The First Lady Read online

  “Small outbuilding, about fifty meters to the east, in a grove of oak trees,” he says. “There’s something going on.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a locked door,” he says. “And a trash bag outside.”

  A slight crackle of static. “With bloody bandages inside.”

  CHAPTER 57

  IN A MATTER of seconds, I’m at the building, and Scotty is standing outside, his flashlight illuminating a white plastic trash bag outside of a locked wooden door, painted green. Oak trees are nearby and overhead, and there’s a dirt path leading back to where we were. Unlike the other buildings we’ve been searching, this one is worn, with a sagging roof. It’s one story and there are small windows set up near the roofline.

  I turn, and Connie Westbrook has managed to keep up with me.

  I flash my light over at the building. “What’s in here?”

  “Nothing,” she says.

  Scotty says, “Over here, boss.”

  I check the torn top of the white trash bag. Inside are crumpled fast-food bags, McDonald’s and Burger King, and I nudge the top, where there’s a couple of crumpled white gauze bandages, stained brown with old blood. There’s also bits of string— used sutures?—and cotton swabs.

  Back to Connie I say, “Care to change your mind?”

  She folds her arms, says not a word. Pamela and Tanya appear, breathing hard, running from wherever they’ve been. Scotty doesn’t say anything, just illuminates the open plastic bag with the used bandages.

  Pamela turns and says, “Who’s this?”

  “The farm’s owner.”

  Pamela’s on her, both strong hands on her robe, and she yells, “Is she in there? Is she in there, you old bat?”

  Tanya pulls her off and the woman nearly falls, but she’s still there, not backing away, eyes filled with hate, staring at us. Scotty says, “I might be hearing things, boss, but I thought I heard a voice from inside.”

  I step up to Mrs. Westbrook. “The key. Get the key to that door right now.”

  She says, “Go to hell,” in a grandmotherly tone of voice, if one’s grandmother had once been a prison matron.

  I turn. “Scotty. Get that door open. I don’t care what you do … get the damn thing open. And where the hell is Brian Zahn?”

  Tanya says, “No idea.”

  “Hold on, boss,” Scotty says, and he races to a near barn, smaller than the one I was exploring, and comes back in under a minute. There’s the sound of honking horns out by the parking area, with a few whoop-whoops of sirens, and the hum of power generators— I wish I had one right now, turning this predawn slice of Virginia farmland into noon—but there’s no time, and Scotty is back, carrying a sledgehammer at port arms, as if it were a Colt M4.

  He goes right up to the door with no hesitation, and with one hard blow, the solid doorknob flies off. Scotty drops the sledgehammer, takes out his service weapon—as do the rest of us— and with pistols and flashlights in hand, we move forward.

  Scotty elbows the door open, yells, “Freeze! Secret Service!”

  And I’m right behind him, and the first thing I see is the anguished and scared face of a woman.

  CHAPTER 58

  IN THE LIVING quarters of the White House, on the second floor, Parker Hoyt nods to a male Secret Service agent standing guard outside the plain door. He knocks on the door twice, enters, and from years of practice, flips a switch on the inside wall that turns on just a few subdued lights in the master bedroom.

  The room is lit up, and the President of the United States is curled on his left side, sleeping, wearing light-blue cotton pajamas. Parker feels a flash of jealousy that Harrison could be sleeping with all that’s been going on. Parker’s been limited to catching naps on an old Army-style cot in a storage closet adjacent to his large office.

  “Mr. President? Sir?”

  The President snaps wide awake, looks to Parker, and says, “Any news?”

  “No, sir, I’m afraid she’s still missing.”

  The room is well-furnished, with old oil paintings and some landscapes of Lake Erie, but Parker and scores of other people in the White House know it’s been a very long time since the First Lady shared this bed with this man.

  Parker has an envelope in one hand, and with a free hand he pulls over a chair, sitting next to the President.

  He rubs at his eyes, says, “Good God, Parker, it’s not even five in the morning.”

  “I know, sir, and I hate to disturb you, but we need to make a decision.”

  Harrison runs a hand over his head. “What decision is that?”

  “This one,” he says, removing a single sheet of paper from the envelope. “It’s a presidential directive from you, ordering the Treasury Department to transfer one hundred million dollars from its Judgment Fund to that bank account in Caracas.”

  Parker glances at his watch. “I’ve spent all night preparing for this transfer, and we have just over an hour to make it happen.”

  Harrison takes the single sheet of paper, and then a pen that Parker offers. “What the hell is the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund?”

  He says, “It’s the fund the Treasury Department maintains to pay out lawsuits or settlements. Also, truth be told … it’s your emergency slush fund. That’s how, when the Iranian deal got settled a few years back, we were able to deliver pallets full of hundred-dollar bills to the mullahs the next day.”

  The President reads the sheet, nods, and then looks to his chief of staff.

  “When can I see the draft of the speech?”

  Here we go, Parker thinks. Aloud, he says, “What speech is that, sir?”

  Harrison says frostily, “It’s too early in the morning to jerk me around, Parker. You know what speech. The one where I go on live television and apologize for the way I’ve mistreated Grace.” He twists in his bed and looks at the nearby clock. “It looks like I need to be delivering that in just about thirteen hours.”

  Parker says, “Mr. President, there isn’t going to be any speech.”

  His eyebrows lift up. “The kidnappers … they’ve adjusted their demands?”

  “No, sir,” Parker says, “we’re not going to meet their demand.”

  “The hell we’re not.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “I better have a draft of that speech by midmorning, or I will personally—personally!—call the heads of all three networks and the cable news channels, requesting airtime for six p.m. later today. And then I’ll make the remarks by myself.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, sir.”

  “Parker—”

  “Sir, please hear me out.”

  The fingers clenching the pen seem as tight as a lock, and Parker is sure the President is fantasizing about shoving that pen down Parker’s throat.

  “Sir,” he goes on, “if you were to make that speech, what does it gain the country?”

  “What does it … hell, Parker, it gets the First Lady free!”

  “Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t,” Parker says. “But hear what I said. ‘What does it gain the country?’ For you, personally, it means your wife is freed. For the First Lady, she’s free, and her friends, family, and followers will be thrilled. And with all the news coverage, and investigative reports, and everything else, in four weeks, you will be smiling on national television, congratulating the governor of California on his success. And less than three months later, that bumbling boob will be sworn in.”

  The President keeps quiet. Parker says, “But let’s say we pay the ransom. That gains us another twelve hours. Perhaps she’s found. Perhaps she’s freed. The news will be of her successful return … without the added burden of you apologizing to more than three hundred million of your fellow citizens that you couldn’t keep your presidential dick in your pants.”

  “You …” and the President can’t say anything more.

  Parker says, “If we’re fortunate, she might be dumped on a street corner somewhere, and we can keep
the news quiet until after the election.”

  “The press will crucify us if we try that.”

  “They might,” Parker says. “And we’ll just say … after you’ve been successfully reelected … that we didn’t want to toss anything into the last few weeks of election coverage that might impact the election. The people will eventually respect that. So what if the press doesn’t?”

  Harrison says bleakly, “Suppose they follow through with their threat. And harm comes to her …. What then?”

  “Then the nation will rally around a President suffering the grievous loss of his wife. Your affair will be overlooked. Your margin of victory will even be larger.”

  Harrison shakes his head. “That … the cynicism … I mean …”

  “Mr. President, excuse me for being blunt. When it comes to kidnappings, chances are that the First Lady is already dead. Once they get their money, the kidnappers will want to rid themselves of her. They know the entire federal government will be chasing after them … and they will want to leave no witnesses behind. With the added thrill of humiliating the leader of the free world in the process.”

  There’s a pause. Parker says, “Remember what I said. How does your speech, how will it serve the country? It won’t. It will ensure the election of a granola-crunching fool who will roll back all of the progress you’ve made—both domestic and foreign—and your legacy will be a bungled affair and a kidnapped First Lady.”

  Another pause. Parker thinks, We’re close. Let’s go in for the kill. “Or … you make the necessary sacrifice on behalf of the nation. You get reelected, with an enormous mandate, and you have four more years to build on the previous four years. For the benefit of the American people and for a safer world.”

  He waits.

  Waits.

  The President of the United States looks at his hand, the one grasping the pen, like he’s wondering how it got there.

  With a savage motion, he scrawls his signature on the presidential directive, and shoves both the paper and pen back at his chief of staff.

  “Get out of my sight,” he snaps.

  Parker stands up. “Yes, sir.”

  CHAPTER 59

  I PUSH PAST Scotty, using my flashlight, and besides the frightened woman in front of me, there are other people as well, men and women, boys and girls. They blink and hold up their hands against the flashlight beams, and they all appear to be Hispanic.

  I quickly count off eight, and there’s no First Lady back there, just cots, a few buckets with dishes and soiled clothes, a hot plate and laundry hanging from a clothesline in the rear. There are two men, two women, and four boys and girls from toddlers to preteens.

  Tanya grabs Mrs. Westbrook by the scruff of her robe and pushes her in. “Is this what you’re hiding, you bitch? Cheap migrant labor? Paying them next to nothing for the privilege of shoveling out the shit from your million-dollar horses?”

  For a small woman she’s pretty tough, and she easily breaks free. “No, it’s not that, not at all.”

  “Then what is it?” Tanya demands.

  Mrs. Westbrook ignores her and speaks in soft Spanish to the two families, and they nod and a couple try to smile as they settle back on their cots. One of the men has a bandage wrapped around his left wrist. It comes to me that this is what they’re used to, being in rough quarters and knowing that at any moment of the day or night armed men and women from the government could break in.

  “There,” she says, looking back at me. “You’re in charge here, are you not?”

  “I am.”

  “Then let these people be.”

  “I want an explanation,” I say.

  “You’ll get it … just as soon as you give these people their privacy.”

  I gesture to Scotty, Pamela, and Tanya, and we step out, and with the rising sun, everything is becoming more visible. Not more clear, no, not that, but definitely more visible. Scotty closes the door and picks up the broken doorknob, looks around with some embarrassment, and drops it to the ground.

  “You … people,” she begins, with her old and strong voice. “You think you know everything.”

  She bundles her robe tighter about her slim frame. “For more than three hundred years my family has lived here, and raised generations here, and yes, for a while, kept slaves. That’s our enduring shame, that my family, at one point, owned human beings. You can read the old journals and old stories about my ancestors, and how proud they were that they treated their property well. But it was still an abomination. No matter how many years have passed, it was still an abomination.”

  I say, “You’re making penance.”

  “For once, miss, you’re making sense.” A fierce nod. “Yes … this farm, this place, was never an Underground Railroad stop back in the day. But it is now. Those two families … they have jobs, a new life waiting for them up north. All we do is make sure they get there, without being harassed or arrested.”

  She stares at me. “Are they going to be arrested?”

  “No,” I say, holstering my pistol. The others follow.

  “Am I going to be arrested?”

  Tanya mutters something about what she’d do if she were in charge, and I say, “No, Mrs. Westbrook, you’re not going to be arrested.”

  “Are you and your … people, are you done here?”

  Then it hits me like a slow-moving yet large and wide tidal wave, an overwhelming sensation of being utterly exhausted, bone-tired, and worthless. The sun is coming up. The ransom will probably be paid, and we’re through here. A few minutes ago, it seemed like success was within reach, just past that wooden door, just past that trash bag with bloody bandages.

  So damn close and yet so damn far.

  Scotty looks around and says, “Where the hell is Brian?”

  “Good question,” I say. “Pamela? He belongs to you. Where did you last see him?”

  “I didn’t,” she replies, rubbing at her cold hands.

  Tanya says, “I saw the kid go back and grab his laptop from the Suburban. He said he wanted to check something out.”

  “And you let him do that?” I demand. “This was a hands-on search, not a—”

  There’s shouting coming from the direction of the parking lot. As one, our little group turns, and in the better light, I see Brian running in our direction, carrying a laptop under his arm.

  More yells and then I make out his words:

  “I know where she is! I know where she is!”

  CHAPTER 60

  I HEAR WORDS from the other agents, and instantly I cut them off at their throats.

  “Shut your mouths, all of you, right now,” I say.

  Brian races up to me, nearly slipping to the ground as he passes through a patch of mud, and nearly out of breath, he gasps out, “She’s here … she’s here … I just know it.”

  In seconds we’re around Brian, and he opens up his laptop and says, “When we started searching I thought about how we lost CANARY, and how her horse Arapahoe came back by himself.”

  Pamela says, “So?”

  “Damn it, you know how that horse loved her,” Brian said, trying to hold the laptop open with one hand while working on the keyboard with the other. “But the horse came back alone. If CANARY had tried to sneak back through the woods and ended up here somewhere, no way Arapahoe would have left her alone. He would have gone through the woods and brush with her.”

  “All right, so what do you have?” I asked. “Where is she?”

  He moves the laptop around and says, “Damn it, I had a good signal earlier …”

  “To hell with showing me something on the laptop,” I say. “What did you find?”

  He nods, tries to catch his breath, and then says, “I went back to the river.”

  Tanya says, “The river was a bust. You know it, I know it, Homeland Security knows it.”

  “But everyone assumed she had fallen off the horse,” Brian said, slowly walking backward, gazing at his keyboard, looking for that elusive carrier signal.
“Or had slipped in. Or based on that note, maybe had committed suicide. So everybody was looking downstream. Who was looking upstream?”

  Scotty says, “Some of the Homeland Security units went upstream, I know that for a fact.”

  “But did they search the buildings?”

  Scotty says, “Yes, they did. At least two miles upstream.”

  Brian smiles. “But they didn’t go far enough … okay, here we go.”

  I say, “Brian, I don’t care if the Death Star is beaming you down instructions. Tell me—right now!—what’s going on.”

  He nods, takes another breath, and says, “Real estate records. I got into the local tax assessor’s office, started looking up and down the river, looking to see if there was someone out there, a friend or somebody, a place where she might have sought refuge.”

  Tanya says, “Wait a minute, the ransom note and the severed finger, how can—”

  I hold up my hand. “Go on.”

  Brian says, “None of the names looked familiar, and none were connected to the First Lady … but I saw that one little remote farmhouse, about three miles upstream, it belonged to something called the Friends of Lake Erie Association … it’s a charitable group. Based in Ohio.”

  “Ohio …,” I whisper.

  “Ah, here we go,” he says, turning the screen around. “Look! Look who’s the chairman of the Friends of Lake Erie Association.”

  I note the name, the photograph, and with as much quiet authority as I can muster, I say, “Brian, you take the lead. Find the quickest route between here and that farmhouse, and let’s haul ass.”

  As we start moving, Mrs. Westbrook yells out, “Hey, who’s going to pay for this broken doorknob?”

  I yell back. “Send the bill to Homeland Security.”

  Then we all start running.

  CHAPTER 61

  PARKER HOYT IS leaning back in his office chair, dozing, when a ringing phone wakes him up.

  He lurches forward, automatically picks up his standard office phone, says, “Hoyt,” and realizes he’s talking to a dial tone.