House Standoff

Also by Mike Lawson

The Inside Ring

The Second Perimeter

House Rules

House Secrets

House Justice

House Divided

House Blood

House Odds

House Reckoning

House Rivals

House Revenge

House Witness

House Arrest

House Privilege

Rosarito Beach

Viking Bay

K Street

A

JOE DEMARCO

THRILLER

Atlantic Monthly Press

New York

Copyright © 2021 by Mike Lawson

Jacket photograph © K. Ann/Shutterstock

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].

FIRST EDITION

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: April 2021

This book was set in 12-pt. Garamond Premier Pro by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

ISBN 978-0-8021-5856-7

eISBN 978-0-8021-5857-4

Atlantic Monthly Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

I’m dedicating this novel to all the doctors and nurses who remained on the front lines throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. As Winston Churchill said about the RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain:

Never was so much owed by so many to so few.

1

A small town was a bad place for a night owl like her to be.

It was past midnight and she couldn’t concentrate and felt like taking a break, but Waverly, Wyoming had pretty much locked its doors, turned off the lights, and gone to bed. If she was still living in Boston, she might have gone to this one hole-in-the-wall bar near her old apartment and had a glass of wine, or maybe to a coffee shop that was open until two a.m. But here there were no cozy coffee shops or quiet bars playing soft jazz that stayed open until the crack of dawn. There was a twenty-four-hour convenience store at the truck stop that served bad coffee and stale pastries but that was about it. The diner was closed and the other restaurant in town stopped taking dinner orders at nine and closed at ten. The one bar in town was open until two but the last thing she felt like was getting hit on by some lonely roughneck who’d had too much to drink.

She looked out the window and across the highway at the diner. It appeared as if Harriet had gone to bed. Harriet wasn’t a night owl like she was; the poor woman just had a hard time sleeping. There’d been many a night since she’d been in Waverly when she’d look out her motel room window and see a single light on over a booth in Harriet’s place and the silhouette of the old woman sitting there. Some nights she’d cross the highway and rap on the window and wave, and Harriet would unlock the café door and they’d spend an hour or so talking. These gab sessions had not only been fun but also useful in that they’d contributed significantly to her research on the little town and its inhabitants. She doubted, however, that there would be another late-night session with Harriet, not after what she’d done to upset her. That had been a big mistake.

She turned back to her laptop and read the paragraph she’d just written. It was awful. It was total crap. If she’d been using an old-fashioned typewriter as Hemingway had, she would have yanked the page out of the carriage and let it flutter to the ground like a dead bird. But since she was using a laptop she couldn’t resort to anything so dramatic. She just blocked out the text and hit delete emphatically. Some nights were like that. Some nights the words flowed from a literary wellspring in her mind and she actually impressed herself. Other nights were like this one, where she produced nothing but unprintable shit. Such was the life of a writer. Maybe she should go for a walk to clear her head; she wasn’t worried about walking alone late at night, not in Waverly.

She knew the time had come for her to leave Wyoming. She’d immersed herself in the setting, had captured it completely in her mind, and the characters in the novel would be born from the people she’d met, yet would not be those people. There was really nothing to be gained by remaining any longer. Then there was the fact that she’d unintentionally alienated some residents, and she had definitely worn out her welcome with them. Yes, it was time to go back to California—she lusted for the sight of the ocean—and start writing the novel in earnest. She wondered idly what would happen to the people in this scandalous little town but their fates weren’t integral in any way to her book. She’d probably give Harriet a call in a couple of months—assuming Harriet would speak to her—to see how things had played out with the adulterers, the potential killer, and the king who was losing his potency thanks to the ravages of time.

The knock on the door made her jump in her chair and she almost gave herself whiplash spinning her head around. What the hell? She wondered if it was his wife, coming to yell at her again. Or maybe it was Harriet. What more reassurance could she give her?

She opened the door, but before she could speak, she felt something slam into her chest, as if she’d been hit in the breastbone with a sledgehammer. It didn’t occur to her that the sound of the gunshot had been mostly muzzled by the noise of two eighteen-wheelers barreling down the highway.

As she lay on the floor, she could feel her body shutting down. She couldn’t move; she couldn’t speak. Her vision began to blur.

Her last sight on earth was a leg clad in blue jeans stepping over her.

The world, and the promise of a glorious future, faded to black.

2

DeMarco looked over at the bedside clock. Eight a.m. A respectable hour to begin the day. He swung out of bed, walked to the bathroom, took a leak, and brushed his teeth. He glanced in the mirror and decided he needed a haircut. Or maybe he’d let his hair grow and tie it up on top into a little man-bun, like some kind of Italian samurai.

Yeah, like that was ever gonna happen.

DeMarco was almost six feet tall and muscular. He had a prominent nose, blue eyes, dark hair he combed straight back, and a cleft in a blunt chin. Clad in red boxer shorts and a sleeveless white T-shirt, he padded barefoot to the kitchen, filled the coffee maker with ground coffee and water, and punched the on button. From the kitchen, he walked, still moving slowly, only half awake, to the front door of his Georgetown townhouse to get the newspaper. He still had the Washington Post delivered to his door; he liked the feel of a newspaper in his hands and didn’t want to read the news on his iPhone.

He opened his front door to a gorgeous morning. It was the first day of June, sixty degrees outside, a cloudless sky, no wind at all. In other words, a perfect day for golf. It was a shame he had to go to work, which he would do eventually, but he wasn’t in any rush. He didn’t punch a clock. For that matter, he rarely went to his office.

He looked down at the porch for his paper and saw it wasn’t there. It was about halfway down his sidewalk, a good thirty feet away. Son of a bitch. He looked around and didn’t see anyone on the street. He walked briskly down the sidewalk in his bare feet, bent over to pick up his newspaper, and just then a car drove by with a woman at the wheel who was treated to the sight of DeMarco in his underwear. Probably made her day. Or maybe not.

Back in his kitchen, he poured a cup of coffee, added cream and two packets of sweetener, and pulled the sports section from the newspaper. The almost always depressing news on the front page could wait. He scanned the box scores to see which baseball teams had won and lost and looked at the teams’ standings. The Washington Nationals were only one game out of first place, but as it was only June, that hardly mattered.

He read an article about two Houston Rockets basketball players. One was a six-foot-nine power forward and the other was one of the best point guards in the NBA—and they’d decided to get married. Since the two guys combined for over forty points a game, DeMarco was betting that the super-conservative, evangelical who’d just bought the Rockets was going to have a Road to Damascus moment.

The important news out of the way, DeMarco scanned the front page. The banner headline was TORNADO IN K

ANSAS

K

ILLS

62. Too depressing, so he skipped the article. On the right side, above the fold, was a story about two soldiers killed in Somalia. Also too depressing; he didn’t read that either. On the other side, above the fold, was an article about a guy who worked in the White House being indicted. This wasn’t depressing; it was just business as usual in our Nation’s capital. DeMarco decided he didn’t care enough to learn why the guy had been indicted and flipped the paper over to see what was on the bottom half of the front page.

The headline in the lower righthand corner read: AUTHOR SHANNON DOYLE KILLED.

Oh, Jesus. DeMarco closed his eyes. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe and felt lightheaded. His next thought was: It can’t be her. Maybe there was another writer named Shannon Doyle famous enough to make the front page of the Washington Post—but he knew there wasn’t. He knew it was her.

DeMarco had known Shannon Doyle. He’d slept with her. He’d been in love with her.

He’d met her in Boston when he was doing a job there for Mahoney. At the time, she was working nights in the bar of the hotel where he’d been staying. During the day, she worked on the novel she was writing. While he was in Boston, her novel—the first one she’d written—was sold to Random House for over a million bucks and took off like a rocket. Oprah picked it for her book club; it was #1 on the New York Times Best Sellers list for fifty-four weeks. The film rights were bought by Reese Witherspoon, who would star in the soon-to-be-released movie. Shannon became rich and famous overnight and began to appear on talk shows.

DeMarco’s involvement with Shannon had only lasted a few weeks. He’d known it was going to be hard to sustain the relationship with her living in Boston and him in D.C., but he’d been willing to make the effort. But when she hit the big time with her novel, she decided to move out to California to work with Witherspoon on writing the screenplay for the movie—and she left DeMarco behind.

But it wasn’t as if she’d abandoned him. They hadn’t been married or lifelong lovers. The fact was that she just hadn’t felt as strongly about him as he’d felt about her and she’d simply moved to the other side of the country to live the life she’d always wanted. The choice to pursue her career instead of staying close to him probably hadn’t been a hard one for her to make, although she claimed it had been.

He could still see her, the last morning they woke up together. She’d been a beautiful woman with long dark hair and gray eyes and a long-legged, narrow-waisted, athletic body. She wasn’t a brooding, introverted writer type. She’d been approachable and gregarious. She’d had a booming laugh and a wicked sense of humor. She’d been an avid hockey fan and had played hockey in college. DeMarco took her to a hockey game on their first date and she was as raucous as the rest of the Bruins’ maniacal fans. He couldn’t imagine someone who’d been so vibrant, so alive, being dead.

He read the article, barely able to focus on the words with the image of Shannon still in his head. It said that she’d been killed in a town called Waverly, Wyoming, where she’d been doing research on her next novel. She was killed in her motel room. Shot once in the chest. The motive for the murder appeared to be theft as her purse, laptop, and phone were all missing. But that was it. There were no suspects identified or any other details provided to make sense out of what had happened. Her death appeared to have been as random and inexplicable as a person being struck by lightning.

Most of the article was about her famous novel, Lighthouse, and the praise it had garnered. Other prominent writers were quoted in the Post, all of them basically saying the same thing, that the world had lost an incredible literary talent. The book was about a woman who’d fled an abusive husband and had gone to live in a lighthouse in Nova Scotia with her pregnant teenage daughter. DeMarco had read it, and although it wasn’t the sort of book he normally read, he had to admit that it had moved him. Even he, a guy who mostly read crime fiction, had been able to appreciate the way Shannon was able to place the reader in the wild coastal setting and make the characters come alive. Her writing was lyrical, poetic, insightful, and profound—something he’d never expected based on her outward personality—and it was easy to understand why the book had been so successful.

Now there would never be a second brilliant novel by Shannon Doyle.

Finally, DeMarco pushed himself away from the table and went to take a shower and shave and dress for work. But before the day was over he was going to find out more about her death and see what the cops were doing to catch the son of a bitch responsible.

3

DeMarco was a civil servant with an office in the subbasement of the U.S. Capitol, although how much he actually served was debatable. According to the paperwork on file with the Office of Personnel Management, he was a lawyer who served members of Congress on an ad hoc basis—meaning that when one of the legislators needed legal help, they might call upon him.

The truth was that although DeMarco had a law degree, he’d never practiced law and he served only one person, John Fitzpatrick Mahoney, the current Speaker of the House.

John Mahoney was arguably the most corrupt politician to ever serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, but through a combination of luck and skill he’d never been indicted, much less incarcerated. Despite his flawed character—or maybe because of it—he was amazingly popular with his working-class constituents in Boston and had been a member of Congress for forty years. His critics quipped that you couldn’t buy Mahoney’s vote, but you could certainly rent it. And the list of Mahoney’s defects continued. He was an alcoholic. He lied frequently and shamelessly. He cheated on his wife, although incidents of adultery had become less frequent as he’d aged. He was vain, self-centered, and unpredictable—and could literally charm the pants off women and figuratively charm them off members of the press.

DeMarco had gone to work for Mahoney after college. DeMarco’s godmother—one of the many women Mahoney had slept with—­blackmailed Mahoney into giving DeMarco a job. Armed with his new law degree, DeMarco arrived in D.C. thinking he would become a member of Mahoney’s staff and be used to untangle knotty legal issues facing the legislature. This was not to be. Mahoney stuck him in a windowless box down in the bowels of the Capitol. In the beginning, DeMarco worked for another man to learn the tricks of his trade—the word tricks not a euphemism—and when his mentor retired by way of a heart attack, DeMarco sallied forth on his own. He became Mahoney’s bagman—the guy who collected the rent for Mahoney’s vote. He was also Mahoney’s off-the-books troubleshooter. In this capacity, Mahoney gave him jobs he didn’t want his legitimate staff to handle, jobs where DeMarco might have to commit acts that were not entirely legal. But he was not identified as a member of Mahoney’s staff nor was there any paperwork or organizational chart tying him to Mahoney in any way. And the reason for this was so that Mahoney could deny that he was responsible if DeMarco ever ran afoul of the law—which on several occasions he had, but like Mahoney, he’d never been caught. Well, he was once, but that was a complicated story.

DeMarco’s current assignment was to identify the person who had leaked something to CNN—something that had embarrassed Mahoney mightily. Mahoney wanted the leaker’s bleeding head on a platter and DeMarco had been ordered to collect it.

DeMarco was supposed to meet today with the person who’d most likely leaked the story. The objective was to see if she’d admit that she was the source. If she didn’t admit it, he would call a guy who could obtain the likely leaker’s phone records to see who she’d been ­calling—like maybe that skinny snake Anderson Cooper at CNN, the guy who broke the story. But today DeMarco didn’t care who had leaked the story or what Mahoney wanted. He had to find out what had happened to Shannon.

DeMarco walked into the Rayburn House Office Building and took the stairs to the second floor where Republican Congressman Wilbur Burns of Wyoming had his office. He was hoping to convince Burns to use his congressional clout to get more information from law enforcement in Wyoming regarding Shannon’s death. He was worried, though, that Burns might not be willing to meet with him, and mainly because of the way Mahoney had treated Burns in the past.

Only seven states have a single congressman, Wyoming being one of those states as it has a population of less than six hundred thousand people. Mahoney delighted in saying that Burns represented more cows than humans. Burns was also an easy target because he was a flamboyant character who often wore cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, and when he was campaigning he’d appear in ads riding a horse. In one of his past ads, Burns rides up on his horse, whips a Colt revolver out of a holster, and puts six bullets into an Osama bin Laden target—then turns to the camera and says: Wyoming needs a congressman who knows how to deal with them dang terrorists. So when Mahoney was asked to comment on something Burns had said one day, Mahoney’s response had been: Oh, you mean Yosemite Sam. Hell, his horse is smarter than he is.

DeMarco entered Burns’ small office. He was not a ranking member on any committee; hardly anyone in D.C. knew his name, and the size of his office reflected this. Sitting in a reception area that was barely big enough for her desk, was a plump, pleasant-looking woman with a curly gray perm. Cat-eye reading glasses hung from a lanyard around her neck. The plaque on her desk identified her as Executive Assistant, Ida Burns. She was the congressman’s wife.

DeMarco said, I’d like to speak to Congressman Burns about a woman who was killed in his district,—Burns’ district being the entire state of Wyoming. I was close to this person and I was hoping that he might be able to learn more than was reported in the papers about what happened to her.

Who are you talking about? Ida asked.

Shannon Doyle, the writer.

Oh, my God. You knew Shannon personally?

Yes.

I met her once when she did a book signing here in D.C., Ida said. I just loved her book and I loved her too. I thought, because of the book, she’d be all brooding and serious, maybe even a bit, oh, you know, other-worldly. But she wasn’t like that at all. She came across as this ordinary, fun-loving young woman. And she had a great sense of humor, which you’d never guess from her book. Like I said, I just loved her. When I heard on the news that she’d been killed I actually cried, and I told Wilbur that he needed to poke around and see what happened to her.

So, do you think he’ll talk to me? As I said, she was a friend.

Ida studied his face for a moment and said, I can see she was more than a friend. Wilbur’s not doing anything important right now, although he probably thinks he is. I’m sure he’ll see you.

DeMarco entered Burns’ office. It was a typical politician’s office with one wall devoted to photos of Burns posing with celebrities who probably didn’t know his name; there was a signed portrait of the Republican god, Ronald Reagan; in one corner was an American flag hanging limply on a pole stuck into a flag stand. His desk and the credenza behind his desk were piled with bills that were hundreds of pages long that Burns would vote on without ever reading.

Burns was at his desk, on the phone, looking out a window and his back was to DeMarco. He finished the call, saying, That’s great, Bob. I’ll meet you at the restaurant at one. He spun his chair around and started to smile—then stopped.

DeMarco couldn’t see Burns’ cowboy boots as they were hidden by his desk, but a white Stetson of the ten-gallon variety was prominently displayed, hanging on a coat rack. And DeMarco had to admit that Burns actually did look a bit like the cartoon character, Yosemite Sam: He was short, as plump as his wife, and had a shaggy brown mustache. The first words out of his mouth were: Hell, I know you. You work for that jackass, Mahoney.

For two decades, hardly anyone knew who DeMarco was, much less that he worked for John Mahoney. He was just one of about twenty thousand mostly anonymous people employed by the legislative branch of the U.S. government—but then he had the misfortune to be arrested for murdering an unpopular Republican congressman. He was actually framed for the crime and eventually proven innocent, but when it came to his relationship with Mahoney, the cat was out of the proverbial bag. DeMarco’s picture was plastered on the front page of the Washington Post, perp walking toward the courthouse in an orange jail jumpsuit. And clever reporters, assisted by leakers working for the FBI, learned that he had some vague connection to John Mahoney. He’d been seen frequently in Mahoney’s office and phone records tied him to Mahoney.

Mahoney, of course, vehemently denied that DeMarco, a man accused of murder, worked for him. He claimed that DeMarco was exactly what his civil service position description said he was: A freelance lawyer who worked for any member of the House who wished to use him. No one, however, believed Mahoney, a man who lied as often as he told the truth. The journalists all concluded, although without any actual evidence, that DeMarco was Mahoney’s fixer—the word fixer laden with implications of corruption and underhandedness. Nonetheless, Mahoney continued to deny that DeMarco was his guy, no matter what the papers said. And that’s where things currently stood: Nearly everyone in the Capitol knew who DeMarco was because the murder case had made him a celebrity, but both DeMarco and Mahoney maintained the fiction that Mahoney was not his boss. Wilbur Burns clearly wasn’t buying it.

But rather than deny who employed him, DeMarco said, Congressman, Mahoney didn’t send me. He doesn’t even know I’m here.

Horse shit, Burns said.

"It’s like I told your wife: I was a friend of Shannon Doyle’s and all I want is to know more about how she died. I figured, being who you are, you might be able to get more information out of the cops in Wyoming. The article in the Post only said that she was killed in a motel room in what appeared to be a robbery, but that’s all it said. I’d just like to know what happened and if the police have any idea who might have done it."

And what if the cops don’t know any more than what the papers said? Burns responded. Before DeMarco could answer the question, Burns said, Well, I know what Mahoney will do. He’ll piss all over the cops in Wyoming, just like he’s always pissing all over me, saying how they’re a bunch of yokels who can’t catch a killer.

Congressman, I’m telling you that Mahoney isn’t involved in this.

Horse shit, Burns said for a second time. This is just another one of that bastard’s dirty tricks. You get the hell on out of here.

DeMarco could see it was hopeless. The guy hated Mahoney so much that it didn’t matter what DeMarco said.

Well, thank you for your time, sir. DeMarco put one of his business cards on Burns’ desk and said, "If you change your mind or learn anything more about what happened, I’d appreciate you giving