Authors: Robert Ellis
“No messages,” Mario said, bolting for the door. “Let’s get out of here.”
“What about theirs?”
Mario stopped and turned around, heading back to the windowsill as if under protest. When he flipped the answering machine open and found the greeting message button, a man’s voice began reading the announcement:
This is RAVE, the Committee for the Restoration of American Values and Ethics, your watchdog on Capitol Hill. Contributions may be sent to six-one-six Jefferson Drive, Washington, D.C. Two-zero-zero-zero-seven. Thanks for your support.
“You recognize the voice?” Mario asked.
Frank shook his head, tossing junk mail onto the floor until he spotted a windowed envelope in what remained of the pile. It looked like a check and he opened it. His heart skipped a beat. The check was made out to Lou Kay’s ex-wife.
“What is it?” Mario asked.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars made out to Sylvia Kay.”
“I knew she was lying,” Mario said excitedly. “If Lou Kay had beaten her, it would’ve come up. Who’s paying her off?”
Frank held the check to the light. “There isn’t a name printed at the top. All we’ve got is the account number.”
Frank looked at his watch. It was only ten. With election day less than a week out, Tracy wouldn’t be leaving the office for another hour or two. He flipped his cell phone open and entered the number. As he waited for her to pick up, he wrote the account number the check was drawn from on the envelope.
Mario moved closer, eyeing the check carefully. “It’s been laundered by a third party, Frank. Probably sent here for hand delivery. Sylvia Kay ruined her ex-husband, but the election’s not here yet. It’s not a done deal until he loses. I’ll bet strings are attached to this money. Some sort of contract.”
Frank raised his hand as Tracy finally answered the call.
“It’s me,” he said into the phone. “I need Merdock’s bank account number. The one in Dallas he’s wiring the TV buy from.”
He waited a moment. She was already at the computer and he could hear her punching up the account. As she read Merdock’s bank account number to him, he wrote it down on the envelope.
“I got it,” he said to her. “Thanks.”
Frank closed his phone and pocketed the check, handing the envelope with both account numbers to Mario. “See if you can find a withdraw from Merdock’s bank that covers this check. Stewart Brown and Lou Kay need proof that they were smeared. We’re gonna give it to them.”
“What are you gonna do with the check?”
“Make a photocopy and send it back,” Frank said. “You need to call Eddie. I want him watching this place. I want to know who picks up the check. Better tell him to bring a camera.”
“He’s scared shitless, Frank. He’s hiding out.”
The anxiousness was back in Mario’s voice and he looked terrified. Frank started for the door, trying to ignore it.
“He can do it from his car, Mario. Just make sure he brings a camera.”
Chapter 54
The drive home only took twenty minutes. Frank heard thunder in the distance and saw an occasional flash of lighting. On the radio they were calling for more rain. Frank wouldn’t have cared if it snowed, wondering if you could overdose on adrenalin. RAVE had been responsible for the dirty tricks against Lou Kay’s campaign. He had the proof in his pocket—the check to Sylvia Kay for $250,000. But RAVE was also an independent expenditure, a special interest group. Depending on how Mario made out, if they could connect the dots to Merdock, then Merdock had broken the law and Lou Kay could drop the bomb at the debate tomorrow night in front of the TV cameras.
It was a silver bullet, just as Frank had told Juliana.
Mel Merdock would be forever branded as the greasy carpetbagger who would do anything to win. The check was big enough, the deceit rich enough, that the press would run with the story. Mel Merdock paid Lou Kay’s ex-wife a quarter million dollars to lie and then destroyed his innocent daughter’s life in a scandal at school. Merdock’s campaign would be finished, his name, poisoned. The cops would no longer have to worry about interfering in an election. The U.S. Attorney could work the murder investigation out in the open the moment the story broke.
Frank pulled into the drive, spotting them on the porch instantly. Randolph sat on the steps smoking a cigarette. Grimes was on the porch swing, gliding back and forth. From the expressions on their faces, it looked as if they knew that he’d just committed a burglary. But that was impossible. Mario had rehung the door and they’d made it out of the building without being seen.
“Where you been?” Randolph asked.
Frank grabbed his briefcase and got out of the car, eyeing them carefully. “I thought you guys got kicked off the case,” he said.
Randolph shrugged. “You know as well as we do D.C. doesn’t elect a district attorney, Frank. The U.S. Attorney is appointed by the president.” Randolph paused a moment to look at his cigarette before taking another drag. “Did I tell you that the U.S. Attorney’s building a new home on the Chesapeake?”
“Are you saying there’s a problem?”
Grimes laughed from the porch swing. “Yeah, there’s a problem. He’s a politician. He goes goo-goo for cash.”
Randolph let it settle in a moment, looking past Frank to the street. “The U.S. Attorney didn’t come from money and he didn’t marry it. I couldn’t prove it. But it sure looks like he spends more than he makes.”
The rain started. A light drizzle. Frank climbed the steps, resting his briefcase on the table and leaning against the porch rail.
“Your fingerprints were found in Olson’s office,” Randolph said in a quieter voice. “You didn’t touch things here and there. You touched everything, Frank. Like maybe you were looking for something.”
“I was there last week,” he said slowly.
Randolph nodded. “The building super says the two of you talked. He says that you were impersonating a police officer. You see where we’re heading, right?”
A long moment passed. Dark and heavy. Frank lowered his eyes, waiting for the detective to spell it out.
“You’re in trouble,” Randolph said. “The U.S. Attorney doesn’t think a candidate for the U.S. Senate would kill four people to cover up an affair. He thinks Olson took those sex shots of your client with the girl. But he wasn’t blackmailing Merdock with them. He thinks that Olson was blackmailing
you
. That’s why you went over to his place last week. You were searching for the photos. Olson was out to get you. Everybody knows that. The U.S. Attorney thinks that you murdered him, Frank. You were there. You were alone with the body. You thought you could get away with it if you made it look like a suicide.”
“What about Linda?”
“Either she’s in it with you, or you staged the suicide and brought her over as a witness.”
Randolph’s voice trailed off. Frank didn’t say anything. He watched the detective flick his cigarette onto the lawn. Another dead soldier falling on a field of wet grass.
“Why did I kill Woody?” he heard himself whisper.
The porch swing stopped. “He’s not sure yet,” Grimes said. “All the U.S. Attorney knows is that you had the opportunity.”
“The president’s fund-raiser,” Randolph said. “That hour no one could find you. The photographer—Bobby what’s-his-name. He says you guys didn’t speak for more than a couple of minutes. You told us you went into the lobby to make phone calls. Only there’s no record of any calls being made on your cell phone that night. You could’ve done Woody and made it back in plenty of time.”
It hung there as the rain picked up—Jake’s threat unveiled in toto like a black flower at the end of spring. Somehow they had found a way to the U.S. Attorney. From the little Frank knew about the man, he’d thought that he might be weak but hadn’t anticipated him being dirty. The U.S. Attorney had driven out to the Merdocks the night Olson was murdered, looked at their house and had probably seen an opportunity. Now everything they knew about the case had been skewed to fit his theory that Frank was the one. Anything that didn’t fit would be thrown out and ignored, the same way it was done in a political campaign.
They had him. They owned him.
“The president’s fund-raiser,” Randolph repeated. “You had the opportunity, Frank.”
“Linda was with someone,” he said. “I didn’t want to see them together. I was sitting in the lobby. I think I went into the bar.”
“Any truth to the rumor that you and Woody hadn’t been getting along?” Grimes asked.
“We’d been partners for ten years.”
Frank saw the two detectives trade looks like they knew all about being partners for ten years. Then Randolph got to his feet, stretching his legs and taking a step closer.
“The U.S. Attorney’s looking for a motive, Frank. Money, jealousy—things like that. You got a lawyer?”
Frank nodded, then remembered the article from the newspaper in Fort Worth that Linda had given him earlier in the day. Digging it out of his pocket, he unfolded the piece of paper and pointed to the photograph of Juliana and Mel Merdock, Sr. standing in front of their bodyguard. Grimes got off the porch swing and both detectives gave the man in the photo a close look. Thunder rumbled across the sky just over the house.
“He’s changed,” Frank said. “His hair’s different, but that’s him. I saw him with Jake a couple hours ago.”
Chapter 55
It was safe to say that his life was in crisis. That to sugarcoat what had happened, to live in a fantasy world of false hope would only lead to his own destruction. As Frank pulled into the lot at his office, he saw Merdock’s Lincoln parked before the entrance. Norman sat behind the wheel with the windows closed. Juliana had seen him drive in and was waiting for him to park. Frank guessed that Merdock and Jake were already upstairs. In spite of everything, they had shown up on schedule thinking that Frank would prep Merdock for the debate tonight as if the river had been dry and no water had passed beneath the bridge.
And Frank would. He’d deliver Merdock to Lou Kay and his consultant Stewart Brown. He’d do it with pleasure, even though he had to admit, he was riding on fear.
He got out of the Chevy, glancing at Juliana as he approached her. She was wearing a light-colored blouse with buttons down the front, black stockings with high heeled shoes and a tight black skirt cut to the middle of her thighs. Her face was still and looked like it had aged, the smell of her perfume, both suffocating and toxic.
“You haven’t been sleeping,” she said.
“We’re less than a week out. How’s Mel doing?”
“He’s nervous.”
She was trying to read his face. She was trying to measure him. She stepped closer and took his hand, pressing it into her breast . Every instinct told him to pull away, but he didn’t.
“I like the time we’ve spent together,” she said. “I wish we could do it more often.”
It was a veiled warning, of course. She was referring to the U.S. Attorney without saying it.
Play ball, Frank, and we can spend more time together. Play ball, and you might not go to jail.
He switched off his soul and managed a light smile. Walking her to the building, he opened the door for her and followed her up the stairs.
They found Merdock and Jake in the conference room. Easing the tension, Tracy had brought in coffee and a cheese tray that included a variety of breads and sliced fruit. With his clients distracted, Frank set up the camcorder on the far side of the room and wheeled in a monitor on a stand. He was going through the motions. Feeling the strain and ignoring it because he knew that he had to.
Two hours later, they were still at it. Merdock stood in front of the camcorder with Frank and Juliana sitting before the monitor. Jake kept his distance, slouched in a chair at the end of the table and tapping his pen on a scratch pad. Jake seemed quieter than usual, tight like a spring, and every few minutes he’d look through the glass into the war room. Frank followed his gaze, wondering what he was looking at. There were several hundred radio spots spread across the floor, and Tracy and the interns were helping the woman from Fedex get the packages into trash bags and out the door for shipping. Linda was in her office. She had a faraway look in her eyes and had just picked up the phone.
“Are you okay, Frank?” Merdock asked. “You seem a little preoccupied today.”
Frank turned back to the monitor. “Let’s try it again.”
“I’m ready,” Merdock said, adjusting his tie.
Frank gave him the nod. Merdock grabbed the podium and looked off camera. He was stiff and appeared drained.
“I think it’s time,” Merdock said, stumbling over the words. “It’s time to put an end to politics. Politics as usual, I mean. I think everyone would agree. Everyone agrees it’s time to reclaim the values—”
Merdock stopped to check his notes. Frank glanced at Jake and noticed him staring into the war room again.
“You’re the front runner,” Frank said to his client. “You need to look like it, Mel. You need to act like it.”