Capitol Murder (19 page)

“That’s a stretch, Dana. And wasn’t Carson with Dorothy Crispin when Koshani was killed?”

“The medical examiner knows she was killed sometime on Sunday between noon and the early evening, but she can’t pin down an exact time.”

“I know for a fact that Carson didn’t kill Crispin. He was in D.C. Clarence Little is a much better bet for both murders. He’s an engineer, and he made pretty good money. He could afford an upscale escort service. Maybe Crispin was the call girl Executive provided. Maybe there was something Koshani recorded in one of his sessions that could be used to convict him of murder.”

“Good thinking, but I still can’t exclude the possibility that your boss was involved in Koshani’s murder. Do you think you can find a connection between Carson and Koshani? Maybe she gave him campaign contributions personally or through her businesses.”

“Can’t you get that information from public records?”

“I might, but you may be able to dig around in your office computers for records of back-door contributions.”

“I won’t do it, Dana,” Brad said firmly. “Senator Carson is my boss, and I’m not going to betray his trust to help you get dirt on him for an article for
Exposed
. I’m surprised you asked me.”

Dana didn’t respond right away. When she did, she sounded contrite.

“Forget I asked. You’re right. I’ll try to get the information some other way.”

“You know I appreciate all you’ve done for me and Ginny . . .”

“Don’t apologize. Working as a vice cop and digging up dirt for Pat Gorman has given me an odd view of humanity. Sometimes I forget that there are people who aren’t sleazy and try to act ethically.”

Brad laughed. “I’m no saint, Dana.”

“You come close, Brad. And you better not change. Say hi to Ginny for me.”

Brad hung up just as his intercom buzzed and the senator’s secretary told him that his boss was ready to discuss the testimony of a witness who was going to appear before the Judiciary Committee in the morning. Brad wondered if there was any way he was going to get through the meeting without imagining United States Senator Jack Carson bound, gagged, and naked.

D
ana Cutler parked in the shadows up the street from Jessica Koshani’s house. She wasn’t worried about being seen in Koshani’s upscale neighborhood. There were no lights on in any of the houses at two in the morning, and the mansions stood well back from the street, surrounded by walls. As soon as Dana got out of the Rover, a frigid wind forced her to pull her watch cap tight over her ears and hunch her shoulders. According to the readout on her dashboard, the air temperature was 39, but that didn’t take the wind-chill factor into account.

Dana jogged down the street. She didn’t see any lights in Koshani’s house. When she was a few feet from the gate that guarded the property, she noticed a keypad. Bummer. She eyeballed the wall on either side of the gate to gauge whether she could scale it. When she turned her attention to the gate for the same reason, Dana noticed that it was slightly ajar. She breathed a sigh of relief. Dana bet that Portland police officers had been through the house at the request of the D.C. police and had forgotten to close the gate. Dana pushed the gate inward, slipped through the opening, and hurried toward the front door hoping that it, too, was unlocked. It wasn’t.

Dana circled around the back of the villa to a large covered patio. On the other side of a brown winter lawn was the Willamette River, coal black except for the patches of water that reflected lights from homes on the shore. Dana was about to try one of the French doors when she noticed that a pane of glass had been knocked out of the next door. Dana frowned. Would the police break in this way?

Dana reached through the door and opened it. When she walked inside, she found herself in a large living room that looked as though it had been searched. She turned in a slow circle, looking through the debris that littered the expensive Persian rug for DVDs that might star Jack Carson. There was a home theater in the room next to the living room. A bookcase next to the television had been filled with movies that were now scattered across the floor, their cases open with many of the disks beside them. Dana sighed and started going through them anyway, hoping that whoever had come before her had missed something. Twenty minutes later, she decided that the disk wasn’t mixed in with the movie collection.

A search of the downstairs did not turn up more DVDs, and Dana headed upstairs to find the bedroom, the most likely place to find porn. She was afraid to turn on any lights, so she’d brought a heavy police flashlight that could double as a weapon.

The bedroom was dominated by a king-size bed covered by black satin sheets. The first thing that looked interesting was a large flat-screen television that was attached to the wall opposite the bed. Under the TV was a DVD player. Dana turned in place looking for the DVDs and found a cabinet near the bed. She did a knee bend. The cabinet door was open. She played the flashlight beam across the area and around the interior. It was empty. Dana stood up. If the DVD of Carson’s sessions with Dorothy Crispin had been in this cabinet, it was gone now. But who had it? She’d searched enough places when she was with D.C. Vice and Narcotics to know that the police would have no compunctions about trashing the home of a low-level dealer. Members of the upper classes were usually treated more diplomatically. She couldn’t discount a police search, but someone else may have gone through the house looking for the incriminating DVD.

As Dana descended the stairs, she noticed a small oil painting in an ornate gold frame. She didn’t know much about art, but she recognized the work as Impressionist. She checked the signature. It was a Cezanne. She looked at the living room walls and picked out a Warhol. A thought occurred to Dana. If these paintings were the real thing, they were very valuable. A woman who owned a ritzy villa was also going to own expensive jewelry. Factor in the woman’s ties to criminal activity, and you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that she would have a top-of-the-line alarm system.

Dana walked to the front door. The keypad for the alarm was attached to the wall next to the door, but it hadn’t gone off. A green light shone above the numbers on the pad. Koshani would have set the alarm when she flew to D.C. The police would have been able to get the alarm code if they searched at the behest of the D.C. police, but they would have reset the alarm when they left unless the alarm wasn’t on when they arrived. The only conclusion Dana could draw was that the person who had searched the house had the alarm code and the code for the front gate.

How had that person learned the code? The answer that Dana came up with made her queasy. She remembered the torture she’d endured during her kidnapping. If the meth cooks who’d held her had asked for the code to her alarm, she would have given it to them to stop the pain. Jessica Koshani had been tortured methodically. She would have given up her alarm code without much resistance.

Dana left the house empty-handed and drove back to her hotel to pack for her flight to D.C. During the drive, she mulled over what she knew. A few things bothered her, and one of the most troubling questions involved the identity of the person who had taken the DVDs. Did it make sense that Little had them? With every cop in the country looking for him, would he have risked capture to travel to D.C. to get an alarm code from Jessica Koshani? Dana had a hard time believing that Clarence Little was jumping back and forth across the country when he had so much to lose if he was captured. So if Little didn’t break into Koshani’s house, who did?

Part IV

Jihad

Chapter Twenty-seven

V
ery few people know the exact moment of their death. When Ali Bashar woke up Sunday morning, he knew precisely when he would give up the life of the body for a new life in paradise with Allah. Ali and the other members of his cell had spent the week before their martyrdom in seclusion and prayer. They had immersed themselves in spiritual contemplation free of the corrupting influence of television and music. Ali welcomed the silence as he purified himself for his holy mission.

The Sunday Night Football game paired the undefeated Washington Redskins with the New York Giants, their undefeated division rivals. It was being telecast nationally and was also being beamed to American troops in the Middle East. During the first quarter, when the game clock at FedEx Field clicked down from 7:01 to 7:00, Ali and the other members of his cell would detonate their trays in four widely spaced areas of the stadium. The stands would be packed and the devastation would be monumental. Ali’s only regret was that his body would be atomized by the explosion before he could see the massive destruction wrought moments later by the remote-controlled detonation of the four explosive-laden ambulances that would be strategically placed at several points below the stadium.

As soon as he was awake, Ali showered and dressed in clean clothes. Then he prayed and reflected on what he was about to accomplish and how joyful he would be when he met Allah. He had heard that some martyrs ingested drugs or alcohol to steel themselves, but he was repulsed by the idea of meeting Allah while drugged or intoxicated. Far from fearing death, Ali had never been happier. He could only imagine the terror he would create. The Americans cursed terrorists as if being one was a bad thing, but the Koran commanded a good Muslim to bring terror to the enemy. “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies. . . .” With his last breath, Ali would bring horror and devastation to the enemies of Islam that would be remembered for a thousand years.

At three o’clock, Steve’s van arrived. The other members of the cell joined Ali outside. There was a refreshing chill in the air and the sun was shining. Ali took a deep breath and smiled. God had made his last day a good day.

Steve opened the rear door of the van and they piled in. There was total silence during the trip to FedEx Field. When Steve dropped everyone off in the employee parking lot, there was no pep talk. None was needed.

Steve had picked up the members of the cell early so they would be the first to arrive at the stadium. Ali willed himself to be calm as he approached the vendors’ room. Jose welcomed Ali with a smile, and Ali smiled back. Ali’s tray had been brought to the room the day before by Mr. Cooper, and Ali had no trouble finding it because it had a notch in the lid. By arriving first, he had made sure that no one else would take it. Other hawkers came in. He knew a few, but he did not initiate any conversations. When someone spoke to Ali, he was calm and sounded normal when he responded. Then Ann O’Hearn arrived, and his calm deserted him.

Before Ann’s arrival, the events of the day had the quality of a vivid dream, and Ali felt he was watching someone who looked like him go through the steps that would lead to his death and the death of thousands. The moment he saw Ann, Ali had a vision of her golden hair in flames, her eyes wide with horror, and her mouth filled with screams of pain. The barrier his mind had erected between his deed and reality was stripped away. Ali felt light-headed and his stomach rolled.

“Hi, Ali,” Ann said with a wide, welcoming smile.

“Hi, Ann,” he said. It took all of his will to force his smile. “How was your week?”

Ann rattled on about her classes and a movie she’d seen with a friend, but little of what she said registered. Then, mercifully, Ann was distracted by something one of the other vendors said, and he was able to escape.

G
ame time approached and Ali stocked his tray. As he waited to go into the stands, the tension grew, and his cool demeanor began to evaporate. Then it was time to leave. In order to reach his post, Ali had to go in front of Jose’s concession stand. As he passed by Ann, he stopped. She didn’t have any customers at the moment. He knew he should pass her by and say nothing. He knew he should not compromise the mission. But some part of him cared enough for her to make him lean in and say, “I need to speak to you.”

Ann glanced quickly at Jose. He was occupied with a customer. She leaned toward Ali.

“Go home,” he whispered.

“What?” Ann answered, unsure she had heard Ali correctly.

“Say you are sick. Go home.”

Ann laughed. “I can’t go home, Ali. That’s crazy. We’re mobbed. And why should I? I’m not sick.”

Ali didn’t know what to say. There was no way he could explain. Then he was seized by guilt. He was endangering a plan that had taken years to develop. Worse, he was betraying Allah by showing compassion for an infidel, a woman. What was he thinking?

Ali shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he said, forcing a smile. “I’m being foolish.”

Ali turned his back on Ann and left the concession stand. Behind him, Ann shook her head in confusion. Then she returned to the counter. Ali hefted the tray and walked into the stands.

A
li stood on a set of concrete steps surrounded by a sea of screaming fans. The Giants had scored first, but the Redskins were marching toward the Giants’ end zone. Every few seconds, the stands erupted with cheers or moans, and the huge clock on the scoreboard ticked down.

8:01, 8:00, 7:59.

The sky had grown dark, and lights illuminated the field. Ali looked up and felt a breeze caress his face. He smiled as he imagined the sky opening and Allah reaching down for him from paradise, arms spread wide in a welcoming embrace. In less than a minute, he would be enfolded in that embrace, and the infidels’ cries of joy would turn to screams of fear and horror as shrapnel from the exploding tray ripped through them just before the stands crumbled and they fell into a pit of fire.

7:45, 7:44.

The Redskins broke the huddle. The quarterback dropped back. A Giants linebacker broke through and hurtled toward him. Just before he was hit, the quarterback hurled a desperation pass. The receiver was covered by two defenders. They all jumped for the ball, and the Redskin snagged it out of the air before crashing to the ground. The fans went wild. Ali slid aside the slim panels that hid the red buttons. All eyes were on the field, and no one noticed.