Capitol Murder (17 page)

Crispin tried to speak, but she had been outfitted with a ball gag. Her eyes darted away from the man and focused on her surroundings. She was in her bedroom, naked. Her arms had been pulled behind her, and her knees and lower legs had been secured to the chair legs, leaving her completely vulnerable. On the end of the bed were a hammer, pliers, pruning shears, and a lighter.

D
ana Cutler sat up in bed. She looked at the clock. It was one thirty in the morning, and something she’d dreamed had shocked her out of a deep sleep. What was it? There was an image on the edge of her conscious mind, but it was as elusive as a ghost.

Dana squeezed her eyes shut. In the dream, she’d been talking to Jake, and they had both been sad. Jake had taken her hand and said that they had to have a heart-to-heart talk and then . . .

That was it! She had to talk to Crispin, but her plane left for D.C. at 6:45. Screw it! Dana ran to her closet and threw on some clothes. Crispin was not going to like being roused at two in the morning, but if Dana was right, that was going to be the least of the law student’s problems.

A
ll of the TV trucks were gone when Dana drove into the apartment complex. In front of Crispin’s front door, she raised her hand to knock but stopped when she heard a noise to her left. It sounded like someone sliding down the steep hill that started at the end of the breezeway and dropped down to the street below. Dana walked to the top of the hill. A man was inching his way down.

“Hey!” Dana shouted as she started down the hill.

The man looked up, but his face was in shadow. Then he pulled something out of his pocket. Dana saw a muzzle flash and saw dirt fly up inches from her. She scrambled back up the hill and dived for cover. Dana drew her gun from the holster at the small of her back while the man slid the rest of the way to the street. When she looked over the side, he was streaking toward a car. She fired and the bullet ricocheted off the sidewalk. The man wrenched open the door and lunged into the driver’s seat. Dana’s next shot hit the trunk seconds before the engine roared to life and the car skidded down the street.

D
ana was sitting in her rented Rover in front of Dorothy Crispin’s apartment complex, resting her head against the back of the seat, when someone rapped on the passenger window. She opened her eyes and saw Monte Pike holding up two cardboard cups with Starbucks logos.

The first time Dana met Pike, during her investigation in the case involving Supreme Court justice Felicia Moss, she’d had a hard time believing he was the chief criminal deputy in the Multnomah County district attorney’s office. As usual, Pike’s hair was disheveled, his clothes appeared to have been selected by a blind man, and he looked more like a junior high student than a brilliant graduate of Harvard Law.

It was cold. Dana reached across and opened the passenger door. Pike slid onto the passenger seat and gave her the coffee.

“Thanks,” Dana said as she pried off the lid and took a sip.

The first officers on the scene had taken Dana’s statement. Then they had asked her to wait while they checked on Dorothy Crispin. Dana had warned them about what they would see inside the apartment, but she got the impression the men hadn’t taken her seriously. Moments after the officers walked into the apartment, one of them staggered out and threw up over the side of the hill. Dana had taken no satisfaction in that. Now, forty-five minutes later, the Rover was blocked in by a morgue wagon, a van from the Oregon State Crime Lab, the car in which two homicide detectives had arrived, and vans from three television stations.

Pike cocked his head in the direction of the detectives who were conferring with a forensic expert near the front door of Crispin’s apartment.

“Detective Pierson says you came here to talk to Crispin at two in the morning. That’s an odd time for an interview.”

“I’ve got a flight back to D.C. at six forty-five, which I guess I won’t make. This was the only time I could talk to Crispin before I left.”

“What was so urgent?”

“When I was asking her about her meeting with Carson she said, ‘We had a heart-to-heart. He told me he loved his wife and regretted what he’d done.’ Those were the exact words Senator Carson used in his press conference. A lot of what she said sounded like she was reading from a script. I wanted to confront her.”

“But you didn’t get the chance.”

“No. I was about to knock when I heard someone scrambling down the hill. I called out to him, and he shot at me. I returned fire, but I didn’t hit him. I got his car, though.”

“Did you get a license, make?”

“No, it was dark, and I spent a lot of time ducking. When I was sure I was safe, I went in through the patio to see if Crispin was okay. She wasn’t.”

Monte Pike would have been suspicious of any other witness who was this calm after seeing how Dorothy Crispin had been defiled, but Pike knew a little about Dana’s history.

“Can you describe the man who shot at you?”

“No. It was dark. I dived for cover when he fired at me. When I fired back, he was down the hill and his back was all I saw.”

“If I tell you something, will you promise me I won’t read it in
Exposed
?”

Dana nodded.

“The killer took Crispin’s pinkie.”

Dana had not spent much time with Crispin’s corpse after determining that she was dead, so this revelation came as a complete surprise.

“Clarence Little?” she said.

“Do you think the man you saw was Little?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never seen him in person, and I was intent on staying alive, so I wasn’t trying to see who was shooting at me. Do you have any idea why Little would want to murder Crispin?”

“None whatsoever.”

“When can I go home, Monte?”

“Tomorrow, unless some concrete reason to keep you here pops up, but I can’t think what that might be.”

“I’ll tell the people at
Exposed
I’ll be delayed. They’ll want me to write this story anyway.”

“But nothing about Little unless I clear it,” Pike reminded Dana.

D
ana got back to her hotel at five thirty in the morning and banged out her story. She was out on her feet, but she called Brad at his office before getting into bed. Thanks to the three-hour time difference, she caught him at his desk.

“Good morning, Brad. I’m calling from Portland, Oregon.”

“Are you still investigating the senator for
Exposed
?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I thought. Wait a minute, isn’t it early there?”

“Yeah, I’ve been up all night at a crime scene. Dorothy Crispin was murdered.”

“Why are you telling me?” Brad asked.

“The information I’m going to give you is not public knowledge. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone about a certain aspect of the case until I got permission. If I tell you, I’ll be breaking that promise, so you can’t tell anyone.”

“Sure. What gives?”

“Crispin was tortured, and the killer cut off her pinkie and took it with him.”

“What?”

“I got to Crispin’s apartment just as the killer was leaving.”

“You saw Little?”

“I was too far away to see the killer’s face, so I can’t say it was him, but I can say that the killer followed Little’s MO.”

“So let me get this straight. Little escapes in Oregon. Rather than head for some country without an extradition treaty, he flies to D.C. and kills Koshani. Then he flies back to Oregon, where everyone is looking for him, and murders Carson’s lover. Does any of what I just said make any sense to you?”

“Not one bit,” Dana answered.

Chapter Twenty-five

T
he phone in Dana’s hotel room rang at four in the afternoon. She was going stir crazy, and she hoped that Monte Pike was calling to tell her she could head for the airport. Pike was calling, but he had something else in mind.

“Meet me at the Peet’s coffee shop on Broadway and Washington,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

“Why don’t you come to my hotel? It’s closer to the courthouse.”

“I don’t want anyone to see us talking. I’m sitting at a table for two near the back door, and I’ve got a cup of coffee waiting for you. Don’t let it get cold.”

Fifteen minutes later, Dana was sitting opposite Monte Pike, who was hunched forward and speaking low enough to avoid being overheard.

“You were right to be suspicious of Dorothy Crispin. One of the guys from Vice thinks he recognized her picture. Crispin may have been a high-priced call girl.”

Dana frowned. “So she wasn’t a law student?”

“Oh no, she was enrolled as a second-year student, and she was definitely working toward her degree, but she may also have turned tricks on occasion—expensive tricks, from what I’m told—for a high-end escort service.”

“What’s expensive?”

“Four figures.”

Dana whistled.

“What those figures were depended on what the client wanted.”

“This puts Senator Carson’s relationship with Crispin in a whole new light.”

“True, but that’s not all, as they say in those obnoxious TV infomercials. There’s more. Guess who ran the escort service?”

“How would I know? I don’t live here.”

Pike grinned from ear to ear. “I could make you guess—and you’d get it eventually if I threw in a few hints—but I’m not going to torture you. There’s good reason to believe that the service was owned by the late Jessica Koshani.”

Dana recoiled and almost spilled her drink. “Holy shit!”

“I thought you’d appreciate that tidbit.”

Dana frowned. “I notice you used a lot of ‘may have beens’ and ‘good reasons to believe.’ Aren’t you sure about what you just told me?”

“Proving Crispin was a hooker or that Koshani was involved with the escort service won’t be easy. Koshani was well insulated. In fact, my conclusion about her connection is an educated guess. My office was looking at Koshani for some time, and we were never able to nail her.”

“Is there any evidence that Carson used Koshani’s escorts?” Dana asked.

“No, but there have been rumors circulating for some time that Carson used prostitutes and had kinky tastes.”

“Like?”

“S and M, bondage—but this is all rumor on rumor.”

Dana sat back. “You’ve certainly given me a lot to think about.”

“Glad to be of service.”

Dana cocked her head to one side and studied the DA. “Why are you being so nice?”

Pike grinned. “I owe you one from the
Woodruff
case. I figure we’re even now.”

It was Dana’s turn to smile. She looked Pike in the eye and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

D
ana parked the Rover in front of a branch of U.S. Bank a little after six. The bank was at one end of a strip mall next to a beauty parlor. A stairway between the beauty parlor and a hardware store led up to a second-floor landing. E
XECUTIVE
E
SCORTS
was etched into a plaque next to a frosted-glass door two offices down from the stairwell. Dana walked into the small waiting room at the front of the office, and a chubby middle-aged woman with mousy brown hair looked up. She had a phone plastered to her ear and she seemed surprised to see a visitor.

“Eight o’clock at the Heathman Hotel,” she said as she held up a finger to indicate that Dana should wait. There were two chairs on either side of a cheap end table, but Dana decided to stand. There were none of the usual waiting-room magazines on the table. From the woman’s reaction and the lack of reading material, Dana guessed that the office received few visitors.

The woman responded to a question Dana could not hear. Then she said, “Yes. Yes,” and hung up.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked after making several notations on an index card.

“Are you the manager?” Dana asked with a smile.

“No, that’s Mrs. Cronin.”

“Is she in?”

“Yeah.”

Dana waited a bit. Then asked, “Can I see her?”

The woman frowned as if this type of situation was highly unusual.

“My name is Dana Cutler.” Dana offered to make the woman’s task easier. The woman thought for a moment. Then she got up and walked through the only other door in the office.

A minute later, the door opened and an attractive woman in a business suit walked out followed by the woman Dana had just talked to. The first woman gave Dana the briefest of glances before leaving.

“You can go in,” the other woman said.

Dana walked into an office that wasn’t much bigger than the reception area. An anorexic woman with peroxide-blond hair and cheap jewelry was sitting behind a scarred wooden desk counting a wad of bills. The woman’s nose was a little too perfect, her breasts were a little too large, and the skin on her face was a little too tight. A cigarette smoldered in an ashtray next to a telephone and a stack of index cards.

A man was slumped nonchalantly in a chair next to the desk. Well-defined biceps stretched the fabric of a black T-shirt that wrapped tightly around his barrel chest. The man studied Dana while the blonde put the bills in a green metal cash box and closed the lid. Dana guessed that the well-dressed woman who had just left had given Cronin the money and that the muscle-bound man was Cronin’s bodyguard.

“Mrs. Cronin?” Dana asked.

“What can I do for you?” the woman answered in a tone that let Dana know that doing anything for her was the last thing on the blonde’s to-do list.

“You can tell me how well you knew Jessica Koshani and Dorothy Crispin.”

The bodybuilder sat up, and Cronin brought the cigarette to her lips. While she inhaled, Cronin stared at Dana hard enough and long enough to make Dana feel threatened.

“What makes you think I know either of these people?” Cronin asked.

“You should. Jessica Koshani ran this escort service until she was murdered, and Dorothy Crispin turned tricks for Koshani until she was killed last night.”

Cronin didn’t give Dana anything, and Dana bet she was a terror at a poker table.

“I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed,” Cronin said.