Lethal Attraction: Against the Rules\Fatal Affair Read online

  “I don’t have all the details, but from what I’ve been told so far, it appears he was dismembered and stabbed through the neck. Apparently, his chief of staff found him.”

  “Nick,” she said softly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nick Cappuano is O’Connor’s chief of staff.”

  “You know him?”

  “Knew him. Years ago,” she added, surprised and unsettled to discover the memory of him still had power over her, that just the sound of his name rolling off her lips could make her heart race.

  “I’m assigning the case to you.”

  Surprised at being thrust so forcefully back into the real work she had craved since her return to duty, she couldn’t help but ask, “Why me?”

  “Because you need this, and so do I. We both need a win.”

  The press had been relentless in its criticism of him, of her, of the department, but to hear him acknowledge it made her ache. Her father had come up through the ranks with Farnsworth, which was probably the number one reason why she still had a job. “Is this a test? Find out who killed the senator and my previous sins are forgiven?”

  He put down his coffee cup and leaned forward, elbows resting on knees. “The only person who needs to forgive you, Sam, is you.”

  Infuriated by the surge of emotion brought on by his softly spoken words, Sam cleared her throat and stood up. “Where does O’Connor live?”

  “The Watergate. Two uniforms are already there. Crime scene is on its way.” He handed her a slip of paper with the address. “I don’t have to tell you that this needs to be handled with the utmost discretion.”

  He also didn’t have to tell her that this was the only chance she’d get at redemption.

  “Won’t the Feds want in on this?”

  “They might, but they don’t have jurisdiction, and they know it. They’ll be breathing down my neck, though, so report directly to me. I want to know everything ten minutes after you do. I’ll smooth it with Stahl,” he added, referring to the lieutenant she usually answered to.

  Heading for the door, she said, “I won’t let you down.”

  “You never have before.”

  With her hand resting on the door handle, she turned back to him. “Are you saying that as the chief of police or as my Uncle Joe?”

  His face lifted into a small but sincere smile. “Both.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Sitting on John’s sofa under the watchful eyes of the two policemen, Nick’s mind raced with the staggering number of things that needed to be done, details to be seen to, people to call. His cell phone rang relentlessly, but he ignored it after deciding he would talk to no one until he had seen John’s parents. Almost twenty years ago they took an instant shine to the hard-luck scholarship student their son brought home from Harvard for a weekend visit and made him part of their family. Nick owed them so much, not the least of which was hearing the news of their son’s death from him if possible.

  He ran his hand through his hair. “How much longer?”

  “Detectives are on their way.”

  Ten minutes later, Nick heard her before he saw her. A flurry of activity and a burst of energy preceded the detectives’ entrance into the apartment. He suppressed a groan. Wasn’t it enough that his friend and boss had been murdered? He had to face her, too? Weren’t there thousands of District cops? Was she really the only one available?

  Sam came into the apartment, oozing authority and competence. In light of her recent troubles, Nick couldn’t believe she had any of either left. “Get some tape across that door,” she ordered one of the officers. “Start a log with a timeline of who got here when. No one comes in or goes out without my okay, got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The patrol sergeant is on his way along with Deputy Chief Conklin and Detective Captain Malone.”

  “Let me know when they get here.” Without so much as a glance in his direction, Nick watched her stalk through the apartment and disappear into the bedroom. Following her, a handsome young detective with bed head nodded to Nick.

  He heard the murmur of voices from the bedroom and saw a camera flash. They emerged fifteen minutes later, both noticeably paler. For some reason, Nick was gratified to know the detectives working the case weren’t so jaded as to be unaffected by what they’d just seen.

  “Start a canvass of the building,” Sam ordered her partner. “Where the hell is crime scene?”

  “Hung up at another homicide,” one of the other officers replied.

  She finally turned to Nick, nothing in her pale blue eyes indicating that she recognized or remembered him. But the fact that she didn’t introduce herself or ask for his name told him she knew exactly who he was. “We’ll need your prints.”

  “They’re on file,” he mumbled. “Congressional background check.”

  She wrote something in the small notebook she tugged from the back pocket of gray, form-fitting pants. There were years on her gorgeous face that hadn’t been there the last time he’d had the opportunity to look closely, and he couldn’t tell if her hair was as long as it used to be since it was twisted into a clip. The curvy body and endless legs hadn’t changed at all.

  “No forced entry,” she noted. “Who has a key?”

  “Who doesn’t have a key?”

  “I’ll need a list. You have a key, I assume.”

  Nick nodded. “That’s how I got in.”

  “Was he seeing anyone?”

  “No one serious, but he had no trouble attracting female companionship.” Nick didn’t add that John’s casual approach to women and sex had been a source of tension between the two men, with Nick fearful that John’s social life would one day lead to political trouble. He hadn’t imagined it might also lead to murder.

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “When he left the office for a dinner meeting with the Virginia Democrats last night. Around six-thirty or so.”

  “Spoke to him?”

  “Around ten when he said he was on his way home.”

  “Alone?”

  “He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”

  “Take me through what happened this morning.”

  He told her about Christina trying to reach John, beginning at seven, and of coming to the apartment expecting to find the senator once again sleeping through his alarm.

  “So this has happened before?”

  “No, he’s never been murdered before.”

  Her expression was anything but amused. “Do you think this is funny, Mr. Cappuano?”

  “Hardly. My best friend is dead, Sergeant. A United States senator has been murdered. There’s nothing funny about that.”

  “Which is why you need to answer the questions and save the droll humor for a more appropriate time.”

  Chastened, Nick said, “He slept through his alarm and ringing telephones at least once, if not twice, a month.”

  “Did he drink?”

  “Socially, but I rarely saw him drunk.”

  “Prescription drugs? Sleeping pills?”

  Nick shook his head. “He was just a very heavy sleeper.”

  “And it fell to his chief of staff to wake him up? There wasn’t anyone else you could send?”

  “The senator valued his privacy. There’ve been occasions when he wasn’t alone, and neither of us felt his love life should be the business of his staff.”

  “But he didn’t care if you knew who he was sleeping with?”

  “He knew he could count on my discretion.” He looked up, unprepared for the punch to the gut that occurred when his eyes met hers. Her unsettled expression made him wonder if she felt it, too. “His parents need to be notified. I’d like to be the one to tell them.”

  Sam studied him for a long moment. “I’ll arrange it. Where are they?”

  “At their farm in Leesburg. It needs to be soon. We’re postponing a vote we worked for months to get to. It’ll be all over the news that something’s up.”

  “What’s the vote for?�€