Sam pulled into the driveway at a large home in Seven Corners. The neighborhood was aging but well cared for. The location was too near Capitol Hill to be a bargain yet too far away for an easy commute. Frank McCulley had chosen the worst of both worlds, Sam thought.
The yard was a bit overgrown and the house needed a coat of paint, but the home’s aristocratic bones still shined. Several of Sarah Beth’s toys were strewn about the yard. The McCulleys hadn’t yet brought themselves to clean them up after her death.
Sam rang the doorbell. Hayward rocked on his heels at her side, hands in his jacket pockets, undoubtedly with his hand wrapped around the grip of his pistol.
The door opened to reveal a gaunt woman with exhausted eyes and a dangerous frailty about her. She was in her late thirties but had aged a decade in the past week.
“You,” Elizabeth McCulley said. Sam hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but the rancor in the woman’s voice caught her off guard. It came from a place of profound pain, focused and sharpened by blame. “I’m calling the police,” Elizabeth McCulley said, swinging the door toward closed.
Sam reached out and stopped the door. “Mrs. McCulley,” she said. “Please don’t do that. Not yet.”
“Why not?” Elizabeth said. “You are responsible for my daughter’s death.”
Damn, those words stung. Sam’s eyes welled up. She couldn’t help it. Even after all she had endured since that day in the park, it was all still very raw and painful. She felt a lump form in her throat and she found herself nodding in agreement. “Maybe I am,” she said. “I don’t really know anymore. All I know is that I’m heartbroken for your loss.”
Elizabeth reached into her pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “You’re going to get what’s coming to you,” she said. There was real hatred in her eyes. Sam could tell it felt good to hate, to feel something with energy behind it, something other than the stifling, suffocating abyss of grief.
Sam put a gentle hand on Elizabeth’s arm. “You can do that in a minute,” she said, “but will you give me a moment first?”
Elizabeth studied Sam’s face. Sam suddenly felt self-conscious and vulnerable but she didn’t avert her eyes. After a long moment, Elizabeth opened the door and Sam and Hayward followed her inside.
The house was opulent and expensive. The air was heavy and oppressive, as if grief had invaded in force, driving the good air out.
Frank McCulley appeared. “What is this?” he asked.
His wife put her hand on his arm. “Ms. Jameson, honey,” she said.
“I know who she is, but I don’t know why you let her in—”
Elizabeth silenced her husband with a look and a squeeze of his arm. “I want to hear what she has to say.”
McCulley sized Sam up, then looked at Hayward, then again at Sam. “I have the Metro PD on speed dial. They’ll respond immediately.”
“May we sit down?” Sam asked.
McCulley motioned toward a sitting room. There was an awkward moment when they tried to figure out who should sit where. Elizabeth disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a tray full of coffee. Sam was grateful for the gesture and even more grateful for the caffeine.
When they were settled, McCulley made a motion with his hands as if to say, “What’s this all about?”
Hayward looked down at his shoes.
Sam took a deep breath. “It’s been running over and over in my mind, that day in the park, and I’ve been trying to figure out what went wrong ever since.”
The McCulleys said nothing.
The lump settled in Sam’s throat again. She couldn’t stop the tears from welling in her eyes. Several escaped and wandered down her cheeks. She wiped them away and took another deep breath. “I am sorry. More than words can express. More than I can grasp right now. Maybe it was my fault, maybe it wasn’t. I don’t really know. But I do know that your daughter’s death has broken me in a way I’ve never been broken before.”
McCulley rose. “You want absolution, go see a priest. There’s a warrant for your arrest and I’m calling the police.”
“Wait,” Sam said. “Not yet. You can call the police in a minute, if you want. But there are a few things I need to know first.”
McCulley glared at her. There was hardness and resolve on his face. He shook his head and turned to leave.
“Please,” Sam said. “It may be important to a lot of people. Then you can do whatever you want.”
McCulley stopped. He looked to his wife, who nodded ever so slightly. He looked back at Sam for a long moment. “Okay,” he finally said.
He sat back down on the sofa, but he didn’t touch his wife. She didn’t touch him. They weren’t doing well with Sarah Beth’s death, Sam surmised. Losing a child was often the death knell for a marriage, and it struck Sam that the pall over the McCulley house might have had more than one source. She felt for them. She could certainly relate to relationship troubles.
She cleared her throat. “If you’ll indulge me for just a couple of questions.”
The couple nodded. The tiredness and pain in both of their eyes was difficult to look at. Sam thought her own face probably wasn’t much cheerier. She forged ahead. “I’m curious about how long you’ve worked for Senator Stanley.”
“Fifteen years,” McCulley said. “Maybe sixteen.”
“You’ve been his chief of staff for that entire time?”
He shook his head. “I took over that job around nine years ago.”
“You run his calendar, right?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m curious, who does the senator meet with?”
McCulley chuckled without humor. “A senior senator on the Defense and Intelligence committees? It would take me a month to list all the ass kissers.”
“I mean, does he ever ask for meetings with anyone?”
“You mean, as opposed to accepting meeting requests from other people?”
“Exactly.”
“That would be a much shorter list.”
“How much shorter?”
“Handful of people, maybe.”
“A handful every week?” Sam said.
McCulley shook his head. “A handful of people, ever.”
Sam nodded. “The president? Vice president?”
“Of course,” McCulley said.
“And who else?”
“What are you getting at?” McCulley wanted to know.
Sam said. “I’m just curious about who Oren Stanley asks to meet with.”
“What could that possibly have to do with Sarah Beth’s death?” McCulley asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Sam said. “Maybe nothing.”
“Senator Stanley has meant a great deal to this family,” McCulley said. “I want no part in anything that might harm him.”
“I’m sure Senator Stanley has nothing to worry about,” Sam said. “It’s all just part of figuring out what happened and why.”
“You’ve been suspended,” McCulley said. “Why are you asking these questions?”
Sam decided to be completely honest. “Because I need to know what went wrong. I need to know if I screwed up. And I need to know why Senator Stanley pushed so hard to have me prosecuted as a criminal.”
“I knew it,” McCulley said. “You’re going after the senator.”
Sam shook her head and stifled a flash of anger. “I’m not going after anyone, much less Senator Stanley. I just need to understand why his reaction was so harsh, so severe. I’m missing something here, and I want to know what it is. I need to know what it is, because even if I made a mistake somehow, even if this is all my fault, I can’t bring myself to believe I’m a criminal.”
McCulley looked at her. He blinked a few times. His eyes became less angry and he nodded his head. “I can understand that,” he finally said.
“I don’t know if Mr. Stanley’s meeting requests will be important,” Sam said. “Honestly, they probably won’t be. As you know, on the day Sarah Beth died, my team and I were trying to arrest a man named Tariq Ezzat. We had very strong evidence that Ezzat was part of a group of criminals who funded Islamic terrorist groups. He resisted arrest and Sarah Beth was . . . caught in the middle.” Sam paused, fighting to maintain her composure.
“What I’ve discovered since then,” she went on after a moment, “is that Tariq Ezzat was also a CIA asset.”
Elizabeth brought her hand to her mouth. McCulley looked as if he had been kicked in the groin.
“The CIA is somehow involved with Tariq Ezzat’s terror financing organization,” Sam said. “Maybe the Agency is skimming money or maybe they’re trying to take the organization down. Either way it’s illegal for them to be operating on US soil, so they must have a very compelling reason to be doing it and I want to understand what that reason might be.”
“And you think Senator Stanley is somehow involved?” McCulley said.
Sam shook her head. “No, but I think he may have more information about who was behind this whole thing than he realizes.”
McCulley was silent for a long moment. Sam felt him sizing her up. “Okay,” he said. “Like you guessed, the senator requests occasional meetings with the president and vice president. He also sometimes asks for meetings with the DNI and the Secretary of Defense.”
Sam nodded. “That all sounds normal. Is there anyone else?”
McCulley nodded. “A man you’ve probably never heard of.”
“You’re probably right,” Sam said, “but indulge me anyway.”
“He also reaches out to a man named Artemis Grange.”