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“I received a courtesy call from the district attorney,” the senator said. “The police were here within the hour, searching Sean’s office. They took his computer.” Her voice rose. She paced a few steps in each direction. “He’s my chief of staff, for God’s sake. There’s analysis on his computer that we need in order to get our bills passed.”
Rorie Rickman looked pointedly at Maren, as if expecting her to make sense of this—that’s what lobbyists did, made sense of things for legislators. But while Maren tried to ground herself in the here and now, to contribute something, she couldn’t get past how surreal it felt standing in the senator’s office discussing Sean’s arrest. She found herself unable to think of a single thing to say.
Rickman walked purposefully to her desk and slid open the lower file drawer. Leaving it that way, she picked up her briefcase and retrieved a white physician’s coat from a small cupboard. “I’m late for clinic,” she said, crossing the office and walking out.
Maren stared at the door. Even given the circumstances, including Maren’s unexpected silence, Rickman’s abrupt exit seemed odd. Then Maren took in the still-open file drawer. She had never known the senator to leave a paper out of place, let alone the relative unbridled chaos of an open drawer.
She moved behind the desk and knelt to see the drawer’s contents. There were nearly twenty files marked SB 770 filled with papers and notes. Many printed from the computer, some in Sean’s hand.
“Can I help you?” Hannah Smart’s petite frame was stiff, her chin held high as she frowned at what appeared to be Maren rifling through the senator’s papers.
She backed off when Maren channeled her brother Noel’s best “don’t-you-question-me” look.
Maren carried the large stack of files the ten blocks back to Ecobabe, hardly noticing their weight in her hurry to get them to her office. She felt like she was trafficking in stolen goods.
It was possible Rorie Rickman routinely kept all work on current bills, including her staff’s, close at hand. But that would make it difficult for Sean and others to get what they needed without interrupting Rickman—and if there was one thing valued by all legislators, it was the brief moments of privacy they had in their offices. Maren thought it far more likely that Rorie Rickman had gone into Sean’s office and removed the SB 770 files in advance of the police visit, and she doubted that was, strictly speaking, legal.
Maren decided to check her emails before tackling the files’ contents—something routine to calm her. It was no use. She got through only three messages in twice the time it would usually take her. The last was another “Invest Now!” missive from senrabyllit@talk.com. She wondered briefly why her spam filter had failed her, before losing all interest in the screen. She shifted her focus to her cell phone, which sat silent on her desk. Willing it to ring.
To her surprise, it did. Maren picked up immediately.
“Maren, it’s Rorie Rickman. The clinic operator said it was urgent.”
Maren had thought about how best to frame her request. “Senator Rickman, I’m sorry to disturb you. Do you know where they’re keeping Sean? I’ve been unable to get answers from the police.” Or from the district attorney’s office or the newspaper that broke the story, she thought. But she didn’t see any reason to walk the senator through each frustrating dead end, particularly since she would have at most a few minutes before Rickman had to return to her clinic patients.
“Sean’s in county jail.” Rorie Rickman sounded weary. “I doubt he’s permitted visitors.”
“Do you know if he’s hired a lawyer? I thought it might help if I spoke to them. I have years of history with Sean—as my intern, a tenant, now a colleague.”
Rickman was silent.
Maren’s stomach tightened. She eyed the orchids on her desk, wondering if she would feel better if she methodically tore off the blooms.
“Let me see what I can do,” the senator finally offered.
Maren expected Rickman to hang up and was surprised when she spoke again.
“You know Sean’s parents died a few years back, both of cancer, one after the other?”
“No, he never said.” Sean had mentioned to Maren only something about his mother being ill. She realized then how private he was with her, just banter and politics when they talked. And how alone he must have felt underneath it all. No parents. She could relate.
“This is Sean’s first year with any real salary, and he has significant educational debts. With no family to turn to, he will qualify to have a state-funded public defender.” As if to quell any protests, Rickman added, “The Sacramento PDs are good.”
Maren had interned briefly with the public defender’s office in San Francisco during her last year of law school. So by “good” Maren knew the senator meant they were smart and dedicated attorneys, but underfunded with a caseload of at least seventy-five defendants each.
Maren pictured Sean with the same confused look he’d had when Tamara Barnes had come into Rickman’s office, although now he was wearing a prison-issued orange jumpsuit. That unsettling image was replaced by one of Tamara lying on the restroom sofa, arms crossed, feet together, still wearing her elegant gray pumps. Her eyes were peacefully closed, but her chest was covered in blood.
Maren spent the next hour scouring the web for detailed reporting on Tamara’s death and Sean’s arrest, but other than the fact that Tamara died from a single stab wound to the heart, there was little she didn’t already know.
The headlines were consistent in their enthusiasm: “Staff-on-Staff Murder!”; “Capitol Homicide!”; “26-Year-Old Brutally Slain!”; “Legislator’s Chief Aide Arrested in Grisly Crime!”
Fortunately, it didn’t take Senator Rickman long to work her magic.
By 2:00 p.m. Maren had escaped the media’s collective joy in the tragedy and was standing outside the offices of the Sacramento public defender at 700 H Street.
The tall gray building had been easy to find. Shortly after moving to the capital, Maren had learned that if you could count and knew the alphabet, you could locate anything in downtown Sacramento, moving from A to Z Street in one direction and First to Eighty-Fourth in the other. The rational layout made her wish the government processes housed within the city were as simple to navigate.
Having shown her ID and acquired a guest badge, Maren was directed through a series of narrow hallways to a small office in the back. The door was ajar. The attorney inside was sorting through stacks of manila files on top of a scratched, cheap-looking credenza—more government-issued furniture.
Maren took in the woman’s flawless skin, high cheekbones, and full red lips. Thick black hair fell gracefully to her collarbone, while the considerable curves of her body seemed hard-pressed to stay contained in a tailored dark brown jacket. A matching narrow, straight skirt ended modestly below her knees, but served only to accent her shapely calves and long legs.
Deputy Public Defender Lana Decateau was a dead ringer for Olivia Glass, the new-millennium starlet of Puerto Rican and Ethiopian descent, a 1940s bombshell glamour girl reborn in the modern era. Maren thought involuntarily of Jessica Rabbit of Roger Rabbit fame. I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.
“Ms. Kane, welcome. Please sit down,” the attorney offered, revealing a lilting southern accent that, without intention, heightened her aura of femininity. “I apologize for the mess. We lost twelve lawyers in state budget cuts—those of us still here have double caseloads. We’re suing the government to prevent staff reductions of another six.” She gestured to Maren to sit in a folding chair before seating herself behind the desk. “The Verston case, isn’t it?”
Maren wondered how the strikingly gorgeous Ms. Decateau could function daily in indigent criminal defense. Most of her clients must be lacking in basic social skills, and many, already incarcerated, were deprived of female companionship. For that matter, how did Lana (Maren was having a hard time thinking of her as anyone other than Olivia Glass) walk down the street without causing major traffic pileups? But when the attorney spoke, Maren could see intelligence in her eyes and composure in her manner that would almost certainly impede the otherwise instant erotic response she generated in most straight males aged fifteen to ninety-five. Because while being female, smart, and attractive was a turn-on for what Maren considered to be gold-standard men, she’d learned firsthand that others found the combination threatening or at least off-putting.
Ms. Decateau’s desktop wasn’t faring much better than her credenza in the paperwork onslaught. She opened a new-looking file, pushing aside several others to make room. From where she sat, Maren had an upside-down view of Sean’s booking photo, an intake form, and a number of loose papers. “I understand you have information pertinent to the case?” Lana asked. Her southern twang made “case” sound more like “cay-yes.”
Maren wondered if the attorney was thirty yet. Sacramento served as a training ground for young professionals before they moved on to “the big city”—San Francisco or LA. Still, regardless of the woman’s youthful appearance, Maren assumed Sean’s case hadn’t been given to a trainee. If the Sacramento public defender’s office worked like San Francisco’s, novice attorneys would be assigned only misdemeanors. A felony case like this would surely go to someone who could handle it.
“I was hoping you could tell me why Sean was arrested,” Maren said. “What exactly happened—the news reports aren’t saying much.”
“Senator Rickman told me you’re a friend of Mr. Verston. She suggested you might be able to help me better understand the circumstances that led him here.” A fleeting smile offered a glimpse of the heights the young lawyer’s beauty might reach if she weren’t burdened by the seriousness of her profession. But Maren could still feel Lana Decateau putting her on notice—unless she could convincingly justify her presence there, her visit with the lawyer would be a short one.
“I’ve known Sean since his college days. He applied to intern at my company after he graduated. He later rented an apartment attached to my home. I feel some responsibility for him since I’ve helped guide his career.” She thought of what Rorie Rickman had told her. “Sean’s parents are no longer alive.”
“I see,” Lana said. “Certainly the senator’s interest in this case is transparent, since Mr. Verston is her chief of staff.”
Maren got the message, that she was only getting the public defender’s cooperation because Rickman had insisted.
Ms. Decateau continued. “The information I can share with you will be public knowledge this afternoon. The mayor’s office, working with DA Sharpton, plans a press release. The community is always interested in the details of a murder, of course. But in this case, they also want to know enough to have confidence in the arrest—to believe in it. With the murder happening as it did in an unrestricted area of a government building, there are questions of public safety.”
Maren nodded. The multitude of crime procedurals on TV was evidence enough of the endless fascination people had these days with murder, imaginary and real.
“The police have a security video of Mr. Verston leaving the capitol building at eight twenty-five p.m. Shortly after footage of you and Senator Mathis arriving.”
That’s nothing, Maren thought. Sean told her he worked late that night. Before she could explain, Decateau said, “Mr. Verston used the exit closest to the bathroom where Ms. Barnes was found rather than the exit convenient to his office.” The attorney turned to the next page in the file. “Although any surface in a busy public bathroom presents a challenge in terms of isolating fingerprints, one promising place to check was on Ms. Barnes’s person. Not on the victim’s skin—DNA tests might show something there later. But on her effects. In this case, her shoes.” Lana’s thick black hair fell forward as she bent to read. She brushed it back with one hand in a single graceful motion. “There were two clear prints on Ms. Barnes’s shoes that match Mr. Verston’s. The police believe he arranged her body in the peaceful repose in which you found it, including lining up her feet so they were not askew.”
Maren swallowed hard. She felt warm and unwound her scarf from her neck before managing a response. “That doesn’t seem like much,” she said finally, more firmly than she felt. “Tamara saw Sean earlier in the day. I was there. Couldn’t there be other reasons he would have touched her shoes?”
Lana gave a small sigh. It was quiet, almost dainty. Maren saw it more than heard it, the woman’s chest rise and fall.
“Can you think of any?” Lana asked. While her tone was soft, it was a challenge, not a question.
Think of other reasons he would touch her shoes? Maren knew there must be, but before she could come up with something, Ms. Decateau spoke again. “At any rate, other theories for the cause of the prints—even if far-fetched . . .” She paused and looked directly at Maren as though to caution her not to go there. “Such theories would be more likely to be entertained if it were not for Mr. Verston’s clear motive.”
This time Decateau skimmed through several papers before finding the one she wanted. “Based on the department’s interviews, Sean and Ms. Barnes dated her first year of the Fellows Program. She rejected him. There are stories that after she broke up with Sean and got involved with someone else, Sean assaulted her new boyfriend, although no formal charges were filed. Sean has dated since, but apparently never found someone to replace Tamara. Photos in his apartment show he was carrying a torch, and according to the police, when Ms. Barnes recently made plans to marry it triggered the old ‘if-I-can’t-have-her-no-one-can’ response.”
Sean and Tamara involved?
Sean assaulting someone?
Tamara engaged?
Sean Verston obsessed?
It was too much for Maren to process. She slid her chair closer to the desk to see for herself, but Lana Decateau had closed the file.
“What photos, what kind?” Maren asked, grasping for something concrete.
“Several candid shots. One taped to the corner of his computer screen. He would have seen it daily. It’s a beach photo on a cold day, Ms. Barnes is wrapped in layers, a hat . . .”
Lana pursed her lips and looked down.
Maren thought she could see Decateau thinking of Tamara Barnes as a person, alive, rather than only as a victim, and the difficulty that caused the young attorney.
“There are also fourteen phone calls over the last few months from his cell to hers, lasting only a few seconds each. No return calls from her to him.”
Maren had to admit that didn’t sound good. Then she realized key information was missing. “Engaged to whom?”
Decateau found the name in the paperwork before looking up. “Caleb Waterston.”
Maren’s eyes widened, her mouth opened, then closed tightly.
Now she knew she had fallen down the rabbit hole.
“Do you know him?” Decateau asked.
When Maren found her voice, it appeared to have gained several decibels. “CALEB WATERSTON?”
She tried again, this time achieving a conversational volume but still unable to offer anything other than surprise and disbelief as she pictured the pale, emaciated, unattractive (at least to any nonreptilian being) lobbyist. “He’s, he’s . . . Well, that’s ridiculous.” Maren stopped, realizing she was sputtering.
Lana kept her voice even. “I’m not able to comment on the appropriateness, or lack thereof, of their union. Evidence indicates it was recent, maybe a month or two. It appears they were trying to keep it secret, not unusual for staff-lobbyist liaisons, as you may know. Mr. Waterston had revealed the romance to a few friends and colleagues, sharing photos of them together. They looked like a happy couple. Homicide believes Sean found out about the engagement, and that was what pushed him over the edge.”
On the walk back to her office, Maren realized Sean’s attorney hadn’t mentioned Tamara’s comment that the governor and she had done something “awful.” Maren worried the information she’d provided in her interview with the police might be buried in the tsunami of papers in Decateau’s office. She was sure that given Tamara’s mention of the governor, something in the young aide’s work for him had to be key to finding the real murderer. And there was something else in the exchange in Senator Rickman’s office the day of Tamara’s death that Maren thought Decateau should be made aware of, something Maren had only reflected on after the fact.
Tamara went to Sean when she was truly upset—perhaps she had even feared for her life. That had to mean their post-romantic friendship was a mutual one, not a one-sided obsession on Sean’s part. And to Maren’s mind, the trusting looks that passed between Tamara and Sean that day gave clear evidence that Sean was not her killer. Maren had known Sean too long and too well to believe that his sincere expression of concern could have been masking a homicidal rage.
At the crossing at Eighteenth and L Streets, Maren stopped at the light, pulled out her cell phone, and called the private line the lawyer had given her. Lana picked up on the first ring and listened politely before responding summarily to Maren’s concerns.
“Ms. Kane, your statement was not overlooked. Governor Fernandez has an alibi for the time in question. He was on a conference call from his office. Phone records confirm it. He will be interviewed further as soon as he returns from an urgent trip to Asia. But don’t expect too much,” she cautioned. “As for your belief that Mr. Verston and Ms. Barnes were on good terms, terms that would rule out the violence that followed, it’s not uncommon for people to convey one thing and feel another. You must know that.”
When the call ended, Maren felt flushed. She walked faster, almost stomping in her boots. Of course she knew people said one thing and did another. But murder? Besides, Lana Decateau didn’t know Sean and hadn’t been there that day to see what passed between him and Tamara.
Ten minutes later as she opened the door to Ecobabe’s offices, Maren realized that with everything else that was said, she had neglected to pursue her primary purpose in contacting Sean’s lawyer—assistance in getting into the jail to see Sean. As soon as she was settled at her desk, door closed, Maren made another call to Lana with the request. Lana’s response wasn’t what she expected.
“Is it true you have a law degree?” Decateau’s tone was blunt.
Maybe an in-person visit and two calls to the attorney in one day were too much.
She fell back on what she’d learned in law school, advice for facing another lawyer’s questioning. “Yes” or “No” answers, minimal elaboration—just the facts.
“Yes,” Maren said.
“Have you taken and passed the California bar exam?”
“Yes.”
“Any experience in criminal law?”
“Yes, an internship with the San Francisco public defender’s office.”
“How long?”
Maren had hoped Decateau wouldn’t ask that follow-up. “Six weeks.”
“Is there any reason Sean Verston wouldn’t want to see you?”
What?
“No. None I can think of. He might be embarrassed. But I can’t imagine, locked up like that, that he wouldn’t want to see me. He and I—”
Maren had gone off script, thinking out loud.
No matter. Lana cut her off.
“All right. Although you could visit Mr. Verston solely as a friend if he were to agree to see you, in a high-profile homicide case like this it could be a lengthy clearance procedure for a brief conversation. I’ll check on whether I can bring you in as a legal colleague. Perhaps you will be able to encourage Mr. Verston to be more forthcoming with me.”
Maren agreed, but when she hung up she was puzzled. She had assumed Sean would readily tell all he knew to his lawyer to speed his release. It could be that he was in shock from the arrest.
As an Ecobabe intern Sean had been her apprentice, learning from her and following her lead on the best strategy to lobby high-stakes legislation. She hoped their experience in those roles might mean she would be able to help in guiding him now.