But no one went to the Building Museum at seven A.M. for its exhibits on architecture. They went for the coffee shop tucked into a corner of the atrium. The space provided a beautiful respite from an otherwise gray neighborhood.
Anna nodded to an obese, sleepy security guard sitting inside the front door. His eyes were at half-mast, and he barely seemed to notice her. She headed across the atrium to the coffee shop, debating whether she’d spring for a latte.
When Anna got inside the little coffee shop, frugality won its usual victory over taste, and she ordered a plain coffee. After she poured in a dollop of milk, she turned and walked back toward the atrium, where a few tables were set up outside the coffee shop. She almost ran into Brett Vale. She stifled a scream.
What was the LD doing here? While a search warrant was being executed on his home twenty blocks away?
The man had disintegrated significantly since she’d interviewed him in the Rayburn Building two days ago. His slicked-back silver hair had broken free from the constraints of hair gel and was sticking out in multiple cowlicks around his head. Stubble dotted his jaw. His white button-down shirt had sweat stains under the armpits.
Vale smiled at her. It was a faraway smile, as if he saw something the rest of the world couldn’t and was proud of this ability. Anna found it disturbing. She took a step back.
“Hi, Anna,” he said, stepping forward to close the distance she’d created.
“Ms. Curtis,” she corrected. She stood her ground. “What are you doing here?”
“Just getting a cup of coffee. Like you.”
She knew he didn’t work or live anywhere nearby. She glanced across the long lobby to where the sleepy guard sat at his desk. There wasn’t a metal detector or X-ray machine at the entrance, as there were at many museums. Vale could have brought anything in. She tried to catch the guard’s eye, but his face drooped toward his chest. He was sleeping.
“I’m sorry,” Anna said. “But I can’t talk to you. You’re represented, so we can only talk with your lawyer present.”
“You mean Singleton? Lionel’s pawn? What a joke. I fired him.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him. More important, she didn’t like the vibe she was getting off him. He wouldn’t do anything crazy in a public place, right? Except he’d killed Caroline McBride at the Capitol. Anna had no idea how crazy he could be.
Her purse vibrated with a series of short bursts. Her BlackBerry was probably the most diplomatic way out of this uncomfortable situation. She would fake an emergency and hightail it out of here. “Please excuse me,” she said. She brushed past him and went to one of the tables and set down her coffee. While she dug through her purse, Vale stood exactly where she’d left him, watching her intently.
Anna pulled out her BlackBerry and saw that the buzz was from voice messages landing in her in-box. The calls must have been made while she was in the gym shower, blocked by the lead walls of the National Security section. She scrolled through her call log: two from Samantha and one from Jack, but just one message, from Sam. Was Jack calling because he missed her? She would deal with her personal life later. She checked Sam’s message.
“Anna, this is Samantha. You’re not going to believe this. Vale was stalking Caroline, just like we thought. Now he’s stalking you. Call me right away.”
A shot of adrenaline sparked through her gut. She turned around to see where Vale was—as he slid up next to her. He smiled at her.
“So,” he said. “You guys find the killer yet?”
Anna jumped back. “We’re following all available leads.” She swallowed back a lump of fear. “I’m sorry, but like I said, I can’t talk about it.”
“I can help you, you know.” Vale again walked into the space she’d vacated. “I have more information you’ll want to hear.”
“Uh-huh.” Anna abandoned her coffee and walked toward the entrance of the museum. She shot a glance at the guard, fifty yards away across the open courtyard. Still sleeping. Should she run or shout? She didn’t think she could outrun Vale.
“About Madeleine Connor,” Vale continued. “It wasn’t a suicide. She was murdered.”
Anna wanted to get away from him, but she wished she could record what he was saying. Her BlackBerry was in her hand. Keeping Vale’s pale blue eyes fixed with hers, she fumbled with the keypad, trying to call back Samantha.
“What makes you say Madeleine Connor was murdered?” she asked. She tried to compose her face into an innocent, interested expression.
“I saw it. Not the murder, but right before. I have proof.”
Anna hit the green send button on the BlackBerry.
“We’re a good team,” Vale said, smiling. His breath smelled stale. She wondered when was the last time he’d brushed his teeth. “We get each other. I’ll be your source, like Deep Throat. Solving crimes by day, doing . . . other things by night.”
He reached out and lightly stroked Anna’s shoulder. She flinched, pulling her shoulder away from his touch. She could hear the BlackBerry down by her waist as her phone call rang to Sam’s cell. She walked a little faster. She and Vale were halfway to the museum entrance.
“Who are you calling?” Vale asked, looking down at the BlackBerry in her hand. His voice grew suspicious. “You’re not calling my lawyer, are you?”
Anna heard Sam’s tinny voice pick up on the other end of the line.
“Anna? Are you okay?”
Anna drew the phone to her ear and spoke with fake cheer. “Hi, Agent Randazzo, it’s Anna. I’m at the Building Museum, and Brett Vale is here. You remember Brett, right? From Congressman Lionel’s office?” She forced a smile at Vale.
“What the fuck!” Vale smacked the BlackBerry to the ground. It thunked on the carpet. “Are you even listening to me? I don’t want to talk to the FBI! I want to talk to you.”
“Calm down,” Anna said. She reached down for the BlackBerry, but Vale kicked it away. As she stood up, he was in her face.
“You calm down, you bitch! Don’t you tell me what to do!” Spittle flecked her face as he shouted. “I try to help you, and you call the FBI? Un-fucking-believable! You’re just like Sasha!”
“Hey, there, kids, there’s no call for that!”
The deep baritone of the museum guard came from behind Anna. Vale’s eyes went wildly from the big guard to her.
“She’s my girlfriend,” Vale told the guard. “It’s okay.”
He clamped a hand on Anna’s wrist and pulled her toward the front door. The guard seemed confused.
“I’m not your girlfriend, you crazy asshole.” She twisted her wrist out of his grasp.
She ran to the guard, who looked bewildered. She stood behind his bulk and wondered if he was armed.
Vale stared at her, his eyes furious and manic. She could tell he was contemplating another swipe at her, even with the guard between them. He was unhinged.
“You bitch,” Vale said in a low voice. “This is not done. This is so not done between us.”
He spun around and ran out of the museum.
“You okay, miss?” The guard looked more frightened than she felt, and that was saying a lot.
“I’m fine.” Anna nodded, although her hands were trembling. She pointed a shaky finger. “He’s getting away.” The guard made no effort to follow him.
Through the glass door, Anna saw Vale throw himself into a tiny silver Smart car parked at the curb. As he sped off, she ran outside and tried to note his license number.
Then she ran back into the atrium and found where her BlackBerry had been kicked. She picked it up. “Sam?”
“Yes, I’m still here! Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Vale’s in a silver Smart car, heading west on F Street.”
46
Jack rubbed his wrists where the handcuffs had pinched, while the officer apologized for the third time. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Bailey! We got a call for an intruder here.”
“It’s okay.” Jack forgave him for the third time. “We won
’t need a beer summit.”
It wasn’t this kid’s fault. Jack blamed the nosy neighbor next door. Even she wasn’t so unreasonable. Jack didn’t live here. Wearing jeans and an old T-shirt, digging through Anna’s potted plants, he must’ve looked fairly suspicious.
The patrol officer held out his cell phone. “Detective McGee wants to talk to you, okay?”
“Sure.” Jack took the phone from the rookie. He’d suggested that the kid call McGee to confirm his identity. “Bailey.”
“Hey, Chief, you want me to work on expunging that arrest?” McGee chuckled. “Maybe I can call in a favor, get you community service. You’d look good in an orange vest, picking up trash on the Beltway.”
This was just the beginning of the ribbing Jack would take for the incident. He sighed. “Luckily, it was just a stop-and-frisk, but I appreciate the gesture. Is there any word on Anna?”
“She’s fine. I’m walking her into the office right now, matter of fact. You wanna talk to her?” He heard McGee’s muffled voice saying, “It’s Jack.”
“No, that’s okay,” Jack said. “Just tell her—”
“Tell me what?” Anna asked from the other side of the line.
“Ah, hi, Anna.” He paused, sorting out his thoughts. “I’m glad to hear you’re okay. I was worried about you. I mean, everyone was worried.”
“Thanks, I’m fine,” Anna said. She was silent long enough that Jack thought she might have hung up. “How’s Olivia?”
“Okay. She misses you.”
“Now I know you’re lying.”
There was much more he wanted to say to her. He wanted to tell her what he’d realized as he walked through her empty apartment, wondering if he’d see her again. How much he loved her and needed her. But he couldn’t make the words come together. He stood there, holding the officer’s cell phone to his ear, listening to Anna’s silence on the other end.
“Well, it’s been good talking to you,” Anna said.
“Right. You, too.”
Jack hung up. He shepherded the rookie cop out of Anna’s basement apartment. Then he filled up a glass to water her plants.
Anna handed the cell phone back to McGee and tried not to let the wistfulness show on her face. But McGee was too good at reading body language.
“You know,” the big detective said softly, “he doesn’t go running like that for anybody else.”
“I know.”
She realized McGee had intuited just about everything there was to know about her and Jack’s relationship. She tried not to let him see her blush. He smiled, clamped a big hand on her shoulder, and escorted her through the lobby, up the elevator, and to her office. He held out the chair for her to sit.
“I should make a habit of this,” Anna said. “I feel like a princess.”
“Wait till you see all the paperwork this morning is gonna cost you. That’ll make you feel like a frog again.”
Before she did anything else, she needed to call Caroline’s mother. Donna McBride had the right to know what was happening before it hit the news. With McGee sitting in her office, Anna dialed the McBrides’ number.
Donna McBride answered the phone. Anna told her that she had some new information and asked if she wanted to meet in person.
“Please tell me now,” Donna said. “I don’t want to spend half the day wondering.”
So Anna told her what they’d found out about how Caroline was killed: how Caroline believed she was going to meet a congressman that night, how Vale had been stalking her, the fact that he’d bought her a ring and was planning to propose. As Anna spoke, Donna McBride cried softly into the phone.
But it was a different kind of crying than three days ago. There was relief in it. Hard as it was to hear what happened, there was a comfort that could only come from knowing. When Donna stopped crying, she said simply, “Thank you.”
47
Sam sped the Durango south on 14th Street, lights and sirens going. Morning rush-hour traffic clogged the street. Although some cars pulled aside to let her through, many sat in her way. Samantha honked and veered around a minivan. “Tell ’em we’ll be there in under a minute,” she said to Quisenberry, keeping her eyes on the road.
Quisenberry nodded and repeated the information to the Metropolitan Police Department.
The BOLO had quickly gotten a hit. An MPD officer driving around the Capitol had seen the silver Smart car heading west on Independence Avenue by the Botanical Gardens. The officer was following the Smart car with lights and sirens. But Vale wasn’t pulling over; he had sped up. And the officer was losing him. MPD officers were prohibited from engaging in high-speed chases.
Sam turned onto Independence Avenue and headed east. She would intercept Vale. The Smithsonian Castle was coming up on the left when Samantha spotted the silver Smart car—with the MPD cruiser following—heading toward her. Blaring her horn, she swung the Durango across the two left lanes, so its big black body blocked the oncoming traffic.
Vale had no intention of stopping. He swerved the Smart car around the Durango onto the sidewalk. A family of tourists screamed and dove out of the way. Samantha cursed. This was tourist central. The Castle was the information center for all the other Smithsonian museums on the Mall.
A black iron fence surrounded the Castle, with a stone gate providing an opening to the brick walkway and gardens. The gate’s opening was about the size of a man’s wingspan. Vale zipped his little Smart car right through the gate and kept going, out of sight.
“Fuck!” Samantha hit the steering wheel in frustration. The Durango wouldn’t fit there. Neither would the MPD cruiser. “Get the helicopter,” she said to Steve.
“On it.” He spoke quietly into his cell phone.
Sam straightened the SUV and sped down to 7th Street, hooked a left, then turned left onto Jefferson Drive, which ran parallel to Independence Avenue, on the other side of the Castle. There was the Smart car, speeding west. Sam sped after him. The long grassy expanse of the National Mall was on their right.
As she drove after him, she could hear other sirens approaching. Two marked MPD cruisers came toward them from the west. They parked in the middle of Jefferson Drive, blocking the street. That hadn’t stopped Vale before, and it didn’t stop him now. The Smart car hopped the sidewalk again, sending sparks flying as the bumper hit the concrete. Then it drove north across the Mall.
“Lunatic,” Samantha said. She steered the SUV up the sidewalk and followed the Smart car onto the grass. She had to swerve around a pair of joggers on a gravel path.
“This seem like a good idea to you?” Quisenberry asked, holding the door handle as the SUV bounced and swerved.
“Of course not,” Samantha said, and pressed harder on the accelerator.
Vale’s Smart car had nothing on the Durango when it came to driving on grass. The SUV gained on the Smart car as it cut across the park. Another broad gravel sidewalk sliced through the north side of the park. Accelerating, Vale tried to turn on the gravel. His tiny car skidded sideways. Samantha could see the wheels turning back and forth as Vale struggled for control. He never got it. His car plowed through a park bench, splintering the wooden slats and sending pigeons flying in every direction. Then it lodged itself into a hundred-year-old elm.
Sam parked on the grass a few feet away.
“That is why we don’t do car chases,” Quisenberry said, unbuckling his seat belt.
“What?” Samantha said innocently, climbing out of the truck. “No one was sitting on the bench.”
A silver door flashed open, and Vale’s long, lean figure shot out of the car. He ran north, cut across Madison Drive, and sprinted up the sidewalk in front of the Natural History Museum. He merged into the crowd of tourists going up the museum’s steps.
“You take the car,” Samantha shouted to Quisenberry. She took off running. “Police, stop!”
They couldn’t shoot at Vale, not when he was in a crowd of civilians, not when he wasn’t an imminent threat to anyone. She had to
catch him. Her high heels were Rockports for exactly this purpose. Sexy on the outside, running shoes on the inside.
Vale sprinted up the steps to the Natural History Museum. He was fast, but Samantha was a trained FBI agent. She was faster. She closed the distance between them and caught up to him in the domed lobby, where a mounted elephant held its trunk jubilantly in the air.
She tackled Vale. He was tall but light and not used to physical combat. Samantha easily brought him to the ground. She stuck a knee in his back and cuffed his hands behind him while dozens of astonished tourists gaped.
“Your tax dollars at work!” Samantha smiled at a tour group of old ladies as she hauled Vale to his feet and led him out of the museum.
48
Congratulations!” Grace yelled over the din of the restaurant.
A dozen pomegranate margaritas were raised over the white tablecloths and clinked together; some pink liquid splashed into candles glowing inside rose-petal globes. The drinkers laughed and shouted. Anna tipped her glass back and let the tart icy drink go down her throat.
They were in the bar of Rosa Mexicano. Thousands of rose petals were pressed between glass panels covering the walls and ceiling, illuminated from behind. Handsome Latin waiters crushed avocados into fresh guacamole in stone bowls. A wall of windows overlooked the flashing lights of Chinatown. Grace had pushed four tall, round tables into a line, and Anna and Samantha sat at the head, surrounded by sex-offense prosecutors and FBI agents. Grace had herded the AUSAs here; Samantha had brought the agents. It was a good mix. Most sex-crime prosecutors were female, and most FBI agents were male. It made for some fun interagency flirting, which Anna watched with amusement.
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