When the women came back, Maddy said, ‘Mom wants to go home, Dad.’
‘Of course, honey. Let’s go.’ He started toward Elise but her look stopped him. ‘We’ll see you later, Caitlin.’
Their departure happened quickly, so quickly that he only had time to snap at me, ‘My brother knows a consultant who could start work tomorrow morning. You’d better keep that in mind.’
As we watched them make their slow way through admirers, Caitlin said, ‘You must have really pissed him off.’
‘I did.’
‘That woman?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I warned him about her. He told me it wasn’t any of my business.’
‘He told me that he’s never been alone with her.’
‘Wow. You asked him that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You believe him?’
‘I want to,’ I said. ‘I really do.’
Two
I admit to being single-minded; selfish if you insist. My first thought seeing Tracy Cabot lying twisted on the floor four days after my run in with her was nothing as noble as a human life had been wasted. No, my first thought was There goes the election. I could justify this by saying that the party and thus the country needed this seat. That if one more representative of the Tea Party gets into the Senate the average American will grow ever closer to living in poverty. We will be on our way to oligarchy. So you could — could if you were being kind — see my first response as somewhat noble. But who would be that foolish?
She was dressed in a red silk blouse, stylish jeans and three-inch black heels. She hadn’t come out here to go hiking.
The wound hadn’t bled that much; somebody had hit her with something heavy on the right side of the head. Those dazzling eyes were dulled now and the mouth shaped in the form of an objection. Or curse. The most certain proof of death was the stench. It often is. From the looks of things, she’d been dead since last night.
Very soon the room would be full of police personnel performing forensic investigations of various kinds. There would be a traffic jam of reporters’ cars and vans. For now these would all be local. But Chicago wasn’t far away and the networks would have people up here within two hours. The circus would be in town and within six hours press from foreign countries already posted here would be striding the midway.
Sex. A senator. A murder. An international orgasm.
I was careful not to touch anything, including her.
The back porch was not only screened in but stuffed with plump comfortable furnishings, a dry bar and a corner packed with fishing gear. You could sit here and watch the sunset with all the melancholy sights and sounds of the dying day and share it like a prayer with your wife or lover. The best days of my marriage had been like that, that kind of shared peace and unspoken love.
But as I stared at it now I remembered for the first time that on the other side of the hill, maybe six or seven miles away, was the Logan family mansion. Civilization was only ten minutes away.
I looked for signs of a struggle and found one easily — a small bronze statue of Jack Kennedy. The upper portion was lurid with blood and hair.
My eyes found her again.
In most cases I would have wondered about her. Not as a character assassin paid by somebody to take down a damned dumb senator, but as a person, because behind the beauty and the expensive work — in natural light, without the heavy make-up, I could see that she’d had some done on her nose and cheeks — there had been a person of some kind. Somebody’s daughter — maybe even somebody’s mother, though that seemed unlikely. I’d wanted to bust her ass and then shove her in the face of her masters but I hadn’t wanted — nor certainly expected — this. Not this at all.
There was nothing else for me there so I went back to where Robert sat in a leather chair before the great dead fireplace. His right hand held a tall, clear glass that appeared to be filled with bourbon.
‘Go easy on that. We need to call the police.’
‘Oh, this’ll be great, won’t it?’
‘Robert, you lied to me. You were involved with her.’
‘No, damn it, not the way you say. We never had real sex.’
Just what I needed. I was in the company of Bill Clinton, Jr. We were going to parse words.
‘Hand job? Blow job? What the hell are we talking about here, Robert?’
He stupidly gunned his drink then shook his head miserably. ‘We, uh, laid naked together one night but nothing happened.’
‘You both had a religious conversion at the same moment?’
‘Fuck yourself, Dev.’
‘I need answers, Robert. We need to call the police and we need to get Zuckerman up here.’ Ben Zuckerman was the go-to criminal lawyer for our side in Chicago. He was a master.
‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘All right. That’s a start.’
‘You believe me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, God, Dev, thanks for believing me.’ I thought he was being sarcastic until I saw the tears in his eyes. He was coming undone.
‘You need to pull yourself together, Robert. We need to get your story straight so it’s coherent.’
‘I know, it’s just—’
‘How many times did you see her alone?’
‘Twice. The first time was in her hotel room. We had room service and made out a little. That was all.’
Microphones, video cameras...
‘How about the second time?’
‘A different hotel room. That was when we— When I couldn’t do anything.’
Microphones, video cameras...
‘Why couldn’t you do anything?’
‘I don’t know. Why can’t you get it up sometimes? Maybe it was guilt. About Elise, I mean. But that’s why I got so hot and bothered in the first place. Our sex life hasn’t exactly been great. Since I had that little fling, I mean.’
Your sex life isn’t very good since you stepped out on your wife so you step out on her again.
‘Now I want you to tell me everything you did so far today.’
His expression said that I was tormenting him and he resented it. But he spoke with forced patience. This was the man of privilege talking to a hired hand.
‘She was supposed to be here waiting for me. I’d made the mistake of telling her how great our cabin is, so she asked if she could spend a night here. She said she liked waking up in the country. She even managed to con me into giving her a key to the place. I didn’t want to but I was in no position to say no.’
‘God, Robert, she was probably planting cameras.’
‘I’m not completely stupid, Dev. I finally realized you were right about her. I was going to surprise her. She thought we were meeting to have sex. But I was going to tell her that she could go to hell and that I wouldn’t stand still for blackmail. I was going to dare her to go to the media. I was ashamed as hell and thought I’d finally gotten my brains and my balls back.’
He formed a fist to shake at the dark gods. ‘I was so stupid, Dev. I can’t believe how stupid I was.’ A sob; then the tears. Not for the dead woman. ‘All I can think of is what this’ll do to Elise. I never told you but she was in a kind of rest home last year after she had a hard time dealing with things.’
‘“Things” being your affair?’
‘I’d give anything to take that back. Elise is... She had psychological problems as a child. She saw a shrink for most of high school and half of college. It runs in the family. Her mother committed suicide and she always blamed her father.’ He made a face. ‘The old man was in love with somebody else and about a week after he told her, Elise’s mother killed herself. With a gun. Elise got all her anxiety attacks and depression from her mother.’ Then, ‘And she’ll leave me now, for sure. She deserves to leave me.’