“So much for going home to change first,” she grumbled. “Freddie will have a field day with this.”

“Tell him you worked all night. Won’t be a total lie.”

“It’ll be a good excuse to remind him that I outrank him and can order him to shut up. He likes that.”

Nick smiled and reached for the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He withdrew a small leather case and handed her his business card. “Call me? My cell number is on there.”

She took the card, stuffed it in her pocket and reached for the door.

He stopped her before she could get out. “Talk to me before Monday so we can arrange to go to the funeral together if you still want me to help you ID people.”

“I do. I’ll be in touch.”

“Remember to eat and sleep, will you?”

“Yeah, right,” she said on her way out the door.

Nick waited, probably to make sure her car started because he was polite that way, and then pulled into traffic just ahead of her.

On the way to Capitol Hill, Sam called Gonzo and asked him to oversee the sift through John O’Connor’s cabin.

“It’s not a crime scene, so I’m not interested in fingerprints or DNA. I’m just looking for anything we don’t already know about him.”

“Gotcha. So we got confirmation that the blood in Christina Billings’s car was her own.”

“Well, I guess that closes that loop,” Sam said. “There’s no way she made it across town, killed him, showered, cleaned up the bathroom and got back with Chinese food in twenty-eight minutes. Not in this town with this traffic, even at midnight.”

“No way is right,” Gonzo agreed. “I’ll get a team together and get out to Leesburg this morning.”

“You’d better notify Loudoun County, too, so we don’t have jurisdictional trouble.” She paused before she added, “Full disclosure—I crashed in the guestroom there last night. I needed to see his parents in the morning, and it saved me some time. Cappuano slept in the senator’s room.”

“Okay.”

“If you could keep that tidbit to yourself, I’d owe you one.”

He laughed. “I like having you indebted to me. Just let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”

“There is one thing,” she said, playing the hunch. “Do a run on Graham O’Connor’s brother, Robert. I need the deal on his family, offspring in particular. If you can get photos, even better.”

“Will do,” Gonzo said. “I’ll call you with what I find out. So, um, you saw the papers this morning I assume…”

Sam’s stomach took a queasy dip that reminded her she hadn’t eaten or had either of the two diet colas she usually relied upon to jumpstart her day. “No, why?”

“Destiny Johnson is calling you a baby killer.”