Manuscript for Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

“I’m not kidding.”

  “And now you believe his daughter might have been murdered?”

  “Not based on what he told me, Artie.”

  “No, based on this mysterious text you received.”

  “Not a lot of people know what we talked about.”

  “But a whole lot know how much you support the first lady’s cause of promoting literacy. It’s hardly a secret.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “That this text message didn’t necessarily come from someone who was inside the Oval Office.”

  “It doesn’t matter where it came from,” I told him, “not right now anyway. What matters is finding out if the message is true and the president’s daughter was murdered.”

  “Thus your question about any contacts in DC Metro Police.”

  “I didn’t specify police. I’d settle for the FBI, Homeland Security, the highway patrol, or the ghost of Broderick Crawford or even Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Anybody who can access confidential medical records and open doors at the hospital where the president’s daughter died of this supposed overdose.”

  “Would you settle for me?”

  * * *

  • • •

  Artie said he could clear his schedule and be on an early train from New York the next morning. Since I hadn’t prepared to stay overnight, this gave me an excuse to buy a new set of clothes and assorted sundries, just as I had after moving temporarily into Hill House. I normally love shopping, but not today. The crowds bothered me, leaving me holding my breath every time someone brushed up against me. By the time I left CVS, I couldn’t wait to get to the Hyatt, my go-to hotel in any city where I stay, save for the occasional boutique luxury hotel.

  Truth be told, my favorite hotels of all time were the old Howard Johnson’s, where my family always stayed when I was a little girl, long before rewards points, concierge levels, and Gold Passports. I loved the orange lettering and all the flavors of ice cream available in their coffee shops, which made the best scrambled eggs I’d ever had in my life. They were also the only restaurants where I could get the big green peas with my turkey dinner, served all the time instead of just on Sundays. There weren’t many Howard Johnson’s left anymore, just a handful, but if there were, I’d probably still be staying in them.

  That said, the Grand Hyatt Washington was located in the city’s Penn Quarter neighborhood, which was about as convenient as it got. My favorite feature of the hotel was the open-air atrium that spiraled upward from the lobby, centered amid rooms on all sides. That design eliminated the claustrophobic feeling common among most big-city hotels, especially the older ones with their narrow halls and closet-sized rooms. My room featured an atrium view, well worth the extra cost, since it meant there was no exterior window through which I could be watched from the outside world or caught in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. A thought that never would’ve crossed my mind a week ago.

  Then again, a week ago I would never have believed I’d be in the Oval Office meeting with the president and wondering how he might be connected to a murder conspiracy.

  I ordered room service and cruised through the television channels, starting the process over again as soon as I’d tried them all. Flirted with the notion of ordering one of those in-room new-release films but decided to save the twenty dollars and settled on an old black-and-white movie on TCM instead, Jimmy Stewart starring in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

  Of all things.

  * * *

  • • •

  I’ve always loved room service, something I guess you never grow out of. I’d just finished breakfast and was working on my second cup of tea when a knock fell on the door.

  “Who is it?” I said, eye pressed against the peephole to find Artie Gelber on the other side.

  “Guess.”

  “What’s the password?”

  “I ought to have you arrested.”

  I opened the door. “Only you would say that.”

  He stepped inside my room and closed the door quickly behind him, as if trying to keep out a draft. He looked around with a cop’s eyes, I think to reassure himself I was safe and alone.

  “You need to call Mort, Jessica,” he said, his expression somewhere between somber and grave.

  * * *

  • • •

  “He’s dead,” Mort told me, not elaborating further, as soon as I got him on the line.

  “Who?”

  “Francis Malloy. The Somerville cops went to escort him to his arraignment and found him dead in his jail cell. An apparent suicide.”

  “Seems to be going around lately. Anything on the security camera?”

  “It was off-line.”

  “Of course it was.”

  “You want my advice, Jessica?”

  “You’re going to give it to me whether I want it or not.”

  “You need to disappear for a while. Let Artie and me sort this out.”

  “If I don’t get to the bottom of this fast, I might disappear for good, Mort. However big we thought this might be, it’s even bigger. Oval Office big.”

  “As long as you don’t ask me to arrest the president.”

  “It’s out of your jurisdiction. Artie’s, too.”

  “But not our wheelhouse.”

  This was the new Mort talking, the Mort I’d never glimpsed before until the past week. I still knew little or nothing about his career with the NYPD, wondered what I’d find if I dug deeper, just as I wondered about his Vietnam experience.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “The Hyatt.”

  Mort hesitated. “I’ve still got some friends in DC Metro from my NYPD days. I’m thinking of asking one to camp out outside your room.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “No? Okay, the lobby, then. Give me any more lip on the subject and I’ll head down there myself.”

  “How could Cabot Cove survive without you?”

  “Easy,” he said. “With you out of town, things are a lot quieter.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “I think we need to bring the FBI in on this,” Artie said after I’d finished my call to Mort.

  “Someone there you can trust?”

  “A whole bunch of people.”

  “Implicitly?”

  “That narrows the field a bit,” he conceded, “but still a decent number.”

  “Okay, and what are we supposed to tell this decent number, exactly, Artie?”

  “How about the truth?”

  “A challenging proposition, given so much of it is actually supposition.”

  Artie looked unswayed by my argument. “That text message is a game changer, Jessica, especially coming right after your visit to the White House.”

  “You think the FBI will believe the first family’s daughter didn’t die of a drug overdose, that she was murdered?”

  “Not initially, in all likelihood.”

  “That’s my point.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  I had been waiting for that question. “According to all the reporting, Kristen Albright was rushed to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital’s emergency room six years ago this week. She was pronounced dead of what was later confirmed to be an opioid overdose one hour later but was already on life support when the paramedics brought her in.”

  “Okay,” Artie said, waiting for me to continue.

  “We need to speak to as many people as we can find who were on duty in the ER that night. Nurses, receptionists, doctors, residents, attendings, janitors—anyone.”

  “On whose authority?”

  “You’re still one of One PP’s top liaisons to Homeland Security, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “And I assume that job comes with some fancy cross-jurisdictional titl
e.”

  “Correct again.” Artie nodded.

  “So technically you’re Homeland Security, in addition to NYPD.”

  “More than technically,” he agreed.

  “And that means you have license to investigate anything that falls under Homeland’s purview.”

  “Only if it covers a threat to national security, Jessica.”

  “I think it’s safe to say that applies here,” I told Artie.

  She didn’t die of a drug overdose

  Artie handed me back my phone with the mysterious text still boxed on the screen.

  “Any chance the number can be traced?” I asked him.

  “Under normal conditions, I’d say yes. But in this situation, given what we’re facing, there’s no way it’ll lead anywhere worthwhile. If Homeland Security, or the FBI, manages to nail down the number, my guess is it’ll lead to an unregistered burner phone that’s probably already been discarded.”

  “I don’t like your attitude,” I said, glad I was still able to find a semblance of humor in all this.

  I was eager to get going, to head over to Georgetown University Hospital, aka Georgetown University Medical Center, to see what we could dig up. This was where my avocation as an amateur sleuth and my day job overlapped a bit, in the sense that we’d reached the stage of a very real case that I couldn’t wait to get back to, the same way it was for the ones I make up. That’s the way it had always been for me. My work picks up momentum as I go. It gets to the point where hours disappear, time melting away when I’m tearing through those final pages, all the connections falling into place. If only real life worked that way, if only I had that much control over finding the truth behind The Affair.

  “I’m not telling you anything you hadn’t already figured out yourself,” Artie was saying.

  “I wish you would.”

  “You know what I wish? That we dump all this into the FBI’s lap and head to Union Station and take the next train back to New York.”

  “We’ve already been over that.”

  “Excuse me for being cautious.”

  “They didn’t try to kill you, Artie.”

  “I think I know that.”

  “And they killed my publisher. That makes this personal. That’s my point.”

  He nodded, weighing my comment. “Have you ever gone up against anything like this before?”

  “No.”

  “That’s my point, Jessica.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  We took the Metro, DC’s subway system, to Georgetown University Medical Center. Founded in 1898, it was one of the oldest academic teaching hospitals in the country and boasted a sterling reputation in all respects. It was located on Reservoir Road Northwest, just beyond the primary Georgetown campus, and easily accessible via the Dupont Circle Metro stop on the Red Line, where a shuttle bus ran every fifteen or so minutes from the stop to the hospital itself.

  “We should have taken a cab,” Artie groused.

  I shrugged, having neglected to note the need to board the shuttle bus on top of the Metro ride. I think we were the only non–Georgetown students on board; to say we stood out would be an understatement.

  The hospital itself was a sprawling structure finished in red brick that look lifted from another era entirely. After entering the ER, Artie asked me to hold back while he flashed his Homeland Security ID and tried to discern the best person with whom to begin our inquiry into the death of Kristen Albright six years before. Since she was the deceased daughter of the current president and first lady, I was sure the hospital got more than their share of such inquiries, though the vast majority probably came from the likes of the National Enquirer and other tabloid-type newspapers and television shows, chasing down conspiracy theories of their own making. There were all kinds of such stories out there, the most outlandish of which claimed that the purported drug overdose was a cover story for the president himself, then a congressman, murdering his own daughter to keep her from exposing an affair that would have doomed his political ambitions. One rumor said the affair was with the then first lady. Another insisted that the dalliance was with a male congressional page, and I seemed to recall a third that insisted space aliens were involved somehow.

  Go figure.

  I hovered close enough to Artie to hear him inquire about that night six years ago, stating that circumstances had arisen that called into question the veracity of the original diagnosis. He said just enough, and in just the right tone, to let the emergency room receptionist know this was an investigation deemed serious at the highest levels of government.

  “Those records are sealed,” the receptionist told him. “I don’t have the authority to be of any assistance to you.”

  “That’s why I’m here, ma’am,” Artie said back to her, “to find somebody who does.”

  That person turned out to be the head emergency room nurse on duty that night six years earlier, who’d since been elevated to the position of chief administrator of emergency services. Her office was located on the sixth floor in a neighboring wing of the hospital complex. The receptionist called ahead to make sure she was in but, on Artie’s urging, stopped short of saying why.

  “It’s going to be tough to explain your presence,” Artie said to me, contemplating the options as we walked along a winding connecting corridor to the hospital’s office annex.

  “Mort never had a problem with that.”

  “You ever investigate the potential murder of the president’s daughter with Mort?”

  “Not recently. And I guess I’m too old to pass as your assistant.”

  “Only just.”

  “Can I make a suggestion?”

  * * *

  • • •

  Alma Desjardins, current chief administrator of emergency services and former head ER nurse, handed Artie back his Homeland Security ID wallet without, as I’d suspected, even casting me a second glance. I’d suggested to Artie that he not bother introducing me at all. I also promised to remain silent, so as not to force the issue. Now that he’d made good on his part of the bargain, it was left to me to make good on mine.

  No easy task, of course, given my penchant for butting in.

  Alma Desjardins had a big, friendly smile that made me feel as if she were about to invite me to dinner. I thought she must be a pleasant person to work for. Her desk was cluttered with picture frames of all sizes, the ones I was able to glimpse containing a slew of smiling faces captured in group shots, both small and large. And, just as I’d hoped, she cast me a glance and a nod without aiming any inquiries my way.

  “What can I do for you, Agent?” Alma asked Artie.

  “Actually, it’s Lieutenant,” Artie corrected. “I work with the NYPD’s Major Case Squad and I’m here because a case I’m following up north has potential national security implications.”

  Alma Desjardins jotted down some notes before looking back up again. “And what kind of case might this be? I assume you can tell me that.”

  “I can.” Artie nodded. “It’s a murder investigation, actually several murders.”

  She didn’t bother jotting that down, just waited for Artie to continue.

  “Mrs. Desjardins, we have reason to believe that the murders in question may be connected to the death of Kristen Albright several years ago.”

  Alma laid her pen down atop the pad. “The president’s daughter?”

  Artie nodded again. “I’m afraid so.”

  “It was an opioid overdose, as I recall.”

  “That’s correct. And she was rushed here, to Georgetown University Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “You were working the emergency room that night as head nurse—is that correct?”

  “It is,” Alma replied, like a woman who knew how to answer a question.

&n
bsp; “What do you recall about that night?”

  “The security people disrupting the entire ER.”

  “Security people?” Artie quizzed, a mere instant before I was about to blurt the same query out.

  “They arrived shortly after the ambulance, maybe even with the ambulance.”

  Trying to make sense of that, I looked toward Artie. He didn’t look back. Had Kristen Albright been the first daughter at the time, the men Alma was describing would’ve almost surely been Secret Service agents. Since she was merely the daughter of a sitting congressman back then, I had no idea who they might be.

  “Were they uniformed police?”

  “No. They wore plain clothes. Dark suits, just like you.”

  “Did they identify themselves as police officers?”

  Alma shook her head.

  “Were they wearing badges, likely dangling from lanyards?”

  Alma shook her head again.

  “Could they have been plainclothes Capitol policemen?”

  “If they were, they didn’t identify themselves as such.”

  Artie finally glanced my way, looking as baffled by this unexpected turn of events as I was. “What do you remember about that night from the time the ambulance arrived?”

  “It was clear from the way the paramedics were working on the poor girl that she was unresponsive. I’d seen this before, far too many times, and it seldom ends well.”

  “I understand. But you weren’t in the room when she was being treated.”

  “No, but two nurses and two of our best emergency medicine physicians were. For over an hour, more than enough time to take every measure possible to save the girl. But I knew it was hopeless. Like I said, I’d witnessed the same scene before more often than I care to consider.”

  Her gaze found me across the desk, as if she was looking for the support of a fellow woman. I clung to my promise to remain silent and I let my eyes meet hers.

  “And then?” Artie prompted.

  “All routine from that point. One of the treating physicians signed the death certificate and a funeral home came to pick up the body.”