The President's Doctor

by David Shobin

  He didn’t have time to dwell on it. He worked his way to the kitchen, where Mireille was just finishing up for the day. Jon kissed her on the cheek and pulled her aside.

  “We have to talk,” he said. “But not here. Can we go to your place?”

  She saw the urgent look in his eyes. “What’s wrong, Jon?”

  “Something’s going on around here, and I don’t know what. It’s serious. What do you say—half an hour, in your apartment?”

  They traveled by separate routes. Once they were at her place, Mireille sat him down and looked him in the eye. “You’re scaring me, Jon. Talk to me.”

  He turned on her sound system, and soon an old Coltrane hit masked the background. When he began speaking, it was in a low whisper. “The Secret Service and FBI questioned me this morning. I think I’m being bugged. Maybe I’m paranoid, but the people close to me might be bugged, too.”

  She gave him an incredulous look. “Jon, I…do things like that really happen?”

  “They can, and they do. This is the United States government I’m talking about. They’re not beyond doing something underhanded.”

  “But why would they do that to you?”

  “They weren’t about to tell me, in so many words. But the gist of their questions was that they think I’m lying about the cyanide thing and probably set it up myself—”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “They also hinted that I had something to do with Rocky’s shooting.”

  Stunned, Mireille looked at him wide-eyed, at a loss for words. She slowly shook her head as she struggled to comprehend. “Do you have any idea at all what’s behind this?”

  “Not in the slightest. But I did speak to Dave, and he’s worried, too. He says he thinks there’s something going on that involves me, but he doesn’t know what. This is what he wants me to do.”

  Jon gave her the new cell phone, and they exchanged numbers. He also let her have the number of Dave’s beeper. He cautioned that the numbers were for emergency use, but she shouldn’t hesitate to call whenever she thought necessary.

  “Did you speak with a lawyer, Jon?” she asked.

  “Do you think I should?”

  “For something like this, absolutely. You have one, don’t you?”

  “Not anyone I call regularly. The last time I used an attorney was for my divorce.”

  “If I were you, I would get in touch with one soon. If you’re in trouble, you need legal protection.”

  Jon put his arm around her, drew her close, and kissed the tip of her nose. “Sometimes I think you’re all the protection I need.”

  Throughout the evening, an ominous sense of foreboding stalked the apartment like an unwelcome visitor. Jon felt it more than Mireille, but his tenseness was contagious. Nonetheless, they continued about their business, trying to pretend the anxiety was imaginary. When that didn’t work, they distracted themselves with board games, DVDs, and cooking. But everything had an edge to it, leaving them unable to concentrate. The inescapable stress was palpable, an emotional tension that didn’t wash off.

  What made Jon’s predicament all the more frustrating was that he didn’t know what it was all about. He was left with a formless sense of impending dread, much like the feeling one might have before entering a ghost-inhabited forest, or receiving an unexpected certified letter. All Jon really understood was that he was caught up in something beyond his control. That futile sense of helplessness vanquished the serenity he might otherwise have in Mireille’s company.

  Curiously, in some ways the apprehension drew them closer. They were soldiers in a foxhole, convicts sharing a cell. Although it was hard to concentrate, the jitters heightened other senses, and they developed the eroticism of caged animals. They shared a night of repeated passion which was at once needy yet unfulfilling, an itch incompletely scratched.

  Jon slept poorly. He pondered and ruminated, tossing uncomfortably in bed like a sunburned child. With Mireille snoring softly beside him, he stared up at the ceiling, listening to the ever-changing nighttime sounds, not knowing who or what was coming for him—or when.

  The next morning was cold and overcast. As Mireille got ready for work, Jon returned home. The leaden skies opened, and it began to snow, large, thick flakes swirled by the rising wind. When he reached his office later, he was going to take Mireille’s legal admonition to heart. He’d needed a good lawyer for a while, for mundane things like estate planning and a will that guaranteed Tommie’s future.

  In his bedroom, he put the new cell phone on his dresser while he changed clothes. The phone’s slender owner’s manual fell onto the floor behind the dresser. Once he was dressed, Jon got down on all fours to retrieve it. A small red package lay beside the booklet. Jon recognized it as the crumpled Marlboros pack that had belonged to Mr. Phillips. He took both items and stuffed them, along with the phone, into his overcoat pockets. When he was ready, he went to the front door and stepped outside into the steadily increasing snow.

  In retrospect, he thought that maybe he hadn’t first checked the outdoors because he was preoccupied, or that he’d forgotten about his shotgun because he was tired. But no sooner did he close the door than strong hands grabbed him and swung him around. He had a momentary glimpse of Fitzpatrick and Lewis before his face smashed into the front door. His arms were pulled roughly behind him, and his wrists were squeezed when the plastic restraints were tied around them.

  “All right already,” Jon managed, his eyes half-closed in pain. “Take it easy.”

  “This is easy, Doc. If it was the hard way, you wouldn’t be standin’ here.”

  “I already answered your questions. What do you want?”

  “We want your ass in our car. Dr. Townsend, you’re under arrest for the murder of Mahmoud al-Abed, and for conspiracy in the attempted murder of Roxanne Meredith, First Lady of the United States.”

  Although he’d been expecting something important, Jon was stunned. When it was actually put into words, the outrageousness of the allegation was mind-boggling. His mind was racing. In the flat light of a dreary, sunless morning, as the agents dragged him to their waiting vehicle, Jon felt confused, beaten, and utterly alone.

  CHAPTER 21

  In the mounting storm, the rising wind froze the snow into crystals of ice. Hands tied behind him, Jon lowered his face protectively as the agents pushed him toward their vehicle. The driven flakes stung his face like pieces of glass. One of the men unlocked the rear door, and the other forced Jon’s head down and shoved him into the back seat. The agents got in the front.

  They were in a nondescript navy-blue Taurus. Agent Johnson drove. As the car pulled away from the curb, Jon sat glumly, struggling to become comfortable with his hands locked in place. He was still too stunned to say anything. Outside, the fallen snow quickly coated the road with a glassy rime. The car’s wheels swerved as the vehicle accelerated.

  “Careful, cowboy,” said Fitzpatrick.

  Johnson gave him a look. “Who’s doing the driving?”

  “Where are we going?” Jon finally asked.

  Both men turned to him. “Shut the fuck up.”

  Their intensely dark looks persuaded Jon to keep silent. Unable to lean straight back, he listed to his left, keeping the weight off his hands. He was suddenly eager to reach headquarters and get on with it already. But looking through the car window, he was confused by their direction. The increasingly circuitous route took them down back roads nowhere near the main highways.

  “You’ll never reach the Beltway this way.”

  In the rearview mirror, Johnson glared at him. “What’d we tell you?”

  “I just don’t want to be in this car longer than I have to, and I’m telling you, this is the wrong—”

  Without warning, Fitzpatrick turned around and punched him flush in the mouth. Jon momentarily blacked out but quickly awoke to a harsh ringing inside his head. The inside of his lip was deeply cut. Blood immediately filled his lips. Rolling onto his chin, it soon dripp
ed onto his coat. He pressed his lips tightly together to stanch the flow.

  For the first time since they’d questioned him, Jon realized something peculiar was going on. Like most knowledgeable adults, he knew that some law enforcement officers abused their prisoners. It was a fact of life. But in his wildest imagination, he couldn’t believe an FBI agent would strike a Navy admiral—the president’s doctor, to boot.

  Not only would charges of police brutality jeopardize the government’s case, but it would also turn the suspect into an adversary. No, federal agents—especially the ones he knew—didn’t behave that way. All of which suggested that something else was afoot here. The fact that they were taking back roads made their intentions all the more ominous.

  From Bradley Boulevard, they turned left onto Persimmon Tree Road. Jon wondered if they might be trying to avoid the heavier rush hour traffic by taking less traveled streets. The road hugged the Congressional Country Club and they went south, as if toward Macarthur Boulevard. Indeed, traffic was sparse, perhaps due to the storm.

  A strong wind buffeted the car. The storm was becoming a true nor’easter, and the winds were increasing to gale force. The snow now blew horizontally, and icy flakes peppered the vehicle like grains of sand. The driver’s vision had to be impaired. Jon thought that continuing at their current pace was reckless. He didn’t see what Agent Johnson had to prove, but he wasn’t foolish enough to voice his objections any more.

  On its way to Macarthur, the Taurus rounded a bend and headed downhill. There were no other cars in sight. All of a sudden, what Jon had feared came true. Taking the curve too fast for the conditions, the vehicle hit an icy patch and fishtailed. The rear wheels spun out. Before Jon knew it, they were skidding sideways down the hill.

  “Shit!” Johnson cried, frantically working the wheel.

  To Jon’s surprise, Fitzpatrick let out a scream—a high-pitched, fear-filled warble Jon rarely associated with tough guys. He sat there in silent disbelief, an observer who watched events unfold in slow motion. As the car continued its sickening spin, Johnson struggled, Fitzpatrick wailed, and Jon was a spectator. Ahead, the road continued to bend, but the car went straight. Inevitably, the sliding wheels hit the side of the road.

  In his peculiar detachment, Jon was thinking with unusual clarity. He knew what was going to happen next. He threw himself onto the floor just as the rear wheels hit the shoulder. Torque and momentum did the rest. The car flipped over. It spun through the air as its wheels left the ground, completing three-quarters of a revolution before crashing heavily onto the driver’s side.

  The initial impact boomed explosively. Wedged on the floor between the front and back seats, Jon was shielded from the worst of the impact. The car continued its catastrophic roll, flipping over and over, the harsh tearing of metal merging with Fitzpatrick’s terrified screams. Jon’s body was pummeled mercilessly. But within another second, the front of the Taurus smashed sickeningly into something and abruptly stopped, but not before a blizzard of fractured glass rained through the vehicle.

  In the near-silence that followed, the only thing Jon heard was the whirring noise of a front wheel that continued to spin. Agent Fitzpatrick was no longer screaming. Jon shifted painfully in place, trying to regain his senses. As his blurring vision cleared, he opened his eyes and took stock of his predicament.

  Snow filtered through the car via a missing front window. Jon felt the blood rising to his head. As he oriented himself, he realized that the car had come to rest on the driver’s side, upside down. He felt something wet and slick against his scalp and feared that it was blood. But then he felt the cold. Craning his neck to one side, he saw that it was snow. The window on his side had been likewise blasted out by impact.

  “Hello up there?” he called.

  There was no answer, no moan, no sound. It suddenly dawned on Jon, as he lay there with his arms behind him and his feet up in the air, that this might be a freakish opportunity. Never having been a prisoner before, he never had to think like one. Yet as he mulled over the agents’ peculiar actions and equally bizarre back street driving, Jon knew he might have been offered a gift.

  Shifting uncomfortably in place, he found nothing broken. Jon again looked over his shoulder and noted that the Taurus was at a fifteen-degree angle to the ground, leaving an eighteen-inch opening he might be able to wriggle through. He inched toward it, listening all the while. Outside, the wind picked up. In its roar, he heard no passing cars. Despite the morning rush, traffic on Persimmon Tree had been sparse. He didn’t know how far they were from the road, but given the weather and the traffic, he doubted they could be seen.

  His head swelled from being inverted. The front seat was pushing backward into his hips and chest. Nonetheless, Jon managed to wriggle his upper torso into the window opening. By shifting his weight between his head, neck, and shoulders, he was able to slowly inch his way through the aperture onto the snowy ground. It was painful but steady going. At length, he was completely free of the car.

  Lying on his back was hurting his hands. Rolling onto his side, facing the front of the car, Jon immediately saw what had happened. The Taurus’ forward momentum was arrested by a huge tree. As the vehicle had skidded on its side at forty miles per hour, its windshield collided with a massive oak. The car was effectively stopped, but not before its front seat passengers had been crushed.

  Both front air bags had deployed, but it wasn’t enough. The oak’s yard-wide girth had virtually eliminated the front passenger compartment. Both of the agents were crushed beyond recognition. A gristly crimson ooze covering seat back and car frame dripped slowly downward, forming a widening scarlet stain in the snow. Jon felt sick. He realized how incredibly lucky he was for the car to have stopped when it did.

  He looked back toward the roadway. The snow was blowing so hard that he couldn’t tell where they’d gone off the road. In the gale, he couldn’t see any cars, and he knew passing motorists couldn’t see him. Unless someone had been right behind them, no one would come looking until the weather cleared. His chances for escape would never be better than they were now.

  The driver’s side door had been buckled by the impact. A portion of its mangled frame had been torn, leaving a jagged edge of metal just off the ground. To Jon, it looked as good as a serrated knife for severing his restraints. Staying on his side, he slithered backwards toward it until his hands touched the cold, bare metal.

  He had to do this blindly, working by touch. The durable plastic band was meant to be released by cutters, not twisted metal. It was also dangerous work: one slip could sever his radial artery, and he would bleed to death in the snow. But he didn’t have much choice. Quickly but carefully, Jon sawed his restraints against the sharp steel edge. It was difficult, tedious work, and he soon began to sweat. Finally, the plastic gave way.

  Wrists freed, Jon momentarily sagged against the snow, breathing heavily. Bringing his arms forward, he pushed himself to his hands and knees and then stood up. His legs were trembling. His whole body felt bruised, and he knew that tomorrow, he’d be painfully sore. That is, if there were a tomorrow. Right now, the most important thing was to get away from the accident scene as quickly as possible.

  Jon’s hands were freezing. The stinging, wind-driven flakes pelted his exposed skin. He didn’t think the temperature was all that low, but the wind-chill effect was excruciating. Fortunately, his heavy coat shielded him from the worst. He patted his pockets for the cell phone, which he found intact. Once he got away from there, he’d make some important calls. Before he left, he bent over again and reached inside the driver’s compartment.

  Owing to the spilled, warm blood, a macabre vapor rose from Johnson’s body. Jon’s hand passed through the mist and onto the agent’s sodden, sticky clothing. He found a gun in a shoulder holster and wrested it free, wiping off the bloodstains in the snow before tucking the gun in his waistband. Jon didn’t know if he was going to need it, but he felt more secure having it available.

 
; The sudden noise of a diesel engine startled him and made Jon twist toward the roadway. It was the signature of an eighteen-wheeler, and it was soon gone. Jon realized that the storm could abate at any moment, and he couldn’t continue standing there.

  Hiking up his coat collar, he lowered his chin and trudged off.

  The footing was treacherous. Jon’s regulation black leather shoes had slick new soles that made the going even more precarious. But the cold and his mounting rage spurred him on. He was soon walking as briskly as the conditions would allow. He hadn’t realized it when he’d first left the car, but it was soon apparent that he was heading home.

  He had nowhere else to go. Here he was, just having escaped after being arrested. He was physically battered, emotionally strained, and freezing. He couldn’t aimlessly wander around in that condition. At the very least, he needed shelter and dry clothes. Once he had them, he wouldn’t go to work. Nor could he go to a friend or Mireille and put them in jeopardy. Until he had a better idea of what was going on, he had to keep to himself. Beyond that, he desperately needed time to think.

  He was two miles from home. Given his current pace, the walk would take about twenty minutes. He didn’t plan to stop, and he doubted anyone could see him in the near whiteout. His brain churned with each stride. If he could get a handle on what was going on, he might be able to figure out what to do next. So far, all he knew was what they’d told him. The more he dwelled on it, the more outlandish their allegations seemed.

  He began with what little he knew. There was no disputing the fact that legitimate agents of the FBI had arrested him. Prior to that, someone had tried to kill him in his own home. In Jon’s mind, the connection between the two was now as obvious as it was absurd: someone wanted him out of the way. Yet being taken out of the way implied that he was in the way, involved in something that threatened others.

  He’d already wracked his brains trying to figure out what that was. He’d toyed with explanations involving Mireille, a malpractice scenario, and a disgruntled patient. If he let his imagination run wild, Jon supposed he could come up with a scenario involving infuriated patients or jealous ex-lovers, even up to the point of attempted murder. It went without saying that such an individual would be seriously deranged. Yet there was nothing deranged or haphazard about what was happening to him. The events of his recent life were methodical to the point of exact planning.