The Bullet (19 page)

Thirty-seven

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

M
y house on Q Street smelled heavenly.

I moved back to my own home four days after the operation. By then it was obvious to everyone, even my mother, that I was perfectly capable of caring for myself. In my absence, Martin's wife, Laura, had let herself in and scoured the place with Windex and Pledge. The table in my kitchen gleamed. She had vacuumed the carpets, scrubbed the windows, even laundered the sheets and made up my bed. The heavenly scent floated up from vases of flowers that she had arranged in every room. Peonies. The dark pink ones, my favorites. Where on earth had Laura found them in October? I resolved to be nicer to my sister-in-law; I would owe her some serious babysitting time for this.

Dad had also been busy. He had hired a locksmith to install new dead bolts on all the doors, and a glazier to fix the basement window. My bedroom door he had replaced himself, adding a sturdy lock that could be opened only from the inside. He presented me with a new ring of keys and two spare sets, adding that he would be back in the morning, both to look in on me and to meet the electrician.

“The electrician?”

“Thought it might be wise to put in floodlights. At your front door, and around the back of the house. I ordered the motion-­
sensitive kind. Anybody steps within a few feet of the house, it'll trigger them.”

He looked so worried that I put my arms around his waist and kissed him. “Dad. I'll be fine now.”

“Call before you go to bed tonight, let us know you're all right?”

“Promise.”

“And set your burglar alarm.”

I gave a sharp, rueful laugh. “Don't worry.”

After he left, I made another tour of my house, checking every lock, turning on every light. All was in order. There was no trace of last week's nightmarish events.

The doorbell rang as I was climbing up to my bedroom to unpack. I froze. Crept back down the stairs and tiptoed to the front door. Through the peephole I could see only the bald top of a man's head. He was holding something large and shimmery; I couldn't make out what it was.

Ding dong ding dong.

“Who is it?” I called, my voice squeaking with fear, not sure if I could be heard through the locked door.

“FTD. Delivery.”

“Just leave it on the step.”

“Need your signature, ma'am.”

I coughed loudly. “I'm sick.”
Cough.
“Contagious. And, um . . . I don't want the Dobermans to get out.” In addition to my father's security precautions, I was going to go online tonight and order a bunch of those
BEWARE OF GUARD DOG
stickers to slap on every window.

I thought I heard the man sigh. He bent down, and then my peephole view was blocked by the shimmery blob. What
was
that? From the curb came the sound of a car engine starting and pulling away. I waited several seconds, then sneaked into the living room and peeked out the window. No one was on the front step, or anywhere in sight. I yanked the door open to find a huge bouquet of silver balloons, weighted down by a basket stuffed with chocolate. Inside the basket was a note:

For Sweet Caroline

Get well soon and then come see us.

Your Devoted Admirer,

Leland Brett

•   •   •

I WAS SMILING
and carrying the balloons into the living room when I noticed a bag tucked in the corner of the hall. A paper shopping bag, the kind with handles, half-filled with mail. Laura must have tidied up ­everything the postman had pushed through the letter slot this past week.

I dumped the contents on the coffee table. Four catalogs from Pottery Barn, a store where I had never shopped. A coupon for a free entrée on my birthday from Mai Thai, the neighborhood Thai restaurant. Bills from Washington Gas and AT&T. And a thick manila envelope, postmarked Atlanta and mailed five days ago.

I ripped it open. Inside was a handwritten note from Cheral Rooney.

Dear Caroline,

I am writing and hoping this finds you well. I expect you saw my quote in the newspaper, about how much you and S.R. look alike. I enclose the article in case you missed it. I was embarrassed to be interviewed, to tell the truth. My mother always said a lady should only appear in the newspaper three times: when she's born, when she marries, and when she dies. Times change though.

You asked to see a photo. You said you deserved to know the truth, even the bad parts. I went back and forth on whether to send these to you. Then I decided you are right.

Sincerely,

Cheral

P.S. Your mother loved you very much. Don't you ever forget it.

From the envelope I shook a crumpled newspaper clipping and several faded photos. These, small and square, had a wide, white border, the way photographs were printed when I was a child. I picked up the first one and studied it. Blinked.

Standing there, with his arm around Sadie Rawson Smith, was a man I recognized.

Thirty-eight

I
had to squint. I'd only met him the one time.

Ethan Sinclare looked young in the photo, but his features were unmistakable.

The second picture showed Sadie Rawson and a young Cheral, posing in profile with matching pregnancy bumps. The third was the original of Boone and Sadie Rawson flipping burgers at a backyard barbecue, the one that ran in the
Journal-Constitution
in 1979, the one that had brought tears to my eyes two weeks ago, when Jessica Yeo had unearthed it from the archives. It must have been Cheral who provided it to the newspaper in the first place. The last image was blurry and shot from a strange angle, as though the photographer had not wanted to be detected. It showed Sadie Rawson lounging on the sand in a bikini, reading a magazine, her eyes hidden behind huge sunglasses. A few feet away, a deeply tanned man sat watching her. I couldn't swear to it, but it looked like Sinclare.

I fanned out the four photos, the clipping, and Cheral's note on the table.

It didn't make sense.

I fetched a glass of water from the kitchen, then sank back onto the sofa. It took a minute to locate Cheral's phone number.

“Hey, honey, I'm glad to hear from you. Did you get my—”

“You said Sadie Rawson's lover was named Tank.”

“He was.”

“But this photo you mailed me . . . I know this man. His name is Ethan Sinclare.”

“I know that, honey. I told you, Tank was his high school nickname. From the football team. It's what we all called him. I don't know whether he still goes by it. I'm happy to say I haven't seen that psychopath in thirty years. But . . .” She stopped. She seemed to have just processed what I had said. “But, Caroline, did you say you know him?”

“He came to my hotel. In Atlanta. The same week I met you.”

She gasped in horror. “Did he try to hurt you?”

“No! He was nice. He bought me breakfast. He actually—I wouldn't have let him if I'd known—but he picked up the entire bill for my hotel room. Three nights at the St. Regis.”

She grunted. “I didn't say he was poor. I said he was a damn psychopath.”

“Cheral, you must know that the police checked out Sinclare. It wasn't him. Couldn't have been.”

“Sure, sure. Why, because there's no proof that he and Sades were having an affair? And because he had an ironclad alibi?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Those aren't trivial points, Cheral.”

“I gave the police that photo of him ogling her on the beach. He was in love with her, it's totally obvious.”

If she was talking about the picture I now held in my hand, I was not convinced. All it seemed to prove was that he appreciated a woman who could fill out a DD-cup bikini. If every man who fit that description was a killer, I was in trouble.

“The whole alibi thing . . . I don't know how he pulled that off,” she admitted.

“What was his alibi, anyway?”

“He said he was with a client all day. You know he's a prominent lawyer here? At one of the big Atlanta firms?”

“Yes. He told me that.”

“God, I can't believe you
spoke
to Tank. That arrogant, lying
pig
,” spat Cheral. She took a moment to collect herself. “Anyway, his story was that he was in his office downtown, with a client, at the time the murders were committed. The client backed him up. It was . . . What was his name? A banker or something. Some sort of businessman.”

“So, your theory . . . your theory is that they were both lying? Sinclare, and his banker client, too?”

“I don't know. I just know—I
know
this, Caroline—it was Tank Sinclare that killed your mama and daddy.”

Beamer Beasley was right. Cheral's theories sounded harebrained. They wouldn't stand up in court for five minutes. Certainly not against a silver-haired, silver-tongued attorney such as the man she was accusing.

So why was I now sitting here, turning things over in my head, going back over every word I had exchanged over scrambled eggs and sriracha sauce with Ethan Sinclare?

•   •   •

“I'M NOT SURE
how this changes anything,” said Beamer Beasley, when I tracked him down buying waffle fries at a Chick-fil-A on Howell Mill Road. “I mean, I know your mama's ex-neighbor thinks Ethan Sinclare did it. She's been yammering on about it for thirty-four years.”

“I
really
wish you had told me that,” I complained. “All you said was that Sadie Rawson might have had an affair. You never mentioned his name.”

“You never asked,” he barked down the phone line. “Last thing I want to do is drag a respectable man's name through the mud, drag him into Ms. Rooney's loony conspiracy theories. Ethan and Betsy Sinclare are well regarded here. He's on the board of directors of the Alliance Theatre, and the Atlanta Botanical Garden. He organizes an annual golf tournament to benefit veterans, for God's sake. He said he didn't do it. He has an alibi. We checked it out. There is
nothing
to indicate he was at the Smiths' house that day. End of story. Frankly, he was probably out of your mama's league.”

I bridled at this last comment, but held my tongue. “Was he one of the suspects who had a gun?” I demanded instead.

“Was he what?”

“Last week, you told me that back in 1979 you questioned two suspects who owned guns. Was Ethan Sinclare one of the two?”

“Ms. Cashion.” Beasley sounded weary.

“Call me Caroline, for Pete's sake.”

“With your permission, I'll stick with Cashion. Police protocol. To do with respect and professional distance and all that. And to answer your question—”

“Doesn't matter. I think I already know the answer. Do me a favor, though? Check where Sinclare was last Wednesday night. The night my house got broken into.”

Thirty-nine

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2013

M
y mother arrived before nine, bearing lasagna. Two deep pans of it, one sausage and one spinach. What I was in fact craving for breakfast was a
croissant jambon fromage
from Pâtisserie Poupon. If I'd known she was driving over, I would have asked her to pick one up on her way.

I wouldn't have said no to a Vicodin, either. I now regretted having told Dr. Gellert not to bother refilling my painkiller prescription. Last night I had tossed and turned in bed, feeling as though a thousand tiny needles were stabbing my neck. I decided to view this not as a setback, but as a positive development: the numbness must be receding. My skin and nerves were knitting back together. Still. This morning I was tired and sore.

I was also worried. The photos of Ethan Sinclare were unsettling. During the night, as I'd writhed around on my mattress trying to escape the needle-knives, I had homed in on the weirdest part of my breakfast with him. He had denied knowing Sadie Rawson well. He had presented himself as a tennis buddy, closer to Boone. But Cheral Rooney had told me that Ethan and his wife socialized with my birth parents. Even if Cheral was flat wrong about there having been an affair, even if she was loony, as Beasley seemed to think, I'd seen the beach photo myself. Sadie Rawson resplendent in a bikini. There isn't a beach within a
hundred miles of Atlanta; at the very least they'd all taken a weekend trip to the coast together. Why had Sinclare lied?

With supreme effort I put a smile on my face. Mom was burrowed into my freezer, trying to clear space for one of her lasagnas.

“Your freezer's packed to the gills,” she muttered. “What is all this stuff?”

“Here. Let me help.” I squeezed past her and started rearranging Tupperware tubs of chicken soup.

Mom stood watching. All of a sudden, she squealed. “You're using your right hand!”

I looked down in surprise. It was true. I was throwing frozen soup blocks around as though it caused me no trouble at all. Tentatively, I stretched my right arm straight and rotated my wrist in a full circle clockwise. Then counterclockwise. I hadn't been able to do that for more than a year.

Mom and I grinned at each other.

“I'm going to call your father,” she said. “He'll be thrilled.”

I headed upstairs to change out of my pajamas. When I returned twenty minutes later, teeth brushed and hair twisted back in a bun, she was seated on my living-room sofa. Cheral's photos were still spread across the coffee table. My mom had picked one up by the edges and was studying it intently, a strange look on her face.

I thought I understood. Had Mom ever seen a photograph of Sadie Rawson? She must be upset. The resemblance to me was staggering.

She waved the photo at me.

“Mom—”

“Darling,” she said. “I didn't know you knew Ethan.”

Forty

M
y mouth hung open. I thought my legs might buckle. I steadied myself on the arm of the sofa. “What are you talking about?”

“I didn't know you knew Ethan. Such a lovely man.”

“You've
met
him?”

“Of course. We've known Ethan and Betsy for years. We got to know each other at the ABA convention. Let's see, the time it was in Dallas.” The ABA was the American Bar Association. “That must have been . . . goodness . . . sometime in the eighties. Twenty-five or thirty years ago. Ethan was seated next to me at the banquet. Which was a relief, I can tell you, because there are some exceptionally boring lawyers in this country, and I always seem to draw them as my dinner partner at these things.”

I stared at her, my mouth still open.

She seemed delighted that I was so interested. “Ethan was great fun, though. Knowledgeable about the theater. And tennis. He and Betsy would fly over to England for Wimbledon every year. Remember a few summers ago, when Dad and I had tickets for Centre Court? We talked about how fun it would be if we bumped into the Sinclares there. But the week before, your father insisted on going out jogging, even though it was raining—”

“And he slipped and broke his ankle and you never let him forget it, I know, I know.”

“Well, I just think he should have shown better sense. We had to cancel the whole trip. Nonrefundable flights to London.” She sniffed. “Anyway, we used to see the Sinclares every year at the convention. We still trade Christmas cards.”

My parents must receive a hundred, maybe two hundred, holiday cards each December. They display them from tartan ribbons, tied in bows and trailing down from the spindles of the stairs in their front hall. My brothers and I race each other to read aloud the obnoxiously self-congratulatory family newsletters; we never bother to glance at the cards from Dad's professional acquaintances.

“You didn't answer me. How do
you
know Ethan?” Mom was sensing that something was wrong.

I raised my hand to shush her. “Hang on. This is important. When did you last see him?”

She looked uncomfortable. “It's been years. We stopped going to all those ABA events when Daddy retired. But . . . but Ethan called the house just last week.”

“He
what
?”

“Let me think. It was the day I had the girls with me.”

The girls would be Hayley and Keira. Tony's little girls. Mom counted backward on her fingers. “Last Monday. The twenty-first.”

“What did he want?”

“Caroline, he was just being friendly. Just saying hi. He talked about how he was thinking of following your father's lead, maybe start easing into retirement himself. He asked about you kids.”

I felt queasy. “Why? Has he ever met us?”

“No, I don't think so. But why do you have his picture?” She gestured at the coffee table. “And what's he doing standing there with . . .” Her lip trembled. “I assume that's her? Your birth mother?”

“Mom. It's okay.” I moved to wrap my arm around her. “What did you tell him? About me?”

“Only that you'd grown up into a beautiful young woman,” she pleaded. “People ask after each other's children, Caroline, it's what par
ents
do.
All I said was how proud we are of you, and how well you've done teaching at Georgetown. And that . . . that you were going to take some time off. To have an operation.”

I closed my eyes.

That Monday was the day Madame Aubuchon had ordered me to take sabbatical for the rest of the semester. Wasn't that the night that Will had slept over? I had already met Sinclare by then. But Leland Brett's follow-up article, confirming my plans to get surgery, hadn't run until the next day. Tuesday the twenty-second. That Monday it was not yet public knowledge whether the bullet was about to be extracted, or whether it would stay in my neck forever.

Ethan Sinclare had been checking up on me.

•   •   •

“HE KNOWS MY
parents, Beamer.” To hell with last names, with police protocol and professional distance. I was too upset. “Sinclare called my mom last week.”

“Back up. What are you talking about? How could he call your mama—”

“Not Sadie Rawson.
Frannie
. He knows the
Cashions
.”

“What? You sure?” asked Beamer Beasley down the phone line from Atlanta.

“My mother—my mother
Frannie
—just recognized him in a photo. She says he called their house last week. He asked about me, Beamer.”

“All right, all right, hang on. Let me conference in Gerry. You can tell us both what happened.”

It took ten minutes to recount my conversation with my mother. When I had finished, Beasley cleared his throat. “Sinclare and your daddy are both lawyers. Trial attorneys, roughly the same age, at the end of successful careers. I suppose it's not shocking that their paths might have crossed.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Gerry Fleeman. “Makes sense that they
would attend the same conventions.” I had liked the head of the Atlanta Police Department's Cold Case Squad when he conducted my formal interview over the phone last week. He seemed smart, competent. Now, from six hundred miles away, he was getting on my nerves.

“There must be, I don't know, half a million litigators in the United States,” I snapped. “It's not like they're all buddies, hanging out and smoking cigars together at Ye Olde Litigators' Club. And to my knowledge, none of the rest of them has been calling my mom in Washington, inquiring after my health. You don't find that a strange coincidence?”

“Let's think this through calmly,” said Gerry. “You said your parents originally met Ethan Sinclare because he sat next to your mom at a dinner back in the 1980s. You're not suggesting . . . what, that he engineered that, are you? As a way of getting to you?”

“I'm suggesting you consider the possibility.”

“Ms. Cashion, that would mean he'd been stalking you for the last
thirty years
,” scoffed Gerry. “Thirty years! If he means you harm, he's certainly taken his time about it.”

“Fine, not stalking me, but keeping tabs on me. Keeping tabs on whether I was healthy. Whether I had remembered anything.”

“What, with an annual Christmas card swap? I'm sorry, I just don't think—”

“It does make a crazy kind of sense,” said Beasley, just when I thought I might scream. “Whoever the killer was, he would have wanted to know whether the sole surviving witness remembered anything. And he couldn't just call and ask to speak to a little girl. He would have had to go through her adoptive parents.”

“Precisely,” I said.

“But I still don't think Sinclare had anything to do with it,” said Beasley. “I also don't think he had anything to do with the burglary of your house, Ms. Cashion.”

“Okay. How come?”

“Because he was at his cabin, out on Lake Burton. His wife says
they were there together all last week. They're still there. Sounds like she's attempting to persuade him to spend less time at the office.”

“Where's Lake Burton?” I demanded. “When did you talk to her?”

“North Georgia. Rabun County.” Beasley sighed. “You asked me to find out where Sinclare was last Wednesday. I can't say I credit your suspicions about him, but I figured we owed you an answer. Also figured we owed him the courtesy of not hearing secondhand that we're taking another look into the Smith murders. So I called his law firm yesterday. They gave me the phone number for the lake house.”

“And he's definitely there?”

“Yes, ma'am. Betsy—that's his wife—she said he'd walked out the door five minutes before I called. Out on his boat fishing all afternoon yesterday.”

“Great bass fishing up at Burton,” Gerry chimed in. “Although getting a little cold for it now. Anyhow, if we're done here—”

“We're not done here,” I said, irritated. “She could be lying about where he was last week.”

“Possible,” said Beasley evenly. “But I had his secretary check his calendar. She agrees he was at the lake house last Wednesday and Thursday.”

“Did she lay eyes on him there? Or is that just where he told her he—”

Beasley cut in, “And we checked the flight lists into National, Dulles, and BWI. All three DC-area airports. Ethan Sinclare didn't fly to Washington last week.”

“Maybe he drove.”

“Also,” added Gerry, “local police got the fingerprinting results from your house. And we already had Mr. Sinclare's on file from way back. We compared them. No match.”

“So the man owns a pair of gloves!” I exploded. “Look, please tell me that one of you is going to follow up. Press Ethan Sinclare on how he happens to know
both
my families—”

“I thought we'd already agreed, he had good reason to attend the same Bar Association meetings as Thomas Cashion,” Gerry grumbled.

“Absolutely,” I shot back. “But why didn't he mention the connection when he met me for breakfast at the St. Regis? He acted as though he had no idea that the man who adopted me was a lawyer.”

“I have to agree with her there,” said Beasley. “I thought of that, too.”

“Thank you.” I relaxed a little in my chair. “Meanwhile, any news about the bullet? The lab's had it four days now.”

“We'll keep hassling them,” said Gerry. “These things can take time.”

After he signed off, Beasley stayed on the line. “Sorry about that. Gerry's a good guy. Skepticism and mistrust are part of the job description.”

“What about being a complete jerk? Does he throw that in for free?”

Beasley chuckled. “And I take your point about Sinclare not acknowledging that he knows the Cashions. It's odd. There must be an explanation, but I'll be damned if I can think of it. Maybe I'll drive up today, pay him a visit at his cabin. It'd do me good to get out of the city.”

“Thank you. One more thing. His alibi. Back in '79. Who was it?”

•   •   •

ON MY DOORSTEP
stood a woman with flaming red hair. “Hey there. Hi. Sorry to disturb you,” she called through the door, waving a business card in front of her. I couldn't read it through the narrow tunnel of my peephole. “Hello? Rhonda, from your office, said I would find you here.”

Rhonda is the administrative assistant for the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics at Georgetown. Cautiously I cracked the door. “Yes?”

“Thanks. Hi.” She trained a warm smile on me. “My name's Alexandra James. I'm a journalist. Wait!” She jammed the toe of her boot in the door before I could slam it shut. “I know, last person you want to talk to, right?” The megawatt smile tipped up at me. “Just hear me out. Two minutes and I'll go.”

I studied her face more closely. She looked a few years younger than me, perhaps in her late twenties. She wasn't beautiful, not exactly, but she was striking. Well dressed. I glanced down. Great legs. “I remember you. You write for that Boston paper, right? You broke the big terrorism story at the White House last year.”

“Yeah.” She grinned. “Still recovering from that one. I got this for my troubles.” She lifted bangs off her forehead to reveal a thin, white scar.

Alexandra James had been all over the news herself for a while. She had broken the mother of all stories, had been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, as I recalled, but questions had been raised about her ethics. Whether she'd crossed red lines in dealing with sources. She was rumored to have slept with a British spy; I couldn't remember the details.

“I'm based here in Washington now. I read your story, about the bullet, and what happened to your family. Were you pleased with how the
Journal-Constitution
handled it?”

I was caught off guard. “Er . . . Yes. More or less. Look, I really—”

“Good. I thought the reporter was respectful, the way he wrote about the deaths of Boone and Sadie Rawson Smith. I did wonder, though . . . I mean, obviously, the
AJC
's an Atlanta operation, they're going to want to play up the Atlanta story. But I did wish they had also interviewed your family here. The Cashions.”

“Oh, we don't want any more publicity.”

“Can't say I blame you. But it would be nice, you know? To hear from the family that you grew up with. They got . . . sidelined by the story, the way it was written. Left out. Kind of a shame, because if I read between the lines correctly, it sounds like you're close. I'd love to see a story where you had the opportunity to thank them. Talk about how much they mean to you.”

A shrewd pitch. She had zeroed in on the one angle I'd be happy to talk about all day.

“Anyway.” The smile again. “I promised to shut up after two min
utes. May I leave you my card? My cell number's on it, in case you ever want to talk.” I accepted the ivory rectangle from her outstretched hand, intending to chuck it in the trash the second she left.

“Oh!” She twirled around. “I almost forgot. Here. For your convalescence.”

Alexandra James held up a white box tied with string. I recognized the elaborate, cursive
P
of the Pâtisserie Poupon logo.

My eyes narrowed. “How did you . . . ?”

“Like I said, I called the university before I walked over here. To check when they were expecting you back at work. I didn't want to disturb you if you'd just been released from the hospital an hour ago or something.”

“And Rhonda gave out my home address?” I would need to have a word with her.

“No, no. I already had it. You're in the phone book, you know. Rhonda didn't tell me anything except that you're on leave for the rest of the semester. And that if you weren't at home, I might find you here.” She tapped the
P
logo on the pastry box. “I share your addiction, by the way. I'm a fiend for their lemon tart.”