“No. That’s not true,” he said. “I’d just started to suspect something was wrong before all this fuss happened.”

“And what did you plan to do with that information? Your suspicions.”

Yarrow turned suddenly and pointed a finger in my face. “Don’t interrogate me, Cross. I’m a goddamn US senator, not some worthless thug in Southeast DC.”

“Exactly my point, Mr. Yarrow. You’re a US senator and you’re supposed to have a conscience. Now, do you have something for us or not?”

He took a beat, long enough to pull a pack of Marlboro Reds out of the console. I noticed that the flame on his gold Senate lighter shook when he used it.

After a couple long consecutive drags, Yarrow started to talk again, facing the windshield.

“There’s a man you should check out. His name’s… Remy Williams. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s in this thing deep.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“That’s a good question, actually. I believe that he used to be in the Secret Service.”

Those last two words went off in my mind like a Roman candle. “Secret Service? What division?” I asked him.

“Protective Services.”

“At the White House?”

Yarrow smoked almost continuously while the knuckles on his free hand went white gripping the wheel. “Yeah,” he said with an exhale. “At the White House.”

Sampson was staring over the headrest at me, and I’m sure we were wondering the same thing. Was this the White House connection we’d already heard about? Or the kind of coincidence that gums up investigations all the time?

Senator Yarrow went on without any more prodding from me. “Last I heard, Remy was living in some godawful shack, way out in Louisa County, like one of those survivalists with the bottled water and the shotguns and all. Into the Wild kind of lifestyle.”

“What’s your association with him?” Sampson asked.

“He was the one who told me about the club in the first place.”

“That doesn’t really answer the question,” I said. “Look, Senator, I’m not recording any of this. Not yet anyway.”

Yarrow opened the window and twisted the last of his cigarette onto the pavement, then put the butt in his ashtray. I could sense him starting to circle the wagons again.

“He’s my ex-wife’s brother, okay? I haven’t seen the bastard in over a year, and it doesn’t matter. The whole point is, you take a drive out there, you might just have something more to do with your Saturday than harassing public servants.”

Chapter 96

IT WAS JUST over two hours’ drive to the western edge of Louisa County, which was also about an hour south of Nicholson’s club. Those two locations triangulated easily with the spot on I-95 where Johnny Tucci from Philly had been pulled over carrying my niece’s remains in the trunk. Maybe we were actually getting somewhere with all this.

Yarrow’s vague sense of the cabin sent us down a handful of wrong turns before we eventually found the right gravel road off Route 33. Several miles back through the woods, it came to a makeshift dead end, with a row of rocks blocking the way. They’d obviously been moved there by hand, and it didn’t take us long to clear them.