Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [105]
“Which also means it’s a possibility that he killed her to get them.”
“Can’t be ruled out.”
“What about Micki Simmons? She can testify to what she told you.”
He shook his head and absently ran his hand over the Porsche’s fender. “She told me she’d never testify, and I understand. Besides, what can she testify to, and who’ll believe her? She’s an acknowledged prostitute. All she can claim is that Hatcher was shaking her down—which he’ll deny, it was all cash, no paper trail—and that he knew about the tapes, including the one on which Colgate stars—which he’ll also deny. It all comes down to he said, she said, and that means zilch. Right now, the worst charge that could be brought against him is through Internal Affairs about the shakedowns. Know what’ll happen with that? He’s retiring, probably on a fast track. They’ll throw him a going-away party, he’ll get his pension, and it’ll be swept under the rug. Like I said, I told Micki she could leave the city. Hatcher’s visit really shook her.”
“But MPD can’t sweep Hatcher under the rug if he killed Rosalie for the tapes.”
“There’s nothing to place him there that night, Mary, no witnesses, no forensics. If he’d actually been there earlier in the evening and killed her, he put on one hell of an act for us. He’d have to have grabbed the tapes, left, come back to Metro or stopped someplace else first to wash off any signs of the struggle, and then catches the case a few hours later and shows up as the lead investigator. Perfect, actually, from his perspective. He ends up in charge of his own murder investigation.”
She grabbed his arm. “We have to go to IA, Matt.”
“No, we have to go higher, to Chief Carter.”
She agreed.
“In the meantime, I want to stay close to Rollins until the kidnapping is resolved. If Colgate knew that he’d been taped in bed with Curzon—and there’s a good possibility that he did, based upon the rumors floating around—the person he would have confided in would be Rollins, his close friend and advisor. The big question right now is that if Hatcher had the tapes, what did he do with them?”
“Sold them?”
“To who? They’re damaging to Colgate, so it’s the Pyle people who would benefit from having them.”
“But wouldn’t they have used them by now in the campaign?”
“You’d think so. Then again, maybe they don’t have them—yet.”
Rollins walked into the garage. “Well, what do you think?” he asked Mary, pointing with pride at the Porsche.
“It’s beautiful.”
He took the keys from Jackson, slid behind the wheel, and started the engine. A smile crossed his face and he looked up at them. “Is that perfection?” he said. “I love perfection.”
Jackson and Hall looked at each other, each thinking the same thing: To be sitting behind the wheel of a fancy sports car and soaking up pleasure from the sound of its engine was incongruous, considering the larger picture.
Rollins turned off the ignition, got out, and led them back to the house. Small talk occupied the rest of the evening, and very little of that. After watching TV—the kidnapping was still in the news but had dropped down in order of importance—the Rollinses went upstairs, leaving the detectives and special agents to fend for them-selves—napping, watching a cop show on TV, reading. Mary fell asleep in a recliner and Jackson covered her with a multicolored patchwork throw from the couch.
The waiting was taking its toll on everyone. Whoever abducted Samantha had done a clean, professional job. There had been calls to MPD from people with theories, and some who claimed to have seen something strange going on in their neighborhood. Those calls were followed up, of course, but nothing tangible came from them. The lack of contact from the kidnappers was the most unsettling of all. According to Kloss, who’d participated in other abduction investigations, not receiving a call for such an extended length of time was highly unusual. He’d pointed out to Jackson that of the approximately 800,000 children abducted each year in the United States, less than ten percent were taken by strangers with