Fatal Flaw (20 page)

“Right,” he said, as he hugged her from behind.

She turned to him and looped her arms around his neck. “Have the best time in Boston. Enjoy every minute and take lots of pictures for me.”

“I will.” He kissed her. “Wish you were coming.”

“Next time. This one is for you and your boy.”

“My boy. I love the sound of that.”

Knowing how he’d yearned for a family to call his own, Sam loved the sound of it too. “I’ll see you, Senator.”

“Yes, you will. Day after tomorrow. I’ll be back before you have time to miss me.”

She kissed him one last time and stood up to wrap her hair into the clip she wore to work. From the bedside table, she retrieved her weapon and strapped it on, slipping her badge and cuffs into her pockets. “No, you won’t.”

“Go on before I drag you back to bed.”

“I’m going,” she said, leaving him with a jaunty wave. “Love you.”

“Love you too, babe. Be careful out there.”

“Always am.”

She ran down the stairs and out the door, doing a time check on her phone as she went. Ten minutes from call to the car—with a shower. Not bad.

Sam drove northwest toward an address off 16th Street, arriving along with the medical examiner. Nodding to the deputy ME, she ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape and headed up the stairs at the well-kept Cape Cod-style home. The smell of death smacked her face the second she crossed the threshold.

Making an effort not to gag from the odor, Sam took a quick look around at a tidy living room on one side of the center staircase. A dining room was on the other side. In the kitchen, she found disarray and the sign of a possible struggle. “What’ve we got?” she asked the patrol officer who met her as she took in toppled chairs and broken glass on the floor next to the body of an older man.

“Raymond Jeffries, age seventy-three,” the officer said, consulting his notes. “A phone call from his daughter, Sabrina Campion in Albany, New York brought us here on a well-being check.” The young officer was clearly battling the need to vomit. “When we got no response, the daughter asked us to enter the home. We found the front door unlocked and entered the dwelling. The odor indicated the homeowner was most likely deceased. We investigated further and found him here in the kitchen.” The officer placed a handkerchief over his mouth and nose.

Over the years, Sam had trained herself to breathe through her mouth at times like these. She tugged latex gloves from her pockets and pulled them on.

“It appears,” the patrolman continued, “as if he was pushed or fell and possibly hit his head on the table.” The officer pointed to a wound on the side of the dead man’s head.

“Possibly,” Sam said, squatting for a closer look. He had wiry gray hair, a beak of a nose and lips that had turned blue in death.

“He had something cooking on the stove that burned. We turned off the heat.”

“Lucky the place didn’t burn down,” said Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Byron Tomlinson when he joined them. Handsome, arrogant and far too brash for Sam’s liking, she put up with him since Lindsey couldn’t work twenty-four hours a day. “Judging by the smell, he’s been dead awhile. Maybe thirty-six hours or more.”

“While you do your thing, I’d like to talk to the daughter,” Sam said, rising.

The patrolman produced his cell phone and handed it to Sam. “Press Send. She was the last call I made. She’s rather distraught, naturally.”

“Thank you, Officer…”

“Huff.”

Sam nodded and took the phone outside where she could breathe normally.

Freddie ambled across the lawn, looking half-asleep and rumpled.

“Take a look,” Sam said. “Plug your nose.”

“Oh God, one of those?”

“Yep.” Sam pressed Send on the cell phone and closed her eyes while she waited for the daughter to answer. She hated making calls to victims’ families.

“Hello?”

Sam wasn’t expecting a man to answer. “This is Lieutenant Holland, Metropolitan Washington Police. May I please speak with Sabrina Campion?”

“One moment please.”

The woman who came to the phone a moment later was crying so hard Sam could barely understand her.

“Ms. Campion, I’m sorry for your loss. I realize this is an extremely difficult time for you, but I need your help in determining what happened to your father.”

“I just talked to him,” she said between sobs.

Sam rubbed her tired eyes. “When was the last time you spoke to him?”

“Two days ago. Maybe three.”

“Can you try to be exact?” Sam told herself to be patient. Wasn’t she worried about her own father at the moment?

“Monday night. Yes, it was Monday because I’d been to book club and called him on the way home.”

Three days ago.

“That’s helpful, ma’am. Did he live alone?”

“For the last five years since my mother passed.” That set off a new round of crying. “I can’t believe they’re both gone. How can they both be gone?”

Since Sam had no answer that would satisfy the grieving woman, she pressed on with the questions. “What else can you tell me about your father and his routine?”

“He was a retired high school chemistry teacher.”

“Which school?”

“Roosevelt.” Sam stood up a little straighter. This was the second time recently that Roosevelt High School had been mentioned during a homicide investigation. “How long had he been retired?”

“Twelve years.”

“Any health problems that you knew of?”

“Nothing major. He was on medication for cholesterol, but that was it. He was still very active, played golf and tennis. He was in good health.”

“Can you tell me about a typical day for him? Any problems he might’ve had with his neighbors or anyone else?”

Sam was treated to a ten-minute dissertation of a rather ordinary life with no particular issues that his daughter knew of. “If he had problems, would you know?”

“Yes, of course. I was his only living child. My brother, Jimmy, a marine, was killed in the Beirut barracks bombing in the ’80s.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It was a long time ago,” Sabrina said softly. “I was after Dad to move here to be with us, but he always said his whole life was in Washington. I teased him about that, about how it hurt my feelings that he’d rather be there than here with me. But I knew he didn’t mean it that way. Now…” She faltered. “I’m sorry, but I need to go be with my family. I’ll be traveling there tomorrow if you have other questions.”

“I may need to speak with you again. Could I give you my cell number so you can call me when you’re free?”

“Let me find a pen.”

While Sam waited for her to return, Freddie emerged from the house looking pale and wide awake. He took deep, gulping breaths of the cool air.

“Brutal,” he said.

Sam nodded in agreement.

“I’ll never take fresh air for granted again.”

Sabrina Campion returned with a pen, and Sam gave her the number. “I’m sorry for your loss. I’ll speak with you tomorrow.”

“Could I ask you…?”

“Anything you need to.”

“Did he suffer?”

“It’s hard to say for sure, but at first glance, it doesn’t seem so.”

“That’s good.”

Sam waited a moment in case the other woman wanted to ask anything else.

“Are you the officer who married the senator?”

Sam winced. If she lived to be a hundred years old she’d never be comfortable with all the attention she and Nick received. “That’d be me.”

“I’m glad you’re the one assigned to my dad’s case. You seem like a real nice person.”

“Well. I try to be. We’ll do everything we can to figure out what happened.”

“Thank you.”

Sam ended the call and turned to Freddie. “Impressions?”

“Are we sure this is a homicide?”

Sam smiled to herself. Her young protégé was coming along rather nicely. “Not entirely. No.”

“I can see two chairs toppled over if he falls, but how do you account for the third one?”

“Maybe he stumbled, grabbed one, it went over, and then he fell against the other two.”

“I suppose that’s possible, but there’d have to be a physical cause for him to fall, right?”

“Yep. That’s what we’ll need the ME to tell us.”

“So what do we do now?”

Sam glanced at the predictable gathering of people outside the crime-scene tape and noticed one of the patrol officers taking a video of the crowd to refer back to later, if necessary. “Let’s speak to the neighbors, find out if they heard a disturbance or know of any problems he might’ve been having, and then we go home.”

“Really?”

“We’ll let crime scene do their thing and the ME do his thing, and then we’ll see what we’ve got in the a.m.”

“So we’re really going home? In the middle of the night. When we might have a homicide.”

Sam laughed at his befuddled expression. “Don’t get used to it. Most of the time we’re pretty damned sure when we’ve got a murder on our hands. But this time…” Sam shrugged. “I really don’t know.”

“Well, then let’s get to it. I want to go back to bed.”

“You want to get back to your girlfriend.”

He flashed her a shit-eating grin. “That too, Lieutenant. That too.”

“Well, that was a gigantic waste of time,” Freddie said. They had conducted an hour’s worth of interviews and had as much at the end as they’d had when they started.

“No kidding. Go on back to your love shack. I’ll see you at…” Sam checked the time on her phone. Three-thirty. “Nine.” Normally they were on duty at eight so they could piggyback all three shifts.

“Your generosity knows no bounds.”

“I agree.”

“I’ve got some stuff on Trainer’s other ladies that we need to go over in the morning.”

“Sounds like a plan.” When he hesitated, she said, “Why aren’t you running for your car?”

“How’s your dad?”

“Out of ICU and doing better.”

“How about you? You have to be disappointed over what we heard earlier. About Leroy.”

“At this point, I’d be shocked if something actually went our way.”

“It will. Eventually. Probably when we’re not even looking. You know how these things go.”

“Yes, I do, and I appreciate the concern. But I’m okay.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“So while we’re being all mushy here, I want you to do something for me.”

“Whatever you need.”

Expecting that reply, she smiled. Sure, she was being sneaky, but if she got the result she wanted… “I want you to call your mother.”

“Oh jeez—”

“Wait. Hear me out.” Sam took a moment to get her thoughts together. “On the day my dad was shot, we had one of the biggest fights we’ve ever had.”

“I can’t imagine the two of you fighting. You get along so well.”

“We always have.”

“So what happened that day?”

“I told him I wanted to take another look at the Fitzgerald case. To say he reacted badly would be an understatement.”

“Did he say why he was so opposed?”

“We never got that far. He told me to butt the hell out and he stormed off. That was the last time I ever saw him walking and moving normally. The next time I saw him was in the hospital. For three of the longest days of my life, I didn’t know if my last words to him would be, ‘You stubborn old bastard.’” She looked up at Freddie. “I’ve never told anyone about the fight we had. Do you get why I told you?”

“I think so.”

“Call her, Freddie. Find out what she’s doing with him. Give her a chance to explain.” Sam rested a hand on his arm. “You never know what’s waiting right around the next corner. What happened that day with my dad taught me to allow nothing to go unsaid. The most important person in my entire life could’ve
died,
and those would’ve been my last words to him.” Her heart ached just thinking about it. “How would I’ve lived with that?”

Freddie rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “I’ll call her.”

Sam nodded. “Good.”

“What’ll you tell your dad about reopening the Fitzgerald case now?”

The stomach that used to run her life chose that moment to make its presence known. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“He’s apt to still be angry.”

“Maybe McBride and Tyrone will tell me what he’s got to be angry about.” She rested a hand over her churning belly. “I’m sort of afraid of what they might uncover.”

“Whatever it is, we’ll figure out what to do about it. You don’t have to deal with it on your own.”

For some reason that made her feel a thousand times better. “Thanks. Go on home. Get some sleep while you can.”

“You too.” As Sam left Mount Pleasant a few minutes later, she pondered her options. Since she’d already said goodbye to Nick, she decided to take care of another matter she’d been postponing.

The apartment her ex-husband had rented after their separation and divorce was located only a few blocks from her Ninth Street home. Peter had, of course, done that to goad her. In the two years that followed their divorce, she’d done her best to ignore him until he’d strapped bombs to her car and Nick’s. When her car exploded a few days before Christmas, injuring her and Nick, it had blown the cover off her then-secret relationship with Nick as well as Peter’s ongoing obsession with her.

Sam hadn’t seen him since the night before her wedding to Nick when Peter had confronted her on the street outside her home to let her know their relationship would never be over. Thankfully, Nick had put an ex-cop on retainer to keep an eye on the newly released Peter, which had saved her ass.

The idea of willingly seeking out Peter’s company for any reason made her sick. Thinking about what Nick would have to say about this middle-of-the-night visit filled her with anxiety. Despite that, Sam parallel-parked on the street outside Peter’s building, locked her car and checked her weapon to ensure it was easily accessible should the need arise.

She took the stairs to his third-floor apartment and rapped on the door. When he didn’t answer, she pounded harder. A minute later she heard him shuffling to the door so she held up her badge over the peephole. As the locks disengaged, all she could think about was that Nick would fucking flip when he heard about this.

Peter pulled open the door. “Don’t tell me you’re already sick of your fancy new husband. If you’re here for a booty call—”

“Shut up, Peter.” As she took in his graying hair and bitter expression, she tried once again to remember what she’d ever seen in him.

“Still cranky when you don’t get enough sleep, I see.”

“Shut up and listen. Whatever crap you think you’re pulling, cut it out. You’re way past pathetic and cruising straight to laughable, you got me?”

“If you’re done hurling insults at me, maybe you can tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

“As if you don’t know.”

“I have no freaking clue.”

A door across the hall opened. “People are sleeping around here, asshole.”

“Fuck off,” Peter replied.

“Eat shit and shut the fuck up,” his neighbor said, slamming the door.

“Nice,” Sam said, making an effort to lower her voice.

“I know you’d love to pin something on me to get me out of the picture. I’m sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart, but whatever you’re fishing for, it’s not me. Maybe whatever you think I’ve done is the work of some other dude you banged who’s put out by all the press you’ve been getting lately. I really had no idea you were such an attention whore.”