His eyes widen in shock, and I guess that’s my answer. “No … nothing like that, I mean …” And his voice rises. “What in hell are you suggesting? Who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say. “What matters is that my source tells me that he or she overheard your wife talking to a man, expressing her love and affection.”
“Can’t you trace that call, find out who he is?”
“Your wife was using a burner phone, apparently secured by someone from the East Wing.”
The President shakes his head and leans back in his study chair. “I … I can’t believe it. When could she do it? How could she do it?”
I think if I bite my tongue any harder it will be severed in half—That’s what you did, I want to say, and that’s what my husband, Ben, did. Why are you surprised?—and thank God, I’m interrupted by my phone ringing.
I see that it’s Scotty calling, and I say, “Sir, please excuse me, I need to take this call.”
I get up from the chair and cross to the door, open it and step into the hallway. Luck is with me because this narrow stretch of fancy corridor with old paintings and furniture is empty.
“Grissom,” I answer. “What’s up, Scotty?”
A crackle and hiss of static, and the words, “—a body.”
“Say again, Scotty? What is it?”
His voice bellows out. “We’ve found a body! Female … at the Quinnick Falls … about three miles south of the horse farm … you better—”
Another burst of static, and I lose the connection.
No matter.
I start running.
CHAPTER 36
IT’S NEAR DUSK, and Marsha Gray is slogging through a swampy area, near Quinnick Falls, where she’s been dispatched after getting a frantic phone call from Parker Hoyt. Supposedly the First Lady’s body has been found, and Marsha certainly hopes so, because she’s tired of hunting in the First World.
The muck and water are up to her knees as she slowly wades through brush and saplings heading toward the sounds of engines, loud voices, and the thumping hum of a helicopter overhead.
She gets closer, finds a dry spot near a maple tree, takes a breather. In the Third World, hunting could be as fun as trick-or-treating. Cops and security forces can be bribed to look the other way. Traffic laws were suggestions, not rules. And in most of her Third World hunting grounds, being a woman meant you were ignored, were part of the shiftless, covered background.
Which made hunting so much fun.
But here?
She drops her rucksack, opens it up, and removes a pair of binoculars with high-grade optics. She leans against the trunk of the maple, starts scanning what she sees. Damn thing is, here in the First World, if a local cop or a Virginia state trooper were to trip over her, she couldn’t bribe them or persuade them to look the other way. Nope, she’d have to kill them, and that made the job just that much harder.
All right then.
The waterfalls look to be about thirty meters wide, with a drop of about two meters. Lots of exposed rocks, tangled limbs, and old tree trunks caught up in the water and debris. Homeland Security folks and a couple of Secret Service agents are on the far side of the river. A guy in a black wet suit and with an orange rope fastened to a harness starts carefully working his way to an area just below the falls. Marsha focuses in and sees an arm flopping back and forth from the currents, the body obscured by the swirling foam and water.
“Bit chillier than the East Wing, eh?” she whispers, as she keeps watching.
Another guy in a wet suit joins the agent, then slips and falls. Shouts and yells as he’s pulled to shore, and then he steps back in again.
“That’s right,” she whispers. “Be a hero. Drown for a dead woman.”
The progress is slow and painful to watch. Marsha shifts her spot, scans the crew, and then another Suburban bounces along the shore, lights flashing, and yep, there she is, the Queen of All She Surveys, Secret Service Agent Grissom, black coat on and red scarf flapping around.
Grissom meets up with another Secret Service agent, and there’s discussion, and the Queen borrows a pair of binoculars, scans the area. They then go to the water’s edge. Behind them a white tent is being erected, and a generator kicks to life.
The two men in the wet suits are at the location of the body. More ropes are deployed, securing the body in case the two heroes fall on the way back. Wouldn’t be nice to have her get loose and bounce around for another mile or two in the rapids.
All right, then.
The two wet-suited men make their way free, the body slumped between them. Marsha swears. Not a good view at all. Just a slumped torso. They work their way through the water, past the rocks and debris. A line of men and women are waiting for them, four holding a wire Stokes litter. Wouldn’t do to have the First Lady of the United States dragged into that examination tent like a sack of potatoes and—
Oh, shit.
Freeze.
Marsha stops, no longer breathing. She is focused on Grissom, the lead Secret Service agent, and the woman is staring right at her, motionless.
Don’t move, she thinks. Don’t breathe.
The worst thing that can ever befall a sniper has just happened to Marsha.
She’s been spotted.
CHAPTER 37
AFTER A BALLS-TO-THE-WALLS, screaming drive from the White House, I finally get to Quinnick Falls, a small park about three miles downstream from where I had found the First Lady’s note. Although it drove me crazy with impatience, I kept off the radio and the phone through the hurried drive to Virginia, not wanting anyone out there with the ears and capability to learn why I was in such a hurry.
And to make this early evening even better, I get a phone call from my neighbor Todd Pence, with more apologies and excuses, saying another emergency from his sister means he can’t look after Amelia tonight.
Damn, damn, damn.
My male Secret Service driver finds an empty spot near other Suburbans and Humvees, and before the vehicle comes to a complete stop and the engine is switched off, I fling the door open and start running to the mass of men and women gathered in a small picnic area, with wooden tables that are crowded now with ropes, grappling hooks, communications equipment, and other gear.
Scotty spots me and comes over, and I say, “What do we got?”
Scotty nods, looking tired, a set of binoculars hanging around his neck, and he points over to the rushing water, where a man in a wet suit is starting to wade out, a bright orange rope attached to his waist. “About thirty minutes ago, a couple of kids fooling around by the edge of the falls saw a woman caught up in the rocks. Apparently drowned. Right about then a Homeland Security Humvee pulled in, as part of the search effort, and they waved it down.”
“How do they know it’s a woman?”
Scotty looks embarrassed. “Exposed breast, Sally. The blouse is torn away and a breast is exposed … and, well, the body’s a mess. It’s been in those rocks for a while.”
“Binoculars,” I say.
He passes over his set without a word, and I check the turbulent waters. Something heavy, like a fifty-pound chunk of lead, seems to slide down my gullet. Through the binoculars I can see a bloated shape in the water, partially clothed, and an arm flopping around.