by Tim Green
Claiborne looked directly at Kurt now, as if to gauge his level of comprehension. “So I start to run for the house and I see some pushing and shoving. Someone’s going ballistic on the old man, but they get whoever it was back into the house before I get there and then they all start coming toward me.
“No one said anything, but I could see from the faces on these kids that something weird happened. They looked like they saw a ghost. The old man was ruffled a little and his face was flushed, but he seemed fine, and when I looked at Mack Taylor, I could tell by his face not to ask any questions. So we get the old man and Taylor loaded into the limo and we all pile into our car and drive back to the White House. No one said boo and I wasn’t going to ask.”
Claiborne raised his hand and briefly rubbed his eyes. “But the way I figure it, whoever the old man went to see came out of the house after him, pissed off. And whoever it was, nobody wanted to talk about the fact that they saw him.”
“But who?” Kurt asked.
Claiborne shrugged. “I don’t know, Kurt. I don’t want to know. I just hope they don’t think I saw more than I did. It had to be someone that the president wasn’t supposed to be with. More than that, I figure it was someone he couldn’t be with and it had to be someone those kids would recognize. Otherwise, why would he have them taken out?”
Kurt looked intently into Claiborne’s eyes to see if he was for real. “Do you realize what you’re saying?” he hissed, his own face awash with disbelief.
Claiborne looked down at the backs of his hands, then rubbed his eyes again before he looked up and returned Kurt’s stare with matching intensity. “Yes,” he said, jutting out his chin. “I do. I think the president had three of his own agents killed. I think they saw something they shouldn’t have, and he had them taken out. What else can I think?”
“But they’d know that you would put the whole thing together,” Kurt argued. “They’d have to know that you’d see what was happening!”
Claiborne nodded slowly and quietly said, “That’s why I probably shouldn’t be talking to you, Kurt. I’m hoping that they think I know better than to say anything. Besides, whoever it was, and whatever they said, I didn’t see or hear it. I can’t implicate the old man, so I’m no real threat unless I start asking questions.
“Hey, you know how things can be. Think about when Hoover was running the FBI. If the right people have their hands on the controls, they can do what they want. They can take out almost anyone, even if it raises eyebrows. It still comes down to proof, and after some initial whispering at happy hour, even the people inside the Service will just write off what happened as three unlucky agents. One disappears, so that’s not even a murder. One’s killed during a robbery, which happens from time to time around here. It’s not unheard of. And one . . . one commits suicide, maybe because he’s depressed over what’s happened to his friends. The point is, it can all be explained . . . The whole thing could be just a coincidence.”
Kurt looked at him sharply at mention of the word. “What about Mack Taylor?” he asked.
Claiborne narrowed his eyes, and Kurt thought he saw the first flicker of emotion since their interview began. It was hatred. He spewed out his words. “Mack Taylor would gun down his mother if the old man told him to.”
“We’re talking about the Secret Service, David!” Kurt said testily. “Not a street gang.”
Kurt still held the Service and its agents in high regard. When he was a boy, he had been with his sister in a diner in their small town outside Albany, New York, when Eisenhower came in and ate a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. Kurt never forgot the men who surrounded him, serious-looking, authoritative, and strong, the men who protected the most powerful man on earth. After that, while other boys pretended to be Dick Tracy or the Lone Ranger in the woods that bordered the village, Kurt played the role of a Secret Service agent protecting the president.
Collin had adopted his father’s respect for the Service. Despite being well-off, Kurt had raised the boy with a focus on personal integrity. Unlike a lot of people with money, Kurt didn’t keep score based on the size of a person’s bank account. And he had taught his son from an early age that integrity was the most important thing about anyone. He also told his son that the men in the Service were somehow a cut above other men.
“You’re talking insane,” he protested to Claiborne. “A SAIC would never gun someone down!”
“I didn’t say he did,” Claiborne retorted severely. “I’m just saying he would. Or he’d get someone else to. And you say it’s not like a street gang, but I say it’s like whoever’s running it. You know what it’s like. It’s like the military. You follow orders. We all presume the orders come from the good guys, but sometimes that’s not reality. Sometimes the man who lives in the White House is one of the bad guys, and you damn well know it.”
“Yeah,” Kurt said, knotting his fists, remembering the shameful exploits of some presidents. His voice rose with emotion. “Immoral people, dishonest people, that’s one thing—but this?”
Claiborne got up from behind the desk and exhaled impatiently. “I’m not here to argue with you, Kurt. I know what happened. I thought you’d want to know too. I know we don’t really know each other anymore, but the Kurt Ford I knew would have wanted to know what happened. I know how much you loved that boy . . .
“Hell,” he said bitterly, his eyes boring into Kurt’s, his voice thick with emotion, “I remember him when he was riding around on your shoulders in the backyard. I remember you getting drunk down in Grand Cayman and calling to hear his voice and having tears in your eyes when you got done and telling me how much he was like his mother . . .”
The words were like scalding water. Somehow, they were worse than Collin’s body or even the horrible police photos. Those things were lifeless, detachable. Memories, though—memories were alive. For a moment, they melted the icy layer that had frozen the inside of Kurt’s mind. He shut his eyes and forced back the tears. He wouldn’t lose control. He couldn’t. He had come to find out what happened to his boy and to do something about it. If he let go now, he might not be able to regain his composure. He might be swept away. He might put a gun in his own mouth . . .
“Shit,” his old friend continued gently, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t care what you do. Believe me, I know there’s nothing I can do. Things like this have happened before. Sometimes people find out about them. Most times, they don’t.
“I’m a survivor, Kurt. I know what I can and can’t do. I can’t stop the old man from whatever it is he’s doing and I can’t change what he’s done. I can only save my ass and hope the next guy in that office is better.”
He got up and walked to the door. Kurt continued to sit there, his hands now slowly massaging his temples. Suddenly and unexpectedly, he felt Claiborne’s hand on his shoulder. His iron grip was surprising.
“I’m sorry, Kurt,” he said.
Kurt just sat.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard the door quietly close. The register by the window began to rattle, emitting a gentle flow of cool air into the room. The second hand on a plastic clock on the desk ticked loudly. The sun outside broke through the clouds and blasted through the slats in the blinds, striping the floor with hot light. Kurt went over in his mind again and again everything he’d heard, ending with the echo of Claiborne’s words—I thought you’d want to know. I know how much you loved that boy.
It was still almost impossible to believe. But if what Claiborne had said was true—and there was no reason for him to lie—then there was something Kurt could do. There was something he would do. He didn’t care who the man was, if he was president of the United States or the emperor of China. The man who killed his son was going to die, up close and personal. If what Claiborne said was true, Kurt Ford knew from the bottom of his soul that he was going to kill the president.
CHAPTER 5
An hour’s research through periodicals at the nearby Library of Congress confirmed much of w
hat Claiborne had said, at least about what had happened to the other two young agents. It wasn’t that Kurt mistrusted Claiborne, but if there was a conspiracy afoot, he wasn’t taking anything at face value. Claiborne’s story was extraordinary and he wasn’t going to act unless he was certain. Strangely, neither of the other deaths got much newspaper coverage, and only an astute reader would have recalled either one of them, let alone connected the two. Including his son’s murder, they had each fallen approximately two weeks apart.
Everything so far supported what Claiborne had told him. Still, Kurt was determined to find an actual link between his son, the other dead agents, and the president. If the police wouldn’t or couldn’t find the girl who was with Collin on the night of his death, he would find her himself. At least he would have to try. He didn’t believe that she was a coincidence.
On his way back to the hotel, he called Collin’s friend Lou. He asked him to meet him at Harpoon Alley and bring his other friend as well. He could tell the young man wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but neither could he say no to the father of his dead friend.
Kurt believed that being in the place they’d last seen Collin might jar their memories and dislodge some detail, no matter how small, that might give him the edge he needed to find the girl. He had already seen the statements each of the friends had given the police, but he also knew that the police interview wasn’t thorough. They had been working under the presumption that Collin killed himself.
When he got to the bar, the two young men were already waiting for him. He knew Lou by sight, having taken him with Collin on a dive trip to Antigua when they graduated from Princeton, and also from seeing him occasionally when he was in D.C. on business. Kurt always tried to have dinner with Collin on those occasions, and his son usually brought one or two friends along. Kurt had always kept an open-door policy toward Collin’s friends. He believed that if he welcomed his son’s friends, he’d see more of his son.
Kurt could tell that Lou and Allen were uneasy. The sweaty pint glasses on the table were nearly empty. Kurt signaled the cocktail waitress for two more, then sat down. Golden afternoon sunlight from the street spilled in through the window and the throngs of Sunday afternoon tourists whose shopping bags cluttered the wooden floor gave the place a festive air, a dire contrast to the crestfallen faces of the three men.
“Mr. Ford,” Lou began.
Kurt held up his hand. “Kurt, I always tell you. Call me Kurt.”
Instead of complying, Lou simply continued: “We just . . . We’re sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say . . .” His lip began to quiver. Allen cleared his throat and muttered something that sounded like, “Me too.”
“Listen,” Kurt said, looking hard at them. “I appreciate what you’re saying. I know this is hard. It’s hard for all of us, but I don’t want to think about it right now. I don’t want you two to think about how you can say the right things to me to make me feel better. I feel the way I feel and I don’t want sympathy. I want your help.”
He let that sink in.
“Whatever you want,” Lou finally said.
“Yes,” Allen echoed.
“I want you to remember Friday night,” Kurt told them sternly. “That’s why I wanted to see you here. I want you to think hard about what you saw. That girl, I think she’s the key. Collin didn’t kill himself.”
The two of them looked embarrassed.
“Hey, listen to me,” Kurt said, demanding eye contact. “I’m not some crazy father who can’t stomach that his kid committed suicide. Collin was murdered!
“I know what the police are saying,” he continued, as if reading their minds, “but there’s at least one detective who thinks like I think. The clues aren’t what they look like. Look, I don’t want to have to go through it. You guys just trust me. I need your help. I need to find this girl. She was probably the last person to see Collin before he was killed. She may have even had something to do with it.”
The waitress came with two new pints. Lou finished his old one and looked up at Kurt. “So how can we help?”
Kurt could see that his son’s friends didn’t fully believe him, but he could also see that they were willing to go along with him and help him as best they could for his sake.
“Tell me what she looked like. Tell me what happened.”
“She was very pretty,” Lou said.
Allen nodded and added, “She pretty much got everyone’s attention. We all saw her when she came in.”
“She had this dark hair,” Lou continued, “long and straight, and she was pretty with these eyes that were like cat eyes or something. You know, like yellow. I mean really yellow, not like anything you usually see. And she had dark skin like she was Italian or Latino or something.”
“And a body,” Allen said, “she had a killer body.”
“Was she tall?” Kurt asked.
“Yeah,” Lou said, “she was.”
“His height?”
“About,” Lou said. “Yeah, just under six feet.”
“And did Collin know her? Had you guys ever seen her before?”
“He did,” Lou said. “He said she was the girl he’d been telling me about that he’d seen in his coffee shop. There’s a Starbucks a couple blocks from his place that he stops at most mornings before work and he told me that he kept seeing this girl. I guess he spoke to her a few times, but didn’t get her name. It was pretty casual, but he definitely recognized her from there.”
“So how did Collin end up leaving with her?”
“I don’t know how, but he went to talk to her and before too long they got up and left. He didn’t say why. We were giving him a hard time,” Lou explained with a touch of unnecessary guilt. “You know, three buddies and one gets the eyes from this nice-looking woman so we were just looking on, giving commentary, you know.”
Kurt nodded.
“So she said something to him and they got up and left,” Lou said.
“He gave us the evil eye,” Allen added.
“Wasn’t there anything she did or said that you heard?” Kurt asked. “Did Collin say where they were going?”
“He didn’t say,” Lou said uncomfortably, “but I figured he’d just take her down the street to another place, someplace a little, I don’t know, quieter, I guess.”
“Why do you say you figured?” Kurt asked.
“Well, I saw them go out and start down toward the water, but then they turned around and went up the street.”
“What does that mean?”
Lou shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, Mr. Ford, but there isn’t much besides shops and town houses if you go up King Street from here. I really thought maybe she lived there and that’s where they were going, either that or to her car, but it didn’t make sense.”
“Why not?”
Lou shrugged again and looked at Allen. “I don’t know, just too quick I guess. I mean he pretty much just said hello and they took off. I doubt she’s asking him back to her place. Two almost total strangers, you know? I’ve just never seen it outside the movies or something.”
“They could have gone to the Brew Cellar,” Allen pointed out quietly.
“She didn’t strike me as that kind of girl,” Lou said. “That’s kind of a rough place. But I guess they could have gone there.
“It’s a little dive around the corner,” he explained to Kurt. “I just didn’t think that was her scene. She looked real nice, you know?”
Allen nodded. “She did, but that’s where I thought they were going.”
“We kind of got into an argument about it,” Lou explained. “We put a bet on it. We bet . . . we bet on what was going to happen.” Collin’s friend looked down at the table and sipped at his beer.
“And you never heard her name?” Kurt asked.
Neither had.
Kurt grilled them for another fifteen minutes, but learned nothing new. They were able to identify the bartender who had been working that night by describing her to their present cocktail w
aitress. Kurt wasn’t able to convince the waitress to give out the bartender’s phone number, but she did say that the same girl would be coming on at six. Kurt would have to come back. It was a slim chance that the bartender would remember anything even if she’d heard it, but slim chances had to be exhausted.
Kurt gave the waitress his credit card and told her to keep the tab open for Collin’s friends. When they protested, he said, “No, that’s okay. I appreciate your help.”
“I feel like we couldn’t really help,” Lou said.
“Maybe not,” Kurt told him. “But maybe you did. If you think of anything, call me. I’m staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City and I might call you if I have more questions. Thanks.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ford,” Lou said as both he and Allen stood to shake Kurt’s hand.
Allen told him how to get to the Brew Cellar and then he left them. In his mind, Kurt now had an image of the woman who had lured his son away from his friends. That was what must have happened. It couldn’t be coincidence. An alluring woman who had been seen in Collin’s favorite coffee shop shows up in a bar, targets Collin, takes him almost immediately away, and later the boy is killed. Each incident in itself is possible. Things like that happen, but not all at the same time. It was more than a coincidence, and Kurt felt his blood start to pump fast. He knew they were somehow connected.
He walked up King Street and rounded the corner, intensely scanning the street as if some clue might appear in front of him. When he entered the Brew Cellar, he paused inside the door until his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He was surprised when he realized that at the back of the bar, Carol Dipper was sitting at a small table with a tall, lean, dark-bearded man. When Kurt got close, he saw the man also wore a silver hoop in each ear.
“Mr. Ford, I . . . I’m,” Carol Dipper stammered, “I’m working on your case.”