Murder at Union Station - Margaret Truman [21]
He was anything but relaxed. He stood, crossed the room, and looked down at the street.
“It sure screws things up,” he said without turning to her.
She came up behind and wrapped her arms around him. Now the impact of the murder on Rich had sunk in. She knew, of course, that Russo’s death had been a shock to the man she loved and that it had shaken him. When he’d returned to the car from Union Station, he’d been frazzled and pale, actually stammering as he told her what had happened inside. She’d sympathized, but simultaneously reasoned that the ramifications wouldn’t be dire. He’d already accomplished all the interviews of Russo he’d intended. The book was completed and at the publisher. Yes, he’d lost someone he’d gotten to know, and the cause of the man’s death was especially harsh, cruel, and unexpected.
But those were rationalizations. The reality was that there was much more to the story than researching and writing a book. There was Geoff Lowe.
“If I’d only been there,” Rich said. “That damned accident on the highway.”
Kathryn diplomatically refrained from again suggesting they should have left Falls Church earlier.
“I could have headed it off if I’d been there.”
“But you weren’t,” she said. “Maybe you would have been shot, too.”
“I’m going to try Geoff again,” Rich said, going to the phone on a small desk in the cluttered living room and starting to dial.
“Rich, why don’t you call Mac Smith?”
“What can he do?”
“He helped you with your publishing contract. He’s a lawyer, a smart man. Maybe he can give you some—”
“Geoff?” Marienthal said into the phone. “It’s Rich.”
Lowe took the call at Senator Widmer’s desk in his office suite in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, at First and C Streets.
He’d just come from a meeting convened by the crotchety senior senator from Alaska, a white-haired stentorian orator who’d recently celebrated his seventy-sixth birthday. Despite his advanced age, Widmer never failed to impress colleagues and staff with his seemingly boundless energy. A widower for many years, he’d made the Senate his life, his only life. The few friends who had had the privilege of visiting him at his Foggy Bottom home couldn’t help but come away surprised at its spartan furnishings and decor. It wasn’t a matter of money, they knew. Senator Karl Widmer was a wealthy man. But his lifestyle, which included many nights sleeping in his office and an abhorrence of fancy restaurants, parties, and expensive clothing, indicated something quite different. “Cheap” is what many on the Hill said behind his back. “Mean-spirited,” others said among themselves, careful to not trigger the legendary temper in the halls and on the floor of the United States Senate, one that left colleagues and staffers quaking.
Despite these less than sanguine personal traits, Widmer was respected and even well liked by many on the Hill. Of course, sharing his steadfast conservative views went a long way to being on his good side. He was a rock-ribbed old-line right-wing Republican who wore his disdain for liberals and their views on his sleeve. The Democratic administration now occupying the White House, led by President Adam Parmele, represented everything the senator stood against. His determination that Parmele not see a second term was pervasive, some said pathologically obsessive.
The meeting from which Geoff Lowe had just emerged lasted longer than had been allotted for in the daily schedule. Widmer’s subcommittee on intelligence had been preparing for weeks to hold a hearing on the current readiness of the Central Intelligence Agency to deal with future terrorist threats. The subcommittee’s Democratic ranking minority member and some of her Democratic colleagues had recently waged a public fight with the chairman over the choice of witnesses to appear. The ironfisted Widmer, whose epitaph would never include credit for being a great conciliator, held fast to his rule that the Republican majority would be the sole arbiter of who would be called to appear before the committee.
“A dictatorial tactic,” the