question.

  “I don’t know.” Understatement of the month. “But I am going to find out.” Every word true.

  I handed him a card. “Call me if you remember anything?”

  “Is this why the ATF guy was up my ass the other day about where Hamilton and I had been and who we’d talked to?” I wasn’t even sure he was talking to me, his eyes on the floor as he took the card. “I thought he was some sort of political spy and I didn’t tell him anything, but now I’m not so sure.”

  The meth lab was Kyle’s case. He’d been on it since before the explosion.

  Had he come here, not chasing leads on Lakshmi, but because he thought Hamilton Baine was somehow involved with the drug runners? Damn, what if Hamilton’s disappearance really did have nothing to do with Lakshmi’s death? And how come every time I thought I finally had a piece of this down, everything around it shifted?

  I tucked the notebook back into my bag with a smile. “I hope things work out well for you, Stacy. All the way around.” I liked him, and my people radar is rarely wrong.

  He walked me out of the building, the space-age elevator lowering us back to the ground floor nearly as fast as it had shot us to the top.

  At the front door, I turned back with one more question. “You and Hamilton met when you worked at Daltec?” Assuming nothing seemed a safe bet.

  He shook his head. “I got him that interview, actually. Lakshmi introduced us at a party when I was a grad student at Madison.”

  Wait.

  Lakshmi’s last study.

  I closed my eyes, willing my cluttered photographic memory to action. L. Drake, S. Adams, and W. Bledsoe.

  I’d found a Stephanie Adams in the school directory and tracked her to Africa through her social media.

  I was wrong.

  “You worked with her in the statistics department?” It popped out before I could stop it. I leaned on the wide steel counter inside the door.

  This thing kept wrapping back in on itself. I needed to stop chasing new ideas and start trying to find the intersecting trails that made sense of the ones I already had.

  He flashed a smile. “I’ve always been a big math and science nerd. Took me a while to pick one to stick with. A long while, if you ask my dad. He’s still complaining about the tuition bills.”

  “So Lakshmi knew Hamilton before she worked for his father?”

  He nodded. “She was a whiz with the political stuff. She was testing a hypothesis about identity politics and harnessing it to influence elections with social media. She knew Wyatt from way back . . .” He trailed off. “Though now that I stop to think of it, nobody ever really said how.”

  I knew how.

  “When did you guys actually do the study?” I asked. “I know it was published last spring.”

  “We worked on it from April to September of the previous year,” he said.

  During Baine’s campaign. Had her influencing research helped put him in the governor’s mansion? And how ethical was that, if it did? Would someone kill her to keep that quiet?

  One more goose I didn’t have time to chase.

  “Lakshmi brought Wyatt in to give advice on the methodology and help find subjects, and he brought Hamil to a party we had when we finished up the research and the numbers supported her idea.” He shrugged. “Politics doesn’t matter much to me, honestly. I’m too black-and-white minded to see all the gray Lakshmi went on about when she got revved up about it.”

  “Did people at Madison know anything about Lakshmi’s past?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know much of anything, though I never thought about it. She was a smart woman and a hard worker. She didn’t talk a lot about her family or her personal life. Hell, I didn’t even know she was Reynash Drake’s daughter until I went to work at Daltec.”

  I fired off a half-dozen rapid blinks, trying to keep my brain from spinning any faster.

  I needed to think this through. But not here in front of this guy.

  I pulled a slow breath through my nose and put out a hand.

  My phone buzzed in my bag. I flicked my eyes down. Not now, Ohio.

  “Thank you, Mr. Adams,” I said. “Let me know if you think of anything else.”

  He closed both his hands around mine. “Find him.” He said. “You’re good at making things right. And pulling off the impossible. I know Governor Baine isn’t your favorite person today, Miss Clarke, but believe me, he’s not Hamilton’s favorite, either.”

  I just nodded before I stepped out the door.

  I couldn’t promise him something I wasn’t sure I could deliver.

  24

  The troopers waited until Adams was out of sight before they closed ranks around me, about a half-dozen steps into the parking lot.

  I scanned for familiar faces. Not a one.

  “Miss Clarke, we’re going to have to ask you to come with us,” the tallest one said.

  The other three folded their arms across their chests, forming a wall between me and Joey’s car.

  So I hadn’t really fooled anyone. Or they’d linked me and Joey and tracked the car. Either way, I didn’t need the extra complication today.

  I turned to the one who was doing the talking. His nameplate said Davis. “Do you have a warrant, Officer Davis?”

  He pulled an envelope from his back pocket and handed it to me. “I have a subpoena. From the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Ma’am.” He tipped his hat and took a half step back.

  “What could the attorney general possibly want with me?” I knew, because Aaron had told me. But I could also tell this guy wasn’t sure he wanted to be here, and the stripes on his shoulder told me he was a commander. So I wanted to make him say it out loud.

  “I’m sure it’s all there in the summons.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, refusing to meet my eyes.

  Fine.

  I ripped one corner of the envelope, specks of the shiny gold seal in the corner falling to the concrete.

  Shaking the thin paper out, I held it up.

  Matters involving state secrets.

  Were they kidding?

  I hadn’t ever actually met the attorney general, but people I trusted had always had good things to say about him.

  Surely he wasn’t accusing me of treason against the commonwealth for printing a story they damn well knew was true, no matter how much they disliked it.

  I looked back at the trooper.

  “It seems I’m an enemy of the state today?” I let my voice go up at the end.

  “I’m just doing my job, ma’am.” He still wouldn’t look at me.

  I let my head fall back, a puffy white cloud drifting lazily overhead. Looked kind of like an elephant.

  Good metaphor for my day. Elephants filling all the rooms, sitting on my chest . . . and now flying overhead, too.

  I didn’t really have any options. They weren’t asking me to go with them. They were telling me. There were three of them and one of me, and it wasn’t like I was outrunning them all, even in wedges.

  “Okay,” I said, spinning to move toward the gray state patrol cruiser to my left. One of the silent troopers jumped in front of me and I stumbled to a stop, eyeing him.

  “I said okay.” I raised my eyebrows, folding my li
ps between my teeth and biting down to keep words I shouldn’t say in.

  He moved and waved me ahead.

  Another officer, who looked to be the youngest one, opened the back door of the cruiser for me, putting a hand out to make sure I didn’t hit my head. Reflex, since they’d spared me the ridiculousness of handcuffs.

  The commander slid behind the wheel, the youngster taking shotgun. Nobody turned to look at me, the silence in the car heavier than the kettlebells my body combat instructor was so fond of these days.

  Oh hell no.

  They weren’t getting around this without talking to me.

  I laced my fingers together in my lap. “Do either of you gentlemen have a sister?”

  Crickets.

  “A daughter?”

  The commander’s eyes shifted to the rearview.

  Bingo.

  “Lakshmi Drake’s mother was beside herself when I saw her yesterday. Her little girl—and my mother tells me no parent ever stops seeing a child as the small person they once were, no matter how old they get—was murdered. Rather viciously, from what I’ve been able to find.”

  I paused.

  Waited.

  The commander put the signal on and turned the cruiser into the shoebox-sized excuse for a parking lot at the corner 7-Eleven.

  He turned in the seat, shooting the other trooper a wordless glare that sent the kid scrambling out of the car.

  “Need some coffee?” I asked, keeping my voice calm as he rounded on me.

  “I know your game here, and I’m not playing,” he snapped.

  I blinked. Okay then.

  “You can’t tell me you don’t know how that woman feels,” I said. “Look, I work with law enforcement every day. I count a lot of those guys among my friends.” Or I thought I did, anyway. “I’m not trying to piss you off or get you fired. But every cop I know well has one thing in common with all the others: a desire to do the right thing. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what the right thing is when you’re faced with a thousand impossible decisions on every shift. But this—hauling reporters in for questioning based on a political vendetta—isn’t why you do this job, is it, Commander?”