She opened her laptop and gave him this information without comment. “Oh, and someone here remembered the name of Diane’s niece. It’s Minella, Collette Minella, and they think she lives in Bedford, or maybe Barberton. Also, Diane’s will is at her office in DC. I knew that, and my secretary overnighted it to me. Who do I give that to—you guys? Her executor? I used to be a lawyer, you’d think I’d know this stuff.”
Riley said that probate was not the job of the detective unit, though they would like to know the executor’s name. “But right now we need to talk about the personal side of the senator. As we said, you knew her better than anyone.”
“Happy to help, but full disclosure—I’ve only worked for Diane for a little over seven months. She was demanding but fair, and I’ve learned more in that seven months than I did in three years with the assistant governor of Oklahoma, but it was still a work relationship. We weren’t besties. We spent about sixteen hours a day together, so we didn’t go barhopping afterward or catch a movie on the weekend. If she had regular sex with anyone I don’t know who that might be. If she hated someone—well, besides Joe Green—she didn’t tell me. And if she felt terrified to death that one particular person wanted to kill her, she never mentioned it. That EPA guy is always giving her a hard time, but I’d be amazed if he had the guts to kill somebody. Like, astounded. If that’s what you were going to ask.”
Yes, Jack thought. That’s exactly what we were going to ask.
Riley hesitated as well, then said, “No critics who were especially vitriolic?”
“These days? That’s the only kind there is.”
“Diane was polarizing?”
Kelly shook her head, black locks swishing back and forth over her shoulders. “The audience comes pre-polarized. Conservative and definitely liberal are no longer adjectives, they’re titles. Moderate is an epithet.”
Riley qualified his question. “Any that were particularly credible in some way?”
She appeared to give this some thought, shaking her head no, until a memory came back. “OMG, yes! I mean, not in person, but I know we had a second letter that mentioned being struck by lightning. Hang on, let me find it.”
She bustled into the next office, partly visible through the open door, and dug through a box on the floor. Returning with a yellow sheet of legal-sized paper, she almost made it to the door before a young man came by and thrust a schedule under Kelly’s nose, pronouncing radio spots as the best he could do. She disagreed. He disagreed with her disagreement. She said she wanted the rush-hour times and he should not take no for an answer.
No sooner had she dismissed him than a middle-aged man who looked as if he should have a cigar clamped between his teeth stepped up and unfurled a poster featuring a gap where a photo of the new senatorial candidate would be placed. Bright red letters above the white space screamed VOTE FOR TRUTH IN POLITICS ON NOVEMBER 6. Beneath it in smaller caps: BECAUSE SOMETIMES YOU FEEL LIKE A CROOK, SOMETIMES YOU DON’T. “What do you think?” he asked anyone in earshot.
“It’s not exactly subtle,” Riley said.
The man snorted. “Who the hell has time for subtle? In the last few weeks, much less these last few days—we’re competing for the least informed, the least engaged, and the least intense voters out there. Subtle ain’t gonna cut it.”
“Get them up,” Kelly ordered.
He rolled up the paper and strode off, muttering “Subtle” under his breath as if it were a filthy word.
Kelly handed the piece of paper to Riley and said, “See, right there, it says she will be struck by lightning. I mean, that’s not a new prediction when it comes to politicians, but—lightning? When electricity killed her? That makes sense, doesn’t it, in a twisted sort of way?”
“Yes,” Riley murmured. Jack read over his shoulder and commented on the greeting (“Jezebel”) and the all-caps handwritten font, both similar to the letter they’d found at the victim’s house but with one significant difference—a signature. “We’ll check this out. But Kelly . . . how did you know she’d been electrocuted?”
With a look more pitying than guilty, she said, “Some friend of a friend of a friend called and told us an hour or two ago. There’s no way you were ever going to keep a lid on that detail—it’s too bizarre.”
Riley’s molars made a grinding sound. “We were hoping to. It helps to hold back some facts to weed out the false confessions. We expect a boatload of them in this case.”
One side of her mouth turned up. “This is politics. We have no secrets here.” Then she amended: “Not for long, anyway.”
Chapter 7
The writer of the “Jezebel” letters, Harold Boudelet, lived in a nondescript bungalow in Maple Heights, with a sagging roof and a canoe resting on the front porch. Jack pressed the doorbell. Riley went over and nudged the canoe’s peeling paint with his toe, as if checking a sleeping dog to be sure it still breathed. Nothing happened as a result of either action. Jack gave up on the cracked button and knocked.
Riley had grumbled through the whole drive that this interview would inevitably be a waste of time. Every politician in the world had to have a stack of hate mail, and Diane Cragin had much more likely been killed over the cash in her safe, but Jack insisted.
Boudelet needed a shave and wore a pair of pajamas pants and a rumpled T-shirt over a pot belly the size and shape of two basketballs, but his eyes were clear as well as clearly suspicious. Their names and badges did not prompt him to invite them in; he held the door with his left hand as if he might have a rifle in his hidden right, stashed. But once they said they wanted to ask him about the letter he’d written to the senator, he grew downright welcoming. His face cleared, the door swung open, and he ushered them into his living room. He even offered to make coffee. They politely declined as Jack scanned the area behind the door. No rifle.
The cops took a seat on the threadbare sofa as Boudelet plopped into a leather armchair across a cluttered coffee table. No sound came from the rest of the structure, which smelled of overcooked beans and rice. Jack could not guess Boudelet’s age, race, or cultural background from his mottled, dry skin or the wisps of an unfamiliar accent, but even if he’d been curious he didn’t have time to ponder these details, since Boudelet began to speak before Jack even settled onto the faded chintz.
“I wrote the senator a few times, not that it did any good. That woman has no shame, but then most people in my former line of work didn’t. It’s the only way you can stand yourself. But I wanted to remind her that people like me exist, people who know what was done and where and when. The companies might keep all our names off their memos and their grant applications, but we still exist.”
“Okay,” Riley said. “Let’s keep this simple. What was your former line of work?”
“EHM.”
A pause, during which Jack waited for that to make sense. It didn’t.
Riley opened his mouth as if to ask for clarification, but he needn’t have bothered. “Economic hit man,” Boudelet said. “Corporations find a country with natural resources we want. I go in and say, look, let us help you build a power plant and put a bunch of your people to work and lift the economy of the whole country—sounds great, right? You’ve got no money to pay us for the expertise and the infrastructure, but we’ll arrange a loan for you. The rulers are wealthy families who don’t care about long-term effects as long as they’re making a bundle, and since they make the rules, they don’t need to worry about a pesky parliament or those damned citizens asking questions. For example—”
“I think we understand,” Riley said.
“For example, we went into Indonesia in 1971,