Ties That Bind

Chapter Eighteen.

Tim Kerrigan heard shoes tapping rapidly on the marble floor of the Multnomah County Courthouse, and someone called his name. He turned and saw J. D. Hunter, the FBI agent he'd met at Senator Travis's cabin, walking toward him.

"Your office said you'd be here," Hunter said. "I'm glad I caught you."

"I just finished arguing a motion."

"Did you win?"

"It was a push."

"You have time for coffee? It's almost three. Coffee-break time where I come from."

"Thanks for the invite, but I'm up to my neck in work and I've got to get back to my office."

"Can I walk with you?"

"Sure. What's up?"

"Jon Dupre. The Wendell Hayes killing."

"Why are you interested in that? There's no federal crime."

"No, not directly, but Dupre may be connected to an international drug dealer who is financing terrorism. So it's peripheral, this interest in Dupre. Just loose ends."

"Who's the drug dealer, in case I run across something?"

"Mahmoud Hafnawi. He's a Palestinian living in Beirut. Let me know if Dupre mentions him."

"I will."

Hunter shook his head. "Dupre is one weird dude."

"Why do you say that?"

"The guy murdered his lawyer. Why do you think he did it?"

"That's a question we're all asking."

"Did Hayes and Dupre know each other? Was there bad blood between them?"

"Hayes knew Jon through his parents, but we haven't found any other connection. Dupre didn't even hire Hayes. The presiding judge asked him to take Dupre's case as a favor."

"I'd have thought he'd already have his own lawyer."

"He did. A guy named Oscar Baron, but Baron wouldn't represent Dupre because Dupre couldn't pay his fee."

"Any question about Dupre's guilt?"

"Of the Hayes murder? None. Wendell was killed in a contact visiting room up in the jail. They were locked in together. It's as clean a case as I've ever seen."

Hunter was quiet for a moment. Then he shook his head. "Considering the trouble he's in, it sure is odd he'd off his lawyer."

"Have you ever figured out why these people do the things they do?"

"You've got a point. Still, Hayes was one of the best, no?"

Tim nodded.

"You'd think Dupre would want a guy like Hayes running his defense, creating reasonable doubt, saving him from death row. If I was in Dupre's shoes, Wendell Hayes would be the last guy I'd kill."

"But he did. We have an eyewitness, a jail guard. He saw the whole thing. Poor guy was shaken up so badly that he's on administrative leave."

"I'm not surprised. Watching someone get sliced up like that and not being able to help. What did Dupre use?"

"A piece of jagged metal," Tim answered. "It looks like the lever they use to open and close the air vents in the jail. It had been sharpened to a point."

"Where did he get it?"

Kerrigan shrugged. "It's your typical jailhouse shiv, homemade. We're checking Dupre's cell and the rest of the housing unit to see if he made it himself, but Dupre could have bought it from someone."

They arrived at the elevators. Kerrigan pushed up and Hunter pressed down. The up arrow turned green.

"You heading back to D.C.?" Kerrigan asked as the doors opened.

"In a bit."

"Safe journey."

"Hey, I forgot," Hunter said. He handed Kerrigan one of his business cards. "In case anything comes up."

Hunter was smiling when the doors closed, like he knew some secret. Something about the agent bugged Kerrigan. He remembered feeling the same way when they'd first met at the Travis crime scene. There had been something about Hunter that had bothered him then. Suddenly he realized what it was. The cleaning people had discovered the senator's body only a few hours before Richard Curtis had called Tim and told him to go to the cabin. J. D. Hunter had told Kerrigan that he was picked to investigate Travis's case because the FBI wanted an agent from Washington involved in the murder of a senator. How had Hunter gotten to Portland so quickly? It would have taken time for Washington to learn about the senator's death. Even if Hunter flew to Portland on an FBI jet, there was no way he could have gotten to Travis's house as fast as he had.

Kerrigan was still mulling over this thought when he walked into the reception area of the district attorney's office and found Carl Rittenhouse waiting for him, unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, looking worse than the last time they saw each other. Tim's first thought was that he was taking his boss's death extremely hard.

Rittenhouse stood as soon as he spotted Kerrigan. "Tim, do you have a minute?" he asked anxiously.

"Sure, Carl."

Kerrigan motioned Rittenhouse to follow him to his office.

"Yesterday, at the house, you were talking about Dupre," Rittenhouse said as soon as Tim shut his office door. "You said he ran an escort service and some woman was killed."

"That's right." Kerrigan dropped his files on his desk and sat behind it.

"I wanted to tell you then, but I wasn't certain, so I found the article about her murder in the paper. There was a picture." Rittenhouse hung his head. "It was the same woman."

"I'm not following you, Carl."

"I'd seen the woman before, Lori Andrews. I took her to the cabin."

"The Senator's cabin?" Kerrigan leaned forward. "When was this? The night she was killed?"

"No, a few months before. We were back in town for a round of fund-raisers. Harold asked me to meet her and drive her out. That's all. I never saw her again."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"What if the argument Dupre had with the senator at the Westmont was about Lori Andrews? What if the senator was involved in her death?"

Rittenhouse was sweating.

"Have you helped the senator with women before, Carl?"

"Once or twice. I'm not proud of it."

"Did he ever do anything to any of them that would make you think he hurt Lori Andrews?"

The AA looked down. He wrung his hands.

"There was one time, this one girl. It was in D.C. There had been a party at an embassy. He called me at home, late, about three in the morning. I brought her home, to her apartment. She had a black eye and some bruises."

"The senator beat her?"

"He said that she'd had an accident."

"What did the woman say?"

"Nothing. She was really scared and I didn't ask. Harold told me to bring money, five hundred dollars. I gave it to her. The senator never mentioned it again."

Kerrigan asked Rittenhouse a few more questions, told him that he would have Sean McCarthy take his statement at a convenient time, then thanked him for coming. As soon as Rittenhouse was gone, Kerrigan grabbed the police reports in Travis's case. On page seven of a report written by one of the investigators from the crime lab, there was mention of traces of blood found on the baseboard of a wall in the living room. This blood appeared to be old. Kerrigan called the lab and spoke to the person who had written the report. Before he hung up, the prosecutor asked the investigator to run a DNA test to see if the blood on the baseboard was Lori Andrews's.