That call … just checking on his insurance policy.
Someone connected out there, working for him.
Highly illegal, highly unethical, and in the end—considering how much he’s been paid—highly effective.
And that’s all he cares about.
CHAPTER 28
PAMELA SMITHSON QUICKLY and efficiently gets me back home, to an apartment complex in Springfield, Virginia, which is closer than going back to the White House, where my personal vehicle is located. I use my cell phone to arrange a Secret Service driver to pick me up overnight if need be.
Pamela pulls into the parking lot and leaves the engine running. I say, “You call me the second you find anything.”
“You know it,” she says.
“If it weren’t for my daughter, I’d still be at the river.”
“We know that, and Sally, no offense, I want to get back there as soon as possible …”
I put my hand on the door handle. “Okay. Pamela, where is she?”
Pamela looks rattled, which is what I’m going for. Good.
“Sally, I—”
“Back at the farm, just before we started the search, Tanya said something about the farm being one of the two places where she feels most comfortable.”
No reply.
“So where’s the second place?”
“I … I don’t know. None of us know.”
I go on. “I also asked you that besides being tossed by the horse, did you think she had run off. Or was hiding. You just said no and instantly changed the subject.”
Still no reply.
“Who is he?” I ask.
She turns and looks around the parking lot. “Pamela! Who is he?”
Pamela’s face is still turned away from me. “I don’t know.”
“How long has she been with him?”
“I … not sure. A few months at least. I’ve heard her talking to him. Three or four times. They communicate only by phone, best I can tell.”
“Hers?”
Pamela says, “No, a burner phone.”
“How in hell did the First Lady of the United States get a burner phone?”
She turns to me, and under the lights from the parking lot, I see her eyes filling up. “How do you think? She makes a request to a staffer, the staffer makes a request to a low-level staffer, and passes it on to an intern. The intern pays cash for a debit card, buys the phone anonymously, sets up a fake Gmail account to activate it, and then it’s handed back up to the First Lady. Nearly impossible to trace.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Pamela …”
She wipes at one eye, then the other. “It’s … a man. That’s all I know. I’ve overheard her talking to him a few times over the past months … and once … I heard her say, ‘I love you so much.’”
I take a breath, feel like punching her in the face. “Pamela, your career went down in flames this morning when you and the others lost your protectee. Now … in the next fifteen seconds, however you answer me will determine whether you’re allowed to quietly resign or whether you’re going to appear in court as a defendant.”
She just nods. I say, “Do you have any idea, lead, or hint of who this man is and where he can be found?”
“No.”
“The other shifts?”
She shakes her head. “I’ve … sounded them out over the past couple of months. Nothing serious, just testing to see if they’ve noticed anything. Not a thing.”
“All right, then,” I say.
I start to open the door, and Pamela says, “I need to tell you one more thing.”
I think of my eleven-year-old girl, up in our apartment alone. We had moved here nearly a year ago, when I found out my husband and her father had been taking interns to our condo during his lunch break, and I refused to live in that place for one second more than I had to. This place is pricey, in poor shape, and in a lousy neighborhood, but I had no other choice.
“Make it quick.”
“Back in May, we were having a going-away party for one of the night shift agents on her detail,” Pamela says. “We had rented a room over a bar in Georgetown, but the First Lady … when she found out about the party, she knew that her three on-duty agents would miss it. So with no announcement, nothing made public, she showed up. A surprise. Took time out of her own schedule so her three on-duty agents wouldn’t miss the party, and she laughed, danced, and knocked back a couple of glasses of wine with the crew. That’s who she is … the best protectee I’ve ever worked for, and Sally, if I had the slimmest lead on who this guy might be, I’d be out there now. You’ve got to believe me.”
I open the door. “I do believe you. Just hope you can convince a judge or a congressional committee if the time ever comes.”
From a parked Honda Odyssey minivan on the street, Marsha Gray watches the lead agent depart the Suburban in an apartment complex parking lot. She has night-vision gear at her side but decides not to use it. She loves minivans because they’re so anonymous and blend in so well, and having a night scope up to her face definitely won’t make her blend in.
The Suburban has been here for about ten minutes, so she’s sure there’s been some chitchat going on inside between the two agents, but what? Marsha wishes she wasn’t by herself, working alone, because she’d have that Suburban bugged and wired so she would know for sure what they were talking about.
Grissom walks across the parking lot, and Marsha sees shadows emerge from between two parked cars.
Things are about to get interesting.
I’m walking to the apartment complex and something flickers ahead of me, and I quickly realize that I’m seeing shadows from two people behind me.
I turn and there’s two youngsters walking quickly in my direction. They have on baseball hats, and the hoods of their jackets are pulled up over them, making it hard to tell what they look like, which is probably the plan.
They keep on walking toward me, fast and deliberate.
I say, “Help you fellas?”
The one on the right says, “Hey, yeah, my bud here, I think he hurt his left knee. You know where the closest walk-in clinic be?”
“No, I don’t,” I say. “But he’s not limping.”
“Appearances can be deceiving, sweetie,” the other one says. “Maybe I’m just faking it, who knows. Maybe we just needed a reason to come talk to you and then take your money.”
I take a step back, swivel a bit, reach under my coat, remove my collapsible baton, pop it open, and swing it hard across the knees of the guy on the left. He yelps, and the pain drops him on the pavement, arms splayed out. His standing buddy is frozen.
I say, “Now he’s not faking it.”
I walk backward a bit, until I’m sure the threat is gone. Then I turn and go to the front door, punch in the access code, make my way through the smelly foyer, and trot upstairs to the third floor. At my apartment I unlock the door, which I had strengthened and the cheap lock upgraded when we moved in. I call out “Honey, I’m here!,” which is my everyday code word so Amelia knows it’s mom coming in and not some creep.