Anna covered her mouth so she didn’t splutter margarita as she laughed.
“That’s why I had to go into law enforcement,” Sam said. “Mom fired me.”
Soon Tony and Anna were engrossed in an animated conversation. He was easy to talk to and easy to look at. She leaned back and tried to soak it all in: Here she was, a victorious lawyer, a free woman, out with friends and flirting with a cute guy.
Somehow, though, it felt like she was trying to convince herself what a great time she was having instead of actually having it.
She really did like Tony. He had recently bought Sergio’s from his parents, he told her. He described his plans for renovating the restaurant and modernizing the menu. She was impressed.
“But you’ve gotta keep those eggplant patties!” she said. “They’re the best.”
“Tell you what,” Tony replied. “Come over Saturday night. I’ll whip up some of my new creations for you. You can be my menu consultant.”
Samantha interrupted. “Are you asking my lawyer out on a date?”
“It’s not a date,” Tony said. “It’s just an opportunity for us to get to know each other a little better in a private, romantic setting.”
Anna laughed. He really was a great-looking guy, with thick dark hair and liquid black eyes shining with humor. And he was a good cook—she was sure his new dishes would be terrific. At some other point in her life, she would have loved to go out with him.
It didn’t feel right now. She knew it didn’t make any sense, but—it felt like she’d be cheating on Jack.
“That sounds delicious,” she said. “But I’m just getting out of a relationship. I’m not in the right place now.”
“I understand. Things like that take time.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll ask you again in a few minutes.”
Samantha gave Tony a shove toward the bar. “Go get us some drinks, Romeo.”
The TV by the bar switched to a shot of the prosecution team leaving the federal courthouse three days earlier, after the Speech or Debate Clause hearing. There were Jack and Anna towing their wheeled briefcases behind them. Jack looked professional and intimidating as he no-commented his way past the reporters. Anna walked next to him, occasionally glancing at his face. Watching her image on TV now, it was obvious that she was in love with him. How could she have thought she could hide it from their colleagues? She remembered what she’d felt when they walked out that day—overwhelmed by the reporters but knowing that
whatever else happened, she and Jack were a team facing the world together.
The newscasters praised the investigators on how quickly they’d found the alleged killer. For Anna, it was a professional dream. She was getting the respect she’d craved from her fellow prosecutors. She was a hero in a very public way. And here she was, out with her friends at Rosa Mexicano, drinking the pomegranate margaritas she’d missed when she spent her nights at Jack’s house. It was exactly what she’d wanted a few days ago.
She didn’t feel the glow of satisfaction that she’d expected. She felt oddly empty.
“Something’s bothering you.” Samantha broke in on her reverie. “What is it? This is our night.”
“I was thinking Jack should be here.”
“Did you guys break up?”
“What makes you think we were dating?”
“Give me a little credit.”
Anna nodded. Even the barista had guessed.
“You want to tell me what happened?” Samantha asked, with uncharacteristic softness.
Anna didn’t often talk about her personal life with her colleagues, but she found herself telling Samantha about Jack. Maybe it was the margaritas, or the camaraderie they’d built up over the last few days. Samantha was a good listener. Anna found it a relief to finally tell the agent. She wondered how much easier her whole relationship with Jack would’ve been if she’d been open about it from the beginning—if she’d shared and celebrated it with her friends instead of hiding it from them. When Anna finished, Samantha put a hand on her arm.
“I’ve known Jack for a while,” Samantha said. “He has a bear of a temper. But he’ll eventually admit when he’s wrong. Sometimes it just takes him a while to figure it out.”
Anna nodded. When Jack first broke up with her, she’d thought he would come to realize his mistake. Now she felt a growing fear that
she
had been wrong. She had been wrong to contradict him in front
of the DOJ bigwigs. Sure, she could hold her own opinion, but she should have expressed it more forcefully to him in private. In public, she should have had his back.
She was also starting to think she was wrong to conceal their relationship. The Discretion escorts concealed their liaisons because they were paid to do it. Why had Anna treated her relationship with Jack the same way? At the time, she thought it was helping her career, helping her get the respect of her colleagues and peers. Now that she had the respect of her colleagues and peers, she realized that she wanted something more.
She wanted
Jack’s
respect. She wasn’t sure whether she’d had it before, but she was sure she had lost it now.
Tony returned to the table with another round of pomegranate margaritas. Anna thanked him but took just one sip. She’d fall asleep right here if she had a third drink.
“Hey,” Samantha said. “Have you seen Vale’s photos of you yet?”
“No.” Though everyone had been talking about them, she hadn’t laid eyes on them herself. “The idea makes my skin crawl.”
“So you don’t want to see them?” Samantha took out her BlackBerry and scrolled to a file. “I had the tech-support folks e-mail them to me.”
“Am I going to have nightmares after this? You should be shouting, ‘Shut your eyes, Anna, don’t look at it no matter what happens.’”
The two women leaned their heads together to look at the photos one by one. There was Anna, walking all around the city, oblivious to the fact that a man was watching her, following her, photographing her. She shuddered at the thought of Vale so close yet hidden from her sight, clicking away.
Although his demeanor at the interview had been strange, she’d never contemplated that she could be personally at risk. She knew that one in twelve American women would be stalked in their lifetime. Somehow, as a prosecutor, she’d felt immune. She’d taken this job in part to escape the violence of her childhood, and now she expected to be on the other side of it. It was a painful reminder that anyone, including her, could be a target.
Sam opened another photo, but it was a picture of Madeleine’s house, not Anna.
“Wait.” Anna put her hand on Sam’s BlackBerry.
Something about the mansion lit up at night caught her attention. She studied it. Zooming in on the high-resolution image, she could see a lot of detail. She could read the license plates of cars parked at the curb in front of Madeleine’s townhouse. She saw a gray cat slipping through the bushes. And there, through a first-floor window on the side of the house, she could see a glimpse of the brightly lit sitting room. Anna could make out the madam’s figure sitting at the desk where she’d been shot.
There was something more. On the wall was a dark shadow of a person that didn’t match up to Madeleine’s seated figure. Someone had been standing in the room with her. While Vale was outside taking pictures.
Anna remembered one of the cryptic things Vale had said at the Building Museum.
I saw it . . . I have proof.
He had seen someone else in the house with Madeleine.
Anna told Samantha about Vale’s words as they looked at the shadow in the photograph. They zoomed in on the sitting-room window.
There, on Madeleine’s desk, sat a little greenish-gray block. Right where the blood spatter had been absent. Anna couldn’t make it out, but that was the beauty of digital photos. “Keep zooming,” she said. Sam enlarged that part of the picture until just the top of Madeleine’s desk filled the screen.
The hair on the back of Anna’s neck seemed to become electrified.
“Holy shit,” Sam said.
The item on Madeleine’s desk was unmistakably a brick of cash. Five little bundles stacked on top of one another, each with a mustard-colored currency strap.
“Mustard straps mean hundred-dollar bills,” Samantha murmured. “A hundred of them.”
Fifty thousand dollars had been sitting on the desk when Madeleine was shot. The money wasn’t there when the police processed the crime scene. It hadn’t been at Vale’s house or in his car.
Anna and Sam looked at each other and pushed their margaritas away at the same time. They were celebrating too soon.
Through the haze of tequila, Anna tried to puzzle it out, like a difficult logic game. Why did Madeleine have a huge chunk of cash on her desk right before she died? Where was the money now? And who was the unseen person casting the shadow on Madeleine’s wall?
She wasn’t sure she would like the answers.
Friday
49
W
aking up in her basement apartment, Anna didn’t feel at home anymore. The water pressure in her shower was weaker than she remembered, and she didn’t have any shampoo. She washed her face with a dried sliver of soap she pried off the shower caddy and hoped that the tiny glob of conditioner she coaxed out of an old bottle would be enough to clean her hair. Most of her toiletries were at Jack’s house. Even her cat was there. She hadn’t realized the full extent to which she’d abandoned her single life until she found herself single again.
She dried herself with a crunchy towel and stepped into the steamy windowless bathroom. The only noise in the apartment was the muffled banter between Matt Lauer and Ann Curry. She’d turned on the TV to have background noise in the uncomfortably quiet apartment. She missed the cheerful patter of Jack getting his daughter ready in the morning. She missed the glow of morning sunshine through the Victorian’s stained-glass windows. She even missed Olivia’s pranks. Had her basement apartment always been this dark and lonely? She supposed so. She just hadn’t had anything to compare it with. Now she knew what she was missing.
As she wrapped her wet hair in a towel turban, she heard NBC4, the local station, interrupting the
Today
show for some breaking news: Congressman Emmett Lionel was holding a press conference. Anna threw on a bathrobe and hurried to the TV in the living room.
She got there in time to watch Lionel take the stage with Betty at his side. It was the same setting as his press conference a few days ago. But it was a totally different atmosphere. Gone were Lionel’s angry posturing and blazing eyes, replaced with a defeated slump. Betty maintained a placid expression but with a new sag to her chin; she seemed to have aged a few years in the past few days.
“Good morning,” Lionel said. Though his face was solemn, his
deep voice quavered. “I would like to thank everyone who has supported me over the years and especially during the last difficult week. It has meant the world to Betty and me. So it is with regret that I announce I will not seek another term in office. As you all know, I have been completely cleared in the recent investigation. But I exercised poor judgment in my associations.”
Anna wasn’t sure whether he was referring to hiring Vale or his own affairs with escorts. He didn’t elaborate.
“The investigation has taken a toll on me and on my family. My first duty must be to my family now, to help them heal after this very difficult time. I will step down at the end of this term.”
Reporters shouted, but Lionel waved them off. He wasn’t taking questions. He held Betty’s hand, and they walked off the stage together.
Now that the case against Lionel was over, Anna had expected celebration from the Congressman’s camp, maybe even some gloating. Davenport had graciously issued a public statement praising the USAO for clearing his client, and he had withdrawn all of his motions. She hadn’t expected another tearful press conference or for Lionel to step down.
The talking heads chewed over the announcement with relish. No one believed the Congressman’s bromide about wanting to spend more time with his family. But the stories about his affairs were continuing to emerge. His trusted adviser was practically a serial killer. The consensus was that Lionel’s reputation was too stained for him to ride out the scandal. The only way to avoid further humiliation was to step down.
Lionel’s resignation left one serious candidate in the Democratic primary, which was only five weeks away: Dylan Youngblood. In a town as Democratic as Washington, D.C., that meant Youngblood would be the next congressman. And Jack was the presumptive next U.S. Attorney.
Just in time for Anna to move her things out of his house.
Anna sighed and went to the kitchen. There was nothing to eat. She smiled, imagining the concoctions Olivia might be making from the full cabinets at Jack’s house. Anna realized that she would rather
be helping the little girl than puttering around her own empty apartment. After all those mornings of missing the peace and quiet of her place, it was a surprising discovery. She fished in her cabinet until she found an unopened bag of Mayorga espresso. When she turned to the coffeemaker, she saw the yellow Post-it note with Jack’s handwriting.
She plucked the note off the glass pot and read it several times.
Anna, I love you. I’m sorry. Call me.
He must have left it there when he came here yesterday. It wasn’t the first time he’d dropped everything to run to her aid. She sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the note for a long time.
She wanted to call him. No, she wanted to go to his house. At this time of morning, he was usually in the shower. She imagined letting herself into the bathroom, taking off her clothes, and climbing into the steam. She smiled and ached, thinking about the look on his face as she pressed her breasts against his soapy back and said hello. She still loved him.
But if she went back to him, it would have to be for good. He didn’t want a girlfriend to play around with; he wanted a wife and a mother for his daughter. She had no idea how to be a good wife or mother. She didn’t know how to keep her own identity while being a supportive partner and parent. She might never be like Eva Young-blood, able to throw fund-raisers for Dylan one day while throwing down mock attackers on another.