House Odds (26 page)

* * *

Emma passed through a stucco archway to enter the apartment complex. It was one of those places where each unit had a balcony overlooking the swimming pool, and it catered to the young and sexually hyperactive. The pool was rimmed with empty beer bottles from the never-ending party.

She rang the doorbell of a third-floor unit. She had to ring twice before a young brunette with a lush figure wearing shorts and a tank top finally opened the door. She was waving her hands in the air; she had just painted her fingernails.

“Yeah?” the brunette said.

“Are you Tammy Doyle?”

DeMarco had told Emma that McGrath’s girlfriend’s first name was Tammy, and Chief Wallace—with a couple of phone calls to bars near the marina where McGrath docked his boat—had been able to come up with her last name and then her address.

“Yeah,” Tammy said. “What . . .”

“I need to talk to you concerning an SEC investigation into a case of insider trading. The Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the attorneys general in three states are involved. I’m assisting them.”

She expected the woman would ask to see her ID—but the airhead didn’t. Instead she said, “Wow. That sounds really heavy.”

“It is. May I come in?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Tammy said, and stepped aside so Emma could enter her apartment. The place was a mess; there were clothes lying everywhere, as if the woman had never heard of a closet or a laundry hamper.

“Do you know a man named Russell McGrath?” Emma asked.

“Rusty? Sure. He’s, like, my boyfriend. Or I think he is anyway.”

Emma didn’t know what that meant.

“Do you know where Mr. McGrath was on Monday and Tuesday of this week? In particular, I’d like to know where he was at one a.m. Tuesday morning.”

“Why do you wanna know? Has Rusty done something?”

“Ms. Doyle, you really don’t want to obstruct a federal investigation.”

“Obstruct! I was just . . .”

“Do you know where he was Monday and Tuesday?” Emma repeated.

“No. We had a fight on Saturday and I haven’t spoken to him since then. He was being an asshole.”

“So you haven’t seen him since last Saturday?”

“That’s right.”

“Have you talked to him on the phone since then?”

“No. I was really pissed. I wasn’t about to call him, and he didn’t call me. The jerk.”

* * *

Tammy Doyle had seemed like a mental midget, but she was an intellectual colossus compared to Gary Fosket, the man who managed the marina where Rusty McGrath moored his boat. Emma suspected that contributing to Fosket’s dullness were both alcohol and marijuana. She could smell the marijuana in his office and the alcohol on his breath.

It took a while for Fosket to recall the days Emma was asking about but he finally did, using a baseball game as a point of reference. “Oh, yeah, right,” he said. “Monday the Braves played Tampa. One of them interleague games. Cost me twenty bucks, that asshole reliever they brought in in the eighth.”

“So did you see Mr. McGrath that day or the next day?” Emma asked for the third time.

“No,” Fosket said. “He was gone both those days.”

“Gone where?”

“I dunno. He took his boat out. I gassed him up Sunday morning and helped him load a few supplies on board. He said he was going down the Intercoastal, just gettin’ away for a couple of days.”

Emma was sure McGrath hadn’t taken his boat to New York. Most powerboats don’t cruise faster than about ten knots, and it would have taken several days for McGrath to travel by boat to New York City. Her next thought was that maybe he had a friend like her friend Ed, a friend with his own airplane, and maybe McGrath met his friend at some nearby marina. But why take his boat to meet his friend? Why not drive? Whatever the case, she wanted to find out where McGrath was on the day Praeter was killed as that would give her a starting point for tracing his movements.

“Do you have a map showing marinas fifty miles south and north of here?” Emma asked.

“Oh, man,” Fosket said, spreading his arms to indicate the chaos in his office. “I must have a couple charts around here somewhere, but it’d take me forever to find ’em.”

* * *

Emma was seated at a bar near the marina sipping a glass of bad white wine. She didn’t know it, but it was the same bar where DeMarco had sat on his trip to Myrtle Beach. And, just as DeMarco had done, she was sitting there looking at McGrath’s boat.

As she drank, she tried to figure out what she’d learned about McGrath. Nothing useful, she finally concluded. Just that he was a womanizer living off his investments and had a mean streak. Regarding where he’d been the night Richard Praeter died, she had no idea and didn’t know who else to ask, other than McGrath himself. All she knew was what the marina manager had told her: that McGrath had said he was taking a trip on the Intercoastal Waterway.

Emma took out her phone and called a lady who was a vice admiral in the Coast Guard; she and Emma had once served together on a counterterrorism task force. Emma asked her if it was possible to check public marinas on the Intercoastal Waterway in the vicinity of Myrtle Beach to see if McGrath had been docked at any of them the day Praeter was killed. She described McGrath’s boat, gave the admiral its name and hull number, and said as big as it was, someone might remember it.

The admiral said if he docked at a marina and paid for a berth, the marina should have a record, although marina record keeping could be pretty spotty. She’d have someone on her staff e-mail the marinas; marina owners were typically very responsive when the Coast Guard asked for something. On the other hand, the admiral said, there were a lot of places where McGrath could have just anchored his boat and taken a dinghy ashore. She’d get back to Emma.

Lastly, she called Chief Wallace and asked him to e-mail law enforcement agencies along the Intercoastal Waterway to see if any of them had encountered McGrath. She knew it was a long shot, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. Chief Wallace agreed, but Emma could tell he was beginning to tire of doing her favors.

She wished she could interrogate McGrath and ask him to account for his whereabouts the night Praeter died, but she didn’t have the authority to do that, and unlike his girlfriend, McGrath would be bright enough to know it. But then, sometimes, you get what you wish for.

“I hear you been asking questions about me. Thought maybe I should find out who you are and why you’re asking.”

Emma turned to look at the speaker.

McGrath was a big, good-looking man. He was wearing a Tommy Bahama shirt, tight-fitting blue jeans, and Top-Siders without socks. Emma could smell his aftershave. He was smiling at her and he looked amused, as if he found the idea of a woman investigating him humorous.

Emma stepped off the barstool.

“Well, are you gonna answer me? You been running all over town pokin’ into my private life, and I’d like to know why.”

“Where were you on Monday and Tuesday of this week, Mr. McGrath?”

McGrath laughed; he laughed loud enough that other patrons in the bar looked over at him. Then he leaned down so his eyes were level with Emma’s. “You can kiss my ass, lady. Now, who are you and why are you asking about me?” As McGrath asked the question, he took a step forward so that Emma was forced back against the bar. He outweighed her by over a hundred pounds and had, at one time, been a professional in a sport where the primary objective appeared to be maiming the opposition.

Emma shifted her position slightly, her arms down at her sides, palms facing outward. She was deciding which part of McGrath’s body she was going to strike first. “Step back, McGrath. Get out of my space.”

McGrath looked around the bar, casually, to see if anyone was looking at him and Emma. Several people were.

He held up his hands in a gesture of false surrender, took a step back, and said, “Sure, honey. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Emma felt like hitting him just for calling her honey. “You didn’t scare me,” Emma said. “Now, are you going to answer my question? Where were you on Monday night, the night Richard Praeter died?”

McGrath just smiled, shook his head as if she were nuts, and walked away, down toward the end of the bar where two barmaids were waiting for drink orders. “Ladies,” McGrath said to the barmaids, “you are both lookin’ delectable tonight. Would one of you sweet young things bring me a gin and tonic? Oh, and you see that lady over there, the tall, ornery-looking one? Bring her another glass of wine.”

As Emma walked past McGrath’s table to leave the bar, he winked at her.

37

The morning after returning from Myrtle Beach—grateful that old Ed had managed to land his plane safely the night before—Emma talked again to her source at the NYPD to see if he’d learned anything new regarding Praeter’s death. He hadn’t—and she got the distinct impression that the death of an unpopular rich guy with no political connections wasn’t high on his priority list. She also pestered her friend at Homeland Security, asking him to check airport surveillance cameras to see if McGrath had been in any of New York’s major airports.

“I know he didn’t take a commercial flight using his real name,” Emma said, “but maybe he has a fake ID, and if the TSA could . . .”

Her friend said, “Sorry, Emma. I love you like a sister, but unless this guy’s Al Qaeda there’s no way I can vector people off on that.”

Well, poop.

It was still raining; indeed, it was coming down so hard Emma was afraid it was going to wash away the new topsoil she’d put in. She wasn’t going to get any yard work done today, so she might as well go see Douglas Campbell and find out if he had an alibi for the night Praeter died. But before driving to Chevy Chase, she had a long, leisurely breakfast with Christine.

This delay almost cost Campbell his life.

* * *

Kathy Campbell answered the door holding a glass of what appeared to be orange juice, and Emma’s first thought upon seeing her was: This woman should use sunscreen.

“Doug isn’t here,” she said when Emma asked to speak to her husband.

“Do you know where he is? I called his office and they said he took the day off.”

“Who are you?”

“A federal agent,” Emma said. Emma had—and she knew it—a face and a manner that people tended to believe and were reluctant to challenge. Nonetheless, she took what looked like a badge case out of her pocket and flipped it open, allowing Kathy Campbell the briefest glimpse of a card embossed with a fancy gold seal. The card identified Emma as a retired civil servant who had special privileges at commissaries on military bases.

“You people need to stop hounding Doug,” Kathy Campbell said. “He didn’t have anything to do with Molly Mahoney.”

“I still need to speak with him, Mrs. Campbell. Can you please tell me where he is?”

“He’s with his good buddy Rusty.”

“Rusty McGrath?”

“Yeah. They’re going to a UVA baseball game today. Rusty called him last night and asked him to go, and Doug took a day off work. I mean, really. College baseball. Who gives a shit?”

Maybe she wasn’t drinking pure orange juice. A mimosa or a screwdriver seemed more likely.

“Mrs. Campbell, do you know where your husband was on Monday night of this week? Actually, early Tuesday morning, about one a.m.”

“I guess he was here,” Kathy Campbell said with a shrug. “I drove down to Richmond on Sunday to see my sister and didn’t get back until Tuesday afternoon. But where else would he have been? I mean Doug’s no Rusty McGrath. He sure as hell wasn’t out chasing college girls in Georgetown.”

* * *

Emma had a bad feeling about McGrath inviting Campbell to a baseball game the day after she’d confronted him. Maybe McGrath just wanted to enjoy an afternoon with a good friend from college. Or maybe McGrath wanted to get together with Campbell and talk about them having been subpoenaed by Molly’s lawyer. Maybe—but Emma didn’t think so.

If DeMarco was correct, McGrath had killed Praeter, and after meeting McGrath, Emma now shared DeMarco’s bad vibe about the man. She couldn’t help but think that maybe McGrath was planning to get rid of the only other man who could implicate him in a crime—and he was going to do it today. Campbell was going to have some kind of accident before he left Charlottesville—a fall down a flight of steps where his neck is broken, a car accident where McGrath walks away and Campbell doesn’t. Rusty McGrath was definitely strong enough to break Douglas Campbell’s neck, and if that happened, she would be partially to blame for stirring the pot with McGrath.

When Emma had worked for the DIA, she rarely relied on the gut feelings of her subordinates, usually insisting on hard data to support their conclusions. But she relied very much on her own instincts, and had been right often enough to feel justified in doing so. And right now her instincts were screaming at her: she needed to get Campbell away from McGrath. The problem was that she didn’t know anyone in Charlottesville she could call to assist her. Well, she knew a couple of professors at UVA—but a professor wasn’t the sort of person she needed. She needed a cop.