“Are you hungry?”
He shook his head. “I should be, but I’m not. You feel free to eat if you want.”
“I already did.” Her posture changed in her seat. She sat back, crossed her legs, and smirked at him.
“What?”
“I don’t get you,” she said. “You’ve grown up here your whole life, your family has more money than God, yet you still don’t have anyone to run to when you need help. How can that be?”
David chuckled as he shook his head. “Now those are some seriously barricaded mind-doors,” he said. “Suffice to say that money truly does not buy happiness. Except maybe for the house staff.”
“You had house staff?”
Her shocked tone made him laugh. “Well, we’re not talking footmen and dressers, but yeah. Two full-time housekeepers and a driver.”
Becky joined him in the laugh. “A chauffeur? In a uniform and everything?”
“Mostly he just wore a dark suit. His name was Tommy. Still is, actually. If it was some official Washington thing, or a movie premiere or something like that, he’d wear the hat.”
“Boots?”
“No, no boots. We had a car, not a team of horses.”
“A car or a limousine?”
David laughed again. “Can we compromise on a big car?”
“That is just so cool! I never knew anybody who had his own limousine.”
David considered pointing out that the limo wasn’t his, but rather his father’s, but he was enjoying the lightness of the conversation, so he let it go.
“You know, it’s not that much different than growing up in suburbia,” he said. “You’ve got all the same problems. You get zits like everybody else, and you get bullied like everybody else.”
The phone rang. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure,” Becky said as she rose to answer it. “But you’ve got top dermatologists for the zits and lawyer daddies to handle the bullies.”
“Don’t forget the hit men,” David added.
“Oh, of course.” Becky picked up the cordless handset from its cradle on the wall where the dining room met the kitchen. “Hello?” Her face darkened instantly. “Oh, hi, Charlie.” She covered the phone with her other hand and mouthed, Baroli.
“Um, no, I haven’t seen him,” she said. Her face flushed as she pointed at David. “Oh my God, are you sure? That doesn’t sound like him at all.”
David’s gut twisted. There were many things that didn’t sound like him — many of them nice, unfortunately — but he didn’t imagine that many of those would prompt a call from the city desk editor at this hour.
“There must be some mistake, Charlie. DeShawn Lincoln was his friend. A really good friend, I think. Why would he kill him?”
Bang! At that sentence, David felt his window of hope slam shut. This was as bad as it could get. He’d been set up for the murder of a cop. Holy shit.
“Okay, Charlie. Yeah, I’ll keep an eye out for him, but I can’t imagine him coming here.” She listened, and then chuckled dismissively. “Oh, I hardly think so. All right, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She pushed the disconnect, and for a long stretch, they just stared at each other. Finally, Becky cleared her throat. “So, uh, I guess you caught the gist of that. Your friend is dead, and the police are looking for you as the prime suspect.”
The room suddenly seemed short of oxygen. It was one thing to suspect that you were neck deep in a pile of shit, but something else entirely to learn beyond doubt that it was true. “I don’t understand this,” David said.
“Did your friend — did DeShawn — tell you anything about what specifically was going on?”
David closed his eyes tightly — winced, really — as he scoured his memory for anything that might be useful. “He was scared. He thought that it had something to do with the Secret Service, and it was too big to speak of over the phone. That means he suspected he was being watched.” He opened his eyes. “And apparently, he was being watched.”
“But why you? Why are you dragged into this?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. The best I can figure out is that they knew Deeshy was talking to me. I mean, they had his cell phone and I called a couple of times right before he was killed. Maybe I was just convenient.”
A minute or two passed in silence. “Maybe you should just go to the police and turn yourself in.”
“That’s crazy. I didn’t do anything.”
Becky cocked her head to the side. “Well, David, no offense, but that’s what every guilty person says. I mean, I believe you — if I didn’t, you wouldn’t be here — but once this story hits the news tomorrow morning, the act of remaining a fugitive just drives home the fact of your guilt to the police.”
“Innocent until proven guilty,” David said.
“Oh, come on, David. You’re not that naïve. You’re the rich son of a fabulously rich father, and you’re a reporter wanted for murder. This has Today show written all over it. If it’s not the featured story on the morning broadcasts tomorrow, then it certainly will be the next day. By the time they finish milking the angle that you didn’t step forward to let justice take its course, you’ll be ruined. Even if a court finds you not guilty, you’ll be famous as the rich kid whose money let him skip a murder charge.”
He felt light-headed. “Jesus, Becky. And you’re the optimist?”
“I’m just saying—”
“I know what you’re just saying. And I also know that you’re right. But you forgot the part about what a crackpot I’ll sound like when I start talking about some giant conspiracy.”
“I don’t suppose you recorded any of DeShawn’s panicky phone calls.”
“Of course not. But if this whole thing is being run by the Secret Service or even the DC Police, the last thing I’m going to do is just walk into a police station and let them determine my future.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Not doing that. That’s the first step. Steps two through three thousand are a little fuzzy. But I’m not going to do the one thing that will guarantee spending the rest of my life in prison. Even if everything you predict comes true, the result will be the same, so what’s the sense in stepping forward now?”
Becky took some time to think about that. “Well, you’ve got a much better chance of survival if you walk in to be arrested than you do if you wait till some SWAT team crashes the doors to take you the hard way.”
David faked a smile. “Yeah, but the SWAT scenario is way more interesting.”
“That’s not funny.”
He let it go and guzzled the rest of his tea. He stood. He had to stand. If he didn’t move, he’d go crazy.
There had to be a thread to pull. He refused to accept that there were no alternatives to a ruined life. He hadn’t been the nicest guy over the years, but he deserved better than this.
He pressed his hands against the sides of his head to keep it from exploding.
“Here’s the problem,” he said. “I don’t know how to untangle this without either being visible to the world or leaving an electronic trail a mile wide. Not that I know where to find answers, but even if I did, I couldn’t go there to look.”
“Don’t you have a lot of police sources?”
“I do, but I can’t call them. Not when the crime under investigation is a murder of one of their own.”
“I’d think they’d want justice.”
“Right now, they apparently think that hauling my ass in is the definition of justice. I can’t risk it.” His eyes narrowed as he focused in on Becky. “What about you? Are you willing to do some detective work?”
She blanched. “I do society pieces. I don’t know anyone among the police. And if I called your sources, all your concerns would inure to me. That’s not a solution. Can you think of anyone else?”