Split Second

by David Baldacci

  CHAPTER

  15

  MICHELLE TOOK a short puddle-jumper flight to North Carolina. Because she didn’t have her credentials and badge anymore but did have her weapon’s permit, she had had to check her gun and a small knife she always carried into the cargo hold, retrieving them only after the plane landed. The blanket policy of confiscating all weapons that had been enacted after 9/11 had been relaxed somewhat, although without her badge it was not that easy. Michelle rented a car and drove about an hour to the small town of Bowlington, fifty miles east of the Tennessee border and in the shadow of the Great Smoky Mountains. However, there wasn’t much of a town left anymore, she soon discovered. Textile manufacturing had driven the area in its heyday, she was told by an old-timer at the gas station where she stopped.

  “They make all that stuff in China or Taiwan for peanuts now, not the good old U.S. of A.,” lamented the man. “What we got left here, not much.” He punctuated the comment by spitting some tobacco chew into a mason jar, rang up her soda and handed back her change. He asked her what she’d come here for, but she was noncommittal. “Just passing through.”

  “Well, ma’am, just so you know, there ain’t much to pass through to.”

  She got in her car and drove through the mostly deserted and impoverished town. She saw lots of old people either sitting on their sagging front porches or creeping across their small, ragged yards. As she pulled up to the place, Michelle wondered why eight years ago Clyde Ritter had seen fit to stop here on his campaign trail. He probably could have scrounged up more votes in a cemetery.

  Situated a few miles outside of the town proper, the Fairmount Hotel had not only seen better days, it seemed about one wavering support beam from tumbling down. The structure was eight stories high and encircled by a six-foot-high chain-link fence. The architecture of the place was a very mixed bag. The building was over a hundred years old and seemed to be Gothic in some parts with fake turrets and balustrades and towers, and Mediterranean in other respects with stucco walls and a red tile roof. Its ugliness could not be overexaggerated, Michelle decided. Even the term “white elephant” hardly seemed to do it justice.

  There were No Trespassing signs on the fence, but she didn’t see any security guard hut or any security guard making rounds. Off to the side of the hotel she found a gap in the fence. However, before slipping through here, she decided to reconnoiter the area, her Secret Service training kicking in.

  The land was fairly flat all around except near the rear of the building where it sloped down to the fence. Michelle eyeballed the angle of the slope to the fence and smiled. She had won state championships in the high and long jumps two years in a row. With a little juice in her veins and a decent tailwind and using that slope, she might be able to jump the damn fence. Ten years ago she probably would have tried, just for fun. She continued her walk and then decided to move a little ways into the woods. When she heard rushing water, she moved farther into the dense trees.

  In a few minutes she located the source of the sound. She went to the edge of the cliff and peered down. It was about a thirty-foot drop to the water. The river was not very wide, but it moved fast and looked fairly deep. There were a couple of thin ledges jutting out from the cliff, and small boulders clung to the sides there as well. As she watched, one broke loose and plummeted down, smacking the surface of the water, and then was quickly carried away by the rush of the river. She had a sudden chill watching this spectacle; she’d never liked heights very much and turned and walked back into the fading sunlight.

  After slipping through the gap in the fence, Michelle made her way to the massive front entrance; however, it was locked and chained. Moving on, she found a large window farther down the left side that had been broken out, and she stepped through there. She had assumed the electricity was shut off, and so she had brought a flashlight. She clicked on her beam and started looking around. She walked through rooms that were filled with dust, dampness, mold and also vermin, from the sounds of scurrying feet. She also saw overturned tables, cigarette butts, empty liquor bottles and discarded condoms. The abandoned hotel apparently now served as a nightclub of sorts for the slim under-seventy crowd left in Bowlington.

  She’d brought with her a copy of the Fairmount’s floor plan, which was included in the files her friend had given her. Using this document, she made her way to the lobby and from there to the interior room where Clyde Ritter had been shot to death. It was paneled in mahogany now, with gaudy chandeliers and burgundy carpeting. When she shut the door behind her, it became so quiet and still that Michelle was glad to feel her pistol riding on her belt clip. The .357 she’d turned in had been replaced by a sleek SIG nine-millimeter. Every federal agent had a personal backup.

  Her reason for being here was not simply to satisfy her own morbid curiosity. There were some interesting parallels that intrigued her. Bruno’s kidnapping had also occurred in an obscure rural town, not too far from here. It had taken place in an old building, albeit a funeral home as opposed to a hotel. There had to have been some inside source relating to the plot against Bruno, she was sure of that. And with what she had discovered so far about the Ritter killing, she was becoming convinced that an insider had played a role there as well. Maybe what she learned here could help with her own dilemma; at least she hoped so. It beat sitting in a hotel room moping.

  Michelle perched on a small table in the corner and consulted her file, which had a detailed diagram of the location of all the players on that fateful day. She walked over and placed herself in the spot where Sean King had stood, Clyde Ritter just in front of him. Her gaze moved around the room, and she noted where one Secret Service agent had been stationed, and then another and yet another. The crowd had been behind a rope, and Ritter had been leaning over it exchanging greetings. Various members of Ritter’s campaign team had been strewn around the space. Sidney Morse had been on the other side of the rope across from Ritter. She’d also seen Morse on the video. He had run screaming like everyone else. Doug Denby, Ritter’s chief of staff, had been over by the door. The assassin, Arnold Ramsey, had been in the back of the room but had slowly made his way forward until he was standing in front of his victim. He’d been carrying an FOC, “Friend of Clyde,” sign and, to Michelle’s trained eye when she watched the video, he hadn’t appeared to be dangerous.

  Michelle glanced to the right and saw a bank of elevators. She imagined herself to be Sean King for a moment more, and she gazed right and left, sweeping the room in precise grids, pretending to speak into her throat mic, one hand out, as though touching the back of Ritter’s sweaty shirt. Then she glanced, as King had, to the right and kept her gaze there for as long as he had; she counted the seconds off in her head. The only thing of note in that direction was the bank of elevators. The ding she’d heard had to have come from there.

  The banging noise startled her so badly that she drew her pistol and pointed it at all corners of the room. She was breathing so hard and shaking so badly that she sat down on the floor suddenly sick to her stomach. She realized quickly that a banging sound was not to be unexpected in an abandoned hotel: It could have been a falling ceiling tile, or perhaps a squirrel had gotten inside and run into something. Still, the timing was abysmal. She had to marvel at King’s ability to endure the same surprise and, while wounded, retain enough presence of mind to pull his weapon and gun down an armed man. Would she have been able to ignore the pain in her hand, the chaos all around, and fire? Now that she’d partially experienced the situation for herself, her respect for him rose several notches.

  She pulled herself together, looked at the elevator bank and then at her file. She had read more of the official record on the flight down, and had learned that this set of elevators had been turned off, secured by the Secret Service during Ritter’s event. Presumably there would have been no ding to be heard. And yet she’d heard one. And King’s attention had been riveted on this spot, or at least in this direction. Although he later claimed it was just a matt
er of his focus wandering, she wondered if it was more than that. She looked at a photo of the room at the time of the assassination. The carpeting had been put in afterward. The floor back then was wood. She rose, pulled out her knife and, eyeballing the spot, cut up the carpet. After she pulled back the rug and exposed a four-by-four square, she shone her light at the exposed spot.

  The dark stains were still there. Blood was almost impossible to get out of wood; obviously the hotel had opted to just carpet over it. King’s and Clyde Ritter’s blood, she thought to herself; it was mixed together for all time. She next went over to the wall beyond where King had stood. The bullet that killed Clyde Ritter and wounded King had lodged here, although it had long since been dug out. The upholstered walls that were present at the time of the Ritter assassination had been replaced with the thick mahogany paneling. Again, this was a cover-up of sorts, as though the hotel owners could wipe away what had occurred. It hadn’t worked, since the hotel closed down soon after Ritter’s death.

  She entered the enclosed office area through a doorway behind the front desk. Large file cabinets were stacked against one wall, and there were still papers, pens and other office items on the desks, as though the place had been abandoned in the middle of the day. She went to the file cabinets and was surprised to see that they were filled. She started sifting through them. Although the hotel undoubtedly had computers at the time of Ritter’s assassination, they also apparently kept backup records on paper. That made things a little easier. Using her flashlight, she found the materials for 1996 and then those for the day Ritter had been there. In fact, the only records here were for 1996 and early 1997. Michelle surmised that the hotel had shut down shortly after the assassination and no one had bothered to clear anything out. If the hotel records had been confiscated during the subsequent investigation, they had been returned.

  The Ritter party had stayed over one night at the Fairmount. King had checked into the hotel along with Ritter’s entourage. The records showed King had occupied room 304.

  She made her way up the main staircase to the third floor. She didn’t have a passkey, but she did have her lockpick kit and the door quickly yielded. The things a trained federal agent could do. She went inside, looked around and found nothing except what one would expect to find in such a place: a mess. She saw that there was a connecting door into the next room, 302. She went through and saw a room exactly like the one she’d just left.

  Downstairs she was about to leave when a thought struck her. She went back to the office area and looked for the employee files. Unfortunately here she struck out. Thinking for a bit, she then checked her floor plan of the hotel, located the main housekeeping supply section and headed there. This room was large and filled with shelves, empty counters and a desk. Michelle looked through the desk and then checked a large file cabinet back against one wall. Here she found what she wanted: a clipboard with names and addresses of housekeeping employees on moldy, curled paper. She took the list with her and went back to the office to look for a phone book, but the only one she found was far out-of-date and therefore probably useless. Emerging into the darkness outside, she was surprised to realize she’d spent over two hours inside the hotel.

  She checked into a motel and used the phone book in her room to check the names and addresses of the maids on the employee list against the phone book. She found three that still lived in the area—at the same addresses they had back then. She began calling. There was no answer at the first, and she left a message. At the other two the phone was picked up by the former maids. Michelle identified herself as a documentary filmmaker working on a project about political assassinations and conducting interviews with people familiar with the Ritter murder. Both women, surprisingly enough, said they’d be very happy to be part of such a film. Perhaps not so surprising, she reflected, for what else was there to do here? Michelle made appointments with both for the following day. Then she grabbed a quick dinner at a country-western roadside diner where three cowboy-hat-wearing dudes hit on her in the span of ten minutes. Vastly fed up by the time the third fellow made his pitch, she munched her cheeseburger with one hand, showed her gun with the other and watched as the would-be suitor fled. Oh, to be so popular. After dinner she spent a couple of hours in her room going over the questions she’d ask the women the next day. As she was doing so, the other former maid called back and also agreed to speak with her. As Michelle drifted off to sleep, she wondered where she was really heading with all this.

  Outside Michelle’s motel room, the old Buick, its muffler still rattling and its exhaust still noxious, pulled to a stop. The driver cut off the engine and sat there, his gaze fixed on the door to Michelle’s room. So intense was his concentration that it appeared the man could see right through the walls, perhaps right into the mind of the young Secret Service agent.

  Tomorrow promised to be an interesting day. He hadn’t anticipated that Michelle Maxwell would come here to perform her own sort of investigation. Yet now that she had, it would have to be dealt with, delicately. He’d carefully constructed his list of targets and had no desire to add to that number injudiciously. However, plans did change as situations developed; whether Maxwell became a target remained to be seen.

  There was a lot left to do, and a young inquisitive Secret Service agent could become a serious source of trouble. He debated whether to kill her right now, actually reaching down to the floorboard for his favored weapon of murder. As his fingers curled around the hard metal, he brooded on the matter further, and then his grip relaxed.

  Too little preparation and too many potential complications would flow from her death right now. That was just not his way. So Michelle Maxwell would get to live another day. He put the Buick in gear and drove off.

  CHAPTER

  16

  THE FIRST TWO former Fairmont Hotel maids whom Michelle interviewed were not helpful. The assassination was the biggest thing that had ever happened in the town and in their lives, and in their discussions with “filmmaker” Michelle both women were prone to conjure all sorts of outlandish theories without being able to offer anything in the way of solid facts. Michelle listened politely and then left.

  The third home she went to was a modest structure but neat, set back from the road. Loretta Baldwin was waiting for Michelle on the wide porch. Baldwin was a slender African American of sixty-plus years with high, pointed cheekbones, an expressive mouth and steel-rimmed spectacles that magnified her darting and energetic brown eyes. She sat ramrod straight in her chair and had a way of looking one over without seeming to that any Secret Service agent would be proud of, Michelle observed. Her hands were long and heavily veined. When the two women shook hands, there was such strength in the older woman’s grip that it took the athletic Michelle by surprise. Michelle sat in the rocker next to Loretta’s and accepted the glass of iced tea the woman offered.

  “This film you doing, sweetie, we talking big or small?”

  “It’s a documentary, so small.”

  “So I guess no juicy part for me.”

  “Well, if your interview makes the cut, then yes, you’ll be in it. We’ll come back and film you at that point. I’m just doing preliminary research now.”

  “No, honey, I mean is this a paid engagement?”

  “Oh, no, no it’s not. Limited budget.”

  “Too bad. Not too many jobs ’round here, you see.”

  “I expect not.”

  “Not used to be that way.”

  “Like when the hotel was open?”

  Baldwin nodded and rocked slowly in the gathering breeze. The weather had turned chilly, and Michelle wished more for a hot cup of coffee than a glass of iced tea.

  “Who you talked to so far?” When Michelle told her, Baldwin smiled and then chuckled. “Them gals have no clue, you understand me, no clue about nothing. Did little Miss Julie tell you she was there when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot?”

  “Yes, she mentioned that. She actually looked a little young for that.�
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  “I’ll say. She knows Martin Luther King like I know the pope.”

  “So what can you tell me about that day at the hotel?”

  “A day like any other. Except we knew he was coming, of course. I mean Clyde Ritter. I knew about him, from the TV and all, and I read my newspaper, every day I do. The man’s thinking was more in line with George Wallace before he found the light, but he seemed to be doing okay, which tells you all you need to know about this country.” Then she stared at Michelle, a look of mirth in her eye. “Is your memory that good? Or maybe I ain’t saying nothing you think is important enough to write down.”

  Michelle started and then pulled out a notepad and began scribbling. She also set a small recorder down on the table next to the woman. “Do you mind?”

  “Hell no. Anybody sues me I ain’t got no money. See, that’s the poor person’s best insurance policy: no assets.”

  “What were you doing that day?”

  “Just like any other day, cleaning rooms.”

  “Which floor did you have?”

  “Floors. Always had people calling in sick. Most time I had two floors all by myself. Had it that day, second and third. By the time I finished, seemed like it was time to start over again.”

  Michelle tensed at this. King had stayed on the third floor. “So you weren’t on the main floor when the shooting occurred?”

  “Now, did I say that?”

  Michelle looked confused. “But you said you were cleaning.”

  “Is there a law against coming down and seeing what all the hoopla was about?”

  “Were you in the room where the shooting happened?”

  “I was right outside the door. There was a supply closet down that hall, and I had to get some things, you understand.” Michelle nodded. “Management didn’t like us maids to show ourselves in the main area, you see. Like they don’t want the guests to know we’re even there. Now, how do they think the place stays clean, you see my point?” Yes, Michelle said, she did. “Well, the room where Ritter was shot was called the Stonewall Jackson Room. It’s not like down here we have us any Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses S. Grant Rooms.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “Well, I poked my head in and I saw that man shaking hands and talking real slick and smooth and his eyes would hold anybody’s he was talking to. I read where he was a TV preacher too. I could see how that man could get dollars and votes, yes indeed. He just had that way. But from a person of color’s perspective I think Clyde Ritter was right at home in the Stonewall Jackson Room and was probably sleeping in the Jefferson Davis Penthouse Suite and loving that too, and damn if he was going to get my vote.”

  “I can understand that too. Besides Ritter, did you notice anyone else?”

  “I remember a police officer blocking the doorway. I had to kind of look around him. I could see Ritter like I said, and there was the man behind him, real close.”

  “Secret Service. Agent Sean King.”

  Baldwin stared hard at her. “That’s right. You say that like you know the man.”

  “Never met him. But I’ve been doing a lot of research.”

  Baldwin ran her gaze up and down Michelle, a scrutiny that made the younger woman finally blush. “You got no ring on your finger. What, are you telling me there ain’t any eligible men that would appreciate a beautiful young thing like you?”

  Michelle smiled. “I keep really crazy hours. Guys don’t like that.”

  “Hell, honey, men don’t like nothing but a meal and their beer in front of them when they want it, nobody questioning the stupid things