The air tonight is mild, as if Mother Nature has given us a brief respite from the stifling heat for this occasion. Idaho Avenue has been closed to traffic from Macomb Street to Newark Street. The sun has set, and the darkness is broken by the light of hundreds of candles held by officers in full dress uniform, civilians, and even children—people who have gathered for the memorial honoring Detective Ellis Montgomery Burk.
There will be a private funeral service later this week. Those were the wishes of Ellis’s widow, Delores, and his daughters, Jody and Shannon. Tonight is the public memorial.
A podium has been set up just outside the police headquarters. A minister has spoken. The Second District commander has spoken. A church choir delivers a touching rendition of “Amazing Grace.”
And then it goes quiet, and we hear the voice of Delores Burk.
“Ellis loved this job,” she begins. “He loved everything about it. He loved solving problems. He loved helping people. But most of all, he loved all of you. He considered you part of his family, every one of you. He would be glad to see all of you tonight. As am I.
“My husband had a simple saying: ‘Have the strength to do it right.’ That was just like Ellis, if you knew him. He always broke it down to simple terms. ‘Do it right.’ There’s right and there’s wrong in this world, and Ellis always knew where that line was drawn. He never crossed it. He thought that was his duty as a member of the Metropolitan Police Department. He thought that was his duty as a father and husband. He thought that was his duty as a man.”
I’m standing on the other side of the barricade. It’s not a good idea for me to cut into that crowd. Not because I might be recognized and arrested—though that would be a distinct possibility—but because I might be a distraction on this occasion. And Ellis deserves this memorial.
I’m to blame for this man’s death. I reached out for him when I had no other options. And he helped me even though the case was beyond his jurisdiction. He helped me because he thought it was the right thing to do.
Delores Burk is correct. There is such a thing as right and wrong. There is black and white. Washington, DC, is a town that lives in the middle gray. But that doesn’t mean I have to.
I owe this to Ellis. I brought him into this fight, and I have to make sure I see it through. If he died in an ultimately noble cause, then his family should know it. If he died as a result of an evil cover-up, they should know that, too.
When the memorial is over, I steer the Triumph onto 39th Street and then head south on Massachusetts Avenue. It will be another long night, another hotel. For a little while there, I really thought my days of running were over.
“Mr. Carney,” I say into my cell phone. “I’m not making a deal with you. I’m going to find out what’s going on or die trying. So buckle up, Craig. It’s going to be a wild ride.”
I need to kill some time before my next stop, so I find a bar on 15th Street and nurse a beer and watch CNN on the screen above the bartender. The sound is muted, but the closed-captioning is telling me that the Russians have detained a person they’re calling a spy from the neighboring republic of Georgia and are lodging an official protest. The Russians and Georgians had an armed conflict back in 2008, and the fear, apparently, is that fires are rekindling.
I generally favor peace over war as a rule, but if another armed conflict broke out over there, maybe the Russians would call back the guys who are chasing me with machine guns. A guy can dream.
At midnight, I make the short walk to the intersection of 15th Street and Caroline Street. Anne Brennan lives on the ground floor of the three-story brick condo building there, and the lights are on, so I assume she’s awake.
I take a good look around first. I don’t think anyone’s tracking me right now, but they might be watching Anne, hoping to find me. I could be walking into a spiderweb.
But I have no way of knowing. I don’t see anyone in the parked cars along 15th Street, and the people strolling along the streets seem to be moving on to other destinations. None of them are wearing signs that say
SURVEILLANCE
or
BAD GUYS
, so I have that going for me, but the truth is, if someone is watching Anne Brennan’s house right now, I have no way of knowing about it. And I have to talk to Anne in person. So I have to take the risk.
But I don’t have to be stupid about it. I head back down Caroline Street, away from Anne’s place, and do a wide circle until I’m the next street over and walking through an alley up to the rear of Anne’s building. The whole thing is a twenty-minute exercise, but it’s worth the peace of mind.
Though Anne lives on the ground floor, there’s a ten-foot fence bordering the back of the property, which I could probably climb if I really wanted to. But I don’t really want to. So I dial her number on one of the many prepaid phones I have.
“I’m in the alley behind your place,” I say. “Can I come in for a minute? Don’t turn on any lights near the back of the house that aren’t already on. Don’t draw attention.”
Not five minutes later, she opens the back door and hustles back to the gate to let me in. She seems more nervous than I am. But she looks a lot cuter. She’s wearing a pair of sandals and an oversize button-down pajama top that reaches her knees.
Coming in from the rear of her condo, I see her bedroom for the first time and my heart does a little skip. Her kitchen is small but spotless and orderly. She leads me into the living room, where the intruders attacked her the other night.
She sits on a folded leg on the couch and looks at me with those wide chocolate eyes. Wearing that tent of a pajama top, she looks like a teenager rather than someone in her early thirties. She also looks to be a nervous wreck, for which I can hardly blame her.
“I’ll be brief,” I say. I take her hand, which she willingly permits. “Anne, I want you to leave town. I want you to take a vacation. The airfare and hotel are on me. I can afford it, so don’t argue.”
“Why do you want—”
“Because I’m not going to let this go, and I don’t want anything to happen to you. I still don’t really know what’s going on, but I know it’s something very big and explosive. I can’t protect you, Anne.”
She thinks for a moment, then places her free hand over mine. “And who’s protecting
you
?” she asks.
“I’ll be fine,” I say with a confidence I absolutely do not possess. “A reporter has some tools at his disposal.”
She almost smiles as she looks me over, appraising me. “That’s not very convincing, Ben. You’re not safe, are you?”
“I’m not safe if I sit still, either. I don’t have a choice. You do, Anne. You’re not involved in this. Your only crime is being Diana’s friend.”
She looks down at our joined hands. I wonder what it means to her. I wonder what it means to me. I catch a scent of lavender and feel myself, against all good judgment, drawing closer to her on the couch.
Then she draws closer to me.
We draw closer to each other.
This isn’t going the way I’d planned.
“It’s okay to say enough is enough, Ben.” Anne looks up at me. We are so close I feel her breath on my chin. “Whatever you feel like you owe Diana, you don’t owe her your life. I don’t want to see
you
get hurt, too.”
She touches my cheek, and my resistance begins to melt away. No. This is a bad idea. You’re endangering her, Ben. Just being here puts her at risk.
She leans into me. Her lips are soft and moist, delicate and cautious. It’s the sweetest kiss I’ve ever received.
“God, you’re trembling,” she whispers.
Personal foul—illegal contact. Replay first down.
Okay, so we replay it. My mouth parts and our tongues find common ground. My hand slides inside her pajama top and Anne lets out a small gasp that turns into a low moan.
Illegal use of the hands.
Penalty declined; second base. I mean, second down.
She lifts her arms and I pull off her shirt and she tugs at mine and the steam of our desperation and fear and longing ignites something primitive between us. We are not two people whose lives are in danger. We are two people who have nothing but right now, only this moment. She is aggressive and desperate and hungry as her tongue invades my mouth, as she digs her nails into my hair, as she takes my index finger and places it in her mouth, as she arches her back, as she raises her legs and wraps them around me, as she whispers
harder, harder
,
into my ear, as she grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut and cries out
harder, harder
—
This is wrong this is wrong
but I can’t stop myself and I don’t want to stop, I want to remind myself that I still have a life and I can still feel something for somebody else and if I only have hours or days remaining in this world, I want to spend at least a small fraction of it with something, with someone, who is good, there is still such a thing as goodness in this world—
“Wow.” I lie on my back and stare up at the ceiling. I don’t know how much time has passed, but I’m guessing more than an hour. We are panting and coming down from the high, and I’m thinking fugitive sex—back to
Seinfeld
,
when George was dating that prisoner and he liked the arrangement so he sabotaged her parole hearing—how did that not make my top ten list?
“Maybe our lives should be in danger more often,” says Anne, her head resting on my chest.
“Did you used to be a gymnast or something?”
She likes that. Her hair tickles my stomach. My limbs are rubbery, useless. My head is foggy. I’ve never felt better.
We interrupt this program for a reality check. That thing about our lives being in danger.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I whisper. “You have to get out of here. You’re not safe.”
She adjusts herself so that her chin is on my chest, her eyes are on mine.
“I’m not going anywhere. If you’re in, then so am I,” she says. “So, sweetie, maybe you should buckle up.”
I spend the night at Anne’s to ensure her safety. Strictly for her protection. No other reason. I mean, there are bad people out there, right? In fact, I might need to come back again tonight to make sure she’s still safe.
But this morning, I’m on the move. My calves and triceps and abdominal muscles and neck are sore beyond description. Apparently I’ve been lacking physical exercise. I also forgot, in the heat of things last night, how much my leg was killing me after I wiped out on the Triumph a few nights back. Luckily, I have this morning to remind me.
In the gym bag that I’m carrying with me everywhere these days, in addition to a few items of clothing and toiletries and my laptop computer, I’ve been accumulating baseball caps that help shield me from detection by someone who might be, say, scanning the streets for me.
But I know the truth: they’re going to find me eventually. Washington, DC, isn’t Manhattan. They could just position themselves at various posts and not move an inch, and sooner or later I’ll walk into them. So I try to keep my head down and baseball cap on and hope I can figure everything out before they find me.
Now all I have to do is figure out what it is I’m supposed to figure out.
As I’m walking down T Street, I call my trusted colleague Ashley Brook Clark, who is basically running the
Capital Beat
in my absence.
“Any luck on Jonathan Liu’s computer?” I ask.
“They’re getting there, Ben. I told them it was high priority, but that computer was beat to hell. What did you do, throw it on the ground?”
Something like that.
“One other thing, Ben. A guy came by looking for you. A guy with a real attitude.”
“Was he wearing sunglasses and a trench coat, and did he move furtively?”
“None of the above. His name was…here it is…Sean Patrick Riley.”
“Sean Patrick Riley? What is that—Pakistani? Somalian?”
“I think it’s Venezuelan.”
“Okay, Sean Patrick Riley,” I say. “And what did this Irishman want?”
“He says he’s a private investigator.”
“And what is he privately investigating?”
“He was very, um—”
“Private?”
“Yes, private with that information. Boy, you’re in a good mood, Ben. Did you get laid last night or something?”
She’s right, there’s been a skip in my step this morning. Maybe things are looking up. Or maybe I just hadn’t had sex for a really long time before last night.
“Did this guy give you a bad vibe?” I ask. “I mean, does he seem like a shady bloke?”
“A private investigator? Shady?”
“Okay, shadier than usual. Like, for example, rather than ask me questions, he’d like to put a bullet through my head?”
“No, I didn’t get
assassin
from this guy. Chauvinist, maybe. Asshole, definitely. But not assassin. I think he’s looking for a missing person.”
A missing person
.
I reach Vermont Avenue, where a big crowd is gathered at the intersection. I hang back rather than mix in too closely with a bunch of people I don’t know.
“As long as he doesn’t want to kill me, I’ll talk to him,” I say. “Give me his number.”
I see Sean Patrick Riley seated near the window of the café before he sees me. It’s not hard to spot a guy wearing a leprechaun suit and eating Lucky Charms.
Okay, he’s more like a middle-aged guy with a full head of reddish-blond hair, a weathered complexion, and a drinker’s nose, wearing a button-down oxford-cloth shirt and blue jeans. And no Lucky Charms, as magically delicious as they may be; this afternoon it’s a cup of joe.
Yeah, I’m still in a pretty good mood from the sex last night.
We shake hands. “Nice bike,” he says.
Okay, there goes my good mood. Normally, that would be a compliment, because normally he’d be talking about my Triumph, which
is
a nice bike. But the Triumph is in a parking garage in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. Now I’m riding a real bike—a bicycle—specifically, a used Rockhopper I picked up at City Bikes. It’s more suited to trails than city riding, but I may have to make some acrobatic moves with it one day, and I want something that can handle some quick turns and rough riding.
Anyway, I’m not too happy about it. I already miss my motorcycle. But the Triumph made me visible. With the Rockhopper, plus a helmet and a fluorescent Windbreaker, I look like one of those bike couriers who risk life and limb weaving through traffic all around the capital.
“You’re the Ben Casper who runs that newspaper?” he asks.
“I am.” Checking out my appearance, he probably thinks I’m a guy who
delivers
newspapers. “And I’m short on time,” I say.
He doesn’t respond to that. I’m guessing this guy used to be a cop, and judging from his speech patterns, I’m guessing Chicago cop. Last I checked, they have a few Irish people out that way.
They put one of yours in the hospital, you put one of theirs in the morgue!
Sean Connery may be Scottish, but he killed as the Irish cop in
The Untouchables
. Killed.
“I was hired by the Jacobs family,” he says. “They live in a suburb of Chicago. Their daughter Nina went missing here over a week ago.”
Nina…Jacobs. I know that—
“Diana’s friend,” I spit out. I met Nina once at a club. She was tall, like Diana, the same lithe, shapely frame, but not blond like Diana. Nina was a brun—
Oh, shit. Nina was a brunette.
And I’ll bet she didn’t have a butterfly tattoo above her left ankle.
“Diana…Hotchkiss, you mean,” Riley says, flipping over a pad of paper.
I take a breath and recall Nina. A beauty in her own right—not the perfect features of Diana’s face, but quite attractive. A bit younger than Diana. Up close, you wouldn’t confuse one for the other, but from a distance, they might be indistinguishable. Especially if Nina was wearing Diana’s clothes.
And especially if Diana dyed her hair Nina’s color, which she did a month ago.
I remember that night at the club, and thinking that Nina looked up to Diana, patterned herself after her. How ironic, in hindsight.
Sean Patrick Riley is looking for a dead woman.
“I’m down to remote acquaintances at this point,” says Riley. “I’ve talked to everyone she knows well, and I’m hitting a dead end. Anyway, she had your business card in her Rolodex. So I’m wondering if you can think of anything that might help me. Any chance you have an idea what might have happened to her?”
Her parents must be in sheer agony right now. I’ll help them find justice for their daughter. I won’t let this go. I’ll tell them everything that happened to their daughter.
But not yet.
“Why don’t you tell me what you’ve put together so far?” I say. “And maybe something will trigger a thought.”