“Oh.” Jess wasn’t sure she liked the idea of that. Just the thought of getting in a car again gave her the willies. Kaleidoscopic memories of the accident crowded in on her without warning, and a shiver of dread slid over her skin. Then she gritted her teeth and forced them away. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life afraid to ride in cars, for goodness’ sake. This had to be overcome, and now was the time to start. Still, the sense of discomfort persisted. She didn’t even know for certain that this arrangement had been made by Davenport. Maybe Marian had come up with it on her own, as part of a plot to eliminate someone she seemed to persist in seeing as her rival.
Now you really are getting paranoid,
Jess scolded herself. If she had to trust somebody, and she did have to, because this was way too big to deal with on her own, then that somebody would be Davenport. And if there was anything that was certain in life, it was that Marian was absolutely loyal to him.
In other words, Marian would connive in Jess’s murder only if Davenport asked her to.
Comforting thought.
“So are you coming?” Holding the door open, Marian looked back at her with obvious impatience.
Jess put the wheelchair in motion. “Right behind you.”
They didn’t speak again until they were in the elevator, heading down to the parking garage. Marian stood stiffly beside her, her arms folded over her chest, her attention focused on the door in front of her, refusing to look at Jess.
“So I’m meeting with Mr. Davenport where?” Jess tried rephrasing her earlier question. She was growing increasingly nervous, and a little conversation would be nice to keep the bad thoughts at bay.
“What, don’t you like surprises? Wait and see.” The nastiness in Marian’s tone was unmistakable now. The glance she shot Jess was openly unfriendly.
Okay, the hostility was getting old. “Tell me something, Marian: What did I ever do to make you dislike me?”
Marian stiffened.
“You think you’re more important to him than I am because you’re a lawyer, don’t you? Well, you’re not. He only hired you out of that nothing law school you went to because you’re a little worker bee who’ll do the drudge work none of the other associates want to do.”
There was a reason why one of the first things they taught you in law school was to never ask a question unless you’re sure you want to hear the answer. Now the other woman’s enmity, instead of being hidden, was right out there in the open.
“You know what? I’m fine with that,” Jess said. And she was. She’d known all along what her role in the firm was. And she also knew that she was determined to work hard enough to rise above it.
Marian snorted. The elevator stopped and they got out.
The drive into the heart of the city was brief, uneventful, and largely silent. Traffic was heavy now that the funeral was over and the masses of people who’d poured into D.C. to mourn had started moving around, heading for places to eat, places to sleep. Likewise the sidewalks were packed, and the parks, and just about every available space where people could crash. Flags at every public building hung at half-mast. Funeral wreaths, black ribbons, and every imaginable religious symbol from crosses made out of twigs to carved-soap Buddhas adorned trees and lampposts and mailboxes by the hundreds. Other than that, D.C. was its vibrant self, alive again with light and sound and movement and the smells of food and car exhaust and the water surrounding the city.
Jess figured out where they were going only minutes before Marian drove into the parking garage at the side of the building that served the law offices of Davenport, Kelly, and Bascomb. There was no attendant on duty, so she used her pass card to get in, then drove straight to the elevator that was available only to building employees who had a special key.
Jess was too junior to have one.
“Mr. Davenport said you were to meet him in his office.” Marian handed over the key. “I’ll be down here waiting when you’re ready to leave.”
14
A
n office skyscraper at night is just naturally spooky, Jess decided as she rode the elevator up to the twentieth floor, the highest of the four floors that the law firm she worked for occupied—the floor that, naturally, contained Davenport’s expansive private office, along with the expansive private offices of the firm’s other partners and the less expansive but still impressive offices of a select few top associates. Jess’s closet—which was how she thought of her own tiny, interior private office—was on the seventeenth floor, the firm’s very lowest level. Just like she herself was at the firm’s lowest level.
Down at street level, the building was brightly lit. Its impressive two-story bronze-and-glass entrance would be staffed by a doorman or two, who could summon security at the touch of a button. On the same block, retailers such as Burberry and Brooks Brothers drew window shoppers who then went on to dine at such fashionable eateries as Michael’s or The Inn at Farragut Park. Up here, the long halls were dimly lit and deserted, so deserted that the hum of the wheelchair’s motor seemed to echo off the faux-finished tortoiseshell walls and the slick marble floors. The offices and conference rooms lining either side of the halls were dark. Their doors were closed and locked. Usually a few gung-ho souls—herself included—would be still working at this hour, and the janitorial staff was always around, cleaning floors and bathrooms and the like, and thus there would be light and sound and the impression of energy and warmth. But on this particular Thursday, this National Day of Mourning when the First Lady had been laid to rest, nobody was at work. The halls felt empty and cold.
Davenport ’s office was at the front of the building overlooking Connecticut Avenue. The private elevator that connected directly to the parking garage was at the rear. Therefore, it required a journey of several anxiety-compounding minutes to reach her target. Using the wheelchair felt odd, but since as recently as this morning her legs had threatened to give out on her when she had done no more than walk to the bathroom and back on her own, she was afraid that walking all the way from the elevator to Davenport’s office and back would be more than she could handle. Plus, he never asked junior associates to sit down in his presence, and she was sure she couldn’t stand for any extended period. Of course, under the circumstances, she
could
sit down, and of course he wouldn’t mind, but . . . it was less complicated all around to use the wheelchair.
Jess’s palms grew damp as she turned the final corner and found herself in the last of the long halls that ended at Davenport’s office. This one was wide as well as long, with a deep gold carpet running down the center. The ceiling was high and coffered, and the walls were lined with huge, expensive modern paintings that filled the space between discreet mahogany doors with their polished brass plates announcing the names of the favored associates who occupied them. Behind Jess was a bank of gleaming brass client elevators that connected to the lobby. In front of her, at the far end of the hall, was a reception area where supplicants—no, make that clients—waited to see Davenport himself, and a long mahogany desk where receptionists Denise Caple and JoAnne Subtelny politely repelled all but the favored few with automatic access or coveted appointments to see the great man. To the right was Marian’s office.
Jess paused at the top of the hallway to take a long, wary look.
No one was there. The desks, the offices, the halls—the whole damned place—took on a completely different atmosphere when no people were around. The silence was absolute.
Okay, stop it. You’re creeping yourself out.
She started moving again.
Jess had almost reached the reception desk when she saw that Davenport’s door was ajar. Just a few inches, enough so that she could see that the office itself was dark inside.
Not good.
She let up on the wheelchair’s controls. The thing stopped cold. She looked at that open door for a minute, considered the possibilities, weighed her options.
Her heart, which was already beating faster than normal, picked up the pace again. Her breathing quickened, too.
“Jessica?”
Jess almost jumped at the sheer unexpectedness of it. But the voice was Davenport’s. No doubt about that, even if it was muffled a bit.
He was talking to her through the intercom on the reception desk, of course. Which meant that he was at his desk. That’s where his end of the intercom was, and he had a little monitor on the credenza to his left, which, when turned on, allowed him to view the reception area.
Her shoulders slumped with relief. Then she realized that if he was talking to her, he could see her, and she sat taller in the chair and put her game face on.
“Hello, Mr. Davenport.”
“Come on in.”
Yeah, okay. Just as soon as my insides stop shaking.
Taking a deep breath, she rolled forward again, skirting the reception desk, pushing the door to his office open wide enough so that the wheelchair could get through.
His office was really a two-room suite with an opulently furnished sitting room complete with twin couches, a quartet of chairs, a wet bar, and all kinds of impressive accoutrements. That was the room she found herself in. The lights were off and the thick drapes were tightly drawn, which was why it had appeared dark from the hallway. To the left were doors leading into Davenport’s private bathroom and a small kitchenette. To the right, an open door led into his actual office. Light streamed through its door, although not the bright light of artificial lighting. As she reached it and entered the huge corner office, Jess saw why.
All the lights were off, but the curtains were open to the max. Both outer walls were floor-to-ceiling windows, and the luminescence from the thousands of sparkling lights that lit up the city like a Christmas tree at night was bright enough to cast a lovely, otherworldly radiance over the entire office. Jess stopped abruptly, able for the moment to do nothing but absorb the breathtaking view. There was the glowing dome of the Capitol, the shining white obelisk of the Washington Monument, the White House itself. Then her attention was drawn by a movement inside the office to her left, and she realized there was someone behind the desk. Davenport, of course. Silhouetted against the background of the luminous windows, the desk appeared as no more than a long, black rectangle. Seated behind it, Davenport himself was a silhouette against the city he loved so much.
A sudden prickling at the back of her neck, as if her instincts were alerting her to another, unseen presence, made her catch her breath. The sensation was so strong that she felt compelled to glance behind her into the dark sitting room and then around the office to make sure they were completely alone.
They were. At least, as far as she could tell.
Still she felt tense. Uneasy.
“Drink?” Davenport turned on his desk lamp. Now she could see him properly—a big man sitting in a big chair behind a big desk. His always perfectly groomed white hair was disheveled, as though he had run his hands through it more than once. He wore a white shirt and solid black tie, probably the same ones he had worn to the funeral earlier, only now the shirt was rumpled and unbuttoned at the neck, and the tie was askew. She could also see the empty glass on his desk, and the bottle of Chivas he held up invitingly.
“No, thanks.”
He tipped the bottle, poured some into the glass. Jess could tell—from many things, like the slight unsteadiness of his hand, the ruddiness of his face, the twitch in his cheek near his mouth—that he’d been drinking before she got there. Heavily, she feared. The bottle was more than half empty, and there was whisky residue already in the glass when he started to pour. A small puddle of liquid around the glass gleamed in the yellowish lamplight.
“I don’t think Mrs. Cooper’s death was an accident.”
There it was; she’d put it right out there on the table before she could lose her nerve, have second thoughts, chicken out, however you wanted to put it.
He heard her; she could tell he did because his eyes narrowed and he frowned a little. But he barely checked in the act of swallowing about half the glass of booze.
“She had problems, Annette.”
As he spoke he lowered the glass, swirling the golden liquid that remained in it and watching it as it sloshed against the sides, then looked at Jess sadly. She sat just outside the circle of light cast by the lamp, probably about twelve feet from the desk, not having moved since she’d been stopped upon entering by the sheer beauty of the view. On the wall behind her and to her left, surrounding the door to the sitting room, were the custom-built floor-to-ceiling bookcases that held everything from his law books to photos of Brianna and their children, taken on the previous summer’s safari in Kenya. To her right the wall was covered with pictures of Davenport with nearly every VIP who had passed through D.C. during the last fifteen years, including this President and his two predecessors.
As Jess had already learned under his tutelage, impressing clients was the name of the game. And that wall was very impressive.
“As soon as I spoke to her at the hotel, I could see that she was upset, even frightened. She ran from her Secret Service detail. She told me she was, to use her exact words, a ‘fucking prisoner.’ ” Talking fast, Jess ticked off the points she wanted to make in chronological order. “She—”
“I should have taken her seriously,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “But she wasn’t happy. Never happy. Fighting with David all the time. All the other things. The last few months, she just bitched and bitched and bitched. I just thought it was more of the same.”
If he wasn’t already drunk, he was close, Jess realized with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. She wasn’t entirely sure that what she was saying was even registering with him.
“Mr. Davenport. I think Mrs. Cooper may have been murdered,” she tried again, spelling it out as plainly as she could in case he wasn’t getting the point.