Mistress(80)

But now he knows I don’t.

I’ve been playing checkers while the CIA has been playing chess. And now we’re at checkmate. Craig Carney has no fear of me now.

I call my lawyer, Eddie Volker. I assume he’s been trying to reach me but doesn’t know how.

“Ben, I’ve been trying to reach you,” he says when he answers. “I’ve got some bad news.”

I take a long breath and look to the sky. “The Metropolitan Police Department has issued a warrant for my arrest,” I say.

“Yeah, that’s right. How did you know?”

“Let me guess,” I say. “It was issued about, oh, ten thirty or so this morning.”

“That’s right. How did you know that?”

Because I got off the phone with Carney about ten fifteen this morning. He wasted no time, I see. As soon as he realized I didn’t have the video, he pulled the trigger. He took the leash off of Detective Liz Larkin.

“You have to turn yourself in,” says Eddie. “Every cop in this town is hunting for you. You’re a cop killer to them, Ben. You don’t stand a chance.”





Chapter 93



Having missed my planned meeting with Sean Patrick Riley, I call him to reschedule. We agree to meet at a bar and grill on Rhode Island Avenue. This better be good, because I’m living on borrowed time now. It’s one thing to hide from a handful of Russians who are positioned around the capital hoping to spot me. It’s another to be on the radar of every MPD cop who patrols the capital on foot or by car.

Riley’s already sitting in the dining area munching on some chicken wings when I arrive. (God, that looks great—eating pub food and having a few beers, as though you don’t have a care in the world.) Like most restaurants, this one seems to be full of people in a relatively festive mood, albeit tempered somewhat by the events of this afternoon. The networks have been covering the explosion on 22nd Street nonstop since it happened, and most people are calling it an aborted terrorist attack on the White House.

“Think it was the Muslims?” Sean asks me when I join him in the booth. That’s the big question everyone’s asking—who were these guys in the SUV? The knee-jerk reaction is that they were Islamic terrorists from Asia or Africa, but eyewitness accounts make them for Caucasian, which cuts against the idea of Islamic radicals, though it doesn’t exclude the possibility.

No one will ever know the answer to that question, because with the amount of explosives they detonated, the Russians’ bodies are in hundreds of pieces.

“Let’s do this, Sean,” I say.

Riley brandishes a piece of paper. (I’m not in the mood for a debate. I say you can brandish paper.) “An e-mail that Nina Jacobs received. Dated August fourth. This is the week before Nina had her mail and newspaper stopped.”

I look at the paper Riley hands me:

From: “Diana M. Hotchkiss” <ladydiana@intercast.com>

To: “Nina Jacobs” <jacobsnina@metoo.com>

Just checking in!



Hey, Kiddo…just touching base. All set for next week? It’s a really big favor and IOU big! Please feel free to eat whatever in the fridge, use the landline, wear ANY of my shoes, and of course don’t forget to feed Cinnamon!



xxoo



Di (p.s. I know this all seems kind of weird but will explain later!)



“Bizarre,” says Riley. “I mean, Diana Hotchkiss is the suicide, the one who jumped off her balcony. From this, it sure looks like Nina was house-sitting for her.”

Yeah, it sure does. I figured that some way, somehow, somebody got Nina into Diana’s apartment and got her to dress in Diana’s clothes. What I didn’t know was who. Who set up Nina? Who talked her into doing this, suspecting—or maybe even knowing—that it would get Nina killed?

And now I know. It was Diana. Diana set up her friend Nina.

So I guess I didn’t know Diana at all. All that time I spent with her, and it turns out she was a fraud, a complete mystery to me.

“I have a theory,” says Riley. “Want to hear it?”





Chapter 94



I try to maintain an even keel, keep my composure, as it dawns on me what I have now learned about Diana. It’s almost incomprehensible that she’d set up her friend Nina like that.

Maybe she didn’t. Maybe someone else sent this e-mail from her account. I don’t know. But this can’t be. I couldn’t have been that wrong about Diana—

“So do you want to hear my theory or not?” asks Sean Patrick Riley.

I left Diana’s apartment just before ten, as she had requested of me over the phone earlier that day. But I just barely made that deadline, having been a bit distracted by Diana’s lingerie and sex toys. Nina Jacobs must have gotten off the elevator and walked into the apartment only minutes, if not seconds, after I scooted out the fire escape.