“Uh-huh. So, this is the way it’s going to work… you can either tell us where to find him so we can go ask our questions quietly and discreetly,” Astra says as she steps closer to the receptionist’s desk. “Or we can go through the office making as big a scene as possible right before we put him in cuffs and dog walk him out of the office. Which do you think he’d prefer?”
The woman recoils, looking like she’s never been spoken to that way before. Her perfectly glossed lips turn down, and she clears her throat as a sour look crosses her face. She stabs the air to her right with a well-manicured nail.
“Go down that hall. You’ll take the first right, then left,” she huffs. “Mr. Richter’s door is the third on the left.”
“Thank you,” Astra says.
Doing my best to suppress my amusement, I turn and follow Astra down the hall. We take the first right then left and find ourselves at the open doorway of Archibald Richter’s large, plush, extremely comfortable-looking corner office. Just across from his door is a bullpen filled with assistants and staffers who glance up at us, then look away with disinterest. Like the rest of the Stallworth Group’s offices that we’ve seen, Richter’s suite is modern in design. It’s streamlined and furnished with a sitting area to our right and a large table-style desk in front of three large, plate-glass windows that overlook the bustling street outside.
Richter’s diplomas and pictures of him with various political dignitaries of all ideological stripes cover his walls. Judging by the who’s who of politicians in his photos, he seems well-connected and apparently doesn’t let political party color his business one way or the other. Richter himself is at a standing desk tucked into the corner on our left, and when we come through the door, his face tightens, but he looks like he’s been expecting us. The receptionist obviously called ahead to announce us. That was thoughtful of her.
“Mr. Richter,” I say as we flash him our badges. “Unit Chief Wilder and SSA Russo.”
“I really don’t have a lot of time, Agents. This is going to have to wait since we all know you don’t have anything you can use to—what was that charming phrase again?—oh, that’s right, dog walk me out of the building,” he says.
Richter is about my height and has a stocky frame. His chestnut brown hair is neatly styled and parted on the right, his eyes are a similar color, and his round face is almost boyish. He doesn’t look like a fifty-five-year-old man. In a charcoal gray, three-piece Armani suit with a violet paisley tie and matching pocket square, Richter is dressed impeccably. He looks the part of a DC power broker. The moment I lay eyes on the man, though, I know he’s not our guy. His body type is all wrong. He looks nothing like the smiley-face man in the surveillance video of the abduction. But we have to play this out anyway.
“Actually, we can dog walk you out of here right now if we want to,” Astra says.
“I don’t have time for this, ladies. Please schedule an appropriate time for us to talk,” he replies. “I’ll make sure to have my lawyer present.”
“It’s Agents,” Astra says coldly, then raises her voice and adds, “and we’ll go. Before we do, though, I just want to confirm that you are user SweetPoppa69 on the website The Sugar Shack? You know, that website where older, often married men, look for young girls to have a sexual and financially beneficial relationship with? That’s you, right? SweetPoppa69?”
Richter’s face drains of color; he rushes by us and slams the door shut, then turns to us with his cheeks flushed and an expression of terror on his face. That fear quickly ebbs, though, and is replaced by a look of barely controlled rage.
“This is outrageous,” he seethes through gritted teeth. “This is my place of work.”
“Would you rather have had this conversation at your home? In front of your wife?” I ask.
Avoiding eye contact with us, Richter goes to his larger main desk and drops heavily into the chair behind it. He’s rattled and looks like he’s deciding what his next move is going to be. He’d obviously rather not talk to us at all but seems to know we’ve got him boxed in, and that if he calls his lawyer, this is all going to go so much worse for him. Astra and I take the pair of seats in front of his desk and give him a minute to gather himself.
As he sits there in silence, his eyes dart left and right, and I notice he’s trembling slightly. He looks like a rat caught in a trap who’s trying to decide whether to give up and die or gnaw off his own arm, giving himself a chance to escape. It takes almost two full minutes for reality to set in on Richter though. He slumps back in his chair, and his expression changes from terrified but still defiant to one of defeat. Richter scrubs his face with his hands, then sits forward.
“There is nothing inherently illegal about being part of that club,” he says. “I just don’t want this getting back to my wife.”
“That’s understandable,” Astra says. “In your place, I wouldn’t want my wife finding out that I’m paying for sex with a girl younger than my daughter either.”
“That’s not what it’s about,” he objects.
“No? Then what’s it about?”
“It’s about connection,” he argues. “Listen, my wife and I have been married a long time, and somewhere along the way, that connection we had has kind of… faded. Life has been… muted. Dull. I’m just looking for a little excitement in my life again. I think if I can start to feel alive, then maybe I can breathe some new life back into my marriage.”
“Wow. That is quite the rationale,” Astra says. “You almost sound like you believe it.”
“It’s the truth!” he snaps.
“So, does being with an underage girl make you feel alive, Mr. Richter?” I ask.
He turns to me so quickly, I’m half-afraid he’s going to give himself whiplash. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Shelby Kittridge,” I say. “That’s the girl you met at the Blue Velvet for one of these sugar baby mixers a couple of weeks ago, right?”
“And before you deny it, we have you on video with her,” Astra tells him.
“I wasn’t going to lie about it,” he answers bitterly. “Shelby is an extraordinary young woman. She’s passionate, intelligent, creative, and articulate. She’s—”
“Sixteen,” I cut him off.
“What?”
“She’s a sixteen-year-old girl,” I say.
He recoils like I just slapped him, and his face blanches. “No. That’s… no. She’s twenty. She never would have been allowed into the mixer if she were underage.”
“You can’t be so naïve that you don’t know fake IDs exist,” Astra says.
He shakes his head, trying to reject reality. “No. That’s wrong. There is no way that young woman is sixteen years old. We bonded over literature and classical music. She’s—”
“She’s still sixteen,” I say.
“And the fact that you had sex with her makes you guilty of statutory rape,” Astra adds.
“What? No! We never had sex,” he argues. “I told you—this isn’t about sex—for either of us. It’s about wanting to connect to another human being and feel that spark of life again.”
“So, you expect us to believe you left the club with a very attractive, young girl, whom you bonded with, and you two didn’t have sex?” Astra asks incredulously.
“That’s exactly what you should believe because it didn’t happen.”
“Isn’t that what these sugar baby things are all about? Financially beneficial relationships in exchange for sex on demand?” Astra asks.
“To some people, sure. But I keep telling you that’s not what this is about for me,” he says. “Maybe we would have slept together, eventually. But we didn’t that night we met.”
“Okay, so what did you two do when you left the Blue Velvet? And remember, we have you two leaving together on video,” I ask.
“We went to the Gilson Theater,” he says. “They have chamber music performances on Friday nights, and a friend was able to get us in.”
“So, if we speak to your friend at the Gilson theater, they’ll confirm that?” I ask.
He nods. “Yes.”
Richter quickly scrawls down a name on a sheet of paper and slides it across the desk to us. Astra picks it up and reads the name before folding the page and tucking it away.
“Mr. Richter, when was the last time you spoke with Shelby?” I ask.
“A few days after the mixer,” he replies. “We were making plans to see each other, but I haven’t heard from her since. I figured she just ghosted me.”
“Did that upset you?” Astra asks.
