Good.
He steps out and walks to the nearby nurses’ station. An empty chair is next to the patient’s open door. Deputy Sheriff Nancy Cook is supposed to be working with him, but one of her kids is throwing up something awful, so she’s running late.
No matter.
When he first checked in on the patient an hour ago, she wasn’t moving or saying a thing, curled on her side, one wrist handcuffed to the Stryker bed. Roy is fine with that, having guarded lots of patients over the years. The ones that drove you nuts were the ones screaming about hospital brutality, about how they had to use a bedpan, or that they were about to hurl all over the floor.
This one, though, is perfect. Short, dark-skinned, kinda rough-looking, but from what he heard at the nurses’ station, she was wearing a Kevlar vest when somebody shot her three times in the chest. Poor gal is all busted up, and the last time Roy tried to talk to her, she just looked away.
Okay, then.
At the nurses’ station, he catches the eye of Rhonda Buell, the floor supervisor, who’s a cute thing with a nice set of curves, and although he’s old enough to be her father, he loves chatting her up.
She rolls over on her chair and says, “How are you doing, Roy?”
“Fine, hon, how about you?”
“Hanging in there,” she says, smiling, and Roy fantasizes for a moment that she’s one of those nurses that gets off on seeing a man in uniform. Maybe he could luck out when both their shifts end and set up a lunch date or something.
Roy says, “I’m about to swing down to the cafeteria, grab some coffee. Can I grab you a cup?”
Rhonda says, “Sure … but you sure you want to leave your patient alone?”
“Cripes,” he says, “you said her chest is all messed up, she’s handcuffed—I don’t think she’ll be breaking out anytime soon.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she says. “I hear word that there’s a bunch of Feds, state cops, and local cops in a conference room on the first floor, fighting over who gets her.”
Roy says, “I still don’t know what she did, do you?”
Rhonda shakes her pretty little blond head just as the nearby elevator opens up, and a sweaty, red-faced Deputy Sheriff Nancy Cook comes out, a large woman in the sheriff’s brown uniform, carrying a small cooler.
“Man—Roy—s-so sorry I’m late—” she stammers out. “You know how it is.”
“Sure do,” he says, and he thinks, Perfect, she can sit and guard the prisoner, and I can make the cafeteria run. “Let me get you set up.”
He points to the patient’s room and Nancy joins him, and they walk in and Roy calls out, “Hey, miss, this is the other deputy sheriff who’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
No reply, which isn’t a surprise.
But a second later, there’s a big surprise indeed.
There’s no patient.
Just bunched-up pillows underneath the blankets, a dangling handcuff, and thick tufts of hair spread across the pillow that made it look like someone was sleeping. Sweet Mary, Roy thinks, she either tugged the hair out by herself or sliced it off.
Nancy is standing next to him, breathing hard.
“Christ, sorry to say this, Roy,” she says, “but I sure am glad I’m late.”
CHAPTER 90
FOR PROBABLY THE last time in my life, I’m able to use my Secret Service identification to go past a police and agency cordon, and after some minutes of delay, I’m able to get to a special room in Blair House, which—irony of ironies—is within easy walking distance of the White House and is also the President’s official guesthouse.
The door is opened up by one of the First Lady’s “children” from the East Wing, and I’m ushered into a sitting room, where a refreshed-looking Grace Fuller Tucker is sitting at a round dining room table. There’s a coffee setup spread before her, and she says, “Can I offer you a late-afternoon refreshment, Agent Grissom?”
Any other time, I would say no, but like I’ve thought many times over the past few days, this certainly isn’t any other time.
“Sure,” I say, “but I’ll pour myself.”
She nods, and I sit down across from her, get myself a cup of steaming hot coffee from a silver set, and add a few lumps of sugar. The First Lady has had her hair done, she’s wearing black slacks and a plain white turtleneck, and the bandage on her left hand is fresh.
“How’s your hand doing?” I ask.
She holds it up and gives it a glance, like it’s some foreign object that’s been attached to her. “Doing much better,” she says. “The ER doctors over at George Washington cleaned it up and restitched it, and I’ve got some very fine painkillers to take the edge off. They wanted me to spend the night, but you see how far that went.”
The First Lady smiles, and it’s nice to be the focus of her warmth and attention, despite what I’m going to say next.
“Was it hard,” I ask, “having your father slice off that finger joint?”
Her smile never wavers. “He’s spent many years at Cleveland Clinic, observing and evaluating. He did a perfectly fine job.”
I take a sip of the coffee. “This had been in the works for a very long time.”
“Not that long,” she says. “Only when my suspicions about Harrison were confirmed.”
“I did some additional checking in on Mr. Fuller,” I say. “It seems he’s also on the board of the corporation that owns the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I can see if a reporter or an editor learned about your husband’s affair, how that news might have gotten to him first.”
Mrs. Tucker doesn’t say anything, but there’s the slightest of nods. I say, “With that information … he doesn’t confront the President. You don’t confront the President. Instead, he sets up that ambush in Atlanta. I was always puzzled by that. It’s typical for a breaking news story for one outlet—television station or newspaper—to take the lead in getting the story. Very unusual to have an ambush consisting of a couple of network television crews and reporters from competing newspapers at the same place and the same time. Like they were all tipped off simultaneously.”
Her smile widens. “It was an unusual story, was it not?”
“Not as unusual as your … disappearance,” I say. “So far, the cover story about your falling in the stream, striking your head, and injuring your finger is still holding. How long do you think it’ll stay that way?”
She picks up her own coffee cup. “May I ask why you’re here, Agent Grissom?”
I say, “By the end of the day, it won’t be Agent Grissom. It will be plain old Sally Grissom. Too much has happened over the past few days.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“I’m glad you are,” I say. “I had a nice career with the agency, a nice record, and now … it’s gone.”
The First Lady says, “Then come with me. I need someone with your experience.”
“You’ll always have Secret Service protection, even if you and the President eventually divorce.”
“I know that,” she says. “But I’m not saying I need someone to help with my protection.”