by David Bishop
“Jack,” Millet called out. “There’s a Michele Browning from Phoenix on the phone. Says she’s your sister.”
Michele had probably watched the press conference. The day always seemed to run out of time, but he should have let her know about it.
“Hi, sis. Everything okay?”
“I’m not quite sure, bro,” Michele answered. “I just learned my brother is an imposter. The president of the United States told me. At the same time he told the rest of the world. You’ve been lying to me for twenty years.”
“Michele, I can explain.”
“Just hold on, Mr. McCall.”
Christ. She’s doing the Mr. McCall bit too. My own sister.
“I’ve got more to say, bro, a lot more. For days I’ve been seeing your name in the newspaper and hearing it on the news. I just assumed it was another man with the same name. After all, my brother worked security for the State Department, and my brother wouldn’t lie to me. Not gullible me!”
Jack held the phone a few inches from his ear and continued to listen.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me that you had to live your cover, that your superiors ordered you to lie. That you didn’t want to put me in jeopardy or make us worry—”
“All that, sis,” Jack interrupted calmly. “I’m glad you understand. I was worried you’d be mad.”
“I was! I am! I’m trying not to be. Why shouldn’t I be? I called your house this morning and got no answer. If I’d reached you then, well, it wouldn’t have been pleasant. Dick tried to calm me down before he left for work, but he wasn’t all that successful.”
“Your husband’s a good man.” Jack told her while loosening his tie.
“Damn it,” she said, turning her volume button back up. Then, sounding more hurt than angry, she huffed, “You couldn’t even tell the truth to your only sister?”
Noting that the others in the Bullpen were all staring at him, grinning, Jack smiled and waved them off. It didn’t work.
“What would have been accomplished if I had told you?” he said, switching the phone to his other hand and giving his team a mind-your-own-business glare, which they also ignored. “You’d have worried and had the additional burden of keeping the secret.”
Jack sat forward and spun a ballpoint pen on his desk. “These things go with the job. Tell me you really understand?”
“Oh, I understand. I guess. You’re right. I would have worried then, like I’m worried now. Are you okay? Can you catch this LW?”
“I’ve got a great team and President Schroeder is giving me full support.”
“When I saw you walk forward after the president said your name, I almost fell off my chair.”
“How is your family?”
“Did you learn to change the subject in spy school? We’re all fine. Really. Don’t worry about us. Call me when this is over. We’ll all get on the phone and you can tell us the behind-the-scenes story.”
“Michele, I had planned to call you this morning, a little later when it wouldn’t be so early on your end of the country. We don’t know where these killers will try to strike next. The government has round-the-clock protection in place for the justices and the Federal Reserve governors, including their families, and mine.”
“But you’re not—you mean us don’t you?”
“You should know that all three of you are under twenty-four-hour protective surveillance. You won’t see them so don’t look. The chance of anything happening is remote, but you need to know.” He gave her his current cell phone number, and the number for her protective detail. “I keep my cell phone with me day and night,” he continued, “but call the detail if you sense an immediate danger. They’re close. Then, when you can, call me.”
The mere fact that she had not tried to interrupt him, let him know she was taking what he said seriously.
“Don’t stop to help strangers or give directions. Keep your place locked up all the time and don’t open your door to anyone you don’t know. If something happens and you don’t have time to call, scream your head off. Start screaming at the slightest hint of a threat. Don’t stop to try and reason with whomever it is. Just scream and keep screaming. The protective detail will hear you.”
“Oh that makes me feel so much better,” she said.
“We’ll get him, sis,” Jack promised. “Soon.”
Soon. He wanted soon. The president wanted soon. The whole damn country wanted soon. But he knew he was far from being as confident as he had sounded, and wondered if Michele had sensed that, too.
CHAPTER 31
Unconfirmed report out of Europe: LW is a member
of Hezbollah, trained as an assassin in Iran.
World News Report, June 15
“Who is it?” Jenny Robinson called from behind the front door of her condo.
“Harold’s Plumbing.”
She opened her door, leaving the flimsy slide chain in place.
“The building manager sent me to replace the washers in your faucets.” The plumber was wearing denim bib overalls and held his hands behind his back.
“I’ve got no leaks,” she told him.
“I unnerstand, ma’am, but the boss man has us change ’em all ever three years whether or not they’re leaking. He wants to avoid a bunch of service calls when one a you gets a drip. Five minutes, lady, that’s all I need.”
“Come back tomorrow,” she said, starting to close her door.
He spoke quickly through the narrowing crack. “You’re my last one today, lady. Please. I gotta work on the other side of town tomorrah. Honest, lady, I’ll be out of your hair in five minutes.”
In forty-five minutes Jenny expected U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Michael Roberts, the benefactor of half her rent, to visit and she was in no mood to argue.
“All right. All right!” She said, releasing the chain. “Come in. But I need you gone in fifteen minutes.”
“Won’t take me more’n five minutes. That’s my guarantee, Ms. Robinson.”
Jenny closed the door and, after turning back toward him, saw the black gun looking even darker in the plumber’s white latex gloved hand.
Her reaction was to draw back in alarm. Then her basic instincts took over and her eyes softened, her mouth curling into a coquettish smile.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she cooed. “If you want sex, it’s okay. I’m an escort girl.” She had always preferred that title to hooker. “Whatever you want—just don’t hurt me.”
“Anything?”
“Name it, honey. Just don’t hurt me. My appearance is how I survive.”
He grinned. “Put on a thong and high heels. Then lay face down on your couch.”
He watched as she stripped down to the black thong and heels she already wore, and strutted toward the couch on incredibly long legs. Her jugs were as big as Kitt’s in San Francisco, and even bigger when she used her arms to accentuate her cleavage. Her bleached hair flowed over her shoulders to cascade down the sides of her well-tanned arms.
She’s enjoying this. She wants it.
He watched her walk while his mind altered the words from a story his mother used to read at Christmas: she shook like a bowl of jelly, only, Momma, it’s not her belly.
He wanted to touch her smooth skin, but as had been the case with Judith Breen at the Resort at Depoe Bay, he couldn’t chance it. He just couldn’t. He couldn’t endanger his mission.
“Okay, Jenny darling,” he said in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “lay butt up on the couch and put your face toward the backrest.”
When she did, he squatted like a baseball catcher next to her expensive, overstuffed couch.
“Hey, whore,” he said, “did one of your sugar daddies buy this couch for you?”
Her answer was muffled by the cushions.
He slowly brought his hands up her calves, the latex dragging against her skin. Then up her thighs, his stroke slowing as it climbed the crown of her butt. Then slowly up her back, his shirt bunching over his shou
lders and along the backs of his arms, until he grasped her neck and tightened his grasp. Moisture beaded on his forehead. Then a sudden snap, and she went limp.
Justice Roberts would find her precisely as she looked at this moment. The plumber smiled, pleased with his design of the scene.
It had been back in March when he first followed Justice Roberts to this little love nest in condo 1214 in the exclusive Capitol Arms, a twenty-minute walk from the courthouse. He had returned to follow Roberts in April and May to reconfirm Roberts still visited Jenny Robinson, and still walked to get there. A week ago, using the skills he’d learned courtesy of the U.S. government, he had tapped Jenny’s phone at the phone company’s box in the building’s basement and heard Roberts tell Jenny he would arrive at his regular time, three in the afternoon.
“I’ll walk out with the tourists,” he had said, “wearing a different coat than the one I’ll wear in that morning. And I’ll wear a hat, something I never do. When I get there, I’ll use my key. You can wait inside to surprise me. I’m not going to miss an afternoon with my Jenny.”
The old widower had sounded like a school kid bragging about sneaking out of the house after his parents went to bed.
The horny old fool.
LW stood watching from Jenny Robinson’s window until Roberts suddenly appeared at the corner of Fifth and F streets, a cigarette dangling from the edge of his mouth. He had not been followed.
Three minutes later, standing near the door, LW heard light footfalls on the carpeted hallway. He held the ends of his fingers loose against the lock and through the latex felt the stuttering friction of a metal key nesting into the grooves.
The knob turned.
The door swung inward.
“Sweetpea!” Justice Roberts called. “Daddy’s home!”
CHAPTER 32
President Schroeder meets with retired Senator Wilson Fowler,
former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Is he the rumored replacement for Jack McCall?
—New York Daily News, June 16
Ms. Lurleen Grissom’s fuzzy slippers sopped the water on her hardwood floor as she slogged her way into the kitchen where she departed from her normal morning routine of turning on the coffeepot. She picked up her phone.
“This is Ms. Grissom in eleven fourteen,” she told Joe Carter, the building manager. “I have water dripping into my living room. It’s coming from that harlot’s penthouse above me. My expensive new Persian hallway runner is ruined, not to mention my slippers. I’m standing in water right now. I demand the building pay for my losses. You get up here, Mr. Carter. I expect you to do something about this. Fast. The water just keeps dripping from my ceiling!”
Joe took his time getting up to the crotchety old busybody’s condo. It annoyed him that this time Gripey Grissom might have a legit beef.
Ms. Grissom wasted no words. “My apartment is a damn swimming pool,” she said as soon as she opened her door. “Just look. Look at that.” Her hands roosted on her hips when she finished pointing.
After an apology and a bit of groveling, Carter called the tenant in 1214, a woman he thought of as Ms. Jenny Sweetmeat. When Sweetmeat didn’t answer, he dashed upstairs, the chain of keys suspended on his belt loop jangling against his leg, Gripey Grissom audibly panting as she waddled up the stairs after him.
His knock went unanswered. “Ms. Robinson. Ms. Robinson. It’s Joe Carter, Ms. Robinson. Please open your door.”
When Ms. Robinson didn’t open her door, Carter used his passkey and upon stepping inside he heard a squish, looked down and saw water rising around his canvas shoes. Then he saw Sweetmeat. Face down on her couch. Butt up, wearing a black thong.
Ms. Jenny had asked him to help her slide that couch into position as a room divider. It remained his favorite help-me-with-this-will-you-Carter chore. When she had leaned to push, he had gotten his best look ever at her big knockers.
Sweetmeat must have tied one on and passed out, he thought. I’ll probably need to put my hands on her to wake her.
It took great fortitude for him to stop looking at Sweetmeat, but he did and went into the master bath to see water flowing over the rim of her old-fashioned tub, its brass claw feet standing ankle deep in water. He had often fantasized how she might look in that tub with bubbles clinging to the ends of her nipples. After turning off the water, he rolled up his sleeve, plunged his arm to the bottom, and pulled the drain plug.
When he came out of the bath, on the dining room side of the couch, he saw a man’s body. A large knife handle appeared to be balanced on his chest, and blood from his forehead had pooled and dried in one eye socket.
Carter didn’t know who the gent was, but he had the sinking feeling he would never realize his fantasy with Ms. Jenny Sweetmeat.
“LW task force. Nora Burke.”
“Nora. Paul Suggs. How are you?”
She remembered Suggs as a steady detective whose grin often revealed that brushing and flossing could not be part of his morning ritual. “I’m staying busy, Paul. What’s up at Metro?”
“We have Supreme Court Justice Michael Roberts dead in condo twelve fourteen of the Capitol Arms on Fifth Street. Initial estimate about twelve to eighteen hours. The cause of death appears to be the knife sticking in his heart. Ain’t all this talk about ‘alleged’ and ‘appears’ a bunch of crap? The damn attorneys are taken over the cop business. Anyway, the killer carved LW in Justice Robert’s forehead, so, yeah, this here’s the work of your guy.”
Nora propped her elbow on her desk, and cradled her chin in her open hand. “What the fuck happened to his surveillance?”
“Search me. I’m just glad Metro PD didn’t have that job.”
Nora snapped her fingers twice to get the attention of the others. “Run it down for me, Paul.”
“We got a dead young woman in the same unit, a Ms. Jennifer Robinson. It’s her condo. The front desk described the owner as a quiet resident who lived well without any known means of support. The doorman knew Justice Roberts as Mr. Smith, one of a number of gentlemen who regularly visited Ms. Robinson a few hours a month. I’m telling ya, this gal’s a centerfold so you can fill in the blank about what she did for a living. Nobody recalls seeing anyone unfamiliar enter or leave the building. We found signs of a lock having been forcibly picked on the outside door leading into the basement equipment room. A work elevator comes up from there to all the floors.”
Suggs went on to describe how the bodies were found.
“You got anything suggesting who left the water running in the tub?” Jack and Rachel were now standing next to Nora’s desk.
“No,” Suggs said. Nora shook her head for the others. “I’m guessing LW surprised the babe while she was filling her tub.”
“Is it possible that LW used the tub as a crude timing device to trigger the discovery?” Nora asked.
“I hadn’t considered that, but, sure, it could’ve went down like that. I mean it’s possible. Yeah, it might’ve been.”
“I’ll advise the bureau. They’ll be coming out to take control of the crime scene. If the media gets to you before that, tell ’em to sit tight and wait for the FBI. Okay?”
“Okay, Nora. Catch this jerkoff, will ya? Our cases are stacking up and we’re short a couple of detectives. I won’t mention any names, but they’re Wade and Burke.”
By the time Nora hung up, Frank and Millet had also come to her desk. She turned the notepad on which she had scribbled and underlined: Justice Michael Roberts and Ms. Jennifer Robinson.
Rachel quickly called FBI Director Hampton. While she was on the phone, the director dispatched a senior agent and an evidence response team.
Jack knew that the bureau would get things started at the Capitol Arms, and he planned to send Frank and Nora over, but before they left he called everyone to the table.
“We often ask victims and witnesses to tell their stories more than once. Let’s do that for the same reason: sometimes something comes out
on the retelling. Frank, start us off.”
Jack could see that Frank was clearly antsy to get to the murder scene, but he did what Jack asked.
“The Oregon gardener and local florist, and the two neighbors close to Chip Taylor’s home in Cleveland, as well as the room service waiter at the Marriott gave us very similar descriptions. Male. Age thirty, thirty-five. Normal length hair. Eye color unknown. Build, medium to light. Height, about five ten. Each time he’s been seen he wore a red baseball cap. No names, other than what may later be suggested by the lists Millet and Rachel are developing. It’s not likely but his initials could be LW. Now, can I get going?”
“When we’re finished, Frank. There are capable people already on their way,” Jack said. “It won’t be long.”
Rachel sat forward with the backs of her hands stacked under her chin. “His psychological profile characterizes him as delusional, someone who thinks he can change the authority structure of America. He plans far in advance. Apparently there’s nothing frightening about his physical manner. People are opening their doors to him. His communiqués suggest he’s either a college grad or highly self-educated. His latest writing hinted that his father, in some way, contributed to perverting him.”
“What do we have that tells us anything about any other member of his militia?” Jack asked. “Anybody?”
“Nothing,” Frank answered, adding squirming to his fidgeting. “Nothing at any of the crime scenes suggested anyone with a different description. And the manner in which each of his victims was murdered would not require an accomplice.”
“Nothing we have supports there being more than one killer,” Millet added in support of what Frank had said.
Everyone nodded, except Colin.
“Isn’t it possible,” Frank asked Colin, “that the idea of his having a militia is a red herring? Couldn’t this be the work of one psycho?”
