Capitol Murder (15 page)

Trees towered over the road on both sides, and the canopy and thick storm clouds made midday seem like dusk. Dana was glad she wasn’t claustrophobic. A slight dip signaled the end of the pavement and the beginning of a one-lane dirt road. The temperature was dropping as the elevation increased, and the thermometer on the dash put the weather outside in the high twenties. The Rover skidded twice, but Dana got it under control before any damage was done. The snow in the forest covered the bases of the tree trunks, and it was clear that it had been snowing at this altitude for a while.

The GPS spoke again seven miles after Dana turned off the highway. She had to squint through the windshield to see the road because the pelting snow was fighting the wipers to a draw. If it weren’t for the GPS telling her to turn, Dana would have missed the slight gap through the trees on her right. A quarter mile later, a log cabin appeared.

The trees had been cut back on either side of a wide driveway that led uphill to the house. Dana was not expecting problems, but one of the adages she lived by was “Better safe than sorry,” so she parked the Rover in front of the driveway in the direction of the highway so she wouldn’t have to turn if she was forced to make a fast getaway.

Dana got out of the car and cursed when she stepped into a pile of snow. A frigid wind raked her cheeks. She threw up the hood of her parka and focused on the cabin. The driveway looked pristine. Dana thought of several reasons why there might not be footprints or tire tracks on it. Carson might have parked on the road, as she had, or the new snow might have covered the tracks. Still, shouldn’t there be some furrows in the snow?

The senator was telling the truth when he said there was no reception, but Dana could still use her cell phone to photograph the driveway. When she was through, she trudged up to the covered porch in front of the cabin. Dana stamped her boots to shake off the snow that had accumulated on them. Before trying the door, she looked through the front window into a large living room with a high stone fireplace. There were no lights on inside, and the light from the sun was starting to fade, so Dana couldn’t make out any fine details. She walked to the door. It was locked. Dana took out a set of tools and picked the lock.

As soon as she was inside, Dana sniffed the air. A musty odor pervaded the living room, the type of smell caused by dust and disuse. There were no cooking aromas, no scent left by burning logs.

Dana found a light switch and flipped it on. The living room had a homey atmosphere. An Afghan had been flung over the back of a sofa that faced the fireplace, and a blanket graced the back of a chair. Throw rugs covered the wood-plank floor. There were no mounted animal heads, not surprising, given the senator’s dot-com, high-tech background, but there were original oils depicting forest and mountain scenes.

Dana walked over to the fireplace. It looked as though it hadn’t been used in a while. She turned slowly, surveying the room. A thermostat was attached to a wall by the stairs that led to the second floor. The senator might have used the heater instead of the fireplace, but the air in the cabin was very cold. Dana could see her breath when she exhaled. How long did it take for warmth to dissipate in weather like this?

Dana inspected the kitchen. The refrigerator was bare except for a half-full bottle of ketchup and a few cans of soda. The freezer section was stocked with two cartons of Rocky Road ice cream and a bag of frozen peas. She walked over to the sink. There were no dirty dishes in it or clean dishes in the dishwasher. She looked under the sink. There was no trash in the garbage can. It looked as though a housekeeper had done a thorough cleaning. In fact, the whole downstairs looked as though it had undergone a thorough cleaning. The senator could have cleaned up before he left, but it was hard to imagine that a cleaning crew had come up in this snow between the time the senator left and the time Dana arrived without leaving tire tracks.

Dana went upstairs. The master bedroom and its bathroom did not look as if they had been used. Neither did any of the guest rooms. Dana decided she had seen enough. She took pictures of every part of the house. Then she locked the door behind her and returned to the Rover. On the way down to the highway, Dana thought about what she had seen. She decided that either United States Senator Jack Carson had a compulsive cleaning disorder or he had not been in the cabin lately.

D
uring her drive from the cabin to Isolation Creek, the one-street town she’d driven through, Dana caught a weather report on the radio and learned that the pass had been hit by heavy snows. Dana filled her tank at the garage on the outskirts of town and asked the attendant to help her put on chains for the trip back to Portland. While they worked, Dana turned the conversation to Senator Carson. The attendant knew the senator from his previous visits to the cabin but said he hadn’t seen him recently.

Dana drove into town and parked in front of the grocery store. She asked the proprietor questions about Carson while she paid for the candy bars that would fortify her during the return trip to Portland. He hadn’t seen Senator Carson since the summer, and neither had any other shopkeeper to whom she talked. There was a café with Internet access at the far end of town. While she waited for her cheeseburger, fries, and black coffee to arrive, Dana set up her laptop and e-mailed the photos she’d taken at the cabin to
Exposed
. Then she called Patrick Gorman.

“Did you get the photos?” Dana asked.

“I did.”

“I’m in a café in Isolation Creek, the nearest town to the cabin. Most of the people I talked to know the senator. He shops in town when he’s at the cabin. No one has seen him in months. I’d bet every penny you have that no one has been in that cabin for a while.”

“Where do you think he was?” Gorman asked.

“Beats me, but it wasn’t here. What do you want me to do?”

Gorman was quiet for a moment. “Send me your report, and I’ll have one of my intrepid reporters write the story.”

“Do you want me to fly back to D.C.?”

“Not yet. If the senator were in Oregon, he’d have left a trail. Check into a hotel in Portland and do some sleuthing. See what you can turn up.”

“Will do.”

The waitress carried Dana’s food to her table, and Dana rang off. She typed her report between bites, then e-mailed it. By the time she finished, the sun had begun its descent, but the snow had stopped. Dana paid the check, slipped on her gloves, and trudged toward her Range Rover. When she had the motor going and the heater cranked up, she headed west.

Chapter Twenty-three

D
ana was exhausted after the tiring drive through the storm-plagued mountains, and she slept late the next morning. After a big breakfast, she headed back to the Portland airport in a driving rain to try to find out if Senator Carson had flown in or out on a private or commercial flight when he claimed he had been in Oregon. After striking out, when she inquired at the commercial carriers, she drove over to the airfield for private planes, where the manager told Dana that information about arrivals and departures was confidential.

Dana left the office, discouraged by her lack of progress. As she headed for her car, a heavyset, bearded man in mechanic’s overalls walked toward her. As he passed, he turned slightly and spoke to her.

“Coffee People on the terminal concourse, twenty minutes.”

Dana didn’t turn her head, and she knew better than to ask him to explain himself. Instead, she parked at the terminal, got a cup of black coffee at Coffee People and found a table in the middle of the food court. Ten minutes after she sat down, she saw the mechanic scanning the crowd. He spotted Dana and walked to her table, looking around nervously the whole way.

“A friend of mine at United told me you’re asking around about Senator Carson,” he said as soon as he was seated across from Dana.

“That’s right. My name’s Dana Cutler, and you are . . . ?”

“That’s not important. You’re with
Exposed
, right? Not some legit paper like the
New York Times
?”

Dana’s initial reaction to the insult was to tense, but there was really no easy way to defend the legitimacy of a paper whose most recent headline was
I GAVE BIRTH TO SADDAM HUSSEIN’S LOVE CHILD
, so she just nodded.

“Good, because I read that the
Times
don’t pay for information.”

“What kind of information are we talking about?”

“You want to know if Senator Carson was in Oregon when that lady was killed in his town house. I can answer your question for a hundred bucks.”

“I’ll give you fifty.”

“My price is nonnegotiable, lady. One hundred dollars, or you can keep guessing.”

Dana didn’t want to waste time arguing, so she laid five twenties on the table and covered them with her hand. It was Pat Gorman’s money, anyway.

“Was Senator Jack Carson in Oregon on the Sunday Jessica Koshani was killed?” she asked.

“I saw him get off his private jet Sunday afternoon.”

“How do you know it was Carson?”

“He flies commercial when he’s looking for votes, but I’ve worked on his plane enough to know what he looks like.”

“And you definitely saw him?”

“Yeah, but just a snatch. What attracted my attention was the hoodie. He was wearing nice slacks, but he was also wearing a gray sweatshirt with a hood.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“There was a black guy with him, and a town car was waiting on the tarmac. The black guy hustled him inside. It drove off right away.”

“If he was wearing a hood, how did you see him?”

“The hood fell back when he was walking down the steps. I was with the refueling crew, and I was near enough to look him in the eye. And that’s what I know.”

“Do you have any idea where the car went?”

“Nope.”

“What time did the plane land?”

“That I can tell you. It touched down a little after five
P.M
.”

“Can you describe the black man who helped Carson out of the plane?”

The man thought for a second. Then he nodded.

“He had a shaved head, and he sort of looked like a football player. Not a lineman, a cornerback.”

Dana couldn’t think of anything more to ask, so she slid the money across the table. The mechanic palmed the bills and slipped them into his pocket.

“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” he said. Then he looked around the food court and left. While he walked away, Dana debated whether to believe his story and decided that he was probably telling the truth. Jack Carson had been in Oregon, but not at his cabin. So where had he been?

D
ana drove from the airport to the senator’s Portland office, then to his campaign headquarters. None of the staff in either place admitted seeing Carson during the period he claimed he was in Oregon.

An old friend from Gorman’s college days covered politics for the
Oregonian
. Dana treated him to dinner and learned a lot about Gorman’s college carousing but nothing about the senator that she could use for her story. Frustrated, she returned to her hotel, watched an in-room movie, and went to sleep.

The next morning, Dana’s cell phone rang just as she was getting ready to take a shower.

“What’s up, Pat?” Dana asked.

“Turn on CNN.”

As Dana switched on the TV, Gorman told her that
Exposed
had put out a special edition with a headline that read
WHERE WAS SENATOR CARSON HIDING
? with a subhead that read
NO PROOF SENATOR WAS IN CABIN
and a story based on her investigation. When she found CNN, she saw Jack Carson standing behind a podium with his wife by his side. Neither was smiling.

“I have always believed in the adage that honesty is the best policy, but I stand here today to tell you that I was not honest with my wife, my constituents, or the American people when I stood here a few days ago and said that I had been at my mountain cabin in Oregon during the days I was missing.”

“Your story flushed him out,” Gorman said. “Good work.”

On the screen, Carson’s eyes dropped. When they returned to the camera, he looked tormented.

“I was in Oregon, but I am ashamed to say that what I did there dishonored my wife and our marriage.”

Carson took a deep breath. “None of this is Martha’s fault. I take full responsibility. Martha has been a wonderful wife and a full partner in my political life, and there is no excuse for what I did.”

The senator looked down again and paused before resuming.

“Over the years, the American people have heard the sordid tale of one politician after another who has soiled his marriage with an unseemly affair. I am thoroughly ashamed to say that I have become a tired cliché. Some months ago, I spent one night with a woman. I have no excuses to make. The fault is mine alone, and I regretted my betrayal of my marriage vows immediately after I committed this unpardonable sin. I also made it a point to stay away from the innocent partner in my terrible mistake after that single night.

“The woman in question assumed that there was more to it than I did, and I can’t blame her. She called me repeatedly. I did not answer her calls. The day before I disappeared, she left a message with Lucas Sharp, my chief of staff, saying that she would go to the press if I continued to ignore her. Mr. Sharp was not aware that I had strayed, and he confronted me. We decided that the best way to end the confusion was for me to fly to Oregon and talk to this woman. And that is what I did.

“The two of us had a heart-to-heart. I explained that I loved my wife and regretted what I had done. She was very understanding. When I returned to Washington, I confessed my infidelity to Martha. She has forgiven me. I would not have blamed her if she didn’t, but our marriage has always been strong, and I truly believe we will weather this storm. Thank you.”

“Who is the woman?” a reporter shouted as the senator turned to leave. Carson turned back to the microphone.