Margaret Truman's Murder at the CDC: A Capital Crimes Novel, Book 31

by Jon Land, Margaret Truman

Genres: Thrillers; Political Thrillers

Synopsis

The year 2002: A military transport on a secret run to dispose of its deadly contents vanishes without a trace. 

The present: A mass shooting on the steps of the Capitol nearly claims the life of Robert Brixton’s grandson. 

No stranger to high-stakes investigations, Brixton embarks on a trail to uncover the motive behind the shooting. On the way, he finds himself probing the attempted murder of the daughter of his best friend, who works at the Washington offices of the CDC. 

The connection between the mass shooting and Alexandra’s poisoning lies in that long-lost military transport that has been recovered by forces determined to change America forever. Those forces are led by radical separatist leader Deacon Frank Wilhyte, whose goal is nothing short of bringing on a second Civil War. 

Brixton joins forces with Kelly Lofton, a former Baltimore homicide detective. She has her own reasons for wanting to find the truth behind the shooting on the Capitol steps and is the only person with the direct knowledge Brixton needs. But chasing the truth places them in the crosshairs of both Wilhyte’s legions and his Washington enablers.

 

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Release date: February 15, 2022

Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Sample

CHAPTER1



WASHINGTON, DC; THE PRESENT

“Are you sure about this, Mac?”

“No, Robert,” Brixton’s best friend, Mackensie Smith, said. “I’m not. That’s why we’re having this conversation.”

Brixton adjusted the notepad in his lap and readied his pen. “Tell me about her.”

He knew the bulk of the associates in Mac’s law firm used iPads these days, but Brixton still favored pen and paper. Mac made it a practice to almost never close his office door, but Brixton watched him do just that now and then retake the leather armchair in the office’s sitting area.

“She’s twenty-five, beautiful, and whip smart.”

“In other words, nothing like the man she claims is her father. And you’re forgetting something.”

“What?”

“Her name, Mac. I will need that, you know.”

Mac returned the smile that Brixton had hoped might put him more at ease. “Alexandra. Alexandra Parks. Parks being her mother’s name.”

“Next question: Have you considered using an investigator with more objectivity?”

Mac looked thrown by that for a moment. “Not even for a second. It has to be you, Robert. You’re the only one who understands what this means to me. Like another chance at something I never thought I’d experience again.”

Mac had been one of Washington’s top criminal lawyers for years, a go-to guy when a case seemed hopeless. But after losing a son and his first wife to a drunk driver on the Beltway—and seeing the drunk get off with what Smith considered a slap on the wrist—he closed his office and accepted a professorship at The George Washington University Law School, where he’d taught fledgling attorneys about the real world of being a lawyer.

While his stint in academia had been satisfying, the call of the courtroom became too loud to ignore. After many long, heated discussions with his second wife, Annabel Reed-Smith, herself a former attorney and now owner of a pre-Columbian art gallery in Georgetown, he resigned his post at the university and hung out his shingle again.

Not surprisingly, his modest return to the law ballooned into a booming practice once more. A single office and reception area gave way to a suite of offices for associates, then an entire floor as those associates multiplied, followed by a second floor with a connecting stairwell to accommodate partners and junior partners, with additional office space reserved for the likes of the firm’s top investigator—Brixton himself.

Mac had considered downsizing, the year before, only to change his mind. He had started to scale back when word leaked of his involvement, along with Brixton’s, in destroying the most dangerous conspiracy in the nation’s history. Though the actual facts of that conspiracy were known to extraordinarily few, rumors of Mackensie Smith’s involvement in its destruction were known to many. The result was an unprecedented number of calls and inquiries looking to hire his firm. Although Mac had earned the right to be discriminating about which cases he took on, the client load necessitated an expansion, and the firm had relocated to the vacant and newly renovated top two floors of the city’s Warner Building, located on Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest.

Brixton knew Mac loved the work, loved the action, loved the fact that the firm had license to avoid the kind of lobbying efforts and representation of politicos that had so soured Mac on the law in general—and on backroom politics specifically. The latest infusion of cash from hourly billings and retainers was substantial enough for the firm to take on more than its share of pro bono work. And when COVID-19 had forced the closure of Annabel’s art gallery, she had returned to the law to head up that department with the firm in its new space.

“You understand what it’s like to lose a child, what it does to you, as well as I do,” Mac continued, referring to Brixton losing his own daughter, Janet, to a terrorist bombing.

“I was lucky in one respect,” Brixton told him. “I had another kid.”

“And now, maybe, I do too. I worry that’s clouding my judgment, not seeing all this clearly. I want it to be true too much.”

“What’s she like?”

Mac cast his gaze out the window, a tell Brixton knew indicated he was uncomfortable addressing the subject. The Warner Building’s location, detached from the cluster of government offices, iconic and otherwise, left it without much of a view to offer, but the building was a mere five-minute walk from the Federal Triangle Metro stop, which featured access to the Orange Line, the Silver Line, and the Blue Line, assuring easy access for the firm’s lawyers and its clients. Much of the world might have moved online for meetings, but initial client meetings went much better in person and, being old-fashioned, Mac always suggested coming in as opposed to logging on.

“Charming, charismatic, full of personality, and beautiful. In other words, you’re right, Robert. Nothing like me.”

Brixton made some more notes. “Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, Mac.”

“The way everyone was looking at her in The Capital Grille, there must be a lot of beholders.”

“That’s where you met the first time?”

Mac nodded. “Her choice. Turns out it’s her favorite place to eat in the city, too.”

“Like father, like daughter.”

“I didn’t know restaurant choice was genetic.”

“Tell me more,” Brixton urged.

“Did I mention how bright she is?”

“‘Whip smart’ was the term you used,” Brixton said, without consulting his notes.

“Neuroscience and organic chemistry major at MIT, if you can believe it. That’s the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

“I think I heard that someplace.”

Mac smiled and shook his head. “I sound like a doting father, don’t I?”

Brixton nodded. “You do.”

“For a daughter I’ve known for all of a week.”

Brixton weighed his next words carefully. “Tell me about Alexandra’s mother.”

“Beverly Parks. New York socialite and head of the family’s magazine empire.”

“The name sounds familiar.”

“Beverly or Parks, Robert?”

“Parks, for sure.” Brixton hesitated. “And this was twenty-five years ago?”

Mac met his gaze. “The answer’s yes, Robert.”

“I didn’t ask a question.”

“You wanted to. Something like ‘It was an affair, wasn’t it?’”

“I would’ve been more tactful in my phrasing.”

“I was married at the time. My first wife and son were still alive. It was the worst mistake of my life—at least that’s the way I’ve always looked at it.”

“Until a week ago.”

“Do you blame me?”

“Not at all, Mac. We all have a right to be happy and fulfilled. I know that better than anyone.”

Mac nodded, smiling. “Speaking of which … Have I told you recently how wonderful it is to see you and Flo back together? Annabel and I feel like we have a social life again.”

Brixton smiled back. “Not that I’m much fun anymore.”

“You mean since you quit drinking.”

“It snuck up on me, Mac. Sometimes you don’t know how far you’ve fallen until you can’t look up and see the light anymore.”

Brixton had blamed his breakup with longtime girlfriend Flo Combes on the malaise that had overtaken him. He’d gotten too accustomed to doing business over dinner and drinks, until the two became virtually indistinguishable. But when the business dried up, the dinner, and especially the drinks, had remained. That had all changed a year ago, when Brixton had climbed back on the horse—almost literally, given that he had proposed to Flo outside her New York clothing boutique after clip-clopping up the street in a horse-drawn carriage. She had dropped down to the pavement, where Brixton knelt on bended knee, and hugged him tight.

“Can I take that as a yes?” he’d asked her.

She’d moved back to Washington. COVID had led Flo to close her New York boutique, leaving her clinging to the DC venue for dear life. Fortunately, Brixton had remained steadily employed through the pandemic, living in Arlington instead of the city proper, a location far friendlier to their finances. The truth was, Brixton had found himself happy to be able to provide for Flo while retail continued to struggle. It felt like redemption to him, a means to make amends after a breakup that had been entirely his fault.

“I know that feeling,” Mac said, shocking Brixton back to the present and the matter at hand. “I fell into a pit for a time after the accident.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“But I’ve never stopped replaying that night in my mind. What I could have done differently, what might have happened if I hadn’t been out of town. Maybe they’d still be alive.”

“Have you ever heard the word maybe used in a positive light?”

“Not off the top of my head.”

“What about in terms of whether Alexandra Parks is really your daughter? Have you confirmed all this with a DNA test?”

“I don’t have to. I know she’s my daughter.”

Brixton weighed not just his best friend’s words but also the veil of certainty through which he’d said them. “But you don’t know her, do you?”

“That’s why you’re here, Robert. There’s something I haven’t told you yet.”



CHAPTER2



WASHINGTON, DC

“All units, we have a Code Red. Repeat, shots fired! We have a Code Red. Secure all positions and personnel, and remain in place until you receive the all clear.”

Kelly Loftus was just coming off her shift as part of the Speaker of the House’s Capitol Police protective detail when a piercing squeal, followed by that message, was transmitted over the earpiece that was a permanent fixture for USCP’s Department of Protective Services. Fortunately, the Speaker was in her office at the time, enabling her four-person detail to immediately lock down the suite of rooms. Nobody in, nobody out, and all those present ordered to the conference room in the back, where it would be easier to secure them. That process had taken on a new meaning and urgency since the Capitol Building had been overrun by insurrectionists looking to thwart tallying up the presidential electors.

It was the first time in the months since Kelly had been on the job with the Capitol Police that her adrenaline kicked in. That had been a far more regular occurrence in her job as a homicide detective for the Baltimore Police Department, or BPD, as it was known in the city, until her tenure and future there were summarily ended for no other reason that her telling the truth. She left one maelstrom for another—her assignment to Protective Services right off the bat rankled those who’d been passed over for promotion. There were claims of reverse racism and sexism, given that Kelly was female and African American. All told, she had no friends remaining on the force she’d left, and none in the offing on the force that she’d joined.

In fact, her new position was the product of an agreement whereby she had agreed to relinquish her detective shield with the BPD in exchange for being placed in another law enforcement job at a comparable rank and salary. Kelly would do even better with the Capitol Police, moneywise, given all the overtime, but she knew she’d miss the action that came with being a homicide detective. She took great pride in putting bad guys away so they couldn’t kill anyone else, and great satisfaction in every case she cleared, just as she’d lose sleep over an investigation in which she couldn’t make a case to nail a suspect she knew was guilty.

That was hardly a concern, working a protective detail for the Capitol Police. There was nothing in her new job to lose sleep over. This Code Red was the first time in the six months that she’d been on this job that her heart had even picked up its pace, before it quickly settled down again. The Speaker had remained secured in her office while Kelly and another member of her detail escorted staff members to the conference room.

She spotted a uniformed Capitol policeman wearing body armor and brandishing an assault rifle, standing guard at an emergency exit.

“It was a shooting on the Capitol steps,” he reported, before Kelly had a chance to pose a question. “Word is, it’s bad.”

MINUTES EARLIER

The hand of God is upon you! He is my shepherd and I shall not want!”

Those were the last words high school sophomore Ben McDonald heard before the shooting started. He and the cluster of other students from the Gilman School, their Baltimore prep school, were on a field trip to the Capitol Building, the first such trip they had taken since academic life had returned to a degree of normalcy, following the endless coronavirus nightmare. Everyone had shown up in their school uniforms, the buses had left on schedule, and the students felt like pioneers, explorers blazing a trail back into the world beyond shutdowns and social distancing.

The reduction in Capitol tour group size was still in force and had necessitated the two busloads of students to be divided into five groups of fifteen, give or take, with three chaperones allotted to each. The group with Ben and his twin brother, Robbie, had gone first, and they had found themselves lingering on the Capitol steps, taking pictures and chatting away with their local congressman and senator, who’d come out to greet and mingle with the students on the steps at the building’s east front.

“Why are you still wearing a mask?” one of them had asked the congressman, but Ben had already forgotten the answer.

He remembered checking the time on his phone just before he heard the first shots. Ben thought they were firecrackers at first, realizing the truth a breath later, when the screams began and bodies started flying.

“I am doing the Lord’s work! I am a sacrifice to his Word!”

Somehow Ben gleaned those words through the screams and incessant hail of fire. The shots were coming so fast he wasn’t sure if the shooter was firing on semi- or full auto. The boy never actually saw the gunman as more than a shape amid the blur before him, which enveloped his vision like a dull haze, though the thin, sheer curtain drawn over his eyes didn’t keep him from recording bodies crumpling, keeling over, tumbling down the steps. The force of a bullet’s momentum slammed a classmate into him, sparing Ben the ensuing fusillade that turned the other boy’s back into a pincushion.

Robbie!

The panic and shock of those initial seconds had stolen thoughts of his brother from him. He wheeled about, covered in the blood of a boy who had dropped off the scene.

“Robbie!”

Did he cry out the name or only think it? The steps around him looked blanketed in khaki and blue, the pants and blazers that made up the Gilman uniform. The sound of gunfire continued to resound in his ears, but he wasn’t sure the shooter was still firing, because no more bodies seemed to be falling. People were running in all directions, crying and screaming. Ben remained frozen out of fear for his brother.

“Robbie!”

He saw his brother’s sandy blond hair draped down from one of the marble steps onto another. Nothing else at first, just the hair. Maybe he had dived atop a friend who’d been wounded, to spare that kid more fire—that was Robbie. But there was no one beneath him, and … and …

He wasn’t moving. His arms were stretched to the sides at angles that looked all wrong. Ben dropped to his knees next to Robbie, his pants sinking into pooling patches of blood that merged and thickened beneath him. He felt something pinching him along the right side of his rib cage and saw his blue shirt darkening with a spreading wave of red in the last moment before he collapsed next to his brother.

* * *

By the time Kelly hustled the last stragglers into the conference room and got them settled, someone had tuned a flat-screen TV to CNN, which was already broadcasting the immediate aftermath of the shooting on the Capitol Building’s east steps, which led up from the beautiful Capitol lawn that adorned the Capitol plaza. She found herself transfixed by the scene for a few moments before she took her post at the door. There was no report on the number of casualties yet, but CNN’s camera caught more than a dozen fallen bodies, a few already being tended to by a combination of bystanders and Capitol Police personnel, including EMTs who’d rushed outside from their station inside the building when the shooting subsided. A report indicated that one of the dead was a sitting U.S. congressman.

She saw a cluster of khaki pants and blue blazers, school uniforms, strewn over a section of the steps, evidence that students from some school were among the victims—maybe even accounted for the bulk of the victims. All boys, at first glance. Kelly figured they were collateral damage for whatever the shooter’s real target on those steps had been. Or maybe he was just a lunatic looking to make a point, a broken and desperate man who had delivered his frustrations onto these innocent kids in a deadly manner. How he had managed to get what must have been a semiautomatic assault rifle, at the very least, past all the security measures in place baffled her. She supposed the shooter could have been a practiced pro who knew his way around such things. Kelly had to take up her door post before CNN weighed in with any further information on the specifics. By the time the lockdown ended, though, she fully expected that to change.

She had handled more than her share of random street violence and shootings back in Baltimore. One of these had led to the chain of events that had brought her here, and she was lucky for that, in some respects, given that her actions could have just as easily ended her career in law enforcement of any kind. Now, instead, here she was, in a kind of a career purgatory, without much room for advancement and lacking in options, given that no police department, big or small, would want anything to do with her, once they did a deep enough dive into her background.

Kelly thought once more of the innocent victims who’d had the misfortune of being on the Capitol steps when the shooting erupted and felt instantly guilty about bemoaning her own fate. Such tragedy had a way of putting things in their proper perspective, and she realized she was lucky to be where she was, even if it wasn’t exactly where she wanted to be.

She’d be far more comfortable rushing to the scene of the shooting, of course, but for now, anyway, this was as close as she was going to get, left to replay the looped CNN footage over and over in her head. It was playing there again when she remembered something she’d spotted that looked out of place: a stationary figure swinging toward the shooter instead of away.

And what she was certain he did next would give her an excuse to check out the scene as soon as the Speaker’s office received the all clear.


Copyright © 2022 by Estate of Margaret Truman