Vic Upton, Commonwealth’s Attorney for Fairlington County, slapped a fold of newsprint on Maggie’s desk. He could have sent it digitally, but Vic liked the sensory impact.
She didn’t look up. She continued writing, fast and strong, bringing order to the week ahead.
This newsprint thwap wasn’t bass enough to be the entire Washington Post, which would mean Vic had dumped a Page One problem on her desk.
Once — just once — she’d screamed when Vic dropped a complete Sunday Post on her desk. It had been barely six a.m., she’d spent the night in the office, and she’d been asleep with her head on the desk that Sunday morning. The four-pound thud had reverberated in her head all day. The professional headache had endured considerably longer. But it had been worth it in the end. She’d won that case, too.
This thud sounded like the local section alone.
The story about the Millerand trial had been in the Saturday Metro section, but Maggie didn’t waste more than a millisecond considering whether Vic was here to congratulate her.
Her cousin’s congratulations on the verdict had been subdued, though she supposed sincere.
Jamison Chancellor didn’t get enthusiastic about justice. She reserved her enthusiasm for her starry-eyed venture aimed at making the world a place where everyone walked hand-in-hand in perfect peace.
Even worse, she kept trying to drag Maggie in.
Jamie had started today’s installment by extolling the beauty of the spring day and mentioning she’d driven past Maggie’s place and seen daffodils blooming there.
“Don’t give me any credit. The previous owner must have done it,” Maggie said.
There was a slight pause. “Ally and I planted them last fall.”
Shit. “Right. Of course, I remember.”
Jamie laughed. Another reason Maggie tried to avoid these calls. Jamie’s laughs were frequent. Too genuine, too affectionate, too … familiar.
“No, you don’t. But it’s okay. We planted them on Vivian’s birthday and she would love them blooming for you now. And—”
“Jamie, I have to go. I got behind during the trial and have a pile of work on my desk.” Not true. Everyone expected the trial to take longer. Her calendar was blocked out.
“I won’t keep you. I wanted to tell you the Foundation’s annual fundraiser is coming up and—”
“I’d have to check my schedule.”
“Nancy says it’s clear.”
Damn both of them — cousin and assistant. “Jamie, I really have to go.”
“Okay. Just — promise me you’ll think about it. It would mean a lot to … to have you there this year. Ally is coming. Please. Just say you’ll think about it.”
Some people failed to see the rock-hard tenaciousness beneath Jamie’s sweet expression and starry-eyed ideas. Maggie had known better since they were kids.
She also knew the only way to get off the phone was to make a promise she had no intention of keeping.
“I’ll think about it.”
After disconnecting, she set to work on a list of tasks sure to keep her mind off that promise. She’d still been at it when Vic strode in, unannounced.
Maggie finished writing the current item on her list, then capped her pen.
Vic snorted. A single sound standing in for past diatribes on her using pens “anybody can buy at Staples, for God’s sake, when you have a Waterman set honoring your family’s foundation.”
Maggie gazed at the newspaper Vic had deposited on her desk.
Not the Washington Post. The Bedhurst Bulletin.
The headline word Murdered caught her first.
Not in Fairlington, so not in their jurisdiction. Could be Vic was crowing over a colleague’s misstep.
Then she saw the complete headline
Bedhurst Woman Murdered in seventy-two-point type. Beneath it, in only slightly smaller type: Similarities to Unsolved Wade Murder Cited.
“Shit.”
“That about covers it.” Vic occupied a chair in a space-gobbling spread of arms and legs. “Judge’s daughter, too. The same judge, right?”
So, Vic was crowing over a colleague’s misstep. Hers.
Though misstep was too mild. Try utter failure.
Picking up the newspaper to bring the text into focus, she pushed aside everything else.
Use your brain, Frye.
Her practiced scan locked on the name — Laurel Blankenship Tagner, daughter of Judge Kimble Blankenship — and said briefly, “Same judge.”
She went back to the start of the article.
Laurel had failed to show up for a gathering at her father’s home at noon Sunday. Friends and family realized no one had seen her since Saturday afternoon. Authorities were called. Someone thought to check the service road entrance to Bedhurst Falls — the same location. God, the same location — and Laurel Blankenship Tagner’s body was found just before sunset Sunday.
The authorities acknowledged there were similarities to the murder nearly five years ago of Pandora Addington Wade. No one had been convicted of that murder.
The location of the body was one similarity, authorities indicated there were more, but had not released details.
Maggie breathed out, slow and deliberate. Similar didn’t have to mean the same murderer. Similar could mean someone who’d followed the Carson case, in other words, anyone in Bedhurst County.
Or the sonuvabitch she’d failed to get convicted could have killed again.
“Is it the same guy?” Vic demanded.
“Hard to tell from this.” She sounded calm. Good. “Could be. Could be a copycat. Could be unrelated.”
Vic stretched one leg kept passably lean by a daily sacrosanct hour in the gym. “In that backwoods county? With who the victim is — another woman from one of the county’s top families, like your victim — and where the body was found? And those other similarities the newspaper doesn’t have? — I got word the body was found in the same position. Face down, arms and legs spread out. No sexual assault. The area around the body brushed, like last time, no footprints, or any other marks.”
Almost certainly related.
She grunted, started reading at the top again. “Where was Carson?”
“There, in Bedhurst. With his defense attorney. Alibied to the hilt.”
Maggie’s stomach tightened.
Under the headlines, a three-column studio photo of a young woman with dramatic makeup emphasizing come-hither eyes and mouth. Maggie squinted at the photo. Pulled up a memory. The judge’s daughters sitting in the courtroom, awaiting the verdict. This one with the sex-kitten mannerisms. Unlike her companion, a square-faced woman who dressed as if Talbots were racy.
“I’m going up there,” she said abruptly.
Vic straightened from his initial slouch, then slid down again. To the untrained eye it might appear to be the same sprawl.
“The hell you are.”
“Monroe is Commonwealth’s Attorney now and the sheriff was elected last fall and he’s an outsider, from Richmond. Monroe—”
“How do you know?”
She flipped her hand, dismissing his question. “Monroe will run rings around him.”
“Even if it is Carson, Monroe can’t defend him. Not in Bedhurst County, not since he was elected Commonwealth’s Attorney.”
“He won’t have to defend. He can make sure there’s no case. As CA, he can refuse to prosecute Carson.”
“Jesus, Maggie, I know you don’t have much use for defense attorneys from that thing when you were a kid, but you make it sound like Monroe would throw a murder investigation to protect a former client. The citizens of Bedhurst must think better of him than you do or they wouldn’t have elected him. Besides, it’s not our case. I just thought you’d be interested.”
Like hell.
He’d thought he would bring her down a peg after Friday’s verdict. It was how he kept his staff from nipping too hard on those ambitious heels of his.
“It’s still my case.” She took a breath, kept the words reasoned, but firm. “The rape trial wrapped up faster than we expected. My desk will never be clearer than it is now. And God knows I’ve got vacation time coming.”
“Listen, Maggie, we all have a case or two like this. The ones that go bad, the blots on our record that haunt us. But trying to make it right can make it worse. Let it go.”
He thought she wanted to make it right so it didn’t dim her record’s sparkle? Of course, he did.
In the face of her silence, Vic heaved a breath. “Actually, the sheriff has requested you up there.”
“To prosecute.” It would be one hell of a trick to get named special visiting prosecutor on the case, but for a second chance to put Carson away she’d call in every favor.
“Not to prosecute. He wants you and Monroe to fill him in on the earlier murder.”