The Winner

  “That’s better,” LuAnn said.

  “Hang on, there’s someone who wants to talk to you.”

  “Mom?”

  “Hello, baby.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, sweetie, I told you Mommy would be fine.”

  “Uncle Charlie said you and Mr. Riggs saw each other.”

  “That’s right. He’s helping me. With things.”

  “I’m glad you’re not alone. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, Lisa, I can’t tell you how much.”

  “Can we come home soon?”

  Home? Where was home now? “I think so, baby. Mommy’s working really hard on that right now.”

  “I love you.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I love you too.”

  “Here’s Uncle Charlie.”

  “Lisa?”

  “Yes?”

  “I mean to keep my promise to you. I’m going to tell you everything. The truth. Okay?”

  The voice was small, a little scared. “All right, Mom.”

  When Charlie came back on the phone, LuAnn told him to just listen. She filled him in on the latest events including Riggs’s plan and his real background.

  Charlie could barely contain himself. “I’m pulling over at a rest stop in two minutes. Call me back.”

  When LuAnn did so, Charlie’s tone was heated. “Are you crazy?”

  “Where’s Lisa?”

  “In the rest room.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “I’m right outside the door and the place is packed with families. Now answer my question.”

  “No, I don’t think I’m crazy.”

  “You let Riggs, an ex–FBI agent, walk into the Hoover Building and cut a deal for you. How in the hell do you know he’s not selling you down the river right now?”

  “I trust him.”

  “Trust him?” Charlie’s face turned crimson. “You barely know him. LuAnn, this is a big mistake, darling. A damned big one.”

  “I don’t think so. Riggs is playing straight. I know he is. I’ve learned some things about him in the last few days.”

  “Like he’s an experienced undercover agent who’s an expert at lying.”

  LuAnn blinked for a second as these words sank in. A small seed of doubt suddenly grew, invading her confidence in Matthew Riggs.

  “LuAnn, are you there?”

  She gripped the phone hard. “Yes. Well, if he did sell me down the river, it won’t be long before I find out.”

  “You’ve got to get out of there. You said you’ve got the car. Get the hell out of there.”

  “Charlie, he saved my life. Jackson almost killed him while he was trying to help me.”

  Charlie was silent for a minute. He was having an internal conflict and was highly uncomfortable with it. From everything LuAnn had just told him, Riggs probably was going to bat for her. Charlie thought he knew why: The man was in love with her. Was LuAnn in love with him? Why shouldn’t she be? And where did that leave him? The fact was, Charlie wanted Riggs to be lying. He wanted the man out of their lives. That thought was skewing his whole mental process. But Charlie did love LuAnn. And he loved Lisa too. He had always put his own interests behind theirs. And with that thought his inner conflict disappeared. “LuAnn, I’ll go with your instincts. Riggs is probably okay, now that I think about it. Just keep your eyes open, will you?”

  “I will, Charlie. Where are you?”

  “We headed through West Virginia, then into Kentucky, skirted the edge of Tennessee, and now we’re floating back toward Virginia.”

  “I’ve gotta go now. I’ll call later today and fill you in.”

  “I hope the rest of today isn’t as exciting as the last two were.”

  “You and me both. Thanks, Charlie.”

  “For what? I haven’t done anything.”

  “Now who’s lying?”

  “Take care of yourself.”

  LuAnn hung up the phone. She would be meeting Riggs soon if everything went according to plan. As she walked back to the car, Charlie’s initial reaction came back to her. Could she trust Riggs? She slid into the front seat of the Honda. She had left it running because she had no keys and didn’t share Riggs’s skills at hot-wiring automobiles. She was about to put the car in gear when her hand stopped. This was no time for doubts, and yet she was suddenly overwhelmed with them. Her hand refused to move.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Riggs walked slowly down Ninth Street, looking casually around, as if he had all the time in the world. A gust of freezing air hit him. He stopped, gingerly slipped off the sling, and put his injured arm in the sleeve of his overcoat, buttoning it all the way up. As the bitter wind continued to blow down the street, Riggs pulled up the collar of his overcoat, took a knit cap emblazoned with the Washington Redskins logo from his pocket, and pulled it tightly over his head so that only the lower part of his reddening face was visible. He entered a corner convenience store.

  The two teams of agents that were following him, one on foot, the other in a gray Ford, swiftly moved into position. One team covered the front of the store, the other the rear. They knew Riggs was an experienced undercover agent and they weren’t taking any chances.

  Riggs appeared carrying a newspaper under his arm, walked down the street, and hailed a taxi. The agents quickly climbed into the sedan, and it followed the taxi.

  Moments after the sedan disappeared, the real Matt Riggs, wearing a dark felt cap, emerged from the store and walked quickly in the opposite direction. The key had been the brightly colored knit cap. His pursuers would have focused on the burgundy and gold colors like a ship’s beacon to pinpoint their man and would not notice the subtle differences in the overcoats, pants, and shoes. He had called in a favor last night from an old friend who had thought Riggs long dead. The FBI was now tailing that old friend to his job at a law firm near the White House. The man lived near the FBI building, so his being in the vicinity would not be difficult to explain. And a lot of Washingtonians wore Redskins knit caps this time of year. Finally, the FBI couldn’t possibly know of the long ago connection between the two men. The agents would question him briefly, realize their mistake, report back to Masters and the director, and get their heads handed to them for their morning troubles.

  Riggs climbed in a cab and gave an address. The car sped off. He ran a hand through his hair. He was glad to get that one under his belt. He and LuAnn were a long way from being home free, but it felt good to know he still had it, at least in small doses. As the cab stopped at a red light, Riggs opened the newspaper he had purchased at the store.

  Staring back at him from the front page were two photos. One person he knew, the other was a stranger to him. He quickly read the story and then looked at the pictures again. With a press badge dangling around his neck and a small notepad and pen peeking out from his shirt pocket, a sleepy-eyed Thomas Donovan looked like he had just climbed off a plane from covering some major news event on the other side of the world.

  The woman in the photo next to his could not have struck a greater contrast to the reporter’s disheveled image. The dress was elegant, the hair and makeup obviously professionally done and thus impeccable, the background almost surreal in its abundant luxury: a charity event where the rich and famous caucused to raise money for the less fortunate. Roberta Reynolds had been a longtime participant in such events and the story said her brutal murder had robbed the Washington area’s charitable community of a great benefactor. Only one line of the story recounted the source of Reynold’s wealth: a sixty-five-million-dollar lottery win ten years earlier. She was apparently worth far more than that now. Or, at least, now her estate was.

  She had been murdered — allegedly, the story reported, by one Thomas Donovan. He had been seen around the woman’s home. A message from Donovan requesting an interview was on the dead woman’s answering machine. Donovan’s prints had been found on a carafe of water and a glass in Reynolds’s home, which indicated the two had indeed met
. And, finally, the pistol apparently used to slaughter Roberta Reynolds had been found in a wooded area about a mile from her home, along with her Mercedes, with Donovan’s prints all over both of them. The murdered woman had been discovered lying on her bed. Evidence indicated she had been bound and held for some period of time, so that the crime was obviously premeditated, the paper said. There was an APB out on Donovan and the police were confident they would soon apprehend him.

  Riggs finished reading the story and slowly folded up the newspaper. He knew the police were completely wrong. Donovan hadn’t killed Reynolds. And it was highly likely that Donovan was dead as well. Riggs took a deep breath and thought about how he would break the news to LuAnn.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  The burly man looked around at the other pricey homes in the Georgetown neighborhood. Fiftyish with pale skin and a neatly trimmed mustache, the man hitched up his pants, tucked his shirt in, and rang the bell next to the front door.

  Alicia Crane opened the door, looking anxious and tired.

  “Yes?”

  “Alicia Crane?”

  “Yes.”

  The man flashed his identification. “Hank Rollins, homicide detective, Fairfax County, Virginia.”

  Alicia stared at the man’s photo and the badge affixed to it. “I’m not sure—”

  “Are you an acquaintance of Thomas Donovan?”

  Alicia closed her eyes and bit her lip on the inside. When she reopened her eyes she said, “Yes.”

  Rollins rubbed his hands together. “Ma’am, I’ve got some questions to ask you. We can either do it down at the station or you can ask me in before I freeze to death, it’s your call.”

  Alicia immediately opened the door. “Of course, I’m sorry.” She led him down the hallway to the living room. After settling him down on the sofa she asked him if he wanted coffee.

  “That’d be great, yes, ma’am.”

  As soon as she left the room, Rollins lurched to his feet and looked around the room. One item commanded his immediate attention. The photo of Donovan, his arm around Alicia Crane. It looked to be of recent vintage. They both looked extremely happy.

  Rollins was holding the photo in his hands when Alicia walked back in carrying a tray with two cups of coffee and some creamer and two blue packets of Equal.

  She lowered the tray to the coffee table. “I couldn’t find the sugar. The housekeeper ran an errand. She’ll be back in about an hour and I don’t usually—” Her eyes caught the photo.

  “May I have that?” she asked. She set down the tray and held out her hand.

  Rollins quickly passed the photo over and returned to his seat. “I’ll get to the point, Ms. Crane. You’ve read the newspaper, I assume?”

  “You mean that pack of lies.” Her eyes flashed for an instant.

  “Well, I’ll agree that it’s all largely speculation at this time; however, there’s a lot of things pointing toward Thomas Donovan having killed Roberta Reynolds.”

  “His fingerprints and his gun?”

  “It’s an active homicide investigation, Ms. Crane, so I can’t really go into it with you, but, yes, things like that.”

  “Thomas wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  Rollins shifted his bulk around, picked up a cup of coffee, and stirred some cream into it. He tasted the result and then poured the contents of an Equal pack into the cup before he resumed speaking. “But he did go visit Roberta Reynolds.”

  Alicia crossed her arms and glared at him. “Did he?”

  “He never mentioned it to you, that he was going to meet with her?”

  “He told me nothing.”

  Rollins pondered this for a moment. “Ma’am, we got your name off Donovan’s answering machine at his apartment. You sounded upset, said what he was working on was dangerous.” Alicia didn’t take the bait. “Also his place had been ransacked, all his records, files, everything gone.”

  Alicia started to shake, finally steadying herself by grasping the arm of the chair she was sitting in.

  “Ms. Crane, you might want to have some of that coffee. You don’t look too good.”

  “I’m all right.” However, she did raise the cup and take several nervous sips.

  “Well, if, as you say, someone went through Thomas’s apartment, then there must be someone else involved. You should focus your efforts on apprehending that person.”

  “I’m not arguing with you on that point, but I have to have something to go on. I guess I don’t have to tell you that Ms. Reynolds was a very prominent member of the community and we’re getting a lot of heat to find her killer, pronto. Now I’ve already talked to someone at the Trib. He told me Donovan was working on a story having to do with lottery winners. And Roberta Reynolds was one of those winners. Now, I’m not a reporter, but when you’re talking that kind of money, maybe somebody would have a motive for murder.”

  Alicia smiled for an instant.

  “Something you want to tell me?”

  Alicia returned to her prim manner and shook her head.

  “Ms. Crane, I’ve been working homicide since my youngest was born and now he’s got his own kids. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re holding out on me and I’d like to know why. Murder isn’t something you want to screw around with.” He looked at the elegant room. “Murderers and those who assist murderers don’t end up in places nearly as nice as this one.”

  Alicia’s eyes bulged at him. “What are you implying?”

  “I’m not implying a damn thing. I came here looking for facts. I listened to your voice on Donovan’s answering machine. That voice told me two things: First, you were scared for him; second, you knew exactly why you were scared for him.”

  Alicia kneaded and kneaded her lap with her fisted hands. She closed and opened her eyes several times. Rollins waited patiently while she went through her decision-making process.

  When she started speaking it was in quick bursts. Rollins whipped out his notebook and scribbled.

  “Thomas had initially started investigating the lottery because he was convinced that several top money management firms were taking the winners’ money and either losing it or charging such huge commissions, churning, he called it, that the winners were left with nothing. He also hated the government for, in essence, leaving these poor people exposed to all of that. And then so many of them not understanding how to handle their taxes, and then the IRS coming in and taking everything back. And more. Leaving them with nothing.”

  “How did he arrive at that conclusion?”

  “Bankruptcies,” she said simply. “All these people were winning all this money and then they were declaring bankruptcy.”

  Rollins scratched his head. “Well, I’ve read about that from time to time. I always chalked it up to the winners’ not being money savvy. You know, spend everything they get, forget to pay taxes, that kind of stuff, like you said. Pretty soon, you can work your way right through all those winnings. Hell, I’d probably do the same thing, just go nuts.”

  “Well, Thomas didn’t think that was all there was to it. But then he discovered something else.” She took another sip of coffee, her face coloring prettily as she recalled Thomas Donovan’s cleverness.

  “Which was?” Rollins prodded.

  “Which was the fact that twelve lottery winners in a row didn’t declare bankruptcy.”

  “So?”

  “So Thomas’s research went back many years. In all that time the ratio of winners to bankrupt was completely consistent. Then, right in the middle of this consistency were twelve who didn’t. Not only didn’t they declare bankruptcy but they grew far wealthier.”