My attention drifted from Kay’s candle burning in the church to Christopher’s.
Maybe he was the one, I mused. Maybe he was the love she’d been looking for.
I’d no sooner had that thought than a ball of emotion swelled in my throat. I tried to stay in control, tried to swallow it back down deep in my gut.
But the enormous, irrational grief I felt for Kay and the weird jealousy I felt about Randall Christopher was too much. I felt a tear roll down my cheek for everything that had been lost when someone put multiple bullets through both of their hearts.
CHAPTER 18
I RAN UP OUR PORCH steps ten minutes later, drenched in sweat but feeling lighter for having visited the church and expressed those conflicting emotions. Inside the house, the air-conditioning made me shiver. I went into the kitchen to find Bree and Jannie cooking breakfast, Ali sitting at the counter typing on his laptop.
“Where’s Nana?” I said.
“Feeling under the weather,” Bree said, scooping scrambled eggs into a dish. “She wanted to sleep in.”
“Fever?”
“Just tired and listening to her body,” Jannie said. “Isn’t that what you told me to do when I had mono?”
“I did.”
Bree scooted past me, bringing the eggs to the table.
“What, no kiss?” I said.
“The way you smell?”
“I’m not that bad.”
“Yes, you are,” Ali said, waving his hand in front of his nose.
I threw my arms up in defeat. “Save me some.”
Upstairs, as I showered and shaved, I felt slightly rudderless, not quite knowing what move to make next. While I dressed, I decided to call Mahoney, and I was about to do that when Bree walked into the room.
I went to hug her, and she pulled back slightly to study my face. “Why were you out running so early?”
“Couldn’t sleep and I figured a run would help me understand why. Turns out I needed to purge something.”
She smiled quizzically. “You want to explain — ” Her work cell rang. “Duty calls,” she said; she turned away from me and snatched her phone off the bed. She looked at caller ID and groaned. “It’s Commissioner Dennison.” She pecked me on the cheek as I left the bedroom, then answered the phone while shutting the door. “Yes, Commissioner. How can I help?”
In the hall, I almost knocked on Nana Mama’s door, but if she needed rest, she needed rest. Downstairs, Jannie was on her way out of the house with her workout bag over her shoulder.
“Training?” I asked.
“Core and agility.”
“Have fun.”
“Always.”
I gave her a hug and watched her go. My daughter was tall, strong but not bulky, and very, very fast. According to the many NCAA track coaches who had tried to recruit her, Jannie possessed athletic skills that had made her a top prospect as a four-hundred-meter runner and a potential heptathlete.
I went into the kitchen and found the plate Bree had set aside for me wrapped in foil. My phone rang before I could take a bite. Mahoney. I snatched a piece of bacon to munch on before I answered. “Ned?”
“You still have your security clearance?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve been granted an audience with Vice President Willingham on Thursday.”
“We? As in me too?”
“He specifically asked that you be there.”
“The vice president did?”
“As I understand it. He wants Sampson too, since he was first on the scene.”
“What time?”
“Eight a.m. sharp. His residence. One Observatory Circle. Bring two forms of ID to show the Marines.”
Bree walked into the kitchen, still on the phone. “Dr. Cross is on the Maya Parker case as well as the Willingham case, sir. I don’t think I can… yes, Commissioner Dennison. I hear you loud and clear.”
“I’ll call you back, Ned,” I said and hung up.
Bree hung up as well, then looked at me, perplexed. “He drives me nuts with this micromanaging stuff. You have to help me out here one more time, Alex.”
“I just agreed to work the Parker and Hernandez case for you,” I said.
“I know,” she said, holding up one hand. “Just go talk to this guy at some point today. He’s a big-time tobacco and food-additive lobbyist. He was shot in the ass with a twenty-two last night outside a restaurant in Georgetown.”
“Shot in the ass?”
“You heard me,” she said. “And someone spray-painted Shoot the Rich on the wall of the alley that the shooter likely fired from.”
“Okay?”
She sighed. “Two other wealthy people have been shot at in DC in the last month. The shooter missed both times, breaking things right next to them, but the same Shoot the Rich graffiti tag was present.”
“I didn’t hear about the graffiti tag.”
“We’ve been trying to keep it quiet,” she said. “But he hit this lobbyist guy. And the lobbyist guy is a friend of Commissioner Dennison somehow. It could get some of his heat off my back if you go.”
“I promise I’ll try to get to him at some point today,” I said. “I have a noon client here. And Ned wants me on Kay’s case, and Sampson and I wanted — ”
“Kay’s case?”
“You know what I mean.”
“You don’t see it, do you? This lobbyist wounded? Two others shot at? Shoot the Rich? What if it’s the same shooter who killed Kay and Christopher?”
“No graffiti tag that I know of.”
“Just the same.”
I blinked, said, “I think I’ll go visit that lobbyist before my noon appointment.”
CHAPTER 19
AN HOUR LATER, JOHN SAMPSON and I were riding an elevator in the Watergate complex. He yawned.
“Didn’t sleep well?” I asked.
“I stayed up looking at the video from the bodega’s security cameras again,” he said and shook his head. “Nothing that I can see that’s relevant, and I scrolled through it for hours.”
“Because the killer or killers came from the west,” I said as the elevator doors opened with a ding. We stepped out into a small round foyer as a door on the opposite side was opened by a maid.
She led us into a stunning penthouse condo with a huge living area and floor-to-ceiling windows that offered sweeping views of the Potomac River and Northern Virginia.
We found the owner in front of the windows, but he wasn’t enjoying the scenery. Phil Peggliazo was facedown on a massage table, covered by sheets and moaning as a concierge doctor and a nurse tended to a series of monitors and IVs hooked up to him.
“Can you boot up the drugs, Doc?” Peggliazo said.
The doctor stopped scribbling on an e-tablet. “Can’t do that for another hour.”
“My ass is on fire here,” the lobbyist complained.
A polished blonde in her forties came into the room, filing her nails with an emery board.
“Phil, you’re being a child,” she said in a soft Texas drawl. “The ER doctors told you it’s a miracle that the bullet missed all major organs. Be thankful.”