Head Shot bs-12

by Quintin Jardine

  'Dad said that he'd only have gone into politics with the intention of making it to the top of the tree. But when he saw what happened in Dal as, he decided there and then that he could never put my mother in that position.' She stopped, as she realised that he was gazing at her with a faint, curious smile on his face.

  'You said "they", just now. Did you realise that?'

  'Did I? Well if I did, that's what my father said; because I remember having that discussion with him, as clearly as if it was only an hour ago.

  I was barely in my teens and President Reagan had just been shot.'

  'Are you sure? Think again.'

  She closed her eyes for a second or two. 'No. I don't need to think again. That's what he said.'

  'He didn't say, "When the president was shot"?'

  'No, Goddammit. He said, "When they shot the president." But so what? It's a col oquialism, almost. Lots of Americans say that.'

  'I suppose so,' he admitted, letting the matter drop as Sarah went back to the book.

  She had not gone much further when she stopped, staring at the pages that lay open in front of her. 'Look here,' she exclaimed. He jumped from the rocking chair in a single easy movement, and sat on the arm of the couch, looking down at the album. He saw two photographs, one on each facing page. The image on the left showed Leo Grace and another, older man… Bob realised with a start that it was J. Edgar Hoover… with the vice president of the United States; in the other he stood alongside Dr Martin Luther King. But it was not the photographs at which his wife was staring; beneath each one was a rectangular shape, whiter than the rest of the backing page. 'Two photographs have been taken from here,' she said. 'The corner fixings are still in place, even.'

  'Go through it and see if any others have been removed.' She did as he asked, no longer studying the photographs, only flicking from page to page looking for what might not be there.

  'No,' she said at last. 'Only those two.'

  'Stil, you should check the rest of the book, just in case Leo took those two out, and they're not the ones we're looking for. The photos you remembered could still be there.'

  She seemed to nod, then shake her head al in one movement. 'Yes

  … no… wait. There was something else.' She turned to look behind her, at a series of shelves, fixed so that they seemed part of the panelling. 'Dad had a football,' she exclaimed. 'It was signed by the president and by al the guys; they gave it to him after the last game he played with them. He kept it on a shelf up there… and now it's gone.'

  He sensed her hesitation. 'Bob, I hate to say this… but this has been done by someone with access to all sorts of files and places; someone who knew about the connection in the first place. Are you sure about Joe Doherty? Can you trust him in this?'

  Bob drew in a deep breath. 'I hear what you're saying, honey. This could be coming from inside, and Joe is inside, very high up, too.

  Except… Joe didn't hold us back on Saturday, when we went to see Jack Wylie. I did. If it hadn't been for me stopping on the boardwalk, we'd both have been on that cruiser when it went up.

  'On that basis alone, I can trust him. I trust my own judgement too.

  Joe's straight.'

  'If you're sure of that, it reassures me. But even at that, where do the two of you go from here?'

  'Good question. If we go anywhere, we go very carefully, however important Joe might be. But we do have a couple of leads; for a start there's the mysterious hunting trip.'

  'What?'

  'Exactly. Your father and Jackson Wylie took themselves off on a trip to the Appalachians last January, ostensibly to shoot deer.'

  'Dad? Never!'

  'Maybe not, but the two of them did go off somewhere and that was the cover story. I'd like to know where they stayed and who else was there… although I can make a pretty shrewd guess. Then there are the laptops,' he added.

  'What?'

  'Computers. Wilkins, Garrett and Wylie all had portable computers; the first two were stolen from the crime scenes in Montana and Las Vegas. We think that Wylie's went up with the boat. Do you know if your father had a computer, apart from that thing over there?' He pointed to the Compaq on a table beside the television set.

  'If he had, I've never heard of it. But…'

  The ringing of the phone on the computer table interrupted her. Bob walked across and picked it up. Lieutenant Dave Schultz was on the other end. 'No gun in the car, sir,' he said. 'I've just searched it, as thoroughly as I've ever searched a vehicle without cutting open the panels. There is no firearm there. Also I've rechecked the crime scene inventory, and there is definitely nothing of that nature listed. Do you want me to check with AT and F?'

  'I've done that,' the Scot answered, 'or at least Mr Doherty has. Mr Grace bought two matching Glock 19s a couple of months back. He kept one in his Jaguar; my bet is that the other was for the house, and that he'd have taken it to the cabin.'

  'You want me to run another search?'

  'No, it would have been found by now if it was stil there.' As he spoke to the detective, the cathedral tones of the doorbell boomed out in the hall above: Sarah ran upstairs to answer its summons. He thanked Schultz and hung up, then fol owed her out of the den.

  He had assumed that the cleaning service had arrived, finally, and so he was slightly surprised to see a youngish man in the doorway, fol owing his wife into the house. Taken off guard. Skinner gave him the classic enquiring look of policemen everywhere.

  'Bob,' said Sarah, with the faintest hint of sharpness, 'this is lan Walker, our Lutheran minister. I've told you about him. As well as being our pastor, he's an old friend. Ian and I were at high school at the same time, then later at college.'

  'Yes,' the newcomer concurred, 'for a while. I graduated two years before your wife.' He was a medium-sized man, with dark, crinkly hair, and round, piercing eyes, informal y dressed in a sports shirt and slacks… sure confirmation in the circumstances, Bob thought, that they were old friends. Indeed, there was something in the way they looked at each other that made him wonder, for a moment, just how friendly they had been. 'The mortician told me you were due in town this morning, Sarah,' the clergyman continued. 'I had to come right away, to express my condolences and to pay my respects.'

  'Thank you, lan; that's much appreciated. We'd have cal ed you later today, in any case; we need to discuss the arrangements for the funeral service. Come through to the drawing room. Will you have coffee?' She realised that she had brought her Budweiser upstairs with her. 'Or a beer?'

  Walker smiled. 'Coffee will be fine. You know how it is with us guys; we can't be breathing fumes over the faithful… not even us Lutherans.'

  'I'll make it,' Bob volunteered. 'You go on through.' He headed for the kitchen, as his wife ushered the minister through to the reception room.

  'I can't tell you how appal ed I am by what's happened,' he said, as the door closed on them. 'Babs is distraught too.'

  'How is she?' asked Sarah. 'How are the kids?'

  'She's very well; she still looks like a teenager, just like you knew her in school. And Matthew and Daniel are growing by the day. And yours?'

  'Mark, our adopted son, is turning out to be a mathematical whiz; the other two, James Andrew and Seonaid, are just ordinary, peaceable children; even if Jazz is built like an outhouse, and eats more than his brother, who's twice his age. I'm happy to hear that Babs is just the same; I couldn't imagine her any other way than just as she is. I must see her. Can you get a sitter, tomorrow or Wednesday maybe, and come to us for dinner?'

  'No,' said lan, 'we've thought of that. Much better if we do it the other way round. We thought that you might like to come to us on Wednesday, a couple of nights before the funeral service, to talk about the running order, as wel as to catch up.'

  She yielded to his logic. 'Okay, that's a date.'

  'Good; I have to tell you that we're getting in first. If you see all the people who've asked me to pass on condolences, and ask if they can cal on you, then
you'l have little or no time to yourself. I have a list of all their names.'

  'Thanks.' She smiled at him, but as she did, she read something in his eye.

  'There is one in particular, though. When you and the baby were back home a couple of years back, that time that you and Bob had troubles in your marriage; remember you came to see me, and we had a heart-to heart about a guy you were dating? The guy you were with when we went out on that foursome?'

  She smiled at him. 'Heart-to-heart, indeed; that's a sweet way of putting it. Truth was, I used you like a confessor; I told you that I had had sex with him.'

  'Sure, and I didn't have any problems with that. I'm one of your newfangled clerics, Sarah; you know that as well as anyone. But the thing is, you'l find the name Terry Carter on that list. He cal ed me last week and said that because he knew that I was your friend as well as your family minister, he'd like to ask me a favour. He said that he'd like to meet you when you got here, to express his condolences in person.'

  'Damn,' she whispered. 'Is he in Buffalo?'

  'No, he told me that he works in New York, and he gave me a cellphone number for you to cal, should you decide to.'

  'Should I decide to? Yes, should I?' she asked herself. 'Not if I've any sense, but… Fact is, lan, I've always felt just a little guilty about the way I treated him. I know he probably didn't want any more than to get himself fucked… Pardon my language, padre… but I didn't even want that, not real y.' She shrugged her shoulders and flashed him a quick grin. 'Okay, I can't lie to you of al people; sure I wanted it, but I had other things in mind too.

  'I used him deliberately as a counter-balance against Bob, not to get even with him as such, but to put us on the same footing for the future.

  Afterwards, I tried to hate myself for it, but I couldn't, not like I did after you and I had our col ege fling, when I knew al along how Babs felt about you, even if you didn't.'

  Walker looked at the floor. 'Yeah,' he murmured. 'But we were just kids then, and we didn't do anyone any harm. I've never felt guilty about that, and I've never seen why you should, any more than I see why you should feel guilty about Terry Carter, or hate yourself for having a relationship with him, given your circumstances at the time. To lapse into professional language, I don't see the sin in it.

  'As far as you and I went, Babs and I weren't dating then; that's in the past and it can stay there. You and Terry, though; I'm not advising you, understand, but from what you're saying, it sounds as if there's some closure lacking there.'

  The phone rang, beside her, but she made no move towards it, knowing that Bob would pick it up in the kitchen. 'Maybe,' she conceded, as it fell silent once more. 'I'll have to think about it.' She looked up at him. 'You got that list on you?'

  53

  Skinner reached out and took the kitchen phone from its cradle on the wall. 'The Grace residence,' he answered.

  'You sound like the fucking butler,' said Joe Doherty, tersely, with none of his usual dry humour sounding in his voice.

  'Kosinski?'

  'If only I knew for sure. I tried to cal him myself, on his issue cellphone; but it was unavailable for connection. So I sent two guys from the Chicago office to intercept him at Arthur Wilkins' office, but by the time they got there he'd already been and gone. They weren't briefed to interview Wilkins, so they left and reported back to me. I called the guy myself and had him cal the switchboard back to verify me. I spun him a story that I'd wanted to catch Troy at his office, and with more than my usual subtlety asked if their meeting had gone okay. He said that it had; that Kosinski had asked him about his father, whether he had done or said anything strange recently.

  'He told him that last time he saw his father, before he died, he had given him an envelope. He knew from the feel of it that it had a computer disk inside, and he asked him what it was about. His father replied that it was a copy of something on a new laptop he had bought, a memoir of his time in the Secret Service. He asked Arthur if he would keep it in the office safe.

  'Kosinski told him that the computer had been stolen when he was murdered, but that if the disk did contain material relating to the Service, that might make it a matter of national security. So he asked Wilkins to give it to him, and the guy, after some thought, did so. Troy thanked him and left.'

  'Interesting,' said Skinner, 'but it sounds on the up-and-up.'

  'I'd agree,' replied Doherty. 'Except for two things: Kosinski's cellphone is stil out and I can't locate him, plus this. Less than half an hour after I spoke to him, Arthur Wilkins left his office to go home for lunch. He was shot dead in its private parking garage, just as he was climbing into his Lexus. My Chicago guys heard the police department alert and called me.

  'And you guess right: no, the police didn't catch anyone.' Suppressed fury exploded from the deputy director. 'Bob, I have a renegade; a fucking renegade within the Bureau. When I trace this bastard, he's as good as dead.'

  'Hey, cool down, man. Who says you're going to have to trace him?' asked Skinner. 'You may be jumping to a big conclusion.'

  'You kidding?'

  'No, I'm not kidding. Whether it's Kosinski who's been taking these people out or not, the killer is a very clever guy. He also has access to files and information that I suspect are beyond even you. We suspected Kosinski because of the timing of the explosion, and the theory that it could have been set to kil us as well. But this guy has the resources to hack into sophisticated computer systems and delete records. Do you think he couldn't have bugged Jackson Wylie's office, or the Wilkins firm in Chicago?'

  'So why can't I contact Kosinski now?'

  'Maybe his cel phone battery's gone soft; maybe his pager's lying on the bathroom shelf. Maybe by now he's been taken out himself, if that envelope Wilkins handed over is significant. You see? Your man may be a suspect, but by now he may also be a victim. If he's either, the odds are that you'l never see him again.'

  'Oh no, why not?'

  'If Kosinski killed these people, then after Wilkins, he's blown, and he'll disappear back into whatever outfit planted him in the Bureau in the first place. If he didn't, and that envelope contained what I think it might have, it made him a target as soon as he left the Wilkins building.

  If he has been killed, they'l make him disappear, so that you, being essential y a dumb copper like me, will assume that he was the bad guy al along.'

  'I wish I was a dumb copper like you,' Doherty grunted. 'Any way we can tell which is which?'

  'No, but if you find that Wilkins was killed by a bullet from Kosinski's Bureau-issue firearm, you'll know that he's gone, one way or another.

  He either kil ed him, or they made it look as if he did.'

  'They?'

  'The same people who kil ed the president.'

  'What!?' The word escaped as a cut-off scream. 'Bob, what the f…'

  Skinner laughed. 'Okay, okay, okay. Calm down, Joe; I'm about seven steps ahead of myself. But here's what I know from Sarah. Wilkins, Garrett and Jack Wylie were all members of the Secret Service back in the early sixties, sharp kids straight out of law school looking for something extra on their curriculum vitae. Leo Grace wasn't, but he was one of their circle; they all knew him because they all played on the president's Sunday football team, and so did Leo. According to Sarah he was the only guy there who wasn't in the Service.

  'When Leo left Washington, eventual y, they gave him a footbal, signed by the Man and al the guys. That's been stolen from the house up here. So have two photographs of the squad.'

  'Shit!' Doherty squealed.

  'Aye. Anyhow, he settles in Buffalo, and a few years later he invites Jackson Wylie into his firm. They all live happily ever after. There's no mention ofGarrett or Wilkins, and no contact we know of, either through the law, or through their shared political interests. Then last January, out of the blue, Wylie tells his secretary that he and Leo Grace… who hasn't shot anything since Korea… are going to kill deer in the Appalachians. This is peculiar also, since Leo doesn't own
a rifle.

  'I'd like to know who else went on that trip, and where exactly they went. I'd like to know also about the purchase by one of the four, somewhere, of three, possibly four, identical Apple Mac iBook laptop computers. Most of all, I'd like to see the Secret Service duty rosters for November 22, 1963; it would be interesting to know whether Wylie, Garrett and Wilkins were on duty that day.'

  'Why, for God's sake?'

  'The only time Leo ever talked to Sarah about those sixties years, he referred to "them" shooting the president. Sure, I know it's just a word, but Leo weighed every word he used. Joe, when all else fails, I go by hunches. In this case, my nose tells me that these three guys either knew who killed the president, or… they did it themselves.'

  Doherty sighed. 'I don't know if I want to hear this, Bob. If you're crazy, I'm crazy for listening to you. And if you're right… I'm stil crazy for listening to you.' He paused. 'But what about Leo? How did he know?'

  'My guess is that Jack Wylie told him at some point; maybe not that he'd done it, but that there had been a plot and he knew who was involved. I guess too that with old age looming, and al it brings with it, the three of them, Wylie, Garrett and Wilkins, may have decided that at the very least they had to make a record of the truth. But they needed someone else, someone from that time who could vouch for them al; so Wylie approached Leo.

  'They met up, in the Appalachians or wherever… and from that point they were done. I'll bet you, Joe, that these guys have been watched, from the day they left the Service.'

  'Watched? By who?'

  'By whoever set up the assassination. The CIA, the Mafia, another agency, I don't know; but they've been keeping tabs on these guys for the last thirty years and more.'

  'Why not kil them back then?'

  'Then kil the guys who killed them? Where would it end? How long before the last gullible American died and there was no one left to believe that Oswald did it? No, you don't take that risk til you have to.