A cab cut him off a block later and he laid on his horn with everything he had. The cabby flipped him off. Nash looked through his windshield and for a split second imagined how satisfying it would be to run the guy off the road and whip him with his own antenna. He quickly banished the idea and turned his mind to his son. He could spend the next fifteen minutes getting angry about it and carefully plotting out the confrontation, but in the end this was about Rory. He and his wife would have to sort their problems out later.
The traffic was a mess at Thomas Circle, and for a minute Nash was tempted to take to the side streets, but he’d made this trip enough to know that could be a risky move. As he was nearing Dupont Circle his phone rang. The readout told him it was a private call.
“Hello.”
“Irene said you wanted to talk to me.” It was Rapp.
“Yeah,” Nash said, “How’d the rest of the hearing go?”
“Well enough. I’ll fill you in later. What’s up?”
“I’ve got a bit of a problem.” He paused and carefully chose his words, keenly aware that the call could be recorded. “That dinner we were planning…the one we canceled. I talked to everybody and they were fine with shutting it down, except Chris.”
“What was his problem?”
“He said he’d put too much effort into it to just call it off, and he felt like he was nearing a breakthrough.”
“So he’s still on the job?” Rapp said casually.
“Yeah, except there’s a slight problem. We had coffee yesterday, and he said he would check in with me last night and this morning.”
“And?”
“Nothing so far.”
“That’s not good. What are you doing about it?”
“I called Scott. He’s trying to track him down.”
Rapp didn’t answer right away and then said, “Irene said you had a family thing to attend to.”
“Yep.”
“When will you be done?”
“If all goes well, I’ll be back up there by one.”
“All right. If you hear anything, call me.”
“Will do.”
“And when you get back here, we might have to make a trip over there.”
“Over there?” Nash asked a bit anxiously. He wondered if Rapp meant the mosque.
“Yeah, I don’t like this. Chris is no flake. If he hasn’t called you back, we’ve got a problem.”
“I agree, but who in the hell are we going to bring it to?”
“We’re not. That’s why you and I are going over there. Get back here as soon as you can.”
“Will do.” Nash hit the end button and set the phone down.
Traffic eased up as soon as he crossed Rock Creek. A few minutes later he was turning on to Wisconsin Avenue and passing the National Cathedral. He checked the clock on the dashboard and swore. It was 11:51. Sidwell was the type of place where things ran on time, so there was no telling what kind of damage his wife had already done. Nash parked the van in the small lot in front of the school and raced in. He knew where the administration office was located, but not the dean’s office. A student pointed him in the right direction and a moment later Nash found himself standing in front of the dean’s door. He could hear people talking on the other side, but they weren’t clear enough for him to know what they were saying.
Nash tapped on the door lightly and then opened the door. He stepped into the room and said, “Sorry I’m late.” Nash gave his wife a fake smile and then approached the neat, organized desk of the dean. Sticking his hand across the desk he said, “I’m Mike Nash, Rory’s father.”
A serious woman with short salt-and-pepper hair offered Nash her hand and said, “I’m Peggy Barnum Smith, dean of students here at Sidwell. Please have a seat.”
Nash noted that there was no warmth in the woman’s voice. He grabbed a chair that was sitting near a bookcase and set it down next to his wife, who made no attempt to look at him. He glanced over at Todd and Kristy De Graff, whom he barely knew, and noted the tissue in Mrs. De Graff’s hand, as well as her red eyes and nose. “What have I missed?”
Dean Barnum Smith leaned forward and folded her hands, placing them atop her leather desk blotter. She tilted her head toward Nash and in a solemn voice said, “Kristy had just finished explaining to us the extent of Derek’s injuries. Your wife,” the dean said while gesturing to Maggie, “is hoping that we can find a middle ground short of expulsion. She has offered to pull your son off the lacrosse team and thinks that one hundred hours of community service, either here at Sidwell, or an organization of the De Graffs’ choosing would be fair.”
Nash took the anger that he felt toward his wife at that moment and set it aside. He looked back at the dean and said, “That’s not going to happen.”
“You would prefer he be expelled?” The dean asked sincerely.
“No.”
“I’ll be honest,” Barnum Smith said, “my hands are tied. We have a zero tolerance policy against fighting.”
“What is your policy for foul-mouthed kids?”
“Pardon me?” Barnum Smith said, looking very caught off guard.
“Have any of you bothered to ask themselves why a kid like Rory, who has never been in trouble before, would suddenly decide to beat up a classmate?”
“What are you trying to insinuate?” Kristy De Graff asked, obviously offended.
“There are two sides to every story, Kristy. Have you asked your son if he provoked Rory?”
“Provoked!” she said in shock. “My son’s face looks like something out of a horror movie. I can’t believe we are even having this conversation.” She turned to her husband. “I told you we should call the police.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” Nash said as he sat back and crossed his legs. “I’m sure the administration here at Sidwell would love the P.R. they would get out of having D.C.’s finest on campus. The police can take statements from each of the boys and any witnesses, and then it will all go away because the D.C. juvenile courts have a hell of a lot more important things to worry about than a couple of wealthy kids getting in a fistfight, because one kid said he wanted to fuck the other kid’s sister.”
The word hit like a mortar shell. Barnum Smith sat back like she’d been slapped in the face, and both De Graffs sat in their chairs slack-jawed, not believing what they had heard. Maggie simply lowered her face into her hands and Nash said, “Yeah, your little angel was telling Rory about all the things he wanted to do to my daughter Shannon…who, by the way, is fourteen. Derek said she was really hot and that he wanted to fuck her.”
An appalled Kristy De Graff said, “My son would never say such a thing.”
“Oh…he did,” Nash said as lightheartedly as he could. “In fact, he said it several times. Rory told him if he said it again he was going to beat him up. Apparently, Derek didn’t take him very seriously, because he thought it would be funny to then insult my wife by telling Rory that Maggie here is a MILF. Which stands for Mom I’d Like to…” Nash didn’t want to push it, so he mouthed the word.
Dean Barnum Smith was seriously offended. She turned to the De Graffs and asked, “Have you talked to Derek about this?”
“I don’t need to talk to my Derek about this,” Kristy said. “He would never talk like that.”
The dean gave her a look that said, Don’t be so sure about it. She pressed the intercom button on her desk and said, “Please send word that I want Derek De Graff and Rory Nash sent to my office.”
As the dean took her finger off the intercom button, Kristy De Graff turned to her husband and said, “I told you we should have brought our attorney with us.”
Nash felt his BlackBerry vibrate. He reached into his suit coat breast pocket and grabbed it. It was an e-mail from Art Harris. Nash opened it and read the small letters: I think I found your guy. Not good. Call me ASAP!
The room suddenly got very hot. Nash pulled at his tie and stood. “I’m very sorry,” he said to the group. “I have to leave.?
??
Maggie looked up at him and saw what she took to be genuine fear on her husband’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Something at work. I’ll call you the first chance I get.” Nash squeezed her shoulder and left. By the time he hit the front steps of the school, he had Harris on the line. “Art, what’s up?”
There was a heavy sigh on the other end and then, “The D.C. fire department responded to a call last night just before four in the morning. There was a burning car in an abandoned lot. When they got the thing put out, they popped the trunk and found a body. Based on the coroner’s report, everything matched your description except one thing.”
“What’s that?” Nash asked, holding out a sliver of hope.
“He was missing three toes on his right foot. The doc said they looked like they’d been cut off one at a time, and not by a surgeon. He also said it looked like it had been done recently. Probably around the time of murder, but he wouldn’t know until he was finished with the full autopsy.”
“Shit,” Nash said as he lost all hope.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Forget we ever had this conversation.” Nash hung up and looked back at the school and then at his phone. He knew what he had to do and he hoped Rory would understand. Nash jumped in his car and dialed Rapp’s number. After six rings he got his voice mail. Nash hesitated for a second and then decided to call Kennedy’s office. When her assistant answered, he said, “This is Mike Nash. I need you to get Rapp on the phone ASAP. I have an emergency.”
CHAPTER 61
CAPITOL HILL
LONSDALE did the walk of shame back to her office from the committee room. Only those who really knew her could have guessed that she was on the verge of cracking. She was a professional politician, after all—a woman who could look happy after three straight months on the campaign trail. What was a little two-minute walk from the Judiciary Committee room to her office? She’d almost snapped three times, though, twice at a couple of her incompetent staffers who couldn’t read her emotions for shit, and once at a fellow senator who had rushed up to her to find out what happened behind the closed-door session. Each time Lonsdale looked like a petite version of the Heisman Trophy with her hand extended palm-out to keep would-be tacklers at bay.
When she finally made it to her office suite, she slid through her private door and walked right past a half dozen senior staffers who knew her well enough to keep their mouths shut. She breezed through the small reception area with a plastic smile on her face and entered her office. A split second later the heavy wooden door slammed shut.
All eyes turned to Wassen. He looked with a heavy dose of trepidation at the door his boss had just gone through and knew she was waiting for him and only him. If anyone else dared go through that door, they would get their head bitten off. Ralph Wassen motioned for everyone to get back to work, and then he very carefully opened the door and slid in, closing it behind him. Lonsdale was on the long couch—her shoes off, her feet up, and a cigarette in her hand. Wassen noticed that she hadn’t bothered to turn on the smoke eater, which he took as another bad sign.
He crossed the room, turned on the machine, and then went and joined his boss in the seating area. He took one of the ultramodern armchairs with the big chrome base and said, “What in the hell happened?”
Lonsdale didn’t bother to look at him. With her head tilted back, she looked up through a cloud of smoke and said, “Probably the worst day of my life.”
Wassen thought of her dead husband. “Worse than the day John died?”
“No,” she answered frankly. “No…not worse than that. It was the most embarrassing failure of my political career,” she corrected herself.
“What in the hell happened?” he asked again.
“They all turned on me. They pissed right down their pants legs.”
“Why? What did Rapp say?”
Lonsdale rocked her head forward and looked at Wassen for the first time. “He did basically what you told me he would do. Not exactly the same, but the same general theme. He scared the piss out of all of them. Made them think we’re in danger of being attacked, and if they don’t let him loose so he can break as many laws as he wants, he’s going to blame us when we get hit.”
Wassen swallowed. “So where does it go from here? We’ve been flooded with calls. Are you going to open it up to the press at two?”
Lonsdale took a long drag and then, after she’d exhaled, began laughing hysterically.
“What’s so funny?”
“There isn’t going to be any hearing this afternoon. At least not in front of my committee.”
Wassen was stunned. “How is that possible?”
“That little shit,” she said, “put the fear of God into all those little pussies I serve with. He wanted to have a public hearing this afternoon. He was willing to admit to hitting and choking and electrocuting that damn terrorist in front of a roomful of cameras, and he was going to say he did it all to protect us against an imminent attack by some phantom terrorist cell. And then he gave them a second option, which was to refer the entire matter back to the Intelligence Committee, where things could be handled in a more secret manner.”
“And?”
“My own damn party ran out on me. There was a heated thirty-minute debate on the matter, a vote to refer it back to the Intelligence Committee, and it was over.”
“How did the vote break?”
She waved her hand dismissively. “It wasn’t even close. It was seven to one before it even got to me, and that was on my side of the aisle.”
Wassen winced and asked, “Anything else?”
She had her head all the way back again. She groaned and said, “Ted Darby whispered in my ear, at one point, that if I didn’t calm down and begin acting reasonably, he would make sure my chairmanship was taken away from me.”
“Oh my God,” Wassen mumbled. Ted Darby was perhaps the most powerful man in the entire Senate and not someone who was prone to making empty threats. “So where do you go from here?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I can go after him when he comes before the Intel Committee, but I don’t think I’m going to get much support.”
Wassen looked at his watch. It was a few minutes past noon. She was already late for her lunch appointment. “I hate to do this to you, but you have a lunch date with Joe Barreiro.”
Lonsdale grabbed her forehead with her free hand and said, “I can’t do it. No way. I don’t think I could hold it together. I’ll end up saying something that could land me in hot water with the Ethics Committee. Hell…probably even the Justice Department.” She paused for a moment and then started laughing. “Wouldn’t that be something? After all this, I’m the one who ends up getting indicted.”
“You’re not going to get indicted. Do you want me to go in your place?”
“No.” She waved her hand. “Just cancel it.”
“Bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Barreiro doesn’t like getting stood up. He’s likely to write something really nasty about you, and from what it sounds like, the last thing you need right now is some bad press.”
“You’re right.”
“What should I tell him?”
“Tell him my party has abandoned me. That they no longer care about government employees following the law.”
“How about I tell him that Rapp brought some disturbing information before your committee, and you have decided that, for the sake of national security, you would refer the entire matter to the Intelligence Committee, where it can be handled with sensitivity.”
“Take credit for it?” she asked in near total exasperation.
“That’s the general idea.”
“No way in hell. This thing will turn someday, and I’ll be standing there looking at all these gutless bastards…and we’ll all know whose fault this was.”
“Fine.” Wassen stood. “Would you like me to tell him the vote was eighteen to two? Let me guess: the only other p
erson to join you was our stalwart communist, Chuck Levine?”
“Do you really think I need this right now?”
“What you don’t need is more bad press than you’re already going to get.”
“Fine…I don’t care,” she said without looking at him.
Wassen looked down at her and hesitated to bring to her attention that he had warned her about this. He wanted to say to her, And what happens if Rapp is right? How will you handle it when all of your colleagues look at you with derision? But he couldn’t. Not now, while she was so thoroughly beaten. It would be cruel. He would wait for a few days to pass and then try to talk some sense into her. And in the meantime, he would give Barreiro a version of the events that would make his boss look more moderate.
CHAPTER 62
RAPP, Kennedy, O’Brien, and Ridley went up to Hart 216 and ensconced themselves in one of the secure conference rooms, so they could have some privacy and take advantage of the phones. Rapp’s club sandwich and fries lay half eaten in a Styrofoam container. He was up and moving. His jacket was hung over one of the empty chairs and he had his arms crossed while he slowly walked from one end of the conference room to the other. O’Brien and Ridley paid him no attention. They were used to the fact that the man seemed to be in perpetual motion, and they were too interested in finishing their own lunch. Kennedy, however, was watching him with her sad, thoughtful eyes. She’d already closed the lid on her salad and pushed it aside.