Executive Actions (35 page)

Christine was a wild and exciting blond. And the congressman had been horny for months. He had no patience for foreplay and pushed right inside of her. As far as the public was concerned, Teddy Lodge was still a man in mourning. In the privacy of his own room, he was devoted to his own selfish pleasure.

Newman would send her away in another week. But for now he felt Lodge deserved a reward, especially after such a good performance in the first debate. This was the way Newman worked. He controlled the congressman’s sex life, like everything else.

Roger Waterman wanted to fuck more. He had finally let her Carolyn sleep for forty-five minutes, but at 2
A.M.
, he found the means to wake her up. She responded instantaneously to his tongue between her legs. An hour later, they lay in bed together talking. Waterman knew he needed to seem interested in her, so while touching her breasts lightly he asked a series of innocuous questions he could care less about.

“Did life around Hudson change much since June?”

“No, not really. It’s always the same,” she answered. “Well, up until tonight.” She leaned closer and kissed him, proud of herself that she could make him grow again.

“Oh, there are people still coming around asking questions about the shooting. That makes things interesting.” She moved her hand up and down him, using long, ever tightening strokes.

“Really?”

“Reporters. The FBI. All sorts of investigators.”

“And what do you tell them?”

“Nothing. But my manager came up with something.”

“Yes?” he prompted.

“I think she really helped them out. You know, the killer, McAlister? He got the room he needed.”

He pulled his hand away. “What do you mean?”

“Well, there was this other man who was checked in there, but he left early. And that meant that the McAlister guy could move into it. People request 301 all the time. But McAlister really needed it. So now they’re looking for the man who had it before him. Frank something. Frank Dolan.”

Carolyn now noticed that her lover had stopped touching her and that he lost his erection. “Heh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Am I talking too much? Because if I am, I can…”

“No, that’s all right,” Waterman said. It was just the opposite. He
wanted
to learn more.

His mind flashed on the slip he made at the train station in Connecticut. He had to assume that someone overheard him and remembered the name Dolan. Some smart investigator would connect the two if that hadn’t happened already.

And then he began to think about Waterman.
He should disappear forever, too.
And the woman?
Maybe she was smart enough to put another piece of the puzzle together.
He had hooked up a pre-paid answering service to throw off the FBI last June. But he had let the payment lax and now his office number was disconnected. If Carolyn tried to call him after tonight and couldn’t reach him, she’d ultimately tell somebody. He had played this out too far.

Maybe he should kill the woman right now.

“What are you thinking?” Katie said as she nestled into Roarke’s chest.

“I’m just trying to sort some things out.”

“They’re far away,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“The things you’re sorting out. They’re far away. And you’re already there. Come back.”

“I’m sorry.” Roarke began stroking her curly black hair onto her shoulder and breasts.

“It’s very important, isn’t it.”

“Yes, I’m afraid it is,” he admitted.

“You’ll tell me if I can help again.”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do, Katie. I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do.”

He closed his eyes and held her tightly. Perhaps there was one thing. But he wasn’t ready to ask.

Waterman weighed his immediate options. He decided that if he killed Carolyn it could give investigators another roundabout link to the Lodge murder. If he simply went away, she might try to find him, but his trail would lead nowhere. However, he would have bought extra time before she even admitted her affair to anyone.

As for covering his tracks, he didn’t think she was smart enough to go the police for a DNA analysis on his sperm. Besides, she’d been using a diaphragm. For good measure, he’d shower with her in the morning. Then he’d wash
his
evidence away. All things considered, he decided to let her live and reward himself. She was
good
and he wanted one more fuck.

When they dressed in the morning, Carolyn sensed his mind was elsewhere. He was quiet, but polite. They ate a simple breakfast of eggs and toast at a coffee shop on the way to the train station. They made it well before the 11:07.

She asked if he would call.

Waterman said he would, but soon there’d be no more Waterman.

Carolyn gazed into the eyes of the man she had loved all night long.

He looked right through her.

She snuggled into his arms before she got out of the car, still grateful for the time.

He counted the minutes until she’d be out of his life.

Teddy watched Christine’s perfect naked body quietly slip back into her adjoining room. He said goodbye with the same fierce passion that brought them together the previous night. He wanted her again. Soon. But he would have to be careful. After all, he was a grieving widower.

“Y
ou can be a hard guy to track down,” FBI Director Robert Mulligan said.

“Well, sometimes I do turn my phone off.” Roarke had been in no rush to leave Katie and get back to Washington first thing Monday morning. Their relationship was developing and would go further, he felt, if he gave into it.

“Actually, I could have disturbed you. But I thought better of it.”

Roarke smirked. Of course they knew exactly where he was. One emergency call to the White House would have cinched it.
But if they were looking for me and it wasn’t an emergency…?
Roarke was confused.

“Okay, what’s important enough for you to find me, but not important enough to roust me out of bed.”

“Some asinine notion.” He passed him a hard copy of an e-mail from Roy Bessolo to the Director.

RE: Lodge, Jennifer footage/Marelli phone call
.

“I can’t let you take it. But read it. It’s vague. If you’re interested, you tell me what you want to do.”

Mulligan watched Roarke while he perused the memo Bessolo wrote up following his telephone conversation with Chief Marelli. When he finished he put the paper down. Mulligan was right on him.

“Well?”

“Sounds way out there, but what the hell. Let me meet this cameraman.”

“You better know one thing going in. It might even save you the trip.”

Roarke raised his eyebrow.

“We hear this Wheaton character couldn’t make it as a cop. Bessolo thinks he’s just trying to one-up everyone else. You know, double jump into the conspiracy theory sweepstakes.”

“Eh, let me see him anyway,” Roarke offered.

“Your time, not mine. I have a copter waiting to take you. Oh, and as long as you’re going, I’ll send Bessolo, too.”

“I’d rather do this alone. Sounds as if he’s already made up his mind.”

“No. You work with him. This is his investigation.
His.
”

Roarke was not happy, but it probably didn’t matter.

“You’ll be up there by three.” The FBI Director decided to add one additional thought. “I bet you’ll be ready to head home by four.”

The ride north on the Huey was noisy. Even the earphones didn’t help abate the sound enough. With the exception of some quick questions and answers, Roarke and Bessolo couldn’t compare notes. Not that they would have shared anyway. Roarke knew more than his new partner and Bessolo wasn’t a talker.

The helicopter touched down in a field next to Chuck Wheaton’s two-story Revolutionary era stone house. They were out of the door before the blades died down.

Wheaton stood at the doorframe. His two golden retrievers, bound out barking, looking about as ferocious as a pair of stuffed animals. Wheaton came after them, ducking under the rotors.

“Hello, I’m Chuck Wheaton,” the cameraman shouted above the noise.

“Yes, I know who you are,” Bessolo said impertantly. “We’ve met before.”

“I remember. Bessolo, right?” Wheaton said.

Bessolo nodded. Roarke offered his hand. “Scott Roarke.” He didn’t add “Secret Service.”

“Thanks for coming up. Let’s go over to my editing room,” Wheaton said. “This way.” He led them to a room carved out of an unattached garage.

Inside, Wheaton had all of the equipment needed to put together a television documentary or news story: a non-linear editing system, a microphone for audio, and a console to feed the footage out on a fiber optic line.

“Let’s see what brought us up here,” Bessolo stated as warmly as he said anything.

“Have a seat?” Wheaton pulled some stools in.

“I’m fine. Just play,” the FBI man said. “I’ve talked with Marelli. You can dispense with the preamble.”

“Okay. But first normal speed. Then slow motion. Stopping and starting. It took me months to start seeing it.”

“We don’t have months, Mr. Wheaton,” Bessolo said.

The cameraman was beginning to dislike the FBI man, but he bit his lip and hit the play key on his computer board.

Roarke remained quiet. Bessolo was the first to comment. “Again.”

Wheaton used his mouse to click and point to the same start point. They screened it a second time and Wheaton now gave the description of what
he
saw.

“Again,” Bessolo barked.

After watching it the third time, the FBI agent in charge straightened up from leaning into the screen and said, “Look, you’re a nice enough man. So I’ll give it to you straight. You want to see something, so there it is. You see it.”

Wheaton hit the red stop key on his keyboard. He spun around. “Agent Besselo, I didn’t want to see anything,” Wheaton shot back. “In fact, I wish I wasn’t even goddamned there! I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since. Ask my wife!”

Roarke rested his hand on Wheaton’s shoulder to calm him down. “Can you enlarge it, please?” he asked quietly.

Wheaton had forgotten to make the image bigger. They had screened the footage in only one quarter of the computer monitor.

“Yes, sure.”

“Then play it again. I’m getting into the rhythm of the speech.”

“That’s exactly what you need to do,” Wheaton said excitedly.

Bessolo gave it only cursory attention. As his team knew, he preferred physical evidence you could hold.

He ran it five times without comment, seeing if they would pick up on the motions in close up. On the sixth pass Roarke spoke up.

“Help me a little. More show and tell.”

“Okay, there. See?” Wheaton said, pointing to the screen. He froze the picture. “Did you see that? His eyes. They darted around quickly. Just a little. But they look nervous. And his fingers are counting. One, two, three, now four fingers. It’s right there!”

“Oh come on,” Bessolo said. “If has counting anything it’s for the place in his speech where he expects to get applause.”

“No. He’s nervous because he knows what’s going to happen. Watch his fingers, dammit! He’s counting; timing it to get out of the way!”

“Bull!” blurted Bessolo.

Roarke looked at Wheaton. “You realize what you’re saying?”

“For Christ’s sake, of course I do,” he said facing both men, but ignoring Bessolo.

Bessolo reached passed Wheaton and tapped his index finger on the television screen. “I want to make this very clear. You’re suggesting, and I’ll leave it solely in those terms,
suggesting
that a United States Congressman willfully knew that he was going to be shot at.”

“Not shot at.”

Bessolo’s tone sharpened. “…Willfully knew a shot was going to be fired towards him? Is that clearer?”

“Yes.”

“That he had been warned about the assassin?”

“Yes.”

“And he knew when?”

“Yes. And he ducked.” Wheaton jabbed his finger on the monitor right on top of Bessolo’s. “Right at that moment!”

“Oh Jesus. He ducked. Why in this God’s earth would he duck?”

“To get out of the way.”

“So his wife would get shot?” Bessolo yelled.

The words hung in the air, as if suspended by the shock of being said aloud. The cameraman yelled back “Yes!”

Bessolo shook his head and stepped away. “I’ve been on this investigation from the first hour of the first day. I’ve seen all of the evidence that my team has pulled together and read thousands of pages of transcripts from eyewitnesses. And there is nothing, nothing that will support your theory!”

He turned to leave, but not before Wheaton defiantly said, “Except what I have on this videotape.”

Bessolo slammed the door. Wheaton felt utterly defeated and was ready to turn off his edit system when he remembered that Roarke was still in the room.

“You going?” he asked Roarke. He heard the sound of the rotors beginning to turn.

“I don’t know.” He was thinking.

“I think your helicopter is.”

“Maybe in a few minutes. Do me a favor,” Roarke asked using almost the same words Chief Marelli had a few days earlier, “Play it again, will you, Chuck.”

The helicopter lifted off at 2212 hours. The long day, coupled with the intensity of focusing on the TV monitor all evening, left Roarke exhausted. He drifted into an unsettling sleep, with the noise of the helicopter melding into the sounds of a crowd.

He was in Hudson in June. Park Place and Warren. The people watching Teddy Roarke. The sound slurred, deepened by the sense that everything was in slow motion.

Roarke saw the candidate, the chief of police, the mayor, and Mrs. Lodge. All there, merely feet away. But he knew where to look; the third floor of the St. Charles Hotel. A rifle barrel inched out of the corner window. The shooter remained faceless behind it. He turned to the podium; to the congressman who paused and slowly leaned forward. His heart raced but everything else was painfully, terribly slow. Now back to the hotel window. He heard the bullet explode from the chamber. It traveled the 25 yards in slow motion. Roarke took a step toward the podium and saw Lodge’s finger by his side. There was Jennifer, beautiful, smiling at her husband through her tears. Roarke moved closer, still in slow motion, desperately trying to race the bullet to its target. As he propelled through the air, he saw Geoff Newman off to the side, laughing at him. Roarke was single-minded now. He had to reach Jennifer Lodge before it was too late. He was getting to the bullet. He reached out. Closer. Feet. Now inches. And then the laughter of Newman again. He turned to the voice and lost his concentration. As he fell to the ground he heard a horrible sound. The sound of the bullet smashing against cranial bone. The sound of a life ending. And the sound of Bessolo waking him.

“Get up. We’re home.”

They’d landed on top of the FBI building.