The Perfect Marriage(63)

“I’m AUSA Parker Henderson,” the man said.

He looked like a federal prosecutor. Young, clean-cut, probably from money, or maybe he’d had a big law firm job before going to work for the government.

“Special agent Allison Lashley,” the female fed said.

Gabriel looked to Asra. From her smile, it had clicked for her too.

“We’ve been looking for you, Ms. Lashley,” he said.

“Apologies for waiting so long for this reveal,” Henderson said. “We wanted to see how things played out before we had this meeting.”

“Someone want to tell me what it seems like you all already know?” asked Tomlinson.

“Special Agent Lashley here was the last person to see James Sommers alive,” Asra said.

“Second to last,” she said. “I didn’t kill him.”

Henderson said, “Mr. Sommers was, unfortunately for him, ensnared in a federal operation concerning stolen art. Special Agent Lashley told Mr. Sommers about his misfortune only a few hours before his murder.”

“I was undercover as an art appraiser for a client,” Lashley said. “I accompanied my CI—a guy who had done a previous deal with Mr. Sommers a few years earlier—to do a buy. A Jackson Pollock to be purchased from Mr. Sommers and his partner, a man named Reid Warwick. After that went off without a hitch, I reestablished contact with Mr. Sommers and we arranged a more significant buy. A three-purchase sale. I met with Mr. Sommers and Reid Warwick in Mr. Sommers’s office to discuss this sale. After Mr. Warwick left, I revealed myself to Mr. Sommers as a federal agent.”

“Was Sommers going to flip?” Asra asked.

“He didn’t have much choice. Under the sentencing guidelines, even for a first-time offender, he was looking at real time. And guys like James Sommers, they’re not built for prison.”

“So what happened that caused Mr. Sommers to crack his skull shortly thereafter?” Gabriel asked.

“Not sure,” Lashley said. “Sommers and I discussed the next steps. The standard stuff. Not to tell anyone, even his wife. That he should pretend that the deal we were doing went off without a hitch. That he’d wear a wire for the payoff with Reid Warwick. And when we were done, I left him very much alive in his office.”

“We figure that, despite our instructions, Sommers told Warwick, and Warwick killed him,” Henderson said.

“Why is this the first we’re all hearing about this?” Tomlinson said.

“That’s on me,” Henderson said. “We didn’t want to jeopardize our investigation. Also, I thought we could help you all out a little better if we didn’t disclose it right away. But this morning, Allison and another federal agent engaged in an undercover buy directly with Mr. Warwick. He’s on tape. All wrapped up with a bow. We arrested him on the spot.”

“Arrested him for what?” Asra said.

“Trafficking in stolen art. There’ll be other charges to follow. Money laundering, wire fraud. It’ll be a decent chunk of time he’ll be facing when it’s all added up.”

“Where is he now?” Asra asked.

“Federal custody. Over at the MCC.”

“How does keeping one of our prime suspects in a murder investigation on ice in federal lockup help us out?” Gabriel asked.

“Our initial thought was that maybe if we questioned him, you know, focusing on the federal crimes, he might let down his guard and give us something on the murder,” Henderson said.

Gabriel actually laughed. “Yeah, how’d that work out for you?”

“About how you figured it would, based on your sarcasm. He lawyered up instantly. We’re still going to hold him for the full forty-eight hours. Hoping that a taste of prison life might soften him up a bit. But once he appears for arraignment, we expect him to make bail on the art charges.”

“Well,” said Asra with a shrug, “at least we can take Allison off our suspect list.”

“And put Reid Warwick at the top,” Gabriel added.



Reid did not like a word of what Steve Weitzen was telling him.

He had been sitting in a prison cell for more than six hours now, clinging to the idea that he’d be out as soon as his mouthpiece showed up. Now that mouthpiece was telling Reid that he’d be staying put for a while.

In Reid’s line of work, keeping a guy like Weitzen on retainer was the equivalent of visiting the dentist twice a year. You wanted to check in every so often to make sure you were not going to have a more serious problem down the road, and if something came up in the middle of the night that needed immediate attention, you had someone at the ready to take care of it.

Reid had first retained Weitzen’s services ten years earlier, regarding a money-laundering investigation in which he had become enmeshed. He liked Weitzen’s bedside manner. The way he told it to Reid straight, and didn’t seem to judge him. Of course, he mainly liked the fact that he hadn’t been indicted that time around. Some of his associates hadn’t been so lucky.

Over the next decade, the advice of a criminal defense lawyer had come in handy in probably half a dozen instances. Usually they concerned Reid’s principal business, which was money laundering. Occasionally, they involved his side hustles, like trafficking in stolen art. None of them had ever involved murder, however.