The President's Assassin (11 page)

I stepped inside and looked around a moment. A narrow closet was hidden behind the door, and it struck me that this would be the perfect hidey-hole for Jason’s darkest secrets and filthiest habits. I swung it open and peeked inside, expecting a blow-up doll to fall out, a corpse, something. There were six shelves, and not a square inch of free space. Laid out on the shelves was a veritable armory of medicines, nasal sprays, antibacterial soaps and shampoos, skin care ointments, and various medical salves, balms, preventatives and devices, from enemas to ear wax cleaning solvents. There must’ve been three hundred bottles and vials and tubes, all neatly arranged, a harem of things to make sure you smelled good, slew galaxies of germs, and never experienced a constipated moment, or even ringworm.

Jennie, who was more familiar with these things, whistled. She said, “Here’s where his money went.”

“Hypochondriac?” I suggested.

She eyed the supplies a moment. “Aside from the aspirin, Band-Aids, and antibacterial ointments, these are all preventatives and body cleaning aids. Not a hypochondriac. Still, this is a little...odd.”

“More than a little.”

We backed out, and the next door led to the master bedroom, where two agents were busily defacing another temple of neatness. A massive and very ornate carved crucifix hung over the bed. The third door led to another, tinier bedroom that had been transformed into a compact office. Jennie said, “In here.”

A female agent was already pulling books off shelves, and she faced us when Jennie asked her, “Anything interesting?”

“Depends what you mean by interesting.” She elaborated, “Mostly horror novels and religious books. Lots of Stephen King and Anne Rice—all that spooky stuff. He’s got the full Tim LaHaye series...Armageddon and all that. I don’t know how he sleeps at night.”

I smiled at the agent and said, “Did you see anything called
How to Whack a President
?”

She smiled back. “Do you recall the author?” She added, “There’s some military manuals on weapons and munitions. I don’t know if that means anything. Leftovers from his military service, I guess.”

I regarded the manuals a moment. Actually, they meant nothing except that Mr. Neatness had one flaw—he was a pack rat. Big deal. I was still carting around a lockerful of manuals issued to me during my basic infantry officer training. But I had a good reason: I could run out of toilet paper someday. You never know.

Jennie commented, “It’s never that easy. But you usually learn a few things about people from their reading habits.”

I said, “Like what?”

She asked me, “What’s on your bookshelf at home?”

“Let’s see...the collected works of John Donne, Shakespeare’s tragedies...of course, all of Oprah’s picks...”

She rolled her eyes. Why wasn’t I being taken seriously?

On the wall across from the bookcase hung the usual vanity assortment—a VMI diploma, an officer commission, a few military awards, all of which were low-grade I-showed-up-for-work-on-time medals. In the middle was a presidential photo with a handwritten inscription that read: “To Jason, thanks for your service.” Well, we’ll see.

Not present were any items or paraphernalia of a personal nature—photographs of Mom and Dad, photo albums, desk trophies, mementos, or even any old letters or bills. By itself this meant nothing. Collectively I thought it meant a great deal.

Jennie was nosing through book titles. She said, “I’ll tell you what’s discordant. Here’s this highly intelligent guy with a tightly ordered, disciplined mind. Yet his reading tastes run toward chaos, make-believe monsters, and destructive visions. It’s contradictory.”

“And what do you make of that contradiction?”

“Let me think about it awhile.”

I advised the agent, “Be sure to flip the pages on the books.”

I walked to Jason’s desk, sat down, and began browsing through drawers. Every pen, stamp, and paper clip was in the proper place, no loose change, no stray papers, no trash, no clutter or debris whatsoever. The order and cleanliness was manic and implied something. I mentioned, “The future Mrs. Barnes is one lucky lady.”

The agent said, “The future Mrs. Barnes is going to go nuts. I did the kitchen earlier. The inside of his silverware drawers are labeled—you know, dinner forks, salad forks. His glassware and plates are shrink-wrapped inside the cabinets. The guy’s garbage looked folded.”

I glanced at Jennie Margold. “Your expertise is head cases.”

“He displays classic anal compulsive tendencies certainly. Clearly he’s neurotic. It’s even possible he’s bacillophobic. Though I—”

“He’s what?”

“Fear of germs.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

She smiled. I love a woman who appreciates my bad jokes. She said, “I’m talking unnecessary fear. The type who boils his toothbrush every morning.”

You can never tell about people. It’s interesting. I observed, “So here’s a guy who wakes up every morning wondering if this is the day when he has to take a bullet for his boss. You wouldn’t think he’d sweat the small stuff.”

This got a big laugh out of the agent, though Jennie emitted a groan. She continued, “He’s an only child, most likely. A very strict upbringing. Military college and his three years of Marine Corps life probably amplified his imprinted habits. It could relate to the paternal issues Mark Kinney cited. An overbearing father he’s still struggling to placate and please. Freud would—”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “The crime—does this relate to the crime?”

“Oh...right.” She nodded at me, somewhat surprised. “You know your stuff. Obviously, you remember that I classified the Belknap murder as an organized crime. Well, organized crimes are the product of neat, orderly, compulsive minds...and—”

“Like Jason Barnes’s mind?”

“Ostensibly. He could fit the personality profile.” She added, “So would a million other males in this country.”

“And females.”

“Not really. Serial and mass killing are forms of aggression peculiarly suited to males.”

“Oh please.”

“I’m not making this up. It’s a statistical fact. Do you know there are only two or three female serial killers in prison today?”

“Well...maybe women don’t get caught.”

“You mean women are smarter.”

“Women are sneakier.”

“I think you mean more clever.” She smiled.

We returned to the perplexing puzzle of Jason Barnes. Jennie said, “Let me suggest this. It’s early to hypothesize, but an only child with a demanding mother or father, neatness becomes a way to please. Only children tend to be oversupervised, neatness is a visible barometer of obedience, and there’s no sibling around to blame for the mess.”

I made a mental note to tell my big brother he owed me big-time. What a nit-picking idiot he’d be had not little Sean been around to pin all the raps on.

She continued, “It can be deterministic. They’re instinctively neat and orderly, but when they feel guilt about something—tiny things—some revert...become obsessive...insufferably compulsive. They feel they can expunge or make amends by ordering and straightening up their external environment. A lot of these people, later in life, they end up on couches.”

Interesting. But she was right, you have to be careful, it
was
too early to reach conclusions. At that moment, we had a suspicion of an inside leak, and a missing agent. I mean, how stupid would we look if Jason showed up in the morning, explaining he had met some hottie in a bar who invited him over to straighten her pantry and iron her undies? Also, a few impressions scavenged from the surface barely scrape the emotional density of a full-blown person. Still, we were starting to tease out a few characteristics about the increasingly peculiar Mr. Barnes. You never know.

“We should take his Rolodex and address book,” I informed Jennie. I added, “And get the phone company to give us his records.” I pointed at his desktop computer. “You’ve got people who can unscramble this hard drive, right?”

She nodded. “They’ll work all night, if need be.”

“Need be.”

She stared at me.

“Am I being too—”

“Are you ever. Back off. Our people know how to handle this.”

“Oh...sorry.”

“I understand. You want to catch these people. We all do.”

Then she thought of something else and turned to the agent leafing through books. “Go to the master bedroom, collect Barnes’s shoes, and send them to forensics immediately.” She looked at me and said, “We’ll compare them to the foot molds from the garden. Yes...no?”

“Good catch.”

Jennie’s cell phone rang again, she punched on, identified herself and then listened. She looked and sounded exasperated. “I understand...right...when...uh-huh, and where?” After a moment, she said, “The helicopter’s in the parking lot. I’ll be there inside twenty minutes.”

She punched off and stared at the floor a moment. She said, “Wait’ll you see this.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

S
TRAIGHT AHEAD AND THROUGH THE HELICOPTER’S WINDSHIELD
,
WE OB
served three or four columns of dark smoke curdling up from 495, Washington’s notorious beltway, and below, a long and frustrated parking lot that snaked its way back to northern Virginia.

The pilot twisted around in his chair and yelled back to us, “No place to land. When I get low, jump out. Watch the skids.”

He tugged back on his throttle and the machine swooped down about five feet off the ground and loitered. I leaped first and landed on a small patch of grass, turned, and saw Jennie hurtling into me. I had just enough time to get my hands out, and she landed in my arms. A nearby cop was staring. I asked, “What happened here?”

He replied, “Man, you won’t believe this. Some asshole fired at a car.” He pointed a finger at a mangled wreck leaking black smoke near the front of the tangled pack. “There—that thing...Used to be a BMW 745i, if you can believe it. Just started crashing into other cars. Everyone was doing about sixty-five...and you got this.”

I saw that in addition to the wrecked BMW, “this” included some fifteen cars ranging from dimpled to mangled, a collage of shattered safety glass, torn steel, and ripped and dented people. Looking badly shaken, the cop remarked, “Probably just road rage...but holy shit.”

Three county fire trucks, ten ambulances, and a fleet of marked and unmarked police cars were squeezed onto the outer median, lights flashing, radios squawking, the whole nine yards. To my right rested a crunched-up blue Ford Escort, where an emergency crew manhandled a Jaws of Life apparatus. An old woman howled in agony, and two emergency aid workers leaned through the car window and fought to plug an IV into her arm. To my left were several dazed people seated on the backs of ambulances, their shirts and dresses stained with blood. Above circled three news helicopters, broadcasting this corpus of destruction and misery.

Twenty yards from the BMW, I noted a clump of cops, in the midst of which stood a man looking singularly self-important, cell phone in one hand, the other waving around, directing an invisible symphony or something. It was George Meany, and understandably, he was not displaying the gestures or body language of a happy man. I asked Jennie, “Why are we here?”

“What?” She appeared distracted.

“How do we know this was caused by our friends?”

“I...what?” She was peering in the direction of the old lady who’d been fighting the emergency aid people. I followed her eyes and saw that the woman was now slumped forward, quiet and still, the fight gone out of her. The rescue team was catching its breath and the medical techs were repacking their kits. Jennie took a step in the direction of the car, and I took her arm. “Don’t. She’s beyond help.”

“But—”

“I know.” I squeezed her arm. “Focus on finding her killers. Now, why are we here?”

Jennie took a long swallow and said quietly, “Let’s go ask.”

We joined Meany, who ignored us and continued to chat on the phone. Above the cacophony I caught snatches of George’s conversation, and clearly the tone was neither cordial nor pleasant. Actually, George looked a little panicky, like a guy being told it was his ass on the line. For a brief instant I almost felt guilty about disliking him. He said, “That’s right, sir.” He wiped some perspiration from his upper lip. “No, uh...yes sir...of course, sir.” He hung up and announced, “What a fuckin’ nightmare.”

Jennie asked him, “How do we know it was them?”

Meany licked his lips, pointed, and said, “That black BMW over there...the plate check says it belongs to Merrill Benedict.”

Nobody said anything. Nobody needed to say anything. Merrill Benedict was the White House spokesperson, the poor soul thrown into the daily mosh pit called the White House press corps to look and sound like he was answering questions he wasn’t answering. About forty, slight of build, sandy-haired, a bit of a dandy, but nice-looking, and boy, was the guy a gold-star bullshitter. I asked George, “Dead?”

“That’s what being torn in half will do to you, Drummond.”

Jennie said, “So he was the target. And all the rest of these poor people were...were...”

I looked at her. Her face was drained of color and her eyes looked cloudy and unfocused. All this misery and chaos was getting to her, was in fact affecting us all. But you have to swallow your feelings and put on a game face, or you scare the shit out of the public. I said, “The clinical expression is ‘collateral damage.’” I added, “But I don’t think that fits this.”

“No?” asked Meany, looking at me a little incredulously. “Well...what does it fit, Drummond?”

“I don’t think this was random carnage. I think the killers intended something spectacular.”

George shook his head derisively. “Just what I need. A half-baked theory from a half-assed lawyer.” He smiled—or more accurately, sneered—at me and added, “If you don’t mind, Drummond, I’ll make up my own mind after I hear from the professionals.” Now I remembered why I disliked this guy.

Jennie, however, had heard what I said and asked, “Why? Why would they...I just don’t...I mean, I don’t see...”

There was no answer, yet. I replied, “We should think about that.”