Bernadette Peacham paused in the hall just outside the bar, her attention focused on something – or someone – behind her. For the past ten years, she’d served as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Before that, she’d been a federal prosecutor and a partner in a prestigious Washington law firm. But her roots were in New Hampshire, where she owned a lake house that had been in her family for more than a hundred years. She often told people she planned to die there, as her parents and her grandfather had.
Rook had done research on Judge Peacham, and he’d testified in her courtroom a half-dozen times in the three years since he’d worked out of the Washington Field Office. He didn’t know if she’d recognize him if she walked into the bar, but she’d sure as hell recognize J. Harris Mayer, the old friend who had lured her to Washington thirty years ago.
She’d never win any awards for best-dressed judge, Rook thought with amusement. Tonight’s outfit looked as if she’d pulled it out of a paper bag stuffed under her desk in her chambers. Apart from the obvious wrinkles, the black floor-length dress and brightly colored sequined shawl somehow didn’t go together. Not that Rook had an eye for clothes, but Bernadette Peacham was a train wreck when it came to style. No Botox and face-lifts for her. No hair dye, for that matter. Damn little makeup, either. People tended to notice her because of her presence and her obvious intelligence and grace. At fifty-seven, she was regarded as a firm, fair, articulate trial judge and, despite her generous nature, no one’s fool.
She was perhaps Harris Mayer’s last friend in the world, not that he would let friendship or anything else stop him from feeding her to the wolves.
Or, if it came to it, the FBI.
Harris would calculate the benefit to himself and act accordingly.
Rook drank more of his water, although he was only a notch less impatient than he’d been five minutes ago. “It looks like she might be expecting someone to join her. A date?”
“Oh, no.” Harris shook his head as if Rook couldn’t have come up with a dumber idea. “She hasn’t started dating again since her divorce was finalized earlier this month. Cal still lives with her, you know. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“Maybe it was an amicable divorce.”
“No such thing.”
Her marriage to Cal Benton, a prominent Washington attorney, had surprised people far more than their divorce two years later. It was her second marriage; her first, to another lawyer, had lasted three years. No children.
“Supposedly he’s not getting a dime from her,” Harris continued, his voice more shrill now, as if he was growing impatient himself. “That can’t make him happy, but it doesn’t matter – Cal will never be satisfied. He’ll always want more of everything. Money, recognition, women. Whatever. For some people, there’s never enough. Cal is one of them. I’m one of them.”
“I can’t launch an investigation because you think Bernadette Peacham deserved better than Cal Benton -”
“I’m well aware of what you require to proceed.” Harris regarded the woman in the hall with a sudden, almost palpable sadness. She’d been a protégée, and she’d left him in the dust in terms of her career, her reputation, her ever-widening circle of friends. His expression softened and he said quietly, “We’re not here because of Bernadette’s love life or lack thereof.”
Rook didn’t respond. Harris had lived in social and professional exile for a long time, but, as prickly as he was, he was observant, experienced and very smart. He had a long career behind him, and even now, people owed him favors and came to him, quietly, for advice.
He gave Rook a supercilious smile. “Thinking you’d be smart not to underestimate me, aren’t you?”
“I’m thinking you need to get to the point.”
Harris leaned over the small table and said in a dramatic whisper, “Don’t forget. I know where a lot of the bodies in this town are buried.” He sat back abruptly and grinned, his teeth yellowed from age, cigarettes, drink and neglect. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”
Rook sucked in his impatience. “If you’re looking for action at my expense, Judge, you’re looking in the wrong place.”
“Understood.” Harris nodded wistfully at the middle-aged woman in the hall. “Bernadette used to stop by my office just to say hello, grab a cup of coffee. We don’t see each other that often nowadays.”
“It’s to her credit she didn’t drop you altogether.”
“I suppose it is. Ah. Here we are.” Harris seemed relieved. “Finally.”
Another woman came into their line of sight.
Rook took in her dark red hair, her big smile as she greeted Bernadette Peacham.
Hell.
Harris’s eyes lit up. “Mackenzie Stewart,” he said with relish.
She was barely thirty and slim, wearing a slip of a deep blue and carrying an evening purse just big enough for a.38 caliber pistol. Rook didn’t know women’s purses. But he knew guns.
“She’s a deputy U.S. marshal,” Harris added. “A fugitive hunter, a protector of the federal judiciary. A fellow federal agent. Doesn’t look like Wyatt Earp, does she?”
Rook kept his reaction under tight wraps. He wasn’t there to entertain Harris. “All right. You’ve had your fun. What’s going on?”