The Coalition: A Novel of Suspense

by Samuel Marquis

  “Now why is this the case? Why is it that women don’t kill in anywhere near the numbers men do? The answer is—you’re going to love this—we don’t know. Some researchers speculate it has to do with testosterone levels or other hormonal interactions. Others point out that women seem to internalize their stressors, punishing themselves instead of lashing out at others. They tend to turn to drugs, alcohol, suicide, things like that to take out their frustrations, whereas men simply take it out on the rest of the world.”

  “But you’re talking about postal nutcases, petty murderers, and serial killers not professional assassins. There are women trained by the global terrorist groups who have no problem killing.”

  “Those women are unique. They perceive themselves as soldiers, freedom-fighters for their cause. They’re pursuing dreams of a better life for their people, trying to change social and governmental policies. Many of these women come from brutal political regimes that subject dissenting citizens to extreme psychological or physical abuse. This helps them convince themselves they are soldiers fighting for a noble cause.”

  “Okay, so what you’re saying is it’s mainly men who are greedy enough to do it for money, and violent enough to make a career out of it.”

  “So much for our lofty position in the hierarchy of organic life.”

  “So based on what you’ve told me, I can probably eliminate women from my database search.”

  “I’m not sure I would do that, but I would keep any female suspects in a separate file. I can’t say a woman couldn’t have done it, mind you, just that it’s highly unlikely.”

  “Seems that way to me too,” Patton said, picturing the man in the video. “But I just wanted to cover my bases. So, now that we’ve done that, tell me more about our perp. We know he’s an experienced pro, not some military wannabe loser like Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan. He blends into unfamiliar surroundings easily. He probably works on a recommendation basis and doesn’t deal directly with strangers.”

  “Or has a control agent that handles these matters for him.” The profiler smiled with amusement at his pupil. “Please continue, Special Agent.”

  “Okay, he comes from a military, paramilitary, or terrorist background. Which is why he’s equipped with sophisticated military hardware and has the ability to move into an area unknown to him, perform his assignment, and get out quickly. He doesn’t get any satisfaction when he kills, but he doesn’t feel remorse either. He’s not like a crime-of-passion murderer, a serial killer, or sexual predator. He has no psychological motivation for killing. For him, it’s all about the money. How am I doing?”

  “Not bad. But I would add a few things to our laundry list. First, he kills only when the money from the last job is close to spent. Judging by the importance of the figure he just killed, I would say he takes in a small fortune for every successful hit. Which means he doesn’t work very often, because he doesn’t have to.

  “Second, our man is a student of the game. He learns a great deal about his victims beforehand to ensure the cleanest hit possible. He will follow his target for weeks, maybe even months, amassing photographs, memorizing daily routines, perhaps even finding ways to coerce or bribe members of the target’s inner circle.”

  “We’re looking into all the Kieger campaign tapes to see if we can pick this guy out.”

  “Good. Third, we’re dealing with one clever and experienced S.O.B. He’s a master at complex problem-solving and has many years of practice at this sort of thing. But that presents a problem for him. As brilliant as he is, he must feel enormous stress in his life. A shooter of his caliber is, no doubt, being pursued by many of the world’s law enforcement agencies and perhaps rival assassins. Slowly but surely, they are closing in on him. How he deals with this constant stress and tension in his everyday life is critical.”

  “So the probability of the killer being an ideologue is remote?”

  Hamilton nodded. “What we have is a cool, calm, and collected professional killer. One clever and anonymous enough to steal his way into a high-rise building undetected despite a state-of-the-art security system and an army of law enforcement people. Someone with the training necessary to assassinate the president-elect at long-range with a rare American-made military-style rifle. Someone capable of taking out two unsuspecting innocents without blinking an eye and then disappearing into thin air, perhaps with the assistance of others, perhaps not. This guy shows the classic profile of the highly organized violent criminal: military-style planning and execution, preselected weapons, and nonrandom victim selection.”

  Patton held up his hand, signaling he needed a moment to catch up with his iPad notes. He was excited by what he had learned thus far; Hamilton seemed to have pieced together a plausible conceptual model of the killer, one untainted by preconceptions since he had not viewed the video footage. It was time now to allow him the opportunity to see how his theory gibed with celluloid reality.

  “You should know, though, there is a problem with this type of criminal,” added Hamilton.

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “He’s, by far, the most difficult to catch.”

  Patton gave him a knowing look. “Oh, I don’t know about that, Doc. Let’s see how you feel after you’ve seen my little video.”

  “Is it X-rated?”

  “Not exactly. But I think you’ll find it titillating just the same.”

  CHAPTER 44

  JENNIFER ODDEN ATE LUNCH at her desk while listening to a killer Dead tape on her iPod. The show was Vegas 5/31/92 with a heart-stirring Help is on the Way→Slipknot→Franklin’s Tower opener that brought down the house. At half past noon, she took a last bite of her lunch and put the plastic container back in her Arctic Zone mini-cooler. The angel hair pasta with marinated tofu, snow peas, and carrots was delicious, but it failed to satisfy her. She decided to grab some tortilla chips from the lunchroom vending machine.

  As she started down the hallway, she saw Marlene “Suie” Tanner stepping into the elevator with an orange, accordion-style folder under her arm. Marlene was no ordinary employee. As Locke’s executive secretary, she had unique insight into his daily schedule and what went on at the highest levels of American Patriots. She was also one of only four people with access to Fileroom E, the others being Locke, Archibald Roberts, director of communications/PR, and Chuck Valentine, director of human resources. Unlike Filerooms A, B, C, and D, which were also in the basement, Fileroom E was the only fileroom with restricted access. The room supposedly housed HR records, but Jennifer suspected far more revealing documents could be found there. As a journalist, she knew that records kept behind locked doors usually contained secrets worth knowing about.

  Jennifer had never seen the contents of a file from Fileroom E, but she knew everything stored there, including CDs and DVDs, was put into an orange folder like the one Marlene now carried. If the room did contain sensitive documents, she had to get her hands on them. She had promised one Reid Farnsworth Lampert that she would, and the last thing she wanted was to fail in her mission and allow the sniveling bastard the satisfaction of yanking her off the story. She only had until Thursday to turn up something big—or that was the end of it.

  But Marlene could help her solve her problem.

  Without drawing attention to herself, she made her way quickly to the fire stairs. If she was going to get to the basement before Marlene, she had to scramble down ten flights of stairs and beat the elevator. When she reached the stairs, she moved at breakneck speed, her low pumps clattering against the concrete, making stabbing echo sounds in the stairwell.

  Reaching the basement, she peered through the narrow window that looked out into the hallway and the door to Fileroom E. To her relief, Marlene had not yet arrived, though Jennifer could hear the click-clack of her high-heeled shoes on the linoleum floor. The stairwell was directly across from the room, giving Jennifer a good angled view to the door and, more critically, to the cyber keypad that unlocked Fileroom E.

  This was Jennife
r’s fourth attempt at identifying the six numbers of the keypad’s digital code. From the three prior occasions, she’d discovered the first three numbers and the last number. This time, she hoped to catch the fourth and fifth numbers, giving her the complete code.

  Marlene materialized from the left and scanned the hallway. She was tubby and pug-faced, with blood red fingernail polish, matching lipstick, and the kind of polyester stretch-pant business outfit worn by seriously overweight women. Jennifer stepped to the edge of the window and peeked through cautiously, keeping her head out of view.

  Be careful—don’t let her see you.

  Marlene raised a stubby index finger to the digital keypad. The numbers were arranged in two vertical columns, numbers one through five in descending order on the left, six through nine plus zero on the right. Jennifer had no problem confirming the first three numbers. The two, three, and six were all high up on the keypad and easily observed. But then Marlene’s hand slid down to touch the two lower keys Jennifer had been unable to catch the last two times. She saw the first number punched—five—but the next number was obscured by Marlene’s pudgy knuckles. Was that a zero, or another five? Then Marlene pushed the last number—six—which Jennifer already knew.

  There was an audible click as the door unlocked.

  Marlene pulled back the handle and stepped inside the room, the door swinging closed behind her.

  Jennifer waited a few seconds, making sure the coast was clear, before opening the stairwell door and creeping into the hallway. While it was still fresh on her mind, she wanted to recreate the way Marlene had held her hand when she had punched in the second-to-last number. Jennifer felt fairly sure it had been a zero, but she wanted to be certain. It would take Marlene a few minutes to file away the contents of the thick orange folder, so the risk was acceptable, as long as she was quiet and didn’t actually touch the keypad.

  She pretended to punch in the numbers, just as Marlene had done. Two, three, six, five, zero, six. No, that’s not right. She tried it again, this time substituting a five for the zero. That’s it—two fives after all. Marlene must have punched twice with her middle finger.

  There was a sudden shuffle of feet inside the room. What was going on? How could Marlene have possibly finished her filing already?

  Jennifer darted across the hall, reached for the door to the stairwell, slipped through the door, and closed it quickly behind her.

  Her heart thumped against her chest.

  As the door clicked shut, she turned and peered through the window looking out into the hallway. The door to Fileroom E opened and Marlene stepped out, scanning the hallway with the suspicious scowl of a prison guard.

  Oh no!

  Jennifer ducked down. Then she crept to the stairs and ascended them quickly but quietly, too scared even to breathe.

  When she reached the first landing, the door to the stairwell flung open. She lunged for the wall and crouched down, hoping the staircase and steel railing concealed her from below.

  In the metallic echo of the stairwell, Marlene’s voice came across as brittle as cracking ice. “Who’s there?”

  Jennifer held her breath.

  “Who’s there I said? Show yourself this instant!”

  But again Jennifer didn’t heed the command. Instead she quietly crept up the stairs, praying that she hadn’t been seen.

  CHAPTER 45

  FIVE MINUTES LATER, Jennifer was in her office when her desk phone rang. She nearly jumped out of her seat. She looked anxiously at the caller ID: it was Benjamin Locke. The phone rang again. Her hand started to move towards it, as if by a will of its own, before stopping like a car at the edge of a cliff. Did she dare answer it? Before she could tell herself “No!” her hand crawled forward the last inch and carefully lifted the receiver.

  The gruff voice on the other end launched in without preamble. “Jennifer, come to my office immediately—I need to have a word with you.” He hung up.

  As she set the phone back down, the breath seemed to leave her all at once. She felt a momentary paralysis. Marlene must have seen her after all and told Locke, and now he would demand to know what she had been doing down in the basement snooping around Fileroom E. She would lie, of course, as she had been doing for the past several months. But would it be enough? Wouldn’t he just see through her and fire her? If that happened, that would be the end of her story. All the hard work and risks she’d taken up to this point would amount to nothing.

  Which meant that obnoxious prick Reid Farnsworth Lampert would win after all.

  She took a few deep breaths to steel her jangled nerves. There was no alternative but to meet with Locke. There was still a remote chance his call had nothing to do with Marlene or Fileroom E, though by the sharpness of his tone, she must have fallen into his disfavor in some way. Maybe he wanted to talk to her about a work-related problem. In any case, she couldn’t just run away from the situation; it had to be dealt with. Before she had a chance to talk herself out of it, she rose from her chair and headed out the door.

  When she reached Marlene’s desk, she tried to present herself in a calm and professional manner. “Good afternoon, Marlene,” she said in a pleasant business-like tone.

  Marlene’s pug face seemed to darken with suspicion, and Jennifer’s flesh turned cold. You saw me, didn’t you? You caught me red-handed, didn’t you, you corpulent toad?

  “Mr. Locke will see you now,” Marlene chirped like an automaton.

  Jennifer was puzzled as she knocked on Locke’s door. I can’t tell—did she see me or not?

  “Come in.”

  The voice was like a booming cannon and Jennifer took an involuntary step back. Then, summoning her courage, she turned the knob and opened the door.

  Locke sat behind his desk, shuffling through paperwork. When he looked up at her, he seemed gargantuan, even seated, and she had the uncanny feeling he could read her thoughts. Though she was completely opposed to American Patriots as an entity, she found herself utterly captivated by Benjamin Locke, but in a fearful way, as one might feel viewing a physically awesome but terrifying great white shark from an underwater cage or a massive Kodiac bear in its native habitat. The man was, quite simply, larger-than-life. But there was something else about him that was captivating: his altruism. The word had spread all around the office that he had plucked a homeless robber off the street on Sunday and already set him up with a good job and housing. The man—Peter Brown—had cut his fire-hazard beard and cleaned himself up and was said to be showing up regularly at 8 a.m. sharp and striving hard to turn his life around. All thanks to Locke.

  “Jennifer, please come in and sit down.”

  She licked her lips, closed the door, and walked to the chair in front of his desk. As she sat down, her eyes passed over three of the hardcover titles in the bookcase: “Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline” by Robert Bork, “Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America?” by Cal Thomas, and “Foundations of God’s City: Christians in a Crumbling Culture” by James Boice. What garbage, she thought.

  “Is there something wrong?” he asked her.

  Looking back at him, she involuntarily shrank back in her seat. “Um...no. Everything’s fine.”

  “You find me intimidating, don’t you?”

  “No,” she said, but she felt transparent. “Well maybe sometimes. But you’re my boss—it’s supposed to be that way, isn’t it?”

  Locke gave her a reassuring smile. “My wife is always telling me I come across too strong. Too much of the lion, she says. I apologize if I intimidate you, Jennifer. I can say this to you now that you’re part of our heralded A-team.” His face took on a gentle glow like a distant star.

  Jennifer was wary. Is this a set-up?

  He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his huge mahogany desk. On the corner of the desk, Jennifer saw the most recent copy of The American Spectator —“a feisty little right-wing magazine” in the words of the late editorialist William Safire. �
��You thought you were being called into the principal’s office, didn’t you?” he said with a chuckle.

  “Something like that,” she replied, still unsure of his motives.

  “Then let me be frank, Jennifer. You have been doing a commendable job for us here at AMP. Though you’ve only been here less than a year, you’re as sharp as someone with five years’ experience. Your writing abilities have dramatically improved the quality of our press releases and voter materials. In short, I’m promoting you to second-in-charge of our communications/PR group. The actual title is senior communications specialist. You’ll report directly to Archie Roberts.”

  “That’s...that’s great,” she said without conviction. Did I just hear that right? I was paranoid over nothing and he’s actually offering me a promotion?

  “Your first assignment will be to fill in for my speech on Thursday.”

  “This Thursday—the day after tomorrow?”

  “It’s on a subject quite familiar to you—American exceptionalism. I thought to myself, who better to give the speech before the Colorado Springs Family Focus Group than you? With all the hard work you’ve put in, ‘American Exceptionalism and the Power of the Christian Spirit’ is sure to have a big impact. We owe a large part of that to you.”

  Now Jennifer felt a combination of nausea and panic. Not only did she not have time for this when she had Reid Farnsworth Lampert’s deadline to meet, but she couldn’t possibly give a speech to a group of people explaining how Americans were better than everyone else in the world because of their Christian spirituality and democratic ideals. Every country in the world thought it was exceptional, so why should the U.S. think that it was special? Especially when it had a history of slavery, genocide towards Native Americans, imprisoning its own countrymen during war, illegally torturing international suspects, wiretapping its own citizens, and lining the pockets of Big Business and Wall Street fat cats while its own middle class died a slow, painful death? Could a country truly be the most exceptional country in the world when it did stuff like that? she wondered.