Sherlock said, “Let’s back up a bit. You think your father was murdered, but his death was ruled an accident. But there was a thorough investigation, everyone was convinced. Do you have any proof otherwise?”
“Not hands-on proof, no.”
“Tell us what you have,” Jack said.
“Okay. Two days after I came back, Jimmy’s lawyer, Brady Cullifer, called. He was rather upset with me since I’d taken off without telling him and he hadn’t known where to find me. There was Jimmy’s new will, you see. Jimmy left me his house and split the rest of his estate among his three daughters. Mr. Cullifer told me he’d already notified Laurel Kostas and Quincy Abbott about what was in Jimmy’s will, told them Jimmy hadn’t left them anything. Oh yes, I forgot—Jimmy adopted me. It came through only days before his death, so I was legally his, surely a record, Mr. Cullifer told me.”
Sherlock said, “Was your father’s divorce messy?”
“You’re thinking his ex-wife could have killed him? I don’t think so. I met Jacqueline and their two daughters, my half sisters, Elaine and Carla, and their husbands at his funeral. They were all very kind to me, very civilized. Jacqueline was very distant, as if she were bored with all of it. His daughters were in shock, quiet, withdrawn, but it seemed to me they were thrilled to leave Washington, which they did the very next morning, and I left three hours after they did.
“I returned from Italy last Tuesday night. Friday night I drank a bit of the red wine that was evidently drugged. When I came back to the house later that night, the wine was gone.”
Jack said, “Do you you think the lawyer, Brady Cullifer, was part of it too?”
“I thought he was for maybe ten seconds. But it just didn’t make any sense. He’d been with Jimmy for years and years. He had no reason to hurt me. Laurel and Quincy put the drugged wine there, I know it.”
Savich said, “Okay, let’s get to the root. You were telling us why you believe your father’s sister and brother murdered him. Keep going, Rachael. Convince us.”
“It’s a long story, and it’s not my story. Since it isn’t about me, that’s why I didn’t say anything right after his death.” She looked miserable. “I don’t know, I just . . .”
“Too late for that,” Jack said. “Come on, Rachael, spill it all. This is about your father, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“And a major disagreement with his siblings?”
She nodded again.
“You call your father Jimmy,” Sherlock said, backing off a bit.
“Yes. I wasn’t comfortable yet calling him Dad. Look, the rest of it, I simply don’t know if . . .”
“Anything you tell us doesn’t go out of this room,” Jack said. “Everyone agrees?”
She looked at each of them as they nodded.
Still, it was difficult. To even think about what had happened was hard, but to speak about it, openly, she didn’t know if she could. But, finally, she knew she had no choice. “All right, I have to trust someone, and you guys seem like my best bet. But it’s got to remain a secret. You’ve agreed, right?”
They all nodded, Jack’s head to the side, frowning at her. “What’s the big secret, Rachael? Senator Abbott was a spy or something?”
“No, no, but . . . all right. If I can’t trust you folks, then I might as well hang it up.”
FOURTEEN
I told you that Jimmy overwhelmed me with his welcome, his generosity to me. He was open, he was loving, he wanted to hear every detail of every year of my life.” She smiled at that. “But I began to notice that he would fall silent at odd moments, that he seemed disturbed and despondent about something. When I pressed him on it, he finally told me what he’d done. I believe he wanted to tell me, that I was like this miracle, and if he told me maybe he’d at least partly make up for this bad thing he’d done. And he was so desperately alone, so desperately afraid.
“About a year and a half ago, Jimmy was driving through Delancey Park on his way home. It was late, sunset, he’d had a couple of martinis with colleagues. He was talking on his cell, not really paying much attention. A little girl on a bicycle came pedaling in front of his car. He hit her, killed her. He panicked and drove away, called his senior aide, Greg Nichols, who came to him immediately.
“His aide—you need to understand about him. Greg is maybe in his late thirties. He’s very smart—intuitive, I guess you’d say—and driven. His ambition was to see Jimmy in the White House. Jimmy trusted him, admired his brain, his drive, his commitment. Greg convinced Jimmy to keep it quiet, that if it got out he’d killed a child—accident or not—his career, his life, his family, would be ruined, he could even go to jail, convicted of vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident.
“I’m not trying to excuse what he did, but Greg is the king of persuasion; he could convince the Pope to convert to Islam. Fact was, Greg himself would also be ruined if Jimmy confessed to killing the little girl. He’d be done in Washington, that’s for sure, and so he worked very hard to convince Jimmy that the best thing, the smartest thing, the only logical thing, was to keep his mouth shut and simply leave the little girl right where she was. Bottom line, Jimmy told me, he wanted to be convinced, and so he was. And yes, he knew very well that Greg was being self-serving, but who cared? He was too concerned about his own future.
“He told me how hard he tried to excuse himself—you know, if the girl’s parents had been with her, as they should have been, it wouldn’t have happened. What kind of parents let their kid ride alone in a public park anyway? There were predators in public parks, were her parents idiots? But he said no matter how hard he tried to make excuses for himself, it never worked.
“He spoke of the personal consequences—unrelenting guilt, recurring nightmares of his hitting the little girl, over and over, he said, how he found himself disengaged more and more from Capitol Hill, from his colleagues, his family, his staff, that even therapy hadn’t helped. He’d lived with this for so long, it seemed like forever, it was eating him up inside. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He told me he was thinking about going to the police, telling them what he’d done, announcing it to the world. He wanted to know what I thought.
“I saw what a wreck he was, how what he’d done was debilitating him, but now that I had found him, I didn’t want to lose him, to have him plunge himself into a scandal. But I could see what it was doing to him, and so I said he should do what he believed was right, that no matter what he did, I was behind him one hundred percent, and I would always be at his side. Let the world do its worst, I told him, I wasn’t going anywhere. But it was up to him. His decision, his life.”