“If he was ending his life, it seems to me it would make sense to ease things a bit.”

“Jimmy did not kill himself,” Rachael said. “He did not. He wouldn’t, he simply wouldn’t.”

“You prefer to think that someone wantonly took his life because of what he was going to confess?”

Rachael sat forward, her voice becoming quite hard. “Jimmy was not that kind of man. Greg, you know Laurel, her slimy husband, and Quincy. Don’t tell me they would hesitate to kill someone they believed would dirty their lovely worlds. Jimmy was planning to explode their world.”

“Plan to murder their own brother? To actually follow through with it? No, that’s pushing it too far, at least for me.”

Jack said, “Shall I tell you the cases I’ve worked where family members have enthusiastically butchered each other?”

Nichols said, “I can accept that, Agent Crowne, if you’re talking about psychopaths, about people with limited mental ability, the sort of people who have only their fists and the will to use them. That’s not the Abbotts.” He raised his hands, no longer clenched. “I know, you have the horror stories, Agent Crowne, but the Abbotts, no matter their behavior, their faults, their seeming lack of, well, humanity. I’ve known them a very long time. They don’t abuse or murder their own blood.”

Nichols sat forward, all his focus on Rachael. “You’re still not planning to tell the world what your father did, are you, Rachael?”

“Yes, I think I am. I know you believe it might destroy your career, Greg, but you brought that on yourself.”

He stared at her. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’m talking about your own involvement in the cover-up. Come now, Greg, Jimmy told me how you talked him out of calling the police after he struck the little girl. When he spoke publicly, of course he wouldn’t point to your role in the cover-up, but you knew it would come out. The speculation alone about your connection would end your career and you knew it.”

Nichols said, “Whatever passed between me and Senator Abbott is confidential, but I will say this. Even though I did know about the accident, I did not know the details, the particulars, until Senator Abbott told me days before his death. That is the truth.” He shrugged and looked gravely disappointed.

Jack nodded, his voice approving. “I suppose denial of particulars is best. After all, Greg, no one would expect you to admit to being an accessory after the fact to a vehicular homicide. No one would expect you to send yourself to jail.”

Nichols clasped his hands together, and his voice lowered, harder now. “I have told you the truth. I will not speak of it again.” He turned to Rachael, raised his voice. “Who are you to destroy a man’s name, to have the world judge him on a fraction of his life when he spent years—years—doing such fine work? That is one decision you cannot make for anyone. Especially not for him. You had only six weeks with him, Rachael, not enough time to know what he even liked to eat for breakfast. You did not know his mind, or his heart. You must accept that.”

Jack saw Rachael’s face was stark and pale, and said easily, “Where were you that night?”

“Me? All right, I suppose I am a suspect. Trust me, I don’t need a calendar. That night is burned into my memory forever. I was to have dinner with Susan Wentworth—she works over in the GAO. But we didn’t go, I can’t remember the reason. So I don’t have an alibi for the night of Senator Abbott’s death.” He looked down at his watch. “I must brief Senator Jankel. He needs my input before he votes.” He rose, didn’t offer to shake hands. He said to Rachael, “I hope you think long and hard about this, Rachael. Very hard.”

Rachael didn’t say anything. Jack thought she looked sad, and very tired.

Outside Senator Jankel’s office, Jack said, “I expected you to tell him someone was trying to kill you, but you didn’t.”

“To be honest, I didn’t see the point. He is very bright, Jack, and very smooth. His word against mine, and what good would it do? And he knows that.” She shrugged. “I don’t blame him, not really. He was only trying to clean up the mess; he didn’t create it.”

Jack said, “He’s also a liar.”

“Yes, he is.”

Jack said, “Do you think he murdered your father?”

Rachael paused on the sidewalk in front of the Hart Senate Office Building and raised her face to the warm sun. She said, “Bottom line, who would hire him on Capitol Hill if it was known he helped my father cover up that accident? Oh, I don’t know. My head hurts.”

THIRTY-FOUR

When Savich called Congresswoman McManus’s office, a staffer told him she wouldn’t be in today, and that was all. It was no problem discovering McManus’s home address. They drove straight to her house in Tenleytown, past the business district along Wisconsin Avenue to Upton Street.

“No warning?” Sherlock asked.

Savich shook his head. “Nope.”

“I would assume she’s a very busy woman. I hope she’s home and not off at some function.”

Dolores McManus was home. Her secretary, Nicole Merril, brought down her thick dark raised eyebrow when Savich identified them, then she led them to the congresswoman’s home office in the back of the good-sized redbrick Georgian house set back from the busy street, surrounded by oak and maple trees. She knocked once, lightly, then ushered them into a room that wasn’t all that large, but it was beautiful, covered with bookshelves, even a ladder to reach the ones on top, heavy dark furniture you could sink into, too warm for Sherlock’s taste.

Nicole Merril said, “Congresswoman McManus, forgive the interruption. This is Agent Savich and Agent Sherlock from the FBI, here to see you about a Dr. Timothy MacLean.”

As an intro, it did the trick. Savich saw McManus’s hands fall off her computer keyboard and he’d swear she nearly rose straight out of her chair before she got herself together.

Then she straightened to her full height, and stood tall and still, facing them. In person, Congresswoman Dolores McManus was magnificent and well-dressed, standing close to six feet tall, with a sturdy, solid build and an amazing face, all angles and hollows, and deep lines seamed along the sides of her mouth. That mouth was opening right now, and Savich knew to his heels this woman loved to mix it up, no matter who or what the subject. Maybe he’d cheer her on if he agreed with her politics; at least he would if she hadn’t paid some yahoo thug from Savannah to murder her trucker husband.