The Advocate's Daughter (13 page)

“You brave boy. You sweet, brave boy.”

 

CHAPTER 31

The tree-lined streets of Chevy Chase were quiet but for a dog barking in the distance. At the front gate, a few newspapers were piled up, but thankfully, no reporters were staked out. Under the yellow porch light, Sean hugged Ryan again and he braced himself as he pushed open the door. If Emily was awake, he'd have some explaining to do. And Sean had no idea what to say. But the house was still.

“Why don't you hit the sack,” Sean whispered, as they both slipped off their shoes. Ryan gave his father another hug. He tiptoed up the stairs while Sean went into the kitchen. Sean didn't turn on the light. He opened the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of water, and took a long gulp. The voice came from the dining room.

“Where have you guys been?” The light clicked on. Emily's gaze softened when she got a look at him. “Oh my God, what happened?”

Sean walked to his wife and gave her a long embrace. Over her shoulder in the dining room he saw piles of photographs spread across the table. Emily put her hands on Sean's arms and examined his face.

“I got mugged,” he said finally. “I was in the gym's parking lot and two guys came out of nowhere. They clocked me good and took my money. They threw my keys into the trees by the lot. I didn't want to worry you, so I had Ryan ride his bike over and bring me a spare key.” They were not a couple who lied to one another, and already Sean regretted it. He should tell her everything. But he was deterred by the weary, demolished look of her. Was the old Emily even still in there?

“Are you okay? Did you call the police?” Emily tucked strands of hair behind her ears.

“I'm fine, and I'm not calling the police.”

“Why?”

“We don't need more attention, and, besides, they knocked me to the ground before I got a good look at them, so it would be pointless.” The first rule of holes, Sean always told his children, is that when you're in one, stop digging. But here he was with not just a shovel, but an excavator.

“I think we should call,” Emily said.

“No,” Sean said. It was firm and final, and to his surprise, Emily didn't fight it. “You're going through some pictures?” he asked, a clumsy change of subject.

Emily followed his eyes to the table and said, “Abby's baby pictures, from before we had a digital camera. I'm having them and all our pictures digitized so they're preserved.”

Sean gave a fleeting smile. “That's a great idea, Em.” He walked to the table and looked over the photos. Birthday shots, first day of school, family vacations. He picked up a recent one.

“Remember this?” he said. It was from last Halloween. They were the Avengers. Ryan as Captain America, Jack as the Hulk, and Abby as Black Widow.

Emily nodded. “You told her the costume was too revealing.”

“It was,” Sean said. “I told her she was so beautiful that she didn't need any more attention.”

“And what did she say?” Emily asked.

“What do you think?”

A smile briefly graced Emily's lips, but then the vacant stare reappeared. “Let's clean you up.” She took his hand and led him to the bathroom, where she pulled out a plastic container filled with Band-Aids and ointments. Her Mother's Kit. She gestured for him to sit on the toilet seat as she ran a washcloth under warm water at the sink.

Sean winced as Emily softly dabbed at the crusted blood on his face. She ran the cloth under the water and a brown and red swirl disappeared down the drain. She cleaned the blood from his hair. More brown and red in the sink. They both stared absently at the blood. Before long Emily was crying. And so was he.

 

CHAPTER 32

After Emily returned to bed, Sean went to his home office and stared at the computer screen. He was too wired to sleep, so he scanned the fifty-seven e-mails he'd received from work. In one, a partner asked Sean to help pitch an appeal to a pharmaceutical company tomorrow. Sean typed out a reply that he would attend. What was he going to do otherwise—sit around the house and imagine conspiracies that didn't exist? Make some more terrible decisions? He eyed the bottle of Nikka whiskey that stood on his desk on top of the photo of Sean, Kenny, and Juan.

He'd been a fool. In not wanting to accept that Abby was gone, not wanting to allow the grief to take hold, he'd lost his way. Temporary insanity. They had the man who'd killed Abby, Malik Montgomery, and everything else was just a distraction. Noise. If Kenny was truly back from Japan, it was probably because he'd seen Sean in the newspapers and thought he could get something out of it. It had nothing to do with Abby. As for Chipotle Man, he was a small-time drug dealer. Neither Kenny nor Chipotle Man would be able to find the Supreme Court building on a map, much less get inside and hurt Abby.

His foolishness tonight had nearly gotten him seriously hurt. Worse, he'd put Ryan at risk. He flashed to his son standing on the football field, clasping the rebar, face sallow. Sean grabbed the bottle of whiskey by the neck and placed it in the wastebasket. He stared at the photo then crinkled it into a ball. A voice snapped him out of it.

“I thought I heard someone still up,” Ryan said. He leaned on the doorframe.

“Hey, what's up? Can't sleep?” Sean asked.

“I forgot to show you what I found,” Ryan said. He held up a folder. “It was in Abby's stuff.” Ryan walked over to the desk and opened a manila folder from Abby's vetting research file. He placed his index finger on some writing in faint pencil on the inside of the folder: [email protected].

“An e-mail account,” Sean said. “Did you try to log on?”

Ryan gave his father a sideways look.

“Oh yeah,” Sean said. They'd reset all the passwords and locked Ryan out of the computers after the Facebook fiasco. He gestured for Ryan to come around to his side of the desk as he started punching keys on the computer.

“What's ‘SCOTUSgirl' mean?” Ryan asked.

“SCOTUS is an acronym for the Supreme Court of the United States.”

“That sounds like an address Abby might use,” Ryan said.

A Gmail page appeared. Sean said, “What do you think for a password?”

“There's some words written on the other side of the folder,” Ryan said. He flipped over the file and directed Sean to two words scribbled on the outside,
CHADWICK
and
WAVERLY
. Sean typed them in one at a time and neither worked.

He typed
LUCY
, for the family's dog. Abby adored the Labrador, and took it hard when the old dog died shortly after Abby left for college. Ryan nodded.

A lockout again.

“How about ‘Povie,'” Ryan said. “I know she used that as a password before.” For her entire life, Abby loved words—big words, obscure words, complicated words. And she had a penchant for making up words. When she was little she called stuffed animals “la-la,” her favorite hamburger place “gookie,” her baby brother “gi-gi.” It was part of their family lore. And her made-up word for the family dog was “Povie.”

Sean typed in P-O-V-I-E and clicked the mouse. He was in.

“There's no e-mails,” Ryan said. He stood behind his father, hunching over Sean's shoulder.

Sean grabbed the mouse and clicked on the Inbox. Ryan was right. No e-mails. He clicked on the Sent Mail folder. Nothing.

“Someone must've gone through here and deleted everything,” Sean said.

“Or maybe she never used the account,” Ryan said. “Why would she? She's had her own e-mail account through Georgetown.”

Sean didn't answer and continued to move about the page. He opened the Drafts folder, and there was one e-mail written in draft form. He clicked on the little mail icon and lost his breath when he read the message:

Meet me at library Sunday, 10pm.

The night Abby was murdered.

 

CHAPTER 33

The next morning, Ryan and Jack ate their breakfast at the counter like always. Sean thought that the best way to keep his imagination from running wild was to return to work. The boys should return to school because things couldn't be normal for them until things were, well, normal. But the Gmail message snatched hold of his thoughts and wouldn't let go. And he fought it, but Japan and Chipotle Man were back in his head. He glanced out the window and happened to catch Frank Pacini taking out his dog, a large, perpetually nervous Afghan hound. Pacini and his wife had sent flowers and a lasagna to the house, but Sean otherwise hadn't heard from him since the night in the library.

“Ryan, can you wait with Jack until Dean's mom is here to take him to school? I need to talk to the neighbor for a minute. I'll give you a ride when I get back.”

“Sure,” Ryan said.

Sean kissed Jack on the top of the head and hurried out the door. He found Pacini standing on the patch of grass that bordered the street. He wore a gray suit and was waiting awkwardly for the dog to finish its business.

“Frank,” Sean said as he walked over.

“Sean, how are you?” Pacini said. “Ouch, what happened to your eye?”

“Long story involving me, a bike, and a patch of gravel.” Funny how when you repeat a lie a few times you start to believe it yourself.

“Are you holding up okay? Ginger said she's called Emily a few times, but hasn't been able to reach her.”

Emily lay in a stupor of depression meds swallowed down with Grey Goose, so Sean saved the obligatory
we're doing the best as could be expected
and cut to it. “Do you think you have the right guy? Did Malik kill Abby?”

Pacini looked at his dog and his forehead wrinkled. “That's something you really should discuss with Patti.”

Patti Fallon was the lead prosecutor assigned to the Malik Montgomery case. Because Abby was killed on federal property, the Justice Department asserted jurisdiction.

“I've had a couple of calls with her. She seems like one of those prosecutors who's a true believer.”

Pacini shook his head. “She's good, Sean. One of the best prosecutors at Justice.”

“I'm sure she is, but I just wanted your take—your honest take on the case.”

“You should talk to Patti,” Pacini said. When Sean gave him a hard glare, Pacini added, “We're both scheduled as witnesses to fend off Montgomery's motion to suppress, so we shouldn't be talking about the case. We could be forced to disclose anything we talk about on the witness stand.”

Pacini was right. Plus he was career FBI—he wasn't going to budge.

“I spoke to Blake Hellstrom,” Sean said.

At this Pacini's eyes widened.

Sean said, “Hellstrom swears his client is innocent.”

Pacini scoffed. “That's his job. Tell me you're not having doubts about the prosecution because of something Hellstrom said?”

Sean shrugged.

“They've got the right man, Sean. Given all the heat they're taking on the race stuff, they wouldn't have moved on Malik Montgomery if they weren't confident he's guilty. And trust me,” he looked Sean in the eyes now, “there's more evidence than you know about.”

“Like?”

“Like, ask Patti.”

Sean sighed. “I found an e-mail,” he said finally. “An account I think Abby opened. In a draft e-mail file there was a note asking someone to meet at the Supreme Court library the night she was murdered. She was with Malik that night at dinner, so she had no reason to send it to him.” For obvious reasons, this was all he would tell Pacini. What else would he say?
My son and I beat up a drug dealer who bothered Abby. And, by the way, my co-conspirator from a childhood murder left me a bottle of whiskey.
The e-mail, though, was something to grab onto. Something real.

But Pacini wouldn't bite. “You should tell Patti about it.”

“You know that using draft e-mails is how people who don't want an electronic trail often communicate? The sender writes a draft and then the other person logs on to the e-mail account and reads the draft and deletes it so there's no transmission over the Internet.” Sean heard the desperation in his own voice. “The Supreme Court discussed the technique in
U.S. v. Ahmed,
the case about the government's surveillance program. Malik said she was seeing someone, so maybe…”

Pacini just looked at him. It was a pitying look. Sean thought about how this all must sound. The grieving father clinging to complicated scenarios and supposedly unanswered questions in order to avoid letting go of his murdered daughter.

Pacini was probably right.

 

CHAPTER 34

“Sean, I appreciate the information, I do,” Patti Fallon said, her voice coming from the SUV's overhead speakers. Sean was driving Ryan to school, and he merged onto the chaotic traffic circle on Connecticut Avenue. “But my priority right now is winning the suppression hearing. If Blake Hellstrom gets the evidence thrown out, nothing else will matter. It'll all be over.”

Sean glanced at Ryan, who fiddled with his iPod Touch. His earbuds were in, and it was hard to tell if he was listening to the call.

“I hear you, Patti, but what Hellstrom says makes sense. Malik is too smart to have left the phone and video evidence behind. It's too convenient. And this e-mail I found suggests that Abby was meeting someone else that night.”

There was a long silence. Then: “I promise you, Sean,” Fallon's voice had the hint of an edge to it now, “we understand those issues. Hellstrom has made the same points to me and my team. I've got my best people working this case, career prosecutors. The best agents investigating. We're considering
all
the evidence, not just the defense's points.”

“Is there evidence I don't know about? Something you haven't told me?”

“Let's talk about it when you come in for the meeting on the hearing. I'll give you an update on everything. Right now, I need my people to focus on the suppression hearing. They're working around the clock, and now we're going to have to determine if we need to give Hellstrom the e-mail you found.”