"Not tonight."
"Why not?"
"If I read you another chapter we'll finish the book sooner and then it will be all done and you'll be sad because Alice and the White Rabbit will disappear."
"But you'll finish someday anyway and I'll be sad."
"But you'll be sadder later."
"And they won't disappear, because you can read it to me again."
Kerrigan kissed Megan's nose. "You are too smart, young lady."
Megan smiled and followed up her advantage. "One more chapter. Please."
Kerrigan was about to give in when Cindy walked into Megan's bedroom.
"It's Richard Curtis," she said. Richard Curtis was Tim's direct supervisor. Cindy looked put out, which was the way she always looked whenever his office called him at home.
"I'll take it in the study."
He turned back to Megan. "Sorry, Buttercup."
Kerrigan kissed Megan, gave her a hug, and said good night. Then he went into his den.
"What's up, Dick?"
"I hate to do this to you but I just received a call from Sean McCarthy. He's at a crime scene and I want you to cover it."
"Can't you find someone else?"
"Not for this one. It's Harold Travis."
"You're kidding! What happened?"
"He was beaten to death."
Tim closed his eyes. He remembered saying good-bye to Travis at the Westmont.
"I can't, Dick, I knew him."
"Everyone knew him."
"I played golf with him this weekend. Can't you send Hammond or Penzler? They'd give their right arms to see their name in the paper."
"Look, Tim, the death of a United States senator is going to be covered by the national media. You know how to deal with them. I need someone out there who won't grandstand if someone from 20/20 shoves a microphone in his face."
Kerrigan was quiet for a moment. Harold Travis. How could he be dead? He didn't want to see someone he knew dead.
"Tim?"
"Give me a minute."
"I need you on this."
Kerrigan sucked in some air. He felt light-headed. Then he closed his eyes and let out a breath.
"I'll do it."
Portland turns from city to country in the blink of an eye. Fifteen minutes from Kerrigan's house, the streetlights began to disappear; the only light was from a quarter moon. The prosecutor was afraid that he would miss the crime scene, but a police car had been stationed near the turnoff to keep out everyone without official business. He flashed his ID and turned onto a narrow, unpaved driveway.
Tim's car bumped along for an eighth of a mile. He had played blaring rock music as he drove out of town so he wouldn't have to think about where he was going and what he was going to see, but he turned off the radio when he spotted flashes of electric light through the trees. Then the dirt track turned and the prosecutor saw an assortment of official vehicles parked in front of a tiny A-frame house. It looked like every light in the cabin was on, and the light leaked across the lawn, bleeding out just beyond Kerrigan's car.
The A-frame was so small that only an unmarried person or a childless couple would tolerate it. Tim stood in the dark for a few minutes, fully aware that he was putting off the inevitable, before walking across the lawn. As he approached the house, he felt a little sick and disoriented, like a family member entering a funeral parlor.
The front door opened onto a stone entryway. In front of Kerrigan was an island with two high stools that separated the entryway from a narrow kitchen. To the left was a living room crowded with police officers and forensic experts, one of whom was talking to Sean McCarthy. The homicide detective had the alabaster skin of someone who never saw the sun; his red hair was streaked with gray. Tim had worked with McCarthy on several homicides and could not remember a time when the rail-thin detective did not look tired. McCarthy spotted Kerrigan and motioned him to wait while he finished up.
Tim stood beside a half-wall that separated the living room from the kitchen and stopped where the stone entryway met the living-room carpet. A flash from a camera attracted his attention to a loft that overhung the living room. Kerrigan had noticed the underside of the polished wood stairs that led up to the loft when he looked through the kitchen. He guessed that the bedroom must be up there where the roof narrowed. When he looked down, he saw a trail of smeared blood leading from the stairs through the kitchen and across the living-room carpet. Someone had run tape on either side so no one would step on the tracks. The end of the blood trail was hidden behind a cluster of people at the far side of the living room.
"I know you're not big on gore, so be prepared," McCarthy told Kerrigan when he ambled over. "This one is not pleasant."
Tim's stomach rolled.
"You up for this?" McCarthy asked, worried by the prosecutor's ashen pallor.
"Yeah. I'll be okay."
A photographer stood between Kerrigan and the body. He finished snapping stills of Travis and the surrounding area and stepped aside. Kerrigan squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them slowly to control the view. The senator was sprawled across the floor like a rag doll. His legs and arms were flung about at weird angles, and his head lolled on the carpet in an unnatural position. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but no shoes or socks. His feet were a bloody mess. Someone had smashed every toe as well as the feet themselves. Travis's shins and kneecaps had also been smashed. Kerrigan guessed that Travis's killer had worked his way up the senator's body, ending at his head, where the senator's forehead, nose, mouth, and chin had been battered to pulp.
Kerrigan really wanted to be out of this room. McCarthy saw him sway and led him outside. The prosecutor walked behind the house to a bluff that dropped off into darkness. A chill wind blew up the ravine. Kerrigan concentrated on a solitary object lit by a string of lights moving slowly along a black ribbon that divided the valley, a tanker heading inland on the Columbia River to the Port of Portland.
"Has anyone notified Harold's wife?" Tim asked as soon as he was breathing normally.
"She's flying back from a medical convention in Seattle."
"This is fucking terrible," said Kerrigan.
McCarthy knew the DA did not expect a response.
"Have we found the murder weapon?"
"No, but I'm thinking a baseball bat or something like it."
"He looked like . . ." Kerrigan shook his head and didn't finish the thought.
"Dick called while you were driving over. He said you knew him."
"Yeah. I played golf with him this weekend."
"Can you think of anyone who'd hate him enough to do this?"
"I didn't know him that well. You should call Carl Rittenhouse. He's his AA. He might be able to help."
"Do you have a number?"
"No, but Judge Grant knows Rittenhouse. Hell, he knew Harold real well, too. Travis was his clerk during the summer before his last year of law school."
A man in a dark blue windbreaker walked up to McCarthy and Kerrigan and threw a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the front of the house.