Emily nodded. Routine, she had said last night. They had to return to their routine.
“There’s coffee made,” she said. “I’ve got to face all the sad looks sooner or later, so I thought I’d take bus duty today. I also called Jack’s teacher. She said I could volunteer in his class this afternoon to see how he’s adjusting to being back.”
Sean nodded. Em was starting to resemble his wife again.
“You got Ryan out the door?” asked Sean.
“Bright-eyed as always,” she said.
“And he seemed okay?”
Emily nodded. “We need to trust him.”
“I do,” Sean said, “I really do.”
“Have a great day, Daddy,” Jack said as they left the house.
By the time Sean had showered, shaved, and dressed, Emily was waiting for him in the kitchen. She led him to the dining room. The table was no longer covered with family photos. Instead, there were four small stacks of Internet printouts.
“I couldn’t sleep so I did some research on Senator James. I think I found something.”
Sean gave her a puzzled look.
Em gestured to the stacks of research. “James grew up in Leavenworth, Kansas. His dad was a guard at the federal prison there.” Emily handed him a sheaf of papers. On top was a story from the Kansas City Star. The headline read LHS STUDENT MISSING.
“While he was there a girl from the school went missing. Her name was Melissa Foster. They never found her.”
“Lots of girls go missing every year,” Sean said.
“But he knew her, Sean.” Emily shuffled through the stack and fished out another printout, this one a page from a high school yearbook. It was a dedication page to the missing girl with a montage of photographs of Melissa Foster. In one, she sat on the hood of a car next to a handsome teenager. A young Mason James.
“When he was in high school his family moved to Lee County, Virginia. Apparently his dad took a position at a prison there. That year another girl went missing.”
“Did anyone ever suggest he was involved in the crimes? He’s in public office. Someone surely would have—”
“No,” Emily said. “But they probably weren’t doing searches of his name with terms like missing girl or murdered. And think about it, Sean. A missing girl in Kansas, a missing girl in Virginia, then John Chadwick’s girlfriend in college. What if when Abby contacted Chadwick at the prison, James or his people found out and were afraid she’d uncover something? James’s father worked in corrections, so maybe they had someone keeping an eye on Chadwick’s visitors. What if Abby connected the murders to James?”
Sean looked at his wife. She was all caffeine and jitters. She picked up another sheet of paper. “I also found newspaper stories about his career. When he was a prosecutor, James’s claim to fame was that he’d never lost a case. There was one trial, though, where everyone thought he was going to lose, but before it went to verdict, the lawyer for the defendant was arrested for drug possession, resulting in a mistrial. Also, James won his first run for attorney general after his opponent was caught having an affair with a staffer. In his Senate run, his opponent withdrew for undisclosed personal reasons. His adversaries always seem to have convenient little mishaps.”
Sean processed it all. Newspaper stories about missing girls and speculation about James sabotaging his adversaries wouldn’t pass the laugh test with a prosecutor or the press. But it was no more speculative than the conspiracy theories racing through Sean’s mind all week. Had they both succumbed to grief-stricken insanity?
Em must have seen the skepticism in his face, and she retreated to the kitchen. Sean stayed at the table reading through Emily’s research.
“You’re going to want to see this,” Emily called out to him.
Sean came into the kitchen where Emily was now standing in front of the sink washing the boys’ breakfast dishes. Sean eyed the bumper sticker under the magnet on the refrigerator, which seemed to be mocking him: STAND UP FOR WHAT’S RIGHT, EVEN IF YOU’RE STANDING ALONE.
Emily pointed a sudsy dish brush at the small television on the counter. The Today show anchor, a black woman with high cheek bones, reported, “The president has scheduled a press conference today to announce his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Chief Justice Malburg, a thirty-year veteran of the high court who announced her retirement last month. NBC has learned that the nominee will be a member of Congress. Senator Mason James. It will be the first time since Justice Hugo Black was appointed in the nineteen-thirties that a sitting senator would join the country’s highest court.”