“What the fuck!” Vale smacked the BlackBerry to the ground. It thunked on the carpet. “Are you even listening to me? I don’t want to talk to the FBI! I want to talk to you.”
“Calm down,” Anna said. She reached down for the BlackBerry, but Vale kicked it away. As she stood up, he was in her face.
“You calm down, you bitch! Don’t you tell me what to do!” Spittle flecked her face as he shouted. “I try to help you, and you call the FBI? Un-fucking-believable! You’re just like Sasha!”
“Hey, there, kids, there’s no call for that!”
The deep baritone of the museum guard came from behind Anna. Vale’s eyes went wildly from the big guard to her.
“She’s my girlfriend,” Vale told the guard. “It’s okay.”
He clamped a hand on Anna’s wrist and pulled her toward the front door. The guard seemed confused.
“I’m not your girlfriend, you crazy asshole.” She twisted her wrist out of his grasp.
She ran to the guard, who looked bewildered. She stood behind his bulk and wondered if he was armed.
Vale stared at her, his eyes furious and manic. She could tell he was contemplating another swipe at her, even with the guard between them. He was unhinged.
“You bitch,” Vale said in a low voice. “This is not done. This is so not done between us.”
He spun around and ran out of the museum.
“You okay, miss?” The guard looked more frightened than she felt, and that was saying a lot.
“I’m fine.” Anna nodded, although her hands were trembling. She pointed a shaky finger. “He’s getting away.” The guard made no effort to follow him.
Through the glass door, Anna saw Vale throw himself into a tiny silver Smart car parked at the curb. As he sped off, she ran outside and tried to note his license number.
Then she ran back into the atrium and found where her BlackBerry had been kicked. She picked it up. “Sam?”
“Yes, I’m still here! Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Vale’s in a silver Smart car, heading west on F Street.”
46
J
ack rubbed his wrists where the handcuffs had pinched, while the officer apologized for the third time. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Bailey! We got a call for an intruder here.”
“It’s okay.” Jack forgave him for the third time. “We won’t need a beer summit.”
It wasn’t this kid’s fault. Jack blamed the nosy neighbor next door. Even she wasn’t so unreasonable. Jack didn’t live here. Wearing jeans and an old T-shirt, digging through Anna’s potted plants, he must’ve looked fairly suspicious.
The patrol officer held out his cell phone. “Detective McGee wants to talk to you, okay?”
“Sure.” Jack took the phone from the rookie. He’d suggested that the kid call McGee to confirm his identity. “Bailey.”
“Hey, Chief, you want me to work on expunging that arrest?” McGee chuckled. “Maybe I can call in a favor, get you community service. You’d look good in an orange vest, picking up trash on the Beltway.”
This was just the beginning of the ribbing Jack would take for the incident. He sighed. “Luckily, it was just a stop-and-frisk, but I appreciate the gesture. Is there any word on Anna?”
“She’s fine. I’m walking her into the office right now, matter of fact. You wanna talk to her?” He heard McGee’s muffled voice saying, “It’s Jack.”
“No, that’s okay,” Jack said. “Just tell her—”
“Tell me what?” Anna asked from the other side of the line.
“Ah, hi, Anna.” He paused, sorting out his thoughts. “I’m glad to hear you’re okay. I was worried about you. I mean, everyone was worried.”
“Thanks, I’m fine,” Anna said. She was silent long enough that Jack thought she might have hung up. “How’s Olivia?”
“Okay. She misses you.”
“Now I know you’re lying.”
There was much more he wanted to say to her. He wanted to tell her what he’d realized as he walked through her empty apartment, wondering if he’d see her again. How much he loved her and needed her. But he couldn’t make the words come together. He stood there, holding the officer’s cell phone to his ear, listening to Anna’s silence on the other end.
“Well, it’s been good talking to you,” Anna said.
“Right. You, too.”
Jack hung up. He shepherded the rookie cop out of Anna’s basement apartment. Then he filled up a glass to water her plants.
Anna handed the
cell phone back to McGee and tried not to let the wistfulness show on her face. But McGee was too good at reading body language.
“You know,” the big detective said softly, “he doesn’t go running like that for anybody else.”
“I know.”
She realized McGee had intuited just about everything there was to know about her and Jack’s relationship. She tried not to let him see her blush. He smiled, clamped a big hand on her shoulder, and escorted her through the lobby, up the elevator, and to her office. He held out the chair for her to sit.
“I should make a habit of this,” Anna said. “I feel like a princess.”
“Wait till you see all the paperwork this morning is gonna cost you. That’ll make you feel like a frog again.”
Before she did anything else, she needed to call Caroline’s mother. Donna McBride had the right to know what was happening before it hit the news. With McGee sitting in her office, Anna dialed the McBrides’ number.
Donna McBride answered the phone. Anna told her that she had some new information and asked if she wanted to meet in person.
“Please tell me now,” Donna said. “I don’t want to spend half the day wondering.”
So Anna told her what they’d found out about how Caroline was killed: how Caroline believed she was going to meet a congressman that night, how Vale had been stalking her, the fact that he’d bought her a ring and was planning to propose. As Anna spoke, Donna McBride cried softly into the phone.
But it was a different kind of crying than three days ago. There was relief in it. Hard as it was to hear what happened, there was a comfort that could only come from knowing. When Donna stopped crying, she said simply, “Thank you.”
47
S
am sped the Durango south on 14th Street, lights and sirens going. Morning rush-hour traffic clogged the street. Although some cars pulled aside to let her through, many sat in her way. Samantha honked and veered around a minivan. “Tell ’em we’ll be there in under a minute,” she said to Quisenberry, keeping her eyes on the road.
Quisenberry nodded and repeated the information to the Metropolitan Police Department.
The BOLO had quickly gotten a hit. An MPD officer driving around the Capitol had seen the silver Smart car heading west on Independence Avenue by the Botanical Gardens. The officer was following the Smart car with lights and sirens. But Vale wasn’t pulling over; he had sped up. And the officer was losing him. MPD officers were prohibited from engaging in high-speed chases.
Sam turned onto Independence Avenue and headed east. She would intercept Vale. The Smithsonian Castle was coming up on the left when Samantha spotted the silver Smart car—with the MPD cruiser following—heading toward her. Blaring her horn, she swung the Durango across the two left lanes, so its big black body blocked the oncoming traffic.
Vale had no intention of stopping. He swerved the Smart car around the Durango onto the sidewalk. A family of tourists screamed and dove out of the way. Samantha cursed. This was tourist central. The Castle was the information center for all the other Smithsonian museums on the Mall.
A black iron fence surrounded the Castle, with a stone gate providing an opening to the brick walkway and gardens. The gate’s opening was about the size of a man’s wingspan. Vale zipped his little Smart car right through the gate and kept going, out of sight.
“Fuck!” Samantha hit the steering wheel in frustration. The
Durango wouldn’t fit there. Neither would the MPD cruiser. “Get the helicopter,” she said to Steve.
“On it.” He spoke quietly into his cell phone.
Sam straightened the SUV and sped down to 7th Street, hooked a left, then turned left onto Jefferson Drive, which ran parallel to Independence Avenue, on the other side of the Castle. There was the Smart car, speeding west. Sam sped after him. The long grassy expanse of the National Mall was on their right.
As she drove after him, she could hear other sirens approaching. Two marked MPD cruisers came toward them from the west. They parked in the middle of Jefferson Drive, blocking the street. That hadn’t stopped Vale before, and it didn’t stop him now. The Smart car hopped the sidewalk again, sending sparks flying as the bumper hit the concrete. Then it drove north across the Mall.
“Lunatic,” Samantha said. She steered the SUV up the sidewalk and followed the Smart car onto the grass. She had to swerve around a pair of joggers on a gravel path.
“This seem like a good idea to you?” Quisenberry asked, holding the door handle as the SUV bounced and swerved.
“Of course not,” Samantha said, and pressed harder on the accelerator.
Vale’s Smart car had nothing on the Durango when it came to driving on grass. The SUV gained on the Smart car as it cut across the park. Another broad gravel sidewalk sliced through the north side of the park. Accelerating, Vale tried to turn on the gravel. His tiny car skidded sideways. Samantha could see the wheels turning back and forth as Vale struggled for control. He never got it. His car plowed through a park bench, splintering the wooden slats and sending pigeons flying in every direction. Then it lodged itself into a hundred-year-old elm.
Sam parked on the grass a few feet away.
“That is why we don’t do car chases,” Quisenberry said, unbuckling his seat belt.
“What?” Samantha said innocently, climbing out of the truck. “No one was sitting on the bench.”
A silver door flashed open, and Vale’s long, lean figure shot out of
the car. He ran north, cut across Madison Drive, and sprinted up the sidewalk in front of the Natural History Museum. He merged into the crowd of tourists going up the museum’s steps.
“You take the car,” Samantha shouted to Quisenberry. She took off running. “Police, stop!”
They couldn’t shoot at Vale, not when he was in a crowd of civilians, not when he wasn’t an imminent threat to anyone. She had to catch him. Her high heels were Rockports for exactly this purpose. Sexy on the outside, running shoes on the inside.
Vale sprinted up the steps to the Natural History Museum. He was fast, but Samantha was a trained FBI agent. She was faster. She closed the distance between them and caught up to him in the domed lobby, where a mounted elephant held its trunk jubilantly in the air.
She tackled Vale. He was tall but light and not used to physical combat. Samantha easily brought him to the ground. She stuck a knee in his back and cuffed his hands behind him while dozens of astonished tourists gaped.
“Your tax dollars at work!” Samantha smiled at a tour group of old ladies as she hauled Vale to his feet and led him out of the museum.
48
C
ongratulations!” Grace yelled over the din of the restaurant.
A dozen pomegranate margaritas were raised over the white tablecloths and clinked together; some pink liquid splashed into candles glowing inside rose-petal globes. The drinkers laughed and shouted. Anna tipped her glass back and let the tart icy drink go down her throat.
They were in the bar of Rosa Mexicano. Thousands of rose petals were pressed between glass panels covering the walls and ceiling, illuminated from behind. Handsome Latin waiters crushed avocados into fresh guacamole in stone bowls. A wall of windows overlooked the flashing lights of Chinatown. Grace had pushed four tall, round tables into a line, and Anna and Samantha sat at the head, surrounded by sex-offense prosecutors and FBI agents. Grace had herded the AUSAs here; Samantha had brought the agents. It was a good mix. Most sex-crime prosecutors were female, and most FBI agents were male. It made for some fun interagency flirting, which Anna watched with amusement.
The bar kept filling up. McGee brought a loud contingent of MPD detectives. Tony Randazzo arrived and gave Anna a quick congratulatory hug. He sat next to his sister and immediately began razzing her about a picture of her being shown on TV. Anna smiled at the siblings, who were obviously close despite their teasing. She wished Jody could be here, too. In fact, Jody and Tony might hit it off.
As word of the happy hour got out, more lawyers, officers, and agents piled in. Each stopped over to congratulate them. Typical for lawyers, everyone wanted to hear—and opine on—every detail of the case.
“Tell ya the truth, I’m glad it wasn’t Lionel.” McGee came over
with a beer in his hand. “The Lion’s been standing up for this city since I was a boy.” He slapped Anna on the back and chuckled. “Now I owe you two drinks! You cleared two of my homicides with one arrest.”
“Don’t chalk up the second stat yet,” Anna said, finishing the last sip of her first margarita. Grace immediately set another in front of her. “We don’t know that Vale killed the madam.”
“Are you kidding me?” McGee hooted. “He had the motive—the madam would have told us he was stalking Caroline. He had the opportunity—he was at her house. The proof’s on his own camera.”
The TV above the bar played the news. It showed a photo from some tourist’s cell phone of Samantha leading Vale down the steps of the museum. The agent looked gorgeous and fierce, her dark curls windblown, her cheeks flushed from the chase. Vale’s face was contorted in rage.
Tony nudged his sister and pointed at the TV. “See, you look like a badass.”
“I’m amazed you can run in those heels,” Anna said.
“Running was the easy part,” Samantha said, scooping guacamole on a chip. “Quisenberry’s never gonna let me drive again.”
“Wise man.” Tony turned to Anna. “Congratulations on making it through your first case with my sister. That alone is a major accomplishment.”
“She’s great.” Anna smiled at Samantha. “Once you get past the rough edges.”
“Rough edges is right,” Tony said. “Sam once dumped a plate of linguine on a customer who pinched her ass.”