TailSpin (11 page)

“After his funeral,” Savich said, “you simply dropped out of sight. The funeral was nearly three weeks ago. Why would they leave you alone for three weeks, then try to kill you? Why not kill you right away, in another accident? How do you explain that, Rachael?”

“Well, in truth, there wasn’t time for me to be on the radar. Jimmy and I only had about six weeks together before his death.” She paused, head down. Jack saw her twisting her fingers in her lap. Then she raised her face and said, voice composed, “They didn’t have a chance to kill me because I left Washington the day after Jimmy’s funeral. I just knew I’d be next. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, not even my mom. I got back to Jimmy’s house last Tuesday. Well, now it’s my house, since Jimmy left it to me. It only took them three days to act.”

“Where did you go?” Jack asked.

“To Sicily, to a little town on the coast, not yet discovered by tourists. I hunkered down, I guess you’d say. I had a lot of thinking to do, but I knew I had to come back to Washington, I had to deal with his estate and his family—and his murder—and so I came back nearly two weeks to the day after his funeral. I wasn’t even back a week before they threw me into the lake.”

Sherlock said, “Let’s back up a bit. You think your father was murdered, but his death was ruled an accident. But there was a thorough investigation, everyone was convinced. Do you have any proof otherwise?”

“Not hands-on proof, no.”

“Tell us what you have,” Jack said.

“Okay. Two days after I came back, Jimmy’s lawyer, Brady Cullifer, called. He was rather upset with me since I’d taken off without telling him and he hadn’t known where to find me. There was Jimmy’s new will, you see. Jimmy left me his house and split the rest of his estate among his three daughters. Mr. Cullifer told me he’d already notified Laurel Kostas and Quincy Abbott about what was in Jimmy’s will, told them Jimmy hadn’t left them anything. Oh yes, I forgot—Jimmy adopted me. It came through only days before his death, so I was legally his, surely a record, Mr. Cullifer told me.”

Sherlock said, “Was your father’s divorce messy?”

“You’re thinking his ex-wife could have killed him? I don’t think so. I met Jacqueline and their two daughters, my half sisters, Elaine and Carla, and their husbands at his funeral. They were all very kind to me, very civilized. Jacqueline was very distant, as if she were bored with all of it. His daughters were in shock, quiet, withdrawn, but it seemed to me they were thrilled to leave Washington, which they did the very next morning, and I left three hours after they did.

“I returned from Italy last Tuesday night. Friday night I drank a bit of the red wine that was evidently drugged. When I came back to the house later that night, the wine was gone.”

Jack said, “Do you you think the lawyer, Brady Cullifer, was part of it too?”

“I thought he was for maybe ten seconds. But it just didn’t make any sense. He’d been with Jimmy for years and years. He had no reason to hurt me. Laurel and Quincy put the drugged wine there, I know it.”

Savich said, “Okay, let’s get to the root. You were telling us why you believe your father’s sister and brother murdered him. Keep going, Rachael. Convince us.”

“It’s a long story, and it’s not
my
story. Since it isn’t about me, that’s why I didn’t say anything right after his death.” She looked miserable. “I don’t know, I just . . .”

“Too late for that,” Jack said. “Come on, Rachael, spill it all. This is about your father, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“And a major disagreement with his siblings?”

She nodded again.

“You call your father Jimmy,” Sherlock said, backing off a bit.

“Yes. I wasn’t comfortable yet calling him Dad. Look, the rest of it, I simply don’t know if . . .”

“Anything you tell us doesn’t go out of this room,” Jack said. “Everyone agrees?”

She looked at each of them as they nodded.

Still, it was difficult. To even think about what had happened was hard, but to speak about it, openly, she didn’t know if she could. But, finally, she knew she had no choice. “All right, I have to trust someone, and you guys seem like my best bet. But it’s got to remain a secret. You’ve agreed, right?”

They all nodded, Jack’s head to the side, frowning at her. “What’s the big secret, Rachael? Senator Abbott was a spy or something?”

“No, no, but . . . all right. If I can’t trust you folks, then I might as well hang it up.”

FOURTEEN

I
told you that Jimmy overwhelmed me with his welcome, his generosity to me. He was open, he was loving, he wanted to hear every detail of every year of my life.” She smiled at that. “But I began to notice that he would fall silent at odd moments, that he seemed disturbed and despondent about something. When I pressed him on it, he finally told me what he’d done. I believe he wanted to tell me, that I was like this miracle, and if he told me maybe he’d at least partly make up for this bad thing he’d done. And he was so desperately alone, so desperately afraid.

“About a year and a half ago, Jimmy was driving through Delancey Park on his way home. It was late, sunset, he’d had a couple of martinis with colleagues. He was talking on his cell, not really paying much attention. A little girl on a bicycle came pedaling in front of his car. He hit her, killed her. He panicked and drove away, called his senior aide, Greg Nichols, who came to him immediately.

“His aide—you need to understand about him. Greg is maybe in his late thirties. He’s very smart—intuitive, I guess you’d say—and driven. His ambition was to see Jimmy in the White House. Jimmy trusted him, admired his brain, his drive, his
commitment.
Greg convinced Jimmy to keep it quiet, that if it got out he’d killed a child—accident or not—his career, his life, his family, would be ruined, he could even go to jail, convicted of vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident.

“I’m not trying to excuse what he did, but Greg is the king of persuasion; he could convince the Pope to convert to Islam. Fact was, Greg himself would also be ruined if Jimmy confessed to killing the little girl. He’d be done in Washington, that’s for sure, and so he worked very hard to convince Jimmy that the best thing, the smartest thing, the only logical thing, was to keep his mouth shut and simply leave the little girl right where she was. Bottom line, Jimmy told me, he wanted to be convinced, and so he was. And yes, he knew very well that Greg was being self-serving, but who cared? He was too concerned about his own future.

“He told me how hard he tried to excuse himself—you know, if the girl’s parents had been with her, as they should have been, it wouldn’t have happened. What kind of parents let their kid ride alone in a public park anyway? There were predators in public parks, were her parents idiots? But he said no matter how hard he tried to make excuses for himself, it never worked.

“He spoke of the personal consequences—unrelenting guilt, recurring nightmares of his hitting the little girl, over and over, he said, how he found himself disengaged more and more from Capitol Hill, from his colleagues, his family, his staff, that even therapy hadn’t helped. He’d lived with this for so long, it seemed like forever, it was eating him up inside. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He told me he was thinking about going to the police, telling them what he’d done, announcing it to the world. He wanted to know what I thought.

“I saw what a wreck he was, how what he’d done was debilitating him, but now that I had found him, I didn’t want to lose him, to have him plunge himself into a scandal. But I could see what it was doing to him, and so I said he should do what he believed was right, that no matter what he did, I was behind him one hundred percent, and I would always be at his side. Let the world do its worst, I told him, I wasn’t going anywhere. But it was up to him. His decision, his life.”

Rachael paused for a moment, her eyes unfocused. She swallowed, said, “I can see so clearly that twisted smile he gave me. He said the shrink he’d been seeing had never spoken about confessing what he’d done; the shrink had only spoken of forgiving himself for an unfortunate mistake.
Unfortunate mistake,
he repeated, the little girl was nothing more than an
unfortunate mistake.”

Sherlock’s eyebrow shot up. “A shrink?”

“Yes, he went to a psychiatrist for maybe six months. Jimmy told me Greg hadn’t believed it smart to see a local psychiatrist—too much chance for it to get out since there were probably three news sharks hanging around every doctor’s office to see if any of the great and famous paid them a visit.”

She took a deep breath, looked at all of them. “Jimmy finally decided to call a press conference. He was going to confess what he’d done, then go to the police. Only thing is, he didn’t have the chance. He died.”

Sherlock said, “Since you believe the Abbotts killed him, he must have told his sister and brother what he was going to do, right?”

“Yes, he told them.”

“Did he call his ex-wife and his daughters?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he did since the fallout would affect them. I’m sure he gave everyone close to him fair warning, probably begged for their understanding and forgiveness since they’d have to deal with the consequences. I believe his brother Quincy told him to plant a tree in her memory, in Delancey Park, where he’d hit her.”

Savich looked up from MAX’s screen. “The little girl’s name was Melissa Parks. Her case remains open. A hit-and-run.”

“Anything else about her we should know?” Sherlock asked.

“A year ago, Melissa Parks’s family received an envelope containing one hundred thousand dollars in untraceable small bills with a note that said only ‘I’m sorry.’ It revved up the investigation again, but since they couldn’t trace the money, or the note, it once again went cold.”

“Jimmy didn’t tell me about that,” Rachael said. “I remember a couple of days after he told me about the accident, I walked into his study and saw him staring at his phone. I knew he wanted to call Melissa’s parents, call the police, simply end it all, right then. Unfortunately he waited a few more days, warned those who would take a hit, and then he was dead.”

Sherlock said, “Rachael, you know for sure your father told his family and Greg Nichols, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I have to tell you, I have a hard time believing that his confession would enrage his family to such a degree that they’d kill him.”

“There’s more. The reason his death was declared an accident was because when the two patrolmen found Jimmy’s Beemer at the bottom of a cliff, Jimmy was alone in the driver’s seat. They said they could smell the alcohol on him. They said it was apparent he’d had too much to drink and lost control of his car, and hurtled down a steep embankment just off the Beltway, near Bethesda Navy Medical Center.”

“Yes, I remember that,” Sherlock said.

“Jimmy told me after he hit the little girl, he simply couldn’t make himself get behind the wheel any longer. The fact is, he stopped driving. It was manageable because he had a car and driver available to him. Not only that, he hadn’t had a drink since the night he killed the girl. That’s what he told me, and I believed him.”

“Then why didn’t you tell the police the truth?” Jack asked.

“I couldn’t,” Rachael said. “It would have meant telling them why he’d stopped drinking and hadn’t driven a car for the past eighteen months. I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it. All of it would have come out. It would have destroyed his legacy.” She drew a deep breath. “That was the main reason I took off for Sicily. I had to decide what to do. For two weeks I chewed it over every which way, and I came to a decision. I was coming back to Washington to tell the truth. Of course, I was going to discuss it with my mother, but I knew she would agree with me and it was what Jimmy would have done, what he was fully prepared to do. The least I could do for him was honor his wishes. After I nail Quincy and Laurel, I can and will do what Jimmy wanted to do. I will clear his conscience for him.”

Sheriff Hollyfield was tapping a pen on his desk blotter. He said thoughtfully, “Your father’s dead, so is his conscience, so is his guilt. I’m thinking like his aide did—why ruin Senator Abbott’s name? Why ruin his memory? Why destroy what he stood for, what he was as a man for most of his lifetime? And that’s what would happen. The sum of his life would be forgotten—he’d end up being remembered for killing a child in a park, and hiding it.” He sat forward, his hands clasped.

“Rachael, do you want what happened in the final year and a half of your father’s life to define him? That he go down in history as the rich guy who killed a little girl when he was drunk?”

Rachael jumped to her feet, began to pace the small office. “I’ve used the very same argument to myself, but I know he wouldn’t! When I tell everyone how he’d planned to confess, surely they would see how moral he was, how ultimately honest.”

Jack said very gently, “I’ve known since I was twenty years old that the human mind doesn’t work like that. Sheriff Hollyfield is right—your father would be cut to pieces, all the good he ever did in his private life, in his political life, distorted, questioned, erased. As for you, there would be no recognition that you were simply following through on his wishes. You’d be the bastard daughter who destroyed her father’s name.”

“I know you’re trying to help, but again, I’ve thought about all this, and it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks or says about me. I think you’re wrong, Jack, you have to be.” She shook her head, then tucked her long hair behind her ears.

Savich looked up from MAX. “Did you tell anyone you were going to make your father’s confession for him since you’ve been back?”

“I told Mr. Cullifer, Jimmy’s lawyer. I’d have thought Jimmy would have filled him in on his plans, but he hadn’t. He was pretty emotionless about it, told me he’d suspected something was very wrong with Jimmy, asked if I had any proof, like fingerprints or witnesses, which of course I didn’t. He then said if I made Jimmy’s confession for him, I would find myself in a snake pit—people vilifying me, accusing me of lying because he left my mother all those years ago, that I was doing it to get back at him, and he wasn’t even here to defend himself. I’d thought about most of those things, but I’ll tell you, the way he spoke, the utter certainty in his voice, I was nearly ready to flip-flop on my decision. Then I found Jimmy’s journal. It was filled with his misery, his guilt, his hatred of himself for what he’d done, and that’s what made me decide to go ahead, no matter the fallout. I felt I owed it to him.