“You mean . . .”
“Yes. Josh didn’t think he was chosen because he was so talented. He believes he was selected because Ben Lambert didn’t consider him to be quite smart enough.”
***
Derek Johnson paced his room at the Ramada Inn like a lion stalking back and forth in its cage. When he’d told Josh earlier today that he planned to stick around to observe for any late adverse effects from RP-78, his friend offered to let him continue to crash on the couch of his apartment. Derek figured that since Josh now had some free time, he’d be happier to have his apartment to himself, so he declined with thanks. No, if he were going to stay, he’d get a hotel room and rent a car. He didn’t want to inconvenience Josh. Besides, he needed some privacy as well—because he had a decision to make.
Derek stopped his pacing long enough to bend backward, then rotate his torso a few times to work out kinks in his back put there by nights spent on call room beds and a few hours of sleep snatched on Josh’s couch. He looked at the bed in his hotel room and silently gave thanks that he was sleeping in more comfort now.
He pulled out his cell phone, then replaced it in his pocket without dialing. Derek glanced down at the industrial-grade carpet of the room and marveled that he hadn’t worn a path in it with his pacing.
He could call Josh, but what would he say? “Josh, I’m bored. Can I hang out with you?” No, he had to let his friend do his thing. Meanwhile, Derek wondered what his own thing really was.
He fell back onto the bed, totally at loose ends. He could go out to eat, but he wasn’t hungry. He picked up the TV remote, then put it down without turning on the set. There’d been a local paper outside his door that morning, but it lay unopened on the dresser. He couldn’t decide what to do.
He’d heard it said that having trouble making a decision represented a decision. Maybe his hesitancy to make the call should tell him something. Then again . . . Suddenly, Derek almost jumped off the bed, grabbed the room’s card key that lay on the dresser, and headed out the door. Maybe a long walk would help.
***
Rachel tossed the magazine she’d been reading onto the coffee table in front of her, got up from her sofa, and said, “Allison, I want to go out.”
“We told Josh we’d stay here,” Allison said.
“I don’t think Chavez is going to come after us. Besides, you can bring your pistol.
“Did you decide you were hungry?” Allison asked. “I suppose we could eat somewhere.”
“No,” Rachel said. “Maybe after we get through with this I’ll feel hungry, but there’s a visit I need to make. It’s been on my mind since I got back, but obviously I’ve been a little busy until recently trying to stay alive. Now it’s time.”
Allison shrugged. She picked up her purse, walked to the suitcase to retrieve her pistol, and dropped it into the bag. “Okay. I’ll drive and try to keep you safe. Where do you want to go?”
“I need to talk with Ben Lambert’s wife.”
To Allison’s credit, she neither argued nor asked for an explanation. Ten minutes later, both women were in Allison’s car, headed to the address they’d found via the Dallas phone directory.
Lambert had been dead for over two weeks. Once the widow was convinced that the ashes returned to the funeral home were those of her husband, she arranged for a memorial service. That had taken place over a week ago. Now, Ruth Lambert was engaged in the tough task of putting together her life without the partner who’d shared it for many years.
“I don’t have a black dress with me,” Allison said. “Think this is okay?”
Rachel roused from her deep thoughts long enough to take in Allison’s white blouse and dark brown slacks. “It looks fine to me. I don’t think it’s necessary to wear black when visiting this long after the funeral.” At least, she hoped so, since she was wearing gray slacks and a red blouse.
They found the Lambert home easily and parked at the curb. There were no cars in the driveway and no activity in the yard. A small purple wreath was on the front door. Rachel opened the car door, but before exiting she turned to Allison. “You can stay here if you like. I don’t think I’ll be long.”
Allison shook her head. “No, I’m going in with you.”
The women walked to the front door, where Rachel rang the bell. In a few moments Rachel heard footsteps. A woman in her early sixties opened the door. “Yes?” Her response was curious, neither inviting nor off-putting.
“Mrs. Lambert?” Rachel asked.
“Yes? I’m Ruth Lambert.” Mrs. Lambert wore a light gray dress. Her dark brunette hair showed a few touches of gray and was neatly styled. Her eyes were slightly swollen, but otherwise her face betrayed no evidence of what she’d been through. She wore her wedding ring, but no other jewelry.
“I’m Rachel Moore. I was on the South American trip with your husband. I . . . I’m one of the people who helped try to resuscitate him. And I . . . I accompanied his body home.” She took a deep breath. “I came to tell you I’m sorry—for your loss, and for what happened to his body afterward.”
Rachel held her breath, trying to read Mrs. Lambert’s expression. For a few seconds, there was no response. Then the woman gave the faintest of nods, stepped aside, and said, “Please come in.”
The house was probably quite nice, undoubtedly cheery and pleasant under normal circumstances. Unfortunately, these circumstances were far from normal. Rachel and Allison were escorted into the living room, where the drapes were drawn. The only illumination came from lamps on two side tables flanking the couch.
Mrs. Lambert gestured her guests to chairs opposite the sofa where she’d been sitting. On the coffee table in front of the couch were stacks of photo albums. “I’ve been looking at pictures . . . remembering our times together . . . trying to figure out where my life is going,” she said after she was seated.
“I realize how difficult things are right now,” Rachel said. “I wanted you to know that I was one of the people who tried to revive Dr. Lambert. It appears his terminal event was sudden, and if it helps any, he didn’t suffer.”
“Did you know my husband very well?”
Rachel wasn’t sure how to respond. “I didn’t meet him until this trip, if that’s what you mean.”
“But you’d recognize him. There’s no doubt in your mind that he really died—that the man in that casket you brought back here was Ben Lambert.”
“No doubt. There were four of us who worked trying to save him. We reached him right after we heard him fall, and he was already gone.” Rachel started to reach over and pat Mrs. Lambert’s arm, but at the last minute she withdrew her hand. “No, I’m sure it was your husband who passed away.”
A single tear began to wind its way down Mrs. Lambert’s cheek. “I didn’t want to believe it. I’ve held out hope that this was all a mistake. I kept expecting Ben to call, to come in that door, to tell me it was all a big mix-up.” She looked down at the albums in front of her. “But now what I have left are photos and memories.”
Allison edged forward in her chair. “Mrs. Lambert, I’m Dr. Allison Neeves. I worked with Ben at the clinic, and I want you to know that all of us extend our sympathy to you. Is there anything we can do?”
Mrs. Lambert shook her head. “No. Ben and I didn’t have children, but the people from our church have been very supportive. He had a huge life insurance policy, so money is no problem. It’s just . . . it’s just hard to think about life without him. Ben was due to retire at the end of this year. I wanted to travel. He didn’t seem as interested as I was, but I felt sure that would change. But now . . .” Mrs. Lambert’s lower lip trembled, but no more tears came.
Rachel thought about it. Obviously, Ruth Lambert had no idea about the passports and bank account they’d discovered in her husband’s office. Was the lack of interest Ben showed in traveling with his wife simply a sign that, while she was planning their retirement together, he was preparing to run away with another woman?
As Rachel wal
ked back to Allison’s car, she tried to process what she’d learned. Was it still possible that Lambert had been framed? Or was he guilty? Had he been murdered to keep him quiet? And, if so, who was behind the plot?
***
Josh drove slowly toward Madison’s home. He was mentally reviewing the ex-president’s case when his cell phone rang. He touched the button on his steering column that would route the call via Bluetooth to the speaker of his vehicle’s radio. “Dr. Pearson.”
“Josh, this is Sixto. Got a minute?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I need to bounce something off you. I just did an exploratory laparotomy for internal bleeding on a middle-aged male who was in an auto accident. Wasn’t wearing his seat belt, and the air bag didn’t fully inflate, so he got thrown around quite a bit. He was bleeding mainly from a large laceration of the liver, but I sutured it and got everything controlled.”
“Okay,” Josh said. “So what’s the problem?”
“The surgery went fine. His vital signs are stable, no evidence of further blood loss, but he’s a lot slower coming out of the anesthetic than either the anesthesiologist or I would like. I mean, a lot slower.”
“Neurologic status?” Josh asked.
“No localizing signs. I went ahead and got an MRI of the head, and it’s negative. This isn’t head trauma or a stroke.”
“Medications?”
“Got the history from his wife because he was pretty well out of it when the paramedics brought him in. High cholesterol, controlled with Lipitor. History of depression, but not on any meds. Anything I might be missing?”
Josh thought a bit. “Any herbal stuff? A lot of people take St. John’s Wort for depression, but don’t consider it a medication because it’s not a prescription item. Not sure if it helps, but it can really potentiate the effect of anesthetic drugs. That’s why anesthesiologists ask patients to discontinue herbals of any kind prior to elective surgery.”
“His wife said no, but given the way he’s behaving now, maybe he’s been hiding it from her. I’ll check and call you back.”
In fifteen minutes, Josh’s cell phone rang again. “Sixto here.”
“Yes?”
“The wife went home and looked through his medicine cabinet. She found an almost empty bottle of St. John’s Wort and another full one next to it. My guess is he’s been taking it for some time and not letting her know.”
“And for whatever reason—embarrassment, insurance—he didn’t want to see a doctor and get a prescription for an antidepressant.”
“Exactly,” Sixto said. “I’ve talked with the anesthesiologist. Now that we know this, I think we’ll just watch the guy—his respirations are good, no circulatory collapse.”
“I wish the people we deal with would tell us the whole truth,” Josh said.
Sixto apparently chose to ignore that, because his next words were on a totally different subject. “While I have you on the phone, how are the two people I did emergency tracheotomies on? When I last saw them, they seemed to be doing okay after the trach tubes were removed. If there’s too much scarring of the skin incision areas, I can do a revision. It’s a fairly simple plastic surgery procedure under local.”
“Both of them are fine. Rachel is at her apartment, and Allison Neeves is going to stay with her for a couple of days. I’m on my way to check Madison, but so far, so good with him as well. Thanks for your help.”
“Thanks for yours,” Sixto said.
By now, Josh was in the neighborhood of Madison’s home. He’d been here only once before, and that time he was in the back of a car driven by a Secret Service agent, but he was pretty sure he could find it again.
This was an upscale area of town, although Madison’s home was neither larger nor nicer than many of his neighbors’ houses. Like theirs, his two-story house was situated on a lot a bit over an acre in size. As Josh recalled, the home was fronted by a long drive with a guard, a Dallas police officer, at the entrance. That shouldn’t be too hard to find.
He was scanning the houses he passed for that guarded driveway when he heard a loud crack, and his windshield seemed to explode, throwing tiny shards of safety glass at him. Josh leaned against his seat belt, stretching it to its full extent as he flung himself to the right and downward until his head was below the level of the dashboard. He jammed his foot onto the brake, but the vehicle had already come to a sudden stop, apparently hitting something solid.
Josh jammed the gearshift lever into Park and turned off the engine. He’d ended up with the front end of his red Subaru Forester buried in a privet hedge that bordered someone’s lawn. He wasn’t sure what was behind or beneath the shrub, but whatever it was, his vehicle had hit it solidly.
His first instinct was to run, but then he thought better of it. Josh couldn’t outrun a bullet, and if whoever had taken the shot wanted him, they probably wouldn’t hesitate to try for a moving target. He could only hope this attempt was a one-and-done effort. Maybe it was simply calculated to warn him—but of what?
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, and with his head still well below window level of his vehicle, punched in 9-1-1.
25
Mildred Madison watched and listened as her husband spoke to his chief of security, Agent Jerry Lang. Madison didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t stamp his foot or throw things. She realized this was essentially a pro forma protest, one that made him feel as though he was in charge. “Is this really necessary?” he said. “I’ve been confined to a hospital room for almost two weeks. Now I’m finally home, but you tell me I’m not safe, so I have to hide in a secure room.”
Before Lang could answer, Mildred patted her husband’s arm. “David, this isn’t the first time we’ve had to go to this room or one like it. When we were in the White House, there were a few occasions when we had to do the same thing. And if it weren’t necessary, we wouldn’t have added a secure room like this one when we moved into the house.” She smiled, a bastion of calm amidst a tornado of trouble. “It won’t be too long.”
“Mrs. Madison is right,” Lang agreed. “This won’t take long. As we speak, the Dallas Police Department is deploying additional officers to guard all the access points to this house. I’ve recalled all off-duty Secret Service agents, and when the detail is at full strength, we’ll establish a perimeter inside the house in case Chavez manages to breach the outer security. When all that’s in place, you’ll be free to move about once more.”
“I have no idea why anyone would think I’m this important,” Madison grumbled.
Mildred remained quiet, but she knew that wasn’t true. She realized exactly why her husband’s life was currently in danger. And he did, too. Oh, well. In a few days, some of the pressure will have lifted.
Madison pointed to the briefcase Karen Marks had brought when she accompanied him here. “Might as well use our time doing something useful. Let’s finish going over everything that piled up while I was out of circulation.”
Marks pulled some papers from the case and spread them on the round table in the corner of the large room. Then she and Madison huddled side by side as she filled him in on various matters.
Mildred Madison retrieved the book she’d brought with her when the agent came to move her to the safe room. She made herself comfortable in a chair in the opposite corner from her husband and opened her book, a well-worn and dog-eared copy of Swindoll’s Hope for Our Troubled Times.
Like so many of the years that had gone before, these were indeed troubled times. When they left the White House, Mildred thought perhaps that she and David could step away from the problems that beset the world and live a quiet life of retirement. Unfortunately, that had not been the case. Oh, well. God was in control. As she had for so many decades, she rested in that thought.
***
Rachel saw that the call was from Josh. “I expected you to call earlier,” she said.
“Everything okay over there?” he asked.
“We’re fine,” Rac
hel asked. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
“Someone took a shot at me when I was on my way to Madison’s home,” Josh answered. “I wanted to make sure he hadn’t bothered you guys.”
“Are you all right?” Rachel beckoned Allison over and punched the speaker button on her cell phone. “Did the police catch the man who shot at you?”
Allison frowned and leaned closer to the phone. Rachel mouthed, “He’s fine.”
“Yes, I’m all right. No, the police didn’t catch the man, but we all have a pretty good idea of who it was. I called Lang after it happened. Madison is fine. The private nurse has already been by and given him his shot. They’re on lockdown until the police catch Chavez, and I’m not going to try to go there this evening.”
“Where are you?” Rachel asked.
Josh explained that he’d been tied up, first with the police, then with the homeowner and his insurance agent. Now he was riding with the wrecker driver to drop off his car and get a rental.
“Well, let me hear from you when you have the rental car,” Rachel said.
“Will do,” Josh replied. “What did you all do after I left?”
“I went to see Mrs. Lambert.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to express my sympathy for her loss,” Rachel said. “After all, I was with her husband at the end.” She went on to summarize her visit with Ruth Lambert. “She talked about the plans she had for the two of them to travel after his retirement. I get the impression he wasn’t as enthusiastic as she was
about it.”
“Maybe that’s because his idea of travel was going out of the country with a redhead who’s much younger than her,” Josh said.
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