by J. L. Brown
“I can’t let generations of my family’s hard work go to waste,” he said, standing. “You can find someone else to help the unemployed. Perhaps your new law will do the trick.”
He stepped around the table and walked to the foyer. Hoisting the travel bag over his shoulder, he grabbed the handle of the suitcase.
She waved at the bags. “Grayson, someone can carry those for you.”
He grabbed his newest fedora off the coat tree and perched it on his head. “As I said, I can handle my own business.”
Whitney caught the double entendre.
He opened the door and turned to her, his expression unreadable. “Even though I don’t agree with what you did, I love and support you, Madam President. But I must go.”
“Of course. You’re becoming an expert.”
“At what?”
“Leaving.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Seattle, Washington
The Ford Crown Victoria climbed a gigantic hill. Jade, sitting shotgun, hoped the traffic light would hold at green, for fear that they might roll backward. She breathed a sigh of relief as they passed under it, only then realizing she’d been rocking forward in her seat to help the car along.
At the top of Queen Anne Hill, a neighborhood north of downtown, the driver, a young agent from the Seattle FBI office named Brian Anderson, made a left on Galer Street, then a right on Fifth Avenue West. Parked cars lined both sides of the street, an inordinate number of them Subarus. Anderson drove slowly, periodically pulling over at an intersection, when a car headed toward them from the opposite direction. The agent finally found a parking spot around the corner from their destination.
Anderson, Jade, Max, Micah, and Dante exited the car and backtracked to a yellow two-story Craftsman house. They had staked out the address for a week, with no sighting of the object of their surveillance. The agents took turns watching the house, the off agents showering and sleeping at a hotel in Lower Queen Anne.
Dante had decided it was time to confront the person of interest.
On the porch, shoes of different sizes and styles—trainers, clogs, sneakers, loafers—were laid in a disorderly fashion just outside the front door. Two rocking chairs, in need of staining, faced the approaching sunset over the agents’ shoulders.
A woman of about forty answered the door. “May I help you?”
Dante made the introductions. The woman examined their credentials.
“Does Jacob Collins live here?” Dante asked.
The woman pointed straight up. “He rents out the attic. We converted it into an apartment.”
“We’re here to ask him a few questions,” he said. “Do you mind if we come in?”
He started to push past her to enter the house, but she didn’t budge.
The woman gestured to the porch. “You’re not very observant for an FBI agent.”
“Ma’am, what are you talking about?”
She pointed. “You mind taking off your shoes?”
“I do,” Dante said.
The woman looked at Jade, who nodded.
“Regulations,” Jade said.
The woman frowned as she stepped back to open the door wider. “He comes in through a separate entrance, but you can come in this way. He’s there now. I can hear him. Go up the stairs and turn left at the end of the hall. The last door on the left.”
The agents filed past her and down the hallway with its hundred-year-old pine floors.
“What kind of trouble is he in?” the woman said from behind them.
“Don’t know yet,” Dante said as he started to climb.
“He’s a person of interest in a criminal investigation,” Jade clarified.
“It was only a matter of time,” the homeowner said.
Jade stopped and turned. “Why do you say that?”
“Spends too much time up there alone, if you ask me. I’ve always wondered what he does up there. Friends never come over. He never goes out. Must be up to something.”
“He could be playing video games. Virtual reality. Something like that.” Jade thought about the killing sites: New York, Chicago, DC. “Does he travel?”
“Not much that I’m aware of. He works up there. Pays his rent on time and doesn’t bother us, so we don’t bother him.”
“We’ll need to talk to you as well.”
The woman slipped on a Patagonia vest. “I’ll be in my garden out back.”
At the end of the hall, they opened the door, not bothering to knock, and climbed the narrow stairs to the attic. Jade’s hand moved to the grip of her .40 Glock 23. She paused at the top. It opened to a living room with a green secondhand sofa behind a leaning, low metal coffee table. A thirty-six-inch TV rested on a simple stand. Against one wall, a small table served as a desk, with a desktop computer on it. The table’s surface was littered with empty cups, Red Bull cans, and candy wrappers. It seemed The God of Veritas loved Snickers.
The apartment reeked of marijuana.
Above the table was a window you could only peer out of if you were standing. A body of water and snowcapped mountains were visible in the distance. The wind whispered outside.
The low, slanted ceilings, an inverted V, prevented Jade from standing at her full height.
A skinny white man in his early to midtwenties, wearing a faded Occupy Seattle T-shirt and jeans, came out of a back room, barefoot, chewing on a candy bar.
“Who the hell are you?”
Dante hunched over, stepped forward, and introduced himself and the other agents.
“Let me see some ID.”
They flashed their badges. The man examined each badge, as if the agents were trying to access the San Francisco mint. When he finished, he still seemed unsatisfied.
“How did you get in?” he asked. “Don’t you need a warrant or something?”
“Your landlord let us in,” Dante said.
“She can do that?” When they didn’t respond, he crossed to his computer and locked the screen. Turning his back to it, he said, “Why are you here?”
“We want to ask you some questions,” Dante said, moving to the couch. “Take a seat.”
“I’ll stand, thank you.”
“Suit yourself.”
Jade and Max joined Dante on the sofa, while Anderson remained in front of the stairs. Micah grabbed a flimsy chair from the small kitchen table.
“What’s your full name?” Dante said.
“I don’t have to tell you that.”
“We’re here to talk to you,” Jade said. “Or would you rather accompany us downtown to the FBI office and make this official?”
The man stared into Jade’s eyes for less than a second before he decided to take the easier path. “Jacob Collins.”
“Middle name?” Dante asked.
“Michael.”
Pat had already determined his real name. They were testing him.
“Tell us about ‘The God of Veritas,’” Dante said.
“How did you find me? My personal information on Twitter is private.”
“Nothing is private,” Dante said. “I’m waiting.”
“I tweet. So what?”
“You tweet a lot.”
Dante had obtained a search warrant for all of The God of Veritas’s tweets, direct messages, photos, videos, and notifications. Jade had reviewed them on the plane ride west.
The young man shrugged. “Again, so what?”
“Are you the Shakespeare Killer?” asked Jade.
“What?” Collins’s eyes bulged. He turned. A tremor was starting to develop in his hand as he pulled out the chair from the table behind him and sat. “Is that why you’re here?”
“Answer the question,” Dante said.
“Of course not.”
“Then why is it,” Jade said, “that every time you tweet about someone—especially someone wealthy—they end up dead?”
Sweat popped up on his pale forehead, despite the coolness of the room. “It’s… it’s a coincidence.”
The curls of his medium-length brown hair began to shake. “That doesn’t mean they’re not coincidences. Besides, I tweet about a lot of people.”
“I hope no one else you tweet about turns up dead,” Dante said.
By now, Collins’s eyes were ready to burst out of their sockets. “Do I need a lawyer?”
“Do you?” Dante asked.
His mouth opened and closed like a fish. “I don’t think so. I didn’t do anything. I just tweet, man.”
“If you answer our questions truthfully,” Jade said in a soothing tone, “you shouldn’t need one.”
He shot her a grateful look. “Okay.”
“Where were you,” Dante said, checking his notebook, “on the nights of January 3, January 17, and February 8 of this year?”
“I was here.”
“Shouldn’t you check a calendar?”
“I don’t go anywhere, man. Honest. I’m an online activist. I spend most of my life online.”
“What do you do,” Jade asked, “for work?”
“I write a blog. Sell ads on my site. Generate affiliate income.”
Dante took in the small apartment. “That’s enough to make a living?”
“I get by.”
“Seattle’s an expensive place to live,” Jade said. She knew this from the time she’d spent in Seattle last year.
Collins said, “This is getting by.”
“Your tweets,” Max said, “are aggressive. Almost threatening.”
“Not to me. I write about stuff. Issues. Injustices. Try to keep our public leaders honest. But I don’t do anything. I encourage other people to act.”
“Like a consultant,” Jade said helpfully. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Max’s lips twitch.
“What?” said Collins.
“What about your tweets about President Fairchild?” Jade asked.
The vitriol of his tweets had intensified over the last few months.
“She’s a conservative,” he said.
“Not a moderate?”
“There’s no such thing. Today you must pick a side. It’s us versus them. You can’t compromise with the enemy.”
She leaned forward, interested. “You see this as a war?”
“Of course it’s a war. Only one side can win. The winner decides the course of this country for the next forty years. The loser risks oblivion.”
“I thought this was the United States.”
“You haven’t been paying attention then,” he said, his tone disdainful. “This nation is divided. More so now than at any time since the Civil War.” He shook his head. “We use facts that only support our entrenched positions. Watch different news programs. Read different books. Recognize different histories. Live among our own kind. Unofficially, some states have already seceded. There are two Americas. We’ll never be united again.”
“If that’s true,” Jade said, “then what’s the point?”
“What’s the point of what?”
“Your tweets. Being an activist.”
He blinked. After a moment, he said in a lame voice, “I still have to try. Even if it’s a lost cause.”
“How does Fairchild fit into all this?”
“She’s a dinosaur. Like the rest of the old guard who’ve been in office forever. They need to go away and die.”
As the other occupants in the room stiffened, Jacob Michael Collins realized he had just threatened the life of the president of the United States and members of other branches of the federal government while in a room full of federal agents.
He held up his hands. “Whoa! Everyone chill! It was a figure of speech.” He dropped his hands. “What I meant was, she doesn’t represent the progressivism of our party. Our generation.”
Jade frowned. “That doesn’t sound like the Fairchild I know.”
This stopped Collins short. “You know her?”
“Yes, I do.”
He seemed stumped.
Dante slid off the sofa. “We need to check out your apartment.”
Max moved to the bedroom. Micah covered the kitchen. Dante checked out the bathroom. Jade remained seated on the sofa, studying the books stacked on the floor against the wall.
Collins jumped at the sudden activity.
“We need to take your computer,” Jade said.
The God of Veritas backed up until his butt was on the table, his arms wide as if he were a basketball defender, blocking them from taking it. “You can’t.”
“We’ll obtain a court order,” Jade said.
Collins’s shoulders slumped.
Jade signaled Anderson. With donned gloves, he picked up the computer and headed toward the stairs.
“What am I going to do until you return it?”
She thought for a moment. “Something?”
Collins looked at her, not understanding.
Jade stood, hitting her head on the ceiling.
That’s what she got for being a smart-ass.
Chapter Forty-Three
The White House, Washington, DC
Leaning against the back of the loveseat, Whitney puffed on a Cohiba cigar as she stared out the window at the Washington Monument. On the table was a glass of Pavillon Blanc du Château Margaux, the bottle next to it nearly empty.
After Grayson left, she’d gone to the Oval Library and perused her first editions: Louisa May Alcott, Maya Angelou, Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Toni Morrison, Carson McCullers, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf, among many others. She had kept Alcott’s Little Women, a gift from Landon Phillips, despite everything he’d done. It wasn’t the book’s fault. It was one of her favorite stories growing up—Jo March, an early exposure to female independence. Plus, the book was in mint condition.
She had idled in the library, inhaling the calming, musty aroma. She had brought a few of the books back to the West Sitting Hall, but tonight, no matter which book she picked up, she couldn’t concentrate on the words.
Whitney had known Grayson would be upset over the legislation. They’d discussed it beforehand, but he’d seemed nonplussed, perhaps thinking it wouldn’t pass.
She’d never thought he would leave over it.
His company treated its employees fairly. He’d told her so many times. But not every employer acted like Fairchild Industries. Some required regulation to do the right thing. Didn’t he believe every American worker deserved a living wage? He would respond that there was a better way. To let the free market work.
He didn’t even need to be present for them to engage in this age-old argument.
The front door of the Residence burst open.
Hurriedly putting out the cigar in the ashtray, Whitney slipped both under the sofa cushion.
“Hey, Mom!”
Whitney rose. “Emma!”
Her daughter ran toward her but pulled up short.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you crying?”
“No,” Whitney said, rubbing imaginary sleep out of her eyes. “Long day.”
She hugged Emma but stopped short herself.
Her daughter hadn’t come alone.
“Hello,” Whitney said to Emma’s guest.
Skipping back to her friend, Emma pulled her forward.
“Surprise, Mom! This is Megan. My roommate.”
There was trepidation on Emma’s face. This young woman wasn’t the same roommate that Whitney had met at the beginning of the school year, when she and Grayson had dropped Emma off. She shook Megan’s hand.
“Hello, Megan.”
“Madam President.”
“I begged Josh to keep Megan’s background check a secret,” Emma explained, noticing the expression on Whitney’s face. “Don’t get him in trouble, Mother.”
“We can talk about that later. Welcome, Megan. Please,” Whitney said, gesturing toward the loveseat. As Whitney settled into one of the matching chairs, the two you
ng women sat on the sofa, close enough that their bodies were almost touching.
Emma’s roommate was dressed in a black T-shirt, green army jacket, scruffy jeans, and Birkenstocks, despite the cold weather. Her hair was the same length and style as Emma’s. But where Emma’s hair was light-brown with a tint of auburn, like Whitney’s, Megan’s hair was dyed black.
Turning to Emma, Whitney said, “This… is a surprise.”
“We should’ve called,” Emma said, missing the point, “but we were here for the Black Lives Still Matter march, and I wasn’t sure we’d have time to visit.” She gazed around the room. “Where’s Dad?”
Whitney shifted her gaze to Megan. “Would you care for something to drink, Megan?”
The young woman’s features were strong and feminine, her face unlined and without makeup. She shook her head. “I’m fine, ma’am.”
Emma touched Megan’s hand. “Are you sure? Don’t be shy. She doesn’t bite. Except when I bring home bad grades…”
Her hand remained on Megan’s.
“Since I presume you’re the same age as Emma, and not old enough to drink legally, how about some water? Or juice?”
“Actually,” Megan said, “I’m old enough.”
Whitney wondered how old she was.
“Do you have any cold-brewed coffee?” Megan asked. “In a can?”
“I’m sure we can scrounge one up.” Whitney looked at Emma.
“The same.”
“When did you—”
She refrained from completing her inquiry into when Emma had started drinking cold-brewed coffee, or any coffee for that matter, and instead picked up the phone to call the ground-floor kitchen.
“Mom, where’s Dad?” Emma asked again.
“He returned to Clayton,” Whitney said, tucking her legs beneath her. “Something to do with the business.”
“Darn,” Emma said. “I wanted him to meet Megan.”
This must be serious.
“When did you become roommates?” Whitney asked. “I thought you were rooming with—”
Emma shifted on the sofa. “It didn’t work out.”
“I see.”
After a knock on the door, a butler entered, setting a tray with two glasses of ice and two cans on the table in front of the young women.
