Capitol Murder by Phillip Margolin Page B

thirty years old, a citizen of the United States for at least the past nine years, and an inhabitant at the time of the election of the state one wishes to represent.
    The halls of the Dirksen Building were usually filled with casually dressed vacationers and groups of self-important men and women clothed in power suits on a mission to get this or that done. The constant din was a sharp contrast to the quiet in the halls of the United States Supreme Court, where Brad had just finished a year as a law clerk. At the Court, silence was the norm, visitors were few, and lobbyists were strictly prohibited.
    An American flag and the Oregon State flag stood on either side of the main door to Senator Carson’s suite of offices on the second floor of the Dirksen Building. Visitors entered a reception area where a young man and a young woman greeted them when they were not dealing with a constant flood of telephone calls. When the Senate was in session, the waiting room was usually filled with vacationing Oregonians who wanted to say hello to the man they had helped to elect and with constituents and lobbyists who wanted something from him.
    When a senator moved in, the office was deconstructed, then rearranged for the senator’s needs. Walls went up to create offices of various sizes for the staff. A door in the reception area opened into a narrow, crowded corridor that ended at Senator Carson’s large corner office. A cubicle occupied by one of the legislative correspondents, who answered the letters the senator received every day, formed a barrier between the corridor and Brad’s office.
    The offices for legislative assistants were small but looked different, depending on the occupant. All were furnished with bookshelves, gray metal filing cabinets, and desks, but some of the spaces were neat and well organized, while chaos reigned in others. Brad’s office was in between these extremes. His desk was neat, but he was starting to use the floor as extra filing space, and it would not be long before it resembled an obstacle course.
    Much of the Senate’s important work begins in committees, which review legislation and oversee the executive branch. One of Brad’s jobs was to help Senator Carson prepare witnesses who were going to testify in front of one of the committees on which he sat. The testimony of these witnesses was received in writing the night before they were going to testify but was embargoed to the press. Brad was preparing a list of questions to ask a witness who was going to testify in favor of an immigration bill the Judiciary Committee was considering when the senator sent for him.
    Senator Carson had hired an interior decorator, and his office now had a regal look. A credenza filled with books on various subjects on which the senator had to be educated stood under a window with a view of Union Station. A set of chairs with polished wood arms and burgundy upholstery sat along a wall decorated with photographs, framed newspaper pages, and awards that highlighted important events in the senator’s business and political careers. Across the way, a long, comfortable sofa sat kitty-corner to a second, smaller sofa and opposite two high-backed armchairs. A coffee table holding two coffee-table books with photos of Oregon’s spectacular scenery stood between the large sofa and the chairs.
    A recess with a flat-screen monitor and a computer keyboard occupied another wall. Senator Carson sat in front of the recess behind a large wood desk and listened while Brad briefed him on the witnesses who would testify about the immigration bill. They had been talking for twenty minutes when the senator’s secretary buzzed to tell him that Senator Elizabeth Rivera of New Mexico, the chairperson of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, was holding on line 3.
    Jack Carson was a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, which oversees the United States intelligence community, including the Office of the Director of