Pursuit

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  The thought made her queasy. Or maybe it was the motion of the helicopter, swooping up and down like a hawk riding the gusting air currents as they followed the twisty path of the Potomac past Reagan National Airport and into D.C. As Davenport ’s assistant, Jess was no stranger to helicopters, but seeing the Capitol laid out before her like a sparkling miniature village was something that never failed to awe her.

  Even today.

  “Mr. Davenport wants you to feel free to use the condo for as long as you need to. He anticipates that it will be for at least several weeks,” Marian said.

  “That’s nice of him.”

  Davenport’s longtime personal secretary was buckled into the cushy leather seat next to Jess. She was sixty-one, unmarried, and totally devoted to Davenport and, to a lesser extent, the firm. Tall, lean, and elegant, with coarse iron-gray hair that she wore in an elaborate chignon, she was dressed in a pale gray skirt suit and a lavender blouse. Her features were strong rather than attractive, her makeup was minimal but well done, and she was very good at blending into the woodwork until Davenport needed her.

  Which he constantly did. As far as everything that wasn’t connected to legal research (Jess’s department) was concerned, Marian was Davenport’s right hand. She knew him better than his young third wife, sent the gifts, made the reservations, fielded his phone calls, set up his meetings, and then sat in on them taking notes. If Davenport had a secret that Marian didn’t know, Jess would be surprised. No, she would be shocked. But Marian kept Davenport’s secrets, too.

  Besides the pilot, who was sitting up front and was separated from the passenger compartment by a partition, she and Jess were alone in the helicopter. According to Marian, Davenport had decided that the fewer people who knew where they were going today, the better.

  The safer. But Jess filled that in for herself.

  The million-dollar question was, did Marian know what was going on? That Davenport was afraid of something concerning Annette Cooper’s death, concerning the crash? Or was this one secret Davenport had kept from her?

  Jess didn’t know, and she couldn’t ask. She wasn’t going to say a word on the subject to anyone until after she had talked to her boss.

  Davenport would know what to do, where to go with her suspicions, to whom it was safe to tell them. Because right now, she didn’t feel like she could trust anybody else.

  Not the cops, not the FBI, and certainly not the Secret Service, all of which had sent representatives to question her about the crash once they learned she was conscious and coherent. She had said the same thing to each of them: I don’t remember.

  They had gone away.

  She had been on pins and needles, fearing they would come back. Which was why she’d been so glad to leave today, twenty-four hours ahead of schedule.

  The Secret Service agents outside her room, all of whom had become accustomed to her comings and goings inside the hospital over the last few days as she’d suffered through more tests and X-rays and treatments and had worked with physical therapists to regain her mobility, had followed her at a discreet distance as she’d headed for the elevator some thirty minutes earlier. Their faces were vaguely familiar because they’d been around, but she didn’t know either of them and they didn’t know her in any kind of personal way, which made telling them that she needed a few minutes alone with her companion—Marian—and then closing the elevator doors in their faces all the easier. After that, it was a piece of cake: a trip up to the hospital’s helipad, bundling into the chopper, and taking off. She was free.

  Just like that. After tossing and turning through a sleepless night and then suffering butterfly-inducing anticipation all morning, the ease of her escape—because that was how she thought of it—was almost anti-climactic.

  Maybe Ryan wasn’t at the hospital because he was attending Mrs. Cooper’s funeral. If he’d been there, she had a feeling that getting away wouldn’t have been quite so simple.

  She hadn’t even told her mother and sisters where she was going. Just that her boss was sending someone for her, and she would be staying in one of his houses for a while until media interest died down. Grace had packed her a suitcase and brought it to the hospital that morning. Jess had parted from her and Judy and Sarah and Maddie with a round of weepy hugs. Judy had wanted her to come home with them, but Jess, with Marian backing her up, had been adamant: Davenport was a pro at handling crises of all sorts, and she would do what he wanted her to do. Reluctantly, Judy saw the sense of that: Like the hospital, her house and Jess’s apartment were still under siege, and some reporters had even started waving fat checks around in hope of procuring an interview.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll call you,” she promised her mother. The truth was, she was desperate to get away from them, terrified that somehow what she knew, or suspected, would be conveyed to them and then they would be in danger, too. Or maybe they didn’t even have to really know or suspect anything. Maybe just being in her vicinity was enough to make them targets.

  And maybe she was just totally paranoid, too.

  But she didn’t think so.

  “Mr. Davenport wanted me to assure you that you’re still drawing your salary, by the way,” Marian said. “I made the arrangements for it to be direct-deposited into your account yesterday. It will continue until you’re able to come back to work. And he said to tell you that you’ll be getting a large settlement soon.”

  Jess couldn’t help it. Even under the circumstances, the prospect of obtaining a substantial amount of money made her heartbeat quicken. It was a result, she was sure, of having spent almost her whole life never being sure that she and her family would have enough groceries to last out the week, or a roof over their heads from month to month.

  Lifting her eyebrows with what she hoped looked like only polite interest, she said, “A large settlement?”

  Marian looked impatient. “You were badly injured in a car wreck. The limousine company and its driver are liable, among others. Ordinarily it would take months, possibly years, to negotiate just compensation. Given the circumstances, though, Mr. Davenport was able to do very nicely for you. All you have to do is sign the papers.”

  Clearly, working around lawyers for so many years had an effect on people, because Marian was sounding like one herself.

  “What papers?” If Jess’s tone was faintly wary, well, she guessed she had reason. One thing she had learned for sure over the years was that if it sounded too good to be true, it usually was. “And how large a settlement are we talking about?”

  “Mr. Davenport will explain. He’ll go over everything with you when you talk to him later.”

  Fair enough. “What time is he coming?”

  The look Marian gave her was withering. “When it’s convenient for him.”

  “I’ll be sure and be ready, then.” If there was a smidgen of dryness to her tone, Marian didn’t appear to notice.

  The two of them were publicly cordial, but they were not friends. Jess sometimes wondered if Marian, jealous of her own position in Davenport’s life, didn’t resent Davenport’s increasing reliance on Jess.

  Jess said nothing else, and the conversation ended. Her gaze drifted down to the scene below. For the first time in her memory, nothing was moving on the Beltway or 295 or any of the other arteries into and around the city. Cars had pulled over to the side of the roads; the expressways were clear. Seeing the flashing blue and red strobe lights at the entrance ramps, Jess realized that police had them blocked off. Instead of cars, D.C.’s center was filled with people. Hordes of them, tens of thousands of them, stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to Capitol Hill in a near-solid carpet, massing in Constitution Gardens, surrounding the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the White House and the Washington Monument, crowding around the Tidal Basin and the Reflecting Pool and filling the Mall, filling the downtown, filling the whole of D.C. for as far as she could see, packing the streets and the public spaces so that everywhere you looked they were all you saw, eclipsing the b
uildings and monuments, the variegated colors of their clothing putting to shame even the intense pinks of the cherry blossoms for which D.C. was famous.

  She remembered that Congress had declared today a national day of mourning.

  A motorcade, composed of vehicles that from this height appeared no bigger than the Hot Wheels cars her nephews loved, caught her eye. It moved slowly down Constitution Avenue. From the tiny flags flying on the lead cars and the number of long black vehicles involved, Jess knew what it had to be: Mrs. Cooper’s funeral cortege transporting her body from the Capitol Rotunda, where it had been lying in state, to the National Cathedral for her funeral service.

  Of course. It was just after one-thirty. The funeral was scheduled to begin precisely at two p.m. The dolorous tolling of church bells all over the city—that was the sound that was barely audible over the thumping of the helicopter’s rotors; she only just identified it—rang out in long peals of collective grief.

  Throat suddenly tight, Jess leaned back in her seat, unable to watch further. Remembering the sweats-clad woman who’d done shots in the bar, who had been obviously frightened of something but was nevertheless determined to escape, whose arm she had taken and flight she had so disastrously shared, she ached inside. Closing her eyes, she said a silent prayer for the souls of Annette Cooper, and the Secret Service agent and the driver who had died with her. Then she added her own fervent thanks for being allowed to live.

  When she opened her eyes, it was to discover that Marian was watching her, a sour twist to her mouth.

  “Mr. Davenport is sick with grief about this.” Marian clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “He seems to feel that if he’d gone himself that night instead of sending you, Mrs. Cooper wouldn’t be dead now.”

  The unspoken subtext was that she’d screwed up. The hard gleam in Marian’s eyes made the message unmistakable. Did Davenport share Marian’s view? Jess hadn’t thought of that. But her conscience was clear. Whatever had happened, she knew in her heart she could not have prevented it. She was as much a victim of the accident as the other three. The only difference was that she had survived.

  So far.

  That thought made her go cold all over. She tried to ignore it.

  “If Mr. Davenport had gone that night instead of me,” Jess pointed out, “he might very well be dead now, too.”

  That shut Marian up, just as Jess had intended. The other woman pressed her lips together and stared straight ahead.

  Instead of looking down again, Jess carefully concentrated on the bright blue sky and cottony white clouds all around them. Though crisp, it was a bright, sunny spring day, with a brisk wind that blew the clouds around like feathers. The air, as she knew from her quick journey across the hospital rooftop to the helicopter, smelled sweet and fresh with scents of new grass and blossoming baby leaves and just-blooming flowers.

  The day was too beautiful for a funeral.

  Her phone began to ring. Jess’s eyes widened. The sound was so normal, so much a part of her ordinary, everyday existence before the accident, that in the context of what was happening to her now it was almost bizarre. It took her a second to realize what it was, and then she unzipped her purse, which the hospital had given to her mother along with a bundle containing the now-ruined clothes she had been wearing when the accident had occurred. Judy had brought the purse to the hospital that morning in anticipation of Jess’s departure later in the day. Fishing her phone out, she saw the number and name on her caller ID: Laura Ogilvy, one of her lawyer friends from work. No doubt calling to ask how she was and to glean all the gossip she could.

  A glance at Marian, who looked on with way too much interest, made her initial reaction certain: She wasn’t going to take the call.

  “You’re not going to answer?” Marian asked with disapproval when the call went over to voice mail to join the other forty-seven messages she had waiting.

  “My battery’s low. Anyway, I don’t really feel like talking right now.”

  Which was the truth: She didn’t. She was physically much stronger, although the outward signs of her injuries—the bruises, the stitches—were still apparent. Face it: Mentally, she was all over the place. She knew what she knew, she suspected what she suspected.

  And she remembered . . . more than she wanted to.

  The Watergate complex, famous for its explosion into the national conversation when it was the site of the notorious burglary that had torpedoed Richard Nixon’s presidency, was actually a semicircular grouping of upscale skyscrapers overlooking the Potomac that housed a hotel, apartments, and condominiums along with a variety of pricey restaurants and shops. As the helicopter set down atop one gleaming silver tower, Jess got a glimpse of a sparkling fountain set in a green lawn surrounded by neatly clipped hedges in a courtyard below. Then the runners settled, the motor was cut, and the rotors slowed. Jess unbuckled her seat belt just as the pilot opened the door.

  He lifted the wheelchair from the cabin. Marian got out first, and Jess followed, climbing down into a cold, stiff wind that belied the day’s sunny brightness. Her back ached with every movement, and she was stiff as cheap new jeans, but she was able to walk the few steps to the wheelchair, which the pilot held for her, without feeling like she was going to collapse. Still, she sank into it thankfully, and was glad that it was motorized so that she could get to the elevator without relying on Marian’s help. The other woman’s expression was unyielding as she carried Jess’s suitcase.

  It took just a few minutes to reach the apartment.

  “Now that we’re here, I can tell you that Mr. Davenport will be busy for the rest of the afternoon. He’ll call me with further instructions sometime after six.”

  Marian spoke behind her as Jess rolled across the spacious, gray-carpeted living room with its white leather couches and chairs and black Lucite tables toward the big picture window. Jess noticed that she was careful to subtly stress the me in that last sentence, thus confirming her impression that in Marian’s own mind at least, the woman was battling to retain the supremacy of her position in Davenport’s life.

  Jess just nodded in reply. They were on the twelfth floor, so she had a panoramic view of the Georgetown Channel of the Potomac curving around Roosevelt Island below. There were no boats on the river below her, not even the big commercial barges that seemed to run continuously, and even as she wondered at it, it hit her that it was because the entire country, and especially D.C., was shut down in a paroxysm of grief over the terrible tragedy that was reaching its culmination at that exact moment.

  Marian sank down on the couch and flipped on the TV.

  The slow, sad notes of a military dirge caught Jess by surprise. She turned around. Her gaze was riveted by the pale stone and soaring Gothic arches of the National Cathedral filling the big TV. Her breathing suspended, her hands clamped around the edges of the wheelchair’s arms, and her throat threatened to close up.

  She was watching the event live.

  A military honor guard carried a flower-draped coffin up the wide front steps. Marines in dress blues stood at attention on either side. Behind the coffin came the President of the United States, his face as white and still as if it had been carved from marble, his two adult children and their families close behind him. They were followed by Wayne Cooper, the President’s father; his sister, Elizabeth; and a gaggle of other family members Jess didn’t recognize. A contingent of Secret Service agents glancing cautiously from side to side and receiving instructions via ear-buds formed a moving wall of protection that fanned out on either side of the family party and brought up the rear. The hearse and the long black motorcade surrounding it waited at the curb. In the opposite lane from the motorcade, boxy white news vans with satellite feeds formed a nucleus around which a heaving mass of reporters, held at bay by stern-faced lines of uniformed cops manning sawhorse barriers, narrated the proceedings for their various audiences. Other than the motorcade and the media, the street was empty, obviously having been cleared in antic
ipation of the arrival and eventual departure of the funeral cortege. Hundreds of mourners lined the sidewalk across the street from the cathedral, pressing up against more sawhorses controlled by more somber-looking cops. The camera panned the crowd, and suddenly thousands of ordinary citizens, dressed in everything from jeans and sweatshirts to business suits to the ethnic attire of many cultures, packed the shot for as far as the eye could see.

  “. . . sensational story reaches its tragic culmination now, as the First Lady of the United States is carried in her coffin into the National Cathedral. Annette Wiley Cooper first appeared on the national scene five years ago, when her husband became Vice President upon the death of then Vice President Thomas Haynes. This past November, David Cooper won the presidency, and in the brief months since his inauguration, Annette Cooper cemented her hold on the affection of a nation. The causes close to her heart were education and literacy, and . . .”

  “Mr. Davenport is there in the cathedral, you know.” Marian cast an evil look Jess’s way as she spoke over the TV. “I was invited to attend, too, but he asked me to stay with you instead.”

  “I’m sorry you had to miss it.” Jess’s careful politeness was an attempt to neutralize Marian’s barely veiled venom. She didn’t think it worked, but at least the other woman shifted her gaze back to the TV.

  Jess did, too, to find that on the screen now it was night, with the flashing strobe lights of an ambulance painting bright bursts of blue and red across the small, dark-haired figure on a stretcher that was being loaded into its open back.

  With a shock Jess realized she was looking at a taped shot that had been filmed in the immediate aftermath of the crash, and that the victim on the stretcher was her.

  She swallowed hard.

  “. . . sole survivor of the accident, attorney Jessica Ford. So far investigators say she has been unable to remember any of the details of what happened that night, although it is believed that she was accompanying Mrs. Cooper on her doomed dash to the hospital at the request of Mrs. Cooper’s longtime friend and personal lawyer, and Miss Ford’s boss, John Davenport, who sent the car. . . .”