Redemption

By Joe Bondi Beach

The Senate minority leader, along with his lover, are found shot to death. Under pressure, a high school boy attempts to blackmail his sometime girlfriend, the president's older daughter, with a sexually explicit video, but he is killed before he can be questioned.

It falls to a detective with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC to find the killer or killers and to extricate the president's daughter from the looming scandal, even as she struggles to control her desire for a key witness.

The minority leader's wife, who has long shared her husband's opinions on race and his opposition to the president in office, finds her own views changing. Ignoring her own safety to protect the daughter of a president whose policies she despises brings this jaded Washington operator a moment of stunning clarity.

This work contains explicit sex and violence and coarse language. It is intended for mature adults only. All characters in this work are eighteen years of age or older.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781312953871

Book preview

Redemption

REDEMPTION

Joe Bondi Beach

Also by Joe Bondi Beach

California Central Valley Summer Heat

Swimming with Kate

Sarah’s Honeymoon

Cheerleaders in Paradise

A New Life for Julie

Chloe

A Picnic with April

Julie

Emily

Emily and Daniel

Spring Break in Napa

Morning at the Baths

Julie’s Spring

Goddess

Copyright

Redemption

---

First Edition (ePub)

Copyright © 2016 by Joe Bondi Beach

Except for the lower cover image, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

ISBN: 978-1-312-95387-1

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Clearing Rain Press

San Francisco, California

[e-mail]

Acknowledgements

The upper cover image, Fiancée (2009), is a transformation of a photograph by Britlad. The lower image is a detail from The White House—Washington, DC (2012) by Glyn Lowe, and is used according to license.

Use of these images does not represent any endorsement of this story or the author by the artists. The upper cover image does not represent any of the characters in this story.

A Note to the Reader

Except where indicated otherwise, this story takes place in Washington, DC. Some of the characters are in politics, and thus they might be mistaken for real people. Even when they appear to occupy real political offices or government positions, however, they aren’t real people. They are products of the author’s imagination. They are fiction.

~ Joe Bondi Beach

Redemption

Ooh wee, ride me high

Tomorrow's the day, my man's gonna come

— Joan Baez,

from You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere, by Bob Dylan

1

The Minority Leader Is Dead

Wednesday afternoon

The Senate minority leader was dead. No two ways about it.

They really got him, said the tall cop.

The slim cop wearing an old sweatshirt with Mountain Rescue SAR on the back stood silently. Her eyes made a slow circuit of the room.

Over there. She pointed to a nick in the frame of the door. Looks like he got one shot off.

The tall cop bent close to the frame.

But where’s the slug?

The Mountain Rescue cop slipped past him and down to the end of the hall. She touched the far doorframe where there was a chunk torn from the jamb, and turned to look back at the bedroom doorway and the tall cop.

Here.

She stretched and scratched absently. The tall cop watched, and she flushed when she realized he was looking where she was scratching.

Knock it off, Larry.

What? I wasn’t doing anything.

No? Want me to share with Louise?

The tall cop laughed.

Oh, I think she might enjoy it, Suzanne.

Suzanne felt a little tingle when she heard that. Louise. Blonde hair. A compact package. A hugger. She thought for a second about the times when she and Steve and Louise and Larry had gone out drinking and how Louise’s smiles and body language and hands seemed to invite something more, Suzanne smiled. Oh, yes, Louise might just like sharing very much. Suzanne looked straight at Larry and deliberately scratched under her other breast. Larry squirmed.

Go right ahead and tell her, Larry.

She snorted.

But in the meantime, what do we do with the late Senate minority leader?

Their assignment that afternoon had been an informal one, hence her well-worn sweatshirt and his equally casual dress, but the two detectives were closest when the radio call reporting something wrong at the minority leader’s house had come in.

Her question to Larry was rhetorical. The dinner reservation protocol existed precisely for this. Suzanne punched a key on her cell phone, thinking this was going to be a nightmare. On the other hand, there was the dead woman in bed with the late minority leader to think about. She smiled to herself and canceled the call.

What is it, Suzanne?

Larry was looking her in the eye for once.

The girl, Larry?

The girl was forty-five years old, at least. The minority leader liked them seasoned.

What do we do about her?

What do you mean, ‘do about her,’ Larry?

Do we make a dinner reservation for her, or for them?

Suzanne let her eyebrows rise. Are you kidding?

Larry looked down at the floor and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

No. I mean, what—?

Suzanne broke in. Sometimes Larry could be really obtuse. "We call the Post, Larry."

She laughed. We call them first, too. She punched another key on her phone.

Deidre? Suzanne.

Larry could hear indistinct but rapid talk.

Yeah. The minority leader.

Suzanne looked at Larry.

Uh huh. That’s who I mean, Deidre. None other.

Another pause.

There’s a bonus, too.

More gabbling. Suzanne laughed.

No such luck, sweetie. As far as I know his wife is safe, probably off with you-know-who. No, I mean forty-something, Asian, a little on the heavy side, a wrinkle here and there.

Chatter.

The best part, Deidre? A little surprise on her boobs and belly. Suzanne laughed. You’ve got fifteen minutes, kiddo. Bring a photographer. After that, it’s open season.

She hung up. Turned to the tall cop.

That’s how it’s done, Larry.

†

"OK, can we