“There are two sides to every story, Kristy. Have you asked your son if he provoked Rory?”

“Provoked!” she said in shock. “My son’s face looks like something out of a horror movie. I can’t believe we are even having this conversation.” She turned to her husband. “I told you we should call the police.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Nash said as he sat back and crossed his legs. “I’m sure the administration here at Sidwell would love the P.R. they would get out of having D.C.’s finest on campus. The police can take statements from each of the boys and any witnesses, and then it will all go away because the D.C. juvenile courts have a hell of a lot more important things to worry about than a couple of wealthy kids getting in a fistfight, because one kid said he wanted to fuck the other kid’s sister.”

The word hit like a mortar shell. Barnum Smith sat back like she’d been slapped in the face, and both De Graffs sat in their chairs slack-jawed, not believing what they had heard. Maggie simply lowered her face into her hands and Nash said, “Yeah, your little angel was telling Rory about all the things he wanted to do to my daughter Shannon… who, by the way, is fourteen. Derek said she was really hot and that he wanted to fuck her.”

An appalled Kristy De Graff said, “My son would never say such a thing.”

“Oh… he did,” Nash said as lightheartedly as he could. “In fact, he said it several times. Rory told him if he said it again he was going to beat him up. Apparently, Derek didn’t take him very seriously, because he thought it would be funny to then insult my wife by telling Rory that Maggie here is a MILF. Which stands for Mom I’d Like to…” Nash didn’t want to push it, so he mouthed the word.

Dean Barnum Smith was seriously offended. She turned to the De Graffs and asked, “Have you talked to Derek about this?”

“I don’t need to talk to my Derek about this,” Kristy said. “He would never talk like that.”

The dean gave her a look that said, Don’t be so sure about it. She pressed the intercom button on her desk and said, “Please send word that I want Derek De Graff and Rory Nash sent to my office.”

As the dean took her finger off the intercom button, Kristy De Graff turned to her husband and said, “I told you we should have brought our attorney with us.”

Nash felt his BlackBerry vibrate. He reached into his suit coat breast pocket and grabbed it. It was an e-mail from Art Harris. Nash opened it and read the small letters: I think I found your guy. Not good. Call me ASAP!

The room suddenly got very hot. Nash pulled at his tie and stood. “I’m very sorry,” he said to the group. “I have to leave.”

Maggie looked up at him and saw what she took to be genuine fear on her husband’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Something at work. I’ll call you the first chance I get.” Nash squeezed her shoulder and left. By the time he hit the front steps of the school, he had Harris on the line. “Art, what’s up?”

There was a heavy sigh on the other end and then, “The D.C. fire department responded to a call last night just before four in the morning. There was a burning car in an abandoned lot. When they got the thing put out, they popped the trunk and found a body. Based on the coroner’s report, everything matched your description except one thing.”

“What’s that?” Nash asked, holding out a sliver of hope.

“He was missing three toes on his right foot. The doc said they looked like they’d been cut off one at a time, and not by a surgeon. He also said it looked like it had been done recently. Probably around the time of murder, but he wouldn’t know until he was finished with the full autopsy.”

“Shit,” Nash said as he lost all hope.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Forget we ever had this conversation.” Nash hung up and looked back at the school and then at his phone. He knew what he had to do and he hoped Rory would understand. Nash jumped in his car and dialed Rapp’s number. After six rings he got his voice mail. Nash hesitated for a second and then decided to call Kennedy’s office. When her assistant answered, he said, “This is Mike Nash. I need you to get Rapp on the phone ASAP. I have an emergency.”

CHAPTER 61

CAPITOL HILL

LONSDALE did the walk of shame back to her office from the committee room. Only those who really knew her could have guessed that she was on the verge of cracking. She was a professional politician, after all – a woman who could look happy after three straight months on the campaign trail. What was a little two-minute walk from the Judiciary Committee room to her office? She’d almost snapped three times, though, twice at a couple of her incompetent staffers who couldn’t read her emotions for shit, and once at a fellow senator who had rushed up to her to find out what happened behind the closed-door session. Each time Lonsdale looked like a petite version of the Heisman Trophy with her hand extended palm-out to keep would-be tacklers at bay.

When she finally made it to her office suite, she slid through her private door and walked right past a half dozen senior staffers who knew her well enough to keep their mouths shut. She breezed through the small reception area with a plastic smile on her face and entered her office. A split second later the heavy wooden door slammed shut.

All eyes turned to Wassen. He looked with a heavy dose of trepidation at the door his boss had just gone through and knew she was waiting for him and only him. If anyone else dared go through that door, they would get their head bitten off. Ralph Wassen motioned for everyone to get back to work, and then he very carefully opened the door and slid in, closing it behind him. Lonsdale was on the long couch – her shoes off, her feet up, and a cigarette in her hand. Wassen noticed that she hadn’t bothered to turn on the smoke eater, which he took as another bad sign.

He crossed the room, turned on the machine, and then went and joined his boss in the seating area. He took one of the ultramodern armchairs with the big chrome base and said, “What in the hell happened?”

Lonsdale didn’t bother to look at him. With her head tilted back, she looked up through a cloud of smoke and said, “Probably the worst day of my life.”

Wassen thought of her dead husband. “Worse than the day John died?”

“No,” she answered frankly. “No… not worse than that. It was the most embarrassing failure of my political career,” she corrected herself.

“What in the hell happened?” he asked again.

“They all turned on me. They pissed right down their pants legs.”

“Why? What did Rapp say?”

Lonsdale rocked her head forward and looked at Wassen for the first time. “He did basically what you told me he would do. Not exactly the same, but the same general theme. He scared the piss out of all of them. Made them think we’re in danger of being attacked, and if they don’t let him loose so he can break as many laws as he wants, he’s going to blame us when we get hit.”

Wassen swallowed. “So where does it go from here? We’ve been flooded with calls. Are you going to open it up to the press at two?”

Lonsdale took a long drag and then, after she’d exhaled, began laughing hysterically.

“What’s so funny?”

“There isn’t going to be any hearing this afternoon. At least not in front of my committee.”

Wassen was stunned. “How is that possible?”

“That little shit,” she said, “put the fear of God into all those little pussies I serve with. He wanted to have a public hearing this afternoon. He was willing to admit to hitting and choking and electrocuting that damn terrorist in front of a roomful of cameras, and he was going to say he did it all to protect us against an imminent attack by some phantom terrorist cell. And then he gave them a second option, which was to refer the entire matter back to the Intelligence Committee, where things could be handled in a more secret manner.”