Capitol Murder (30 page)

Carson was shaking. His brow was beaded with sweat.

“Before we start, I am going to entertain you and your friends with a DVD Miss Koshani recorded.”

Mustapha laid his gun on an end table and picked up a remote.

“Please, no,” Carson begged. “They don’t have to see that. I’ll tell you want you want to know. Please.”

Mustapha pressed
PLAY
. Brad felt sick when he recognized the man wearing the dog collar. He turned his head away from the screen. Mustapha let the DVD run for a few minutes before stopping it. He turned to Carson.

“What happened at your town house on the day Jessica Koshani was murdered?”

Carson’s head dropped so he was looking at his lap. “I can’t,” he whispered.

Mustapha nodded. The man standing behind the senator took a knife and sliced off Carson’s left earlobe. The senator screamed as blood poured onto his shoulder from the wound.

“Cauterize it,” Mustapha said. The large man took out a lighter and burned the wound until it sealed. Carson was screaming right next to Brad, and Brad had to fight to keep from fainting.

“Senator Carson, what happened in the town house?” Mustapha repeated.

“It wasn’t me,” Carson gasped. “Please don’t hurt me anymore. It wasn’t me.”

“Explain.”

Carson was weeping. His eyes were fixed on the floor. His teeth were clenched from the pain.

“Lucas did it. He killed her.”

Brad looked at the chief of staff. He was glaring at his oldest friend with unconcealed contempt.

“Start at the beginning,” Mustapha commanded.

“She made me come over. She asked about the plot, what the FBI knew. Nothing had changed. I told her Homeland Security knew there was something big planned but not what the target was or when the plan was going to be executed. Then she asked me about the hearing, what would happen, what questions the committee would ask. A little before noon, she told me I could go. She was staying on the second floor in the guest bedroom. She took out a cell phone and went upstairs. As I was walking to the front door I heard her talking to someone.”

Carson paused and took a few deep breaths. When he started to speak again, his voice was ragged.

“I crept up the stairs. I was hoping I would learn who she was talking to so I would have leverage to get the DVD back. I heard her mention FedEx Field. Then she stopped talking and closed the phone. She must have heard me, because the next thing I knew, she was in the doorway with a knife. I was shocked. She stabbed at me and I jumped back. She ran at me and stabbed me in the side. I don’t remember how it happened. It must have been reflex. I hit her. It was hard and right on the chin. She fell back and hit her head on the corner of the grandfather clock. It’s solid wood, and it stunned her. I hit her again and she collapsed.

“I was in a panic. I called Luke. When he arrived, I was light-headed and in a lot of pain. Luke applied first aid, but he said a doctor should check me out. Koshani was still unconscious when he arrived, but she was breathing. I told Luke everything: the blackmail, the DVD. He said we had to force her to tell us where she had the DVD and who had copies so we could destroy them. He told me he’d been a DA when Clarence Little was killing people in Oregon. He’d seen the autopsy reports, he’d actually seen the body of one of the victims in person, and he’d read the opinion of the Oregon judge who reversed Little’s cases. The opinion described the method of torture in detail. He said he’d make it look like Little killed her.”

The senator was babbling, and Mustapha listened patiently as Brad’s boss threw his oldest friend under the bus.

“It wasn’t my idea. I didn’t even mean to hurt her. He took off her clothes and tied her to the chair. He woke her up. She was very groggy. She could barely speak. She must have had a concussion. I tried to stop him, but he cut her until she answered all of his questions. She told him where she kept the DVD. She gave him the alarm code to her house. When . . . when he was through, he killed her. It wasn’t me.”

Carson looked up at Mustapha. His eyes begged for mercy. Mustapha smiled and nodded to show he understood.

“Go on,” Mustapha urged his prisoner.

“Luke said I needed an alibi and someplace to rest until my wounds healed. We flew to Portland on my private jet so he could get the DVD. I told him about Dorothy Crispin. He paid her to let me stay while I healed. He knew a doctor with a drug habit from his days in the DA’s office. He took care of me for a price. It was Luke who called Dana Cutler with Crispin’s name. He said it made the alibi more believable if a reporter discovered her name.”

“Did you tell the FBI or CIA about FedEx Field?”

“No, I swear. I didn’t have time. I was in Oregon. I was hiding out. If I told, they’d know I was with Koshani when she was killed.”

Brad couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Carson had known about the plot to destroy FedEx Field and he’d done nothing.

“I swear I never betrayed you,” Carson said. “Please, don’t kill me.”

Mustapha looked Carson in the eye. “You are truly pathetic. You are a pervert and a craven coward and a perfect example of the infidels who run your country.”

He looked at the man who was standing behind the three captives.

“Kill them.”

Chapter Forty-six

A
driving rain pelted Ron Tolliver when he walked through the door of the detention center. He flipped up the hood of the sweatshirt and turned up the collar of the jacket Bobby Schatz had purchased for him. Then he checked the street for a tail. He couldn’t pick out anyone suspicious, but he was certain that someone was following him.

Tolliver thought about his next move. He had money, a gun, and false ID stashed at a pawnshop that was owned by a shell corporation controlled by Afridi. Tolliver took a bus across town, then walked a circuitous path to shake the people he was certain were tracking him. He had very little confidence that he would get to the pawnshop undetected, but he had no choice.

The shop was in a section of D.C. where a white man looked out of place, so Tolliver kept his hood up and his hands in his pockets. A bell rang when he entered the store. The owner, an elderly black man with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a flannel shirt, a threadbare sweater, and brown corduroy pants, looked up from a stack of paperwork.

“I need my stuff and a disposable cell phone,” Tolliver said.

“Are you crazy? You should have called. I’ll have every fed in D.C. in here as soon as you leave.”

“I need my stuff,
now
.”

The proprietor hesitated, then went into the back. When he came out, he was carrying a gym bag. He shoved it across the counter.

“Now get out,” he said.

Tolliver unzipped the bag and checked the contents. Then he left without another word and took evasive action until he arrived at a cheap hotel ten blocks from the pawnshop, where whores rented by the hour and winos occupied the lobby. On the way, he picked up two sandwiches, several bags of chips, and a few bottles of water at a convenience store.

Tolliver registered under a false name and paid in cash for two days. Then he paid the desk clerk $100 to forget he’d registered. When he opened the door to his room, the odors left behind by the previous occupant made him gag. Tolliver didn’t bother to unpack. He threw his gym bag on a bed with a stained sheet that covered a mattress with sagging springs that had conceded the fight with gravity a long time ago.

Tolliver pulled a chair over to the room’s only window and looked at the brick wall of the building across the way. The sun set. Tolliver ate one of the tasteless sandwiches. He felt completely lost for a while. Then his spirits rose. This was the way he’d felt in Afghanistan when his team had been wiped out. His head wound looked ghastly, and he’d faked death by lying perfectly still until night fell and the last of the Taliban fighters left the battlefield. When he was finally alone and had time to think, he’d been overwhelmed by depression. He’d doubted the possibility of surviving in this hostile wasteland without food or water. But he had survived. His situation was different now. He was surrounded by enemies, as he had been in the mountains of Afghanistan, but he had a way out. Tolliver took the cell phone out of the gym bag and called Imran Afridi.

I
mran Afridi was planning to return to Pakistan as soon as Mustapha told him what he had learned from Senator Carson. He was telling the pilot of his private jet to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice when another cell phone rang. It was the phone with the number he had given Ronald Tolliver to call in an emergency, but Tolliver was in jail. How would he get a cell phone? Could this be a trap?

The phone rang twice more, and Afridi’s curiosity overcame his sense of caution.

“Yes?” he said.

“It’s me.” Afridi recognized the voice instantly. “The prosecutor screwed up so they had to release me. You have to get me out of the country.”

“You must have a wrong number,” Afridi said, certain now that he was being set up.

“I know you’re worried that someone is listening in, but I haven’t been turned, and I am out. Meet me in two hours at the last place we met, and I’ll explain.”

Tolliver cut the connection. Afridi sank onto a chair. His stomach was churning. Tolliver was not in jail. A man arrested for attempted mass murder was walking the streets, a free man. How did such a thing happen? The answer was simple: it didn’t. Prosecutors did not screw up in a situation like this unless the screwup was intentional, unless the prosecutor wanted an informant on the street as part of a setup. This was how the heads of drug cartels were brought low. A little fish was arrested and promised a deal that would lead to dismissal of his case. Then the little fish hooked a bigger fish, and so on.

A great weight fell from Afridi’s shoulders. He smiled. The mystery had been solved. Ron Tolliver was the traitor, and he would pay.

Afridi summoned his head of security and told him to take some men to the C&O Canal.

Chapter Forty-seven

“K
ill them,” Mustapha said.

Brad was surprised that he was resigned and sad but not terrified. In seconds, he would be dead, and that meant he would never see Ginny again or have kids or take any of the trips they had planned. This was it. The last moment of his life—and the last thing he would see was the smirk on a terrorist’s face.

Brad waited for the shot. There was an explosion, and Brad was showered with blood and brains. At first, he assumed the gore belonged to Lucas Sharp or the senator. Then Mustapha dived for his weapon and there was another shot. Mustapha’s left kneecap shattered. He collapsed, screaming.

“How are you doing, Brad?” Clarence Little asked.

Brad’s mouth gaped open, but he couldn’t speak. Carson and Sharp stared wide-eyed at the most wanted man in America. Little walked over to Brad and used a handkerchief to wipe the gore off his face.

“Sorry about that. I’ll get you a wet towel in a bit. And before you start worrying, I’d have to be a complete ingrate to harm even one tiny hair on your head after you saved my life. And don’t worry about Ginny, either. She’s certainly delectable, but she’s off limits as far as I’m concerned.”

Little turned to Carson then Lucas Sharp. “These two are another story. I don’t like them. Especially you, Mr. Sharp. Imagine my surprise when I learned that I had been in Washington, D.C., killing Jessica Koshani. I do tend to be forgetful at times, but you’d think I’d remember traveling cross-country and playing with someone that tasty.

“Then I heard Senator Carson admit to shacking up with Dorothy Crispin on the day Koshani was murdered. I decided that things were not as they seemed, so I drove from Seattle to Portland and had a chat with Miss Crispin. In between screams, she told me that the senator had been stabbed and needed a place to hide out and recuperate.

“Like Sherlock Holmes, I have considered all of the evidence and deduced that I did not murder Miss Koshani and that the real killer is someone in this room. Unfortunately, the senator ruined my dramatic unveiling of the killer’s identity by confessing before I had the opportunity to reveal my startling deductions, but you’ll have to take it on faith that I really did figure out that you and your boss committed the dastardly deed.”

Clarence placed the barrel of his gun under Lucas Sharp’s chin and pressed his head up.

“Tell me, Luke, do you have any idea how inconsiderate it is to frame someone for murder? Gosh, there are so many consequences, I have trouble keeping count of them. But the biggie is that people who are successfully framed for murders they don’t commit have to spend years in teensy, weensy cells living like animals until they are taken out to be slaughtered like a Thanksgiving turkey. Did you think about my feelings when you decided to frame me to save your pathetic boss?”

Little turned his head toward Carson. “And for the record, Jack, I agree with the raghead. You are pathetic.”

While Little was talking, Mustapha had been dragging himself toward his gun. Little watched for a moment, then stood over the terrorist.

“I happen to be a big pro football fan, Osama, and your plan to disrupt the season pisses me off.”

Little shot Mustapha between the eyes. Then he walked over to Lucas and pulled a hunting knife with a serrated blade out of a scabbard he had fixed to his belt at the small of his back.

“You are the second person who has framed me for a murder I did not commit. Enough is enough.”

Little slashed the knife into Sharp’s crotch. Brad had never heard anyone scream like that.

“Please, Clarence, don’t do this,” he begged.

Little considered Brad’s plea. Then he nodded.

“I owe you big time, so I’ll make this quicker than I would have liked. He’s a murderer anyway, so I’m just carrying out his inevitable sentence.”

Little walked behind Sharp, pulled up his chin and slit his throat. Brad turned away, unable to watch.

“Don’t kill the senator,” he begged. “You heard what he said. He was being blackmailed, he acted in self-defense. It was Sharp’s idea to frame you.”