“Did you talk to him?” Maggie asked.
Peter frowned and said nothing.
“Mr. Stanhope? Did you talk to Ned Baer?”
Peter was still silent, and she could see him working up answers in his head.
“Yesterday, you told Serena Stride that neither one of you had ever met him,” Maggie went on. “Now you’re talking about doing your homework on him, and you obviously were familiar enough with his work to consider him a liability. So I’ll ask you again. Did you meet with him or talk with him that summer?”
“Yes,” Peter replied in a crisp voice.
“Peter?” Card interrupted. “What the hell? You met with him?”
Peter shook his head and held up a hand, silencing the Congressman. “Yes, I did. Devin’s surprise is genuine, by the way. I never told him about it. I wanted to protect him should it ever come out.”
“Why did you lie to Serena?” Maggie asked.
“Since I wasn’t involved in his murder, I didn’t see any value in advertising the conversation I had with Mr. Baer. I didn’t think anyone else knew about it. That was before someone tried to blackmail me.”
“Blackmail you? About meeting Ned Baer? Who did that?”
“His name is Adam Halka. He owns the motel where Baer was staying that summer. He also knew me when we were teenagers in school. Halka saw me outside his motel, and he put two and two together about why I was there. He also had a picture of me in my car. Last night, he tried to extort me to keep the secret.”
“When were you outside the motel?”
“August 23 seven years ago.”
“The day before Ned Baer was murdered?” Dan asked.
“Apparently.”
“Were you there to meet Baer?”
“Yes.”
“How did that come about?”
“He dropped off a note at my office that day,” Peter said. “He asked for a meeting. He told me that he’d identified the woman behind the anonymous allegation against Devin, and he wanted to talk about it.”
“So you went?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What happened?”
“Devin is right about Baer. He was a disgusting individual. Drunk. Almost violent. He was ranting about what shitholes Devin and I were and how he couldn’t wait to see us twist when the news came out. He accused me of having him followed. Of breaking into his motel room to find out what he was working on.”
“Did you do that?” Maggie asked.
“No.”
“So what did he want?”
“He offered to spike the story if I gave him one hundred thousand dollars.”
Dan made a silent whistle with his lips. “Baer wanted a bribe?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?” Maggie asked.
“I said no. I told him to publish whatever he wanted. Devin was innocent. I said we’d rather know who was behind the anonymous accusation, because then we could find a way to counter it. I told him he was doing us a favor. He didn’t like that.”
“Did he tell you who the woman was?”
“No.”
“Did he tell you how he found her?”
“No.”
“So what happened next?”
“I left.”
“Did you talk to him again? Did you hear from him again after that night?”
“No. Never. The next time I heard his name was when I read a few days later that he’d disappeared. The police said he’d probably drowned.”
“Did you believe that?” Maggie asked.
“I had no reason not to.”
Maggie looked at Dan, whose eyebrows flicked a message at her: We’re done.
“I think that’s all of our questions for now,” she told them. “Thank you both for your time.”
“Actually, I have a question for you, Sergeant,” the Congressman replied.
“What is it?”
“You said you know the identity of the woman who made the accusations. Have you talked to her?”
“Not personally, but one of my colleagues did, yes,” Maggie said.
“Do you know if she plans to come forward?”
Maggie closed the folder in front of her and put the pen back in her pocket. She stood up, and so did Dan.
“I have no idea, Congressman,” she told him. “I guess you’ll find out soon enough.”
23
High on the trail over Hawk Ridge, Cat felt as if she and Brayden were the only two people in the world. The dense brush made a little shelter where they sat on the rocks. Below them, the trees mostly blocked any views of the city, so all they could see were the green rolling hills of the northland heading to Canada and the great blue expanse of the lake. The morning air, only an hour after sunrise, was cool, with a breeze tumbling down the hillside and mussing her chestnut hair. The rush of the wind made the only sound, other than the occasional chatter of birds.
She plucked a stalk of white wildflowers that grew between the rocks and rubbed it along her cheek. She closed her eyes.
“You look relaxed,” Brayden said.
Cat gave him a dreamy smile without opening her eyes. “Not really, but being here helps. I needed to get away from all of the craziness for a while. That’s why I come here. To get away from everything. Hawk Ridge is my favorite place in the world.”
“Do you hike up here with Stride?”
“Nope. Not Stride. Not Serena. Not Curt. I always come here alone. Just me. And now you.”
“I’m honored.”
“You should be,” she replied, opening her eyes and giving him a smirk. “But you wouldn’t have let me come by myself, would you?”
“No.”
“There you go,” Cat said.
She shrugged a small backpack off her shoulders and put it in her lap. She unzipped one of the pockets and dug out a granola bar from inside, and she held it out to Brayden. “You want one?”
“No, thanks.”
“You don’t eat. You don’t drink. Are you always a good boy?”
Brayden laughed. “My father would roll his eyes at that idea, believe me. I was hell on wheels in school.”
“How’d you get past it?”
“Who says I did? You’re only seeing one side of me, Cat.”
“I’d like to see the other side.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Trust me, tigers are best left in their cages.”
“Oh, you’re a tiger, huh? Now you really have me interested.”
Brayden shook his head. “What is it with you? Do you flirt with every man you meet?”
Cat looked down at her lap, and her hair fell across her face.
“Sorry,” Brayden said. “That was mean. I don’t know why I said that.”
“No. You’re right. I’m screwed up when it comes to men. I probably always will be. Stride says I’ll have a normal relationship someday, but I don’t see it happening.”
“Why not?”
“Because of my past.”
“People change.”
Cat pulled her legs up and hugged her knees. She stared at the sweeping view below them instead of at Brayden. “Do you have any idea how many men had fucked me by the time I was sixteen? I’m sorry, Stride hates it when I talk like that, but I don’t know what else to call it. That’s what it was. That’s what they did. Guess how many.”
“It’s none of my business, and I don’t need to know.”
“Well, it was a lot. Most of them way older than you. That was my life, that was how I paid my way. The shrink I saw said I’d always be attracted to older men because of it. He said that while he was banging me in his office.”