Handcuffed and wearing an orange prisoner jumpsuit, the only surviving member of Romero’s crew glared at the tabletop as Bree followed Ned Mahoney into an interrogation room at the federal detention facility in Alexandria, Virginia.
I was in an observation booth with U.S. Secret Service agent Lance Reamer and Capitol Police lieutenant Sheldon Lee.
“She still hasn’t said anything?” Special Agent Reamer asked.
“She’s asked for an attorney,” I said.
“Course she did,” Lieutenant Lee said bitterly.
Mahoney and Bree took seats opposite her. She raised her head, saw Bree, and acted as if she’d sniffed something foul. She had spiderweb tattoos on both hands and another climbing the left side of her neck.
“Your prints came up,” Mahoney said, sliding a piece of paper in front of her. “Lupe Morales. Multiple arrests as a juvenile. Four as an adult, for solicitation, drug dealing twice, and abetting an armed robbery. Looks like you did three years in the California Institution for Women at Lompoc for that one.”
“Eighteen months,” Lupe said, and she yawned. “I’ve asked for a lawyer. Twice now.”
“The federal defender’s office has been notified,” Bree said. “In the meantime, you can do yourself a whole lot of good by talking to us.”
She sniffed. “I’ve heard that one before.”
Bree showed no reaction. “The U.S. attorney is preparing to charge you with four counts of kidnapping, three counts of attempted murder, and two counts of firing on police officers in the course of duty. Oh, and co-conspirator in the plot to murder a sitting U.S. senator. I’m thinking life without parole times two, maybe more.”
“If not the federal death penalty,” Mahoney said. “The new administration’s big on taking that road whenever possible. Or hadn’t you heard?”
Lupe sat forward, her upper lip curled. “I’m guilty of nothing but being stupid and going along for a ride I shouldn’t never have been on. Know what I’m saying?”
“No, actually,” Bree said.
“Spell it out,” Mahoney said.
“Check my gun,” she said. “That little Glock? No bullets, and not because I ran out. It’s clean because I’ve never shot it. I didn’t shoot at no one. Never have. Never will. And especially no senator.”
In the booth, I put a call in to the FBI lab at Quantico and asked a tech to check her assertion about her gun. He put me on hold. As I waited for an answer, I heard Lupe denying knowing exactly why Fernando Romero had decided to drive across country from Oakland to Washington, DC.
“Only thing I knew is he said he was gonna set some things straight and make a pile of Benjamins doing it,” Lupe said. “I was just along for the ride.”
“Armed to the teeth?” Mahoney said.
“Not me. Like I said, that piece was all show.”
“Tell us about Senator Walker,” Bree said.
She shrugged. “Fernando hated her.”
“Enough to kill her?”
Lupe thought about that and then nodded. “But he’d have to have been seriously messed up on meth and Jim Beam and have her, like, show up at the door when he was all hating the world and shit.”
Mahoney said, “C’mon, Ms. Morales. Romero or his other man or you shot Senator Walker early yesterday morning from an empty town house in Georgetown.”
“The hell I did,” Lupe said, sitting up, indignant. “Fernando didn’t either, or Chewy. We might’ve hated Walker, but we sure didn’t kill her.”
“Romero confessed,” Bree said. “I heard him. So did two other police officers.”
“No way!”
“Way,” Bree said. “When you were out on the porch with the girls, when Romero and I were negotiating for time, he told me we had ten minutes and after that he didn’t give a damn, that little girls and Mommy were going to start dying, quote, ‘just like that bitch Betsy Walker did.’”
“So?” Lupe said. “That’s no confession. He was just, like, comparing it.”
“That’s not the way I heard it.”
“You hear it any way you want, that don’t make it so. Was Fernando happy Walker was dead? Totally. He went out into the damned snow and did a dance when he heard. But he did not kill Betsy Walker. None of us did. Early yesterday morning? When she was shot? We were stuck in a shithole motel ’cause of that ice storm. The Deer Jump Lodge or something in, like, Roanoke. You go on and check. We gotta be on security cams there. People can’t be two places at once.”
Bree started to say something but Mahoney beat her to it.
“We will check, Ms. Morales. But again, if you weren’t here to kill Senator Walker, why did you and Mr. Romero and this Chewy come to Washington in the first place? And armed to the teeth?”
“Like I said, I don’t know for sure,” Lupe said evasively. “I came along for the ride, mostly. I always wanted to see like the Lincoln Monument. Know what I’m saying?”
Bree said, “But Mr. Romero was coming for other reasons, to set things right and make a lot of money? Is that correct?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Were you going to make money?”
Lupe didn’t reply for several beats. “I dunno, maybe. It hadn’t been decided if I was in or out yet, like, if I was needed. Necessary, I guess.”
“To do what?” Bree asked.
Lupe’s face scrunched up. “No clue, I said.”
There was a sharp knock at the door. A tall, willowy blonde in a fine blue pantsuit and a pearl necklace came in carrying an attaché case.
“Perrie Knight, counselor-at-law,” she said crisply. “I’ll be representing Ms. Morales. And this interview, I’m afraid, is over.”
Bree exited the interrogation room looking agitated. She was openly angry when she reached the observation booth. I was still on hold, waiting for the lab tech.
“Romero confessed,” she said. “I heard it. Wiggins and Flaherty heard it too.”
“Lupe says it was just a manner of speaking,” Agent Reamer said.
“Sure, she says that,” Bree replied. “She wants off death row.”
“What’s Perrie Knight doing involved in this case?” Lieutenant Lee said. “She’s not with federal defenders. She’s high-dollar, white-collar crime cases.”
The tech at Quantico came back on the line. I listened, thanked him, and hung up. “Morales was right about her gun being empty. In fact, the FBI lab says it’s never been fired.”
“That doesn’t absolve Romero of the murder,” Bree said.
“I agree,” Lieutenant Lee said.
“You’re both right,” I said. “Until we check with that motel, an empty gun doesn’t absolve anyone. But you should also know that the ballistics folks at Quantico say that none of the weapons recovered last night remotely match the bullets that killed Senator Walker. I think we have to consider the senator’s case open again.”