Margaret Truman's Internship in Murder Read online

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  For Zach, Alex, Jake, Luke, Abigail, Sylvan, Ellie, and Gray.

  I’m too young to have this many grandchildren.

  PROLOGUE

  ROCK CREEK PARK, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Washington, D.C., had been good to Capac Lopez. Since arriving twelve years ago from Peru, he’d found the ethnically diverse city a fertile ground for realizing his dream of opening a Peruvian restaurant in the United States. He’d been brought up around restaurants. His father owned a popular café in Lima, and Capac had spent much of his youth washing dishes, prepping food, and accompanying his father to the markets in the early morning to choose fresh ingredients for the café’s ambitious menu.

  But at the age of thirty, and with a young wife and infant son, Capac made the wrenching decision to leave his parents and siblings to forge a new life in the United States. Now, eight years after a tearful farewell, he was the proud owner of a thriving restaurant in Washington’s bustling Adams Morgan area of the city.

  It was hard work, leaving Capac little time for recreation. But on many Sunday mornings he indulged in a favorite pastime, an early-morning hike through the woods of Washington’s Rock Creek Park, twenty-one hundred acres that cut through the center of the nation’s capital, America’s oldest natural urban park.

  Being outdoors provided Capac with a sense of freedom. He especially enjoyed the twisting trails in the southernmost section, not far from Adams Morgan and the National Zoo; on some days he could hear the lions roar. On this particular Sunday morning he’d left his house even earlier than usual, arriving at the park as the sun began to rise. It promised to be a lovely day, the city’s notorious humidity having dropped to a more comfortable level, the brightening sky a harbinger of what Capac liked to say would be el día gordo—a fat day.

  Capac loved to breathe in air that was fresher than in the city, observe small animals scurrying about, examine wildflowers, and splash cold, fresh water from streams on his face. Trash left behind by others angered him, and he quietly cursed them in Spanish as he balled up a plastic bag and shoved it in his pocket.

  He was heading home when something—a piece of green cloth?—caught his eye. At first he ignored it; he couldn’t pick up every bit of trash. Whatever it was had been partially obscured by a layer of leaves. After taking a few steps away, he returned and bent over to see better. He used his sneaker to kick away some leaves, revealing more of what had captured his attention. More leaves were wiped away. Now the cloth came into full view. It was one leg of a pair of green slacks. Capac straightened, afraid to go farther. But then, using his hand to brush off the debris, he briskly, desperately allowed dappled sunlight to fall on his discovery.

  It was a body. A woman. Blond. Pretty? Hard to tell considering the shape her face was in.

  Capac turned away and gave up his breakfast to the forest floor.

  * * *

  Homicide detective Jason Ewing had been with the Washington Metropolitan Police Department for eighteen years, one of more than two thousand African-American officers on the force. With him in a conference room at police headquarters on Judiciary Square was the department’s superintendent of detectives, Ezekiel “Zeke” Borgeldt who, after a long career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had been recruited to take over the demoralized and understaffed detective division. The two men, along with Ewing’s partner, Jack Morey, three years as a detective after eleven years in uniform, were meeting to discuss Capac Lopez’s discovery.

  “What do you think?” Ewing was asked by his superior.

  “The conclusion the press and public will come to is that we’ve got a serial killer on our hands,” Ewing said. “This is the second vic in the park in the past three months.”

  “But two homicides don’t add up to serial killings,” Morey put in.

  Borgeldt looked down through half glasses on the tip of his bulbous nose as he read from the report. “This one’s twenty-two years old. The previous one was twenty-seven. No obvious connection between them. The older victim had been reported missing by her husband two months ago. No one reported this new woman missing. The ME is still trying to come up with a name for her and where she came from.”

  “A hooker?” Morey asked.

  “Who knows?” Borgeldt said, sighing. “Amazing how many people disappear and nobody even knows or cares that they’re missing.”

  “Or maybe they’re happy to see them gone,” Morey quipped.

  “Same MO,” Borgeldt said, “same cause of death, blunt force blows to the head, both bodies buried in a shallow grave covered with leaves.”

  “What I don’t get,” said Ewing, “is why whoever killed these women took the time to dig shallow graves. Those areas are popular with hikers, families with kids, lots of people. Sure, the graves are shallow, six inches deep at best, but it takes time to scrape away that much dirt and lay a blanket of leaves over the bodies.”

  Borgeldt pulled photographs from the file and fanned them out on the desk. “The ME estimates that this victim was killed within the past two weeks. Nobody walking in that area saw what this Lopez guy saw?”

  “Hikers aren’t looking for bodies,” Ewing said. “Lopez was pretty far off the path when he discovered her.”

  “You ran a check on him?” Borgeldt asked.

  “Sure,” replied Ewing. “Family man, came here from Peru eight years ago, owns a popular Peruvian restaurant in Adams Morgan. I’ve eaten there a few times. Nice guy. Good food.”

  “What about that Russian guy women were complaining about, the one they say harassed them when they were hiking in the park?” Morey said.

  Borgeldt shrugged. “Wouldn’t hurt to bring him in again for questioning. Pick him up.”

  THE SEDUCTION

  CHAPTER

  1

  THREE MONTHS EARLIER

  DAVIS ISLAND

  TAMPA, FLORIDA

  “I’ll have one of your patented Collins drinks,” Congressman Harold “Hal” Gannon told party host Lucas Bennett.

  “Tom or John?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Bourbon or gin? Tom uses gin, John uses bourbon.”

  The congressman laughed. “Where did Florida’s leading malpractice attorney learn so much about making drinks?”

  “I bartended during law school, got interested in the subtler aspects of it. Besides, if doctors ever stop cutting off the wrong limb or leaving sutures inside patients, I might need a job behind a bar.”

  “Bourbon.”

  “One John Collins coming up. By
the way, I only use Meyer lemons.”

  “As opposed to?”

  “The usual lemons. Meyers have a deeper taste, a hint of orange,” Bennett said as he prepared the drink behind the marble bar top in his posh waterfront home. “They were invented in China. Some guy tried to grow them in California, but his trees had a virus that damn near wiped out every other citrus tree in the state. They eventually figured it out.” He shook the bourbon, freshly squeezed lemon juice, sugar, and ice in a stainless shaker, poured the concoction into a glass, added club soda, garnished it with an orange slice, and handed it to the congressman.

  Gannon took a small sip. “Wonderful,” he said, smacking his lips. “I know some bars in Washington that could use you.”

  “I’ll send my surrogate,” Bennett said as his twenty-two-year-old daughter, Laura, joined him and accepted his embrace.

  “She’s a lot prettier than you are,” Gannon said.

  “Which means she’ll get better tips.”

  Lucas Bennett was a big man in every sense. He was overweight, but the pounds were solidly packed on his six-foot-two frame. His flowing white hair gave him the look of an orator of yore. His ruddy face and ready smile belied a keen legal mind and a killer instinct when engaged in an adversarial situation with another attorney. Hal Gannon had been one of those lawyers who’d once felt the heft of Bennett’s intellect and the sting of his silver tongue.

  But that was before Gannon put his Tampa law practice into mothballs and successfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida’s Fourteenth Congressional District. He was in his fourth term. In an amusing irony, Lucas Bennett, his former opponent in court, had been one of his most generous backers, and Laura had worked as a volunteer on his most recent campaign.

  “Has Laura acquired your skills, Luke, as a—what’s it called?—as a mixologist?”

  “I make a dynamite cosmopolitan,” she said, “and I can pop a cap off a beer bottle in the wink of an eye.”

  Both men laughed as Bennett’s wife, Grace, joined them. “You have to get out from behind the bar, Luke,” she said, “and mingle with our other guests.”

  Grace Bennett was reed-thin but not emaciated. A physical therapist at Tampa General Hospital, she was a workout fanatic, and her sinewy, muscular arms and chiseled face—not an ounce of excess flesh anywhere—testified to a lifetime spent in gyms and lifting paralyzed patients back into wheelchairs.

  “I suppose I should,” her husband said as he rinsed his hands in a small sink and dried them. Before he followed his wife to where their other guests were gathered on an expansive patio that led down to the water and the slip at which their small cabin cruiser was docked, he said to Gannon, “I know I’ve thanked you before for arranging Laura’s internship in your Washington office, Hal, but I’ll say it again.”

  “Looking forward to having her,” Gannon said.

  “Just make sure she doesn’t fall in love with some knee-jerk Democrat,” Bennett said jovially.

  Gannon, a conservative Democrat, said, “Even if he’s a Blue Dog?”

  “Well, that might make a difference,” said Bennett. “Enjoy your drink Hal. I’ll be back in a few minutes to whip up another round.”

  Gannon’s reference to Blue Dogs reflected his leadership in the House of Representatives’ band of right-leaning Democrats who often sided with their Republican counterparts. They’d taken the name Blue Dogs to mock the Yellow Dog Democrats of the early 1900s who were branded with the nickname because it was said that they would vote for anything, even a yellow dog, rather than a Republican.

  Gannon and Laura watched the Bennetts go through open French doors to the terrace.

  “Your folks are great,” Gannon said, placing his barely touched drink on the bar.

  “You aren’t drinking this?” Laura asked, picking up the glass.

  “I don’t drink much, just an occasional social sip. Didn’t want to offend your dad.”

  Laura took a healthy swig and smacked her lips. “Yummy.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Congressman Hal Gannon would be considered handsome by any standard. He had a shock of unruly black hair that defied taming, which could also be said about his earlier bachelor days in Tampa. He topped six feet in height, and even beneath his red-and-blue-striped sport shirt you could see that he was physically fit. Like Grace Bennett, Gannon was no stranger to gyms, both when he was home in Tampa and when in Congress, where he took full advantage of the House’s workout facilities. His jaw was square, his green eyes probing, mouth always on the verge of breaking into a boyish grin. The Washingtonian magazine had named him one of the House of Representatives’ handsomest men.

  “Looking forward to coming to work for me?” he asked Laura, who took another sip of the drink.

  “Are you sure I’ll be working for you?” she said playfully. “When you work for someone, you usually get paid.”

  “We have rules about that in the House,” he countered, “but maybe I can squeeze something out of the budget—if you’re good.”

  “Good at what?” she asked, raising a nicely shaped eyebrow.

  “Hal!”

  Gannon looked through the open doors to where his wife, Charlene, waved at him.

  “I’m being summoned,” he said.

  “Your wife is so beautiful,” Laura said.

  “She is, isn’t she? Looking forward to when you arrive in D.C. The housing service landed you a prime spot, a two-bedroom on Capitol Hill, only a few blocks from the office, lots of space for you and your roommate. Roseann, my chief of staff, will help get you settled. Ace those final few exams before you come. I like my interns to be achievers and…”

  “And?” she said playfully.

  He shrugged. “Available, I suppose. Excuse me. See you in a month, Laura.” He hesitated, came forward, kissed her cheek, and joined his wife.

  Laura finished the drink her father had made for Gannon and placed it on a tray of dirty glasses behind the bar. She took in her image in the back-bar mirror. She was her mother’s daughter, albeit more fleshy, more womanly. Her legs were long, her waist narrow. Unlike her mother, her bosom was large and amply occupied her pink silk blouse, its top buttons undone to reveal some cleavage. Both mother and daughter were brunettes, although Laura’s hair had more of a copper tint to it; she wore it loose and shoulder length.

  She turned her attention to the terrace, where what someone had said generated gales of laughter. It was a money crowd. Social gatherings at the house were always attended by her parents’ wealthy friends, and Laura knew that she was fortunate to have been born into the Bennett family. She’d never wanted for anything and had been blatantly spoiled. She was in her senior year at the University of Southern Florida, majoring in health administration in its College of Public Health. She hadn’t chosen that major. She would have preferred something more artistic, like acting or painting. But her father had convinced her that she should graduate with a usable degree, which wouldn’t preclude her from pursuing artistic endeavors on the side. Law school? That’s what Lucas Bennett really wanted for his only child.

  Laura’s attention went to Charlene Gannon, the congressman’s wife. No doubt about it, Charlene was a stunning woman—silver-blond hair, lovely figure, and perfectly painted oval face. She and her husband made a picture book couple. The media, always on the hunt for juicy stories about elected officials, pounced on every aspect of the Gannons’ private life, focusing most recently on the fact that Charlene spent little time in D.C. with her husband.

  “Why would anyone choose to run for office and open himself to such public scrutiny?” Laura once questioned her father after reading that the public’s view of members of Congress ranked only slightly higher than serial rapists and below identity thieves.

  “Ego,” he replied, “pure, unadulterated ego.”

  Hal Gannon certainly had such an ego. Maybe “self-assuredness” was a better term. Laura smiled as she watched him break into a contagious
laugh at something a woman said. If anyone had the right to be self-assured, she decided as she went to the patio and joined in the spirited conversation, it was Hal Gannon, successful attorney, popular member of the U.S. Congress, and movie-star handsome.

  A real hunk.

  In a month she would be leaving Tampa for Washington to become an intern in his office. Growing up in the opulence of the Bennett family had been wonderful, as carefully measured and nurtured as her father’s favorite drink recipes.

  But it was time to taste something new.

  She couldn’t wait.

  CHAPTER

  2

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Mackensie Smith had come full circle.

  He’d been one of Washington’s top criminal lawyers, a go-to guy when a case seemed hopeless. But after losing a son and his first wife to a drunk driver on the Beltway—and seeing the drunk get off with what Smith considered a slap on the wrist—he closed his office and accepted a professorship at the George Washington University School of Law, where he’d taught fledgling attorneys about the real world of law.

  While his stint in academia had been satisfying, the call of the courtroom became too loud to ignore. After many long discussions with his wife, Annabel Reed-Smith—herself a former attorney, now owner of a pre-Columbian art gallery in Georgetown—and with her less-than-enthusiastic blessing, he resigned his post at the university and put out his shingle again: MACKENSIE SMITH, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW.

  He’d spent most of the day taking depositions in a case involving the allegation that his client, a prosperous businessman, had bribed a government official in return for a lucrative contract. Mac was in the midst of reading the stenographer’s transcript when his receptionist informed him that Mr. Brixton wanted to see him.

  “Send him in, Doris.”

  How’s my favorite private investigator?” Smith asked as Brixton entered the spacious office on Pennsylvania Avenue.