by Bobby Nash
The patrol officer smiled at that. He understood the rotten hours all too well. The officer pointed off to an area at the edge of the road. “My guess is he’s down the hill over there. That’s where most of the team’s been hovering.”
“Thanks,” Jacks said as she turned to leave. “Hey,” she called over her shoulder, pointing to the crowd of ‘suits’ pow-wowing just inside the yellow crime scene tape. “Who are all these people?”
The patrol officer scratched his head. “Feebies. Uh, I mean, Feds, ma’am. Some of them were here before we were. The officer in charge said they could stay, but only here at the perimeter. I don’t think they took it very well, especially when he called them all spooks.”
“Probably not,” Jacks said with a smile, knowing that her partner must have enjoyed pulling rank on the gawkers. “Do me a favor and remind them of the perimeter, huh? Some seem to be straying from the kennel.”
“Of course, Detective,” the officer said, returning her smile. Definitely no love lost between the FBI and the D.C. Metro.
“I’ll let you get back to it then, “Jacks said, walking over to the edge of the road and looking down at the mangled car sitting face first into the drainage ditch. A crane wench was being lowered toward the cars so they could both be hauled out and taken to the police impound lot for further examination. The crane operator gave Jacks a small salute as she passed. They were casual acquaintances, having met at more than one crime scene where the crane was required. Jacks saluted back and flashed the man her pearly whites as she passed. For the life of me, I can never remember his name.
Just past the area beyond the car stood her partner and a few of the D.C. Metro Crime Scene Techs. Beyond that was a smoldering car of indeterminate make and model, at least from her vantage point. The car was singed black from a recently extinguished fire and heavily crumpled from the impact. Detective Walker seemed to have things under control.
“What’s up, Kimosabe?” she shouted down to him, not bothering to make her way down the muddy hill.
“Jacks!” Melvin tossed a clipped wave. “Stay there. I’m coming up.”
“Oh-kay.” She backed away from the edge, giving the crane a wide berth. While she waited on her partner, Jacks walked the edge of the blacktop, noticing the damaged gravel where the cars must have gone off the road. “Point of impact,” she muttered.
“Hey, partner,” Melvin huffed as he navigated the incline, moving a lot slower than she remembered. “Welcome to our party.” It was at this point that she noticed he was using the cane again. It had been a couple of weeks since she had last seen him with it.
“Not like I was doing anything important. You know, like sleeping.” She followed his lead back toward the edge with the mangled gravel. “Looks like a pretty nasty accident, there, Mel. Last time I checked, we handled homicide cases, not traffic accidents. It looks like these two cars had a little tangle in the road over there,” she pointed to the skid marks dotting the paved surface, using her hands to demonstrate the accident. “Lost control and over the edge the went.” She mimicked an explosion with her hands. “Ka-Boom! Case closed.”
Her partner watched her miming ability without comment.
“Or am I wrong?”
“Funny, that was what I said at first too.” He waggled a finger for her to come closer. “Until we got a good look at the cars and drivers.”
“By the way, good work keeping the Feds at bay, partner. I imagine you’re on somebody’s shit list now.”
“Maybe they’ll put my name right next to yours.”
“You’ve got a lot more people to piss off before that’ll happen,” she only half joked. “By the way, you okay?” she inquired, pointing at the offensive cane, an object she knew he loathed.
“It takes a bit to get going after I’ve been in bed. Damned leg stiffens up when I sleep.” He tapped the uncooperative appendage for good measure. “Better safe than sorry seemed prudent.”
He shrugged.
“As long as you’re all right.”
“I’m good, Jacks.” His expression pleaded for her to drop it. “Want to take a peek?”
“Sure. So, what have you got?”
Once she was standing beside him at the top of the incline, Detective Walker pointed to the crumpled car below with the cane. “See that car right there?”
“Yeah.”
“A ’99 Oldsmobile Cutlass.”
“Nice car.”
“Yeah. My Mom used to drive one before she traded it in on that tank she drives these days. Anyway, the driver has a bullet hole in the side of his head, .45 caliber from our initial examination, but it’s tough to tell from the fire damage so the M.E. wants to be sure before she makes it official.”
“Damn.”
“I know,” Mel said. “I’ve got the assistant M.E. moving the bodies over to Doc Martin’s office for a rush evaluation. The captain’s pulling a few strings to help speed up the process. We’ll know more in the morning.”
“I bet the doc loves that. You know how she hates it when we interrupt her social life.”
“What’s a social life?” Mel joked.
“Something neither you or I can afford, my friend. So, a .45 to the head, huh? I assume we’re not talking road rage.”
“Doubtful, but you never know. Anything’s possible, I suppose,” Mel shrugged. “But wait,” he held up a finger as he built up to a major development. “Wait, it gets better.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask, Mel.”
“Guess who the driver works for?”
“You mentioned he was an analyst. Did he work for the same group as our first vic?”
“Nope,” Melvin smiled. “Well, not exactly.”
She shrugged. “Uh, okay, do I get a hint?”
“Sure,” Melvin said as he turned and motioned toward the throng Jacks had just pushed her way through. “See those guys over there?”
“Yeah.”
“He worked for them. Our victim is CIA.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Jacks said, clearly surprised. “Way to bury the lead, partner. Fuck! I knew we were in the heart of Central Intelligence Land, but I wasn’t expecting the vic to actually be a Fed. Are they taking the case away from us?”
“Not yet.”
“What are they waiting for?”
“My guess is they’ll work their own investigation and impede the shit out of ours.”
He smiled.
“That’s just a guess though,” he added sarcastically.
“Jesus, a Fed. Not good.”
“There's blood in the water, Jacks, and the vultures are circling.”
Jacks looked out at the anxious crowd of suits anxiously milling around the perimeter.
“I’m surprised they haven’t claimed jurisdiction and bullied their way in here yet.”
“Frankly, so am I. I expected them to take over the scene before you got here, but so far there’s not been so much as a ripple of a turf war.”
“Yet,” he added.
“That just means when the shit does hit the fan it’s going to hit hard.”
“Better break out your umbrella, kiddo,” Mel said.
“Oh. This can’t end well,” Jacks said.
fourteen
Washington DC
Sunday
William James Montgomery was tired.
Being the President of the United States of America was no easy task. Not that he had sought out the job because he thought it would be a cakewalk. He was an idealist, not naive. There were meetings on top of meetings, meetings to discuss other meetings, briefings, press conferences, requests for interviews, more briefings, reports to read, reports to sign, reports to sign about reports he’d already read and signed, laws to introduce, laws to veto, foreign dignitaries to entertain, hands to shake, letters to write, phone calls to return, and even more briefings, not to mention the numerous other things that occupied his every waking moment. He was on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five
days a year for four years, eight if he did his job well enough to be reelected.
He was starting to feel his Presidency was akin to a prison sentence. No wonder they use the word ‘term’ to describe it, his predecessor joked when they talked briefly before he took office.
His one little escape was watching his home team, the Atlanta Braves, play. Unfortunately, he could only catch them on TV. Who has time to go to a baseball game? Except in the midst of the direst of emergencies, he had a standing rule that he was not to be disturbed during his team’s televised games.
Still, he had them DVR’ed, just in case.
The second President to be elected from the state of Georgia, William Montgomery was well liked and respected by his constituents. Hell, even the late-night talk show hosts didn’t joke about him nearly as much as they had his predecessors. Despite what his advisors told him, he still wasn’t sure if that was actually a good thing or not.
As per usual, the President was awake and on-the-go early, or “up with the chickens”, as he liked to say in his thickest southern brogue. The President had become known for his down-home sayings, which he referred to as “horse sense” several times during his campaign. These days he peppered them in sporadically during his various speeches and briefings. He’d been told that the American People liked them.
On most mornings the Commander in Chief went for either a walk or a jog, but as the temperature began to drop with winter’s approach, his jogging trips had lessened. It had been a week since the last time he had gone for a run. His doctor advised him to start using the treadmill, but he had resisted because he hated the damned thing. Walking on the treadmill felt unnatural and made his lower back ache.
“How are we doing this morning, Jonesy,” Montgomery asked the perpetually stone-faced Secret Service Agent Ralph Jones who worked the morning shift Sunday through Thursday.
“Wonderful, Mr. President. How are you this fine morning?”
“Glad to be alive, son,” he said, clapping the thirty-nine year old agent on the shoulder. It had become a tradition with the two men. Every day the President asked him the same question and every time, Ralph Jones gave him the same answer.
On the one hand, it made the laid-back President more comfortable to speak to the agents instead of pretending they were just part of the furniture as some of the other Presidents had done in the past. On the other, it was gratifying that the most powerful man in the world knew his name. Jones liked his Commander in Chief. In the time he had known him, President Montgomery had been nothing but cordial and pleasant. He treated everyone on staff with a greater respect than others that had occupied the office before him and Jones appreciated that about the man.
“I guess the night shift earned their money then, sir,” he replied with his traditional answer.
“We’ll have to give those folks a raise then, eh, Jonesy?”
“Yes, sir.”
They laughed as Agent Jones fell into step just behind the Commander in Chief. “To your office, Mr. President or are you in the mood for a jog?”
“A little too cold for a jog this morning.”
He paused and thought about it for a second.
“Don’t tell the press.”
Agent Jones chuckled, relieved not to have to shadow his boss out into the chilly morning air.
“It’ll be our secret, Mr. President.”
###
President Montgomery settled behind his desk in the Oval Office.
He leaned back in the plush desk chair with a piping hot cup of black coffee and watched the sun start to peak its way out from beyond the horizon. He never tired of the view from his office and tried to watch the sun come up as often as possible because he knew that he would only have this particular view for a short time and he wanted to make use of it while he could.
It was still hard to believe that he was actually here. He was the President of the United States of America. It was even harder to believe he was already into his second year. It seemed like only yesterday that he had been sworn in with his wife standing by his side as he recited his oath to serve the office of the President. It was a day that he would never forget.
Montgomery’s tenure to date had been pretty uneventful compared to some of his predecessors. The Middle East was still a hotbed of political intrigue and threatened to boil out of control at a moment’s notice, but nothing had happened in the region of late that actually required the United States’ direct involvement. The past few weeks had been spent looking into a terrorist camp in Israel, renewing ties with the Russian Premier after a few years of silence between the respective countries, and hosting a dinner reception for the British Prime Minister who would be visiting this week.
Maybe we can even squeeze in a few rounds of golf while he’s in town, he hoped. On his last visit he and the Prime Minister had spent a very relaxing afternoon on the greens enjoying themselves. They managed to go all eighteen holes without talking business. It turned out that they had a lot in common and friendly conversation on topics not related to politics helped strengthen their relationship. That made talking business later somewhat easier. He wished all of his political hurdles could be solved on the golf course.
Then there was a potentially inflammatory situation developing in Korea that he had his people keeping close watch on just in case.
Just another week on the job for the leader of the free world.
There was a gentle knock at the door.
“Enter,” he said as his aide, Thomas Gibbs, stepped in to remind him of an early morning appointment. “Are they here yet?” the President asked. “Or do I have time to get a little breakfast and the Sunday paper first?”
“The Secretary of Defense and his guests have arrived, sir. Would you like me to have them wait?”
“That won’t be necessary, Tommy,” the President said with a toothy, almost childlike smile as he folded the newspaper closed. “If we get behind, I’ll never get my schedule back on track. Send them in and have someone bring me up some more coffee and some of those pastries Mrs. Nellis makes that I like. She knows which ones I mean.”
“Yes, sir.”
The aide started to leave when the President snapped his fingers as if a flash of insight had struck. “Oh, and Tommy?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Bring enough for the group if it isn’t too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all, Mr. President.”
“My mother always told me it was impolite to eat in front of guests, you know.”
“Yes, sir.”
Two minutes later, Secretary of Defense, Matthew Conrad and his party entered the Oval Office. Handshakes were exchanged as Conrad introduced Dr. Harrison Fairchild, Dr. Perry Leeke, and Deputy Director James McHenry of the Secret Service.
The inclusion of the Secret Service Agent told President Montgomery that this was not going to be a pleasant meeting. As President, Montgomery understood the need for men like Agent McHenry, but sometimes he felt smothered by them. They reminded him of clucking mother hens constantly running around in a panic, waiting for the sky to start falling. The most powerful man in the world and I can’t tell these guys to back off. Well, that sucks.
He imagined his viewpoint would change, however, if some crazed lunatic ever took a shot at him. Then he would undoubtedly see the need for men like James McHenry.
Selfishly, he hoped that day would never come.
Maybe it was simply McHenry that put him ill at ease. The man had a rough-edged demeanor that rubbed the polite President Montgomery the wrong way. It wasn’t any one thing in particular. McHenry was cordial, professional, and had an excellent track record for getting results, but still something about him just seemed off putting. Maybe it was because the man never smiled. It was another of his mother’s idioms that reminded him not to trust anyone that didn’t smile.
The President shrugged it off. He had a meeting to run. As was his nature, plus a privilege of the office, he greeted each of them by their first na
me with the exception of McHenry. Something about the man made calling him “James” seem wrong. He sure as hell doubted anyone ever called him “Jim” or Jimmy.”
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Montgomery said in his customary good ol’ boy southern accent as he joined them on the couch where they could speak more easily. “I have a rather full schedule today so what say we skip the usual pleasantries and get right to it.”
“Of course, Mr. President,” Conrad said. There were nods from around the room as everyone took a seat. One of the upsides of being President, sometimes people actually listened to him. The main exception being his children, but really, what teenagers listened to their parents these days?
McHenry was the first to speak.
“I hate to start your day off on a sour note, Mr. President, but I’m afraid I have unsettling news.”
“Oh?” President Montgomery said with just a hint of cynicism. Everyone seemed to start off their meetings with some hint of impending doom or gloom. It was a well-crafted, time-honored rhetoric that had been in place since before anyone in the room had been born. I bet even George Washington probably had to deal with political bullshit in his day too, Montgomery assumed. The more things changed, the more they apparently remained the same.
“You’ll excuse me for not getting excited, Mr. McHenry, but you also started off with unsettling news last week as well, did you not? And the week before that, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yes, sir. I did.”
“Have you ever started a meeting by delivering good news?”
“Good news isn’t my department, Mr. President.”
Montgomery chuckled at the humorous statement, even though the man hadn’t meant it as one.
“Although threat assessments can be misinterpreted or even flat out inflated,” McHenry continued without apology. “Such as our case last week, we have to act on intelligence when we receive it. As I’m sure you understand, Mr. President, my job is to report unsettling news and bring it to your attention as we see it, not sugar coated.”
