Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [119]
“Hopefully he’ll be okay,” Jackson said, putting his arm around the woman. “If you’d like, we’ll drive you to the hospital.”
Which they did.
• • •
Detective Walter Hatcher died that night in the hospital. He never regained consciousness. An autopsy was ordered.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Walt Hatcher’s obituary was short. It referred to him as a decorated veteran police officer who was within months of retirement. He left behind a wife, Mae, three children, and four grandchildren. The cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage.
Within the MPD, the account of his passing, enhanced by rampant speculation, was less succinct. Everyone knew that a team had been dispatched to bring Hatcher in for questioning about a number of charges, including the shaking down of local businesses, extortion, suspicion of murder—and more important, that Jackson and Hall had been behind it.
They were assigned to temporary desk duty until a suitable permanent assignment could be determined. They weren’t blind to the reason for being chained to a desk and kept out of the mainstream. A strong current of distrust swept through detectives loyal to Hatcher. Hall and Jackson were shunned by those cops, some of whom made it clear to Chief Carter that they would not welcome having either detective assigned to work with them.
Three days after Hatcher’s death, Jackson found the word “traitor” scrawled on his locker door. Later that day, Mary’s locker was defaced with the crude drawing of a rat. They complained to Carter about it and were told to let some time pass. “They’ll get over it,” he counseled. “Keep your noses clean and things will straighten themselves out.”
But while this pervasive, oppressive atmosphere pressed down on two young detectives within the walls of MPD, the fallout from Hatcher’s death reached far beyond Indiana Avenue.
• • •
The first news of the existence of salacious tapes was floated by a lower-level member of President Burton Pyle’s campaign staff, who confided in a political blogger on the campaign’s payroll. He reported it on his daily blog, careful to issue the disclaimer that he personally had not seen the videotapes but had received word of them from “a trusted source within Washington political circles.” He characterized the tapes—“as described to him”—as an X-rated encounter between former governor of Maryland and presidential hopeful Robert Colgate, and a paid escort, Rosalie Curzon, and the blog ended, almost as a throwaway, that she’d been the victim of a brutal murder.
This was, of course, picked up by other bloggers; within 24 hours, a single mushroom had exploded into a field of them, prompting Colgate to summon Rollins to a late-night meeting at a room in the Willard Hotel.
“I can’t believe this,” Colgate said after they’d shucked their suit jackets, loosened their ties, and poured bourbon over ice. Only a few table and floor lamps cast light over the suite’s expansive living room, rendered darker by the mood. Rollins noted that Colgate looked as though he hadn’t slept much, which was true. While presidents were known to age while in office, Colgate was visibly growing older before even attaining the post. His normally flushed complexion was wan, the cheeks sagging where once his boyish expression had masked his age.
Rollins had dreaded the meeting but couldn’t see a way out of it. Since the kidnapping and the events surrounding it, he’d wanted nothing more than to bow out of the campaign, tidy up affairs at his office, and take the trip to Hawaii he’d promised Sue and Samantha, maybe never to come back. But that was out of the question. He was in D.C., and as long as he was, he knew he had to play the game.
“Believe it or not, Bob, it’s obviously out there.”
“Is it? Just because some damn blogger says it is doesn’t make it so.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think we have any other choice than to treat it as reality.”
“Reality?”
“In the sense that if such tapes do exist, they’ll start showing up