Fatal Series 01 - Fatal Affair

said.
    “It’ll certainly delay it indefinitely. Getting a bill through committee and on to the floor for a vote is no simple process. It took more than a year of writing, rewriting, compromising, meetings with various lobbies and interest groups, more compromise. Not simple.”
    Listening to him, Sam had a whole new appreciation for how John’s death had affected Nick’s professional life. The failure to pass the immigration bill had to be a bitter defeat on top of the personal tragedy. “In that case, his murder seems too well timed to be coincidental.”
    “Someone couldn’t bear to see him get this win, you mean,” Freddie said.
    “Which takes us right back to his brother Terry,” Sam said.
    Nick shook his head.
    “Speak,” Sam said.
    “I’ve said this before—Terry doesn’t have the balls to kill his brother. He’s an overgrown boy trying to live in a man’s world. This would take planning and foresight. Terry’s idea of making a plan is deciding which bar to hit on a given night.”
    “Still,” Sam said, “he had motive, opportunity, a key and can’t produce his alibi. I want to bring him in tomorrow morning for a formal interview.”
    “Can’t that wait until after the funeral?” Nick asked, beseeching her with those hazel eyes of his.
    “No. I’m sorry. I wish I could spare the O’Connors any more grief, but the minute they lied to me about Thomas, they lost the right to that courtesy. In fact, I could charge them with obstruction of justice.”
    “But you won’t,” Nick said stiffly.
    “I haven’t decided yet.”
    “I noticed Terry never completed the court-ordered safe driving school after his DUI,” Freddie said.
    Sam smiled as she turned to Gonzo and Arnold. “Will you pick up Terry O’Connor in the morning? While he’s our guest, we’ll have another chat with him about his alibi. Coordinate with Loudoun County.”
    “Can do,” Arnold said.
    “You’re barking up the wrong tree,” Nick said, frustration all but rippling from him.
    “So noted.” To the others, she said, “What’ve we got on the bombing?”
    Higgins gave them an in-depth analysis of the four crude, homemade bombs they’d found attached to Sam’s car and Nick’s. “We got a partial print off one of the EDs on Mr. Cappuano’s car, and we’re running it through AFIS now,” he said, referring to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
    “We’ve worked our way through the Johnson family and the majority of their known associates,” Detective Jeannie McBride said. “For the most part, they were hardly sympathetic to hear you’d nearly gotten blown up but were adamant that they had nothing to do with it.” With a chagrinned expression, she added, “A few said they wished they’d thought of it.”
    “Nice,” Nick muttered.
    “We didn’t pick up any vibe that an actual order had come from either of the Johnsons,” McBride said.
    “And it would have,” Sam said. “After six months undercover with them, I can tell you nothing happens without one of them ordering it.”
    “Agreed,” McBride said.
    Sam ran her fingers through her hair, which she had left down the way Nick liked it. “I’ve got a bunch of shit running around in my head, so I want to go through it from the top if no one minds.”
    When the others nodded in agreement, she began with Nick finding the senator’s body in his apartment. “He’s murdered on the eve of a vote that would elevate his standing in the Senate by passing legislation on a hot-button issue. The murder itself, at least on the surface, is personal, with all the trimmings of a love affair gone wrong. However, as Detective Cruz correctly pointed out, the dismemberment could’ve been intended to throw us off, to send us down the personal road. Keep in mind there was no forced entry and no sign of a struggle, leading us to believe the killer was someone he knew, someone he was comfortable with and not surprised to see.”
    “And someone who had one of the many keys he’d given out,” Freddie interjected.
    “Yes. We’ve interviewed three of his past lovers, discovered he had a few fetishes, and uncovered a son his family kept hidden from the public for twenty years. The mother of that child appears, for all intents and purposes, to have been the love of his life and, for some reason, the only one who didn’t experience his wilder side. It would stand to reason that his often-cavalier treatment of other women and his fixation with