CHAPTER 29

The governor was dressed in a bright blue aloha shirt with yellow flowers, a lei draped around his thick neck. When I sat across from him at the conference table, he clenched his teeth and told me I’d better make this quick. “I have to return to the festival. I’m scheduled to begin a speech in less than an hour.”

“Fine,” I told him. “Let’s get right to it then. Oksana Sutin was pregnant.”

“Excuse me?”

“With your child.”

Omphrey seemed to deflate, the headful of steam released in one great sigh. “Who told you this?”

We were alone in the conference room, Jason Yi sitting just outside in reception. I’d told the governor no more games, no more aides. Yi wasn’t the governor’s wife and he could testify against him if called by the prosecution.

“A confidante who lived in Oksana’s building,” I said.

“What is her name?”

I ignored the question. “She said that you and Oksana were exclusive for the few months you were together. But she suggested someone was paying Oksana nonetheless.”

“That’s complete bullshit.”

“Then what was her source of income? How did she manage the rent in Diamond Head?”

“I told you, we never discussed those things. For me to do so would be to open a door that can’t always be closed.”

“What do you mean?”

Omphrey drew a deep breath. “The mistress of a powerful man, Mr. Corvelli. More often than not, they want things. Once you start giving, you can’t stop. And eventually, someone follows the money and you’re exposed.”

“So that’s why you never asked—”

“Exactly. Rule one, never discuss money. Rule two, never discuss your wife.”

I regarded him as I sat back in my chair and crossed my right leg over the left. “Rule three, kill them when they become inconvenient.”

Omphrey’s mouth opened wide but no sound emanated from his throat.

“I received a package in my mailbox last night, Governor. It contained a DVD, two scenes apparently captured by a hidden camera in Oksana’s apartment.”

Omphrey remained silent.

“In the first scene, you’re standing in front of her wet bar, asking if you could pour her some brandy. She reminds you she can’t drink and asks instead for some tea. You tell her to go ahead and take a shower while you make the tea. Then you reach into your pocket and fish out a small brown vial, which, if this case goes to trial, will be said to contain strychnine.”

“What the hell are you saying!”

“In the second scene,” I said calmly, “which it will be suggested occurs just a couple weeks later when you were in Washington, DC, Oksana falls to the floor and goes into violent convulsions. When the convulsions finally stop, Oksana Sutin is dead.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said in an apparent panic. “I’m being set up.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions, Governor.”

“What do you mean? What other explanation is there?”

“First off, did you know Oksana was pregnant?”

“Of course not.”

“Yet you knew she couldn’t drink.”

“She’d been sick. She was taking antibiotics.”

I leaned forward. “Let’s put the pregnancy aside for the moment. The tea you prepared for her that night, describe it.”

“Black tea, very strong. The leaves came in a bag like the coffee beans you buy at Starbucks or in a supermarket.”

“And the vial? It’s only on-screen for a moment, but it appears to contain a white powder. Strychnine, as you may know, also takes the form of a white powder.”

Sweat budded on the governor’s ample upper lip. “It wasn’t poison,” he finally said. “It was cocaine.”

“Who did you get the coke from?”

“From Oksana.”

“You said directly to Special Agent Slauson that Oksana didn’t dabble in drugs.”

“She didn’t,” the governor said in a huff. “I did.” A brief pause. “I do. And Oksana procured the cocaine for me from one of her friends.”

Had Scott and I not seen Iryna Kupchenko pull out a similar vial to do a fist bump or two before she left to meet her client, I wouldn’t have believed Governor Omphrey. But as it was, I did. At least about the cocaine. I didn’t tell the governor that Iryna said Oksana Sutin used cocaine every day up until the time she found out she was pregnant with Omphrey’s child.

“I’m fucked,” Omphrey said, seemingly on the verge of tears. “My life is over.”

“These things can be explained away at trial, if it even comes to that.”

“Fuck trial. This fucking disc you found is going to be released to the press, and it’s enough to end my political career and my marriage. It has me in Oksana’s apartment, obviously for an affair. And it shows me pulling a vial of blow from my pocket.”

I reached behind me and tried to loosen the unyielding tendons in the back of my neck. With the governor’s drug use already on the table, I was tempted to reach into my own pocket and pull out the bottle of Percocet. I could crush a half dozen, and Wade and I could have ourselves a little pity party and wash away our troubles in a narcotic haze.

“If you are being set up, Governor, which this evidence does suggest, then I think it’s time to consider who might be behind this.”

Omphrey gaped. “Who the hell do you think is behind this? My opponent. That fucking scum-sucking bottom-feeder would kill his own mother to take my office from me.”

The governor’s challenger, whom I’d voted for in the primary and would vote for again in the general election, was John Biel, a candidate running on such issues as Hawaii’s declining education resulting from budget cuts, the governor’s failure to lower taxes on working families, his vetoing of the civil unions bill passed by the state legislature, and of course the environment. I couldn’t quite envision the sixty-four-year-old candidate murdering pregnant prostitutes with strychnine to frame an incumbent.

“I think it would be best if we expanded our list of possible suspects, Governor. Surely, someone in your position has made other enemies over the course of your political career?”

“We all make enemies, Counselor.” Omphrey suddenly stood up. “Find me the motherfucker responsible for this, and I can assure you that your enemies in the state prosecutor’s office will quickly find themselves back in Los Angeles.” As he stepped past me, he smiled and addressed the stunned look on my face. “Oh, yes, Mr. Corvelli, I read Paradise on Fire. I know all about how Luke Maddox tried to win a conviction in the Simms trial by planting stories in a pyromaniac’s head. And I know how you turned things around to win your client an acquittal. How you took a knife in the gut to save the boy. That took some brass balls. That’s what I look for in a lawyer, Mr. Corvelli. That’s why I hired you.”