Capitol Murder (34 page)

“When you learned of the affair, did you attempt to end it?”

“Not then, no. What would be the point? He would be angry and would only move on to someone
else.” Back at counsel table, Ben noted a concerned expression on Christina’s face. Was this
testimony supposed to be helping them? “I couldn’t stop my husband from straying. So I resolved
to simply remain informed of the situation. I couldn’t prevent my husband from philandering. But
I could certainly prevent myself from being left in the dark.”

“So what steps did you take?”

“I hired a private detective.” A definite stir in the courtroom. Even Judge Herndon appeared
extremely attentive.

“To follow your husband?”

“No. With all the security at the Capitol, that would be next to impossible. Plus there’s a
good chance he’d spot the tail, and then the game would be up.” She turned, crossed, then
recrossed her legs. “I hired the man to follow Veronica Cooper.”

Point made, Ben thought, and convincingly done, too. The foundation for his next witness was
laid. Now he could proceed with Marie.

“Mrs. Glancy, another great linchpin of the prosecution case has been a certain videotape. I
believe you were in the courtroom when it was played. It appeared to portray—”

Marie held up her hand. “I know the one you’re talking about. I don’t need a description.”

Several of the jurors almost laughed. She was handling this very well.

“Before it aired on C-SPAN, did you have any prior knowledge of the video?”

“Yes.”

Jurors’ necks craned. A few lips parted.

“You did?” He paused. “Did your detective—?”

“Make the video? Absolutely not. He took notes, not pictures. But he did find out about the
video, and he told me immediately. You see, on this point, the distinguished junior senator from
Oklahoma was right—and this may be the first time that’s happened in his entire career.” A
full-fledged round of laughter. She was charming them, absolutely winning them over. “Veronica
Cooper made the videotape herself. She set up the camcorder, hid it, and made copies of the tape
afterward.”

“Objection,” Padolino said, rising to his feet. “Since Ms. Glancy is relating what was told to
her by this alleged detective, this is hearsay.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Marie said, before Ben had a chance to respond.

“Ma’am,” Judge Herndon said, “you should allow counsel to handle the objections.”

“Why? I’m a lawyer, too.” More laughter, even louder than before. “It’s true that I got a
report from my detective. But less than twenty-four hours later, I had personal knowledge of the
tape. Because I saw it. In Veronica Cooper’s grubby little hands.”

“She came to you?” Ben asked.

“No. It’s not my style to wait for the inevitable, especially when it could be so potentially
dangerous. I went to her apartment and confronted her.”

“Why would you do that?”

“It was pretty obvious that she made that video for a reason, and it wasn’t just so she could
spend nostalgic evenings remembering how fabulous my husband had been. My mission was damage
control. Find out what she wanted and get it to her before she did something stupid—and
irreversible.”

“Wouldn’t it have been smarter to tell your husband? Let him handle this?”

“Absolutely not. Todd is an intelligent man and an excellent politician, but that in itself
can be very limiting. No telling how he might react. And quite frankly, there are some things a
U.S. senator simply cannot do—but a wife can.”

Ben nodded, slowly scanning the eyes of the jurors. Even those he thought had been most
hostile to her at the outset were beginning to melt. That was good. Very good.

“What was it Ms. Cooper wanted?”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ve already guessed. She needed money, of course. Lots of it. Apparently she
had quite an active nightlife—I guess the previous witness gave you some idea of that—and she was
using this designer drug that was very expensive. She’d gotten herself deeply into debt, with the
kind of people who don’t take IOUs. She wanted to leave town, but her meager intern’s salary
wouldn’t permit it. She basically had two options: prostitution, or blackmail.”

“And she chose blackmail.”

“Exactly, although I’m not sure she’d ruled the other out altogether, if the blackmail didn’t
work. It’s pretty clear at this point that she was . . . not exactly inhibited when it came to
having sex.”

“Nonresponsive,” Padolino said. “Move to strike.”

“As you wish,” Judge Herndon said. “The jury will disregard the witness’s last statement.”

“Did she make a specific request?”

“She did. She told me she wanted a quarter of a million dollars, in cash, by the end of the
week. And if I didn’t comply, she would release the tape to the press and destroy my husband’s
career.”

“What was your response?”

“Well, I wanted to tell her to go—” She stopped herself. “Jump in a lake.” More scattered
laughter. “But I couldn’t. She had the goods, and if anything her request was fairly modest.”

“So you considered her offer?”

“I had no choice. I tried to read her the riot act and threaten and scare her, but she wasn’t
budging. She said she’d already sent a copy of the tape in a sealed envelope to a reporter friend
of hers, and if anything happened to her he was under instructions to open the envelope. Which, I
assume, is how the damn thing got out. Anyway, bottom line, a quarter of a mil wasn’t that much
to salvage the career of a man who was being touted as a potential vice presidential or even
presidential candidate. I suspect the Democratic National Committee would’ve put that up in a
heartbeat.”

Padolino rose again. “Your honor . . .”

“I’m sorry,” Marie said quickly. “I’ll take that one back myself. Anyway, money wasn’t the
issue. Trust was the issue. I knew she’d made copies of the tape. How did I know she wouldn’t
come back for more money later? Addicts always need money and are often willing to do anything to
get it. For that matter, how did I know this little minx wouldn’t take the money and then leak
the tape anyway? I’d learned enough about her to be cautious.”

“So what did you do?”

“I gave her my Evelyn look.”

“Excuse me?”

She smiled. “My Evelyn look. Evelyn was my mother. And when she got angry, or she had a point
to make, she had a look that told you in no uncertain terms that she was not a woman with whom
you wanted to be messing around. So I gave this tramp my Evelyn look.” She sampled the expression
for the jury, who appeared to be suitably impressed. “I told her that she might have some damn
tape, but I knew more about her than her own mother, and I could do a lot worse to her than she
could ever dream about doing to me or Todd.” She took a deep breath, then smiled. “I thought she
got the message, so we set a time for the exchange. My money in exchange for her tape and all the
copies, and a promise to quit her job and have nothing further to do with my husband.”

“Did you tell your husband what you had done?”

“Of course. If I hadn’t, the woman might’ve tried to get money out of both of us. But it was
important that he stay out of it. Private citizens can pay blackmail without breaking the law.
But a politician can’t—that’s called hush money.” She smiled. “You’ll find that in the
encyclopedia under Nixon, Richard M. You have to remember, I was doing a lot more here than
saving my husband’s political career. I was saving our lives, our futures. Regardless of what
Todd may or may not have done, I believe in the sanctity of marriage, of the importance of the
family unit. And I was determined to see that this woman didn’t destroy mine.”

Ben nodded slowly, giving everyone time to absorb her answer. “And did you in fact consummate
the deal with Ms. Cooper?”

“Yes. I’d rounded up the cash and was all ready to go. Todd asked me to wait until he could
talk to her, but I knew that was inane—no amount of charisma was going to persuade this cheap bit
of—you know. Anyway, I paid her, but apparently she decided to two-time me, because the next day
the video broke. I wanted to confront her, but when I tried to contact her at her apartment, she
had disappeared. And then I learned the truth. She was dead.”

“Do you have any idea what happened to Veronica Cooper? Who killed her?”

“No. Unfortunately, I’d called my detective off after she agreed not to see Todd anymore, so I
didn’t have anyone trailing her. But here’s my point.” She tilted her head toward the prosecution
table. “These people keep saying Todd had a motive to silence Veronica Cooper. It isn’t true. In
the first place, Todd may have trouble keeping his zipper zipped, but he’s not a murderer. No
way, no how—it just isn’t in him. He couldn’t kill someone if his life depended on it. But it
doesn’t matter, because his life didn’t depend on it. The situation had been handled. Cooper’s
silence had been bought. And after the reporter leaked the tape—something I personally don’t
think Veronica Cooper meant to happen—she could do him no more harm. There was no reason to kill
her.”

“Thank you,” Ben said. He turned to Padolino. “Your witness.”

“Are we really going into this place?” Shalimar asked, as they stared at the dark gabled
Victorian-style brownstone on the other side of the dark, rainy Georgetown street. “We don’t have
a warrant. Isn’t this kind of . . . breaking-and-enterish?”

“I don’t have enough to get a warrant. But if Beatrice is in there—”

“Right, right.” She shuddered. “Just looking at it gives me the wiggins.”

“Hey, I’m lookin’ forward to this. After all the places we’ve been so far, it’ll be a relief
to be inside a church.”

“It’s a vampire church, Loving.”

“I don’t care if it’s the Church of the Zombie-Eaters-of-the-Dead. It’s still gotta be better
than the other places I’ve been.”

Once again, Loving was very wrong.

The room at the front of the building was small, Loving thought, but it was without doubt a
church. It had all the hallmarks: a high steepled ceiling, pews, an altar, an altar rail, and an
organ. But there were significant distinctions, too. Instead of electrical lighting, ornate gold
candelabra provided the principal illumination. The altar rail was lined with golden goblets,
stained-glass pentagrams, and similar gimcracks Loving suspected were more for show than use. The
woodwork as well as the stained-glass window behind the altar incorporated bones, skulls, cups
spilling with blood, and the ankh—which Loving now recognized as the shape Lucille had drawn in
the air for him. Shalimar explained that it was the Egyptian symbol for immortality and had
become the vampire’s logo. Of course, Loving rationalized, the Catholic Church he’d grown up in
had talked a lot about drinking blood and, for that matter, eating flesh. But somehow he sensed
this was very different.

No one was in sight, but the fact that the candles were lit suggested that someone was not far
away. Loving tiptoed forward. “Did you see this?” He pulled a black hardbound book out of the
cradle on the back of the pew before him. The gold embossed lettering on the cover read: THE
VAMPIRE BIBLE. The title page explained that it contained “the underlying pagan and mystical lore
derived from our forebears, with selections from Sherpu Kishpu and sacred mystical works.”

“What exactly do the parishioners here believe?” Shalimar whispered.

“Funny you should ask.” He pulled out a service bulletin he found underneath one of the pews.
It was dated the previous Saturday—apparently that was their Sabbath day. “‘The Church is an
exclusive society dating back to the time of the Annunaki—Those Who From the Dark Heavens Came.
Our Brotherhood is composed of those genetically drawn by the ancient mysteries, those born to
the Blood, or those who have heard and heeded the Call of the Night. Our mission is to find our
Brethren, the Lost Children of the Blood, and to convert them to the ancient ways before the time
of the Final Harvest is upon us. We, the descendants of the ancient priesthood of Ur, call upon
the Undead Gods, the ancient Sumerian vampire dragon goddess, Tiamat, and the way of the Magick,
to protect and defend us as we find the pathway into the Master Adepti—the Inner Circle.’”

“This is the place,” Shalimar murmured. “And the Final Harvest? You don’t suppose—”

“Let’s hope not.” Loving pulled out another document he’d found behind the altar. “Wanna hear
the Vampiric Creed?”

“Actually, no. Federally registered or not, I don’t believe this place would keep membership
rolls any more than the S-and-M palace did. And I don’t believe my sister has become a nun in the
Temple of the Vampire.”

Certainly not a nun, Loving thought silently. But he wondered about some other disturbing
possibilities. “Shalimar, I’m gonna take another look around and—”

He froze. Footsteps. Just outside the front door.

He and Shalimar ducked behind a pew.

A few moments later they heard the heavy front wooden doors open. Two people came inside,
talking animatedly. Loving could make out one of their voices.

“Then tonight will be the night?”

Deep Throat. Back at the Reflecting Pool. The informant who got him started on this crazy
quest.

“Yes,” his companion replied. “Are you certain you have no doubts, my brother?”

“Oh, yes, yes.” Deep Throat seemed nervous, just as he had when Loving talked to him at the
Reflecting Pool. “That was only temporary. I know we’re doing the right thing. The Inner Circle
must be protected at all costs.”

At least that’s what he’s telling you, Loving mused. Not what he told me.

“Are we the last to arrive?” Deep Throat asked.

“Yes. The preparations have been made. We cannot afford to delay any longer. We must deal with
her immediately.”

“As you say, Sire.”

The two figures moved down the center nave of the sanctuary. Behind the altar, they unlocked
and then passed through a door recessed in the back wall.

Loving and Shalimar looked at each other. It wasn’t necessary to speak the words; they both
knew what the other was thinking. They were getting ready to deal with Beatrice.