The First Family

by Michael Palmer

  “You feel that?”

  “You mean the cotton swab?”

  Passed.

  All other sensory tests were normal: vibration, joint position sensation, temperature, and the like.

  “Now let me see you walk,” Lee said.

  Lee could glean plenty of information by observing a patient’s gait. Was there a subtle drag of the leg? Were there signs of imbalance? Did he have equal and normal arm swings? Everything checked out fine.

  Lee tested Cam’s reflexes. Those were normal, too. He finished with a general examination, listening to the heart and lungs, palpating and listening to the belly, looking for any unusual skin rashes or lesions or birthmarks, finding none. Physically, everything appeared normal, except for his slightly enlarged tongue and complaint of occasional blurred vision. Lee could hardly be sure those were even signs of any significance.

  But that did not mean Cam Hilliard was out of the woods.

  When the exam was over, Cam dressed in his street clothes and went back in the waiting room with Lapham and Duffy. Lee felt almost sad to see him go, because he was unsure if their paths would cross again. He had come to like Cam in the short time they’d spent together. The boy was witty, sweet-natured, and obviously exceptionally intelligent.

  Ellen Hilliard and Dr. Gleason returned to the exam room, but the president did not join them.

  “The president has a meeting he cannot miss, but I’m to report your findings to him.”

  Lee wondered if Gleason had encouraged the president to brush off his debrief, and got the vibe he was prowling in the territory of the alpha male. His preference was to speak to both parents, but no matter. The mother was here and Lee had findings to share.

  The three sat in a circle facing each other. Ellen’s blinking was rapid and nervous, her jaw firmly set.

  “Well, I didn’t find anything physically wrong in my exam, but I’m concerned. Cam told me he’s been waking up some mornings feeling confused and extremely tired, with sore muscles.”

  Ellen seemed baffled. “He never said anything to me. You, Dr. Gleason?”

  Gleason shook his head. “Don’t we all have those days?”

  Lee had seen this coming.

  “Yeah, but he’s only sixteen, and these episodes seem to come out of the blue,” Lee said.

  “Have you ever been depressed, Dr. Blackwood?” Gleason asked.

  Lee gave the question some thought. On the life happiness spectrum, he typically swung pendulum-like from full-on joy to a bit morose, but never manic, and never so low that he could not pull himself out of a tailspin dive. Sure, he would like to find love again, have some sort of companionship. His last girlfriend, a nurse from the MDC named Bethany, had recently ghosted him. At first Lee thought she might have lost her phone, until his son Josh explained “ghosting” as the process of suddenly ceasing all communication in an effort to end a relationship without hurt feelings. Soon after Bethany went radio silent, Lee spotted her out on the town with an orthopedic surgeon. Bethany had never struck him as the materialistic type, but not many family docs cruised around in an eighty-five-thousand-dollar Mercedes, either.

  Despite Lee’s dismal love life and the stresses of a diminishing medical practice, he had managed, miraculously even, to live a relatively happy existence.

  “I have never had depression,” Lee finally answered.

  “But you do realize fatigue, morning aches, are symptomatic of the condition?”

  “I’m well aware,” said Lee. “But there is another, more sensitive matter Cam was reluctant to discuss.”

  Ellen folded her arms across her chest, bracing herself for the news. “What did he say?” she asked.

  “He told me that he wet his bed at night. He said it happened only once, and I’m inclined to believe him.”

  Ellen seemed bewildered, but also relieved Lee’s discovery was not worse.

  “He’s never been a bed wetter,” she said, “but one time, an accident, a really deep sleep maybe, it’s not so remarkable.”

  “I agree,” Lee said. “But it’s also unusual, and I’m here looking for anything unusual that might give us a different window into what’s troubling your son.”

  “And has this window shown you something?” Ellen asked.

  “I saw nothing in my exam to indicate the presence of a tumor, but I’m worried that Cam might be having seizures during sleep. I thought his tongue was a little generous in size, possibly from having bitten it at night, and waking up tired and achy, the bedwetting, those are all possible indications of nocturnal seizure activity.”

  “Are you diagnosing Cam with epilepsy?” Dr. Gleason’s voice had a harsh edge.

  “I can’t tell you that, but I do think he needs to see a neurologist, and he needs more tests.”

  Ellen pressed her palms together, fingertips to her mouth as though in prayer.

  “What does it mean?” she asked. “There’s no history of epilepsy in either of our families.”

  “At this point, having a seizure doesn’t mean having epilepsy. If the findings are indicative of seizures, those could be affecting his mood as well.”

  “What could cause that?” Ellen asked.

  “Scarring in the brain, perhaps, or a genetic predisposition of some sort.”

  Ellen shook her head in disbelief, unsure how to process this information. She eyed Dr. Gleason as if to say, How come you didn’t know all this?

  “No offense, Dr. Blackwood,” Gleason said, “but I believe you’re in over your head here, and I’m afraid you’re alarming the first lady for no particularly good reason. Now, hats off to you for getting Cam to open up, but nothing you’ve described makes me think anything different.

  “If you take into account all the evidence—Cam’s moodiness, the behavioral changes, and now add bedwetting to the mix—I think you’ve helped to bolster my case that the real culprit is anxiety and stress. I think we should rule that out before we make Cam any more anxious with what may be unnecessary tests,” Gleason said. “Then, I guess, we could let someone who knows the brain take a look at him.”

  With all the evidence he had presented, just about any doc Lee knew would be willing to suspect seizures, but not Gleason. Again, Lee caught the strong scent of Gleason’s alpha male aura. If Cam was going to receive a neurological consult, it would be at Gleason’s direction, not Lee’s.

  “Cam’s not had any previous problems, and he says he’s not under any undue stress,” Lee said. “Something else may be going on here.”

  “Your exam was normal,” Gleason said.

  “That doesn’t rule out anything. You have his visual complaints to consider as well,” said Lee. “I think you should rule out all medical issues before declaring him in need of psychological help.”

  “Dr. Gleason, what are we going to do here?” Ellen asked. “All I hear is you two arguing, and that’s not helping my son.”

  Her eyes bored into Gleason. She was task-driven, Lee could tell. She wanted clearly articulated next steps and a resolution.

  Dr. Gleason returned a wan smile. “We will certainly take Dr. Blackwood’s assessment under careful advisement. I want to thank you for your time today. You’ve been of great service.”

  There were more thank-yous after that, and a lengthy handshake with the first lady, and a promise to let Lee know he would be called upon again if they felt he could be of further help.

  Lee was not expecting his phone to ring anytime soon.

  CHAPTER 8

  WEDNESDAY MORNING, APRIL 19

  Mark Muller, the man his friends called Mauser, parked the cable company van across the street from the home belonging to the parents of Susie Banks. Mauser knew nothing about the cable business, but his friend who worked for the company servicing this home (as well as most in the area) did. His friend also happened to have a serious love affair with drugs, and had lent his van along with some technical know-how in exchange for the kind of help Mauser could provide.

  The street where Sus
ie Banks lived was nothing special. Nice brick houses nestled closely together on postage-stamp lots. There was one car in the narrow driveway. It would be the father’s. He was the one who’d called the company when his Internet went down after Mauser’s friend disconnected the service using his work laptop.

  Now his friend was in the back of the van, high and happy, so it was Mauser who ambled up the stone-lined walkway to the front door. These were older homes—modest dwellings with a price tag nipping at the obscene level, but such was life in Arlington, Virginia.

  Mauser’s digs were not so cheap either. He lived in Fort Dupont, just east of the mostly forgotten Anacostia River area. It was centrally located to two steady sources of drug-dealing income: the sketchier parts of southeast D.C. and the far more upscale neighborhood of Capitol Hill. Cam Hilliard lived only a few miles from his apartment. Mauser had no idea how he’d deal with that problem when the time came, but he knew it would not be nearly as easy as pretending to be a cable repairman.

  Mauser rang the doorbell, summoning Douglas Banks, tall with square shoulders, to the door. He was a family therapist who had an office on the first floor of this home. His wife was a high school history teacher. His daughter was a violin prodigy. The only other thing Mauser knew about this family was they had little time left to live.

  Doug Banks checked over Mauser’s uniform and saw the van parked outside. His face showed relief.

  “Thank you for getting here so fast. Can’t believe how dependent I am on the damn Internet. A few hours without it and I’m utterly lost.” The man chuckled.

  Mauser returned the pleasant smile of someone who heard that a lot in the course of a day. Tucked under his arm was an official clipboard, a prop his friend had provided. In his pants pocket Mauser carried a number of nine-volt batteries he had drained using a nine-volt connector and several LED lights purchased from an electronics store. He hoped those dead batteries would come in handy soon.

  Mr. Banks invited Mauser inside, but first Mauser covered his work boots with plastic bags as a professional courtesy. Never track dirt into a customer’s home. That would be poor form.

  The home was decorated modestly and kept clean and neat. Music posters hung on the walls, along with framed photographs depicting a happy family proud of their talented daughter.

  Mauser should have felt something akin to remorse, but the money he was making thanks to the arrangement with Rainmaker occluded his conscience.

  “May I see your router?” Mauser asked.

  Doug Banks led Mauser to a tidy little office directly off the kitchen. On a bookshelf the router’s lights blinked a distress signal of sorts. Mauser examined the router and the cables, looking like a man who knew what he was doing.

  “This might take some time,” Mauser said, his voice implying the problem was a serious one. “The issue could be anywhere. I’m assuming you have a cable box upstairs?”

  “Yeah, we do.”

  “Okay, I’m going to have to check throughout the house. Is that all right with you?”

  “You have free range,” Doug Banks said. “I’ll be hiding out in my office if you need me for anything.”

  Mauser thanked the man and headed upstairs, where he found the first carbon monoxide detector stuck to the ceiling in the hallway. There were no prongs for an outlet, but a little green light indicated the unit was operational on battery power only.

  Good.

  He had a backup plan if the system was connected to a central alarm, but this setup made things considerably easier. Stealthily, Mauser snapped open the cover and replaced the working battery with the dead one, using a hand to dampen the sound of a chirp. Mauser checked the light and confirmed his dead battery had rendered the unit useless. He surveyed the rest of the floor. A single detector was all it took to safeguard the upper level from the odorless, tasteless, and deadly gas.

  Down in the kitchen, Mauser found a second unit. He replaced that good battery with his dead one while Doug Banks toiled away in his office on the other side of the kitchen wall. The house was not alarmed, and the only other home safety products were two smoke detectors that would not go off for a gas leak.

  Mauser found Doug in his office.

  “Mind if I check the basement?” he asked. “I think the issue might be with the splitter. If so, it should be easy for me to get you back up and running in no time.”

  Mauser did not know what a splitter looked like, or what it even did. But his friend had given him a couple buzzwords to toss around before he got buzzed on oxy.

  Douglas Banks brought Mauser to the basement door. “Do you need anything else?” he asked.

  “No, nothing at all,” Mauser said.

  Mr. Banks returned to his office without Internet, while Mauser descended a varnished wooden staircase to the basement. He entered a spacious unfinished room, dimly lit, with a clean cement floor and boxes of various sizes all neatly arranged on shelving units. A pegboard displayed a nice collection of tools, but the workbench functioned as storage for additional boxes.

  Mauser rendered a third CO detector useless before answering one of his last remaining questions: the home was heated with a gas furnace. This was a good thing. An oil furnace might not do the trick, but a big, nasty crack in the heat exchanger of a gas furnace would flood the house with carbon monoxide.

  Some naysayers would argue that a cracked heat exchanger in a gas furnace was no cause for alarm. They’d say it was a sales job from an eager repairman looking for a good payday. They were wrong.

  Mauser might not be an expert at cable, but he knew heating and cooling systems. It was his cover job—gave a plausible explanation for all his money. His father had taught him the trade, and Mauser had spent years working alongside his dad, learning the nuances of maintaining and fixing complex machinery.

  The real money, however, came from dealing drugs. Profits kept climbing, even though he had to share the take with his crew of seven, all part of the Blitzkrieg motorcycle gang. These days his crew was busy expanding their operation and territory, thanks largely to his arrangement with Rainmaker.

  A lot of people saw the name Blitzkrieg, and the emblem on the back of his leather jacket—a fiery skeleton clad in leather, wearing an Imperial German Pickelhaube helmet, riding a sleek chopper—and thought Aryan Brotherhood, but he was no neo-Nazi. Mauser’s affection for all things German, his prized Mauser C96 pistol included, was born out of respect for a small, economically depressed country that nearly took over the world.

  It was hard to get more badass than that.

  Mauser checked the furnace tag. The model was ten years old. In five or so years the unit would be a candidate for replacement. If something were to malfunction, not many eyebrows would rise. The incident would be logged as a terrible tragedy and a grim reminder to test carbon monoxide alarms monthly and replace the batteries at least once a year.

  The basement had a single door to the outside, with a steep set of concrete stairs up to ground level. The lock on the door was nothing special, easy to breach.

  Everything was in place except for one final detail. Mauser called his friend in the van. Five minutes later he called upstairs.

  “Mr. Banks, could you try the Internet for me?”

  “Sure, hold a second,” Mr. Banks called back. A moment later he exclaimed, “Hey, you’re a miracle worker!”

  No, Mauser thought. I’m Death riding a chopper with a German Pickelhaube on my head.

  CHAPTER 9

  Karen watched Cam’s touch football game from the shade of a massive magnolia tree that President Andrew Jackson had planted sometime around 1835. Off to her right, White House gardeners were out in force, taking advantage of a dry day to prune the shrubs that lined the west colonnade bridging the Rose Garden and the South Lawn, where Cam’s game took place.

  In the days since Lee conducted his physical examination, Cam’s chess game had continued to decline and with it his confidence had sunk to new lows. He hid out in his room and didn’t even
want to go to the TPI for chess practice anymore. Ellen, desperate for a breakthrough, arranged the football game as a way of possibly achieving one.

  At first, Cam had resisted, calling it a scheduled play date. School was closed because of a teachers’ professional day. Somehow, the first lady had convinced Cam to extend himself, see if a little fun might lift his spirits. She made the plans before he had a chance to change his mind.

  Normally, Karen did not have to watch over Cam so diligently inside the compound. The kids could not have been safer. But Karen had promised Ellen she would keep a close eye on him, and her perch by the tree offered a view of the action without making her a presence on the field.

  Cam was not the best athlete in the game, but he had a decent enough arm and probably would have been QB even if he were not the president’s kid. To Karen’s surprise, Taylor Gleason was playing. She was glad to see that Cam’s string of losses had not soured their long-standing friendship. It showed great maturity, strength of character, and could mark a turning point in Cam’s steady decline. One could always hope.

  Cam dropped back to pass and connected with a boy named Rodger Winchester for a solid gain followed by a series of spirited high-fives. The smile on Cam’s face was a major relief.

  Maybe the first lady’s play date would work after all.

  Karen had had high hopes that Lee’s exam would reveal some hidden cause for Cam’s issues. Instead, his findings gave Gleason reason to dig his heels in even harder. The president was now thoroughly convinced the best course of action was for Cam to see a psychiatrist right away. That plan would have made perfect sense, except for one small detail: Cam kept insisting his issues were with his body, not his mind. He vehemently opposed any psychiatric help, but Cam had a hard time making his case.

  For years, he had essentially lived his life above the busiest store in all of D.C., on display for the public’s endless scrutiny. While the children of presidents were off-limits from muckraking (one of a few unwritten rules in Washington), living in the public eye had to be tremendously difficult. Cam had never asked for this role, and until recently, he had managed it well.