by Sandra Brown
He led her into a lovely, tastefully furnished parlor. A cheery fire was burning in the marble fireplace. Vanessa, wearing a ruffled dressing gown and looking like the frail heroine of a Victorian novel, reclined on a divan. She was still attached to an IV.
Standing before the fire, one arm propped on the mantel, was the President of the United States.
No one had suggested that he would be here. There’d been no waiting motorcade or entourage outside the house. The only Secret Service agents in sight were the two who’d been in the entry when she came in, and she had supposed they were guarding Vanessa. She tried to mask her trepidation.
“Hello, Miss Travis.”
She unglued her tongue from the roof of her mouth and said, “Good evening, Mr. President.” She could barely hear her own words over the drumming of her heart.
“Hello, Barrie.”
Barrie looked down at Vanessa. “Mrs. Merritt.”
She smiled. “After all we’ve been through together, I think you should call me Vanessa.”
“Thank you.” Taking the chair the senator indicated, Barrie faced the three of them like a witness on the stand—or a condemned woman facing a firing squad.
“You appear to be feeling much better than you were the last time I saw you,” she said to Vanessa.
“I am much better. How’s Gray?”
Barrie shot a glance toward Merritt, but his expression didn’t change. “He’s shocked by what happened to Spencer Martin last night.”
“As we all are,” Armbruster said with insincere sorrow.
“Gray sends his regards,” Barrie said to Vanessa.
“I can’t thank the two of you enough for taking me out of Tabor House. Under George’s care, I would have died there.”
Barrie felt like thumping her temple with the heel of her hand. What was this, Wonderland? Was she Alice, who’d just tumbled through her mirror into an otherworldly tableau? Since stepping across Senator Armbruster’s threshold, nothing had been as she’d expected it. For all the sense it made, their dialogue could have been gibberish. Surely Vanessa didn’t believe that George Allan, acting singly, had devised to kill her.
Barrie saw no alternative but to go along with this bizarre script and see where it led. “Thank you for clearing up the matter of the kidnapping.”
“It was a mix-up that needed straightening out.”
As simply as that, Vanessa dismissed it. The senator interrupted an awkward silence by offering Barrie a drink. “What can I get you?”
“Nothing, thanks. What I’d really like is to get down to business. Why’d you invite me here?”
“We—the three of us—felt that we owed you this courtesy, Miss Travis.” The senator was apparently the mouthpiece for the proceedings. Since greeting her, Merritt had said nothing, but she was constantly and uneasily aware of his baleful gaze.
“As I said earlier,” Armbruster continued, “we want to clear up this unfortunate misunderstanding, lay it to rest. Because of all the ill will felt by both sides, we’re offering you an olive branch in the form of an exclusive story.”
“What story?”
Armbruster looked at David, who glanced down at Vanessa, then at Barrie. “Vanessa and I are getting a divorce.”
Barrie was too stunned to speak, but she didn’t have to. He went on to explain. “Dalton Neely will make a statement to the media tomorrow at noon, although he doesn’t know it yet. He’ll read this letter from me to the American people. I’m giving you an advance copy.” He removed an envelope from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and handed it to Barrie.
“May I read it now?”
He nodded. She opened the envelope and took out two sheets of stationery bearing the presidential seal. After a sugary salutation, she reached the body of the letter and began to read aloud.
“ ‘The death of our son took a terrible toll on Mrs. Merritt and myself. The demands of this office also have contributed largely to her unhappiness. Neither of us blames the other for the dissolution of the marriage. We accept our individual blame for its breakdown, although I must assume the larger share of responsibility. Countless times, being president superseded being an attentive husband.
“ ‘Vanessa is an incredibly unselfish woman. None other would have endured as much as she has for as long as she has. I have nothing but deep admiration and affection for Vanessa Armbruster Merritt.’ ”
Barrie stopped reading and raised her head. She might just as well have been looking at three formal portraits. Their features were frozen into perfect, perpetual pleasantness.
She returned to the letter. “ ‘Vanessa and I realize that you, the American people, will be as disillusioned and saddened as we by this turn of events, but no one is immune to this dilemma which is experienced by millions of families in our world community. We ask only that you make no harsh judgments and that you appreciate the honesty with which we’re dealing with this unhappy situation.
“ ‘Following the example set by my father-in-law, Senator Armbruster, Vanessa and I have dedicated ourselves to public service. We plan to continue serving you in whatever capacity you’ll allow us. Speaking for myself, more than at any other time as your president, I need your wholehearted support. Thank you.’ ”
It was signed David Malcomb Merritt, President of the United States. Barrie folded the letter and replaced it in the official envelope. “Very eloquent, Mr. President,” she said. After a beat, she added, “And very fraudulent.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Barrie took a deep breath and mentally leaped off the high diving board. “You’re not heartsick over this divorce, Mr. President. You’re relieved. Because I’m certain it’s part of a deal, right? A deal struck with Senator Armbruster and Vanessa.”
“This is an outrage,” Armbruster blustered. “You’ve surpassed even your audacity, young lady. We invited you here tonight—”
“Hoping that you could purchase my silence with an exclusive story about the divorce in the First Family. Sorry, Senator, no trade. No deal, Mr. President.” She stood up and approached the divan on which Vanessa was reclined. “How could you settle for this,” she said, smacking the envelope against her palm, “when he killed your baby?”
“I’m calling the Secret Service.”
“No, Clete,” David ordered, halting his father-in-law at the door of the parlor. “Let’s have this out. Miss Travis has been slinging mud at me for weeks, influenced no doubt by Gray. It’s time she heard my side of the story.” Facing her, he said, “I did not kill Robert Rushton Merritt. I don’t know how you reached that ridiculous and slanderous conclusion, but you’re wrong.”
“Vanessa intimated to me that you did. After the events of these last few days, I believe her.”
“You mistakenly inferred that from something she said at a time when she was so depressed she couldn’t think straight.”
Barrie kneeled down so that she and Vanessa were on eye level. “When you contacted me that first time, were you clinically depressed? Or were you afraid? Did he smother the child while you were in the room, or did you find him standing over the body, pillow in his hand?”
“The baby died of SIDS.”
Ignoring the President, Barrie grabbed Vanessa’s hand. “Are you going to let him get away with murdering your baby and trying to murder you?”
“I’m warning you, Miss Travis, one more word and—”
“Your father talked you into this deal, didn’t he? Wasn’t it he who suggested that you maintain your silence in exchange for a peaceful divorce? Do you know why he urged you to accept that deal?”
“Because he knows I’m afraid,” Vanessa said faintly. “I want out of my marriage to David.”
“Be quiet, Vanessa,” David shouted. “Don’t tell her a goddamn thing.”
Barrie appealed to her. “Why do you think the President agreed to a divorce when it could impede his chances for reelection? What reason would be compelling enough for him to grant you a divorce?”
Vanessa looked distraught, but her wide blue eyes were fixed on Barrie. “I… I don’t know.”
“Because your father threatened to expose a terrible secret if your husband said no.”
“I’m warning you for the last time—”
“David, let me call in the Secret Service,” Clete implored.
Barrie spoke above them. “Your father knows where the body is buried, Vanessa. In this instance, that isn’t simply an expression. There really is a buried body. Of another baby. Born years ago to a woman named Becky Sturgis. That baby wasn’t wanted either, so your husband killed it. And your father helped him cover it up.”
Vanessa looked at her father. “Daddy? Is this true?”
“Of course not! The woman’s a lunatic, Vanessa. Everybody knows it. You can’t trust a word she says.”
“You can’t bluff your way out of this, gentlemen,” Barrie said. “Shutting me up won’t help. Too many people know. It’s over.”
“Like hell it is!”
Responding to the President’s angry shout, the Secret Service agents opened the door. “Mr. President?”
Merritt impatiently motioned for them to leave. “Get out,” he yelled. “This is private.”
“Who’s going to do your dirty work this time, Mr. President?” Barrie asked. “Dr. Allan tried to kill himself because of his contribution to your treachery.”
“He tried to kill himself because of his own inadequacy. He’s the Barrie Travis of medicine, a total screw-up. He couldn’t even blow his own brains out successfully.”
“What about Spencer Martin?” she said. “You had him killed last night because he knew too many secrets. Was he in the room when you smothered the baby?”
“You had Spence killed?” Vanessa cried.
David shot her a venomous look, then he said to Barrie, “I did not kill the baby. How many times do I have to say it? If Spence was here he’d tell you the same thing. I did not kill him. She did!” he exclaimed, jabbing his finger toward Vanessa.
Vanessa cried out in shock and outrage.
“Vanessa didn’t kill her child,” Barrie said. “No more than Becky Sturgis killed her baby son. You strangled him.”
“Oh, my God. My God!” Vanessa wailed.
“That’s right,” Barrie told her. “Then he beat that young woman unmercifully. At least he learned one lesson from that experience. He learned to use more subtle tactics.”
Vanessa rounded on her father again. “Is this true, Daddy? Did you know?”
Looking as flaccid as a deflated inner tube, the senator backed into a chair and plopped down on the seat. His posture was indicative of the guilt weighing down his shoulders, twenty years’ worth of it.
Vanessa cried out as though in agony. “It is true. Oh, God! Why’d you let me marry him? Why’d you encourage me to have his baby?” She sobbed. “I wanted a baby so much.” She looked at her husband as though looking into the embodiment of evil. “How could you kill him? He was so helpless, so sweet.”
Merritt barked a harsh laugh. “You’re such a sentimental fool, Vanessa. And so false. The baby was driving you to distraction. You couldn’t stand his crying. You were inept at taking care of him, just as you are at everything. You didn’t love that baby. The stuff that Gray squirted into you, and which you’ve so ridiculously romanticized now, was slime. It should have been flushed. That would have saved us both a lot of trouble.”
Barrie was stunned by the ugliness of the President’s words. Armbruster too was shocked into speechlessness.
But Vanessa was not. Eyes blazing, she came to her feet. She swayed weakly, but gripped the back of the divan for support. “You son of a bitch, it wasn’t Gray. It was Spence.”
“Spence?” Merritt exclaimed.
Spence? Barrie’s mind reeled.
Seemingly unmindful of the IV tube in her arm, Vanessa moved toward her husband, dragging the wheeled rack behind her. “Yes, Spence. Spence!” She virtually spat the name in his face. “You thought Gray was my lover because you wanted to think it was him. A man of Gray Bondurant’s inflexible sense of duty and right and wrong, sleeping with his best friend’s wife!” She laughed tauntingly.
“Get real, David. Gray was only nice to me because he knew about your other women. It never occurred to you that it was Spence who was fucking your wife,” she said in that same gloating voice, happy to destroy his illusions about the man in whom he’d placed so much trust.
“But he did fuck me. And I wanted him to. Only thing, the joke was on me. He wasn’t any better at it than you are. He was a cold, heartless bastard just like you. He was actually glad that the baby died.” Her voice cracked. “Spence wanted no part of him, and that broke my heart. But at least my son wasn’t yours. At least I didn’t have your baby.”
Merritt slapped her.
That launched Armbruster from his chair. Roaring like an old lion, he charged his protégé. But with very little effort, Merritt shoved him aside. “You’re a joke, Clete.” David laughed. “You’ve got no power, figuratively or literally. You’re a eunuch. You don’t have the balls to bully me into making any decision.”
Then, looking at his wife, he said, “I’ve changed my mind about the divorce, Vanessa. Not about granting it, but about the reason. I think it’s time the world discovered what a cunt their sweetheart really is.
“As for you,” he said to Barrie, “if you know what’s good for you, you’ll fuck off. And fuck Bondurant too, while you’re at it. Although no doubt you already have.”
He strode to the door and flung it open.
Gray Bondurant was standing on the other side of the door with Attorney General Yancey and a phalanx of federal agents.
“Mr. President, you have the right to remain silent—”
“What the hell are you doing here, Bill?”
Gray pushed past Yancey and Merritt and leaned down over the two women. “Are you all right?”
Holding the weeping Vanessa against her chest, Barrie nodded. “She’s okay.”
“What about you?”
“I’m fine. Shaken. He looked ready to kill me with his bare hands.”
“I’d have killed him first,” Gray said. His eyes held hers for a five count, then he turned away and assisted in the business at hand, arresting the President and Senator Armbruster.
Merritt wasn’t responding in a dignified, peaceable manner. In fact, he was raving like a maniac. He screamed invective at Yancey, but to Yancey’s credit he maintained his cool while reading the President his rights.
Then Merritt began ranting that Vanessa, not he, had killed their son, and that anything he’d done since then had been to protect her. “She smothered him. It was her, not me. She’s the crazy one.”
“I caution you to say nothing more, Mr. President,” Yancey said. “You’re implicated in another crime in Mississippi.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Clete! Clete, tell them how sick Vanessa is.”
Armbruster opened his mouth, but his lips were slack. His jowls jiggled when he tried but failed to form words.
“Senator Armbruster will have a chance to testify,” Yancey told Merritt. “His testimony will be as valuable to us as that of the eyewitness.”
“There was no one in the nursery except Spence, Vanessa, and me. Spence is dead, and she’s lying.”
“I’m not talking about the death of Robert Rushton Merritt,” Yancey explained. “We have an eyewitness to the murder in Mississippi.”
Finally, the attorney general’s words seemed to penetrate the red curtain of David Merritt’s rage. For the first time, he seemed to grasp the bleak reality of his situation. He glared long at Yancey, then turned to Clete.
Clete gazed back at the man he had made and had now destroyed, but at tremendous personal cost.
Merritt’s eyes narrowed to malicious slits. “You sly son of a bitch,” he hissed. “What did you do?”
The Exclusive
“Senator Armbruster was there when I regaine
d consciousness.”
Becky Sturgis’s soft drawl filled the otherwise silent television studio. The floor crew had locked down the cameras. They were as immersed in her story as the millions of people watching it on TV around the world. She was staring down at her hands, which were clasped tightly in her lap.
“When I came to, I remember hoping that I was waking up from a terrible nightmare, but it was real. My baby was dead. His little body was still lying on the floor where David had dropped it. There was a lot of blood. I guess it was mine. David had hit me very hard.”
“David Merritt, the President?”
“Yes, ma’am. Only he wasn’t president then.”
She wore a scarf to cover the permanent depression in her temple, where her scalp had been crudely sewn over her crushed skull. She was very self-conscious of the disfigurement. When Barrie met her, she’d been dressed in a prison jumpsuit. Tonight she was wearing a simple dress. Other than the scarf, she was unadorned.
“After he hit me that first time, I don’t remember anything until I woke up and Senator Armbruster was kneeling beside me, feeling for a pulse in my neck. He was startled that I was still alive because David had told him I was dead.”
“He’d also told Senator Armbruster that you killed the baby.”
“I didn’t,” she said fiercely. “David did. And I told the senator the truth. He was very kind. He told me not to worry, that he would take care of it.”
“What did he do?”
“He called a doctor, who came to the trailer and sewed up my scalp and gave me a shot for the pain.”
“You weren’t taken to a hospital?”
“No, ma’am.”
“When were the police called?”
“Senator Armbruster called the sheriff’s office. When the officers got there…” She began to cry. Barrie didn’t probe. She gave her time to compose herself before starting again. “Senator Armbruster lied to them. He told them I’d killed my baby. He told them to arrest me. They took me downtown and started questioning me. They wanted me to sign a confession, saying I’d committed manslaughter. I refused. For a while.”
“And then, you did.”