Fatal Deception (3 page)

“For all the good it did.”

“Looks to be some skin under her nails too,” Lindsey added.

Sam called for crime scene detectives and then took a walk through the well-appointed house that was full of photos of the blonde baby girl who was the center of her parents’ lives. Mixed in with the family photos were pictures of Derek with his boss, the president of the United States, and other political luminaries as well as his parents and what looked to be his siblings along with their families.

His framed degrees from Yale University and Yale Law School hung in the study along with a certificate from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and Victoria Taft’s degree from Bryn Mawr. Sam pulled the notebook from her back pocket and made a note of Victoria’s maiden name as well as the year of her graduation from college. On the shelves in the study were sports trophies that Sam took a moment to study. All of them were Derek’s. Soccer and lacrosse had been his games at St. George’s School in Rhode Island.

Sam thought it odd that she didn’t find photos of Victoria with anyone other than her husband and daughter. In the master bedroom, which was done in shades of blue with white accents, she picked up a silver-framed photo of Derek, Victoria and Maeve and studied the woman who’d been killed, noting her serene smile and the happiness that sparkled in her brown eyes.

She thought about what she knew of Victoria, overall impressions, pieces of conversations from the last eight months. Sam, who’d always fancied herself a bit of a fashionista, had felt like an amateur next to Victoria, who did stylishly sexy with that effortless grace some women seemed born with.

Sam might’ve envied Victoria for that effortless grace if she hadn’t been so warm and genuine and funny. Every time she’d been with Victoria, Sam had found her to be a happy, peaceful person who was clearly in love with her shy but accomplished husband and thrilled with her sweet baby girl.

A deep, penetrating sadness settled into Sam’s bones when it dawned on her that Victoria might’ve made for a good friend if Sam had taken the time to get to know her better.

“We’ll find your little girl, Victoria,” Sam whispered, as the sound of a throat clearing caught her attention. She returned the photo to the bedside table and turned to face her partner, Detective Freddie Cruz. His dark hair was mussed, and he looked sleepy-eyed and rumpled. Ever since he moved in with his girlfriend Elin a few months ago, he always looked like he’d just rolled out of bed—and he usually had.

“What’ve we got?” he asked, taking in the spacious bedroom.

Sam walked him through what she knew so far. “Crime scene is on the way,” she said. The detectives would go through every square inch of the home looking for evidence.

“She was a friend of yours, wasn’t she?”

Sam looked down at the photo. “We socialized occasionally. Her husband and Nick are good friends, but I didn’t know her all that well. She always had the baby with her, so it wasn’t easy to chat about anything other than Maeve.” Sam didn’t add that she’d been jealous of Victoria because she had the baby Sam had been denied.

“I need to get Mr. Kavanaugh to HQ and get to work. Can you take care of the canvass and wait for crime scene?”

“I’m on it.”

“Thanks.” Sam went downstairs as Lindsey was overseeing the removal of Victoria’s body from the house.

Derek’s keening wail at seeing the body bag broke Sam’s heart. She simply couldn’t imagine what he must be feeling—and didn’t want to. The thought of losing her wonderful husband so violently didn’t bear considering.

Her wonderful husband was, at the moment, holding his friend up as he cried his heart out.

Across the street, photographers from the city’s newspapers took photos of the two men.

“Get rid of them,” Sam snapped at Freddie. “Heartless bastards.”

Darren Tabor from the
Washington Star
crossed the street. “What’ve you got, Lieutenant?”

“Why do you vultures have to take pictures of a husband’s unimaginable grief?”

“Because he’s deputy chief of staff to the president, and he’s being comforted by one of the nation’s most popular senators.” Darren shrugged. “That photo will sell a lot of papers tomorrow.”

“It’s sick.”

“Maybe so.”

Thinking of the promise she’d made to Victoria, Sam forced herself to make eye contact with the earnest young man who’d once done her a huge personal favor—one she was not likely to ever forget. “Put the word out that Kavanaugh’s daughter, thirteen-month-old Maeve, is missing and presumed kidnapped from the scene.”

“Holy Christ.”

“Do it, Darren. The sooner we have everyone looking for her, the faster we’ll find her. Cruz, go back inside and get a photo of the kid. Hurry up.”

“On it.”

“Get it out on the wires as fast as you can,” Sam said to Darren, who looked a little paler than he had initially.

“I will. If you have anything else you can tell me, you know where to find me.”

Sam left him with a quick nod and went back to Derek and Nick. Their friend, Dr. Harry Flynn, had joined them and was hugging Derek.

“We need to find Maeve,” Derek said, hiccupping on a sob. “Whoever did this to Vic took her.”

“We’ll find her, but we need your help. I’d like to take you downtown to HQ now, but before we go, you need to call your folks and anyone who shouldn’t hear about Victoria’s murder and Maeve’s disappearance from the media.”

“Oh God, my parents,” Derek said. “When I called to see if they might have Maeve, I told them I couldn’t reach Vic... I didn’t tell them anything yet...because I couldn’t...I couldn’t get the words out...”

“Do you want me to call them for you?” Harry asked.

“Would you?” Derek seemed relieved by his friend’s offer. “I don’t think I could say the words... That would make it real...”

“What about Victoria’s family?” Sam asked.

Derek shook his head. “She doesn’t have any. Her parents died years ago, before I met her, and she was an only child.”

“Aunts, uncles, cousins?”

“None that I knew of.”

Sam thought it was odd that Victoria had no one, but she kept her expression blank so as not to add to his distress.

“Go ahead and make the call to his folks,” she said to Harry, who took Derek’s phone from him.

“Do I tell them about Maeve?” Harry asked.

“You may as well,” Sam said. “I asked the
Star
reporter to put it on the wires, so it’ll be on the news before too much longer.”

Harry nodded. “I’ll meet you at the station,” he said to Nick. “I want to be there if Derek needs me.” He walked away to make the call.

“Will you drive us to HQ?” Sam asked Nick as crime scene detectives arrived on the scene. “I don’t want to give the vultures a photo of him being put into a police cruiser when he’s not a suspect.”

“Of course. Come on, Derek. Let’s get you downtown so Sam can figure out what happened and find Maeve.”

While Sam had a word with the crime scene detective in charge, Nick settled Derek into the backseat of his car.

Sam joined them a minute later, sending her husband a small smile of thanks for his help with Derek. Usually dealing with the grief-stricken fell to her, and she hated that part of her job more than any other. What did one say to someone whose life had been violently changed forever?

Using his elbow to flip up the arm rests that would block Derek’s view of the center console, Nick reached for her hand and held it all the way downtown.

* * *

“I know your loss is unimaginable, and I’m truly heartbroken for you and Maeve,” Sam said when she had Derek settled in an interrogation room at HQ, “but I need you to take me through the last few days. Your schedule, Victoria’s, anything unusual that she or anyone else might’ve said or done.”

Derek’s light brown hair was standing on end, as if he’d been running his hands through it, and his brown eyes were red from crying. With his elbows on the table, he hung his head and was quiet for a long time.

Watching him and his terrible grief, Sam vibrated with tension and fury. Someone she knew and considered a friend had been murdered in her city, and she was pissed off. That anger would fuel her every movement until she found the person who killed Victoria and took Maeve.

“I didn’t want to go to Camp David,” Derek finally said, his voice barely a whisper. “It was Vic’s birthday yesterday, and I wanted to be with her and Maeve.”

“What was the reason for the weekend at Camp David?” Sam asked.

“We were fine-tuning the president’s convention speech. The convention starts in two weeks in Charlotte.” He glanced at her. “Nick’s name came up as a possible keynoter.” Derek huffed out a deep breath. “I was going to call him about it tomorrow.” It seemed to occur to Derek right then that all his future plans had been altered.

Even though Sam was stunned to hear her husband had been considered for such an honor, she couldn’t take the time to process that now when she had murder and kidnapping on her mind. “Was Victoria having any problems with anyone that you knew of?”

“No. You knew how she was, bubbly and friendly. Everything I’m not.” As a fresh wave of sobs racked his muscular but wiry frame, he dropped his head into his hands. “I’m sorry. I know you need my help, but all I can think about is where’s Maeve, and how am I supposed to live without Vic?”

Moved by his raw grief, Sam dragged her chair over next to his and rested a hand on his back. “I’m so sorry, Derek. I know this is a nightmare, but time isn’t on our side where Maeve is concerned. I won’t quote statistics, but it’s imperative that we find her soon.” She watched him make an effort to pull himself together. “You’re certain Victoria hadn’t had recent conflicts or problems with anyone?”

“Not that she told me.”

“And she would have?”

“I think so. We’re tight, you know?” His use of the present tense saddened Sam. Family members of murder victims almost always used the present tense when speaking of their loved ones right after they were taken from them suddenly and violently. Poor Derek had a long road ahead of him as his staggering loss registered. “I work a lot—too much, especially lately with the campaign heating up. So it’s possible something could’ve happened and she hadn’t had a chance to tell me.”

“If something big happened and you were at Camp David with the president—”

“She would’ve called me. I might have an important job, but she knew that she and Maeve came first—always.”

“I have to ask about your work and if there’s anyone or anything you’re involved with that might factor into this.”

“That’s my job,” a familiar voice said from the doorway.

Sam bit back a groan when FBI Special Agent Avery Hill and her boss, Chief Farnsworth, stepped into the room. Hill had butted into an earlier investigation of hers before Farnsworth sent him packing back to Quantico.

“I’ve got this, Hill,” Sam said in her best dismissive tone. “But nice of you to come by.”

“Actually,” Hill said in a honeyed Southern accent that no doubt worked on most women. Unfortunately for him, Sam wasn’t most women. “Since I have a top-secret security clearance and you don’t, I’ll be looking into Mr. Kavanaugh’s work and any tie-ins.”

The guy was too handsome for his own good, and Sam hated to admit that if she hadn’t been recently—and happily—married, she might’ve been interested in getting to know him better. He wore his golden-brown hair combed back off his face in a style he could pull off thanks to chiseled cheekbones and equally golden-brown eyes that zeroed in on her with laser-sharp purpose.

Of course Nick picked that moment to step into the room to see if Derek needed a drink or anything to eat. Over the last eight months, Nick had become an unofficial member of Sam’s team. They’d all but deputized him a few times, so no one thought a thing of him coming into the room where his friend was being questioned. When Nick noticed her staring match with the agent, the subtle lift of one eyebrow was the only change to her husband’s otherwise expressionless demeanor.

“Let’s put aside the turf war,” Farnsworth said with a warning look for Sam. “We all have the same priority—finding Maeve Kavanaugh and catching Victoria Kavanaugh’s killer.”

When the man that Sam once called “Uncle Joe” used that particular tone, there was no point in arguing. “Follow me,” he said to her and Hill.

“Excuse me for a minute,” Sam said to Derek, annoyed by the interruption.

On the way past Nick, she rolled her eyes.

Farnsworth led them to a conference room where Special Victims Detective Ramsey waited with another officer.

He nodded to Sam. “Lieutenant, we meet again.”

“Detective.” Their paths had crossed right before Sam’s wedding when she’d gone to him seeking information on an old case that might’ve been tied to her father’s unsolved shooting. It had turned into another dead end.

“My partner, Detective Harper,” Ramsey said.

The younger officer reached out a hand to Sam. “Heard so much about you, Lieutenant. Pleasure to finally meet you.”

The sucking up earned him a scowl from Ramsey.

Harper quickly pulled back his hand after Sam shook it.

Sam never had figured out what Ramsey had against her. She’d decided he was put out by the fact that he was easily ten years older than her, but she had two ranks on him. Whatever. His fragile ego was the last thing on her mind at the moment.

“Here’s how this is going to go,” Farnsworth said as Sam’s mentor, Detective Captain Malone, joined them. Farnsworth pointed to Sam. “You’re the lead on the Victoria Kavanaugh murder. Hill’s in charge of looking into any possible connections to the husband’s work, and Ramsey is leading the investigation into the missing kid. Anyone have a problem with that?”

Sam had a problem with it, all right. Her team could easily handle every aspect of the investigation without assistance, but she held her tongue, knowing the chief expected her to do what she was told.

“Anyone who can’t work collaboratively will be taken off the investigation and disciplined accordingly,” Farnsworth continued.

Hill smirked at Sam, letting her know that he expected her to be disciplined before it was over.