“Are you okay?” Erica said.
“Yeah. It’s just beginning to sink in. I had to…” He hesitated.
“Van Dyke?”
Kevin nodded toward the back of the boat. “Dead.” The shivering got worse.
“Are you sure?”
He didn’t answer. She went behind the console and sucked in her breath when she saw the body.
“He’s dead all right.”
“I thought you were, too,” he said. “He shot you. You fell backward…”
“No, I dove backward. I thought he might assume I’d dive forward. Apparently, he did. I heard one of the bullets zing past my ear.”
“Oh, that makes me feel a lot better.”
“Let’s not dwell on it. It happened. Now let’s get you out of those handcuffs.”
They retrieved the keys from Van Dyke’s back pocket, then moved the body away from the console and laid it against the port side. Kevin draped the boat’s rain tarp over the body while Erica washed the bloody deck with a bottle of water. It took five refills from the Potomac to wash it all off.
When they got back to the marina, Erica told the rental agency they would need the boat for another day. After she paid in advance with cash, the clerk promised that it wouldn’t be disturbed.
There had been no discussion about reporting the shooting to the police before their meeting with Congressman Sutter. This was their only chance to get high-level help. Going to the police would just make them stationary targets.
The truck was in the marina’s lot, but they would never find a parking space around the Capitol at this hour. The nearest Metro station was a five minute walk. With only 25 minutes left before the meeting, they jogged.
The white limestone steps of the Rayburn building, one of the three House of Representatives office buildings, gleamed in the morning sun, forcing Kevin to squint until he and Erica were under the shadow of the portico. He glanced at his watch. 7:56. Right on time. The walk from the Capitol South Metro stop had been short. Kevin breathed a literal sigh of relief. The worst was over. Now it was just a matter of getting someone to believe them.
The guard at the door of the Rayburn building had shown them where to find the building’s directory. Sutter’s office was on the second floor of the north wing. They walked briskly but calmly upstairs and found the congressman’s office.
The outer area of the office was somewhat small, to be expected of a congressman who was in only his second term. The larger offices would go to the more senior members. Four chairs lined a wall under pictures showing various scenes from the congressman’s district. A wide-angle shot of downtown Houston, a medical researcher pretending to study a test tube for the camera, an aerial view of South Texas University. The last made Kevin feel a little more confident about doing this. He turned to the desk facing the chairs.
Behind it sat a slightly frumpy woman in her fifties. She gave a smile that showed perfect teeth.
“May I help you?” she said in a pleasant voice.
“Yes. My name’s Kevin Hamilton. I have an appointment with Congressman Sutter.”
“Kevin Hamilton?” The secretary looked at him as if he’d told her his name was Madonna.
“Yes, Kevin Hamilton. This is a friend of mine, Erica Jensen. Our appointment was for 8:00. It’s very urgent that we speak with the congressman.” Kevin tried to see the appointment book. There was none. It must have been on the computer. “It should be down for 8:00 this morning. I called last Wednesday.”
“Yes, Mr. Hamilton. I was the one who spoke to you. Until a few minutes ago, I wasn’t expecting you until 9:30. Now I’m surprised you’re even here.”
What was this woman talking about? Kevin looked at Erica. She seemed just as puzzled as he was.
“I’m sorry,” said Erica to the secretary. “I don’t understand.”
“When I called Friday to tell Mr. Hamilton that the meeting had been delayed until 9:30 this morning, I assumed he had received it.”
“Wait a minute,” said Kevin. “You called my apartment?”
“That’s right. Representative Sutter had a breakfast with Senator Mitchell that was supposed to run late. As it turned out, the breakfast was over early.”
“You mean he’s here?” Thank God. It wasn’t too late. If Kevin’s apartment phone was still tapped, Tarnwell would know they were planning on coming here. Once he found out they’d escaped, he’d send someone down here to intercept them. They had to hurry. He started for the Congressman’s office.
“Mr. Hamilton, the representative is in a meeting. Mr. Tarnwell said you wouldn’t be coming, so I canceled…”
“Tarnwell?” He was right. Tarnwell’s thugs might be here any minute. Despite the secretary’s loud protests, he burst through the door to Congressman Sutter’s office.
The room was about 15 by 15 feet, with a spectacular view of the Capitol through the broad windows at the opposite side of the room. Bookshelves lined one wall, while a couch sat in front of the other. A television was perched on an oak dresser to Kevin’s left. A man occupied one of the two chairs in front of the congressman’s mahogany desk. Congressman Frederick Sutter, a slender black man in his forties with a receding hairline and dressed in a gray suit, stood up from his chair at the intrusion.
“What’s going on here?” he said.
The other man stood as well now, rising to his full six foot six height. He turned, and Kevin stopped short when he saw who it was. The look on Clayton Tarnwell’s face was almost as shocked as Kevin’s, but he quickly recovered.
“Kevin,” Tarnwell said, “I see you and Erica were able to make it after all.”
“I recognize you now,” Sutter said to Kevin. “You sat next to me at a South Texas brunch, correct?”
“A dinner,” said Kevin. “You told me about your son’s football scholarship to A&M.” He turned to Erica. “This is Erica Jensen. She’s a med student at South Texas.”
“Nice to meet you.” He nodded at Erica and then looked at Tarnwell. “These are the two you were telling me about, Clay? I find that hard to believe. I remember Mr. Hamilton. He seemed like an articulate young man.”
“Yes, Fred, he does. Kevin fooled me as well. I’ve never met this girl before, but her boyfriend here is the slickest con artist I’ve ever seen.”
Kevin made a move toward Tarnwell. “I should…” Before he got two steps, Erica grabbed him, holding him back.
“Now that I’ve exposed your little game, you’re losing your cool. How pathetic.”
Erica spoke to Sutter. “I don’t know what this man has told you, Mr. Sutter, but Kevin has discovered a revolutionary new process that could change almost every industry over night.”
“He’s got her in on this thing with him too,” Tarnwell said. “Very clever, Kevin. Two voices are always better than one. But as I was just telling Congressman Sutter, your plan’s a failure. I thought the police had caught you by now, and when you’d bragged about your meeting with Mr. Sutter, I thought I’d better come down and clear up any misunderstandings you might have caused. About how you and Dr. Ward tried to swindle me into investing huge amounts of money into a experimental process with no merit.”
“He’s lying, Mr. Sutter!” Kevin said. “I can prove it.” Kevin reached into his pocket for the specimen he’d completed two days ago.
“Ah yes,” Tarnwell said. “Now he’s going to present you with a piece of glass and claim it’s a diamond. Well, Kevin, let’s see it.”
Kevin walked over to the Congressman’s desk and handed him a diamond the size and shape of an egg. It was perfectly clear, a flawless specimen, except for one thing: the safe deposit box key fused in its middle.
Kevin thought he’d need some way of confirming that he hadn’t stolen it from somewhere, that it was actually made and not dug up out of the ground. The key was the most appropriate thing he could think of.