Chapter 26

 

 

On the way home, I decide to follow Janet’s example and fix something to eat there and wash it down with a beer or two. I have the makings for spaghetti and sausage, but stop at a deli not far from my place to pick up some Italian bread and some parmesan cheese.

 

While I’m waiting in line to pay for these items, I see that the owner has a small TV on a shelf above the counter he slices the meats and cheeses on and it’s tuned to Channel 2 News. I can barely hear what the reporter is saying, but I catch the word Crusader so I ask the owner to turn it up.

 

What I hear makes me lose all interest in eating. Two men delivering some office furniture to a law firm recognized Aldrich as he was getting off a bus and tried to apprehend him and were shot in the process, one of them fatally. The other man suffered two gunshot wounds, one to his shoulder and one to his upper chest and is currently in surgery. A spokesman for the hospital said that although the injuries are serious the patient should survive. The man who was killed had a wife and three small kids, the oldest eight years old.

 

Witnesses said that they briefly saw the shooter, but he quickly ran into a nearby mall and disappeared. One of the policeman at the scene said that while they were waiting for the ambulance to arrive the injured man told him what had happened.

 

I pay the cashier and head home. I pass on supper, but not on the couple of beers while thinking about the kinds of things that can turn a loving family man and a law abiding citizen into a cold blooded killer. It’s a terrible way to spend an evening, so I elect to do some research on a missing person, the wife of a French diplomat who went shopping for a new outfit a couple of weeks ago and never came home. The President asked me to look into the case personally because the Frenchman has helped him in the past with some very touchy issues and he would like to return the favor, but in a quiet out of the spotlight kind of way.

 

Over the next couple of hours I make some headway, but my heart really isn’t in it, so I go to bed and toss and turn for another hour before I finally drift off to sleep. A memorable evening it was not.

 

I woke up on time the next morning, but I just couldn’t get my ass in gear as I was still thinking about the shooting yesterday and showed up at the FBI conference room fifteen minutes late. Nobody seemed to notice as everyone was talking about the shooting. After a cup of strong coffee and some pastries, I feel more alive and ask Janet if she was able to deliver the scripts to Don as she had promised.

 

“I had to rewrite them a couple of times before I was satisfied, but I met his deadline. When I left, he was calling the President. He hasn’t said anything yet about how the call went. We’ve all been talking about what the Crusader did yesterday.”

 

When she says this, I begin to sense something else is different about this morning, but at first I can’t figure out what it is. Then it dawns on me. There are no phones ringing.

 

I comment on this to Janet and she says, “In the public’s eye, spotting the Crusader and reporting it has just become a lot more dangerous with the killing of the two delivery men. Even though they’ve been warned about how dangerous Aldrich is, the killing of two people who aren’t primary targets of the Crusader makes getting involved a whole new ball game. It will be interesting to see if the phones stay silent or start ringing again, but in a smaller number. I don’t believe we’ll be receiving the volume of daily call-ins we have been receiving anymore.”

 

Don asks everyone to take a seat so he can bring everyone up to date on the progress made regarding the planned Crusader trap. After he summarizes what was discussed and agreed upon at the planning meeting he finishes up with, “Everything we need to pull this off has been arranged for and will be in place on the day of the news conference at Walter Reed. The President bought into everything we’re planning to do, including his impromptu appearance at his press secretary’s news briefing with the press later this morning which will begin promptly at eleven o’clock. All we can do now is keep our fingers crossed and wait to see what happens. I’ve had a TV brought in so we can all watch the news conference along with the next shift if you want to hang around.”

 

The rest of our shift is uneventful as there are only five call-ins by the time ten o’clock rolls around, none of them helpful. It looks like Janet’s assessment of the future call-in volume is going to be the case. Janet and I elect not to stick around for the news briefing, but instead to catch it in her office where she can prepare a follow up story to what transpires during the briefing after the President drops his bombshell on the Crusader and have it in her editor’s hands before he can even think to ask her for one. Her editor has no idea she wrote what the President will be saying. We figure the fewer people who know that the safer we’ll be when it comes to leaks. Press room personnel have loose tongues too.

 

At eleven o’clock, Janet and I are glued to the TV in her office as the Whitehouse press room appears on the screen. The Press Secretary, Jim Worthington, walks into the room and the reporters settle down to listen to his remarks. About half way through the news briefing, reporters start firing questions about the Crusader’s latest killing. The President chooses this moment to put in his surprise appearance. He makes the appropriate apology for interrupting Worthington as he’s in the process of answering a reporter’s question and then steps up to the mike. Soon after he begins to speak he has me convinced he should have been an actor. He’s putting on an Oscar performance and the reporters are eating it up. Ten minutes later he turns the news briefing back over to Worthington and exits the press room. As of that moment the news briefing is over as everybody begins to scramble out of the room to call in their stories.

 

Somewhat in awe I look at Janet and say, “Lady, if you ever get fed up with journalism, you could make a whale of a living as a novelist. That script you wrote for the President had everyone in the room spellbound.”

 

“Thank you for the compliment, Chet, but the President is the one who should get the credit. He added the believability that was necessary for it to have the desired effect. This will be all over the news for the next 24 hours. Let’s hope Aldrich catches it.”

 

During the President’s performance, Janet was multi-tasking at her computer inputting segments of the story she plans to submit to her boss so she won’t have to worry about forgetting ideas and phrases she wants to use. She now turns her attention back to her computer and immediately becomes preoccupied with her story and I’m forgotten. I silently slip out of the room and head back to my office. Although I’m making a lot of money working with the FBI on the Crusader case, I’ve been neglecting the rest of my business which is going to come back to haunt me if I don’t get back on track.

 

I spend the rest of my day working on other cases and manage to make a fair amount of progress. I even found the wife of the French diplomat. Unfortunately, it was in a hospital. Apparently, she had a stroke in a women’s restroom at one of the stores she was shopping in and was found by another customer lying unconscious on the floor. Her purse was missing, so there was no immediate way to identify her and since she isn’t a resident of the United States they didn’t have her fingerprints or a picture of her on any American document that would help ID her. The stroke put her in a coma for 12 days and when she came out of it she couldn’t speak clearly and she’s lost all movement in her right arm and hand and only has partial movement in her left hand. Since she can’t communicate, the police and hospital personnel have been scratching their heads over what to do with her.

 

I found her because I had a picture of her that the President got from the husband and I emailed it to all of the local hospitals asking them if the woman was a patient in their facility. Two hours later I received a phone call from the Coronary Care Unit at Howard University Hospital telling me that the lady was a patient there.

 

When I call the President to let him know he could now score some points with the French diplomat, he doesn’t answer the phone and that has never happened before. It’s a dedicated line that only I have access to and when it rings it’s supposed to be answered without delay because the call is important. When he calls me, it’s on a separate cell phone that I always have on my person or close by and only he has the number for it. I don’t make calls on it to anyone else but him. We don’t call these numbers to socialize.

 

I leave a message about locating the Frenchman’s wife and asked him to call me before he contacts the diplomat. I want him to be aware of her condition so he can decide how to break the news to the man.

 

The fact that the President didn’t answer the phone has me more than a little concerned. I’m thinking something very urgent has occurred that’s taken precedence over my call to him.

 

It’s now about five-thirty and my stomach’s starting to put up a fuss about being empty, so I decide to head for Morey’s. I haven’t eaten since I wolfed down those pastries in the FBI conference room early this morning. On my way to my car, I call Janet to ask her if she’d like to join me, but my call goes to her voice mail, so I leave a message. When I get to the restaurant, there are a few vacant spaces in the parking lot which surprises me. The last time I was here the lot was crammed with cars. Maybe Reardon’s off tonight.

 

When I get inside, Sadie is at the hostess stand welcoming a party of four to Morey’s. She assigns a table to them and calls one of the hostesses over to show them to their table. I’m next in line and the first thing she says is not hello or good evening, Chet, but where’s Janet?

 

“Sadie, we’re not tied to the hip. We don’t go everywhere together. Despite what you might think or wish, we’re not an item. We’re just in the getting to know each other better stage of our relationship. I know you mean well, but please, back off on playing cupid, okay?”

 

“You two are perfect for each other. Trust me, match making runs in my family. I know these things.”

 

“Sadie, people like to move into relationships at their own pace. They don’t want to be pushed or maneuvered into them by someone else even if that someone is a match making guru and means well. So, will you back off?”

 

Looking at me like I’m a lost cause, she shrugs her shoulders and reluctantly agrees to try to mind her own business, but she also says she won’t make any promises because what I’m asking her to do is like asking her to stop scratching an itch.

 

I figure that’s the best I’m going to get from her, so I change the subject by asking her about Reardon. “Is the Maestro playing tonight?”

 

“He is, but there are no tables available in that room. However, you’ll be able to listen to him wherever you’re sitting because we had a speaker system installed throughout the entire restaurant today, even in the restrooms.”

 

“Okay, seat me somewhere. I’m famished.”

 

As soon as I sit down, my special cell rings. I get a sudden queasy feeling in my stomach and it’s not from hunger. I’m thinking I’m about to hear some very bad news. “Good evening, Mr. President.”

 

Without any preamble, the President laid it on me. “Chet, about four this afternoon the Vice President was shot leaving his home at the Naval Observatory. When you called, I was in the middle of finding out what the hell happened and wasn’t having any luck finding someone that could answer my questions. I still only have a cursory knowledge of what went down there.”

 

“What’s the Vice President’s condition?”

 

“He’ll be okay. His briefcase and laptop bought it though. He was holding it up in front of him to hand it to one of his security detail for some reason when the shot was fired. The briefcase absorbed most of the momentum of the bullet and that’s what saved him. The bullet penetrated his chest muscle, but did no major damage.”

 

“Do you know who shot him? Was it the Crusader?”

 

“We don’t know. It might have been him. A rifle was used but from where it was fired is still unknown. The Secret Service and FBI are crawling all over the place trying to figure that out and looking for clues to the identity of the shooter.”

 

“I’m betting this is more of the Crusader’s work. Yesterday the Vice President pulled no punches when talking to some TV reporters about how he feels about the Crusader’s rampage. I caught his comments on the news last night. He said several times in several different ways that the Crusader is way off base in his reasoning for his vendetta, that he’s drawn erroneous conclusions from spurious information provided by unreliable sources and is no better than any other serial killer with a lust for blood. I’m betting this got Aldrich’s blood boiling to the point that it pushed him to try to spill some of the Vice President’s blood.”

 

“I hope you’re right. That’ll mean we don’t have another crazy on our hands. One is all I can handle at the moment. Telling me you located Madame Julien was the only bit of good news I‘ve had all day, but even that was cast in shadow by your request not to call her husband with the news until we talked. Something tells me that what you have to say is going to take some of the shine off the discovery.”

 

“I’m afraid so. The lady has had a very severe stroke which has left her right arm and hand completely paralyzed, her left hand partially paralyzed and has seriously affected her ability to speak. She had the stroke in the women’s restroom at one of the stores she was shopping in and was found lying on the floor unconscious and her purse was gone. At first, the manager thought she had been mugged, but she had no outward signs of that. He called 911 and an ambulance was dispatched which took her to Howard University Hospital and that’s where she’s been ever since. She was unconscious for twelve days and when she woke up she couldn’t speak or write. Since her purse was stolen, hospital personnel had no ID to work with and the police got nowhere with her picture or fingerprints. Since she’s a foreigner, she couldn’t be found in any of their data bases.”

 

“Damn, this is one of those situations where you give someone something with your left hand and take it away with your right.”

 

“The good news is she’s been found alive and other than the speech and paralysis aftereffects from the stroke her brain appears to be firing on all cylinders. The Head Nurse of the Coronary Care Unit told me that significant progress has been made in the recovery area for stroke victims and she has a good chance of making at least a 90% recovery.”

 

“Thanks, Chet. I’ll call Andre right away. How’d I do at the news briefing today?”

 

“You knocked ‘em dead, Mr. President. Ronald Reagan had nothing on you.”

 

“Well, by taking a shot at the Vice President he’s demonstrated that he’s willing to go after the top guns and it has me thinking that he’ll not hesitate to go after whom he thinks is me if the situation and timing is right. The situation is close to perfect as we talk. This nut is in a pressure cooker from the media blitz and the anger he’s generating by his reaction to what the Vice President and I have said about him.

 

“The timing is just about right in that he’ll have a couple of days to stew in his own juices waiting for the press conference at Walter Reed. All we can do now is wait and hope he’ll take the bait and walk into your trap.”

 

As usual there are no goodbyes, just the sound of a click as he disconnects.

 

As I dig into my meal Janet shows up, sits down in the chair next to mine, flashes me a megawatt smile and starts eating the bread that came with my sea bass smothered in a garlic cream sauce. After she swallows she says, “Um, that fish looks good. Does it taste good too.”

 

Since I’m not a big fan of drool, I push my plate over to her and say, “Enjoy. I’ll order another one.”

 

I wave our waitress over and order another fish dinner and a house salad because I know Janet will want to pick at that too. I had clam chowder with my original order. I also ordered a glass of the Argentinian Malbec that she likes. Flashing back on my conversation with Sadie earlier, I realize that I am getting to know Janet better and am liking the idea more and more.

 

“From the way you’re chowing down, you must have had a day like I had, all work and no eat.”

 

“I handed my response to the President’s comments at the news briefing fifteen minutes after you left and then settled in to work on some stories I’ve had in the hopper for a while now. Things were moving along splendidly until I got a call from one of my sources in a senator’s office who told me that the Vice President had been shot outside of his home, so and I had to make a beeline for the Naval Observatory. That’s where I was when you called.”

 

I’m a lousy poker player as my face gives me away every time I try to bluff. I can’t tell her about my conversation with the President, but as I glance at her when she stops talking I see her giving me that bug under a microscope look and she says, “As far as I know, I’m the only reporter that knows this happened and I’ve been asked to keep it to myself until the Administration has more answers and my source gives me the go ahead. Why do I have this feeling that you already know about this?”

 

“It must be some kind of bug that’s going around. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”

 

Before she can go into reporter mode, my order arrives along with Sadie and I’m saved from the third degree and having to dredge up more flippant responses.

 

“Good evening, Janet. I hope you had a good day and that has given you a good appetite. That sea bass you commandeered from the big guy here is imported fresh every day from Chile. There’s none better anywhere in the world. And the cream sauce is one of Morey’s special creations. Enjoy.”

I’m waiting for her to slip into her match making mode and say something or ask something provocative, but she surprises me by moving on to the next table. That itch must be driving her crazy.

 

Janet picks up where she left off when Sadie dropped by our table by saying, “An assassination attempt on the Vice President has convinced me that the Crusader is definitely in the mental state of mind to jump at just about any chance to go after the President. I think he’ll take the bait hook, line and sinker we’re laying out at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. I hope Don has made sure the President’s agenda has been edited to reflect the visit to the Medical
Center.”

 

“I’m sure it has. Don is no amateur at this kind of thing. He’ll stay on top of everything until this is history.”

 

“Aldrich is completely out of control. I don’t think he has a conscience any more when it comes to killing. If anyone gets in his way, he’ll drop them without thinking twice about it. This trap has got to work. If anything goes wrong or he somehow senses that he’s being set up, a lot of people could die. I’m not going to get much sleep until this is over that’s for sure.”

 

My dinner arrives, so we put the topic aside to enjoy our meals, some small talk and Reardon’s magic at the piano. While we’re sipping on an excellent after dinner brandy, my cell sounds off. It’s Don Ericson. “Hi, Don, what’s up?”

 

“Aldrich that’s what.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Did you know that Aldrich knows how to fly a plane?”

 

“What?”

 

“He was just spotted at a small private flying club stealing a plane that had just been refueled and was parked on the apron waiting for the pilot to show up. He was sitting in the cockpit when someone walked by and noticed him. The guy knows the owner of the plane and when he saw an unfamiliar face staring back at him he took a closer close look. He recognized Aldrich immediately from seeing his picture on TV and notified the tower not to give him clearance to take off.

 

“Aldrich realized at the same time that he had been recognized and didn’t hesitate to taxi to the runway and take off without clearance to who knows where. There almost was a mid-air head-on collision with another plane as it was coming in for a landing.

 

“This little tidbit didn’t show up in our initial database searches we conducted when we first heard his name. I just checked with the FAA and sure enough he has a current pilot’s license to fly a Cessna Skyhawk. I’m told that’s a single engine propeller type of plane. The plane he stole is a Skyhawk 172N which has a maximum cruising speed of 226 mph and a range of 575 nautical miles fully gassed up. Hell, he could be anywhere by now. We’ve got the serial number of the plane and we’ve alerted all of the airports within a radius of five hundred seventy-five miles to report any sightings to us, but there are a lot of places within an area that size he could land without any one being the wiser. It only requires 1630 feet or about three tenths of a mile to take off or land and there are a lot of lightly traveled country roads or clearings that he could use within the area.”

 

“I wonder what he’s up to. After shooting the Vice President, he may have decided he’d really be pushing his luck to hang around to take a crack at the President within a couple of days, assuming he’s already hacked into the President’s computers and knows about the Walter Reed visit. Of all of his options to get out of D. C. for a while, this is one of the better ones. He managed to get into the aircraft without being seen by anyone, including the owner, but it was his bad luck to be spotted by someone who recognized him before he could get clearance for takeoff and disappear in the evening sky.”

 

Janet has been listening intently to my side of the conversation and is just about at her limits of self-control to refrain from grabbing the phone out of my hands, so I take mercy on her and tell Don to hold on a second while I pass on what he’s told me to her.

 

After I clue her in she says, “Find out where this airport is. I’ve got an idea.”

 

I ask Don for the location and after I pass it on to Janet and tell him she’s got an idea but hasn’t shared it with me yet he ends our conversation with, “I hope her idea is a good one because I’m fresh out of ideas, good or bad. All I can think of to do now is sit tight and wait to see if Aldrich will show up at Walter Reed.”

 

Don hangs up and Janet now has that statue like look on her face that most of us get when we’re deep in thought about something, features frozen and eyes staring unblinkingly at the table top as though she is trying to burn a hole in it, but in reality her mind isn’t registering anything in sight as she’s lost in her thoughts.

 

After about five minutes of this I finally say, “No more brandy for you, Janet. A stupor is not one of the most endearing assets for a woman to be sporting, especially a journalist.”

 

This snaps her out of her trance as she says, “Although this brandy has a very delightful taste, an infant has more kick than it does. I’m sorry I spaced out on you, but I was thinking that maybe the Crusader has given us an opportunity to nail his hide to the wall without us even having a hammer.”

 

“Explain to the dummy please.”

 

“An airplane is a difficult thing to hide without advanced planning, Chet. The chances of it being spotted by someone, even out in the boonies, is pretty good because the sight and sound of a small private plane flying low which I’m betting is what Aldrich is doing is unusual and should and probably will attract attention.

 

“So how does this help us nail him to the wall?”

 

“This just happened and he could still be in the air. I’m thinking of contacting some people I’ve met while flying on the weekends and asking them to scramble with me to conduct an air search within the area. I know six of them that will probably go along with what I have in mind. At the same time, Don could contact the law enforcement people in the area to conduct a ground search in the most likely places a plane could be hidden. Law enforcement could also alert the residents in the area by phone to be on the lookout for the plane and notify them if they spot it anywhere.

 

“With eyes in the air and on the ground we’d have a fairly decent chance of spotting the plane before it lands and if it’s spotted on the ground perhaps Aldrich will be in it or somewhere close by.”

 

“It’s sure worth a try. Get on the phone and start calling your fellow pilots and I’ll phone Ericson and get him to contact the law enforcement folks in the search area.”

 

I waive our waitress over and order some coffee for us and fifteen minutes later the coffee cups are empty, six raring to go pilots are on the way to the airport, but I haven’t been able to reach Don. When I dial his number nothing happens.

 

As we run out of the restaurant we pass Sadie at the hostess stand I shout out, “I’ll settle up with you tomorrow. Something very important has come up and we’ve got to get to Dulles International as quickly as possible.”

 

As we’re rushing through the door I hear her shout back, “Well, wherever you’re going have fun you two.”

 

She just had to scratch that itch.