“But … Amelia, I sure as hell can’t.”
Gwen steps forward, arm around me, hugging me. My younger sister, whose hair is graying out and who has fine lines around her bright blue eyes, all from her job at the Puzzle Palace over at Fort Meade, deciphering and interpreting horrible secrets that should forever remain secret.
“I’ll take care of Amelia,” she says.
“Gwen … I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“Don’t fret,” she says. “I got some time coming to me. It’ll be just me and your little firecracker, until the parental units and sister Kate show up. I’ll host ’em until things get straightened out.”
My throat thickens and the tears come, and in the middle of this cemetery with the gravestones with Hebrew lettering and the Star of David, I give her a long, long hug. She whispers to me, “Always got your back, big sis, remember that. Always.”
I pull away and we exchange cheek kisses, and Gwen says to my daughter, “Hey, Amelia, how about spending some time with your nutty aunt Gwen?”
Amelia looks up to her. “You live where there’s an indoor pool, right?”
Gwen says, “That’s right, sport.”
“I’d like to go swimming. But I don’t have a suit.”
Gwen takes her hand. “We’ll get you a suit, I promise.”
The two of them start walking away, and I realize I haven’t even said good-bye to Amelia, when Scotty gets my attention.
“What the hell’s going on?” I ask. “Have they found …”
He shakes his head. “Nope. Take a look.”
He flips his large iPhone on its side so I can read the screaming headline from the Washington Post:
FIRST LADY REPORTED MISSING; MAY HAVE DROWNED AT HORSE FARM
I swear and Scotty grabs my arm, and we start to run out of the cemetery as dirt continues to be shoveled into my husband’s grave.
CHAPTER 50
PARKER HOYT HEARS a burst of loud voices outside of his office, with Mrs. Glynn coming in loud and clear with, “You can’t go in there!” and sure enough, Special Agent Sally Grissom slams the door open, pushes her way through, and slams the door behind her.
“Agent Grissom,” he says, “what a not-so-pleasant surprise. Sorry to hear about the death of your husband … shouldn’t you be with your daughter?”
She strolls forward, face twisted with fury, and Parker has a momentary lapse into fear—after all, this crazed woman is armed—but she stops at his clean desk and slaps down a sheet of paper.
“I just got this off the wire downstairs,” she says. “News flash from a ‘highly placed administration source,’ about the First Lady being missing and presumed drowned. That source was you, you son of a bitch.”
Parker doesn’t even acknowledge the paper before him. “Why are you here, Agent Grissom? You should be taking the rest of the week off.”
“Why? Why the news leak?”
“Sit down.”
“I like standing.”
“My office, my rules,” he says. “Park it.”
She slowly takes an empty chair, and Parker feels once more that little thrill, of bending someone else’s will to his own. He says, “Is there anything inaccurate in that news flash?”
“Anything? The whole damn thing is inaccurate. You don’t know if she’s drowned or not.”
“And neither do you,” he says. “Your agency, which managed to lose the First Lady two days ago, has come up with exactly nothing. Zero. Zip. Even when you somehow bribed Homeland Security to come in and help, all you did was find some poor drowned homeless woman a couple of miles downstream.”
Her teeth are clenched as she says, “That’s not true. We found the note, we found the panic button, and—”
“The note and panic button? A groom from the horse farm could have found that. Or some birdwatcher. Or fisherman. No, the great and mighty Secret Service, upon losing their protectee, hasn’t been able to do squat these past two days. Zero. So now it’s time to change the playing field and players.”
Grissom picks up the sheet of paper with the printed news bulletin on it and crumples it in her hand. “By leaking this crap?”
“Exactly,” he says. “Before, it was you and your agents, and Homeland Security, trying to keep it secret, trying to keep it lowkey. That approach didn’t work.”
“That was your approach, not mine,” she protests.
“And it didn’t work,” he says. “FDR once had a process of trying something, and if it didn’t work out, he dumped it and tried something new. That’s what I did. The quiet approach didn’t work. Now, in a few hours, the FBI will be all over this, along with thousands upon thousands of concerned citizens who will join the hunt—without even being asked—for their beloved First Lady.”
Grissom says, “You still think she’s in hiding, trying to humiliate the President. And if you make it a big production and find her hiding someplace, then all of the bad news from Atlanta will go away.”
Parker thinks Grissom is way too smart to stay within the Secret Service, but she’s not dark enough where it counts—in her soul—to truly figure out what’s going on. “If that happens, the President and I will be thrilled. She will be found, safe. And if she isn’t in hiding … if something else is going on, well, again, besides the full force and fury of federal investigative agencies, the American public will be helping us as well.”
Grissom says, “And what about the Secret Service?”
Parker smiles. “Come now, Agent Grissom, you’ve had your forty-eight hours and a chance to shine. It’s time for competent adults to step forward.”
She says, “You … if you’re so damn competent, did you know the First Lady was …”
The Secret Service agent stops talking. Parker waits. “Go on,” he says. “Finish your sentence. Did I know what about the First Lady?”
Grissom sits there, stubbornly, and for God’s sake, again there are raised voices outside and Mrs. Glynn says, “You can’t go in there, he’s in a very important meeting,” and sure enough the door opens up and a man in uniform steps in, eyes wide, face pale. He has on black trousers, a white dress shirt with gold badge, and black necktie, and Parker recognizes him as one of the many faceless members of the uniformed Secret Service, out there on the perimeter of the White House grounds manning the gate booths and kiosks.
There’s something in his hand.
Parker says, “What’s going on? Who are you and what do you want?”
The man ignores Parker and goes right to Grissom. “Supervisor Grissom,” he says, voice strained. “You need to see this.”
She stands up and says, “What is it?”
“You need to take a look,” he says, handing over the package. Parker sees it’s a large, clear plastic bag containing a standard business-size manila envelope. “This was dropped off at the South Gate about ten minutes ago.”
Grissom says, “Gloves?”
“Right here, ma’am,” he says, and from a rear pants pocket he passes over a pair of light-blue latex gloves and she snaps them on.