First Family

by David Baldacci

  “You knew I was having an affair?”

  “After I asked Agent Betack to look into it, yes. He had you followed and reported back to me that you were indeed screwing around.” She looked at Sean and Michelle. “Not the first time, of course. My brother seems to have an inability to keep it in his pants unless he’s around his wife. It’s not just my brother. I think it afflicts all married men. As soon as they take the vow one of their chromosomes informs them that it’s time to cheat.”

  Tuck looked like a very large man had just punched him flush in the face. “I can’t believe you would—” he began.

  “Just shut up, Tuck. We’re way past that now.”

  Okay , thought Sean, this is a side I’ve never seen of the woman and I don’t like it.

  “So Betack was talking to Pam about what he’d found?” asked Michelle.

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “So, what exactly then?” asked Sean.

  “I had Agent Betack inform Pam that Tuck was not cheating on her.”

  Even Tuck looked slightly disgusted by this information, although the lie had obviously covered up his infidelity. Perhaps he was thinking of his dead wife out there in the muddy ground all by herself.

  “So you had him lie to her, in other words?” said Michelle.

  “My husband’s reelection is a foregone conclusion barring any unforeseen calamity, including personal.”

  “So if Tuck’s affair came out you were afraid it would tank your husband’s chances? That’s why you had Betack lie to Pam?” said Sean, who did not try to conceal his rising anger.

  “But you’re not your brother’s keeper and neither is the president,” Michelle pointed out. “Tuck’s a big boy. There might be a scandal, but it wouldn’t involve the First Family.”

  “Sometimes it’s hard to determine where the First Family starts and stops,” shot back Jane. “And in any case, I was determined not to find out that the public’s opinion of my husband would be adversely affected by such a revelation. If nothing else it would give traction to an opposition that so far has found none.”

  There was another reason, but the First Lady chose not to elaborate for reasons that were obvious to her.

  “Well, I don’t think Pam believed Betack,” said Sean.

  “Why?”

  “Because the night she was killed, we were going over to see Pam at her request. She didn’t know Tuck would be arriving home that night. She said she had a matter she wanted us to look into. I’ll give you three guesses at what that might be.”

  “I could tell at the party at Camp David that she was still concerned about it,” admitted Jane.

  Tuck looked at Sean. “And when I suddenly showed up at the house that night, she did look sort of freaked out.”

  Sean nodded. “She might have even wanted to call me to cancel, but she only had my office number, not my cell. And we were already on our way when Tuck showed up.”

  “So now you know all,” said Jane.

  “No, not all.”

  They all turned to see Agent Aaron Betack standing there.

  “What?” asked Sean.

  Betack advanced into the room.

  “I don’t recall asking you to come here, Agent Betack,” said a surprised Jane.

  “You didn’t, ma’am. I… I took it upon myself.” The veteran agent looked very pale.

  “I’m not sure I understand how you can do that,” she said bluntly.

  Betack gazed around uneasily at the others. “There was a letter delivered to one of the women who works in the kitchen here. Shirley Meyers.”

  Jane rose. “You will leave right now, Agent Betack. This instant.”

  Sean rose too. “What the hell is going on?”

  “You will leave now!” snapped Jane.

  “Aaron, what letter?” asked Michelle.

  Before Betack could answer, Jane snatched up the phone. “One call, Betack. Either you leave now or your career is over.”

  “Maybe it already is,” said Betack. “But what’s a career compared to a little girl’s life? Have you even thought about that?”

  “How dare you speak to me that way!”

  Tuck stood. “I dare. If it’s got something to do with whether my daughter lives or dies, I sure as hell do dare.”

  Jane looked at him, and then at the others, one by one. Her confidence seemed to fall away under their gazes. She looked to Sean like a cornered animal desperately seeking a way out.

  Sean said, “Jane, if you received a letter that has something to do with Willa, we need to know. The FBI needs to know.”

  “That is impossible.”

  Tuck grabbed her arm. “The hell it is.”

  Betack instinctively rushed forward to protect the First Lady. But Michelle had already snagged Tuck’s arm and forcibly removed his grip. She pushed him down on the couch.

  “Just chill, Tuck. You’re not helping matters. She’s still the First Lady.”

  “I don’t give a shit what she is. She could be the president and I wouldn’t give a damn. If she knows something that’ll help get Willa back, I need to know what the hell it is.”

  Jane was looking steadily at Betack. “How do you know anything about this?”

  “Nothing happens in this building without the Secret Service knowing, Mrs. Cox.”

  “Was the letter from the kidnappers?” asked Sean.

  Jane finally looked away from Betack. “It might be. It’s impossible for me to tell. For anyone to tell.”

  “Was it checked for prints?” asked Michelle.

  “Since it wasn’t sent here and passed through multiple hands before landing in mine, I think the answer to that is no,” she said coldly.

  “Where is it?” asked Sean.

  “I destroyed it.”

  Sean looked uneasily at Betack. “Jane, this is a federal investigation. If you’re found to have knowingly withheld and then destroyed evidence….”

  “Now that could tank the election for your husband,” added Michelle.

  “But why would you withhold it?” Sean wanted to know.

  Jane did not make eye contact with him. “It was a shock to receive it the way that I did. I was trying to evaluate things before I determined what to do with it.”

  Okay, now she’s on full spin , thought Sean.

  “I think the authorities need to evaluate it,” said Betack. “Please, Mrs. Cox, you need to understand fully what you’re doing here. You need to tell them what was in the letter.”

  “Fine, I’ll tell you. The letter said that I would be getting another letter sent to a post office box. They also sent me the address for that box and the key for it.”

  Sean, Michelle, and Betack exchanged glances.

  Jane noticed this because she added, “And it said if anyone who remotely looked like a police officer or a federal agent went anywhere near the box, we would never get Willa back.”

  “Is that why you kept the letter to yourself?” asked Tuck.

  “Of course. Do you seriously think I want anything to happen to Willa? I love her like she’s one of my own children.”

  How she said this struck Sean as a little odd. “When did it say the other letter would be coming?”

  “It didn’t. But that I should check regularly. As of today there was nothing there.”

  Betack said, “We have to tell the FBI about this.”

  Sean and Michelle nodded in agreement but Jane shook her head. “If you do then we will never see Willa again.”

  “Jane, the Feds are really good at this.”

  “Yes, they’ve been superb so far. Figured everything out, haven’t they? I can’t imagine why they’d screw it up now.”

  “That’s hardly fair,” began Michelle.

  Jane Cox raised her voice. “What do you know about fair?”

  “When you get the letter, you have to let us see what it says.”

  She glanced over at Sean. “I have to?”

  “You retained us to investigate this case, Jane. So
far, you’ve lied to us, withheld vital information, and caused us to waste time we didn’t have. Yeah, you need to let us and the FBI see the letter when it comes. Or else we can just pack it in right now and be done with it.”

  Tuck spoke up. “Jane, for God’s sake, this is Willa we’re talking about. You have to let them help.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Tuck looked dumbstruck by this, but Sean said, “Fine, you think about it and let us know.” He rose and motioned Tuck and Michelle to join him in leaving.

  “Tuck, why don’t you stay here with the children?” said Jane.

  He didn’t even look at her. “No thanks.”

  Tuck stalked out of the room. Michelle and Sean followed him.

  Betack had turned to join them when Jane said, “I’ll never forget this betrayal, Agent Betack. Never.”

  Betack wet his lips, but whatever he was about to say back he seemed to think better of. He turned and left.

  As they were leaving the White House, Sean pulled Betack aside. “Aaron, one thing.”

  “You need any freelance investigators? I see an involuntary career change coming in my future.”

  “I do need you to do a little sleuthing.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “The letter the First Lady got.”

  “She said she destroyed it.”

  “Considering that just about everything that’s come out of the lady’s mouth has been a lie, chances are even money that she didn’t.”

  “And you want me to find it?”

  “I’d try. But I think someone might notice me snooping around here. I understand the security’s pretty good.”

  “Do you realize what you’re asking me to do?”

  “Yeah. I’m asking you to help save a little girl’s life.”

  “Where the hell do you get off hitting me with a guilt trip like that?”

  “Would you do it if I didn’t hit you with it?”

  Betack looked off for a moment. When he stared back at Sean he said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  After they dropped off Tuck back at Blair House, Sean’s phone buzzed. He answered, listened, smiled, and clicked off. “I can feel the tide turning a little.”

  “Why? Who was that?” asked Michelle.

  “My language department friend. They might have something to tell us about the marks on Pam’s arms.”

  CHAPTER 51

  WE’D EXHAUSTED just about everything we could think of,” said Phil Jenkins, Sean’s professor friend at Georgetown University. “Of course it wasn’t the Chinese Yi as you initially suspected. Wrong alphabet. But college professors love a challenge like this, so I called in other faculty from some of our interdisciplinary studies. At least it beat grading fifty exams.”

  “I bet,” said Michelle as she perched on the edge of Jenkins’s desk in his cluttered office. She would have opted for a chair but the two in the room were piled with five-pound books.

  “And you found what?” asked Sean impatiently.

  “Ever heard of Muskogean?”

  “Isn’t that a town in Wisconsin, or maybe Oklahoma?”

  “That’s Muskogee. No, it’s Indian. Native American Indian. Without getting too technical, it’s a family of languages, actually.”

  “So the markings we gave you are Muskogean?” asked Michelle.

  “The language is actually Koasati, or more typically known as Coushatta. But it is of Muskogean origin.”

  “So what does it say?” asked Sean. “What we gave you.”

  Jenkins looked down at a sheet of paper with scribbles all over it. “It was a bit difficult to figure out because none of the accent marks or other pronunciation points were included. For instance, there should have been a colon between Chaffa and kan. And, of course, the letters weren’t separated into words. That made it far more difficult.”

  “Sounds like they didn’t want to make our job easy,” commented Sean.

  “And they didn’t,” remarked Jenkins. “So what it says, as best we can figure, is this. Chaffakan means one. Hatka means white and Tayyi means woman.”

  “One white woman?” said Sean.

  “One dead white woman,” amended Michelle.

  Jenkins glanced up sharply at her. “Dead?”

  “It’s a long story, Phil,” said Sean. “What can you tell us about this Koasati stuff?”

  “I consulted with a professor here who specializes in Native American languages. He’s the one who really cracked this. The Koasati tribe was part of the Creek Confederacy in what is now Alabama. However, when the Europeans started immigrating there, and because they were also under attack from rival tribes, the Koasati and the Alibamu tribes moved to Louisiana and then on to Texas. There are apparently no members of the tribes still living in Alabama. The bulk of the people who still use the language, and they only number in the hundreds, reside in Allen Parish, which is a little north of Elton, Louisiana. Although there are apparently a few speakers living in Livingston, Texas.”

  Michelle and Sean stared at each other.

  She said, “Texas and Louisiana. Pretty big places to search.”

  “But if it’s narrowed down to towns, and to a few hundred people?” said Sean.

  “But why put the words on Pam’s arms to begin with? Sure, they made it hard, but not impossible,” she commented.

  Jenkins broke in. “These words were on a woman’s arms? And you said something about dead?”

  “Not just dead, murdered ,” said Michelle.

  “Oh dear Lord,” said Jenkins and he dropped the page on his desk.

  “It’s okay, Phil, I doubt these folks are going to come back for another language demonstration. Thanks for the assist.”

  As they walked from his office, Sean was shaking his head. “Why does this seem like a diversionary tactic?”

  “And a knuckleheaded one at that, because they didn’t have to do it at all.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So what now?”

  “We need to talk to Waters. Tell him what we know.”

  “That jerk? Why?”

  “Because we promised. And we need to find Willa just as fast as we can. So we’re going to need the Feds’ muscle behind us.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t be surprised if that muscle comes down on us instead.”

  CHAPTER 52

  SEAN CALLED WATERS and they arranged to meet at a bar a few blocks away from the FBI’s Hoover Building.

  “Didn’t expect to get a call from you,” Waters said as they sat at a table in the back.

  “I told you if we had anything to report we’d be in touch.”

  “So report.”