Words of Conviction Read online

  “Crow is in the process of finding out where the guy is.” As if on cue, Scott’s cell phone rang. As he took the call, Senator Grable, red-faced, entered the dining room.

  “Miss Graham,” he said pointing his finger at her, “I need to talk to you.”

  Scott turned away, struggling to hear his phone.

  “Senator, let’s go into your office,” Kenzie said. She followed him, her neck already tense. Once there, she closed the door. “What’s the problem?”

  “My wife says you’re harassing her and I want it to stop.”

  “What do you mean by ‘harassing’? I’ve asked her a few questions, Senator, that’s all.” Kenzie’s face felt hot.

  “You’re badgering her. Interrogating her friends. And I’m telling you, she had nothing to do with Zoe’s disappearance. You cut it out!” Grable’s blue eyes sparked with anger. “She’s off limits!”

  “No one’s off limits in a federal investigation, sir.” Kenzie’s heart pounded. She crossed her arms. “You know your wife pretty well, Senator?” Kenzie asked.

  “Of course!”

  “Do you know she’s been to see an attorney? A divorce attorney?”

  Shock flashed onto his face. The senator’s eyes searched hers, trying to detect any chance of a bluff. When Kenzie stood her ground, he suddenly turned, walked to his desk, and sagged into his chair.

  Kenzie walked toward him. “I’m sorry, Senator.”

  Suddenly, he looked old and sad. He put his hand to his mouth, and stared at the penholder on his desk. He sighed. “I guess I’m not totally surprised.”

  Kenzie rested her hands on his desk and leaned toward him. “I’m going to check out everything I can to find Zoe,” she said softly, “even if it embarrasses or offends some people. Zoe’s worth it, don’t you think?”

  A glint of tears appeared in his eyes. He waved his hand. “Do anything you need to do. I just want . . .” he stopped, catching a sob in his throat.

  “Kenzie!” Scott called out.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the senator. “I need to go.” And she quickly left the office.

  “You want to come with us? Or stay here?” Scott asked, after telling her what Crow had found.

  “I want to go.”

  “Vest up, then,” Scott said quietly, strapping his gun to his leg.

  “Are you going to tell them?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Seconds later, Scott stood in Grable’s office, facing the couple who stood stiffly side by side, like intimate strangers. Scott wore khaki cargo tactical pants and a navy blue shirt covered by a blue tactical vest with bold white letters proclaiming “FBI.” A broad black strap secured his gun holster to his leg. “We’re getting a search warrant now,” he said. “The man lives off Kalorama Road, in the third floor apartment in a Victorian row house. There’s a back stair leading up to his place, so he has the perfect opportunity to go in and out with no one noticing. He parks in a small garage behind the row house, goes in through the alley, and up the stairs.”

  “And how exactly does he know Nina?”

  “He is the boyfriend of her sister.”

  “And a sex offender.” The senator spit the words out.

  “And he’s been seen with a little blonde girl.”

  “I told you to fire her!” his wife snapped. “Why didn’t you listen to me? You never listen to me.”

  The senator rubbed his hand through his hair.

  Scott actually felt sorry for him. “I’ll call you when we know something,” the agent said. “We need to roll.”

  “Ride with me,” Scott said, motioning Kenzie toward his Bucar, his Bureau car. It wouldn’t be a long trip—barring one of D.C.’s traffic jams they’d be on Kalorama in fifteen minutes.

  Kenzie climbed in and buckled her seatbelt. The ballistic vest felt uncomfortable. So would being dead. She adjusted it and turned the air conditioning vent toward her face. Stress gripped her. “Fill me in, Scott,” she said as he turned onto Wisconsin Avenue. “How are we doing this?”

  “We’ve got three teams. There’s just one door into his apartment, and one access from the outside of the building, off the back alley. We’ll have one team out front, one in the alley, and one will go up the stairs.” He braked as traffic stopped. “You can stay with me if you want. But if you do, I want you behind me.”

  “OK.”

  “OK, then it’s you, me, Crow and three others. We’ll go in with the ram, and . . .”

  “We know he’s home?”

  “He’s there.”

  The two were silent for a moment as Scott swiftly negotiated the narrow streets of Northwest D.C. Kenzie’s stomach knotted. This would be the second raid she’d been on in her entire career. Just the second one, confirming her boss’s assessment. She had very little street experience.

  The other time, she’d been assigned to one of the rear teams. Now Scott said he’d let her get up close and personal. How would she feel? Could she handle it? The aggression, the danger, the noise, the fear?

  Kenzie looked over at Scott. His brown eyes stayed focused straight ahead. “Look, if you’re going to pray, keep your eyes open, OK?” She plastered on a goofy smile to signal she was kidding.

  He ignored her attempt at humor. “Every time we go out I pray. Every time. Are you worried?”

  “Me? No, not at all.” She turned toward her window, swallowing her deception.

  Scott took a right turn. His cell phone rang. As he spoke into it, his frown intensified. “How bad? Did she cry? Which hospital?” Tension filled his voice. Kenzie watched him carefully. “Thank you. Tell her I love her and I’ll come see her as soon as I can.”

  “What’s up?” Kenzie asked.

  “My wife called to tell me my daughter, Cara, fell out of a tree. Lisa thinks her arm is broken.”

  “Do you need to go to them?”

  “Lisa will have to handle it,” he said, his jaw flexing with tension, his hand forming a fist on the steering wheel. “It’s not the first time.”

  Kenzie looked out of the window. Lisa was an attractive brunette, a former nurse who now stayed home with their two kids. They seemed to be doing all right, but Kenzie knew being an agent worked hardships on families. The divorce rate among law enforcement officers was very high. The stresses of the job and the inability to leave it at the end of the day combined with the worry and loneliness of the spouse left at home made marriage difficult.

  “Cara’s very active.” Scott turned a corner.

  “Maybe she’ll want to be an agent.”

  He shot her a look. “That’s exactly what she says. She lines up her stuffed animals on the couch, and jumps out from behind the chair yelling, ‘FBI, FBI! Drop your gun!’ Then she blows them away.” Scott raised his eyebrows. “Apparently, her subjects always resist arrest.”

  Kenzie laughed.

  “It drives her mother crazy.”

  The two dozen agents who would be involved in the raid had gathered in a hotel parking lot near the target location. After listening to Scott’s plan, they moved quickly to their cars. Surprise and overwhelming force were their main weapons, safety their main concern.

  Crow questioned Kenzie’s involvement. “She’s a linguist,” he said to Scott when the two of them were by themselves. “What’s she going to do, talk the guy to death?”

  Scott cut him off. “She can handle herself, plus she’s fluent in Spanish. She’s coming. Deal with it.”

  From across the parking lot, Kenzie saw them talking, saw Crow glance in her direction, frowning. What was he saying? She tossed her head and tightened her vest straps. She had no intention of letting on just how nervous she felt.

  An ugly shade of yellowish beige covered the stucco surface of the row house. Trash littered the front yard, enclosed by a falling-down iron fence.

  The group in the rear of the house, with Scott carrying the battering ram, moved in first. The front team would attract more attention, and so it waited to approach the house u
ntil the back crew was in place. When they got the signal, they positioned themselves so they had control over the front door and the suspect’s apartment front window.

  “All right,” Scott said in a low voice, and he and his squad moved up the back stairs. Kenzie stood right behind him. Her hair was damp with sweat, her body alive with adrenaline. The rustling of their raid jackets and the thumping of their feet seemed amplified in the narrow stairwell. The stifling heat made it difficult to breathe.

  The subject’s apartment door had three locks on it, no peephole. According to plan, Crow knocked loudly on the door. “Mr. Lopez? Open up, FBI!” He repeated it in Spanish.

  They counted twenty seconds. On signal, two agents heaved the heavy ram once, twice, and the door shattered. Scott and Crow, guns drawn, shouting “FBI! FBI!” stepped in.

  Emilio Ernesto Lopez jumped to his feet.

  “Get on the floor, get on the floor!” Scott shouted.

  Instead, Lopez tried to run.

  Where’s he going? Kenzie’s mind raced along with her feet as she followed Scott and Crow after the man, into the kitchen. She saw Lopez grab something off of the counter. “Gun!” she screamed.

  Lopez was halfway out of the window before Scott had his hands on him. Then Kenzie heard a muffled boom, the sound of gunfire. “Scott!” she yelled, raising her gun. She had no clear shot.

  “I’m OK,” Scott said, hauling the man back into the kitchen and cuffing him as he dragged him to the floor.

  Crow stood next to him, his gun trained on the suspect, bleeding from a massive wound to the gut. “Call an ambulance!”

  Kenzie realized he had directed that command at her. Hands shaking, she holstered her gun and made the call.

  “Where’s the girl? Where’s the girl, Lopez?” Scott yelled at the man.

  “Donde está la chica?” Crow repeated. But Emilio Ernesto Lopez’s life was draining out onto the floor in a spreading pool of blood.

  Kenzie’s head spun. She couldn’t take her eyes off the body before her. “Did you shoot him?” she asked Scott.

  He shook his head. “He shot himself. Clear the rest of the apartment.”

  Kenzie snapped out of her daze and, with other agents, paced through the rest of the rooms. “Clear! Clear!” they announced, declaring each room empty.

  But what about the girl? Where was she?

  They entered a bedroom last. A double bed mattress lay on the floor. Magazines and DVDs lay nearby. The bedcovers were askew. An old, cheap TV on a stand and a DVD player stood at one end of the room, across from a large chest-on-chest.

  The other agents left after peering under the mattress and into the closet. But something held Kenzie there. Something felt wrong. But what? A drip of sweat ran down her back. She stared at the chest-on-chest. It looked like it covered a door. Why would anyone cover a door?

  Kenzie felt Crow’s eyes on her. Heart drumming, she said, “Help me move this.”

  It took both of them to do it. Then Kenzie carefully opened the door. Behind it was a second closet, empty—except for a pile of clothes on the floor. Kenzie reached up for a string and pulled on the light. Her eyes widened. From under the clothes, a little foot protruded. She froze. “Oh, no!”

  Crow pulled her back, moved past her, and squatted down. He reached out and touched the foot, then he stood up and shouted, “Scott!”

  Zoe? Dead? Kenzie fought to keep from showing her emotions. She stared at the pile of clothes and the little foot. Then her eye caught some movement. A spider scurried across the pile that covered the body. Stomach acid rose in Kenzie’s throat.

  “Are you OK?” Crow asked.

  She choked it back. “Fine.”

  Scott brought in an evidence tech team. When they uncovered the little girl’s body, her blonde hair was spread over the dirty floor like a sunburst. Kenzie gritted her teeth.

  Crow stood next to her. “You don’t look good,” he said quietly.

  “Just hot.” She turned away and as she did, she had to catch her balance. Crow steadied her and she felt herself flush with embarrassment.

  “Here,” Crow said, handing her a stick of gum. “It helps.”

  Her face burning, she took it.

  The medical examiner, a crusty old man with white hair, showed up an hour later. He approached Scott. “Approximate age five. White, female. Dead about two hours. She has bruises on her neck. Strangled, possibly. I suggest you get the Grables down to the morgue.”

  Two agents would bring the Grables downtown. Scott told Crow and Kenzie to stay behind and supervise the rest of the crime scene investigation, but Kenzie insisted on coming with him to the morgue. “Somebody needs to be there for Mrs. Grable,” she said. He shrugged and agreed.

  The bright summer day seemed an incongruity with what Kenzie had just seen as Scott negotiated the narrow streets on their way to North Capitol Street NE. The muscles in his jaw worked overtime. The suspect killed himself. A child was dead. And he’d just called his wife and found that Cara had a compound fracture of her left arm and would soon be in surgery.

  Not a good day, thought Kenzie. She aimed the car air conditioner so it blew full force on her face. She felt glad she hadn’t passed out. It had been close. She blamed it on the bulletproof vest.

  Scott turned right only to find himself blocked by a double-parked delivery truck. He glanced over at her. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Fine,” she replied in her most professional voice, and she felt a tremor pass through her. She turned to stare out of her window, visions of Emilio Ernesto Lopez and a little dead child playing over and over in her head. Then there were flashbacks, surges of emotional memory, intrusive thoughts. And questions, lots of questions. Why’d the little girl die? Was she dead before her killer threw her in the closet? What did he do to her before that? And where, pray tell, was God? Watching?

  8

  The D.C. morgue sat near Union Station on North Capitol Street. The senator stood waiting for them in the lobby. His wife elected to stay at home, sedated, he said. Kenzie felt glad. Grable had changed into a suit and, except for his haggard face, he looked ready to meet the press. Had they been notified, Kenzie wondered?

  “How does this go?” he asked Scott, his voice trembling slightly.

  The agent took a deep breath. “Dr. Marcus will call us in. They’ll have the body on a table, covered, and pull back just enough for you to see her face.” He hesitated. “The body was not, uh, mutilated in any way. Preliminary indications are that she was strangled.”

  The senator winced. Then he nodded. Kenzie had to admire his courage.

  The door opened and Dr. Marcus stuck his head out. He motioned with his hand. “Come on,” he said, gruffly.

  Scott led the procession, followed by the senator, then Kenzie. The other agents would wait in the lobby. The smell of the morgue got to Kenzie immediately; the chemicals made her head spin. She’d been in a morgue before, but this felt different, much more intense. At the end of the room, a woman in a lab coat worked on the body of a young black man. Closer to the door, in a fiberglass tray on a stainless steel table, lay a smaller body, covered with a white sheet.

  They walked toward it. The senator stopped abruptly. “It’s not her!” he said.

  Kenzie’s heart thumped. She looked at him.

  “Look!” Grable pointed. The child’s tiny hand lay exposed. He looked at Kenzie. “She always wears nail polish. Can’t go without it. Pink. It’s got to be pink. Pink nail polish. It’s not Zoe!”

  Poor guy, Kenzie thought.

  “Senator,” Scott said gently, “let’s take a closer look.” He touched the senator’s arm.

  “The victim’s face may look swollen,” the medical examiner warned. He lifted the sheet off the child’s face.

  Grable shook his head violently. “It’s not her.” He took two steps back and turned away. “It’s not Zoe.”

  Kenzie looked at Scott. How could there be two missing white five-year-old girls in D.C. on the same
day? Scott raised his eyebrows, then moved his head almost imperceptibly toward the senator. Kenzie nodded. She moved toward Grable and touched his arm. “Senator, let’s be sure. Will you look again?”

  “It’s not her! I’m telling you, it’s not her!”

  “Please, Senator, just one more time, just to be sure.”

  Grable hesitated, then relented. He moved toward the autopsy table, and looked again at the face of the child. “No, no. No.” He turned to Kenzie, his face resolute. “This is not my child.” His eyes narrowed. “I told you about the mole she has, didn’t I?” The senator pointed to a place just in front of his right ear. “She calls it her kissing spot. I kiss her goodnight there, every night I’m home. This is not my child. You look for yourself. You’ll see.”

  “Doctor?” Kenzie asked.

  On cue, the medical examiner moved the child’s hair aside and looked at her right ear. He shrugged. “No mole.”

  Tears welled up in the senator’s eyes. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped them, then blew his nose.

  Scott nodded. “Thank you, sir,” he said to the doctor, and he put his hand on the senator’s shoulder.

  Grable shrugged him off.

  Kenzie and Scott drove back to the Grables’ house. The glare from the summer day glinted off of windshields and shimmered up from the asphalt road. Kenzie had a headache, one she figured she had earned.

  She rested her head back on the seat, images from the day playing over and over again in her mind. The heat of the stairwell in Lopez’s house had been oppressive, the tension like nothing she’d ever felt. Her body felt tight, as if encased in a pressure suit. Now, she felt drained, washed out, as if she’d just run twenty miles.

  “I would have thought Grable would be happy,” she said to Scott, pulling herself out of her thoughts.

  Scott shrugged. “He is. But he’s also an angry father.”

  She bit her lip.

  “You did well, Kenzie. Are you OK?”

  “Sure.” She turned toward him. “The child in the closet—why did Lopez think he could just hide her body, like a pair of outworn jeans, in a pile of clothes? What was he thinking?”