House Arrest Page 22

  “What in the hell have you done?” Peyton shrieked.

  “Just do what I’m telling you, Mr. Peyton. Call Arlington and tell them about Lynch. I’ll meet you at the Hoover Building in one hour and explain everything. I’ll be bringing my lawyer with me. I’d suggest you bring a DOJ lawyer but only one. I don’t want to see a conference room full of bureaucrats.”

  Emma hung up before Peyton could say anything else. When her phone immediately rang again—the screen showing the caller was Peyton—she sent the call to voice mail.

  Emma’s next call was to her lawyer, Janet Evans.

  She said, “I’m sorry to do this to you, Janet, but I need you to meet me at the Hoover Building in one hour. I want a witness to a meeting I’m going to have with the FBI. I also want you there to keep me from being arrested.”

  Peyton and a DOJ lawyer—a sharp-eyed black woman in her forties—were seated on one side of a conference table that could accommodate twenty people. Emma and Janet Evans were seated on the other side. Peyton looked as if he felt like killing something; the lawyer looked as if she’d enjoy skinning whatever he killed.

  Emma said, “Have the cops found John Lynch’s body?”

  “Yeah, and my guys are on the scene right now.”

  Emma said, “Good. Now here’s what happened.”

  Emma explained that from the beginning she’d been convinced that DeMarco was being framed. She reminded Peyton that she’d told him this; she still didn’t admit, however, to knowing DeMarco. She said that because the FBI appeared to be doing nothing to look for another suspect, she’d looked for one on her own.

  Using the Capitol Police personnel files that Peyton had provided, she looked for Capitol cops about DeMarco’s size with some connection to Sebastian Spear—and she found John Lynch, a man who’d been in the air force at the same time as Spear’s head of security, Bill Brayden. She also learned that Brayden was the guy Sebastian Spear used when Spear needed somebody to get his hands dirty. She didn’t mention that Neil had helped her.

  Emma said, “I also learned in the course of my investigation that Lynch had a large amount of cash hidden in his apartment.”

  “Wait a goddamn minute,” Peyton said. “How did you learn this?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Emma said. “I know it’s there.” She could see no reason to tell Peyton that she’d broken into Lynch’s apartment and ripped out a wall. Before Peyton could say that it sure as hell did matter, Emma said, “Because John Lynch is now a murder victim, you’ll be able to search his apartment without a warrant and I’m sure you’ll find the money. I’m certain the money is what Lynch was paid to kill Canton.”

  Peyton started to say something, but Emma held up a halting hand. “Tonight, I decided to follow Lynch to see what else I might learn. I asked a friend to help me, and my friend and I saw Bill Brayden shoot Lynch while Lynch was sitting at the bus stop in Arlington. I have video footage of Brayden driving away from the shooting scene, but unfortunately wasn’t able to video him in the act of shooting Lynch.”

  Emma decided not to tell Peyton that she’d panicked Lynch into meeting with Brayden. Why dig the hole she’d dug for herself any deeper?

  “Can you believe this woman?” Peyton said to the DOJ lawyer.

  The lawyer didn’t respond. She was beginning to appreciate that Emma was not your average witness/criminal.

  Emma said, “While my friend confirmed that Lynch was dead—she would have called for an ambulance if he hadn’t been—I followed Brayden. I witnessed him put the murder weapon in the trunk of his car.”

  That was actually the only lie that Emma told.

  “In summary, Agent Peyton, what you have are two eyewitnesses who saw Brayden kill John Lynch and a video showing Brayden’s car leave the scene. Based on my testimony, you’ll be able to get a warrant to search Brayden’s car and find the weapon he used to kill Lynch.”

  As might be expected, Peyton wanted to know a lot more than Emma had told him, and he was bright enough to know that she wasn’t telling him everything. So for the next several minutes Peyton bombarded her with questions. Among them was: Who was Emma’s friend that had witnessed the killing?

  “A distinguished war veteran named Pamela Stewart,” Emma said. She didn’t see any reason to mention Pamela’s issues with PTSD.

  When Peyton ran out of questions about Lynch’s murder, he said, “Can you prove Lynch killed Canton?”

  “No,” Emma said. “But you’ll have enough evidence to convict Brayden of the first-degree murder of John Lynch. And unlike the District of Columbia, the state of Virginia still has the death penalty on the books, and killing a cop is a death-penalty offense. Therefore, you can threaten Brayden with lethal injection unless he agrees to confess to his and Sebastian Spear’s role in killing Lyle Canton.”

  Emma decided not to mention Nikki Orlov at this point. Orlov’s part in framing DeMarco would most likely come out in the future, but Emma wanted to give her NSA friend, Olivia Prescott, a heads-up that the FBI might soon be talking to her about Orlov. Olivia wouldn’t be happy, but there was nothing Emma could do about that.

  The meeting digressed for a while, as Peyton felt compelled to rant about what Emma had done, and the DOJ lawyer wasted some time threatening Emma with obstruction of justice, interfering in a federal investigation, and violations of a few obscure federal statutes.

  When they finished ranting and threatening, Emma said, “Right now the wrong man is in jail for killing Lyle Canton. Agent Peyton, I’m a person who dislikes speaking to the media, but I’m willing to make an exception in this case. I’d suggest that instead of getting your nose out of joint because I caught the killers and you didn’t, you should just thank me. I have no desire to take any credit. I’m willing to give all the credit to you. And what that means is that instead of looking like a complete fool for arresting the wrong man, you’ll get all the glory for arresting the right one.”

  Emma left the Hoover Building sans handcuffs and immediately broke her promise not to tell anyone about the imminent arrest of Bill Brayden.

  She woke up John Mahoney.

  After calling Mahoney, Emma drove to Neil’s office, where Pamela and Shandra were waiting for her.

  Neil looked unhappy, because Shandra and Pamela had tracked mud—picked up on their shoes while they were hunting for Brayden’s gun in Four Mile Run—all over his office. He was also unhappy that in response to the stress, they’d both been smoking in his office—but he’d been afraid to tell them to stop. He could tell they were agitated, and either one of them could have bent his overweight frame into the shape of a pretzel.

  “I’m so sorry this happened,” Emma said to the two veterans. “I just wanted you to help me prove that Brayden and Lynch knew each other. If I had known that Brayden was going to kill Lynch, I never would have involved you.” Speaking to Pamela, she said, “The last thing I ever wanted was for you to see that man killed. The good news, thanks to you, is that the FBI will be able to get Brayden for killing Lynch, and Brayden will confess to conspiring with Lynch to kill Canton, which means my friend, DeMarco, will be freed.”

  “Am I going to have to testify in court that I saw Brayden kill Lynch?” Pamela asked.

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so,” Emma said. “I think Brayden will cut a deal with the FBI, and there won’t be a trial. But you will have to give a statement to the FBI and the Virginia cops that you saw Brayden kill him.”

  “What do I say?”

  “The truth, but no more than necessary. Basically, you’ll just say that you were with me in the park when Brayden drove up and shot Lynch, and you videotaped him driving away. We’ll figure out the exact wording of your statement later, and my lawyer will be with you when you give it.”

  “What about finding the gun in the creek?” Shandra asked.

  “You say nothing about that. Neither of you. Ever. And Shandra, the police don’t know that you helped me tonight, and I don’t intend to tell them that you did.�
��

  Emma smiled at them. “You two performed marvelously, and I’m so proud of you. And you should be very proud of yourselves for taking part in something that will free an innocent man.”

  “What about me?” Neil said.

  “Shut up, Neil,” Emma said.

  47

  Bill Brayden was awakened at six a.m. by what he thought was an explosion. What he’d actually heard was the sound of his apartment door being bashed open by a big cop with a battering ram. Seconds later Brayden, still in somewhat of a dream state, saw two guys in body armor pointing M4 rifles at his head, screaming at him to show his hands. This wasn’t a dream; it was a wide-awake nightmare.

  And the nightmare continued. He was informed that he was being arrested for the murder of John Lynch. Papers were waved in his face: warrants to search his apartment and his car. He was taken, as DeMarco had been, to the Alexandria city jail. The irony of this never occurred to him, as he had other things on his mind, the most prominent of which was: How in the hell did they catch me only five hours after I killed Lynch?

  He was told he had the right to an attorney, and he exercised that right immediately by contacting one of the lawyers who worked at Spear Industries. Two hours after he was arrested, he and his attorney met with FBI agent Russell Peyton and a DOJ lawyer. Brayden’s lawyer asked why the FBI was involved, since the crime his client had allegedly committed should be under the jurisdiction of some Virginia state law enforcement agency.

  To this Peyton said, “Oh, your client will be prosecuted by the state of Virginia. We want him prosecuted by Virginia, because Virginia ranks number four in states that have the most executions. In fact, did you know that in Virginia, they actually let you pick your preferred method of execution, either lethal injection or electrocution?”

  Brayden’s lawyer snapped, “Why are you telling my client this? Are you trying to intimidate him?”

  Peyton ignored what he considered to be a rhetorical question. “Mr. Brayden, let me tell you where things stand right now. We have two eyewitnesses who saw you shoot John Lynch, a U.S. Capitol policeman. You killed a cop. We also have a video of your Lexus driving away from the murder scene. The video doesn’t show your face, but the time the video was taken matches the time the eyewitnesses saw you shoot Brayden.”

  “I don’t know any John Lynch,” Brayden said.

  “Shut up, Bill,” Brayden’s lawyer said.

  Peyton wagged a finger at Brayden and said, “No, no, Bill. That lie won’t fly. We know that you knew Lynch from your time in the air force.”

  Brayden started to say something else, but his lawyer again said, “Shut up, Bill.”

  “We also have the gun you used to shoot Lynch. Ballistics tests prove it was the gun.” Peyton paused before saying, “We found the gun hidden in the trunk of your Lexus.”

  Brayden came straight up out of his chair. “That’s impossible,” he screamed.

  “Not impossible, Bill. It’s a fact,” Peyton said.

  Brayden couldn’t tell Peyton that it sure as shit was impossible for the gun to have been found in his car because he’d thrown it into Four Mile Run. So instead he said, “I’m being framed.”

  Peyton laughed. “You know, it seems like every guy I arrest lately tells me he’s being framed.”

  Peyton continued. “Anyway, we found the gun in your car and have two eyewitnesses to the shooting and a video of you fleeing the scene. So you’re pretty much assured a place on a death-row gurney or in the electric chair. Your choice, like I said.”

  Brayden’s lawyer said, “What motive would my client have for shooting this Lynch person?”

  “His motive doesn’t matter,” Peyton said. “That is, it won’t matter to the state of Virginia. The state doesn’t need a motive to convict him.” Before the lawyer could say anything else, Peyton said, “Now for the good news, Bill. I believe that you shot John Lynch because he helped you kill Congressman Lyle Canton.”

  “What are you talking about?” the lawyer said, genuinely confused. The lawyer may have worked for Spear Industries, but he hadn’t been involved at all in Canton’s murder.

  Again ignoring the lawyer, Peyton said, “I’ll be frank with you, Bill. I can’t prove that you conspired with Lynch to kill Canton. I did find a hundred grand in cash hidden in Lynch’s apartment, which I believe was part of what he was paid to kill Canton, but I can’t prove you gave him the money.”

  What Peyton didn’t tell Brayden was that his people hadn’t been able to find the money in Canton’s apartment without some help from Emma. After Emma had told Peyton that she knew the money was there, he’d dispatched four agents to search for it, and the first search came up dry.

  Peyton called Emma and said, “There is no money in Lynch’s apartment.”

  To which Emma had responded, “Yes, there is. Think ‘Cask of Amontillado.’”

  “What?” Peyton said, but the damn woman had already hung up. Then Peyton thought, “Cask of Amontillado”? The Poe story? The guy stuck behind a brick wall while still alive? An hour later, his agents found the money behind the wall in Lynch’s closet.

  “Bill,” Peyton said to Brayden, “you’ve got one chance here and only one. You may be able to avoid the death penalty, but only if you admit that you paid Lynch to kill Canton and if you name the other people involved in the conspiracy to frame Joe DeMarco. And I’m talking about Sebastian Spear.”

  “I’m terminating this interview right now,” Brayden’s lawyer said.

  “That’s your call,” Peyton said. “Your client will be arraigned tomorrow, returned to this jail, and then Virginia is going to convict him of the first-degree murder of a cop. His one and only opportunity for a deal is to tell the truth about Canton.”

  After Peyton left the room, Brayden expected his lawyer to ask him if he knew anything about Lyle Canton’s murder. But that didn’t happen. Instead, his lawyer said, “Bill, I need to make a phone call.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the lawyer was back. He said, “You’re going to have to retain your own counsel, Mr. Brayden. I can no longer represent you.”

  That was when Brayden realized that Sebastian Spear’s lawyers, to avoid a conflict of interest insofar as protecting their primary client, was throwing him to the wolves.

  48

  As he usually did, Mahoney added a shot of bourbon to his morning coffee. This morning, however, the bourbon wasn’t the old remedy called hair of the dog nor was it simply the daily ritual of a committed alcoholic. This morning’s dollop of bourbon in his coffee was instead an act of celebration.

  Mahoney had grown sick of the media continuing to imply that he had somehow conspired with DeMarco to kill Lyle Canton. Given the opportunity, he would have mowed down all the so-called journalists with a machine gun as they screamed questions at him every time he ventured outside his office. Well, as soon as Brayden was arrested and Canton’s death was pinned on that Capitol cop, Mahoney was going to give the jackals an ass-chewing of epic proportions.

  He would say: This is what happens when you dumb shits start making up the news based on nothing but guesswork. You not only tried to smear my sterling reputation, but that poor lawyer, DeMarco—who I barely knew—was demonized by your irresponsible reporting. He’d polish the words later—maybe he wouldn’t use the word sterling when it came to his reputation—but he’d make sure the media looked like the incompetent bunglers they were for trying to tie him to Canton’s death.

  Yes, Mahoney felt content as the laced coffee went down his gullet; he’d weathered the Lyle Canton storm with no more than a couple of small rips in his political sails. The sad part was that DeMarco was not going to be so fortunate.

  DeMarco was going to lose his job.

  When Mahoney had set up DeMarco’s position all those years ago, he’d been the Speaker and had enough clout to do damn near anything he pleased. Knowing the nature of the things he wanted to use DeMarco for, he’d given him an office down in the subbasement, and there had been no o
fficial, documented connection between him and DeMarco. The main reason he had done this was, if DeMarco did something stupid and was caught, Mahoney would be able to say—just as he’d been able to say in the case of Lyle Canton—that he wasn’t responsible for any sins DeMarco may have committed. The reason he’d set DeMarco up in a standard civil service position was so that he wouldn’t have to waste his budget paying the guy.

  And for years everything had worked just fine, until that prick Canton was killed. There were at least twenty thousand people employed by the legislative branch, and about a third of them had law degrees. Mahoney even had one. So DeMarco had been nothing more than a single, tarnished legal needle in a bureaucratic haystack filled with dull and tarnished needles. A couple of times over the course of DeMarco’s career, some anal bean counter in OPM had questioned the need for his civil service position, but Mahoney had always been able to bat down any questions with a swipe of his mighty, meaty hand. As time passed, the long-established position of Counsel Pro Tem for Liaison Affairs—a meaningless title that Mahoney had invented—became nothing more than a barely discernible small box on the immense, sprawling organizational chart of the Capitol’s bureaucracy.

  Moreover, DeMarco had always stayed out of the limelight and never discussed his connection to Mahoney. He certainly couldn’t say he was Mahoney’s bagman, nor could he talk about the things Mahoney asked him to do when he needed the law bent ever so slightly. When asked what he did, DeMarco would always say that he provided legal services on an ad hoc basis for members of the House and then would say that, due to the need for client confidentiality, he couldn’t discuss exactly what those services were. Until he was arrested for killing Lyle Canton, DeMarco’s picture had never been in a newspaper.

  Now every journalist in America knew who DeMarco was, and as soon as he was released from prison he’d be hounded relentlessly. The host of some morning show—a twenty-five-year-old with a supermodel’s cheekbones—would ask DeMarco to appear on her show so she could ask how he “felt” about almost going to jail for first-degree murder. As for DeMarco’s civil service position, a spotlight had been shone on it by the media, and since the Republican majority in the House now suspected that DeMarco’s position was in some way connected to Mahoney, they would insist that it be lopped off like a gangrenous limb on an otherwise unhealthy body.