Fatal Series 01 - Fatal Affair

remind them—twice—that a United States senator had been murdered in his apartment and did they really want any more unfavorable publicity than they’re already going to get?”
    “Good job, Freddie. That’s the way to be aggressive.” She was forever after him to get in there and get his hands dirty. In turn, he nagged her about getting a life away from the job.
    “I learned from the best.”
    She made a face at him.
    “We also seized everything from the senator’s home and work offices—computers, files, etc. The lab is going through the computers now. We can hit the files tomorrow.”
    “Good.”
    “What’s your take on the O’Connors?”
    “The parents were devastated. There was nothing fake about it. Same with his sister.”
    “What about the brother?”
    “He seemed shocked, but he says he was with a woman whose name he doesn’t remember.”
    “He’ll have to produce her if he’s going to rely on her for an alibi.”
    “He’s painfully aware of that,” Sam said, smirking at her recollection of Terry O’Connor’s discomfort and Graham’s obvious disapproval.
    “That’s what he gets for sleeping with a stranger. Imagine going up to someone you slept with to ask for her name.”
    Sam’s face heated as memories of her one-night stand with Nick chose that moment to resurface. “Easy, Freddie. Don’t get all proper on me.”
    “It’s just another sign of the moral decline of our country.”
    Groaning at the familiar argument, she said, “Any word from the M.E.?”
    “Not yet. Apparently, they had a backlog to get through.”
    “Who comes before a murdered U.S. senator?”
    He shrugged. “Don’t kill the messenger.”
    “My favorite sport.”
    “Don’t I know it? The guy who found him checked out? Cappuano?”
    “Yeah.” Sam decided right in that moment not to tell Freddie about her history with Nick. Some things were personal, and she didn’t want or need Freddie’s disapproval. She was still dealing with her own disapproval for bringing up their former personal relationship in the midst of a murder investigation. “He was at work all night with other people from the staff, which I’ll confirm tomorrow.”
    “So what’s next?”
    “In the morning, we’ll interview O’Connor’s staff and pay a visit to the senate minority leader,” she said, filling him in on Graham O’Connor’s long-running feud with Stenhouse.
    Freddie rubbed his chiseled cheek. On top of his many other faults, he was GQ handsome, too. Life wasn’t fair. “Interesting,” he said.
    “Senator O’Connor questioned the timing—on the eve of the biggest vote of his son’s career as a senator.”
    “Someone didn’t want that vote to happen?”
    “It’s the closest thing to a motive I’ve seen yet. When we talk to his staff tomorrow, we need to cover both sides—the political and the personal. Who was he dating? Who might’ve had an axe to grind? You know the drill.”
    “What’s your gut telling you, boss?”
    He knew she hated when he called her that. “I’m not loving the political angle.”
    “The timing works.”
    “Yeah, but would a political rival cut off his dick and stuff it in his mouth?”
    Freddie cringed and covered his own package.
    “We’re going to keep that detail close to the vest and see where it takes us. But my money’s on a woman.”
    “You know what’s bugging me?” Freddie asked.
    “What’s that?”
    “No sign of a struggle. How does someone get a hold of your dick and do the Lorena Bobbitt without you putting up a fight?”
    “Maybe he was asleep? Didn’t see it coming?”
    “Someone grabs my junk, I’m wide awake.”
    “Spare me the visual, will you, please?”
    “I’m just saying…”
    “That it was someone he knew, someone he wasn’t surprised to see.”
    “Exactly.” He picked up the second donut and took a bite. With a dollop of white cream on his lower lip, he added, “He had one of those butcher block knife things in his kitchen. The butcher knife was the one holding him to the headboard.”
    “So the killer didn’t arrive armed.”
    “It doesn’t seem so. No.”
    Standing up, Sam said, “I want to see those tapes. What the hell is taking them so long?”

    Driving from the Watergate to the office, Nick should have been thinking about what he was going to say to his staff. They’d be looking to him for leadership, for answers to questions that had no answers. But rather than prepare himself for what would no doubt be an