Margaret Truman's Undiplomatic Murder Read online

  “Oh, no,” Marylee wailed.”Do you think she was with him when the bomb went off?”

  “I don’t know. From what I’ve heard, he wasn’t inside the café when it happened. So she must not have been with him.”

  “Please, God, let that be true. I’ll try some other numbers. Maybe somebody will know. If you hear from her, call me right away.”

  * * *

  The CNN broadcast was also watched by Mackensie and Annabel Smith at their Watergate apartment. They’d befriended Brixton a year earlier when he’d come to Washington while working a case as a private investigator from Savannah, Georgia.

  Mac Smith had been a top criminal attorney in D.C. until a drunken motorist ran into the car driven by his wife and only child and killed them both. When the drunk driver was given what Smith considered a slap on the wrist by the trial judge, Mac soured on representing criminals, closed his practice, and accepted a post as law professor at George Washington University.

  Annabel had been a Washington attorney specializing in matrimonial law. After years of dealing with irrational, squabbling spouses for whom the children’s interests took a backseat, she took down her shingle and pursued what had been a lifelong passion, pre-Columbian art, opening a Georgetown gallery, which prospered under her ownership. Following their marriage at the National Cathedral, they’d settled into the apartment in the Watergate complex with splendid views of the Potomac and beyond, and reveled in having found each other. Their names were on many A-lists in a city where such lists are currency, but they pledged to be judicious in which invitations they accepted. They might have fallen in love with each other but did not share the same affection for “official” Washington.

  “There were two people involved,” Mac said to Annabel, “at least according to this report.”

  “And Robert shot the second person,” Annabel said. “They said that he escaped serious injuries.”

  “Fortunately. I’m going to call his apartment and leave a message on his answering machine.”

  “Is there someone at GW Hospital you can call?” she asked.

  “Yeah, there is. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  * * *

  Also watching CNN with great interest was Willis Sayers, Washington bureau chief of the Savannah Morning News. He and Brixton had met while both lived and worked in Savannah during the period when Brixton was a detective and Sayers worked local news, especially the crime beat. The bombing in the café would, of course, be front-page news in every newspaper in the country, but Brixton’s apparent involvement gave Sayers a local Savannah angle. He corralled a freelance photographer who did work for the paper, and they headed for the hospital, hoping to get an exclusive interview.

  * * *

  In New York, Flo Combes, Brixton’s significant other while they lived in Savannah, breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the announcer indicate that Brixton had survived the suicide bombing. Leave it to Robert to be where a bomb goes off, she told herself as she called his Washington phone number and left a message.

  * * *

  While others in Brixton’s circle reacted to the steady stream of news about the bombing, he was wheeled back to the private examination room, where the FBI special agents and local MPD authorities awaited his return. Donna Salvos, Brixton’s partner at SITQUAL, dreaded seeing him again. There was no record of Brixton’s daughter having been admitted to GW or to the other hospitals that were tending to the victims, which could only mean that she hadn’t survived the bombing. Those in the room had been joined by Mike Kogan, Brixton’s and Salvos’s boss at SITQUAL. Kogan had worked with Brixton during the latter’s four years as a Washington cop, and while Brixton’s tendency to do things his own stubborn way had perplexed, even angered Kogan on occasion, he recognized in his maverick employee a top-notch investigator—and a guy you’d want at your back in the parking lot when members of a motorcycle gang decided to crack your skull.

  Brixton was no sooner delivered to the room when yet another suit arrived; he introduced himself to the others as Clint Halpern, special assistant for public affairs to the secretary of state. No introduction was needed for Brixton. He’d met Halpern on a few occasions and hadn’t liked him. Halpern was immediately followed by two representatives from the Department of Homeland Security. The cluster of blue suits in the small room was suffocating. “Why the hell are there so many people here?” Brixton growled.

  “Take it easy, Robert,” Kogan said.

  “I’ll take it easy when I’m out of here,” Brixton said. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  When no one replied, he said, “Janet. My daughter Janet.”

  “We don’t have any news yet,” Salvos said.

  Kogan, his head shaved and his body built like an NFL linebacker, leaned closer to Brixton. “I’ve talked to the doctors, Robert. They’re going to take you to a private room, where you’ll stay the night.”

  Brixton sat up. “No, I want out of here.”

  Kogan’s hand on Brixton’s shoulder was firm. “Don’t argue,” he said. “They want to observe you overnight; you suffered a concussion.”

  “Concussion? I’m fine.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by another doctor and two nurses, who asked that everyone leave while they prepared to take Brixton to his private room. He continued his verbal protest, even as he realized that it was a waste of time and words. Followed by the entourage that had assembled, he was wheeled out of the chaotic ER area, taken to an elevator, and a few minutes later arrived in the room that would be his for the night. It was on the top floor of the hospital, and judging from its trappings, it was reserved for VIP patients. It was large, had a sitting area with four black leather chairs, and a private bathroom. As the room filled up with investigators, Brixton was shifted from the gurney into the bed. He looked around at the faces staring down at him. The only difference was that there was more room here for the crowd than the ER treatment room had offered.

  Everyone was asked to leave while a doctor performed an examination, including the wounds on the back of Brixton’s head and neck.

  “It’s not as bad as it looked when you first arrived,” a doctor said. “Should heal up fine.”

  “Then why am I here?”

  “An explosion like the one you’ve experienced could cause a concussion” was the doc’s reply.

  “I don’t have a concussion.”

  “We’ll know better after you’ve had a chance to rest overnight.”

  The examination completed, the doctor and nurse left, and the others who’d been asked to vacate filed back in.

  “Feel up to a few questions, Agent Brixton?” the man from Homeland Security asked through a disingenuous smile.

  Brixton didn’t answer. He muttered to himself, “Just like that. One minute you’re drinking a beer and eating calamari, the next minute you’re blown up by some warped kid who thinks she’s doing something wonderful.”

  “I understand that you left the café just before the explosion,” Homeland Security said.

  Brixton snapped back to the moment. “Yeah, that’s right, I was almost out of there.”

  “You were leaving anyway? You’d finished eating and drinking?”

  “No. I left because I smelled something was wrong.”

  “Wrong? In what way?”

  “What does it matter?” Brixton said. “I don’t know why—a look in the girl’s eyes.”

  “That she was obviously of Middle Eastern background added to your suspicions?”

  “No. Well, maybe. I mean, I don’t go around suspecting every Arab of planning to blow up a café.”

  “No, of course not.” His smile was still there.

  “When the guy left, I had the feeling that something bad was coming down.”

  “But you didn’t do anything,” Homeland Security said.

  Brixton flared. “Do anything? What was I supposed to do, shoot the girl there in the café? Jump up and shout ‘There’s a suicide bomber’? All I thought o
f at the moment was to get my daughter out of there and…” His voice trailed off and he looked away.

  The representatives from the various government agencies were in and out of the room over the next hour. Brixton could see them huddled in the hallway, where two uniformed members of the Washington MPD had taken up positions in chairs on either side of the doorway. At one point only Donna Salvos and Mike Kogan were with Brixton.

  “What’s going on?” Brixton asked.

  “They’re trying to handle inquiries from a dozen sources,” Kogan answered. “The press is camped outside the hospital trying to get a handle on the number of dead and injured. That friend of yours, Sayers, sent in a note asking to see you.”

  “Will? I don’t want to see anybody,” Brixton said.

  “And you don’t have to,” Kogan said. He managed a small laugh. “Not that you’d be allowed to talk to anyone, including the press—especially the press—until you’re cleared.”

  “Cleared? By who?”

  “Homeland Security, DSS, the MPD, FBI—you name it, Robert. The way it’s falling, you’re the only eyewitness to the bombing who’s alive to offer something tangible about it. And there’s the guy you shot.”

  “What about him? Who is he? Who put him up to it? Who brainwashed him and the girl to do what they did?”

  “That’s being investigated,” said Kogan. He checked Donna’s reaction before continuing. She said nothing, simply turned away and looked out the window at the city’s lights. “In the meantime,” Kogan continued, “they want you secluded in the hospital until the doctors clear you to leave. You might as well use the time here to rest up. There’ll be a million questions for you once you’re discharged.”

  “And what if I don’t want to answer them? All I care about is that beautiful daughter of mine who died at the hands of those bastards.” He looked at Salvos, hoping that she’d contradict him. When she didn’t he struggled to keep from breaking down.

  “Why don’t you try and get some sleep,” Kogan suggested, and nodded to Donna that they should leave. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

  Brixton watched them go. The profound sadness he’d felt about Janet was now accompanied by an intense rage at those who’d killed her and so many other innocents. He thought of the young man he’d shot in the alley and desperately wished he were alive so that he could confront him, question him, beat him up if necessary to try to make sense out of why he and his girlfriend would have done what they did.

  As Kogan and Donna Salvos waited for the elevator, they were approached by the lead MPD detective who’d been dispatched to provide security for Brixton and to keep him from being approached by anyone other than authorities.

  “Just thought you’d want to know that we’ve got the ID on the guy your agent shot,” the detective said.

  Kogan and Donna waited for him to elaborate.

  The detective consulted a slip of paper. “Name’s Paul Skaggs, age twenty-two.”

  “Any relation to Congressman Skaggs?” Kogan asked.

  “Yeah, I’d say so. He’s the congressman’s son. By the way, he wasn’t armed. The only thing he had was a cell phone in a silver case.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  Suicide Bombing Stuns D.C.

  17 Dead, Scores Injured

  Congressman Skaggs’s Son Shot: Possible Second Bomber?

  That was The Washington Post front-page headline that confronted Brixton the next morning as he prepared to leave the hospital.

  “Skaggs’s son?” Brixton said aloud. “That’s who I shot?”

  He quickly scanned the long article. While most of it focused on the café bombing and its victims—those who survived were in critical condition at local hospitals—he got to the section about the shooting.

  Details are sketchy, but sources have told this writer that a security agent for the State Department, who was in the café at the time of the blast, accosted a young man the agent alleges was with the suicide bomber just minutes before she detonated the explosives. We have been able to confirm that the victim of the shooting was Paul Skaggs, the son of Congressman Walter Skaggs. Witnesses say that the agent, Robert Brixton, followed the younger Skaggs into a nearby alley and shot him dead. Attempts to contact Brixton have been unsuccessful. He is reported to have been taken to George Washington University Hospital to be treated for injuries he incurred in the bombing. It has been further reported that Brixton might have been with a family member in the café at the time of the incident.

  The doctor assigned to his case entered the room just as Brixton finished reading The Post’s coverage.

  “How are you feeling?” Brixton was asked.

  “I just want out of here.”

  The young doctor examined Brixton, including running him through a cursory series of questions to determine whether he was suffering any latent effects of the explosion. He evidently passed, because the doctor, who appeared to Brixton to be too young to have an MD after his name, gave him a prescription for pain meds, urged him to rest for a week, and said, “Lots of luck, Mr. Brixton.”

  Donna Salvos arrived as the doctor was writing up Brixton’s discharge papers. She was followed by Kogan, Brixton’s boss at SITQUAL; the State Department’s Clint Halpern; two FBI agents; a Homeland Security Department representative; and a new face, a stern, young, prematurely balding man from the CIA who didn’t bother giving his name. Salvos noticed the morning paper with its telling headline.

  “You’ve read it?” she asked.

  Brixton grunted. “Yeah, I’ve read it, full of the usual ‘allege’s. The Skaggs kid was there in the café, Donna. I’m not alleging that he was there. He was there.”

  One of the FBI agents took the newspaper from where it had been tossed on the bed and put it in his briefcase. “Time to go,” he said.

  Brixton and his entourage were taken downstairs in a service elevator, walked through a series of underground tunnels, and emerged through a back door leading to a loading dock, where a black limousine with tinted windows waited, its engine running. A marked MPD patrol car blocked access to the area for other vehicles.

  Brixton said nothing during the short drive to his Capitol Hill apartment. The dread and sadness over Janet’s death had firmly set in during his sleepless night in the hospital room. No matter how hard he tried, he could not replace the vision of her laughing face with something less painful. Sometimes the picture was of her as a small child getting into mischief, pulling the cat’s tail or dumping salt into the sugar canister. At other times it was her sitting next to him in the café trying to sell him on the cockamamy idea of her latest boyfriend. Once, his mental projection screen showed a close-up of her pierced lip, and he had to bite his own lip to not weep.

  But Janet wasn’t the only visual that had kept him awake. There was the young girl of Arabic origins looking fearful as her companion sipped lemonade and prepared to leave her to commit mass murder of seventeen innocent people, including two children, according to news reports. And there was her coconspirator, a smirk on his face as he watched from afar the pain he and the girl had inflicted on so many. When those images flashed in Brixton’s mind, he swore under his breath, fists clenched, eyes squeezed shut against the rage that consumed him.

  Several times he had considered getting up and sneaking out of the room and the hospital. But he knew that he’d never get past the two uniformed officers flanking his doorway. He felt helpless—helpless to save his daughter and helpless to find out more about the people who’d slaughtered her.

  There were people on the street when the limo pulled up in front of Brixton’s building. Some were from the neighborhood, who’d learned about their now-infamous neighbor and were waiting for his homecoming. They were joined by reporters and a TV camera crew who were also there for the homecoming but with a job to do. The neighbors said nothing as the vehicle’s occupants piled out and walked quickly toward the entrance. The reporters shouted questions, which Brixton ignored. He kept his e
yes straight ahead as they took the elevator to his floor, where he unlocked the door and stepped inside. A telephone answering machine’s red light blinked, accompanied by a series of beeps. Brixton went directly to it but was stopped by one of the FBI special agents.

  “I can’t listen to my calls?” Brixton growled. “My dead daughter’s mother might have called. So might a lot of other people I want to talk to.”

  “No, go ahead,” the agent said, pulling up a chair beside the small desk that held the machine and taking out a pad of paper and a pen. Brixton glared at him, to no effect. He pulled his own chair close and punched the button to listen to the nine messages.

  Calls from Mac Smith and Will Sayers were duly noted. Sayers called a second time urging Brixton to call back: “Your involvement will be big news back in your favorite city,” he said, snidely referring to the fact that Brixton was never a fan of Savannah, Georgia, where he’d spent twenty years as a cop. “Don’t forget me, pal.”

  Flo Combes’s call from New York touched Brixton. Their breakup had been contentious; some bad feelings lingered. She asked how he was doing, and hoped he wasn’t too badly hurt. “If there’s anything I can do, Robert—”

  It was the two frantic calls from Brixton’s ex-wife, Marylee, that meant the most to him. The first call was made before she knew that Janet had been killed in the blast. The second was pure hysteria. She’d received official word that Janet was among the victims of the bomber, and Marylee could barely talk, sobbing, pleading for word from him, screaming at times, invoking God at others.

  “Satisfied?” Brixton asked the FBI agent, after he’d gone through the calls, which included messages from other reporters besides Will Sayers.

  The agent didn’t respond.

  “Robert,” Mike Kogan said, “everyone here has questions for you. Maybe it’s best that we sit down and get it over with before—”

  “Before what?”

  “Before people without an official capacity get to you.”

  “I have to return some of these calls,” Brixton said.