“I watched television in my room until about two. I couldn’t sleep.”

“And you?” Sam asked Lizbeth.

Her expression rife with indignation, Lizbeth said, “I was at home in McLean with my husband and children.”

“I’ll need a phone number for your husband.”

Lizbeth met Sam’s even gaze with a steely stare before she stalked from the room and returned a minute later with a business card.

“Thank you,” Sam said.

The three women left the room.

“You really had to do that today?” Nick asked Sam when they were alone. “Right now?”

“Yes, I really did,” she said, looking pained. “I have to play by the book on something this high profile. Surely you can understand that.”

“Of course I do, but they just found out their son and brother was murdered. You could’ve given them fifteen minutes to absorb that before you went into attack cop mode.”

“I have a job to do, Nick. When I make an arrest, I’m sure they’ll be relieved that his killer is off the streets.”

“What the hell difference will that make to them? Will it bring John back?”

“I need to get back to the city. Are you coming?”

Taking a long last look around the room, remembering so many happy times there with John, Nick followed her out the front door.

Chapter 4

Feeling as if the world had quite simply come to an end, Graham O’Connor leaned against a white split-rail fence to look out over the acres that made up his estate but saw nothing through a haze of tears and grief. John is dead. John is dead. John is dead.

From the moment Carrie called them to say Nick was waiting at the house, Graham had known. With the most important vote of John’s career scheduled for that day, there was only one reason Nick would have come. Graham had known, just as he had always known there was something shameful about a father loving one of his children more than the others. But John had been extraordinary. From the very earliest hours of his youngest child’s life, Graham had seen in him the special something that inspired so many others to love him, too.

His face wet with tears, Graham wondered how this could have happened.

“Dad?”

The sound of his older son’s voice filled Graham with disappointment and despair. God help him for thinking such a thing, but if he’d had to lose one of his sons why couldn’t it have been Terry instead of John?

Terry’s hand landed on Graham’s shoulder, squeezed. “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing.” Graham wiped his face.

“Senator?”

Graham turned to find Nick and the pretty detective approaching them.

“We’re going back to Washington,” she said, “but before we do I need to confirm your whereabouts last night. After ten.”