Chapter 23

Washington

11:24 am GMT, 6:24 am Local

Over the past three years Vice President Crittenden had found myriad reasons to loathe his official residence at the Naval Observatory in northwest Washington. To begin with, it was over a thousand miles from his beloved home in Mississippi, measured by how the raven flies. Second, its original construction dated back to before the Civil War which, to him, represented an era when elitist Yankees were invoking fractious rhetoric toward the South and its agrarian economy, one that was increasingly dependent on slave labor.

Plus, the Union Navy itself had been instrumental in the defeat of the Confederacy, even if the H.L. Hunley had managed to sink one of its treasured ships. To be living in its official observatory in the heart of the Union capital was the height of irony, an afront to all the Mississippi boys and men who had laid down their lives to preserve the ideals of southern sovereignty and the confederacy for which is stood.

But the real reason he had a distaste for the place was the security; tighter than tight, as if he were a teenager who’d just been grounded. When he was at home in his cherished Raven’s Rest outside Biloxi, his Secret Service detail respected his privacy and allowed him significant latitude within the gates of his own home. Most days they’d be in their bunker behind the main residence, poring over row upon row of surveillance monitors, but the rooms inside the mansion were safe from prying eyes and ears. At least, that’s what he’d been told—so he believed he enjoyed a modicum of privacy.

The residence at the Naval Observatory was a different matter altogether. The white three-story Queen Anne-style house, with a traditional turret and dormer windows, featured an asymmetrical floor plan that made Crittenden’s OCD wife uncomfortable. The master suite was located on the second floor, along with another bedroom, a study, and a den that Raeanne had instantly claimed as her sewing nook. At one time the attic had been used as servants’ quarters, but over the years it had been divided into four bedrooms, two of which were used by their children during their infrequent trips home from college.

It was the protection detail itself, however, that he abhorred the most. Fucking guards were on him like shit on a shoe. They were everywhere on the grounds, often hovering downstairs in the living room or in the basement kitchen. He’d heard that past VPs even had a problem with them washing their clothes in the family’s private laundry room.

All this protection and concern for the man who was “just one heartbeat away” made it difficult to arrange this morning’s face-to-face follow-up with William Raymond Tate, who had called him on his secure mobile phone around an hour ago.

“There’s a rumor circulating that could prove troubling,” Tate had said when Crittenden answered the phone. The VP had flown back up to DC last night for an ad hoc meeting with the president later today, but his wife remained down in Mississippi. “We need to meet.”

“Gonna have to make it early,” the vice president had replied. “I’ve got a full schedule today.”

“I only need two minutes. Your golf game can wait.”

Now, seventy minutes later, they were seated in the second-floor study down the hall from the master bedroom. Crittenden had updated it in dark wood paneling that echoed the private pub in the basement of Raven’s Rest, albeit half the size. It was warm, almost hot, the AC unit not strong enough to adequately pump enough cooled air up from the condenser to chill it with any efficiency. Thus, an oscillating fan created a breeze that just barely kept both men from perspiring, even at this early hour.

“You assured me this was a slam-dunk,” Crittenden said, sipping from a cup of coffee into which he’d surreptitiously dribbled a little bourbon…and then a little bit more. “Full court press, I think you said.”

“I despise basketball, and all the cultural allusions that go with it,” Tate replied. No coffee, no mineral water this morning. “What I said was, it’ll be a home run.”

“Whatever,” Crittenden said, dismissing the crossed sports metaphors with a roll of his eyes. “Point is, you insisted Wheeler’s death would be a sure thing, the evidence would be conclusive. ‘Incontrovertible,’ is the word you used. No one would have reason to question it. And now you tell me that some two-bit blogger is turning over rocks to see what’s under them?”

“First, he’s not just a blogger. He’s won a lot of awards in his career, caused a world of hurt for a lot of people. Our people.”

“Then why isn’t he still with the Post?” The vice president uttered the word as if it carried a vile taste, like cloves or the fried kale Raeanne had such a taste for.

“Budget cuts,” Tate replied. “That was the official story, at least. Unofficially, there was some alcohol involved, put him on the purge list.”

“What do we have on him?”

“Give me twenty-four hours,” Tate said. “I just put two of my men on it. All I know is the boozing started when his fiancé died six years ago. Damned near flushed him down the crapper.”

“Shit follows the path of least resistance,” Crittenden said.

“Maybe. But this shit carries its own stink, and that worries me.”

Crittenden didn’t like the wrinkled brow or the darkness that seemed to have fallen over Tate’s eyes. “All right, I’ll bite. Why the concern?”

“Does the name Katya Leiffson mean anything to you?”

“Should it?”

Not to a sociopath who has absolutely no empathy for another living soul, Tate thought. “That was his fiancé’s name,” he said. “The blogger.”

“Good to know,” Crittenden responded with a shrug.

“She was one of the five passengers who died in the crash.”

The cocky confidence in the vice president’s eyes abruptly faded, replaced with a flicker of alarm. “Don’t fuck with me,” he said.

“I fuck you not,” Tate replied.

“And now he’s looking into Wheeler’s death?”

“That’s what I’m hearing. Questioning the videos and pics on the computer, the silk noose. The whole autoerotic thing. He’s even calling for the M.E. to conduct an in-depth tox screen, see if there’s some sort of fast-acting anesthetic in his system.”

“Is there?”

“You don’t want to know. Point is, he’s asking the right questions, and one of them might land him the right answer.”

“You can’t let this lead back to you,” Crittenden reminded his trusted friend and fixer.

You, not us, Tate noticed. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t,” he said.

“You promised me results, not problems, Billy Ray. Twice, in fact. I don’t need to remind you what’s at stake here—”

“No, Mr. President,” quipped the man who was being paid handsomely to expedite Crittenden’s ascendance from this ratty old residence in northwest Washington to the mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As quickly as possible, if all things played out as they were planned.

“Speaking of which, how is our succession strategy progressing?” Crittenden inquired.

“All is proceeding according to plan,” Tate assured him.

“We’re still looking at that fucking media thing?”

That fucking media thing was the annual White House Media Dinner on Saturday evening, tomorrow night. It was just another of the many things Crittenden despised about this town, a sophomoric farce of ribald humor and racy innuendo that one had to endure in order to appear affable and self-deprecating. President Mitchell played the game like a seasoned pro, but Crittenden considered it Sodom-and-Gomorrah burlesque of Biblical proportions.

In years past he’d been loath to go anywhere near it, but this one he wouldn’t miss for all the world. It was pre-destined not just to be the event that changed his life, but one that changed the course of history for all time.

“Everything’s locked and loaded,” Tate assured him.

“Lots of eyewitnesses.”

“Eight hundred and four of them, at last count.”

Crittenden nodded at the mental image, then said, “And you’ll take care of this reporter?”

“Blogger,” Tate corrected him. “You’ll read about him in the papers. Armed mugging gone horribly wrong.”

“Do you think we can risk that? People might put two and two together—”

“News of Mr. Logan’s demise will be mitigated by a much larger story,” Tate replied as he rose from his chair to leave. “Less than forty hours from now you’ll have just been sworn in as the next leader of the free world.”

Less than a mile away, Raleigh Durham stared at the computer screen, holding her mug of donut shop roast in both hands as she read. Trained to articulate every syllable of every line on a teleprompter five nights a week, her eyes went over every sentence word for word, each one of them ratcheting up her intrigue even further. When she came to the end of the story, she didn’t take a sip of her coffee, which was getting cold. Instead she stared intently at Carter Logan and said. “This is friggin’ unbelievable. If it’s true.”

Logan was leaning against the kitchen counter, nibbling on a cinnamon bagel, watching her reaction. “I have sources and evidence to back it all up,” he assured her.

“Did you pull an all-nighter on this?”

“Nothing but time on my hands.”

“But…how did you get access to those pictures? I mean, that has to be the most guarded laptop in this entire city—”

“The value of a secret is that it remains that way,” Logan told her, revealing nothing.

“And you actually were given access to his room?” Raleigh asked him. “The crime scene at the hotel?”

“Sources and secrets often are one and the same.”

“And the medical examiner?”

“She remembered a piece I wrote a few years ago,” Logan explained. “A defense attorney dragged her through the fire on the stand, made her look as if she buried forensic evidence in a high-profile trial. I checked into it, found that the defendant’s lawyer paid someone to tamper with it. The article I wrote pretty much saved her career.”

“So, she owed you,” Raleigh said.

“Magic markers.” He took another bite of his bagel, washed it down with a swig of orange juice right from the carton. “But overall, you like it?”

She blanched as she watched him put the container back in the fridge. “I’m never going to drink OJ here again, but yes, I like it. Again, if it’s true.”

“Every word of it. So, I want you to say it.”

“Say what?”

“That I’m not delusional.”

“Never thought you were.”

“I want to hear you say it anyway,” Logan replied.

“I don’t think you’re delusional,” she assured him. “And I want to remind you what you said when you pitched this idea to me.”

“I didn’t pitch it,” he corrected her. “I just told you what I was working on.”

“Semantics,” she huffed, with a flip of her hand. “You implied that I might be able to convince someone—one of our producers—to piggyback on this, if there was a strong enough case to do so.”

“That’s not exactly how it went, but yeah, I remember.”

Raleigh took a sip of coffee, which she had brought with her rather than take a chance on Logan’s second-hand grounds. “Anyway, what’s the chance you could hold off on submitting this to your editor?” she asked. “Just a couple hours, to give me time to check out a few things?”

“You’d better get moving,” Logan told her.

“You’re kicking me out?”

“Au contraire. In fact, I think we should take a little stroll into the bedroom and bat for the cycle, as they say in the big leagues. But in the spirit of full disclosure, I need to tell you that my editor is going to post it this morning, as soon as he runs it past the corporate lawyers.”

Raleigh practically leaped out of her chair, splashing coffee on the already-filthy laptop keyboard. “Dammit, Carter. You promised.”

“I told you I’d let you read it when it was finished. That’s why I called and woke you up, why you agreed to stop by on your way downtown.”

He was right, of course. He hadn’t promised her anything when he’d pitched—synopsized—the story to her last night at dinner. But if Logan had the sources and evidence he claimed to have, he knew she’d want in on it. It was his story and he deserved the credit, but she was ambitious and determined, and had been looking for a way to scrabble up the ladder to the roof. Which, in this case, meant the network.

“How much time do the lawyers have?” she asked him.

“As long as it takes,” he said. “But as you saw, it’s only six hundred words.”

“Crap.” Raleigh grabbed her purse, which she’d set on the floor near the door. “I appreciate the lead time,” she said, heavy sarcasm, kissing Logan on the cheek.

“And I appreciate whatever back-up you can give me,” he replied.

She started to turn the knob, then stopped, her eyes burrowing into his. “There’s another thing we talked about last night, remember?”

“Last night we said a great many things, and you said I should do the thinking for both of us—”

“Dammit it…now’s not the time for Casablanca quotes,” she scolded him, even though she still giggled. “What I mean is, I told you that if it turned out you were right about Wheeler’s death being murder rather than suicide…well, whoever pulled this off is going to go full ballistic if the truth gets out.”