Murder Inside the Beltway

by Margaret Truman

  Murder Inside the Beltway

  Rosalie Curzon, a Washington, D.C., call girl, is found bludgeoned to death in her Adams-Morgan apartment. At the murder scene a video camera is discovered nestled high on a bookshelf. Had the victim taped some of her clients during their sexual liaisons?

  As the investigation proceeds, so does business inside the Beltway. President Burton Pyle is heatedly running for reelection against consummate politician Robert Colgate, who is expected to win. Colgate, though, is not without cracks in his slick exterior: Rumors swirl about his failing marriage and various dalliances. But no one is prepared for the explosive development that erupts when the daughter of Colgate’s closest friend is kidnapped and Detective Mary Hall and rookie cop Matthew Jackson uncover a shocking connection between the abduction, the Curzon case—and a killer no one will see coming.

  MURDER INSIDE

  THE BELTWAY

  A Novel by

  Margaret Truman

  Capital Crimes Series: Book 24

  Copyright © 2008

  by Margaret Truman

  eISBN: 978-0-345-50966-6

  Dedication:

  Dedicated, with love, to our mother, Margaret Truman Daniel. For more than thirty years, she liked nothing better than to sit at home in New York, murdering people in Washington, D.C., one at a time.

  Clifton Truman Daniel, Harrison Gates Daniel, Thomas Washington Daniel

  ONE

  “What a waste.”

  Matthew Jackson went to where Walter Hatcher stood holding a framed eight-by-ten color photograph he’d pulled from a bookshelf. “She’s a knockout,” Hatcher said. “I wouldn’t have minded getting some of that myself.”

  Jackson ignored Hatch’s comment—it wasn’t unexpected from the senior detective—and simply agreed that she was, indeed, beautiful.

  The woman in the picture was posed the way photographers liked to shoot glamour girls of yesteryear, provocatively positioned on a white divan. She wore a bloodred kimono, left open enough to display plenty of leg and cleavage. Jackson tried to discern her lineage; probably Mediterranean a few generations back judging from her inky black hair and large, almond eyes. Her expression was inviting, slightly parted full crimson lips hinting at a mischievous smile, teasing whoever viewed the photograph.

  Hatcher put the picture back on the shelf facedown and turned to look at the body sprawled in the center of the bedroom floor. “Looks like some john figured he didn’t get his money’s worth.”

  “She’s a hooker?” Jackson said.

  Hatcher looked at the young detective as though he’d mispronounced a simple word. “What do you figure she was, Jackson?” he asked. “Your mother decorate her bedroom like this?”

  Jackson drew a breath. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. He’d almost gotten used to his partner’s put-downs. Almost.

  The room to which Hatch referred was a large bedroom on the second floor of an apartment in the Adams Morgan section of Washington. If a set designer had been charged with creating the quintessential bordello, he might have used the same approach. There was the requisite mirror on the ceiling over the king-sized bed, which was suspended by four gold chains. A few feet from it was a mirrored ball that, when rotated, caught the light from tiny red and blue pin-spots. The bedding was golden and silk-like. Animal-print rugs (leopards and zebras) and upholstery created a cross between Animal Planet and Vegas. Dimmers controlled the lights. A fully stocked minibar occupied one corner. Soft rock music that had been playing when the detectives arrived continued to sound from small speakers high up in the room’s four corners.

  Whoever killed her hadn’t attempted to maintain the room’s décor. It was a mess. Bottles and glasses from the bar were strewn on the floor. The bedding was bunched up; one corner of the duvet was smeared with her blood. A red barrel chair had been overturned, as had a wrought-iron stand, its furry-leafed plant resting in the middle of a dark water stain on the carpeting.

  She’d obviously put up the good fight.

  The cops knew her name. The building’s super, who sat in the apartment’s living room with two other residents of the building, had provided it: Rosalie Curzon. She’d been a tenant for two years: “Always paid her rent on time,” the super had told the cops. “Nice lady.”

  Hatcher called headquarters to run the name. Her history was brief. Ms. Curzon had twice been arrested for prostitution four years ago when she worked for one of D.C.’s myriad escort services. She’d paid a fine—or someone did—and she walked.

  Matt Jackson turned his attention to the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves from which Hatch had lifted the photograph. The deceased’s reading selection was eclectic—leather-bound editions of classics, potboiler fiction, and a dozen erotic novels lined up next to six volumes on sexual practices. Jackson smiled as he read the spine of one in the latter grouping, Kosher Sex. He pulled it down, saw that it had been written by a rabbi, and returned it to its place on the shelf.

  Sections were reserved for home decorating books, murder mysteries by big name authors, and for biographies of a variety of famous names in business, politics, the military, and religion.

  “The well-read hooker, huh, Matt?” Hatcher said, joining his young colleague in perusing the books. His eyes eventually went to the top shelf, twelve inches below the crown molding that separated the wall from the ceiling, where ten videotape boxes stood nestled in slots provided by a blue, faux-leather slipcase designed for that purpose. They were too high up to reach. “Grab that desk chair,” Hatcher instructed. Jackson dragged it over, stood on it, and handed the slipcase down to Hatcher.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Jackson said, pointing to a small video camera that had been partially concealed by the tapes, its lens tilted down in the direction of the bed.

  “Grab that, too,” Hatcher ordered.

  Jackson gave the camera to Hatcher, jumped down from the chair, and joinedhim in reviewing what was written on the spines of the tapes.

  Hatcher looked at Jackson and grinned. “Look’ee here,” he said, referring to the neatly handwritten notations on the videos. Each indicated a span between two dates, followed by initials.

  “You don’t figure the lady was a movie producer, too, do you, Jackson?”

  Jackson’s thought matched Hatcher’s. Had the deceased prostitute videotaped her trysts with paying customers? If so, was it possible that she’d captured her own murder on tape?

  Hatcher’s laugh was a mirthless low rumble. “Maybe we got lucky.”

  “It would be nice.”

  “It would be better than nice. It would be a home run.”

  “Two are missing,” Jackson offered, referring to empty slots in the slipcase that was designed to hold twelve tapes.

  “Maybe business was slow,” Hatcher said. He opened the compartment of the camera and retrieved a tape. A quick examination showed that approximately half of it had been used.

  They turned as the third member of their team, Mary Hall, entered, followed by crime scene techs and a D.C. medical examiner.

  “Took you long enough,” Hatcher said to the young, prematurely balding ME in the white coat.

  The ME ignored him and went directly to the body. One of the techs began making a video recording, circling the body to capture it from a variety of angles.

  “What do we know?” the ME asked Jackson.

  “One of her neighbors called nine-one-one, said she heard noises from the apartment. She got hold of the super and he used his key to get in.”

  “How long ago?”

  “We got the call forty-five minutes ago.”

  The ME knelt next to the victim and leaned close to examine the injuries to the back of her head, and to the one side of her face
that was visible. “This is the way you found her?” he asked no one in particular.

  “If you mean did anybody move the body,” Hatcher said, “the answer is no.”

  The ME moved to the other side of the deceased.

  “Somebody beat her up pretty good,” Jackson said to Mary Hall, who’d come to his side.

  “And strangled her,” said the ME, pointing to bruising on her neck. He stood and surveyed the room’s disorder. “She didn’t go down easily.”

  “Where are the super and the other tenants?” Hatcher asked Hall.

  “In the living room.”

  “You get statements from them?”

  “Preliminary ones.”

  “And you leave them alone in there to get their formal stories straight?”

  “Hatch, I—”

  “Get back in there!”

  Jackson avoided Hall’s exasperated look as she left the room.

  “The nine-one-one call came in at ten thirty-seven,” Jackson said. “Somebody in the building said she heard noises in here, like a fight. That pins down time-of-death.”

  “She’s warm but starting to cool,” said the ME. “It didn’t just happen. I’d say two, two-and-a-half hours ago.”

  “Maybe the lady waited a while to make the call. Go ask her, Jackson.”

  Jackson returned minutes later. “You were right, Hatch,” he said. “She says she heard the fight going on around seven, seven-fifteen, but her husband didn’t want to get involved.”

  “So what made her change her mind at ten-thirty-seven?”

  “She says she knew she’d never get to sleep without doing something.”

  “Her husband with her?”

  Jackson nodded.

  “Tell Mary to take them back to their apartment to get their statements.” He called over one of the crime scene techs who’d started to mark blood spatter on the carpet with small tent cards. “Where’s your evidence bag?” he asked.

  The tech went to where he’d dropped it on a chair and brought it to Hatcher. The veteran detective led Jackson to a corner where they wouldn’t be overheard. He placed the camera, the tape it contained, and the ten marked videos into the bag and handed it to Jackson. “Take this back to headquarters and wait for me there. Don’t let it out of your sight. Understand? You show it to nobody until I get there.”

  “You don’t want me to log it in?”

  “You catch on quick, Jackson. Go on, move.”

  Hatcher went to the living room, where Mary Hall was about to escort the husband and wife back to their apartment. He waited until they were gone before addressing the only other person in the room, the building’s superintendent, a beefy Hispanic man with pockmarked cheeks and a tic in his left eye.

  “Tell me about the lady in there,” Hatcher said, nodding toward the bedroom.

  “Miss Curzon? What about her?” His English was good.

  “How long has she been here?”

  “Must be two years now.”

  “She sign a lease?”

  “Sí. Everybody does.”

  “Don’t sí me, José. You’re in America, so speak American. English.”

  The super’s expression mirrored his confusion, and fear.

  “How much she pay you on the side?”

  He stared blankly at the detective.

  “Come on, José, don’t give me that dumb look. You knew she was turning tricks. She’s a puta, right? A whore. How much she pay you to look the other way?”

  “Oh, no, no, sir, you are wrong. I do not care what the tenants do as long as they don’t bother nobody else. I say live and let live.” He forced a smile in the hope it would indicate sincerity.

  “How much every month? A couple of bills? Five?”

  “I told you that—”

  Hatcher closed the gap between them, his face now inches from the super’s. “You’re lying to me, scumbag. That’s a crime, pal. I’m going to look into every corner of your life, and when I come up with what I know I’ll find, you’re going to be dead meat. Tax fraud. Obstructing justice. Lying to a cop. In the meantime, we’ll go to MPD and have a nice, long chat.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “You stay in this room until I’m through in there. You hear me?”

  The super nodded.

  Hatcher returned to the bedroom, where the ME was finishing up his initial examination. “Blunt force trauma,” he told Hatcher, “and apparent strangulation. Can’t tell which one killed her until we autopsy.”

  “No weapon?” Hatcher asked.

  “That’s your department, Hatch. From what I can see of her wounds, whoever did it used his hands. I’d say he was pretty pissed off.”

  One of two uniformed officers who’d been first to arrive at the scene entered the room. Since the arrival of the detectives, he’d been stationed in the hallway to keep the curious at bay. His partner had taken up a position downstairs at the building entrance. Hatcher ordered them to remain at the scene and to make sure no one entered the apartment. “There’ll be reinforcements soon to canvas the neighborhood and the rest of the tenants.”

  He rejoined the super and told him to take him to where Detective Hall was questioning the husband and wife.

  The door to the apartment directly beneath Rosalie Curzon’s was open when they arrived. Hatcher told the super to wait in the hall and joined Hall in the couple’s living room.

  “You about finished?” Hatcher asked.

  “I think so, Hatch.”

  Hatcher returned to the open door and ran his fingers over its peephole. “You must see a lot of what goes on here, huh?” he said to the wife.

  “I mind my own business,” she said, looking nervously at her husband, a thin, tense man wearing glasses with thick, clouded lenses.

  “I tell her all the time to mind her own business,” the husband said, “but she won’t listen. She never listens.”

  Hatcher ignored him and asked the wife if she’d seen anyone coming or going that evening.

  “I don’t pay attention to who comes and goes,” she said.

  “That’s all she does,” countered the husband. “She’s always standing at that damn peephole to see who’s coming in and going out.”

  “And who’d you see tonight?” Hatcher repeated.

  “No one,” she said, vigorously shaking her head.

  “Let’s go,” Hatcher said. Mary Hall snapped her notebook shut, thanked the couple for their time, and left the apartment with Hatcher. On his way out of the building he locked eyes with the super, who looked as though he might cry at any minute. “I’m going to give you overnight to decide to be straight with me, José. I’ll be back tomorrow. You got twenty-four hours to take some memory pills. Got it?”

  “Sí, yes, gracias. Thank you.”

  Hatcher pressed his index finger against the super’s fleshy lips. “Twenty-four hours, my friend. Don’t disappoint me.”

  The detectives walked to where Hatcher’s car was parked crookedly at the curb. Hall and Jackson had arrived together in Jackson’s car, which he’d taken back to headquarters.

  “Damn, I’m hungry,” Hatcher complained as he and Hall headed for MPD on Indiana Avenue.

  “Stop and get something,” she suggested. “We going back to headquarters?”

  “Yeah. You ever watch porn movies, Mary?”

  “I’ve seen a few.”

  “Feel like watching some tonight?”

  “Oh, Jesus, Hatch, what the hell are you doing, entering your dirty old man phase?”

  He laughed. “Jackson’s back in the office with a batch of amateur porn for us to watch.”

  “Great. You and Matt get your jollies. I’m off-duty.”

  “No you’re not, Mary. We’ve got a long night ahead of us. I think I will grab something to bring back. Chinese?”

  “Whatever turns you on, Hatch.”

  TWO

  Matt Jackson anticipated what Hatcher would want when he arrived at MPD headquarters. He secured a seldom-used interrogati
on room that contained a TV set and video/DVD player. Once inside with the doors closed, he drew drapes across the one-way mirror, and turned off the harsh overhead fluorescents, leaving on only a small lamp. The evidence bag containing the tapes and camera from Rosalie Curzon’s apartment sat between his feet underneath the scarred table. He hoped no one would come in and ask what he was doing there. Hatcher had made it clear that the tapes were to remain within his possession, at least until Hatcher had a chance to view them.

  Could it possibly be that the prostitute’s killer was caught on tape? Obviously, the tapes cataloged and stored in the slipcase couldn’t contain such material. But there was that half-used tape in the camera. Had the camera been running during the attack? If so, Rosalie Curzon’s case might possibly avoid joining the ranks of MPD’s burgeoning file of unsolved murders.

  His mind wandered as he sat alone in the room. He was tempted, of course, to pop a tape into the player, but knew that Hatcher would be angry if he did. Barely a year ago, when he’d been promoted to the rank of detective after four years as a uniformed patrolman and assigned to Walter Hatcher’s squad after a brief stint with another team, it seemed a golden opportunity to learn from one of the force’s most decorated cops. He didn’t harbor any illusions that working with Hatcher would be easy. The man defined hardnosed, impatient, and unforgiving. There were rumors that he had taken the law into his own hands on more than one occasion, but as far as Jackson knew, the senior detective had never been brought up on departmental charges. Or, if he had, nothing had ever come of it.

  Working side by side with Hatcher had been the learning experience Jackson had expected. He knew he had a lot to absorb and excused Hatcher’s tendency to berate him for every mistake. Jackson wasn’t thin-skinned and didn’t take Hatcher’s sarcastic comments and bombastic eruptions personally. What did bother him also had to do with his skin—its color.

  He was the product of a mixed marriage, his father a black man, his mother white. Fair-skinned, he sometimes passed for white, although he never tried to conceal his African-American roots. Hatcher used slang for every minority—blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, and women, an equal-opportunity bigot. That provided some solace for Jackson. At the same time, he sensed a deeper, darker disdain that Hatcher had for him because of his mixed parentage, and because he was a college graduate, his major sociology. As far as Hatcher was concerned, college was a waste of time and money for anyone seeking a career in law enforcement, and he never hesitated to say so. Too, Hatcher often said that Jackson didn’t look like a cop, whatever that meant. True, Jackson was reed thin and not tall, and leaned toward tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, button-down shirts, knit ties and desert boots, not a cop out of central casting. But this wasn’t Hollywood. This was Washington, D.C., with a police force of almost four thousand, two-thirds of them African American, twenty-five percent female. What did a typical cop look like? Like Walter Hatcher, big and rawboned, thick-necked, red-faced, and with a perpetual nasty scowl?