Authors: Lis Wiehl
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers, #General, #Christian, #Suspense, #ebook, #book
“Stop talking about food,” Cassidy said, snatching up more of their fries. “I’m hungry!”
Nicole lightly slapped Cassidy’s hand. “You’ve got a bad habit of eating off other people’s plates, you know that?”
Cassidy’s grin was unrepentant. “In grade school kids used to make a big production out of licking their food in front of me so I wouldn’t eat it.”
“Did that stop you?” Allison asked.
Cassidy raised one eyebrow. “What do you think?”
The three women laughed.
Turning serious, Cassidy added, “I didn’t just pick this restaurant for the quality of its grease. It’s also close to where Katie disappeared. I saw both of you at the vigil.” She lifted her beer glass in Nicole’s direction. “And I heard that you’ve been handpicked to be the liaison with Katie’s parents. Congrats! The Triple Threat Club is on the case!” She raised her glass and leaned forward.
Allison tapped each of their glasses with her own. She was trying to drink more milk for calcium and eat more leafy greens for vitamin K—the existence of which she had only learned about this week. As a result, her dinner tonight was a Cajun Cobb salad and a glass of milk. McMenamin’s, which wasn’t exactly known for restraint, had dressed the salad in about a half cup of blue cheese dressing.
Her newfound hunger sometimes shocked her, especially since it alternated with bouts of nausea. Three hours after breakfast this morning, she had felt an overwhelming urge to eat. She ended up in the third-floor cafeteria, tucked away in a corner, her back to the empty tables, wolfing down an egg sandwich and a hashbrown disk. What if the baby’s fingers had been forming right at that moment? What if the knuckles were being made, and the only nutrition her body had to work with was junk?
Nicole’s smile was rueful. “Yeah, it may be an honor, but it’s not going to be easy. We’ve got no crime scene, no evidence, no clues, no suspects, no ransom note, and no verifiable sightings.” She popped another fry into her mouth.
Cassidy shook her head. “I’m like you, Nic, trying to work this thing when there is no new information. This morning I had the cameraman down on his knees so we could get a dog’s-eye view. Since you guys found the dog, it was supposed to be like what Jalapeño would have seen when he was with Katie. Did you guys get any clues from it?”
Allison didn’t bother asking where Cassidy had come across that little tidbit. She had sources scattered throughout the city. Sometimes she knew things before Allison and Nicole did, which came in handy.
Earlier that day, a woman had been walking her dog near Chapman Elementary when she had spotted the black Lab without a collar. With the help of a dog treat, she coaxed it into her van. She thought it looked like the dog on the Converses’ flyers, so she took it to an animal shelter. Luckily, Jalapeño had been chipped.
“There was something dark matted on its flank, but the dog was filthy—fur stuck together, burrs, cuts on its paws,” Nicole said. “Everyone got all excited. But it turned out to be canine blood, not human.”
“I’ve been trying for an interview with the woman who found him, but Channel Eight’s got her all sewn up.” Cassidy took another sip of beer.
“What would you guys have if you didn’t have nonstop coverage of this?” Nicole said. “Maybe some actual news?”
Cassidy snorted. “We’ve talked about this before. Everyone sitting at this table depends upon crime for her livelihood. We don’t
make
the bad guys. We catch them!”
Have joking, half not, Allison said, “But the media distort everything.”
“Right. Just like all cops are trigger-happy and all lawyers are sharks.” Cassidy laughed. Nothing ever seemed to get to her. “The media are not creating the problem. We’re reporting it. There’s a difference.”
As the counter guy set down Cassidy’s food, Nicole said, “In about fifteen minutes, could you bring us a black-and-tan brownie and three spoons?”
After he nodded and left, she turned back to Cassidy. “Are you sure there really is a difference?”
“Hey, her parents have begged for coverage. They want everyone to know what Katie looks like, what a good girl she is. They think it will help.”
Allison pushed the remains of her salad away. “Sometimes I worry that this much coverage just gives people ideas. Now any sicko who wants his own little piece of the six o’clock news knows that all he needs to do is go out and get his own girl.”
Instead of taking offense, Cassidy dropped her eyes and smiled a private smile. “That’s what Rick says, too. He says I’m just encouraging them.”
Nicole pounced. “Rick! So you’ve got yourself a new man? You’ve been holding out on us, girl!”
“This one’s a cop. So he understands the hours. He gets that when a story breaks I’ve got to go.”
“Where’d you meet him?” Allison couldn’t imagine what it would be like to still be dating. She and Marshall had been together since they were sophomores in college.
“I interviewed him when that 7-Eleven clerk got shot, and afterward we ended up going out for coffee.”
Nicole arched an eyebrow. “So is he fine?”
Cassidy licked her lips. “He is very fine. He reminds me of a fox, or maybe a wolf. He’s got these pale blue eyes and dark brown hair and a
very
muscular body.”
Nicole made a show of fanning herself.
Despite complaining that all the good men were taken or gay, Cassidy managed to find dates every place she went. Dates, yes. Long-term boy-friends, no.
Cassidy was a contradiction. She was always sure of herself when it came to covering a story, but in her personal life she needed constant reassurance. Though she exercised obsessively, she complained about being fat, and worried aloud about growing old—and waited for some-one to contradict her. And she twisted herself into a pretzel to gain the approval of whatever guy she was dating.
Three years earlier, she had been a windsurfer for about two weeks when she had a boyfriend who loved windsurfing. Then she had briefly become a vegetarian when she dated someone who abstained. And there was the time she was “seriously considering” converting to Catholicism until she realized the guy she had met on Match.com expected her to stay home and have babies. Lots of babies.
Maybe this Rick guy would be different.
But Cassidy was still the same. Even over dinner with friends, she couldn’t stop looking for a story. “Jerry wants a minute-forty-five package about Katie on the news every night. That’s an unbelievable amount of time. The world coming to an end would be lucky to get a minute and a half. Normally I would start with the latest update and reverse to the B-roll—but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything new. Right?” She eyed Nicole closely.
Nicole shot Allison a look, which Allison answered with a little nod. None of this got past Cassidy, who grinned in anticipation.
“I wouldn’t say that.” Nicole shook a cautionary finger. “But you can’t use this, Cassidy. Not yet.”
“All right.” She nodded so hard that her artfully highlighted hair swung back and forth.
“I mean it. You can’t. I’ll give you a heads-up when we’re ready to release this. But Katie had a MySpace account, and she kept a blog on it.”
Cassidy’s eyebrows went up. “And her parents didn’t take it down?”
“They didn’t know anything about it,” Nicole said, reaching out to grab some of Cassidy’s fries. “It’s anonymous, or at least as anonymous as a seventeen-year-old girl can think of how to be.”
“In other words,” Allison said, “not very.” Reading the blog had left her with a residue of sadness. It brought Katie alive for her—and yet as she read her words, Allison grew even more afraid for the girl.
“Right,” Nicole agreed. “Like it’s called The DC Page, and on the part where people can leave comments, they’re all addressed to Katie. There’s only one Katie in the Senate page program. What makes it even clearer is that now that she’s missing, there are people begging for her to come home, or saying how much they miss her.”
“Are there any clues? Like ‘Dear Blog, today I intend to disappear . . .’ ?”
The counter guy set down their dessert. Cassidy was the first to pick up one of the three spoons.
Nicole shook her head. “No. I wish there were. It’s clear she had a boyfriend in the program, but it also sounds like they broke up. It was all very dramatic, very much love one minute and the worst thing that ever happened to her the next. The one thing that gave me pause is that she seemed to have a crush on one of the senators. She called him Senator X, but she also said it was her sponsor. Which would be Senator Fairview.”
Allison hadn’t known what to make of the blog. Had Fairview returned the girl’s feelings? Or had he even been aware of them?
“Fairview.” Cassidy rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard stories about him.”
“What do you mean?” Allison asked. Her heart started beating faster. She set down her spoon.
“I’ve interviewed him before,” Cassidy said, taking a bite of dessert that strategically encompassed the brownie, the ice cream, and the caramel sauce. “He’s a nonstop flirt who likes it when women are impressed by the fact that he’s a senator. His wife—I think her name’s Nancy—lives here with their two kids. She’s got an upscale children’s clothing business. So he spends his time back in DC in a bachelor pad, and maybe comes home once or twice a month. But when the cat’s away, he likes to play. . . .”
“So he’s like Senator Packwood?” Allison asked.
Bob Packwood, after decades as an Oregon senator, had been forced to resign after dozens of women came forward saying he forcibly kissed or groped them.
“No. As far as I know, all his conquests are willing. But you hear stories about him.”
“Like what?” Nicole leaned forward.
“Like him having sex in the back alley with some college girl he met in a bar, while his driver waits in the car.”
“That’s pretty sick,” Nicole said.
“The sick thing is that I heard it from the
driver
.Our honorable sena-tor got a kick out of doing it right in front of him.”
Nicole made a face. “A woman in a bar is one thing. A seventeen-year-old girl is another.”
Allison was finding it hard to breathe. The food in her stomach had turned into a leaden ball. She remembered another man she had known.
He
had liked to take chances too. The more dangerous it was, the more he got off on it.
It felt like a big piece of the puzzle had just fallen into place.
Allison said, “I don’t think the two are that far apart. It sounds like Fairview likes to take risks. What could be riskier—or more tempting—than a seventeen-year-old?”
Making an enemy of a powerful senator was never a good idea. Still, Allison knew it was the right thing to do. She took a deep breath.
“Tomorrow, I’m going to open a grand jury. And I’m going to make sure that the first thing they do is take a good hard look at Senator Fairview.”
September 17
A
ll the other pages complain about the schedule.
They don’t know what they are talking about.
At least here I can make most of my own decisions. If they give me an errand to run, nobody cares how long it takes. If I stop to talk to some-one, or to look at a painting, they don’t grill me about what I was doing.
Besides, this place is so cool! Like on Sunday evening we all ended up playing Frisbee on the Capitol lawn. I mean, who else gets to do that? We even got one of the Capitol cops to toss it back & forth for a few minutes. And in January we’ll hear the State of the Union live. See the president up close & personal. Did you know the pages are the first people to shake the president’s hand when he walks in? Look for us on TV!
I’ve finally made a friend here—this girl E—& sometimes we do crazy things. E & I went on a “guy hunt” the other day, where you take pictures of cute guys with your cell. But they can’t catch you doing it or the game is over. We got some pictures of the other pages, bike messengers & a cop. I even took one of Senator X, but I didn’t tell E about that one.
When we went through the rotunda, people actually took pictures of us! It must have been because of our uniforms.
Sometimes you do sort of feel important. Some of the senators take time out to talk with you & tell stories in the back lobby. It’s awesome when a senator calls you by name or remembers what state you’re from. We’re even allowed to get in an elevator with senators, as long as it isn’t the senator-only elevator & it isn’t crowded.
It’s not a big deal to them, but being a page is pretty much scum compared to being a senator. Some senators just ignore pages all together, but a few of them are nice. The coolest is my senator, Senator X. He says he remembers what it was like from when he was a page.
I was talking to him today & some newspaper guy started pointing a camera at us. I noticed how Senator X lifted his chin & started using his hands a lot. I took mental notes for when I’m a politician someday. He looked important. He looked powerful.
And then Senator X caught my eye & winked. With the eye that the camera couldn’t see.
W
e’re talking about destroying the youngest of human lives for research purposes,” Senator Fairview said.
He had them all. He could feel it. The Senate galleries were packed. The cameras clicked and whirred. His veins were filled with quicksilver.
He nodded, and Katie set up the metal easel and then put up the poster board. He was in the zone, as he liked to think of it, and even though Katie was very easy on the eyes, he barely saw her. The poster showed a series of photos, starting with a black-and-white collection of cells and ending with a color photo of a little girl.
Stepping out from behind the polished podium, Fairview walked over to the easel. He adjusted a silver cuff link that had caught on the edge of his navy blue blazer, then pointed at the photograph of cells—they looked like a cluster of gray circles—on the left-hand side of the board.
“Even the presiding officer, as handsome as he is”—Fairview paused for the laughter, and got it, feeling a
Yes!
in his gut—“he looked like this at one time, just a little clump of cells. If he had been destroyed at this point, he wouldn’t be here before you today. It’s important to remember that we all started like this.”