Political Suicide Read Free Page B

McHugh’s elegant Tudor-style home. The electric candles in each window looked as if they had been included in the design when the house was built, but there were no bulbs on the shrubs. Lou observed only one car parked in the circular driveway—a Lexus, which he assumed belonged to Missy, McHugh’s wife. McHugh prided himself on his high-end black Jaguar. Lou wondered if the car had somehow been involved in the man’s current plight—a fatal accident of some sort, perhaps. Then he reminded himself that McHugh had very specifically said murder.
    He braked the Toyota to a stop in front of the roofed entranceway. McHugh—graying red hair, broad-shouldered, dense five o’clock shadow—stood waiting. He wore a green collared sweater, but no jacket. His face was distorted by a huge bruise involving the area between his left cheek and hairline. His left eye was swollen shut.
    “Hey, thanks for getting here so quickly,” McHugh said grimly, “I forgot it was rush hour.”
    “No problem. Gary, let’s get inside. It’s freezing out here.”
    Limping slightly, McHugh set Lou’s peacoat on a hook in the foyer, and shook his hand. His wrestler’s grip had not been diminished by whatever had battered his face. His one open eye was bloodshot, and Lou almost immediately smelled alcohol—more, it seemed from the man’s pores than from his breath. Whatever had happened today, booze was almost certainly part of it. Lou’s recurrent warning that he did not feel McHugh could ever drink in safety had gone unheeded and was now apparently extracting a heavy toll.
    “What’s going on, Gary?”
    “Let’s go my study,” McHugh said. “I just lit a fire to take the chill out.”
    The temperature in the cherry-paneled room had already responded to the neatly laid blaze. The space was perhaps a third the size of Lou’s entire apartment. A forty-inch plasma TV mounted above the stone fireplace was tuned to CNN. The walls were decorated with pictures and souvenirs that defined the man—his travels to exotic locales, his plane, skydiving certification, skiing with a skill and grace that showed even in a photograph, black-tie parties featuring A-list notables, testimonials and letters of thanks, at least two from recent presidents.
    McHugh motioned Lou to one of two red leather armchairs, while he remained standing, glancing from time to time at the TV.
    “Talk to me, Gary,” Lou said.
    McHugh, now watching CNN steadily, had his back turned. Despite the odor of alcohol, there was no evidence in his speech or manner that he was intoxicated. “Anytime now,” he said, “CNN is going to report breaking news regarding the shooting death in his garage of Congressman Elias Colston.”
    Lou stiffened and dug his fingers into the thick arms of his chair. Colston, the chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services, was one of the more popular congressmen in the House. Maryland District 1, Lou guessed, or maybe it was District 3.
    “How do you know?” he asked.
    “I was there,” McHugh said flatly, wincing as he sat down in the other chair. “I saw the body. At least two shots—one to the chest and one dead center in the forehead.”
    “Are you absolutely sure? Did you check for a pulse?”
    “Believe me, Lou, I checked, but I know dead.”
    “And the body temp?”
    “Warm.”
    “When did this happen?”
    “I got there at noon.”
    “And you had been drinking?”
    There was an embarrassed silence, and then, “Yes. Fairly heavily.”
    Lou groaned. Gary McHugh seldom did anything in half measures. He could only imagine what fairly heavily meant.
    “Why hasn’t the story broken by now?”
    McHugh shrugged. “I guess because I’m the only one who saw him—besides the person who killed him, that is.”
    “And why didn’t you call the police?” Even as he was asking the question, Lou knew the answer.
    “I … intended to find a phone booth and call them anonymously, rather than risk giving them my cell phone number. I