Murder on Capitol Hill (18 page)

“I have to feed my cats,” she told him as they stood together in the office and prepared to leave the station.

“They’ll live.”

“Just drop me off. It will take ten minutes and I’ll feel better.”

“All right,” he said, tossing letters as fast as he could open them into an already overflowing wastebasket.

They arrived at the Watergate, parked his car in the underground garage and rode the elevator to his floor.

“Can I get you something?” she asked after they were in the apartment.

“No, thanks,” he said, kicking off his shoes and sprawling on the couch.

“I think I’ll make myself a drink,” she said.

“You drink too damn much,” he said.

“No, I don’t.” (Yes, I do.) “Sure you don’t want one?”

He didn’t answer. She went to the kitchen and poured herself a gin over ice, returned to the living room and sat next to him on the couch, drawing her feet up beneath her as she did. Hughes looked straight ahead across the large room.

“What are you thinking about?”

“About you.”

His comment pleased her. She touched his arm. “That’s nice to hear. Good thoughts, I hope.”

He continued to stare straight ahead. Then: “I think it’s time for you to move on, Christa.”

For a moment his words didn’t penetrate. He turned, looked into her eyes. “Did you
hear
me? I said, it’s time for you to move on.”

Her laugh was purely nervous. She quickly took another drink of the gin. “Move on?… What do you mean? From my apartment?… From here?…” She knew damn well what he meant, was too terrified to acknowledge it.

He continued to focus on her eyes, and as hard as she tried to avoid his look she found herself drawn back to them like metal shavings to a magnet. “I mean
really
move on,” he said. “We’ve been together too long, Christa. I think you ought to get out of the station, out of Washington. You’ll have no trouble
getting another job in the business. I can arrange that with a phone call.”

Her stomach knotted, she had difficulty swallowing the remaining gin in her glass. Often when they would fight she would be overcome with the same grip of inertia, nerve ends all activated at once and trying to propel her in a dozen different directions. She wanted to cry, to scream, to physically hurt him, to wrap her arms around his neck. She could do none of them.

She went to the kitchen, where she filled her glass to the brim. She gripped the edge of the Formica counter and tried to stop herself from trembling. She drank, grabbed her purse and popped a Valium in her mouth.

“What are you doing?” Hughes called from the living room.

She came around behind him as he sat on the couch and used the back of it as a brace for her trembling hands.

“Sit down, damn it,” he said, turning so that he could look up at her.

She took a chair across a coffee table from him.

He squinted. “We’ve had a good long run, Christa. Everybody moves on at some point in their lives.” He moved to the edge of the couch and reached for her hand. She pulled it away. She knew what she looked like at that moment. She remembered her mother looking that way…

“Calm down,” Hughes said. “I’ll see that you’re set up with one hell of a good job. I’ll also make sure that you leave here with plenty of money in your pocket—”

“You are a terrible person,” she said softly.

“What did you say?”

“I also love you. God, don’t you know that?”

He placed his arm on the back of the couch, crossed his legs and jiggled his stockinged foot. “Love. That’s for kids, Christa. Grow up.”

“I
was
a kid when I fell in love with you.” A large, immovable lump was in her throat. “I’ve stayed all these years because of that love—”

“That’s your problem. I never told you to do it. I never promised you anything. It was your choice. I say it again, grow up, Christa.”

She stood up and threw the contents of her glass in his face.

“All right, damn you, I just have.”

It took him a moment to recover from the shock. He shook his head, quickly got to his feet, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. He was across the room in a moment, took her by the throat with one hand, crossed his right arm over his body and brought the back of his hand sharply against the side of her face. He stood over her, forced her face up so that she was looking directly at him. “You’re sick, Christa. I’ve been telling you that for a long time. You’re sick and need help. Do you want help from me, Christa? Do you want me to see that you’re put someplace where they can help you?” He, of course, knew all about what had happened to her mother.

Nothing in her now except terror. She broke down, begged him to forgive her, not to tell her she was sick. He finally let go of her hair. She fell back on the carpet and stayed there, motionless, while he disappeared into the bedroom.

He came back wearing fresh clothes. “I’ll be out for a while. I want you gone when I come back. Go home, get drunk, pop some of your damn pills and sleep it off for a couple of days. When you come back to the station I’ll have it all worked out for you, a new job, a new city, a new life. That’s the trouble with people like you, Christa, you can’t tell the black hats from the white hats. I’m doing this in
your
best interests, but you’re either too stupid or too sick to understand that.” He left the apartment, slamming the door behind him….

Fifteen minutes later Christa Jones stood at the wide expanse of window overlooking the city of Washington, D.C. She’d been standing there all that time, her mind a jumble, her breath coming in short spasms, her chest filled with the ache that had been there for so many years.

She left the window and entered the bedroom, where she went directly to one of the closets that held Hughes’s extensive wardrobe. She got down on her knees and found what she was looking for on the floor of the closet, his fireproof storage vault. Quickly she went to the kitchen and felt around behind the refrigerator, removed a key from a nail, returned to the bedroom and opened the vault with the key. It was filled with papers, some cash, jewelry. None was of interest to her. She removed a package wrapped in brown paper, closed the lid, locked the box and returned the key to its hiding place behind the refrigerator. She put on her coat, looked about the apartment, then left.

She hailed a cab outside and rode in it to her own small apartment, the package cradled on her lap as
though it might have been a living thing. She locked the door behind her, took off her coat and flipped on the overhead lights. She was terrified. She drew a glass of water from the kitchen tap and used it to wash down another tranquilizer. An empty gin bottle stood in the sink along with dirty dishes. She found an almost empty bottle of cognac in a kitchen cupboard and poured what was left of it into a glass, then returned to the living room where the brown package sat next to her telephone. She found a slip of paper on which a phone number was written, picked up the phone and dialed the number. She let it ring fifteen times before hanging up.

***

Lydia James had just left her apartment on her way to an appointment with Cale Caldwell, Jr. She heard her phone ringing and debated going back to answer it. She didn’t. “They’ll call back if it’s important,” she muttered to herself as she continued toward where she’d parked her car.

Christa Jones hung up the telephone. One of her two cats jumped up on her lap and meowed. The animal pressed against her and rubbed back and forth. From its throat came rumblings of contentment.

Christa looked down and smiled. “There, there, babe,” she said as she petted the cat’s head. “There, there, now. Mommy loves you. Love…”

Cale Caldwell, Jr., had called Lydia earlier that morning and asked her to come to his office to discuss an important matter. She hadn’t spoken with him since the night they’d had drinks together at Hogate’s.

Joanne Marshall, Cale’s secretary, was behind a receptionist’s desk when Lydia now entered the outer office. She stood. “Cale will be free in a moment, Miss James. Please take a seat.”

Lydia sat on an antique church pew that was covered with red corduroy cushions. She took in the office and realized what an influence Veronica Caldwell had on her son’s tastes. The reception area had the look of an old schoolhouse. The wood on the walls was dark, and the floor was covered in a green carpeting in which scenes of early America were woven. There was a genteel calm to the room.

Moments later Cale came through a door, smiled. “Come in, Lydia. I’m glad you could make it.”

Cale’s office looked much the same as the outside area, except that it was four times as large. There was a wall of framed photos, built-in bookcases, a small round conference table with four ladder-back chairs. Cale’s desk was massive and old. Burns along its edge
testified to a previous owner’s habit of leaving lit cigarettes or cigars on it.

Cale went to a window and looked outside. He turned, propped himself against the sill. “Lydia, I know you’re busy. I’ve debated asking you to meet with me for quite a while now. What I want to talk to you about isn’t pleasant, at least for me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that you were entitled to know what’s on my mind.”

“That’s a turn of events, Cale. I was getting the feeling that the one thing I was not to have was information. From anyone.”

“I can understand why you feel that way. It must have been rough.” He pushed away from the window and leaned against his desk.

“It isn’t all past tense,” Lydia said as she adjusted herself in a bentwood rocking chair. “I’m still involved. I suppose you know I’m to write a report based on what the MPD comes up with.”

“Yes. I’m still his official counsel. I expect to have another attorney brought in within a few days. It’s a decision the family must make, Mark Adam’s defense. Some of the best legal minds in the nation would probably prove counterproductive. I think of the Patty Hearst case. F. Lee Bailey, brilliant as he is, was wrong for her, I feel. I think when an attorney becomes famous, juries often want to see him lose even before the trial begins.”

Lydia agreed. His defense would apparently be based on legal insanity, and there were certain attorneys who could better present that plea to a jury than others.

An awkward silence, broken by Caldwell. “One of
the things I insist on with any counsel chosen for Mark Adam is that the entire matter of Jimmye’s murder be excluded from the proceedings. In fact, and you’re one of the few people I’ll talk to about this, part of the arrangement made with the MPD had to do with that issue. It was the only consideration given us, but it was an important one. Mark Adam confessed to both murders in exchange for an understanding that Jimmye’s case would be closed without further examination. Actually it wasn’t much of a concession from the police. Mark Adam is being charged with and tried for the murder of my father only. Solving Jimmye’s murder provides a bonus to the MPD. Lord knows, they solve few enough cases, and when they can close the door on one this easily, they’re damn pleased.”

Lydia took a moment to digest what he’d said. True, there was nothing so unusual about the arrangement. In multiple murders the accused was usually brought to trial for only one of them. Why then, she wondered, was she reacting with skepticism, even anger? Perhaps because they’d tried to dissuade her so many times from following up leads on Jimmye’s murder.

Caldwell continued: “I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’re still interested in looking into Jimmye’s case. I honestly don’t know why you would want to do that, Lydia. It doesn’t make much sense. From what I can understand, the committee formed to investigate Dad’s death is virtually out of business. The only thing left is for you to prepare a report. If you had any questions before about whether Jimmye’s death links up with my father’s, they should be
truly a thing of the past now that Mark Adam has come forward.”

She decided to be direct. “Cale, I can’t come up with concrete evidence, but I simply can’t accept Mark Adam’s confession.”

Cale shook his head. “You’re an amazing person, Lydia. You won’t let go of some notions, no matter what facts stare you in the face. Look, we’re family. Yes, we all wish that Mark Adam had not done what he’s done. We all wish that he was a normal, rational human being. But that’s not the case. He’s seriously disturbed. It doesn’t take a psychiatric genius to come to that conclusion. The fact is, he killed our father out of a long-standing hatred for him. A lot of young men dislike their fathers. A lot go through life coping with it one way or another. Mark Adam, sad to say, wasn’t able to do that. When he came to Dad’s party and again had a chance to see the man he’d built such a dislike for from his early teens, well… it was just too damn much for him.”

Lydia started to say something, but he cut her off.

“Lydia, think of how Mother and I feel about forcing Mark Adam to attend the party. It had been a long time since Dad and my brother had had any contact. We
should
have known better. But that’s Monday-morning quarterbacking, isn’t it?… You asked me when we had drinks together if I knew why an autopsy had not been performed on Jimmye.”

Lydia looked intently at him. “Yes, I remember that… Why do you bring it up again?”

“Because I know you will, Lydia, unless I give you enough reason not to. The only thing I feel will accomplish that is the truth. Fact is, I admire people
who demand the truth, even if they are annoying.” He picked up a pencil and doodled on a fresh, clean lined yellow legal pad. “It’s true that the family brought pressure on the MPD to avoid an autopsy on Jimmye. Dad, because of his position in the Senate, was successful in that effort.”

“Why? What were you trying to hide?”

He pressed down hard on the pencil and drew a long slash across the page. The pencil’s point broke when it went off the edge of the pad and hit the desk. “Because… she was pregnant, Lydia. Jimmye was pregnant when she was killed—”

“My God… how awful—”

“For whom?” He looked up at her. “She was carrying my brother’s child.”

Mark Adam’s child? Yes… not as Chief Jenkins had sordidly implied—but there was a Caldwell in Jimmye’s picture. She’d concocted scenarios based on the few facts that had surfaced during the investigation, but mostly on hints and rumors. Never once, though, had she sexually linked Mark Adam Caldwell to Jimmye McNab. “But… he was in the cult long before Jimmye was killed,” she said. “How?…”