J.T. Ellison - Edge of Black

“Where’s his wife now?”

“Gretchen? Flying in from Terre Haute. She’d gone home to get one of their...charities settled. She is devastated.”

“I’ll need to speak to her as soon as she arrives. And I need to speak to his detail. I’ll also need the names of all the supporters who were here this morning.”

“I will have the detail get in touch immediately, and the list of people sent to you.”

“The detail weren’t here, in the office?”

“Not at his time of death. In the building, yes. More than likely. They were scheduled to go out with him at two. The congressman had a meeting this afternoon at the University Club. He was scheduled to speak to the Daughters of the American Revolution, of all things.”

Fletcher appreciated the irony—speaking to a group whose membership could trace their lineage to the first attempts of the country to gain their freedom on the day the most important city in the world was attacked by terrorists was rich.

Temple tapped a pencil on the clean desktop. “Do they know what the attack was comprised of? What the agent was?”

“We don’t know yet,” Fletcher replied. “What about the rest of it?”

Temple glanced at him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.”

He gave Fletcher a pointed look. “Trust me. I don’t know.”

“Mr. Temple. We’re both grown-ups here. I have no intention of using the information to demean or embarrass the congressman’s legacy. You saw the text. The language seemed...purposefully inflammatory. Has the congressman been harassed lately?”

He shook his head, finally showing some interest in the situation. No, that wasn’t fair. He hadn’t been disinterested before. He was under control. Very much under control.

“Peter Leighton is an American patriot. He served his country honorably in the service, came home and decided to continue his selflessness in this thankless job. He is the greatest man I know.”

Fletcher sat back in his chair and took a sip of his Scotch. “You know, I’ve been a cop in D.C. for eighteen years. I’ve seen a lot of shit. It is not my job to be judge or jury. Your boss had a reputation in the very quiet corners of this town, and you can’t expect me to believe that, as his number-one guy, you aren’t aware of that.”

There it is. Right over the plate.

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Come on. You want to tell me what this is all about? Who might have sent something like this? Who did the congressman piss off?”

Temple swiveled the computer screen around to face Fletcher.

“Who hasn’t he pissed off? My God, we get five thousand emails a day, and I’d say a solid ninety percent are upset about something. Take, take, take, blame, blame, blame. That’s all these people know.”

“Mr. Temple. Please. I’m talking about something a little more private than constituents with a burning desire for a new road.”

Temple shook his head but wouldn’t meet Fletcher’s eye.

“Truly, don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There are rumors...”

Temple laughed. “This is D.C., Detective. If there isn’t a rumor about you, you’re doing something wrong.”

* * *

It was a good story, as far as stories went. Temple looked like a hero, he’d done everything he could think of to save his boss. The interviews with the three other staffers corroborated his story. Either they were all telling the truth, or they had decided on the story before Fletcher got there.

Not a single one was willing to breathe a bad word against their boss.

This was going nowhere, fast.

Fletcher got a crime scene tech to come to the office and take exclusionary fingerprint samples. That took fifteen minutes, and while it was going on, Temple arranged for the service detail who’d been with the congressman this morning to meet them in the office. Fletcher dismissed Temple and talked to them—a man and a woman, Mac and Sally—grizzled old hats who’d been assigned to the congressman for several months. Nothing in the routine this morning was different from any other day. They didn’t know where his briefcase was. Neither were feeling ill. Both were going for stoic, but Fletcher could see they were genuinely distressed over the news.

He pushed them on the rumors, too, but they clammed up. He took their statements, assured them he’d let them know what was happening, and let them leave, feeling vaguely uneasy.

They gave him a list of the people who’d been in the office over the past few days, and this morning. The official congressional photographer would send over the photos from the morning’s meet and greet. Otherwise, it seemed there was nothing here.

Someone was lying to him. He just didn’t know who. Or why.

Chapter 9

Washington, D.C.

Dr. Samantha Owens

Sam waited for Fletcher in Nocek’s office, watching the late-breaking news story that had finally leaked its way into the media. The anchors looked shaken; even though they’d known for at least an hour, the media had kindly waited for the wife to land in D.C. and get to her husband’s side before they broke the news.

Congressman Peter Leighton, Democrat from Indiana, was dead, a suspected victim of the morning’s attack.

Sam was always amazed at how thorough the media could be when they wanted. Granted, Leighton was a public figure, and as such, packages were built in the event of an untimely death. But considering he was just one of four hundred and thirty-five serving members, there was quite a bit of material that had been collected on him.

The minute the news was out, the attack itself became secondary. Every station was giving their own eulogies of the congressman.

Leighton had been a classic dove for most of his career, using his own service record as an example of why the United States should stay out of foreign domains. He’d flip-flopped about a year prior, started fighting for the troops, for them to get more money, better equipment and better services when they mustered out, damaged and broken. A seismic shift, brought about by the death of his son, Peter Leighton, Junior, a battalion commander in the Army who’d gone to Afghanistan and been decimated by a roadside IED.

Grief changes you. Sam understood that. It mutates your soul, your emotions, your thoughts. Green becomes yellow, the sun disappears from the sky, and your lifelong convictions no longer seem to matter. As she watched the multitude of clips of the congressman defending his change of heart, she understood completely. He hadn’t done enough to keep his own child secure and protected, so he’d launched a campaign to keep the remainder of the soldiers on the ground and in the air safe. Too bad he hadn’t been fighting for them earlier. It might have meant a different outcome for his own son, not to mention countless others.

At least the media didn’t have the text message yet. Once that slipped out, the wolves would circle and all bets would be off. The congressman would stop being lauded and start being blamed.

And maybe he should. If the text was real, authored by the perpetrator behind the attacks, there was something to be discovered in the congressman’s very publicly private world.

Sam muted the television. The message was unmistakably clear. What she was trying to ascertain was why, if the attack was directed at him, had so many others been included.

Two hundred sick, some clinging to life. Two other deaths, random, people wholly unrelated to the congressman. She felt bad that their deaths were being overshadowed by the demise of someone more famous.

Even one death is too much.

Planes were flying overhead, the high-pitched roaring whine of the F/A-18s unmistakable. Helicopters chattered. There was talk of shutting down the bridges. There was a curfew in place, yet there were still news stories about chaos and absolute fear reigning in some neighborhoods. There’d even been a couple of reports of looting, down near Anacostia. But the congressman’s face was taking up ninety percent of the airtime.