After taping up the still pretty spry old codger with some vinyl electrical tape he’d found in a drawer, Gannon guided him into his wood-paneled home office.
“Mike?” Mickelson said as Gannon sat him on his leather couch.
“Are you really that surprised?” Gannon said, rolling the office chair over the Persian rug to sit in front of him. “You were the one who taught me all the Art of War stuff, sir, remember? When far away, appear near. When near, far away. It’s even in your best seller that I read on the plane.”
The admiral stared pensively at the wooden blinds.
“You have a son, Mike. What would you do for your son?”
“Spare me the tear-jerking family sob story, Admiral. I’ve been having a long couple of weeks so my compassion meter is on E.”
“You know my daughter Ginny. Are you aware of her run for Senate?”
“You mean the one that got kicked off just around the same time I was getting a bag over my head?”
“Mike, bear with me,” he said glancing out at his lawn again.
“Stop stalling,” Gannon said. “Your watch dog won’t be done licking his wounds for quite a while.”
“No,” Mickelson said, looking concerned. “What did you do to Kevin? Don’t tell me you killed him. He’s a SEAL like you, you know.”
“Is he? Well, they don’t make them like they used to anymore, do they? Screw Kevin, sir. You care about him as much as you care about anyone else. Namely, zero, zilch, nada. So, cut the bullshit, Admiral. It’s storytelling time. I’ll even start it off for you. Once upon a time, Ginny was away at school at UCLA.”
“Right,” he said, staring down at his lap. “Ginny was away at school at UCLA and she called to tell me that her car broke down.”
“I remember,” Gannon said.
“That’s all I knew at the time, Mike. I heard about all of the rest of it from her very recently, okay? You have to believe me about that.”
“I don’t have to believe anything, Admiral. Especially anything that comes out of your dirty treacherous backstabbing mouth. But do go on.”
“That’s when I called you in San Diego to pick her up.”
Gannon nodded.
“I thought it was weird going all the way out there to get her in the desert. Where the hell was it? Shandon? Some rest stop out in the middle of nowhere. Took me hours to get there. Kept thinking, why not triple-A? So, what the hell did she do?”
He looked at him, opened his mouth then closed it.
“What the hell did she do?” Gannon repeated. “Must have been a doozy since you decided to try to lay me out in order to cover it up. Right before her big press event for Senate, too. I was the loose end, huh. For what? What the hell did she do in college?”
“There was a road trip up to the big game with Berkeley. Ginny had to go as she was dating the star cornerback at UCLA.”
“Charles Chambers,” Gannon said. “I’ve been googling. That’s her husband now. The ESPN guy. He played in the NFL for a bit. Now he’s a man ball sports Muppet.”
The admiral nodded.
“Yep, that’s Charlie. Anyway, she and all her friends all went up to Berkeley for the big game. On the way up there the night before, they stopped off at a honky-tonk bar. A lot of drinking went on, a lot of drugs. Charlie had a friend, a very close friend from his high school, a young man named Peter McNulty. Who knows how these things happen, but he and Ginny had a romantic encounter in the parking lot.”
Mickelson paused, let out a long breath.
“We’re getting to the good part now, Admiral. I can tell.”
“They fell asleep in the car afterward, and when Ginny woke up and realized what she had done, she panicked. She’s always been very, um, circumspect. Very controlled. She had selected Charles Chambers to be her boyfriend, knew that he was going places, the same places she wanted to go. She also knew he was shopping for an engagement ring. But when he found what she had done with his buddy, it would be over between them so...”
“So?”
“Peter McNulty was reported missing two days later.”
“No one had seen them together?” Gannon said.
Mickelson shook his head.
“Everybody was wasted and he had driven up by himself. They found his car in the lot of the place, but they couldn’t find him. He’d simply disappeared.”
“What did she do? Strangle him with her panties?”
The admiral pursed his lips and looked down at the floor.
“They were in her car and she got him to chug some more vodka on a dare and when he got it all down, she suffocated him while he was passed out then drove out and dumped him in the desert.”
“Your daughter is a psychopath?”
The admiral said nothing.
“Then her car died?”
“She ran out of gas as she was coming back. She called me in Virginia Beach, where I was stuck at a conference. I knew you were in San Diego on your next assignment, which is why I called you.”
“But this happened twenty years ago,” Gannon said. “Why take me out now?”
“They found McNulty’s remains two years ago. Three miles from where you brought her the gas. The family hired a detective, who’s been poking around. You would be the only link. I know you’re a straight shooter, Mike. If you heard about it, you would’ve told. You would have put her right there at the scene.”
“You’re wrong,” Gannon said.
“You wouldn’t have told?”
“No, I definitely would have told. You’re wrong that I’m the only link. You knew about it, too.”
“My family traces its public service back to the Civil War, Mike. My grandfather was in WWI, my father a colonel under Eisenhower. I did my duty, but I never had a son to pass on the chain. Just three daughters. Ginny is it. Her talent. Her Senate run. She’ll win, too. She’s next in the chain.”
“Correction,” Gannon said as he showed the admiral the recording app up on his iPhone. “Ginny was the next in the chain.”