our job and taking her out before the President gets stuck like a side
of beef. An eyewitness! Remember that term. Before I found out about
this little piece of evidence you left behind, I figured our asses were
cooked anyway. Guy leaks the story somehow, some way and it snowballs
from there. Some things we just can’t explain, right?
“But nothing happens and I figure maybe we all got lucky and this guy is
too afraid to come forward. Now I find out about this blackmail shit and
I ask myself what does that mean.”
Burton looked questioningly at Russell.
She answered, “It means he wants money in exchange for the letter
opener. It’s his lottery. What else could it mean, Burton?”
Burton shook his head. “No, it means this guy is fucking with us.
Playing mind games. It means we got an eyewitness out there who’s
getting a little daring, a little adventurous.
On top of that it took a real professional to crack the Sullivan nest.
So this guy is not the type who’s gonna scare too easily.9@
“So? If we get back the letter opener aren’t we home free?” Russell was
dimly beginning to see what Burton was getting at, but it still wasn’t
clear.
“if he doesn’t keep photos of it, which might end up on the front page
of the Post any day now. An enlarged photo of the President’s palm print
on a letter opener thatcame from Christine Sullivan’s bedroom on page
one. Probably make for an interesting series of articles. Grounds enough
for the papers to start digging around. Even the slightest hint of a
connection between the President and Sullivan’s murder and it’s over.
Sure, we can argue the guy’s a whacko and the Picture’s a clever
forgery, and maybe we’ll succeed. But one of those photos showing up at
the Post doesn’t concern me half as much as our other problem.”
“Which is?” Russell sat forward now, her voice low, almost husky, as
something terrible was beginning to dawn on her.
“You seem to have forgotten that this guy saw everything we did that
night. Everything. What we were wearing.
Everybody’s name. How we wiped the place clean, which I’m sure the
police are still scratching their heads over. He can tell them how we
arrived and how we left. He can tell them to check the President’s arm
for traces of a knife wound. He can tell them how we dug one slug out of
the wall and where we were standing when we fired. He can tell them
everything they want to know. And when he does, they’ll at first think
he knows all about the crime scene because he was there and was actually
the trigger man. But then the cops will start to’realize that this was
more than a one-man show. They’ll wonder how he knows all this other
stuff. Some of which he couldn’t have made up and which they can verify.
They’ll begin to wonder about all those little details that just don’t
make sense but that this guy can explain.”
Russell stood up and went over to the bar and poured herself a scotch.
She poured one for Burton too. She thought about what Burton had said.
The man had seen everything.
Including her and an unconscious President having sex. Miserable, she
pushed the thought from her mind.
“Why would he come forward after he’d been paid off ?”
“Who says he actually has to come forward? Remember like you said that
night? He could do it from a distance.
Laugh all the way to the bank and take down an administration. Hell, he
can write it all down and fax it to the cops.
They’ll have to investigate it and who’s to say they won’t find
something? If they got any physical evidence from that bedroom, hair
root, saliva, seminal fluid, all they need is a body to match it
against. Before there was no reason for them to look our way, but now,
who the hell knows? You get a DNA match against Richmond, we’re dead.
Dead.
“And so what if the guy never comes forward voluntarily?
The detective on the case is no bonehead. And my gut tells me that,