Murder on Capitol Hill Page 24

  The girl’s face was caught in a close-up, and the combination of resignation and fear was now even more evident to Lydia. Jimmye’s words about punishment had brought Lydia to the edge of her chair. She was like someone appalled at the thought of seeing an impending disaster, yet not able to take her eyes from it. She glanced up at Christa, who sat motionless, her face empty of expression.

  The four young men surrounding the girl moved closer until she was literally pressed between their bodies. One of them grabbed the neck of her robe and yanked at it. The crowd observing the event had become dead still. Now the chant rose up again from its midst, an eerie cacophony that put goose bumps on Lydia’s arms and neck. She watched as the young men stepped back and completed the act of disrobing the young girl. She now stood naked. Lydia felt outraged, sickened. Then Mark Adam Caldwell stepped into the frame and sharply struck the girl in the face. The blow knocked her to the ground. He pulled the girl to her feet by her hair and hit her again. And again. The cameraman stepped closer and caught the sickening action. The tape recorder picked up her cries that cut through the monotonous din of the chant.

  Eventually Mark Adam stepped out of camera range. The girl appeared to be unconscious. She was on the ground, her legs askew, her head turned to one side. Blood trickled from her mouth.

  “My God,” Lydia said.

  Jimmye’s voice came through the speakers. “It was not the intention of those who ordered the punishment you have just seen that the victim die. But that is what happened on this day. For whatever supposed transgressions she had committed against the cult to whom she had dedicated her life, she was to be punished at the hand of a fellow cult member. It was to be an object lesson for others tempted to stray from their commitment. It did not work out that way.

  “Why was such a film made? One might ask the same thing about why tapes were recorded in the White House when the Watergate cover-up was being discussed. It’s difficult to ever evaluate the motivations of people in high places, in positions of authority. In this case it seems the film was made as a permanent document to be shown to members of the cult… not, surely, potential members… as a warning not to falter in their commitment.”

  The film ended. Jimmye McNab appeared on the screen. “How I became the owner of this film is irrelevant. The important thing is that you, the viewer, will now hopefully have a better understanding of the insidious hold such organizations maintain over so many young people…”

  She turned then to Mark Adam Caldwell. “Why did you agree to inflict the punishment on her, Mark?”

  His eyes remained fixed on some unseen object, just as they’d been when Lydia had visited him. He said in a flat, emotionless voice, “She’d sinned against our Father. It was right that I carry out his wishes.”

  “Who told you to do it, Mark?”

  “Our Savior,” he replied, still visually ignoring the fact that she was sitting next to him.

  “You didn’t mean to kill her, did you?”

  “She died for her sins.”

  “But you didn’t mean to kill her.”

  “She was evil. Satan had possessed her.”

  Lydia remembered what Mark had said about Jimmye McNab during her conversation with him at the center. He’d branded her as a woman who had sinned and whose death was justified.

  Jimmye finished her commentary and the screen went black, leaving Lydia in near-darkness, though she could see Christa get up from behind the console, go to a videotape machine and rewind the tape. The horror of the killing, accident or no, left Lydia wrung out. What did it have to do with Senator Cale Caldwell’s murder? Certainly Jimmye might have been murdered by members of the cult who knew she’d come into possession of their tape. God knew, it was damaging, legally and otherwise. Murder to suppress it would not be unthinkable.

  But Senator Caldwell? Did he know about the tape showing his son murdering a young girl? If so, who would want to kill him because he had that knowledge? Hughes? Hardly. Christa may have been right that Hughes did it out of jealousy, but the cult was at least as likely. And was Mark Adam the cult’s agent, as he had been in the punishment of the girl in the film? Maybe his compassion was legitimate after all. Maybe…

  Lydia’s thoughts were interrupted as Christa walked into the studio, sat down in the matching orange chair and handed her the reel of tape. “Jimmye used the tape to blackmail the Caldwell family. Later, I believe Quentin did too. Pretty, isn’t it…”

  Lydia looked at Christa. “It’s hard to believe that. Jimmye was brought up with all the love and care that a natural daughter could ever expect. To turn on those people who’d been so good to her…”

  Christa closed her eyes, hunched her shoulders. “Jimmye McNab was driven with ambition. Even Quentin understood that. He told me. When he found out that she was pregnant by Senator Caldwell, he went crazy. That’s why he killed her, and like I said, I can only assume that jealousy was his reason for killing Senator Caldwell—”

  Lydia shook her head.

  “What does this have to do with the tape?”

  Instead of Christa’s voice answering, a male voice said from behind them, “I’d say it has a good deal to do with it.”

  Both women turned. Lydia found the voice familiar but couldn’t quite identify it. The man stepped from the shadows of the corner of the studio into the dim light. Cale Caldwell…?

  “Cale? What are you doing here? And what do you mean,” Lydia got up from her chair and took a few steps toward him.

  “Sit down, Lydia,” he said.

  Lydia looked hard at him, then went back to her chair. Cale came around in front of her and stood next to one of the video cameras. “Give me the tape, Lydia. After all, it involves my poor brother—”

  “You’ve seen it?” Lydia asked as she reluctantly gave it to him.

  “I never had to. It was described to me in detail.”

  “Who described it?” Lydia asked.

  “Jimmye, of course. She’d been holding it over our heads ever since she made it. Our wonderful so-called sister turned out to be neither wonderful nor a sister… she was a blackmailer who victimized our family from the first day she came to my mother and told her that if she didn’t receive large sums of money regularly, she’d make the tape public.”

  Lydia looked at Christa. “Quentin had the tape…”

  “After Jimmye was murdered, Quentin ended up with it. I suppose he took it from her the night he killed her.”

  Lydia turned to Cale. “Did Hughes blackmail you after Jimmye’s death?”

  “In a sense,” he said wearily. He leaned against the camera. “Hughes never directly asked us for money, but just knowing the tape existed and what was on it was enough to keep going the potential destruction of the family. Hughes told my father he had the tape, never mind how… It was more frustrating dealing with him having it than Jimmye—at least with her there was an ongoing transaction to focus on. Not with Hughes. He seemed happy to taunt my father with it. He’d call him at odd times just to remind him that it existed. In fact, he brought it up just before the interview he taped with my father at this station. They actually scuffled, I was told. No, Quentin Hughes never asked for money from us. He asked, or rather extracted, much more.”

  Keep him talking, Lydia told herself. Cale had obviously been under intense pressure for a long time. Finally talking about it in a darkened television studio was a relief he seemed to need very badly. Maybe he’d say more than he intended. Keep him talking…

  Lydia shifted in her chair, out of the corner of her eye noticed what Christa had called the remote panel. Casually she moved her right hand to it and in the dim light managed to use five fingers to press down on buttons that activated silent solenoid switches without being detected by Cale. She had no firm idea what would happen from pressing the buttons, all she could do was hope they’d activate a recording. She waited. No flashing lights, no whirring spools, nothing…

  “Cale, how did you get into the studio?”

 
“When you’re the son of a United States senator, both dead and alive, you go pretty much anywhere you please. Jewel telephoned Mother at the center, I headed here. I told the security guard who I was and that I was meeting Quentin Hughes on a personal matter. He wanted to call Quentin and confirm it but I told him that it was of a very delicate nature and that Mr. Hughes would not want anyone in the station to know about our getting together. He waved me through. That’s the problem with security, it depends on people.”

  “Are you aware of Miss Jones’s claim that Hughes killed Jimmye and your father?”

  Cale shook his head. “The important thing, Lydia, is that Jimmye is dead. My father, unfortunately, couldn’t do anything to stop her. He was far more effective on the Senate floor than in real life. He met with her, tried to reason with her. And ended up sleeping with her. Made her pregnant, of all things. How’s that for messing up a mess. You can imagine what it did to Mother when Jimmye told her that she was carrying Dad’s child… and it wasn’t so much that my father had slept with another woman, Lydia. We’d become quite accustomed to that. Of all of us, it bothered my brother the most. In fact, my father’s weakness for the opposite sex had a great deal to do with pushing Mark Adam toward the cult. In his sad mixed-up view of life, he felt he had to atone for the sins of his father.”

  Lydia tried to sort out what she was hearing… she was hardly naive, but somehow the image of Senator Cale Caldwell being a womanizer was not easy for her to accept. She felt sorry for Veronica Caldwell. It must have been excruciating for her to keep up the front…

  She glanced at Christa, then said to Cale, “I take it from what you’ve said that you don’t believe Hughes killed Jimmye and your father. But Quentin did meet with Jimmye the night of her murder, was apparently terribly jealous of her affair with your father, not to mention that she’d become pregnant by him—”

  “I didn’t realize that you knew about Jimmye and my father, Lydia. You’d asked me about it, but I figured you were only responding to rumors and that my denial was enough to put them to rest.”

  “Well, I didn’t know for sure until tonight, but now that you’ve confirmed it, it raises other questions.”

  “Such as?”

  “Who did kill Jimmye?”

  “My brother, sad to say. He’s confessed to it, and—”

  “I’ve just never been able to believe that Mark Adam killed Jimmye, or your father. Even though I realize he hated them both…”

  Cale sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “That’s too bad, but it’s the truth. Lydia, Mother and I assumed you would accept that. Mother apparently assumed too much about you, including the way you would conduct yourself as special counsel to the committee investigating my father’s murder.”

  “Did she really think I would simply go through the motions? And why push for a committee at all?”

  He stepped away from the camera and his voice took on new strength, a kind of genuine urgency. “So that everything could be finally put to rest, Lydia, so that what’s left of this marvelous family could get on with the important work it was put on this earth to accomplish. Have you any idea of the hell Mother and I have gone through because of the pathetic weakness of my brother, and father? Can you count the sleepless nights, of tears, the fear of exposure and disgrace? It was my father’s responsibility to put his own house in order. God, how my mother pleaded with him. She expected him to stand up and protect us. Well, he wasn’t capable of it, Lydia, never was. It was all left up to Mother to protect the Caldwell name against people who would destroy us by their indiscretions, or their greed and ambition.”

  “You mean Jimmye…”

  “Yes, damn it, I mean Jimmye. She got hold of that film and persuaded Mark Adam to be interviewed about it. Not so hard, considering their relationship. After that she held it over our heads. We weren’t the only people she blackmailed because of that tape, Lydia. She took from us, and from the cult. She was a taker. There was no reasoning with her. Nothing worked. I talked with her a few times and she laughed at me. I suspect she must have laughed at my father too, especially after he not only failed to persuade her to stop blackmailing us but ended up making love to her. I’m a lawyer, but if there was ever a person on this earth who deserved to leave it, it was Jimmye McNab, my dear and unlamented nonsister.”

  Christa, who’d said nothing through it all, broke her silence. “Maybe he didn’t do it?”

  “No, of course Hughes didn’t kill Jimmye,” Cale said.

  Lydia looked directly at him. “Did you kill her?”

  Cale stared at her. “Don’t be ridiculous, Lydia. But for the record, being a lawyer and since a lawyer has asked, no.”

  “Did your brother? I know he’s confessed, but—”

  “Yes, he’s confessed. Lydia, not to seem cold-blooded, but the important thing is that he finally will be making a contribution to his family that will in some way make up for the pain he caused it by joining the cult and killing that young girl, in front of a movie camera, God help him. Anyway, I’ll get him off on an insanity plea and that will finish it.”

  Lydia swiveled in her chair as though looking for someone to share what she was thinking and feeling. Mark Adam Caldwell, it seemed pretty clear now, was being sacrificed to save someone else. And his own brother knew it… “Cale, how could you possibly allow your brother to confess to murders he didn’t commit? You talk about this wonderful family of yours, yet the remaining members of it, you and your mother, are willing to identify flesh and blood as a killer? Who are you protecting? Who will benefit from your brother’s confession?”

  “I didn’t say he didn’t commit the murders. You did. But to answer your question… the Caldwell name.”

  “And who was used to protect that name, Cale?” And then it hit her… “Jason DeFlaunce? Loyal, faithful Jason…?” It was logical but still a shot in the dark… or rather the dawn…

  “An interesting notion, Lydia. Jason is very loyal to my mother and to the Caldwell tradition. But why must you ask so many questions? From the beginning you’ve refused to understand what was really important about investigating my father’s death. He was about to hurt us all by telling what he knew about Jimmye and my brother, about how she died. Pregnant with his child. His reasons weren’t the same as Jimmye’s but they were just as dangerous. He knew he was dying of cancer… I suspect you’ve found that out by now… and suddenly he was filled with a rush of lofty ideals, with a need to purge himself, to set the record straight, the way he claimed to do in campaign speeches. He was such a damned fool, Lydia, so proper and upstanding to everyone except those who most deserved the best from him.”

  “You’re referring to the letter he wrote, aren’t you?” Lydia said.

  “Still probing, Lydia, still trying to involve yourself in something that’s truly none of your business. All right, yes, there was a letter. Not anymore, thank God, because Mother came across it in his study before he could deliver it to Dr. Clemow. It was quite a letter, Lydia. It would have fed you and people like you enough destructive scandal about the Caldwell family to satisfy appetites for years to come. When he discovered that Mother had the letter he became irrational, threatened to tell the contents of it to his friends, even the press. We couldn’t allow that to happen. It would have destroyed this family… surely you can understand that…”

  “And so to protect the good Caldwell name, you and your mother used good old Jason.”

  Cale looked at both women carefully. Carefully weighed his mother’s and his word… the Caldwell word… against the possibility of a court believing one very upset woman and one confused lady lawyer, more a female out of her depths than a credible professional. He liked the odds… overwhelming in his favor. And what a relief to tell it, and without substantive fear of the consequences… “Well, Lydia, I won’t say you’re wrong.

  “You know, it’s ironic, the tape brought the cult and the Caldwell family into a bizarre alliance. We were both threatened by it and worked togethe
r to find it. Eventually Mother convinced Jimmye… or thought she had… to turn it over to us for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But when Jason met Jimmye, she demanded the money and said she’d destroyed the tape. Considering the source, that was hardly credible. Jason properly acted on his own initiative.”

  “And Hughes…?” Lydia asked, exhilarated and disgusted at the same time, leading him on now, but not wanting to press too hard and risk shutting him up.

  “We waited for Hughes to pick up the blackmail where Jimmye had left off. Talk about your sword of Damocles…”

  Lydia turned to Christa. “Why did Jimmye give Quentin the tape, Christa, and what did he actually intend to do with it? Apparently he never directly asked for money.”

  “I guess Jimmye was afraid for her life… I mean from the cult. And she trusted Quentin to do what she wanted no matter what. She was right. And for him the tape meant a lot of things… a hedge against failure—for all his macho act he’s the most insecure man I’ve ever known. A day hardly passes that he isn’t convinced his career, which is his life, will collapse around him.”

  “What else did it mean?”

  “Most of all I think it was a reminder of Jimmye.” She forced a grim smile. “Instead of a wallet photograph of a lost love, he had Jimmye on tape, moving, talking, almost alive.” She paused, then said, “And the tape gave Quentin a way to work out his hatred of Senator Caldwell. It was a hatred that could easily have led to killing the object of that hatred. I thought it had.”

  She was on the edge of tears, took a deep breath, tried to compose herself. “Anyway, I knew that taking that tape would hurt him, and that’s what I wanted. I was hurt and angry, I wanted him to be.”

  Lydia put her arm over Christa’s shoulder and held her for a few moments, then looked at Cale. “Your brother isn’t the only sick one, Cale. You’ll never get away with this. Now there are two of us who know that Jason killed your father and Jimmye on behalf of you and your mother. What do you do now, kill us, or have Jason do it? And then do you get rid of Jason? And you a lawyer… God…” She felt far less brave than she sounded. Take it easy, she told herself… you’ve drawn him out… don’t provoke him…