The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (2)

She brought the computer up and began opening files.



* * *





The young woman left the building at six-thirty in the morning, now wearing her jacket red side out, the dawn light filtering through the plum trees as she walked beneath them. Her rental car was a half-block away. She put the backpack in the trunk and transferred the lock rake, switchblade, and a short steel crowbar, which she hadn’t needed, to a FedEx box already labeled and paid for. The pack still held the file folder of printer paper that she’d taken out of the office. She drove carefully to a FedEx curbside station and dropped in the box of burglary tools. It would arrive back at her Arlington, Virginia, apartment in three days, when she would be there to accept it.

That done, she drove back to the DoubleTree hotel where she was staying, put the do not disturb sign on the door, changed into yoga pants and a tank top, put on a sleeping mask, and crawled into bed.



* * *





That afternoon, she parked a block from Annette Hart’s house, and waited. At five-thirty, Roscoe Anthem pulled up to the curb. He honked once and Hart trotted out of the house, smiling, piled into the car, gave Anthem a peck on the cheek, and they rolled out to I-10, then three and a half hours west to Mobile, Alabama.

Because while you can sin in Tallahassee, in many different ways, it was much more fun where the casinos were bigger and your friends were less likely to see you rollin’ them bones.

The blue-eyed young woman stayed with them all the way, well back, always behind other cars, shifting lanes from time to time. And she was with them in the casino, at the craps tables, at the blackjack tables, at the slots, always behind a screen of other patrons, talking on her cell phone and pushing the camera button.

Only to be interrupted by a nerdy young card player who eased up behind her to touch her hip and whisper, “You know what? You really overclock my processor.”

Made her laugh, but she blew him off anyway.



* * *





Monday morning, the Washington, D.C., office of Senator Christopher Colles (R-Florida), door closed. Colles and his much-hated executive assistant, Claudia Welp, perched on visitor’s chairs, looking across a coffee table at the young woman. Welp pitched her voice down. “Wait: you broke into the office?”

“It wasn’t exactly a breakin, since it’s Senator Colles’s office and you told me to go there and retrieve some of his information,” the young woman said.

“I didn’t mean for you to break in, for God’s sakes,” Welp said. “I sent you down there to talk to that secretary.”

“But to get to the heart of the matter, did you find anything?” Colles asked.

“Yes. The information you got from Messalina Brown is correct,” the young woman said. “Anthem and Hart have stolen about three hundred and forty thousand dollars in campaign funds. I believe they’ve blown most of it in a casino in Mobile, Alabama. In their defense, they’re having a really good time.”

Colles: “What!”

Welp: “Even so, I’m not sure that justifies breaking into . . .”

“Shut up, Welp,” Colles said. “How’d they do it?”

“I wrote a full report yesterday, after I got back to D.C. I’ve attached the relevant documents and a couple of photographs of the happy couple at Harrah’s Gulf Coast casino on Friday night. It’s here.” She took a file out of her backpack and passed it to Colles.

Welp: “Even if it proves to be true, you’ve far transgressed . . .”

“Doesn’t matter what you believe,” Letty Davenport interrupted. “I quit. You guys bore the crap outta me.”





TWO




Letty worked in what its denizens called the bullpen, an open room of low-ranking senatorial assistants and researchers, each with his or her own desk and filing cabinet, surrounded by a hip-high fabric cubicle wall. Most of the staffers were either recent Ivy League graduates or smart state school grads, getting close to power.

As a graduate of a heavyweight West Coast university, with a master’s degree in something useful, combined with her cool reserve and the way she dressed, Letty was different. She was smart, hard-nosed and hard-bodied, lean, muscled like a dancer, and occasionally displayed a sharp, dry wit.

The young women in the bullpen noticed that her clothes carried fashionable labels, while tending toward the dark and functional, if not quite military. Her jewelry was sparse but notable, and always gold. One of the Ivy Leaguers excessively admired a chain bracelet set with a single, unfaceted green stone, and asked if she could try it on.

Letty was amenable. After the other woman had tried and returned the bracelet, and Letty had gone, a friend asked the Ivy Leaguer, “Well, what did you find out?”

“Harry Winston.”

“Really.”

“Honest to God,” the Ivy Leaguer said. “That stone is a raw fucking uncut emerald, like Belperron used. We could mug her, sell the bracelet, and buy a Benz. Maybe two Benzes.”

“You could mug her. I’ve seen her working out, so I’ll pass on that.”



* * *





When Letty finished briefing Colles and Welp on the Tallahassee situation, she left them studying the purloined spreadsheets, dropped her letter of resignation on Welp’s desk—two weeks’ notice—and walked down to the bullpen. An hour later, Welp called and said, “Get up here. Senator Colles wants to speak with you.”