by Rachel Lee
“The murder of our ambassador,” he had said, “while barbaric, is a reflection of the violence that has torn that country apart. There is no reason to connect this crime with the recent attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq. The solution to war is not more war. The solution to war is a just peace. And, as president, I will work toward that just peace.”
That kind of backbone impressed Tom. He wished Grant Lawrence had been his Special Agent in Charge back in L.A. Things might have gone differently. A little girl might not now hate him, and he might not have broken his boss’s nose.
Then his fists tightened, and he told himself he was just being wishful. Grant Lawrence was probably just another political chameleon. Like his former boss, with his eye on promotion, not on the lives that would be affected.
Tom forced his attention back to the television as Lawrence finally quieted the crowd and resumed speaking.
“As joyous as this night is,” Lawrence said, his voice now softened, “I must pause to acknowledge the grief of Mrs. Kilhenny and her children. Nothing I can do or say will ease their loss. I met Bill and Grace Kilhenny a month ago, when I went to visit Guatemala to see for myself the conditions that prevail there. He was a skilled diplomat, a gracious host and a brave man.”
A long moment of silence passed, both in the Lawrence campaign headquarters and in the apartment. In the space of that minute, the senator had swept away the trappings of power and politics and attended to the pain of one woman. Even Tom was reluctantly moved.
Tampa, Florida
Grant Lawrence looked out into the sea of faces and finally found the one he really wanted to see. Karen. She was standing near a side door, smiling. He wished she could be up here with him. But that would be tantamount to a public proposal of marriage, and that was a step they weren’t ready to take.
She was, after all, a cop. It wasn’t merely her job. It was a big part of her identity. If he won this thing—and tonight even that dream seemed within reach—they could not be together. She couldn’t function as a homicide detective with a Secret Service retinue. And the country wouldn’t stand for a First Lady who held a job regardless. He knew it. She knew it. It was the bitter cloud around this silver lining. He had wanted to bow out of the race, to remain in the Senate, so they could be together. She had steadfastly refused to let him do it. She said she loved him, and her country, too much to allow it.
And so here he was. And there she was. The gulf between the podium and that door seemed insurmountable.
It was with that thought in his mind that he looked again at his supporters, then at his prepared text, and pushed the text aside.
“Friends, we have work to do. Not just for the next eight months, but for the next four years. That work will not be easy. Justice, peace and prosperity are not easily won. These past months have tested our commitment, but they are only the beginning. Greater tests lie ahead. But I am sure that if we commit ourselves to facing those tests together, to meeting those challenges, to giving wings to our dreams and life to our ideals, we can transform both ourselves and this nation. We can be, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, that last, best hope. Tonight I say to you, I am committed to that last, best hope. Join with me. Stay with me. And together we will go on to victory!”
The roar was almost deafening. He turned and saw Jerry Connally’s smile. His old friend stepped toward him, extending first a handshake and then a bear hug. Grant chose the bear hug, for this bear had been at his side throughout his eight years in the Senate, in the lean times, and in the worst of the ugliness that politics and life can offer. This night was Jerry’s as much as it was Grant’s.
“Wow, boss,” Jerry said, almost yelling in his ear to be heard above the crowd. “I don’t know where you got that from. But you’d better bottle it for safekeeping.”
“Thank you, friend,” Grant said.
“Thank you,” Jerry said. “But the best is yet to come. For all of us.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“By the way, boss, there are about two hundred people in the lobby that couldn’t fit in here. You should make your way out there and let them know they’re not on the outside looking in.”
“Right,” Grant said. “You’re right. Lead the way.”
“Wasn’t he amazing?” Miriam asked.
“As always,” Terry said. “If the country doesn’t elect him this fall, they’re passing up one hell of an opportunity.”
For his part, Tom simply nodded and forced a smile. Yes, Lawrence’s speech had been an effective piece of political rhetoric. Whether it was any more than that remained to be seen. He watched as Lawrence left the stage and waded into the crowd. The man certainly seemed to enjoy people.
Tom could still remember a time when he’d felt the same. Lately, people were to be avoided. Even here, with Miriam and Terry, he avoided any real contact. Contact only led to betrayal and hurt.
His thoughts were interrupted by a sound like popping corn, emanating from the television.
“What the…?” Terry said, looking at the screen.
“God, no,” Miriam said, eyes wide.
The camera caught it all in stomach-turning detail. Lawrence’s smile faded in an instant, replaced by a blank look of shock as he slid to the floor. Tom Lawton had seen that look before and didn’t need to hear the reporter’s next words.
“My God, he’s been shot. Grant Lawrence has been shot!”
3
Washington, D.C.
“I want Tom Lawton on my team,” Miriam said firmly.
“No,” Kevin Willis replied. “I’m sorry, but no.”
She gave him a look of disgust and pressed on. “Tom is the smartest investigator I’ve ever worked with. He thinks outside the box. That’s exactly the kind of mind we need on this case.”
In that sense, she was right. It was all too easy for an agent to fixate on a suspect to the exclusion of other evidence. Kevin knew that as well as anyone in the Bureau. In the mid-nineties, early in his career, he’d been assigned to the Atlanta field office, putting him among the dozens of agents who’d responded to the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. He’d witnessed firsthand the near ruin of an innocent man before investigators finally stepped back to reexamine the evidence.
Grant Lawrence was a media darling. He had been for years, and the kidnapping of his children had only pushed his star higher in the public consciousness. The firestorm over his shooting was already under way, and there would be pressure for a quick, clean solution to the case. Exactly the kind of conditions under which investigators were most likely to develop tunnel vision.
So yes, in that sense, Tom Lawton was exactly the kind of agent the Bureau needed on a case like this. But on the other hand, the psych evaluation was clear as day.
“Look,” Kevin said, “I know you like Tom. You’ve mentored him ever since he joined up. Heck, I worked with him for six months in Dallas before he was sent out to that mess in L.A. I liked him then. I like him still. But the simple fact is, he assaulted his superior. The guy needs plastic surgery, for crying out loud. Did you read Lawton’s psych evaluation? The report is four paragraphs long, and the phrase ‘distrust of authority’ appears four times. He’s on suspension for a reason, Miriam.”
“Can you blame him?” she asked.
“Hell no! The way things went down out there, any one of us could be in the same boat. I’d have done the same damn thing he did. But if I use him on this case, the director is going to be stepping all over me.”
She sighed heavily and nodded reluctantly.
“I feel for the guy, Miriam. I do. But right now he’s too damn volatile. He needs time to recover. You’re his friend, for crying out loud. You of all people should realize that.”
She looked away, the hurt evident in her eyes. He hadn’t meant it to come out the way it had, even if it was the truth. But there it was.
“You’re right,” she said, turning back to him. “He is my friend. I’ve read the reports on L.A. And his psych sheet. But I know Tom
Lawton better than anyone. Better than that doctor. Better than you. What he needs is a way to prove to himself that he’s not a screwup. Which you and I both know he’s not.”
Kevin nodded. He’d never gone through what Lawton had, thank God, but he’d had his share of cases gone bad. After every one, he’d felt exactly what she was saying. He’d wanted to get right back at it. Do it right. Regain his confidence. The Bureau recruited Type A personalities. Goal oriented, driven to excel. The kind of individual for whom failure was almost a worse fate than death.
But he’d had enough trouble just getting Miriam on the case. She knew Grant Lawrence personally. Like any other law enforcement agency, the FBI had a clear rule about agents who were personally involved with a victim, witness or suspect. They were off the case, period.
He’d fought for Miriam for the same reason she was fighting for Tom Lawton. He’d mentored her. He knew her capabilities and her limitations. And he knew her well enough to know that she would not stay away from this case, regardless.
Ultimately, his argument had been simple. Special Agent Miriam Anson was a consummate professional, and if she were on his team, working the case officially, she would exercise professional judgment and restraint. If she were left to pry into the case on her own, she would have fewer inhibitions and might cause more damage. His bosses had bought that argument, with the caveat that she was to work under his personal supervision. And that she would be his responsibility.
That was good enough, then and now. Except that now she was pushing him out on a limb with Lawton. He could understand it, much as it irritated him.
“Okay,” he said, “here’s the deal. Tom works with you. No one else. Hell, I doubt there’s anyone else he trusts, anyway. And he’s all you get, for the same reason—I doubt he’d trust anyone else I put with you. He’s your responsibility, Miriam.”
She nodded. “Fair enough.”
Kevin looked at his watch. “How soon can you get him in here?”
“Five minutes. He’s downstairs in the cafeteria.”
Kevin shook his head, then laughed. “You knew what I was going to say, didn’t you?”
She didn’t join in the laughter. “You trained me, Kevin. Let’s get to work.”
Tom was the last person to enter the conference room, and he had no illusions about finding a chair. Instead, he squeezed into a space along the back wall. He caught Miriam’s eye and gave her a quick nod. He would thank her properly later. Any piece of the action right now was better than staring at walls and waiting for his next appointment with the psychologist.
“Here’s what we have so far,” Kevin Willis said, standing at the front of the room with a notepad in one hand and a remote control in the other. “At twenty-two nineteen hours last night, someone fired three shots in the lobby of the Hyatt Harborside in Tampa. Two of those shots struck Grant Lawrence. The other struck a campaign staffer named Ellen Bates. Ms. Bates was wounded in the left arm and is in stable condition after surgery.
“Senator Lawrence was not so fortunate. One bullet hit him in the chest, the other in the midtorso. He’s still in surgery. The doctors are saying fifty-fifty.”
Tom saw Miriam’s face sink at that statement, although he knew she was already aware of Grant’s condition. Karen Sweeney had called within an hour after the shooting, and Terry was already on a flight to Tampa. Still, hearing it described in the cold, clinical language of a briefing had to be hard to bear.
“Lawrence had just finished his victory speech after the Florida primary,” Kevin continued. “Apparently he’d gone out into the lobby to shake hands with staffers who couldn’t fit into the main ballroom. Powder residue on the victims and two bystanders put the shooter within three or four feet, but it was a tight crowd. So far, we haven’t found anyone who can identify the shooter or even give us a firm description.”
Tom saw heads nod around the room. It made sense. In close like that, with bodies packed in tight, a hand with a gun could easily slip beneath the arm of someone in front. Pop-pop-pop. Victim goes down. The shooter slips away in the panic. It was the nightmare scenario for protective services, worse even than a sniper. It was the reason the president never waded into a crowd.
“What happened to his security?” an agent in front asked. “Why’d they let him get into that situation?”
More nods from others who’d had the same training and followed the same line of reasoning Tom and the questioner had. It wasn’t rocket science. This was a basic breakdown in procedure.
“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision by Lawrence,” Kevin said. “He didn’t want the people in the lobby to feel left out. That fits with his profile. He’s the type who will stop and talk to people on the Capitol steps. I doubt he gave it a second thought. But his security team should have. We’ll need to talk to them, but you all know how the Secret Service is. They’re going to want to take care of their own.”
Just like the FBI, Tom thought. Or any other police agency. It was a mind-set as old as the human species. You look out for your own kind, because they look out for you. When they didn’t, it got very ugly, very fast. As he knew from personal experience.
“We did catch a break, though,” Kevin said. Fifty sets of eyes instantly became alert. “The hotel has good security, including video cameras in the parking garage and covering the sidewalk in front of the lobby. So we ought to have the shooter on tape. The guys in Tampa are trying to cross-match the news footage of the event with the video of people leaving the hotel. With any luck, that will leave us a short list of suspects. Then we’ll split them up among our teams and run them down.”
The brute force method, Tom thought. Standard Bureau procedure. It reminded him of a joke about a collection of law enforcement types looking for a beaver in a forest. The NSA put a surveillance camera in every tree. The CIA sent in an agent dressed as a beaver, who returned a week later scratched, dirty, breathless and pregnant. The L.A.P.D. sent in two officers, who returned in ten minutes with a bloodied, beaten raccoon that was ready to admit it was a beaver. As for the FBI, they rounded up every animal in the forest and held them for six months while a forensic veterinarian examined their dental impressions.
It had been the Bureau’s modus operandi since the reign of Hoover. Overwhelm the problem with manpower and science. It was effective. It was also slow. In most of the Bureau’s investigations, that wasn’t an issue. When you were going after a John Gotti or a Ted Kaczynski, whose crimes weren’t daily front-page news, you could afford to take your time and build a case brick by brick. But that wasn’t the situation here. The media, not to mention the attorney general, would be demanding daily briefings, with each one detailing new information and positive progress toward an arrest.
The brute force method was not designed to achieve that. When it was misapplied toward that end, the Bureau inevitably ended up with egg on its face. Fifteen hundred Arab-American detainees were only the most recent case in point. Tom could see the writing on the wall, and the message wasn’t promising. He began to feel sparks of anger in the pit of his stomach. By sheer force of will, he battered them down.
Willis continued the briefing, dividing the task force into teams, handing out assignments. Tom paid only cursory attention until Willis looked at Miriam.
“Miriam, you and Tom will eliminate the wacko groups. I want to say we’ve left no stone unturned. Dig around on the Net. Get a list from our domestic surveillance guys. Crazies who’ve written against Lawrence. Run their files. I’m sure you’ll find a bunch.”
“No doubt,” Miriam said. “He’s liberal, Catholic, handsome, single, a dad whose kids were kidnapped, running for president while dating a cop. Put it all together and he’s probably the darling of half the fringe organizations in the country.”
“Probably,” Kevin agreed. “And it’s probably a waste of time. But I don’t want conspiracy nuts coming along to say we didn’t look. So look.”
In short, Tom thought, he and Miriam were supposed to run down bulls
hit. On the case, but safely out of the way. It made sense. Miriam was too close to Grant to be in the middle of things. And Tom had no doubt where he stood in the Bureau’s hierarchy of competence.
Then Willis spoke again, and this time his eye fixed on Tom. “I want everyone in this room to remember that at this time we are acting in a support capacity to the Florida offices, which are heading the investigation. If you find anything, it goes through me to them.”
In short, no running off on your own. Tom gave Willis the nod he was looking for, but his neck felt as stiff as if it hadn’t moved in centuries.
Watermill, Long Island
“He might have been what?” The man tried to suppress his anger as he listened to the voice on the phone.
“He might have been caught on videotape,” the caller said. “Word is the hotel had good security, and the FBI’s getting the tapes.”
“And you can make sure that doesn’t happen?” the man asked, clearly expecting an affirmative answer.
“No,” the caller replied. “I can’t. They know those tapes are out there. If the tapes vanished, that would just pile more shit on the doorstep. Besides, he can be sacrificed. We knew that from the start.”
“So long as there’s no trail,” the man said.
“I can handle the trail,” the caller replied. “I have that part covered. Don’t worry.”
He hung up in disgust. What an absurd statement, after calling on his daughter’s wedding day, with two hundred guests arriving in an hour, to tell him an assassin he’d paid for might have been caught in the act on videotape, and then to say, “Don’t worry.” There was too much at stake for him not to worry.
“Daddy, are you ready?”
He turned and looked at his one and only daughter. This was the last afternoon that she would truly be his. In two hours, she would belong to another. A fine young man, of course. He wouldn’t have permitted anything less than the best for his girl. But still… The old bromide about not losing a daughter but gaining a son just didn’t work for him. Not when it came to her.
