The President's Henchman (4 page)

That was when McGill realized
he
didn’t look North Shore. Not in his jeans, T-shirt, and humble small watercraft. Be a helluva thing to die in a case of mistaken identity.

McGill did the only thing he could. He pulled out his badge and held it in front of the eyes he now squeezed shut. After the longest three count of his life, he took a look. The marksman had lowered his rifle and moved his spotlight slightly to McGill’s right.

McGill could see that the man was yelling at him, but he couldn’t hear the words. The distance was too great and the pounding of his heart was too loud. Still, he doubted the man was thanking him for testing the Grants’ new defenses.

He turned the skiff around and headed back to the launching ramp.

Believing the lake would not be the avenue of attack.

Just to be safe, though, he called every marine copper he knew from Milwaukee to Gary and let them know of his worries and to ask that they call him if they spotted anyone suspicious.

Congresswoman Grant cast her vote opposing the Support of Motherhood Act. It failed and … nothing happened. A month went by. Patti came to believe she’d been right. The threat had been a bluff and nothing more. She began to find the presence of a large number of security men in and around her home intrusive.

She spoke to Andy about letting them go.

“I’ll talk to the chief, see what he thinks,” her husband said.

He did and reported back. The Grants discussed the matter in their kitchen as they prepared a light supper to eat outside.

“Chief McGill thinks we should move. Temporarily. But without notice. Or publicly revealing where we’ve gone.”

“That’s preposterous.”

“He says it only makes sense for attackers to wait until the defenders relax. But if we take the initiative, change the place we live, we might force them out into the open.”

Patti’s eyes narrowed. “In other words, he hasn’t been able to find
any
evidence that the threat was
ever
real.”

“No, and it’s eating him up. Because he’s positive the threat
is
real.”

Congress was in its summer recess. It would be a natural thing for the Grants to take a vacation trip, then … simply not come home. At least not for a while.

“I won’t do it, Andy.”

Andy sighed and nodded. “I don’t like the idea of being run out of my house, either.”

“We’ll keep the security men.”

“Or let them go if they bother you too much.”

They carried their food and drinks outside, nibbled for a while without talking.

Finally, Patti asked, “You like him, don’t you?”

“The chief?” Andy asked. “Yes, I do. He’s smart, honest, has a ton of experience. His professional accomplishments aside, everybody I’ve talked to about him says he’s a good man and a devoted father. He has three kids, two girls and a boy.”

That hit home. Both Patti and Andy were infertile. Their shared sense of personal regret was one big reason why the Grant Foundation sent millions of dollars each year to organizations with proven records of bettering the lives of children in need.

“Good for him,” Patti said, and left it at that.

After Labor Day, Congresswoman Grant returned to Washington when the House of Representatives reconvened. She declined Andy’s suggestion of having a bodyguard accompany her, and he didn’t push it too hard. By that time, he was beginning to have doubts, too, that the threat against his life had been real.

Chief McGill still thought it was, but even the most astute professional made mistakes. Andy dismissed the security force at his house, thinking it would make a nice surprise for Patti, the next time she came home, to have the house to themselves. He didn’t notify the chief of his action; he didn’t want to debate the matter any more.

Andy kept the new armored Mercedes and the chauffeur who’d been trained in evasive driving. He varied his routine. He was alert to his surroundings. But that was it. He just wasn’t going to be afraid all the time. It took all the joy out of life.

He was killed three days after he let his security people go.

The attack came from the lake. Nobody had to storm the beach. The night was still, the lake was flat, and a cabin cruiser was used as a shooting platform. From a point just outside the barrier, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired through Andy and Patti’s bedroom window.

Second floor at the left corner of the house.

When he got the news of an explosion at the Grant house — a terrified neighbor had called the village police — McGill wanted to kill someone himself. “Goddamnit, goddamnit,
goddamnit!”
he roared, and slammed the phone down without thinking.

Klara, his dispatcher, called back and told McGill that Sweetie was on the way to his house. ETA five minutes. While he got dressed, he told Klara to make sure every one of his thirty-six sworn officers was out on the street. He ordered that the Village of Winnetka be sealed. Absolutely no one was to leave his jurisdiction without his permission.

He also told Klara to make sure that every cop in the country — and Canada — got the word of what had happened. But he was not yet able to tell his brother officers for whom they should be on the lookout. Then the brief
whoop
of a police patrol unit announced Sweetie’s arrival.

McGill lived in the northwest corner of Evanston, two gilded suburbs down the social ladder from Winnetka and the Grant estate. Fifteen minutes away in normal traffic. Less at that time of night. Much less at the speed Sweetie was driving.

But there was still plenty of time for Sweetie to tell him.

“The neighbor who phoned in the report said the explosion was in Mr. Grant’s bedroom. Apparently, he has a clear view of the Grant’s place from his house. He was embarrassed when he had to admit he knew what the room was. But you live next door to a former movie star’s boudoir…”

Sweetie shrugged at human foibles.

“Did he see any sign of life after the blast?” McGill asked.

“Klara asked about that. The neighbor said no.”

“Had anyone noticed if Mr. Grant was home tonight?

Sweetie nodded. “The neighbor. Saw him in his bedroom before the light was turned off.”

“Shit.”

Sweetie asked, “You going to make the call, Jim?”

He nodded and took out his cell phone. He had the number in the 202 area code committed to memory. Andy Grant had given it to him. Just in case.

She answered on the third ring, and McGill said, “Congresswoman Grant? This is Chief of Police James J. McGill. I have some bad news …”

The FBI called McGill just as he reached the Grant estate. Sweetie had radioed the company that maintained the property’s electronic security system and was given the code to open the gate. She was punching it into the keypad as McGill took the FBI call. The gate rolled open, but she waited at the entrance to the driveway while McGill talked to the feebs.

The Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office, a guy named Braun, told McGill that Congresswoman Grant had informed them of what had happened. The Bureau was assuming control of the case.

“Like hell,” McGill said. “You have no jurisdiction. You said so yourself.”

He gave it a moment to see if they’d learned about the mailbox, but they still didn’t know. Andy had never told anyone but him. So McGill continued, “You set foot on my crime scene, I’ll arrest you for interfering with police officers in the performance of their duty.”

Braun laughed bleakly. “You’ve got some balls, buddy. But you know what? Our lawyers can beat up your lawyers, and we’ve got more of them.”

There was no arguing that, so McGill gave the fed something else to chew on.

“You want something to do? Think about this. Maybe these assholes won’t be happy until they kill the congresswoman, too. Protecting her, now that’s a federal responsibility.”

McGill left Sweetie at the gate with orders to allow no one in except the crime-scene team from the Cook County Sheriff’s Department.

“Paramedics?” Sweetie asked.

The nosy neighbor had reported that the explosion had been blinding, deafening, and strong enough to crack his windows next door, over a hundred feet away. How was anyone going to survive that? But McGill said, “Okay, them, too.”

Sweetie closed the gate behind them and blocked the driveway with her patrol unit. McGill went to the house on foot.

The only chance for Andy was if he’d been somewhere else in the house. McGill quickly checked every room, calling out Andy’s name. Loudly at first. Softly and with growing despair the closer he got to the blast area. The door to the Grants’ bedroom leaned out of its frame like a drunk falling off a curb, providing a view of the carnage within.

Andy Grant had been sundered, and there had been a fire. Put out by a sprinkler system that had survived the blast and was still going. Watering down the stink of the explosion and the charred flesh. The largest piece of Andy that McGill could identify was a blackened lower left leg severed at the knee. McGill had seen dead bodies before, more than a few, but nothing like this. This was a scene from a battlefield.

He raised his eyes and looked out at the lake, made all the easier with half the wall on that side of the room gone. Not a boat in sight. So much water in which to dump the murder weapon. He took out his cell phone and started calling his list of lakefront police departments. He had them on voice dial. Maybe the assholes who had killed Andy would do something stupid.

A minute later, a cop he called in Kenosha said something smart.

“You alert any grouper troopers on the other side of the lake? You know, in Michigan?”

Landlubber that he was, the thought hadn’t occurred to McGill. Crossing forty miles or more of open water. He’d thought only of hugging the near shore. Worse, he didn’t know any coppers over in Michigan. But his friend in Kenosha did. Said he’d start making calls and get back to McGill if he came up with anything.

McGill had just said thanks and clicked off when Sweetie called up to him from the front door. “Feebs are here. Got a judge’s order allowing them onto the property. I told them I’d have to take it inside, read it in a good light. They gave me five minutes.”

McGill descended the stairs. If Sweetie was in the right mood, he wouldn’t put it past her to shoot it out with the federal government, but he could see she thought this was neither the time nor the place.

“I’ll let them in … but Margaret?”

The use of her proper name between the two of them was reserved for only the most serious of occasions.

“Yes?”

“Don’t let Mrs. Grant see what’s happened to her husband. I doubt she’ll get here before they take him — his remains — away, but just in case, don’t let her see.”

Sweetie nodded. Now she was in the right mood.

McGill felt more certain than ever of one thing: Andy’s death wasn’t a lone-wolf killing. Somebody had put the threatening note in his
Journal.
Somebody had scouted his house from the lake. Probably saw Costello’s crew putting in the barrier. Maybe even saw Andy in his bedroom the way McGill had from his skiff. Then somebody had figured out a plan to overcome the barrier … and somebody had pulled the trigger on Andy.

Could have been one
industrious
son of a bitch. But McGill’s gut told him it was a group …
a group with money.

The thought was an epiphany, one that made McGill shudder. Costello had told him there had been people watching his guys work, but they all looked like they belonged. North Shore. They could have come back at night and watched the house with binoculars, out far enough not to attract the attention of Andy’s security team.

McGill groaned at the god-awful mistake he’d made. He’d kept thinking that the killers would look like cornpone crazies. Hicks. Stand out like Ma and Pa Kettle in his designer-label town. But the truth was — had to be — at least one of them blended perfectly because he was homegrown. Provided all the local color the group needed.

Wrote his death threat in perfectly grammatical English.

McGill got behind the wheel of Sweetie’s patrol unit, backed it away from the gate of the Grant estate, and called out the key code so the feds could open it.

SAC Braun was the first inside. He double-timed over to McGill’s car.

But whatever the fed had intended to say, McGill’s look made him think twice. The chief told him, “Mr. Grant is dead, dismembered by the blast. The crime scene is as I found it. Sergeant Sweeney of my department has been ordered not to let Congresswoman Grant see her husband’s remains. You and your men will be in peril should you try to countermand that order.”

Braun’s head jerked as if McGill had given him the back of his hand, but he didn’t argue. Some things a judge’s order couldn’t overrule.