We spoke for a good forty minutes. A surgical nurse at Georgetown Medical Center, divorced, and the mother of two college students, Taylor had befriended Randall Christopher and his wife the day they’d moved in. The twin girls were nine or ten then, and Elaine Paulson had her hands full while her husband founded and built the charter school from scratch. Taylor described Christopher as “single-minded and evangelically passionate” about his work, starting the school in a small building and then, as enrollment increased, taking over and refurbishing an existing school structure.
“What about the marriage?”
The nurse chewed her lip. “My judgment might be clouded here, given that my husband left me for a twenty-six-year-old, okay?”
“Okay.”
Taylor said the marriage seemed loving and supportive in the first couple of years. But as Christopher got involved in various civil crusades, his star began to shine and people in the community began to look to him for leadership on everything from education to addressing the series of rapes and murders that had taken place in Southeast DC over the past fifteen years.
“As a result, Randall was away often,” Taylor said. “And there were fights when he was home. Nothing physical, not that I ever saw. But there was a lot of shouting, and I heard her crying more than once.”
“Police ever have to get involved?”
“Not to my knowledge. I never called them, anyway.”
“Did she confide in you?”
The nurse gave me a strange look. “If I tell you, I’m not keeping her confidence.”
“I gather that’s a yes.”
Taylor did not respond.
I said, “I’m going to ask her these same questions when I find her.”
Still no response.
“Have you considered the possibility that Elaine Paulson and her daughters might be in danger? And that they might need the FBI’s protection?”
The nurse thought about that, then swallowed hard. “Please, I adore Elaine as a person, and I would not want to jeopardize our friendship.”
“I just want to understand the situation, ma’am.”
“All right,” she said, relenting. “They hadn’t made love in months. She suspected an affair. She considered hiring a detective to follow Randall.”
“Did she hire one?”
“I don’t know.”
“When was the last time you saw her and the girls?”
“Tina and Rachel? Fourth of July, before they went off to camp. They’re counselors.”
“Is that where they are now?”
“Until mid-August.”
“When was the last time you saw their mother?”
Taylor licked her lips and looked ready to cry. “This morning,” she said in a soft voice. “Early. Twenty to five? I thought I heard her moving around next door even earlier, when I was eating breakfast. But as I was going out the door for my shift, I saw her coming in from a run, climbing the porch steps drenched in sweat. She looked like she’d been crying.”
“Early run and crying,” I said, estimating the distance to the school at roughly two miles. “Describe what she was wearing, please.”
Taylor said Christopher’s wife had on blue running shorts, a long-sleeved white T-shirt, a reflector vest, and a pack with a hydration pouch.
“Did you talk to her?”
“Just to say hello and ask if she was okay. She said she’d been having trouble sleeping, that she was emotional with the girls away, so she’d gone for a run.”
“What else?”
“She said she’d decided to go somewhere for a few days and think things through.”
“She say where?”
“No.”
“Do you have her cell phone number?”
She nodded and went to her phone. She choked as she read the number to me, then she threw her hand up to her mouth and said, sobbing, “You don’t think she killed him, do you, Dr. Cross? The Elaine Paulson I know is such a sweet, sweet soul.”
CHAPTER 9
AFTER TRYING ELAINE PAULSON’S PHONE unsuccessfully several times, I drove to Kay Willingham’s brick home in Georgetown. She’d bought two old townhomes decades before and merged them into a small mansion. As I parked, I noted that the front door was still deep green and the brass knocker was still polished to a high shine. A riot of flowers spilled from window boxes to the left and right.
It was so familiar.
I remembered a night, years before, when Kay had had too much to drink at a fundraiser and I’d given her a ride home. I was working a brief stint as a private investigator at the time, and I was single then, a widower. The socialite had gotten her high heel stuck in a crack in the brick side-walk; the heel broke, the shoe slipped off and landed in a puddle, and she tripped. I’d caught her before she hit the ground. She’d been gasping and afraid and suddenly there’d been this intense moment of attraction between us that I’ll never forget.
Shaking the memory off, I got out of my car and walked to the broad-shouldered young man in a dark suit and glasses standing at the low iron gate across the short path to the front door. “FBI?” I said.
“Special Agent Aaron Tilden,” he said, nodding. “I recognize you, Dr. Cross. I heard you lecture several times at the academy.”
“I hope I was coherent.”
“Very, sir,” he said, holding out his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
I shook his hand, saying, “The honor’s all mine, Agent Tilden. Has anyone been inside?”
“Not since my partner and I arrived a half an hour ago. Bill’s in the alley. Doors are locked. No one is answering when we knock. Do you have a key?”
“No, uh … we know the location of the spare,” I said, feeling a little flustered. I motioned him aside. “Any media been by?”
“Cameraman from CNN,” Tilden said. “He shot the front of the house and stayed about two minutes.”
“She lived alone,” I said, putting on latex gloves. I reached over the iron railing left of the door to the brick face of the house, counted two bricks in and two down, then pressed on that brick. A small door levered open, revealing a shallow slot and the key.
“That’s neat.”
“Her idea, evidently,” I said and unlocked the door.
“Do you need help, sir?”
“I’m sure I will, Special Agent Tilden,” I said as a hollowness formed in my stomach. “But I’d like to take the first look around alone.”
“Of course,” Tilden said.
The door opened on oiled hinges and shut behind me just as quietly. I had not been in Kay’s two-hundred-year-old Georgian townhome since that night long ago when she’d tripped and I’d caught her and she’d invited me in for a nightcap.
But standing there in the foyer that met the long center hallway of her home, I felt like it could have been yesterday. I could smell her scent. I could hear the echoes of her laughter in the air.
I walked down the hall, passing the various paintings on the walls, and stopped at the entrance to what had been Kay’s grand salon. Then I stepped inside the long rectangular room and took it all in with a sweeping glance.