And she was a lawyer, no less. Everyone hated lawyers. Even lawyers hated lawyers. A zealous lawyer could make enemies faster than a Jew in a mosque.
And the lawyers working in the Department of Justice found themselves in a curious predicament: they were ultimately appointed by the administration, to police the administration. Which produced an inherent conflict of interest. The Attorney General worked for the president, ostensibly to keep the president and his administrators from doing anything stupid or illegal. Or unconstitutional.
But in practice, Justice was just like any other watchdog agency. People in the Department of Justice served at the pleasure of the president. Everything else was secondary, tertiary, or utterly unimportant.
Which wasn’t to say that everyone at Justice did the job the same way. It was entirely possible that one or two Justice employees took the job a little too seriously. Perhaps they got their priorities confused. Perhaps one of them placed the rule of law above the desires of the administration. Perhaps that’s what happened to Janice Everman.
It would have to have been a serious misstep to have gotten her killed. The American system wasn’t big on assassinations, except the political kind, not involving blood or body bags. Usually, getting sideways with one’s political overlords merely resulted in a sacking, not a bagging.
Sam had already asked Dan Gable to look into Janice Everman’s financials. Often, a person’s money situation led to useful insights regarding their broader situation in life. A large debt, or a large sum of money suddenly deposited into an account, was usually a red flag from a security perspective. Sam wanted to rule out any security concerns, worst case. Best case, maybe Dan would discover something actionable. Mark Severn’s work on the Janice Everman case had obviously touched a nerve, so Sam was hoping for a break.
Sam exited the elevator onto a floor that didn’t look anything like a normal government office space. There were no gunmetal gray cubicles. The carpet was new and clean. It looked like a real office, and an upscale one at that. People sat at real desks. There were real filing cabinets nearby. The furniture was made of real wood. It looked very genteel, not very government at all.
It looked like a place full of lawyers.
Sam found Jonathan France’s desk. It was large, oaken, situated at an angle in a corner office, with a view out over the Potomac. On France’s desk sat a number of photographs. Many of them contained France himself, presumably, shaking hands with people of importance. Sam recognized a few of them from the local DC scene. The photos were arranged in a way that visitors could see them. France himself spent the day looking at the back of the photo mounts. It was an odd arrangement. France was clearly a man interested in impressing people.
Sam reminded herself not to be impressed.
“May I help you?” Jonathan France asked. He was a bookish man, pudgy, with narrow eyes, a sharp nose, thin lips, and a dour expression on his face. His reading glasses threatened to tumble from the end of his nose. There was a pile of paper in front of him on the desk.
“I was hoping to talk to you for a moment about your predecessor,” Sam said, showing her badge.
Sam noticed a slight roll of the eyes. It was clearly a subject that Jonathan France had been prevailed upon to talk about on more than one occasion.
“I suppose it’s about time for another one of these conversations,” France said. “It’s been nearly a month since the last guy was here.”
Mark Severn had probably been the last guy to stop by France’s office to talk about the case, Sam surmised. “There’s been a lot of interest in Janice Everman?” she asked.
“No. Not to be insensitive, but there’s been a lot of interest in Janice Everman’s death. When she was alive, she was a nice lady doing a job. Nobody paid much attention.”
“I see. Well, I won’t take up too much of your time, in that case. It’s just routine stuff, really, just revisiting a few things in light of some new information.”
France’s eyes flashed.
Sam noticed. She filed it away.
“Please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing halfheartedly to a chair in front of his desk.
Sam obliged. “This is a nice office,” she said. “I should talk to my supervisor about an upgrade. My office is decorated in ‘early cheapskate.’”
“Attorneys like to feel self-important,” France said.
Sam kept her strong opinion on the subject to herself. “I’ll take your word for it,” she said. “Anyway, I know you’re busy, so I’ll get right to it. I was just wondering what Janice Everman might have been working on right before she died.”
France shrugged. “The usual, I suppose,” he said. “I mean, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing remarkable.”
Sam frowned. “I see. I don’t have much sense for what normal might be, though. Could you give me an example or two?”
France smiled. The smile looked out of place on his face. “Of course,” he said. “Someone in the administration wants to do something. Someone else in the administration tells them they can’t do it, because it’s of questionable legality. So they call us. We prepare a brief, which is a legal document that nobody reads. We also prepare a one-slide summary, which everybody ignores. Then, people do whatever it was they wanted to do in the first place.”
Sam smiled. “Sounds terribly rewarding.”
“Not so much. But it’s not too bad, either. I’m not working eighty hours a week at a law firm. I get to see my wife and kids occasionally. These days, I think they even like having me around. That wasn’t always the case when I was at the firm.”
“Which firm?”
“Kellerman, Stein, Schwartz, and Markowski.”
“Isn’t that a lobbying firm?”
“Same thing.”
“I thought you said you were at a law firm.”
“It is a law firm,” France said. “It’s a dirty little secret that lawmakers don’t actually write laws. Corporations hire lobbyists to write laws and hand them to congressmen. And for that, lobby firms need lawyers.”
Sam sighed. The government was worse than she thought.
“Not to mention the trillion legal pitfalls associated with being a lobbyist,” France went on. “Paying the right amount of money to the right people at the right time and in the right way. Staying out of trouble is half the business.”
“What’s the other half?” Sam asked.
“I really have no idea,” France said. “They kept me in a dark room drafting legislation.”
“What kind of legislation?”
“Defense Acquisitions stuff, mostly. Like watching paint dry.”
Sam gestured toward the expansive view out the window. “This must be a significant step up for you, in that case,” she said.
“Like I said,” France said, “the job doesn’t have to be all that satisfying to make for a much better life than I had before. And Connie can stay home with the kids now, too.”
“So it was a good opportunity for you, then.”
Sam saw anger flash on France’s face. “Did I benefit from Janice Everman’s death? Obviously, I did,” he said, a little testily. “It’s a good job in a good location, and it’s a stepping stone to bigger and better. But am I happy that a person died? Absolutely not.”
“I wasn’t implying anything,” Sam said, conciliation in her voice. “So what kind of issues were on her plate when you took over her workload?”
France shook his head. “There were no issues. Someone else had totally cleaned out her inbox. By the time I took over, it was a completely clean slate. In fact, it took a little bit of time before anyone would send any work my way, because they had gotten used to going elsewhere to get it done.”
Sam nodded. “I see. Was there any water-cooler scuttlebutt about anything going on in Janice Everman’s world, that you are aware of?”
“I have no idea. I wasn’t here at the time.”
“How about during the time when you were here?”
France shook hi
s head. “Nothing about her, except what a great lady she was. Everyone loved her. They said she always had a stern look on her face, until you smiled at her, and then her face beamed. Everybody loved that about her. Other than that, nothing. I know next to nothing about the kinds of things she was handling at the time of her death, or any other time.”
“Is there anyone here who might know more about that?”
France thought for a moment. “Same as in any office,” he said. “The secretary knows everything.”
Jonathan France was right. Executive assistants knew plenty. Sometimes more than the bigwigs they served. They certainly knew a lot more about the inner workings of the organization, and they usually had a keen awareness of the politics going on behind the scenes. Who liked whom, who slept with whom, and who couldn’t stand being in the same room together.
They also tended to have a solid sense of the ongoing business issues at any particular time. Sam hoped she would find that to be the case with Sylvia Salisbury. Sylvia was the executive assistant to Jonathan France, and she was Janice Everman’s executive assistant before that. In fact, no one could remember a time when Sylvia Salisbury wasn’t an executive assistant at the Department of Justice. She knew where all the bodies were buried.
Sam approached her with a smile. “Good morning, Ms. Salisbury,” she said.
The secretary looked up. Her face was kind but serious. She had quick, intelligent eyes. She looked like a person with a lot on her plate. She also looked like a person who could handle even more. “May I impose on you for a few minutes of your time?” Sam asked.
“Sure,” Sylvia Salisbury said. “There’s not much going on here at the moment.”
“Is there someplace private we can talk?”
Sylvia Salisbury nodded, stood, motioned for Sam to follow, and walked to a conference room with a stunning view of downtown DC. She held the door for Sam and closed the door behind them.
Sam sat at the head of the table. Sylvia Salisbury sat next to her, on Sam’s right, in a position of deference, a courtesy undoubtedly learned and probably subconsciously applied after years as an executive assistant. It wasn’t a power play on Sam’s part. It was an attempt to establish the natural order of things in Sylvia Salisbury’s mind, to put her at ease, to put her in a familiar element.
“You’re here about Janice Everman, aren’t you?” Sylvia Salisbury said after viewing Sam’s Homeland badge.
“I am. But what makes you say that?”
“Nothing in particular. But if there’s an issue going on involving Homeland, usually I know about it in advance, to put it on the calendar for the right people. Your visit was unscheduled.”
“I see,” Sam said. “But I’m curious why you thought right away that my visit might pertain to Janice Everman. After all, it’s been a little over a year now, hasn’t it?”
The secretary’s face fell a little bit. She nodded. “I guess it still doesn’t feel quite right for many of us,” she said.
“How so?”
“Well, she was in such good health. DC is a very fitness-conscious town, and Janice Everman fit the profile better than most people. She went on a run or bike ride every day. She always defended that fitness time on her calendar. I could never get her to move her workouts to take an appointment.”
“So she took care of herself.”
“Very much so,” Sylvia Salisbury said. “She said it helped her to think more clearly. To get more work done, be more efficient. She said it helped her feel better about things, too.”
“Was there a lot of work stress?” Sam asked.
“There really was,” Sylvia Salisbury said. “There was a lot going on at the time.”
“You mean at the time of her death.”
“That’s right. All the meetings were classified, so I didn’t know exactly what it was all about, but I could tell there was something big going on. And I could tell that Ms. Everman took it all very seriously.”
“Classified meetings?” Sam prodded.
“They had nonspecific meeting titles, and they never published an agenda beforehand. But that wasn’t unusual. Since 9/11, things have gotten much more secretive, and a much larger percentage of our time is spent on classified issues.”
“I see,” Sam said. She jotted a note on her pad.
“Do you suspect something?” Sylvia Salisbury asked while Sam wrote.
“Not particularly. We’re just following up on some new information right now. It may turn out to be nothing, or it may turn out to be significant. But we never know unless we do our job and ask all the normal questions.”
“That’s the way Janice felt about her work, too. Ms. Everman, I mean. It’s not like we were on a first-name basis. She was always very professional, but very kind. We all miss her.”
“It was a tragic thing,” Sam said. “Probably very traumatic.”
Salisbury nodded, a faraway look in her eye.
“So, back to those classified meetings,” Sam said. “How did you schedule them?”
“I scheduled them the way anybody schedules anything, I suppose,” the secretary said. “I checked to find an open time on the calendar, and I booked the meeting.”
“On the computer?” Sam asked.
“Yes, that’s right. On the computer.”
“Do you think it would be possible for me to take a look at Ms. Everman’s calendar for the two months leading up to her death?” Sam asked.
“Of course. Anything I can do to help. Everyone has looked at all of that stuff already, and they didn’t find anything. But as you say, maybe there’s some new information that pertains.”
“Thank you,” Sam said. She followed Sylvia Salisbury back to her desk. She looked over the secretary’s shoulder, watched her call up the calendar program and use the arrows to move back in time by a year, thirteen months, fourteen months, until the weeks leading up to Janice Everman’s death became visible. “Would you mind if I sat in your chair for just a moment, to take a few notes?” Sam asked.
“Please, be my guest. I’ll just take a coffee break.”
Sam thanked her and began scrolling through calendar appointments. There didn’t appear to be anything remarkable. But there was a meeting that recurred, called the NSP. Under the list of participants, the calendar only listed the NSP Group. It didn’t list any individual names.
Sam opened up Sylvia Salisbury’s contact information in her email program. She typed NSP group into the address finder. Nothing.
That seemed unusual. If an executive assistant were going to schedule a meeting with a particular group, she would require insight into the calendars of the individuals belonging to that group, Sam surmised. Otherwise, how could she schedule the meeting?
Sam continued to scroll through the appointments. A new meeting popped up two weeks before Janice Everman’s death. It too was identified only by its initials, SAG. Again, there were no individual meeting participants listed. Just a repeat of the meeting title.
Puzzling. An executive calendar was no place for ambiguous annotations. Sam had never seen it done that way before.
Sam wrote down the dates and times of those meetings, of the NSP group and the SAG meeting. Nothing else stood out to her as unusual.
Sylvia Salisbury returned to her desk, and Sam asked her what the two meetings were about.
“NSP was the national security policy meeting,” the secretary said.
“Do you recall who participated?”
“I never knew who participated in that meeting,” Sylvia Salisbury said. “They would just telephone with the meeting time and place, and Ms. Everman would show up.”
“Was that meeting ever held here, at Justice?”
“Never, to my recollection,” Sylvia Salisbury said.
“Do you know who called to tell you the meeting times and locations?”
“Usually an executive assistant from the National Security Policy Group.”
Sam’s brow furrowed. “National Security Policy Group? I’ve nev
er heard of such an animal,” she said. “Do you know who any of the players were?”
“Yes,” Sylvia Salisbury said. “I had to prepare a cover sheet one time, for a classified briefing that Ms. Everman prepared.”
“Ms. Everman delivered a briefing to the National Security Policy Group?”
Sylvia Salisbury nodded. “I don’t know what it was about, but it seemed like a big deal. I sent copies to Homeland, CIA, NSA, FBI, and the Chief of Staff.”
“The White House Chief of Staff?”
“That’s right,” Sylvia Salisbury said.
Sam’s eyebrows arched. “That’s very interesting,” she said.
“It was all very interesting,” the secretary said. “Usually, when we’re asked to consult on an issue for a group like this, there’s an agenda forwarded in advance. The attorneys have a chance to look it over, do some case law research, form an opinion, maybe even produce a briefing to present at the meetings, to help guide policy. But this particular set of meetings had nothing of the sort. It all seemed very hush-hush.”
“Interesting,” Sam repeated. “How was Janice Everman’s demeanor when she returned from those meetings?”
Sylvia Salisbury frowned a little. “I remember her as being more serious than usual,” she said. “More stressed. And she always had classified work to do afterward.”
“Are you sure? I mean, if it was classified, how did you know about it?”
“I do have a security clearance, but I wasn’t briefed to whatever she was working on at the time. I just know that she was working on something, and I assumed it was related to those meetings because she always went into the classified room after she came back. She usually spent a couple of hours in there.”
Sam pondered. Her brow furrowed. She chewed on the end of her pen. “Is there anything that’s bugging you about events surrounding Janice Everman’s death? Anything that seemed strange?”
Sylvia Salisbury thought for a moment. An uneasy look crossed her face. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again, as if having thought better of it.
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