“Really? I assume she kissed you before you told her that you were betrothed.”
“Think whatever you want.”
“How exactly did you get the prostitute to drop the charges against you?”
Langley rose. “You are very, very close to a defamation suit.”
“Don’t think so.”
“Oh, so now you’re a lawyer?”
“No, everything I said was true. She was a prostitute, you were charged with assaulting her, and she then dropped the charges and left town. I hope she’s still alive.”
“Goodbye, Decker.”
Decker walked out of his office and closed the door.
He stopped in front of Rose’s desk. She was crumpling up a tissue and wouldn’t look at him.
He sat down across from her. “I take it you heard about the wedding plans?”
She nodded and blew her nose.
“And you two were…？”
“At least I hoped so. I mean, I know he was seeing her, but I never thought…” She glanced up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. “He told me he loved me.”
“I’m really sorry,” Decker said as she blew her nose again. “That was not a nice thing for him to do.” He looked around. “This is pretty expensive office space, and it’s built out top dollar. And the guy drives a Bentley. I mean, I know lawyers do well, but is there something else going on here?”
She looked at him guardedly. “I don’t think I can talk to you about anything having to do with this firm.”
“That’s fine. I don’t want you to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. Seeing as how he’s been so loyal to you.”
He heard her say something under her breath that sounded basically like, Fuck it.
She glanced at her computer and a few seconds later tapped some keys. “In addition to being Mr. Langley’s assistant and paralegal, I also handle the firm’s accounts. Now, I have to go and see someone about something. I’ll be back. You can just hang around here if you want.”
She walked off and Decker immediately sat down behind her desk.
The pages he was scrolling through were financial in nature. He took screenshots of all of them and then studied the pages as he walked out.
The embittered Rose had just given him a piece of low-hanging fruit. Langley should treat his employees better.
When he passed by the Bentley, he smiled and patted its hood.
Now he understood Dennis Langley quite clearly, not that it was so very difficult.
But was he also the murderer of Julia Cummins?
Chapter 78
W?HITE HAD MADE A DOZEN calls and come up essentially empty.
The senior members of Tanner’s former Senate staff were almost all either deceased or long retired. She had gotten some names and a few pictures online of these people from their younger days. She supposed they could show them to Deidre Fellows to see if she recognized the man in the bedroom helping Kanak Roe to wrap up a dead woman and stuff her into a suitcase.
But if the person had been a young aide, a secretary, or some very junior member of the staff, it was going to be really difficult to track that person down now. It wasn’t like they kept exhaustive lists of such personnel in some neat and tidy archive. A lot of the staff had probably gone on to work with other members of Congress after Tanner retired, or left the political arena entirely. If the man was a personal aide of Tanner’s and not part of his political operation, they still might be able to identify him, but she wasn’t sure how. Mrs. Tanner was dead. Mr. Tanner would be of no help. Deidre was an only child, and she hadn’t recognized the person that night. Kanak Roe would know, but he was probably dead, too. And all of this had happened before Kasimira Roe was even born.
She had contacted the Miami–Dade Police Department and spoken with someone from their Cold Case Squad. Without revealing specifically what her case was about, she gave the woman’s description and the date and location in question. The officer said he would get back to her—but she was in a long queue, he had warned, and without a name it was not going to be quick or easy. In fact, he said, it was going to be pretty much impossible.
There was a Cold Case database run by an independent organization that covered forty-six states and fifty Florida counties, but, again, without a name White’s search turned up no hits when she put in the information she had.
Shit. She rubbed her eyes and wondered how Decker was getting on.
She got some email responses on other lines of inquiry they had started. The traffic cameras had turned up nothing on Langley’s Bentley or Chase’s Aston Martin at the time in question. Barry Davidson had made no suspicious payments. They hadn’t heard back from the liquor store, so she had called and was told the night clerk had remembered seeing Langley come in that night at the time he said he had.