Abandon - Carla Neggers [1]
Harris could call the shots tonight. He was the informant. It was his show.
“There’s Judge Peacham.” The old judge almost chortled as he gestured toward the hall, smiling as if he were in possession of a secret that confirmed his natural superiority. “I knew she’d be here.”
“Why do I care if Judge Peacham is at a charity function?”
“Just wait.”
“Mr. Mayer—”
“Judge,” he corrected with a sniff. “It’s still appropriate to refer to me as Judge Mayer.”
“Seeing Judge Peacham again doesn’t help me.”
“Shh. Patience. We might have to go into the hall. I hope not—I’d prefer Bernadette not see me.”
Bernadette Peacham paused in the hall just outside the bar, her attention focused on something—or someone—behind her. For the past ten years, she’d served as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Before that, she’d been a federal prosecutor and a partner in a prestigious Washington law firm. But her roots were in New Hampshire, where she owned a lake house that had been in her family for more than a hundred years. She often told people she planned to die there, as her parents and her grandfather had.
Rook had done research on Judge Peacham, and he’d testified in her courtroom a half-dozen times in the three years since he’d worked out of the Washington Field Office. He didn’t know if she’d recognize him if she walked into the bar, but she’d sure as hell recognize J. Harris Mayer, the old friend who had lured her to Washington thirty years ago.
She’d never win any awards for best-dressed judge, Rook thought with amusement. Tonight’s outfit looked as if she’d pulled it out of a paper bag stuffed under her desk in her chambers. Apart from the obvious wrinkles, the black floor-length dress and brightly colored sequined shawl somehow didn’t go together. Not that Rook had an eye for clothes, but Bernadette Peacham was a train wreck when it came to style. No Botox and face-lifts for her. No hair dye, for that matter. Damn little makeup, either. People tended to notice her because of her presence and her obvious intelligence and grace. At fifty-seven, she was regarded as a firm, fair, articulate trial judge and, despite her generous nature, no one’s fool.
She was perhaps Harris Mayer’s last friend in the world, not that he would let friendship or anything else stop him from feeding her to the wolves.
Or, if it came to it, the FBI.
Harris would calculate the benefit to himself and act accordingly.
Rook drank more of his water, although he was only a notch less impatient than he’d been five minutes ago. “It looks like she might be expecting someone to join her. A date?”
“Oh, no.” Harris shook his head as if Rook couldn’t have come up with a dumber idea. “She hasn’t started dating again since her divorce was finalized earlier this month. Cal still lives with her, you know. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“Maybe it was an amicable divorce.”
“No such thing.”
Her marriage to Cal Benton, a prominent Washington attorney, had surprised people far more than their divorce two years later. It was her second marriage; her first, to another lawyer, had lasted three years. No children.
“Supposedly he’s not getting a dime from her,” Harris continued, his voice more shrill now, as if he was growing impatient himself. “That can’t make him happy, but it doesn’t matter—Cal will never be satisfied. He’ll always want more of everything. Money, recognition, women. Whatever. For some people, there’s never enough. Cal is one of them. I’m one of them.”
“I can’t launch an investigation because you think Bernadette Peacham deserved better than Cal Benton—”
“I’m well aware of what you require to proceed.” Harris regarded the woman in the hall with a sudden, almost palpable sadness. She’d been a protégée, and she’d left him in the dust in terms of her career, her reputation, her ever-widening circle of friends. His