The First Lady Read online

  GRACE FULLER TUCKER, former First Lady of Ohio, daughter of a prominent family from the Midwest and current First Lady of the United States, is resting on her side on a creaky bed with a thin mattress inside an old, rural building, her left hand throbbing from the pain of her severed pinky.

  She doesn’t dare move.

  Not at all.

  She takes a deep breath, feels tears trickling down her cheeks. She’s cold, hungry, and thirsty. She’s still wearing her riding gear from two days ago—black stretch jodhpurs with stirrups, tan turtleneck sweater, and short black cotton jacket. Her boots have been stripped off and her helmet tossed aside.

  Grace looks at her thick-bandaged left hand, again feeling the horror of seeing her arm stretched out, fastened so she couldn’t move, hearing the clink-clink of the instruments, looking away and thankful that at least some anesthesia had been administered. There had been that dull sensation, feeling the sawing movement, still looking away, her stomach cold and empty, and even throwing up and not being able to move.

  So here she is.

  Why is she here?

  She thinks back and knows it’s because of the choices she’s made, even all those years ago, when she had attended a charity event at the Cleveland Clinic, where her family had been the primary sponsor, and a newly elected state senator called Harrison Tucker had caught her eye.

  Decision.

  She could have turned away from that smiling and charming face, gone somewhere else, but she had stayed.

  Even with the Extra Strength Tylenol trying to do its work, the painful throbbing continues in her left small finger.

  She had stayed.

  Grace thinks that if she were to die in the next twenty-four hours, the inscription on her tombstone could read:

  SHE STAYED.

  Stayed with Harrison while he rose through the ranks of the Ohio State Senate, when he became a two-term governor, got his party’s nomination to be President, and then was the winner-takes-all, getting the keys nearly four years ago to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Oh, yes, she stayed, while he made promises, compromised, and made more promises. She had come along with him, her burgeoning career in education and early childhood development dying along the way, until she found herself in a place that had always horrified her—being a politician’s wife. The type of woman who laughed at bad jokes, who kept a smile on her face while slicing through yet another chicken dinner, and who would make small talk with thick men with smelly breath who had the ability to write huge checks to campaigns and PACs.

  Then … her own illness. When, some years back, the annual mammogram—at the same Cleveland Clinic her father and now deceased mother were prominent in, ironically—had shown something suspicious, and then a follow-up had done the same, and then a needle biopsy had shown cancer cells, well, Governor Harrison Tucker, running in the primaries, had said all the right words, had made all the right gestures.

  But that damn black slug Parker Hoyt, she had caught him meeting with Harrison, about the sympathy vote Harrison could count on when the news came out about her illness.

  And that had been that. A nasty argument had ensued, and for once in her life, she had won a victory against Harrison and against being the perfect political wife, and she had suffered in silence during those months of surgery and chemo and the ultimate realization that she could never, ever bear children.

  Grace hears footsteps outside of her cold and plain room.

  Then there was the presidency, with the thoughts that she could circle around to where her life had once been, to really make a contribution to the health and safety of children— especially the ones who were homeless through no fault of their own—and that had been a four-year struggle of budget compromises, setbacks, and defeats.

  Because she had stayed.

  The door to her room creaks open.

  A gruff male voice says, “I want to look at that hand.”

  Grace doesn’t say a word, doesn’t move.

  As she has always done, she stays.

  CHAPTER 54

  IT’S THREE A.M. and I’m at a McDonald’s in Forestville, Maryland, waiting. I’ve finished off two cups of coffee and two Sausage McGriddles sandwiches. I was hungry earlier, which I suppose is a good sign, but I’m still not conscious of having tasted anything.

  So much going on.

  I’m sharing this common eating area with a number of folks that you would expect to see in an urban McDonald’s at three a.m.—bundles of young men and women, laughing and chatting, working women staring at their breakfasts, and two long-haul truckers, sitting in their booths, just shoveling fuel into themselves so they can keep on truckin’.

  A door opens up. Scotty comes in, glances around, and then spots me, slides into the booth.

  “Boss.”

  “Hey,” I say.

  “How’s Amelia?”

  “With her aunt Gwen.”

  “Boss, I’m so sorry that—”

  I hold up a hand. “It’s done. And I’m not going to talk about it. Let’s wait, all right?”

  We don’t have to wait long. The door swings open, and two members of CANARY’s protective team come in, looking like they just spent the past hour holding up a sign and begging passing motorists for coins. The lead agent, Pamela Smithson, comes by, accompanied by Tanya Glenn. They skip the food counter and push in next to Scotty.

  “Where’s Brian?” I ask. Pamela yawns and Tanya says, “I saw him out in the parking lot. Looks like he was making a phone call.”

  Scotty says, “At three in the morning?”

  Tanya says, “Maybe he was telling his mommy what he wants for breakfast.”

  Pamela slightly smiles and then the door swings open, and the young male agent hustles in, saying, “Sorry, didn’t mean to be late.”

  He sits next to me, and I say, “That’s all right. I haven’t started yet.”

  And before I start, Pamela says, “Sally, I know I speak for Tanya and Brian by saying how sorry we were to hear about Ben. Is there … is there any news? About the investigation?”

  “No,” I say.

  Next to me, Brian says, “Do the local police have any leads?”

  “None that I know of,” I say, and Tanya speaks up: “Sally, I can’t believe your daughter was there when—”

  I hold up my hand once more and say, “No offense, guys, but shut your traps.”

  Their faces flush or freeze. I’ve gotten their attention.

  Good.

  “There’s a lot going on and I don’t have much time,” I say. “Just tell me this to start: what have you been doing the past few hours?”

  Scotty and the three other agents give quick glances to one another, as if they’re wondering if this senior Secret Service agent has finally gone off the rails, and one by one, the answers come.

  “Having a beer, watching HBO.”

  “Asleep.”

  “In bed, trying to sleep.”

  “I was sleeping, too.”

  I say, “Any of you get any phone calls from the FBI?”

  No verbal answers, just quick shakes of the head.

  “I thought so,” I say.

  I check, just to make sure we’re relatively alone in this large McDonald’s, and I say, “CANARY’s been kidnapped. About twelve hours ago a ransom message was delivered to the White House.”

  Their faces show various stages of shock and disbelief, and CANARY’s lead agent is the first to respond.

  Pamela says forcefully, “How do we know it’s not a fake? Ever since the news got leaked about her supposed drowning, every freak and nutcase has crawled out of their mom’s basement and started posting conspiracy theories on the internet. Maybe this note’s just part of it.”

  “This note came with a severed finger joint,” I say. “The finger-print matches.”

  Whispered obscenities and wide eyes, and Scotty says, “Boss … what’s going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on,” I say. “That’s the problem. I was wi
th Parker Hoyt when the ransom note and the finger arrived. He said he was going to contact the FBI and tell them what happened.”

  Silence. Out in the kitchen, there’s some arguing going on in Spanish.

  I say, “None of you have been contacted by the FBI, you … the shift working with CANARY when she disappeared. You should have been the first ones interviewed.”

  Scotty says, “What did the ransom note say, boss?”

  “A hundred-million-dollar payout by six o’clock this morning. At six p.m. today, the President goes on national television to apologize for his affair.”

  Tanya Glenn’s eyes are moist but sharp, like knives coming out of a dishwasher. “What are you telling us, Sally?”

  I say, “The money may be paid. But there’s no way the chief of staff is going to have that speech delivered.”

  Out in the kitchen, there’s a loud noise as something crashes to the floor.

  “Parker Hoyt wants CANARY dead,” I say. “And it’s up to us to stop him.”

  CHAPTER 55

  SAVE FOR SCOTTY, everybody else is looking at me with cold skepticism. The youngest agent, Brian Zahn, says, “With all due respect, Agent Grissom—”

  His boss, Pamela, interrupts him. “Sally … you’ve been under a lot of stress, and God knows that—”

  My turn.

  “Parker Hoyt also told me that my role in looking for CANARY, along with this detail, was unauthorized and illegal, and violated the wishes and orders of the President. Which meant that according to the law, you were accomplices to me while we illegally searched for the First Lady.”

  Tanya says, “The bastard …”

  Scotty says, “Why does he want CANARY dead?”

  I say, “Have you seen the news? CANAL’s poll numbers are collapsing like an avalanche. Something has to save him. And what’s that something? A dead First Lady, someone for the nation to mourn, so the voters can show their sympathy for CANAL when they go into the voting booth in a few weeks.”

  “Ma’am,” Brian says, “that’s … cold.”

  Pamela says, “That’s DC. So what are you thinking?”

  All right, I think, this is where it’s going to get interesting.

  “Folks … it’s time to face facts, as ugly as they are. All of us, our careers are destroyed. Ruined. Months or years from now, when this is finally settled, we’ll be very lucky if we can get hired as mall cops. That is, if we’re not serving time in prison.”

  I let that sink in and say, “We can do one of two things. We can sit back, let Parker Hoyt do whatever he’s doing, and let CANARY get killed.”

  Brian says, “We could go to the FBI.”

  With a tight tone in his voice, Scotty says, “It’s three a.m. That means we’ll get a duty officer, who’ll have to contact her senior officer, and if you think she’s going to act on her own, no. It’ll have to go up the chain of command … that is, if anybody would believe us.”

  Tanya says, “And what’s the other thing we can do?”

  “Find her on our own,” I say.

  Pamela says, “Boss, no offense—our track record right now sucks. We haven’t found a damn thing.”

  “Which means we don’t have to retrace our steps. Pamela … tell us again what you found from the horse farm’s security force and its surveillance cameras.”

  She says, “Surveillance cameras along the property fence line showed nothing unusual. Security personnel said the same thing. And no aircraft overhead—if somebody had an idea of swooping in with a helicopter to grab her. The gate cameras also showed us coming in with CANARY that morning … and nobody, I mean nobody, left the grounds until you and Scotty showed up.”

  I say, “So we go back.”

  “What?” Scotty says.

  “We’ve trusted the horse farm staff to tell us that all was well. But that means the buildings weren’t searched intensively. Just a quick walk-through. But this time … we make it thorough.”

  “Now?” Tanya says.

  “No time to waste.”

  “They won’t like being woken up,” Tanya says.

  “I’ll order them breakfast when we’re done. Anything else?”

  Brian speaks up. “There’s another—”

  Pamela says, “Stow it, Brian. We’re going to follow Sally’s lead.”

  She catches my look. “Back to the horse farm. Before we all get arrested.”

  Scotty laughs. “Yeah, as Benjamin Franklin once said, well, we must all hang together, or we’re all going to hang separately. Or something like that.”

  A Hispanic male dressed in dirty black slacks, a black striped dress shirt, and a red necktie with a McDonald’s logo on it comes over and says, “Please. If you’re going to stay here, you must order something more to eat.”

  I get out of the booth. “We were just leaving.”

  CHAPTER 56

  SINCE I WAS there last, the Westbrook Horse Farm has certainly gotten busier. Cars and trucks are parked on either side of the access road, even though it’s still a couple of hours before sunrise. We’re crowded in a Secret Service Suburban, and it takes the judicious use of flashing lights and sirens before we can get any farther.

  Pamela is driving, and once she nudges the car into the parking lot, we all step out and take in the madhouse. There are at least a half-dozen television satellite trucks, with news correspondents doing stand-ups in halos of bright lights. There are bands of men and women going out on the trails with flashlights, wearing knapsacks and using walking sticks. There’s even what looks to be a troop of Boy Scouts, forming up and ready to join the search, and there’s a mass of law enforcement personnel, from the Virginia State Police to the county sheriff’s department to local police, plus a smattering of volunteer firefighters just to round things out. The thick woods with the riding trails are being lit up by bands of searchers, all heading to the river where some hours ago Parker Hoyt had told the Washington Post the First Lady had apparently drowned.

  Standing next to me, Scotty says, “Talk about the circus coming to town.”

  Next to him is Tanya, who just shakes her head. “What a mess, what a mess.”

  “Forget it,” I say. “That’s not where we’re going.”

  I lead my group of renegade investigators toward the stables and farm buildings, and within a few seconds, two security officers come out of the shadows and stop us.

  “Sorry, folks, nobody’s allowed to come over here,” the first one says, and the second one says, “Bad enough to have all those crazies out tromping through the grounds.”

  I hold out my identification. “We’re not nobody, and we’re not crazies. We’re the Secret Service, and we’re coming in.”

  My folks line up behind me, and maybe the two security officers are tired or overwhelmed, but the near one unhitches the gate and we walk through, while he mutters something about not getting paid enough to handle this mess.

  “All right,” I say. “Make it happen.” I start pointing to buildings, one after another, assigning them to the agents. I say, “Be thorough, but haul ass. We don’t have much time.”

  For about thirty minutes I’m in one of the large barns, taking in the scent of horse, grain, and hay, and with flashlight in hand, I make my way across the cobblestoned floor, pointing the light into each stall. Most of the horses avoid me and ignore me, and some make grumbling noises and slight whinnies.

  One horse stands out, the beautiful black Morgan named Arapahoe belonging to the missing First Lady.

  I carefully flash the light around his enclosure, making sure the First Lady isn’t tied up in the corner with a bloody hand.

  I say to the horse, “You know what happened, pal. Wish I could make you talk.”

  He blinks his sad brown eyes.

  I wonder if horses can mourn.

  I resume walking and find a ladder at one end, and climb up, the small flashlight in my teeth.

  The upper part of the barn has boxes, piles of leather gear, some old saddles and boots, and
clumps of hay. I move around and twice bump my head on an overhead beam—painful but not limiting—and when I move my way back down the ladder, about ninety pounds and seventy years of Virginia womanhood is angrily waiting for me.

  “I’m Connie Westbrook,” she announces. “Who the hell are you?”

  She has steel-gray hair bundled at the back of her head in a tight bun, and she’s wearing a tan robe over a nightgown and knee-high Wellingtons. One wrinkled hand is holding the robe closed against her chest, and the other is holding a flashlight.

  When I get to the bottom of the ladder, I do her the courtesy of showing her my identification. “I’m Sally Grissom of the Secret Service,” I say. “I’m the special agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division.”

  Connie seems to be one of those old Commonwealth of Virginia matrons who can trace their lineage back to the original founding of Richmond, and who still calls the Civil War the “Late Great Unpleasantness.”

  “So?” she asks. “Why are you here?”

  I start out of the barn, and she keeps up with my brisk pace. “You know why.”

  “And where’s your warrant, Agent Grissom?”

  I go out into the cool air. The sky is not yet lightening over in the east. “Really, ma’am? The First Lady has gone missing at your facility and you’re concerned about a warrant?”

  She purses her lips. “You’re here illegally.”

  “I’m here to find the First Lady.”

  “She’s not here,” she snaps at me. “I’ve already told your … personnel that very same fact. And now my fields and trails are being trampled, torn up, and my horses are panicking. And I want you to leave … and just as soon as I can, I’m getting those other … people off my property.”

  “Well, we’re looking again,” I say. “Just to be sure.”

  “I forbid it.”

  I give her a good stare, up and down, up and down, and I say, “Ma’am, you can forbid it all you want, and while you’re at it, you can forbid the sun to rise over there. Both will be equally effective. Now—”

  A voice crackles in my earpiece. “Boss, Scotty.”

  I lift up my wrist, trigger the microphone. “Sally here, Scotty. Go.”