The First Family

by Michael Palmer

  The gunman slammed into Paul’s desk, catching sight of Lee as he doubled over. Taking advantage, Lee jumped up and threw a punch, a solid jab that connected hard with the man’s jaw. Pain exploded in Lee’s knuckles.

  The killer stumbled back. Josh grunted as he went with him, continuing his struggle to pry the gun loose. The two became entangled, momentum carrying them both to the floor. As he fell, the killer moved his gun in front of Josh’s face.

  Lee’s body went rigid at the sound of the bang. Two other shots rang out. Had Josh been shot in the face? His shoulder? His neck? It had happened too fast for Lee to see. The entwined pair hit the floor with a thud.

  Lee scrambled to his feet, leapt over the desk, and ripped the man off his son’s body, screaming, “JOSH! JOSH!”

  The killer went backward as Lee fell forward onto Josh. Even though the gunman was now behind him, the threat no longer registered. All he saw was blood on the front of Josh’s shirt. Lee ripped the shirt open, popping several buttons as he flexed his arms back. He searched frantically for the entry wounds, seeing none.

  Where has he been shot?

  “Dad!”

  Josh’s voice lifted Lee from his drowning panic. The boil of his blood settled.

  “Dad—Dad, I’m fine! I’m not hurt!”

  Lee crumpled to the floor, chest heaving, gasping for air. Then he carefully regarded the gunman, specifically noting the three dark splotches marking the front of the man’s gray sweatshirt. Josh stood and aimed his gun at the dead man—a gun Lee now knew had three fewer bullets in the magazine.

  CHAPTER 50

  “Who did the shooting?”

  The person doing the asking was a tall, handsome black man with a smooth, shaved head and well-groomed goatee. He was Detective Neil Moore. Unlike the MPD officers roaming the clinic in police blues, Detective Moore wore dark slacks and a sharp-looking tweed blazer over a white shirt and red tie.

  “I did, sir,” Josh said, his deference to authority kicking in like a reflex. “It was self-defense. My father was a witness. This guy was going to shoot me.”

  Josh did not sound or act distraught. He never talked much about his experiences overseas in the military, but his calm and composed demeanor suggested this was not the first person to die by his hand. Lee thought about his own close brush with death, having a vague memory of Karen telling him how often people miss in close-quarters combat. He felt grateful she’d been proven right.

  “Where’s the weapon?” Moore asked.

  “SIG Sauer. Bagged and tagged already,” a nearby MPD police officer announced.

  “It’s my mother’s gun,” Josh said.

  The detective responded with a nod. Lee studied the man’s dark eyes, searching for any hint of aggression, seeing none.

  Blood scented the air all the way to the waiting room, where Lee and Josh gave Detective Moore their statements. The clinic had become a beehive of activity, with cops everywhere and caution tape strewn about like a haphazard cobweb. Outside, strobes from a fleet of vehicles lit the sky like a display of fireworks. From down the hall, the sound of turning wheels drew Lee’s attention to the medical examiner transporting a body zipped up in black plastic.

  The detective reached out a hand, bringing the gurney to a stop.

  “Who’s that?” Moore asked in a rich baritone voice.

  “The doc,” said a young medical examiner in a white disposable body suit. Behind the ME stood an older gentleman dressed in a light blue jacket with the word CORONER emblazoned on the back. Lee’s heart sank at the sight. His throat closed, his eyes watering with grief.

  “He’s not the doc,” Lee said, spitting out the words with ragged breath. “His name is Paul Tresell. And he was my partner and my friend.”

  Detective Moore gripped Lee’s arm gently and with a nod, sent the coroner on his way.

  “I’m truly sorry for your loss, Dr. Blackwood,” the detective said, locking eyes with Lee. His sincerity was enough to hold back Lee’s dark anger.

  “Thank you,” Lee said, a measure of calm returning. He took a seat next to Josh on one of the waiting room chairs.

  Detective Moore pulled a chair over for himself, maneuvering it so he faced the father and son. He sat. “Do you keep narcotics here?” Moore asked Lee.

  “Why are you asking?”

  “The man your son shot is named Willie Caine. He’s a doper, sometimes dealer, and let’s just say he’s earned a lot of frequent flyer miles with Police Air.”

  “You think he broke in here to get drugs?”

  “Any other reason he’d kill your partner and ambush you?”

  Lee was thinking there were plenty of reasons. He had no doubt Paul’s murder was connected to the repairman. But how?

  Lee locked eyes with Detective Moore. “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  “Anything,” answered Moore.

  “Does Willie Caine have a tattoo of a skull wearing a pointed helmet on his body?”

  The detective gave a shrug. “Why do you ask?”

  Lee explained his encounter with the repairman at the MDC.

  “Guess we can have a look,” Moore said. “Willie won’t mind.”

  Lee and Josh followed Detective Moore back into Paul’s office, the smell of blood more pungent with each step. When they entered, Lee’s breath caught. Paul was gone, but his echo remained in the form of a gruesome stain on the carpeting.

  Lee’s eyes turned down in reverence and memory. For Paul’s sake, he vowed that sadness and anger would not cloud his mission. He would get answers. Paul would have justice.

  The office was crowded with police and forensic specialists, all busily gathering evidence and processing the crime scene. On the floor, exactly where Lee had tossed him, lay Willie Caine. His gray and lifeless eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling, and his open mouth revealed a set of crooked, yellow teeth. A police photographer, encased inside a white plastic suit, took photographs with a digital camera.

  Detective Moore knelt next to the body. With a gloved hand, he pushed up the sleeve of Willie’s sweatshirt, exposing an array of tattoos decorating the forearm. One of them, framed by the tail of a winged dragon, was a skull head wearing a spiked helmet.

  “That looks familiar to you?”

  Lee nodded, then turned his head away.

  “That tattoo could be gang-related,” Moore said. “I’m not familiar with it. But there is a lot of narcotic activity in these gangs.”

  Lee believed this was about drugs—just not the kind sold on the streets.

  “We have specialists who know a lot more about gangland than I do,” Moore added. “I’ll make sure to include this in my report.”

  “What about Josh?” Lee asked.

  It was inconceivable to think that Josh could be in any trouble for saving his life.

  “There’s evidence to suggest you and Josh believed your lives were in imminent danger,” Moore said, nodding toward Willie’s sprawled-out body. “By law, you can use the amount of force which you reasonably believe is necessary to protect yourself.”

  “Meaning?” Lee asked.

  “Meaning, don’t use a gun when the other guy has a golf club.”

  “The other guy had a gun,” Josh said.

  “In D.C. you don’t have a right to stand and kill, but there’s no duty to retreat either,” Moore explained. “We’ve got a healthy middle ground there. My sergeant and lieutenant will be down here soon enough. We’ll have a sit-down. We’ll talk it out.”

  “We’ll have an attorney present,” Lee said.

  “It’s your right,” Moore said.

  Lee did not know how it would play out, but he did not get the sense that Josh would leave in handcuffs.

  Lee noticed one of the forensic specialists remove a cell phone from the back pocket of Willie’s pants and slip it into an evidence bag. It was a Galaxy phone, the same kind Paul owned. Several thoughts came to Lee all at once. What if Paul had called and left those voice mail messages before Willie a
mbushed him? What if Willie forced Paul to text Lee? Had Paul sent clues with the misspelling and the use of the word,”office”? Aside from imagining Paul’s visceral terror, another thought struck Lee. What had Paul found out?

  “Detective Moore,” Lee said. “I would like to look at my partner’s computer before you take it away.”

  Moore shook his head. “It’s evidence. I’m afraid that can’t be allowed,” he said.

  “I understand,” said Lee. “Would you mind if I made a phone call?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Lee stepped into the hallway and returned moments later, handing his phone to Detective Moore.

  “It’s for you,” Lee said.

  Moore put the phone to his ear. “This is Detective Moore. Yes, yes of course … I’ll hold.” Moore appeared thunderstruck, his bravado retreating like the tide. He pulled the phone away and must have seen the number on the display come up as WHITE HOUSE because his eyes went wide. A few moments later those eyes grew even wider.

  “Um, Mr. President? For real? Um—sir, yes, Mr. President, it’s an honor. Yes—yes, of course. Of course, Mr. President … we’ll have oversight, but yes, I’ll make that happen. I understand, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President.”

  Moore handed Lee back his phone in a daze.

  “The computer is all yours, Dr. Blackwood,” he said.

  CHAPTER 51

  Lee sat at Paul’s desk, trying to ignore the divot in the leather cushion—a reminder of where Paul once sat. He tried not to focus on the carpet’s dark stain. Instead, he cleared his mind of grief and sorrow to focus on the task at hand. Paul had found something—maybe something critical, something that might have cost him his life.

  Willie Caine’s body had been taken away in a body bag and a lawyer friend of Lee’s was on his way to the clinic. Josh was going to be interviewed, but it was increasingly doubtful he’d be charged. Josh would get Karen up to speed. She knew Paul well and would be devastated by the news. The police were on their way to Paul’s house to notify Tracy, his wife, of her husband’s murder. News that broke hearts was best delivered in person. Lee would speak with Tracy soon enough.

  What did you figure out? Lee asked Paul, thinking again of those voice mail messages.

  He assumed it was research related, so he opened Microsoft Word, checking the most recent files, and found nothing of interest. Next, he pulled up a Web browser and glanced through Paul’s browser history, not because he had any strong feelings, but because he did not know where else to begin. To his surprise, Lee found a series of Web site visits, all of them specifically dealing with lipid storage diseases. He felt a little tingle at the base of his neck.

  When this all began, he and Paul had discussed a metabolic disorder as a possible cause of Cam’s symptoms, something genetic. But they had abandoned the theory when more young people turned up with similar symptoms and shared connections to the TPI.

  Metabolic disorders, inborn errors of metabolism, were inherited at birth. The idea of a group of teens, all affiliated with the same organization, all having the same never-before-seen genetic disease, was inconceivable. The cause had to be environmental, a toxin, something the kids had ingested, something given to them, not a mutation inherited at birth.

  Lee had put Occam’s razor, a principle of scientific philosophy, into practice. The simplest explanation is usually the better one. An experimental nootropic was simple.

  So why, then, was Paul looking up lipid storage diseases, a type of metabolic disorder and the least simple theory Lee could think of, hours before he called?

  Because they could not come up with another answer, that’s why.

  Lee accessed Paul’s e-mail. In the messages, he found recent correspondence with a geneticist named Dr. Ruth Kaufmann. Lee read through the e-mail chain and was surprised to read that Dr. Kaufmann did not at first dismiss the possibility of a genetic disorder.

  Then again, Paul had started their correspondence by listing the symptoms with no mention of the ProNeural nootropics or the unusual clustering around the TPI. So in a way it was logical that Dr. Kaufmann had come up with a genetic cause, same as Lee and Paul had once discussed. But in Paul’s next message, he gave new information, including the link between the patients and the TPI. This time, Dr. Kaufmann supported Lee’s theory that an environmental factor made the most sense.

  Lee was puzzled. What if they had focused only on the symptoms, as Dr. Kauffman had done in that first e-mail exchange? Could it be that Susie and Cam, the others too, all suffered from the same genetic disease—an illness that interfered with metabolism, causing progressive damage to multiple organs: brain, retina, liver, kidney—the whole body?

  Paul was smart to reach out to somebody new, someone without bias. Dr. Kaufmann had given them a fresh perspective. In her e-mail to Paul, Dr. Kaufmann wrote:

  While I agree with you that a toxin makes the most sense, the red spots and other systems issues still make me think some genetic factor is at work. The only way to know for certain is to conduct comprehensive genetic testing. I think it’s critical to rule out the possibility, as unlikely as it seems, that this condition is genetic in origin.

  The idea of it baffled Lee. If the red spots in Susie’s eyes had been there since birth, a precondition for them to be genetic disease markers, why didn’t Cam have them as well? And what was the real likelihood of five TPI students, possibly more, all having the same incredibly unusual genetic disease? It seemed as probable as lightning striking one person five times.

  Could it be Lee was missing something, some significant find that would tie everything together?

  To get that answer, Lee knew what call he had to make next.

  * * *

  ON THE phone, Dr. Ruth Kaufmann had a husky voice with a rich and resonant sound. From her bio, Lee had learned that she was the director of the National Human Genome Center at Howard University, having earned her master of science degree in biology from Virginia Tech, and a Ph.D. in human genetics from the University of Maryland. According to her accompanying picture, she was a black woman in her late fifties with a round face, short hair, and a breezy smile. She was, from what Lee ascertained, internationally renowned for her expertise on genetic diseases. Paul had probably phoned her because of her reputation and proximity—Howard University was only a twenty-minute drive from the clinic.

  Lee did not expect to hear from Dr. Kaufmann so soon after leaving her a voice mail with news of Paul’s murder, but she phoned back minutes later. He took her call in his office, unable to bear another minute in the same room where his friend had died. He spent time giving Dr. Kaufmann an overview of the events leading up to Paul’s murder, excluding names, focusing instead on the symptoms of the five known cases.

  “The clustering is more than hard to explain, I agree,” Dr. Kaufmann said, sounding baffled. “And I probably would have gone down the same rabbit hole you did.”

  “But you think it’s still worth doing comprehensive genetic testing?”

  “I do.”

  “A swab?” Lee asked.

  “I don’t think that will suffice,” Dr. Kaufmann said. “For the kind of testing I have in mind we’d need a sample of blood, skin, or other tissue for a higher-quality analysis.”

  “One of the subjects, the one without the red spots in his eyes, is well—unavailable,” Lee said, careful not to mention Cam by name.

  “Then I’m afraid I can’t be of much help.”

  Lee had no way to get tissue samples from Noah Pickering, or the Stewart twins. Those three were long dead and buried. He could easily get them from Susie, but to complete the picture he needed to test Cam. An idea came to him and his pulse jumped.

  “What if I could get you tissue samples from a spleen?” he asked.

  “That would work fine,” Dr. Kaufmann said.

  Three hours later, after the lawyer was gone, and the lieutenant and sergeant had finished questioning Josh; after the reporters were shooed away, no statements given; aft
er Detective Moore gave them the green light to go home; after Lee spoke to Paul’s wife, now widow, and made a promise to meet her at the medical examiner’s office in the morning; after all that was done, Lee got in his car, Josh seated beside him, and drove off in the direction of the MDC.

  * * *

  MAUSER FIRED up his tracking app and followed Lee out of the parking lot. He was driving the white cargo van he used for his heating and cooling business (peel-away decals advertising his company removed). Hours ago, back at the MDC, Mauser had stuck a magnetic GPS locator to the undercarriage of Lee’s car. He had followed Lee to the clinic and had been nearby when Willie Caine tried to do away with three people and came up two short. It was too bad for Willie, but Mauser had made the right call to use him as the sacrificial lamb. At least now he knew what he was up against.

  Checking his rearview, Mauser spotted Drew Easley on his Harley, motoring right behind the cargo van. Easley, a fellow Blitzkrieg Biker, one of Mauser’s top dealers, looked like a Viking with his long blond hair streaming in the breeze and a thick beard shielding much of his face. Unlike Willie Caine, Easley was someone Mauser could take to war. They had met up in Tenleytown and were together, drinking Starbucks coffees spiked with cinnamon whisky, watching police come and go from Lee’s clinic. Now they were on the move, and Mauser thought he knew where they were headed.

  His new plan was to trail Lee, because he and Rainmaker believed it would eventually lead them to Susie Banks. The situation was rapidly deteriorating, and things had to be dealt with in a permanent fashion. Prison was not an option. Willie’s death would be a dead end, as in a junkie-desperate-for-a-fix kind of dead end, but if Rainmaker went down, Mauser had every reason to believe he’d take his henchman down with him.

  It was time again for Mauser to get his hands dirty.

  * * *

  DR. BRIAN SENECA, the surgeon who had removed Cam’s spleen, met Lee down at the path lab in the basement of the MDC. He was dressed sharply, in a tailored suit with stripes as bold as his scalpel cuts. The lab was closed at this hour, but Seneca was on friendly terms with a pathologist who had agreed to come in and procure a sample of the spleen for Dr. Kaufmann.