In a sweet curl of irony, the woman would die in a room that the corpse from the primate center was paying for-at a tidy sum of $598 per night. And no one would find that out until it was too late.
He hopped off I-95.
12:41 p.m.
The hotel wasn’t far at all.
Let the games begin.
26
I was less than five minutes from Missy Schuel’s office, and in anticipation of our meeting, my thoughts were revolving around Tessa and her father.
We met him in Wyoming at the end of last month.
The air in the mountains had been smudged with rain that day, and the peaks surrounding his cabin were swallowed in a thick gray mist.
A weary, drizzling sky.
As we stepped out of the car, Tessa slid a wisp of hair away from her eye. For some reason I remember that. A small gesture. Frozen in time. “I want to do this by myself.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Tessa, I’m not leaving you alone with him. Not until I know more about him.”
“He’s my father.”
Though I knew the words were true, they stung a part of my heart I’d never known existed until after Christie’s death when Tessa became the most important person in my life. “Yes, he is,” I said. “But if you’re going in there, I’m coming with you.”
A pause. “Fine.”
So together we’d approached the cabin. The fog snaking around us. The mud thick underfoot.
I wasn’t sure how Paul would respond to having us show up like this unannounced. We hadn’t phoned to tell him we were coming; after all, he didn’t own a phone. Or have a bank account. Or a credit history. On paper the man didn’t exist.
And that was one of the reasons I wasn’t going to leave Tessa alone with him. He’d left society behind, and I wanted to know why.
When he answered the door I decided that mentioning I was a federal agent might not be the best way to get off on the right foot. “My name is Patrick Bowers,” I said. “Are you Paul Lansing?”
His eyes traveled back and forth from me to Tessa. “I am.”
I was about to explain the purpose of our visit, but before I could, Tessa held out the diary, opened to a note that a man named Paul had written to her mother seventeen years earlier asking her not to have an abortion. “Did you write this?”
He gazed at the page, and his expression changed from curiosity to mild suspicion. “Who are you?”
“My name is Tessa Bernice Ellis. My mother was Christie Rose Ellis. Seventeen years ago you slept with her and she wanted to abort me and you begged her not to. I’m your daughter.”
I waited for Paul to speak, to say something, anything. But he just studied Tessa for an infinitely long moment, and finally whispered, “So she didn’t…” Neither Tessa or I moved. “I always thought…”
And then a soft tear formed in his eye and he invited us inside.
And in that moment I realized that he had loved Tessa for the last seventeen years even though he hadn’t known she was alive.
Just down the block from Missy’s office, my phone’s ringer snapped me out of my thoughts about that gray day in Wyoming. I answered.
Ralph: “Where are you, man?”
“DC.”
“Good. Congressman Fischer wants to see you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He asked for you. I think it’s about Mahan.”
“Me? Why?”
“Didn’t say. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I need you to-”
“Listen, I’m on my way to see the lawyer Brin told you about. Have Margaret deal with-”
“I know you need to do that, but those things take weeks. You have time. Fischer has a press conference in less than fifteen minutes.”
I pulled into the liquor store’s parking lot across the street from Missy Schuel’s office. “Ralph, this doesn’t make sense. There are plenty of people who can talk to Fischer. Sic Doehring on him.”
“You can stop him from-”
“What about a phone call? Why don’t I just call him?”
“He asked to see you.” Agitation rising in his voice. “I don’t need to tell you that right now is not the time to get him pissed off at the Bureau.”
“Wait.” I was losing my patience too. “Am I talking to Ralph, or is this Margaret?”
A slice of silence.
“The meeting with the lawyer can wait.” Ralph’s tone had turned cold. “You have ten minutes to get to the house minority leader’s office so Fischer can talk with you before he meets with the press, and I don’t want you to be late.”
“Get ready to be disappointed.”
“Pat, the priority right now needs to be-”
“My daughter,” I said and I ended the call.
Then I turned off the ringer, grabbed my satchel with the letter from Lansing’s lawyers in it, climbed out of the car.
And headed across the street to Missy’s building.
Tessa was washing her face, but her black mascara had smeared really bad and she still looked terrible.
How can that man actually be your dad? It’s not possible!
She felt like hitting something, hitting him, and of course, cutting again. Trying to slice the pain away.
Her eyes went to the scars on her arm.
She’d seriously been trying to move past that chapter in her life, didn’t even carry a razor blade or X-acto knife with her anymore. But she could get one. She could buy Don’t go there, Tessa. Not again.
She finished at the sink, dried her face, left the restroom.
She needed to talk to Patrick.
Now.
Tell him everything, apologize.
Oh great. That’s right.
The phone. The BlackBerry Paul had given her with his little Google GPS program on it so he could track her.
She pulled it out and left him a rather unambiguous message on the screen of what he could do with his little gift phone, then dropped it in the trash can beside the front door as she left the museum. Go ahead, let him track it, find it, read it.
Enjoy that, Dad.
She fished out her own phone. Speed-dialed Patrick.
No answer.
Come on, pick up, pick up.
Nothing.
Dang.
She left a message, trying to make it seem like she wasn’t totally about to lose it, but it wasn’t easy.
Get back home.
Back to the house. Just get out of here.
At the street corner, she found a placard showing the location of the city’s Metro stations, located the nearest one that could get her to the VRE back to Virginia, and headed toward it.
Missy Schuel’s reception area was a small, cluttered nook of a room containing a desk piled high with papers, invoices, and legal pads filled with illegibly scribbled notes. No receptionist. An old TV sat in the corner of the room, sound off, mutely showing an empty podium with a flag beside it. Text at the bottom of the screen told me that Congressman Fischer’s press conference would be starting momentarily.
I’d dealt with enough crimes in the DC area to recognize the press corps room just outside the house minority leader’s office.
The place Ralph had told me to go.
A door to my left had a sticky note on it: “I’m in here.”
A sticky note.
Wonderful.
Brineesha said she’s good. At least give her a chance.
I knocked.
“C’mon in, Dr. Bowers.”
I stepped inside.
27
12:48 p.m.
A simple office.
Law manuals packed the bookshelves, a small window on the east wall faced another building less than five meters away. A laptop computer sat centered on her desk flanked by a small digital clock and a picture of three smiling children-one boy and two girls, all of whom appeared to be ten years old or younger. A neat, nearly empty inbox.
Missy Schuel was neither hefty nor slim, neither beautiful nor unattractive. Early forties, black hair fringed with a touch of gray. She made me think of an elementary school principal rather than a hard-nosed divorce attorney.