Murder Inside the Beltway (32 page)

Jackson swatted away a mosquito. “Did the topic ever come up again?”

“Not like that. He asked me about it once, whether I knew if Rosie really had tapes of clients.”

“You confirmed it?”

“I didn’t want to.”

“But you did.”

She started to cry. “Damn it,” she said, wiping her eyes with her knuckles. “Was she killed for those tapes?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know. But I intend to find out.”

J
ackson couldn’t wait to get back to the Rollins house to share with Mary what he’d learned from Micki. He arrived a little before eight and found her in the kitchen, doing dinner dishes with Sue Rollins. Her raised eyebrows said she wanted to hear about the meeting. He winked and raised his index finger;
We’ll get to that
, the gesture said.

Jerry Rollins was in the living room with the lead FBI special agent and Detective Bob Kloss.

“Enjoy your dinner?” Kloss asked.

“Oh, yeah, I did. Thanks for the time off. Nothing new here?”

“Afraid not. Mr. Rollins is reconsidering putting out a personal plea from him and his wife, maybe tomorrow or the day after.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Jackson said. “Am I back at the office with Mr. Rollins tomorrow?”

“Afraid you’re stuck with me again,” Rollins said pleasantly, “but I won’t be there for much of the day. Meetings.”

With Kevin Ziegler
, Jackson thought.

Mary eventually joined them.

“Mr. Rollins showed me his pride and joy in the garage,” Jackson told her. “He’s got a beautiful Porsche out there.”

“Show her,” Rollins said.

“Want to see it?” Jackson asked.

Mary had no interest in cars, but realized that he was using it as an excuse to get away from the others. “Sure,” she said. “Love to.”

Rollins escorted them to the kitchen, where he pulled the car’s keys from a rack. “Start her up,” he told Jackson. “She really hums.”

Their appearance in the drive brought forth the usual couple of shouted questions from encamped reporters, which they ignored. Jackson turned on the garage’s interior lights and closed the door.

“Okay,” she said, “it’s a nice car. Now, what happened with Micki Simmons?”

“Lots,” he said, “but I’ll try and whittle it down. I must have let slip her name when I confronted Hatcher today in the locker room at Metro. Know what he does? He visits Micki this afternoon and threatens her, says that if she talks she’ll end up like Rosalie Curzon.”

“Talks about what?”

“About him shaking down Micki and Rosalie and who knows how many other hookers. That’s number one. He was getting protection money from them. Here’s number two: He knew about the tapes.”

“How?”

“Rosalie told him. She got drunk one night at Joe’s Bar and Grille where he used to meet them for his payoffs. Looks like the owner, Yankavich, was on Hatcher’s payroll, too. That explains why he hasn’t written up Yankavich as a suspect. Anyway, Rosalie lets spill that she taped some of her clients.”

“He knew about the tapes? When we were at the crime scene he acted like finding them was a big surprise.”

“He put on a good show. Not only did he know about the tapes, he knew that one of them contained footage of Rosalie with Governor Colgate.”

“Come on.”

“I’m serious.”

“So the rumors about Colgate and Rosalie are true.”

“Evidently.”

“And Hatcher knew about it.”

“Yes.”

“Does that mean he’s the one who took the tapes from her apartment?”

“I’d say it’s a good possibility.”

“Which also means it’s a possibility that he killed her to get them.”

“Can’t be ruled out.”

“What about Micki Simmons? She can testify to what she told you.”

He shook his head and absently ran his hand over the Porsche’s fender. “She told me she’d never testify, and I understand. Besides, what can she testify to, and who’ll believe her? She’s an acknowledged prostitute. All she can claim is that Hatcher was shaking her down—which he’ll deny, it was all cash, no paper trail—and that he knew about the tapes, including the one on which Colgate stars—which he’ll also deny. It all comes down to he said, she said, and that means zilch. Right now, the worst charge that could be brought against him is through Internal Affairs about the shakedowns. Know what’ll happen with that? He’s retiring, probably on a fast track. They’ll throw him a going-away party, he’ll get his pension, and it’ll be swept under the rug. Like I said, I told Micki she could leave the city. Hatcher’s visit really shook her.”

“But MPD can’t sweep Hatcher under the rug if he killed Rosalie for the tapes.”

“There’s nothing to place him there that night, Mary, no witnesses, no forensics. If he’d actually been there earlier in the evening and killed her, he put on one hell of an act for us. He’d have to have grabbed the tapes, left, come back to Metro or stopped someplace else first to wash off any signs of the struggle, and then catches the case a few hours later and shows up as the lead investigator. Perfect, actually, from his perspective. He ends up in charge of his own murder investigation.”

She grabbed his arm. “We have to go to IA, Matt.”

“No, we have to go higher, to Chief Carter.”

She agreed.

“In the meantime, I want to stay close to Rollins until the kidnapping is resolved. If Colgate knew that he’d been taped in bed with Curzon—and there’s a good possibility that he did, based upon the rumors floating around—the person he would have confided in would be Rollins, his close friend and advisor. The big question right now is that if Hatcher had the tapes, what did he do with them?”

“Sold them?”

“To who? They’re damaging to Colgate, so it’s the Pyle people who would benefit from having them.”

“But wouldn’t they have used them by now in the campaign?”

“You’d think so. Then again, maybe they don’t have them—yet.”

Rollins walked into the garage. “Well, what do you think?” he asked Mary, pointing with pride at the Porsche.

“It’s beautiful.”

He took the keys from Jackson, slid behind the wheel, and started the engine. A smile crossed his face and he looked up at them. “Is that perfection?” he said. “I love perfection.”

Jackson and Hall looked at each other, each thinking the same thing: To be sitting behind the wheel of a fancy sports car and soaking up pleasure from the sound of its engine was incongruous, considering the larger picture.

Rollins turned off the ignition, got out, and led them back to the house. Small talk occupied the rest of the evening, and very little of that. After watching TV—the kidnapping was still in the news but had dropped down in order of importance—the Rollinses went upstairs, leaving the detectives and special agents to fend for them-selves—napping, watching a cop show on TV, reading. Mary fell asleep in a recliner and Jackson covered her with a multicolored patchwork throw from the couch.

The waiting was taking its toll on everyone. Whoever abducted Samantha had done a clean, professional job. There had been calls to MPD from people with theories, and some who claimed to have seen something strange going on in their neighborhood. Those calls were followed up, of course, but nothing tangible came from them. The lack of contact from the kidnappers was the most unsettling of all. According to Kloss, who’d participated in other abduction investigations, not receiving a call for such an extended length of time was highly unusual. He’d pointed out to Jackson that of the approximately 800,000 children abducted each year in the United States, less than ten percent were taken by strangers with no connection whatsoever to the family of the child. The Rollins kidnapping clearly fell into that category. Those who picked the child up and swept her away from the fringe of the Mall were pros, with no axes to grind with the Rollins family, no grudges being played out, no questions of paternity or creating a wedge in a family dispute. No, these abductors were after something tangible, presumably money—or something else. The question was, what was it they wanted? There was no way of knowing without a phone call from them, or a note. Or a mistake.

The tapes?

Jackson couldn’t shake that possibility from his mind.

He sat alone in the kitchen and mulled over his conversation with Micki Simmons. He liked her and was sympathetic to her situation, no matter that it had been self-generated. It was Rosalie Curzon with whom he had trouble mustering sympathy. Deciding to videotape some of her trysts with men, primarily those with high profiles in D.C., had been a shabby and certainly foolhardy thing to do, and had probably led to her murder. He admired Micki for adhering to the prostitute’s so-called code of honor, maintaining the secrecy of customers. It didn’t make prostitution more honorable, but there was, at once, a certain kind of honor in even considering a code of conduct in a distinctly dishonorable, albeit ancient profession.

He used the downstairs guest bathroom to brush his teeth, stripped down to his shorts and T-shirt, and climbed into one of two single beds in the guestroom, where he quickly fell asleep, his final thoughts of himself behind the wheel of Rollins’s Porsche, Mary in the passenger seat, racing through a fall countryside, the top down, the sweet roar of the engine bringing wide smiles to both of them. It was a pleasant way to end a distinctly unpleasant day.

A
s was by now their custom, Jackson preceded Rollins to his office the next morning and was with the second detective in the reception area when Rollins arrived. The attorney and confidant to the high-and-mighty was grim-faced as he walked past them, grunting a greeting, and closed his office door behind him.

Caroline raised her eyebrows. “A good morning to stay clear,” she commented, returning to her chores.

At quarter of ten, Rollins left, carrying his briefcase. He stopped at Caroline’s desk to say he’d be meeting with Kevin Ziegler at his office, but he expected to be back by noon.

Rollins took a taxi to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, separated from the White House’s West Wing by a narrow street. Many of the administration’s offices were located there, as was the vice president’s ceremonial second office. Richard Nixon had made more daily use of it than any other VP. Built between 1871 and 1888, the imposing building held a rich history in a city of rich histories. It took up an entire city block, and had been the site of the nation’s first televised press conference. Top political advisors to presidents maintained their working offices there, although much of their time was spent in the West Wing, where they could be in closer proximity to their clients-in-chief.

After being cleared, Rollins was escorted to Ziegler’s office, a large, airy room with tall windows that afforded an unhindered view of the West Wing of the White House, a fitting perch from which to look down on his presidential protégé to make sure he didn’t do something stupid and stray from the Ziegler political Bible.

“Sit down, Jerry,” Ziegler said, indicating one of two matching blue leather club chairs on either side of a small, round table. “Thank you for being on time.”

Rollins placed his briefcase on the floor next to him. He kept his leg in touch with it, as though expecting a hand to reach in and steal it at any moment. His emotions had run the gamut since his initial meeting with Ziegler and his decision. This day, at this moment, anger prevailed, anger at Ziegler and at himself, at Washington, and at Bob Colgate, at the sewer into which politics had sunk, and at the world in general and his place in it. It took all the restraint he possessed that morning to keep from erupting, from lashing out at Ziegler verbally and physically.

“I know this is unpleasant for you, Jerry,” Ziegler said, a perpetual small smile on his lips, “but life takes funny turns.”

“I find nothing funny about it,” Rollins said.

“Poor choice of words on my part,” Ziegler said. “Of course, you’ve brought what we discussed.”

“Yes.” Rollins reached down, opened his briefcase, removed the envelope and placed it on the table. Ziegler looked at it, a quizzical expression on his malleable face. “What do you figure the cost of a couple of videotapes is, Jerry?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Surely not much. How much did you pay for them?”

“I don’t see where that’s relevant.”

“Just curious. They were brought to us first. I told you that.”

Rollins sat up a little straighter. He’d wondered why the tapes hadn’t been offered to the Pyle campaign. It was only logical. “Why didn’t you buy them?” he asked.

“Because there wasn’t anything tangible to buy. We were told that the tapes existed but weren’t provided with specifics. We decided it was a ploy, a scam, and told the seller to get lost.”

That hadn’t been the case with Rollins. He’d been offered the opportunity to actually view the tapes before committing to buying them, and had taken the seller up on that opportunity. He was stunned, of course, at what they contained, but kept his feelings to himself. “How much?” he’d asked.

“A quarter mil,” was the answer.

“How do I know you haven’t made copies of them?” he asked.

“You’ll have to take my word for it,” the seller replied, grinning. “I didn’t make copies. I don’t play games. We have a deal?”

“It will take me a few days to arrange for the money.”

The seller put the tapes back in the shopping bag he carried and told Rollins to call when he had the money.

“I don’t want to see you again,” Rollins had said. “Can we arrange to have the tapes and the money exchanged without actually meeting?”

“Sure. I’ll tell you where to come. But don’t let this drag on too long, huh? You’re not the only game in town.” Another grin. “Nice meeting you.”

Rollins manipulated campaign funds under his control—there was so much money, and so little oversight, that coming up with $250,000 and hiding it under miscellaneous expenses wasn’t difficult. He called the seller and it was agreed that the tapes would be left at a designated spot, and where Rollins could deposit an envelope containing the cash. It went smoothly, and Rollins had not heard from the seller again, to his relief.