by Tom Abrahams
Holt admired how a woman as smart as Karen cared about her appearance too. He knew too many people in the web business, men and women, who flippantly overlooked their clothing or hygiene.
“You really do look good,” he purred as she stepped past him, following the hostess to their table.
After helping her into her seat, Holt slid in across from her and leaned on the table with his elbows.
“How long has it been?” he mused. “Was it the untimely death of that Houston congressman? What was his name?” Holt snapped his fingers.
“Gruber.”
“Yes! Gruber. Wow! Good memory.”
The dim candlelight flickered a flattering glow across Karen’s face. Holt lost his train of thought.
“Let’s forego the foreplay, shall we?” Karen reached into her purse and pulled out an iPad mini.
Holt looked past her and caught the attention of a waiter. “Could we please get some water and a bottle of your Ferrari-Carano Sauvignon Blanc?”
“I’m not drinking.” Karen looked at Holt over the top of her glasses. “So the bottle is yours.”
“Fair enough.” The reporter shrugged and asked the waiter for two glasses.
“I have some information on my iPad here.” Karen tapped on the screen and then pushed her glasses against her nose with her index finger. “I’ll need to explain some of this to you, and I can’t let you take this information with you. So either you’ll need a notepad or a good memory.”
Holt pulled a digital recorder from his jacket pocket and slid it onto the table. He pressed a button and a red light illuminated. Karen pursed her lips, looking at the recorder, then initiated her tutorial.
“Let me begin with the basics. At every death there are at least two scenes we consider. One is the location of the death. The other is the body itself. We’re responsible for the analysis related to the second scene. Any questions you have about the first scene won’t be answered by anything I have to tell you.”
“Got it.”
“Our work consists of a gross external examination, a gross internal examination, toxicology, and a microscopic examination. Together, those four elements help us determine how the subject died.” Karen paused as the waiter returned with a bottle of wine.
He presented it to Holt and uncorked it, pouring a taste into Holt’s glass. The reporter swirled the wine around in the glass, as he’d seen real oenophiles do, and then sipped from his glass.
“It’s good.” He tipped the glass toward Karen.
Karen rolled her eyes and nodded. The waiter filled both glasses and offered to return with a description of the evening’s specials.
“As I was saying—” she took a sip of the wine, her tongue gliding across her upper lip “—the internal investigation is what most people consider the autopsy. That’s where we take an in situ inventory of the organs before we remove them, weigh them, and then examine them thoroughly. We are looking for signs of disease, trauma, or anything abnormal. Once we examine the organs, we then collect samples from each for microscopic examinations.”
“And that’s it, aside from the toxicology?”
“No. When we finish with our report, we have to take into account what the death investigation finds. That’s typically handled by a police agency that is in charge of that other ‘scene’, the location of death. Once we get that report, we incorporate it into our findings and issue a final autopsy report. That’s when we release the cause and manner of death.”
“Like homicide?”
“Like homicide, suicide, accidental, or undetermined. And we’ll typically accompany that with the contributing or causal factors. Those could be a cardiac arrest, asphyxia, blunt force traum—”
“Drug overdose.”
“Yes.” Karen nodded. “Drug overdose.” She looked down at her iPad and tapped it twice before running a finger along the center of the screen.
“So now that I’ve completed Autopsy 101,” Holt said, “what’s on that iPad?”
“We haven’t completed the autopsy. It’s still in the preliminary phase.”
“What are you waiting on?” Holt took another swig of his wine.
“Toxicology isn’t back. And neither is the death investigator’s report.”
“So what’s the preliminary cause?”
“Overdose.”
“Even without the toxicology?”
“There are signs.”
“Like track marks?”
“Among other things.”
“C’mon, Karen,” Holt smirked. “Quit being coy.”
“I thought you liked that,” she zinged as the waiter returned and offered the night’s specials. They both ordered from the menu.
“So you were talking about the signs of a drug addict,” Holt said, refilling Karen’s glass after the waiter walked away. She didn’t protest.
“There are so many.” She picked up the glass, waving it like a wand. “In this instance, the subject’s liver was inflamed. That’s a symptom of hepatitis, a common infectious disease contracted by intravenous drug users. Additionally, and more importantly, were the vascular issues.”
“How so?”
“Repeated heroin use clogs the blood vessels supplying the lungs, liver, kidneys, and brain,” she explained. “That’s because whatever is in the heroin, the stuff that’s not naturally part of the opiate, doesn’t dissolve properly.”
“And Horus—”
“The subject,” she interrupted, her eyes looking down to the glowing red light on the digital recorder, “presented with all of these issues. Put that together with the track marks on his arms and feet, and it’s a safe deduction he was a heroin addict.”
“That leads you to conclude overdose?”
“There was also a remarkable arthritis in his elbows and ankles.”
“Remarkable?”
“For someone his age, he shouldn’t have suffered from that degree of inflammation in those joints. It’s another side effect of the heroin use.”
“Just because he was an addict,” Holt countered, “it doesn’t mean he overdosed. I could be a smoker and not die from lung cancer.”
“True.”
“So why the overdose determination?”
“We have some basic information from the death investigation, despite not having the report.” Karen took her napkin and dabbed the cloth on either side of her mouth.
“And?”
“There was a large amount of heroin at the location,” she answered. “He had a needle in his arm. There was drug paraphernalia strewn about the location. I could go on…”
“You’re not telling me anything the police haven’t already said publicly.” Holt poured the remainder of the wine into his glass. “Aside from the clogged arteries and the arthritis.”
Karen’s eyes narrowed behind her frames. She pushed them up the bridge of her nose without taking her eyes off Holt’s. Her expression was unchanged, but Holt sensed she was telling him to keep asking questions.
“What about the female companion?” he pressed.
“What about her?”
“Did she leave any evidence?”
“Finally.” Karen pulled the glass to her lips and smiled. “You’re asking the right questions.” She took a sip from the glass. “Order another bottle.”
CHAPTER 10
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, DC
Felicia Jackson stood in front of the mirror, fixing her hair. She glanced at her husband’s reflection over her shoulder. “I don’t have much time. I have a press conference.”
“I don’t know why tonight should be any different,” he bemoaned, stepping to within a few inches of her. He put his hands on her hips and she flinched.
“Really?” Her blue eyes were icier with every passing moment; she rolled them and returned her attention to styling her jet black, shoulder-length hair. “Passive aggression doesn’t suit you.”
“We need to talk about this,” he pressed, pulling his hands from her hips a
nd moving them to her shoulders. He squeezed gently. “You’re going to Camp David and then straight to Barcelona.”
“I’m glad you at least pay attention to my daily schedule advisories.” She shrugged herself free of his hands.
“I spoke to Chapa,” he said, lowering his voice.
“What?” Jackson whipped around to face her husband. She was a good six inches shorter than the First Husband, but she was glaring down at him nonetheless. “Why? You were supposed to cease all communication with him after the inauguration. That was the deal. You know all the communication in the White House is logged. It’s all public record.”
“We met at Crystal Thai,” he said, “near our loft on Clarendon.”
“Seriously? In person? At a place where you’re well known? What were you thinking? For a neurosurgeon, you’re an idiot sometimes.”
His shoulders shrank and he stepped back from her, shoving his hands into his pants pockets. “I don’t like your choice of words,” he countered flatly. “I picked a place where my presence would appear normal, where nobody would care, and where there wouldn’t be any cameras.”
“You didn’t need to pick any place. You were supposed to cease contact. We cannot be connected to Chapa anymore. Not at all.”
“He wanted to be certain his name would never be attached to anything.”
“Attached to anything?”
“I assured him there wouldn’t be any questions. That he is, for all intents and purposes, invisible.”
“On whose authority?” The president folded her arms and stepped into her husband’s space.
“I assumed I had the latitude to make that promise given the previous arrangement.”
“Chapa was paid. You were paid. I made certain…concessions. That was years ago, and that was where the previous arrangement started and stopped.”
“Understood, Felicia,” he said, shaking his head. “I get his concern. All of these threads, regardless of how tangential they might be, tie together.”
“How naïve are you?” she sneered, turning her back on him to face the mirror again. “If there weren’t questions then, or questions after the bombing, why would there be questions now? Have you thought of that?”
“I—”
“Has Chapa thought of that?”
“He—”
“Good lord. There’s a joke that brain surgery ain’t rocket science. It’s more on the nose than I’d have thought.”
“What’s happened to you?”
Felicia Jackson looked at her husband’s reflection and the nauseated frown on his face.
“Less than a year ago we were good, Felicia. We spent time together. We liked each other’s company. I…”
“You what?”
“I loved you.”
The president started to turn around to face her husband, but she stopped herself. She plucked at the part in her hair.
“Don’t kid yourself,” she said, staring into her own eyes. “This marriage hasn’t been the same since we left South Carolina. You and your buddy Chapa saw to that.”
He laughed incredulously. “Chapa and me? That’s rich. Because your need for power had nothing to do with any of this, right?”
“Tell yourself whatever helps you sleep at night,” she hissed.
“Sure thing, Madam President.” He snapped a mocking salute, spun on his heel, and marched out of the room. Felicia could hear his steps bounding down the hall of the residence.
“I hope you enjoyed the curried chicken,” she called after him, instantly regretting the tone of the longest conversation they’d had in weeks.
She bit the inside of her lip until the pressure hurt. It wasn’t much of a mea culpa.
They were both right; they were both wrong. The relationship had soured after her inauguration, after their move from the loft to the White House. But the slow decay of the marriage had begun long before that. When she ran for office, he was a proud advocate.
He beamed the night she won her congressional seat all those years ago and, without her asking, he gave up his practice to follow her to DC. They kept a condo in their home district and bought another inside the Beltway.
As she collected favors and made enemies, they drifted farther and farther apart. He was there to counsel her and have dinner warm when she ate at home. He tried. She knew he’d tried.
But his distaste for her style of governance was evident. He stopped attending banquets and parties. He avoided Capitol Hill. He retreated into his own world, playing golf and reading political thrillers.
“If somebody wrote a book about what you’ve done,” he told her, looking over his reading glasses on their second night in the West Wing, “nobody would believe it. The way you’ve ascended to power is diabolical. Frankly, Felicia, it’s too ridiculous to be plausible.”
That was the last night they shared a bed. Though he later apologized and made efforts to repair the damage, it was too late for her.
The apple, as it were, was rotten.
Felicia Jackson took a deep breath, pinched her cheeks, and forced a smile. The press was waiting.
*
“It’s a little late for a press conference, isn’t it?” the slender, chain-smoking White House reporter for The Huffington Post asked Brandon Goodman as the corps gathered in the press room at the edge of the West Wing.
Goodman smiled without saying anything, his dimples digging into his cheeks for effect.
“We’re hearing that a traffic accident in Virginia includes a national security component,” the reporter said. “US Marshals are involved. The scene is secured. The airspace over it is closed. Kinda strange, huh?”
“It’s a little late for background, isn’t it?” Goodman replied. “Why don’t you take your seat. The president’s about to come out.”
The reporter cleared her throat of phlegm, rolled her eyes, and slinked back to her seat in the third row. That seat indicated her perceived cachet among the White House press corps. It was better than some, not as good as others.
Goodman looked across the room, noticed all of the regular seats among the seven permanent rows of seats were filled, and the cameras along the back row were manned, as were those along the left side of the room. He gave a thumbs-up to the assembled media and then turned to wave the president into the briefing.
A cacophony of camera shutter clicks filled the space as Felicia Jackson took to the blue lectern at the front of the room. She tugged at the bottom of her smart black suit jacket, straightening it. She smiled and acknowledged a couple of the network correspondents seated in the front row.
“Good evening, everyone,” she began. “Thank you for joining us on short notice and late in the day. This is an urgent matter I thought was best to handle immediately and with candor.
“Earlier today”—she worked her eyes around the room, paying attention to the intensity of the reporters’ faces—“a US Marshal Service vehicle transporting a high-value prisoner was attacked en route from one federal pretrial facility to another.”
President Jackson paused to accommodate the murmurs in the room. Younger reporters were tweeting on their phones, the older ones scribbling notes on pads.
“The US Marshal Service, as many of you know, is responsible for the transportation of more than one thousand prisoner movements each day under the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System, otherwise known as JPATS,” the president said from memory, her voice low and measured. “They do an outstanding job of working hand in hand with the Department of Justice, and I’d personally like to thank all of our deputy marshals and their families for the dedicated service to our nation.
“The ambush-style attack was well coordinated and our early intelligence suggests professionally managed. I have tasked the directors of our various national security agencies to determine the group or groups responsible. And I can tell you, without equivocation, these cowards will be brought to justice.” The president took a deep breath, inhaling the last of the calm before the storm.
The room exploded, the reporters restless and uncontrollable in their seats as they strained to gain the attention of the president. Phones vibrated, laptop keyboards clacked, and murmurs rumbled throughout the room.
President Jackson raised her hand to silence the mob aching to light her on fire with its argumentative, inflammatory statements disguised as questions. “Before I take any questions, I’ll finish telling you what my aides have told me; then I will turn it over to the director of the US Marshal Service, who will provide background about the three deputies involved.”
The rumble subsided. The president looked over to Goodman, who managed a reassuring nod.
“The attack was brutal,” President Jackson said, referencing her notes for the first time, being careful to stick to the precise language upon which she, Goodman, and two speechwriters had agreed minutes earlier. “The attackers were in four vehicles. We understand they essentially ‘boxed in’ the transport vehicle so that it could not move. Armed men emerged from the vehicles and opened fire on the transport vehicle. At some point, an explosive device or devices were used to gain access to the interior of the transport vehicle. Everyone inside the vehicle was executed. They were dead when emergency responders arrived at the scene. Now I will take questions.” She pointed at her favorite network correspondent. “Jake, go ahead.”
“Madam President, why do you think Sir Spencer Thomas was targeted, and who do you think is responsible?”
“As I indicated,” she said, “we don’t yet know who is responsible. No group or organization has claimed responsibility. We hope to have a good handle on who was involved within the coming days.”
“Why was he targeted?”
“I didn’t say he was targeted, Jake.” President Jackson glared at him for a moment and then turned to point to another reporter. “Anne, from the Times.”
