My phone rang. I saw a number I didn’t recognize but answered anyway. “Cross.”
“The good doctor himself. This is Clive Sparkman.”
“How did you get this number?”
“A triviality,” Sparkman said. “I want to meet for breakfast. Now.”
“Forget it. Never,” I said.
“Suit yourself, then, Cross. Blow up your life when I’m giving you the opportunity to put out the fuse.”
CHAPTER 38
AN HOUR LATER, I WALKED into Ted’s Bulletin, a restaurant on Eighth Street in Southeast DC, four blocks from my home. I was sure Clive Sparkman was aware of that and was letting me know that he’d studied up on me, which only added to my general surliness at having to meet him to see what he planned to write about me.
Sparkman sat in the back booth on the left, facing the door. His face lit up when he saw me, and he stood to shake my hand.
“Dr. Cross,” Sparkman said. “I appreciate you coming on such short notice.”
“You didn’t give me much of a choice,” I said, but I shook his hand anyway.
Sparkman gestured at the booth. “Shall we?”
I slid into the booth, watching him the way I would a sleeping snake. He held my gaze. Was that amusement on his lips?
“Coffee?” he said. “Breakfast? It’s on me.”
“I’ve got things to do, Mr. Sparkman,” I said. “A congresswoman was shot this morning, or hadn’t you heard?”
“You’re on that already? You do get around, don’t you?”
“Out with it. And by the way, I am talking to you off the record, and if you don’t like that, I’m walking, and you can write whatever you want. Which you’ll probably do anyway.”
Sparkman sat back, irritated. “You don’t think much of me, do you, Dr. Cross?”
“I rarely think of you at all.”
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“Is that right?”
“I’m not sleazy and I’m not second rate,” he said.
I didn’t reply.
Sparkman said, “I went to Yale, Dr. Cross.”
“Bully for you.”
“I have a master’s in economic and political journalism from Northwestern. I graduated at the top of my class.”
“And yet you peddle gossip.”
“I write about gossip with facts. Which is about as close as anyone can get to the heart of the matter these days. Don’t you feel it? Like everything is malleable, even the truth? In many cases, gossip is the story; how it moves and grows and influences the facts.”
“I believe you can find the truth if you dig hard enough.”
“And what is the truth to you, Doctor?” he said.
“An unassailable argument built on facts. The rest is conjecture or clickbait.”
Sparkman seemed to be enjoying himself. “Yes, in your world, you’re right. In your world, Dr. Cross, every action is designed to get the bad guys into court where just such an argument supported by facts will determine their fate.” I thought about that. “Not every action I take, but the majority, I’ll grant you.”
“And never — not once — has some snippet of gossip you’ve heard from a witness along the way turned out to be material, a seriously strong fact to be used?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re an honest man. Good. So, when you think about it, we’re kind of in the same line of business, Dr. Cross. You employ your investigative skills for various exalted government agencies, and I employ mine for the site and the blog.”
“Except I don’t throw around wild accusations and bogus innuendo in public to juice up a story.”
The enthusiasm drained out of Sparkman’s eyes and he put on what I took to be his game face. “Like I said, Dr. Cross, I don’t do that. I’m trained. I check things out, which is what I’m doing here.”
Before I could reply, the blogger reached into a leather messenger bag and pulled out a manila envelope. He opened the clasp, drew out a piece of glossy white paper, and turned it over, revealing a photograph. He slid it across the table to me.
It was upside down, so I spun it around and felt almost immediately nauseated, like I’d been caught in a carefully laid trap.
CHAPTER 39
THE PHOTOGRAPH HAD BEEN TAKEN years ago and through a long lens. It was a night scene, a diagonal view across a street toward a brick sidewalk, a low iron gate, and the green front door of Kay Willingham’s home. Just outside the gate, Kay and I were embracing; her right foot was raised behind her and her eyes were on mine. It looked like we’d just kissed.
“You told me you never had an affair with Kay Willingham,” Sparkman said.
For a long moment, I didn’t reply, just studied the picture and Kay. I remembered that moment, how she’d laughed.
“Cross. The affair.”
I looked at the blogger, who’d taken out a pencil and a notebook. “There was no affair.”
“The picture says otherwise.”
“No, the picture says that I was taking Kay Willingham home from a fundraiser because her ride was a no-show and she’d had a little too much champagne.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, sounding skeptical as he scribbled a note.
“Hey, Mr. Yale and Northwestern, Mr. Legit Journalist,” I said, spinning the picture toward him and tapping on it. “Take a closer look at her raised foot.”
The blogger blinked, set down his pen, and bent over to study the foot. “No shoe.”
“Because Mrs. Willingham’s heel went into a crack in the brick sidewalk and her shoe slipped off a moment before that picture was taken. I caught her before she could fall, and her shoe dropped into that puddle you can see there behind her. I was a helping hand. No affair.”
Sparkman studied the photograph and then me. I could see gears grinding in his head. “When was this taken?”
I thought about that. “It had to be April early in Willingham’s term as governor of Alabama.”
“Eight years ago?”
“Sounds right.”
“When she was estranged from her husband.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“She was. They spent nearly ten months apart that year. Her call.”
“If you say so.”
Sparkman flipped his pencil neatly between his fingers, studying his notes. “Did you go inside?”
“Yes,” I said. “She asked me to check the house, which is what her driver usually did before she set the alarm and went to bed.”
“How long did that take?”
“I don’t know, fifteen minutes?” He looked disappointed. “You didn’t try to get an after-dinner drink out of her? A woman like that?”
Some things are worth lying about, and I wanted this guy off the story of the photograph. “I did not ask for an after-dinner drink. Would I have liked to? Sure. Kay Willingham was beautiful, smart, and a little out there — in a good way. But I have a rule about imposing on women who have had too much to drink.”
“How sensitive-male of you,” Sparkman sniffed.
I shrugged. “You’ve been asking all the questions, Sparkman. I’d like a few of my own answered.”
“Okay?”
“Where’d you get the photograph?”
He stiffened. “You know I can’t reveal my sources.”
“Who took the photograph?”
“I have no idea.”
“It just came to you.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. I am known. People in power do send me things.”
I paused, seeing his obvious hunger to be thought significant. I decided to feed that, change my whole attitude and approach. I sat back, showed him my open palms. “Mr. Sparkman, I don’t doubt it. I’ve been unfair to you. I came in here with a set idea about you, but I have to say, you’ve impressed me with your intelligence and your willingness to be fair and impartial in listening to my side of the story behind that photograph.”
The blogger sat up taller, nodded. “Okay, well,
I appreciate that.”
Then I leaned across the table and in a low threatening voice said, “But don’t think for a second I won’t use the full force of the FBI against you if you do not tell me where the hell you got that photograph and right now.”
Sparkman retreated, pressing his head against the back of the booth. “You can’t do that.”
“Watch me,” I said. “I’m an investigative consultant to the FBI. I’m working with the FBI on the deaths of Kay Willingham and Randall Christopher. And I want to know who wants me off the investigation.”
“Well, you are compromised, don’t you think?”
“By a broken shoe? I don’t think so. Listen hard, Mr. Sparkman. If I tell Special Agent in Charge Mahoney that you have evidence concerning the killing of the vice president’s ex-wife and that you’re not cooperating, he will seize everything you’ve got and shut you down until you’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars to hire lawyers to get your stuff back. By then you’ll be bankrupt.”
He looked sickened. “He can’t do that.”
“Actually, he can.”
The blogger lost some of his confidence then. I could see the growing confusion in his expression. His brain was spinning, trying to find a way out.
I gave him one. “So maybe we can help each other, Mr. Sparkman. You sit on that photograph, you do not publish, and you wait while we do our work. When we are done, we will grant you an exclusive on the story, and you can use the picture or not. I won’t care at that point because I’ll have found Mrs. Willingham’s killer, and you can print whatever you’d like, although I’d prefer you to base it wholly on facts.”
I’d had his entire attention at the word exclusive, but he said nothing.
I said, “This is one of those rare moments, Mr. Sparkman, where the decision you make might just determine the course of the rest of your life. Do you want to be arrested for obstructing justice in a high-profile federal investigation? Or do you want to patiently lay the foundation for a blockbuster story of real journalism that’s all your own?”
Sparkman’s eyes darted left and right as if he were looking at lists of pros and cons. Then his shoulders relaxed. “I’ll take the story,” he said at last. “Put the exclusive in writing.”
“As long as we get what you know. Deal?”
“Deal.”
I smiled and reached over to shake his hand.
He grinned now. “We’re like partners, me and you.”
“No,” I said firmly. “But we both benefit here. Now tell me where that picture came from.”
CHAPTER 40
CHARLIE PALMER’S STEAK ON Constitution Avenue is as close to an off-site congressional dining hall as you can get in the nation’s capital. The restaurant is a few minutes’ walk from the U.S. Senate office buildings, the food’s excellent, and politicians and power brokers of all persuasions are drawn to the eatery.
According to Clive Sparkman, the politicians and the power brokers were why I might find a woman named Kelli Ann Higgins eating lunch there. Probably alone. Sure enough, when I arrived at the restaurant, showed the maître d’ my identification, and asked after Ms. Higgins, I was told she had just been seated.
“She’s at a table for two, I imagine.”
He looked down at his seating chart. “No, just her.”
“She’s an old friend,” I said. “I’ll join her.”
Before he could reply, I dodged around his station and strode through the main room to the back, where Higgins liked to sit so she could track the comings and goings in the room. Or at least, that’s what Sparkman had said.
I spotted her almost immediately, mid-forties, rail-thin, stylish dark hair, pale, almost translucent skin, and wearing her signature red dress and pearls. She was entranced by something on her cell phone and didn’t glance my way until I sat down opposite her.
Higgins looked at me with disdain. “Who are you?”
“My name is Alex Cross.”
She was good, I’ll give her that. At my name, she barely took a breath before shaking her head. “Am I supposed to know you?”
I smiled, showed her my FBI contractor’s ID. “I’m a consultant to the investigation into the deaths of Kay Willingham and Randall Christopher.”
“And?”
Before I could answer, a waiter came over and asked what I wanted to drink.
“Oh, he won’t be staying,” Higgins said.
I smiled at her. “We can do it here, Ms. Higgins, or I can make some calls and you’ll be hauled out of here for questioning.”
Her nostrils flared, but she said, “Get him what he wants.”
“A Coke,” I said. “And I heard the steak sandwich is good.”
When the waiter was gone, she said, “I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation. I was looking forward to a nice lunch, maybe seeing some old — ”
“Stop,” I said. “You have a law degree and run a PR business, Ms. Higgins. That’s what it says on your office door, anyway, although I understand your real game is something entirely different.”
Indignant now, she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Blackmail,” I said.
“Would you like to be sued?”
“Oh, I don’t mean you do the blackmailing yourself, though I suspect you’ve strayed close to that line more than a few times doing what you do.”
Higgins crossed her arms. “And what is it that you allege I do?”
“You deal in dirt, Ms. Higgins. Damaging information, the kind of leverage you need in a blackmail scheme or a plot to tear down or build up some politician. It’s why you’re here or in one of the other power-lunch venues around town every day, Monday through Friday. You’re trolling for business.”
“Wherever did you get the idea that I deal in dirt?”
“A dirty little bird told me.”
“You’ll have to do better than that or I’m going to ask you to leave, FBI or no FBI.”
“Clive Sparkman,” I said.
“That worm,” she said. “Don’t believe a thing he says.”
“Ordinarily, I don’t,” I said. “But he told me he was talking to you in the hours after the murders of Kay Willingham and Randall Christopher, and you said that you had so much on those two you could light up Sparkman’s site like ‘the Drudge Report on a down day for Democrats.’ Is that correct?”
Higgins’s focus drifted into the middle distance for a moment before she squinted and laughed. “Yes, I said something like that. I did! But I was doing what my little brother would call ‘yanking his chain.’ ”
“Sparkman’s chain?” I said.
“He’s easily played. I like to play with him. It makes him eager to please when I really need him.”
“To do what?”
She shrugged. “Float a theory. Roll out a hidden fact or two that might sway public opinion.”
“So you have nothing on Kay Willingham or Randall Christopher?”
She smiled sweetly at me. “Wish I did, but I’m afraid not.”
“Did you know her? Kay?”
“We met several times. I liked her, but we weren’t friends.”
“Really? Kay was friends with everyone.”
“I suppose she thought I knew things she did not want out in the open.”
“Did you?”
“Not really. I mean, not things that I would consider cause for scandal.”
“What about beneath your scandal threshold?”
“She liked men and women and often strayed outside her marriage, but that’s been reported. She may have had a nervous breakdown or two. That’s a persistent but unconfirmed rumor.”
“Did you send Clive Sparkman a photo of me and Kay Willingham?”
She ducked her chin and then laughed in wonder. “There’s a photograph of you and Kay Willingham?”
“It’s not like that.”
“It never is, Dr. Cross.”
I studied her. Higgins was practiced and polished in he
r gaze, but I was still picking up something that said I wasn’t getting the entire story. “Did you send the picture?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m going to go, then.”
“Not staying for the steak sandwich?”
“You take it — you look like you could use the iron,” I said, standing. “But in the meantime, whatever game it is that you’re playing, Ms. Higgins? Be very, very careful. I suspect there are forces involved you have not even begun to consider.”
CHAPTER 41
LATER THAT SAME AFTERNOON, Metro Chief of Police Bryan Michaels and Chief of Detectives Bree Stone were on the receiving end of a titanic venting from Commissioner of Police Wayne Dennison.
“I told you both time and again that my friend getting shot in the ass was part of something bigger, something sinister,” he said. “The Washington Post put it together before we did; rich people and politicians were getting shot at in the streets of DC before Phil and the congresswoman were actually hit. Where were we, Chief Michaels? Chief Stone? Where was Metro?”
Bree’s boss glanced at her. She threw back her shoulders and said, “With all due respect, Commissioner Dennison, Metro was there. We knew about the shootings. Dr. Cross interviewed Mr. Peggliazo at length. We couldn’t anticipate an escalation away from wealthy targets to shooting a sitting congresswoman.”
“No?” Dennison said. “Isn’t that the job of a leader, Chief Stone? To anticipate what might happen and take appropriate action so it does not?”
“What exactly did you want me to do, Commissioner? Take over congressional security? That’s the Capitol Hill Police’s job.”
“That’s true, sir,” Chief Michaels said. “And even so, Chief Stone was on the scene of that shooting this morning before any other agency with primary jurisdiction.”
Dennison fumed a moment. “I do not want the people in this department looking like fools. I will not have Metro be the third-stringer in this town. Metro leads. Metro anticipates.”
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