the circumstances that led up to you and Agen!!
Collin having to shoot the wife of one of the wealthiest and’ most
influential men in the United States? Because if you call the, police,
if you call anybody, that is exactly what you’ will have to do. Now if
you are prepared to accept full responsibility for that undertaking,
then pick up that phone over there and make that call.”
Burton’s face changed color. He backed up a step, his Superior size
useless to him now. Collin was frozen, watching the two square off. He
had never seen anyone talk that way i I to Bill Burton. The big man
could have snapped Russell’s neck with a lazy thrust of his arm.
Burton looked down at the corpse one more time. How could you explain
that so that everybody came out all right?
The answer was simple: you couldn’t.
Russell watched his face carefully. Burton looked back at her. His eyes
twitched perceptibly; they would not meet herstl now. She had won. She
smiled benignly and nodded. The I I show was hers to run.
“Go make some coffee, a whole pot,” she ordered Burton,@
i all. And that they’re to stay put. Understood? I’ll call when I want
you. I need to think this out.”
Burton and Collin nodded and headed out. Neither had been trained to
ignore orders so authoritatively given. And Burton didn’t want to be
calling the shots on this one. They couldn’t pay him enough to do that.
LuTHER HADN’T MOVED SINCE THE SHOTS HAD BLOWN APART the woman’s head. He
was afraid to. His feelings of shock had finally passed, but he found
his eyes continually wandering to the floor and to what had once been a
living, breathing human being. In all his years as a criminal he had
only seen one other person killed. A thrice-convicted pedophile whose
spinal cord had collided with a four-inch shiv wielded by an
unsympathetic fellow inmate. The emotions sweeping over him now were
totally different, as though he were the sole passenger on a ship that
had sailed into a foreign harbor.
Nothing looked or seemed familiar at all. Any sound now would do him no
good, but he slowly sat back down before his trembling legs gave way.
He watched as Russell moved around the room, stooped next to the dead
woman, but did not touch her. Next she picked up the letter opener,
holding it by the end of the blade ‘with a handkerchief she pulled from
her pocket. She stared long and hard at the object that had almost ended
her boss’s life and had played a major role in ending someone else’s.
She carefully put the letter opener in her leather purse, which she had
placed on the nightstand, and put the handkerchief back in her pocket.
She glanced briefly at the contorted flesh that had recently been
Christine Sullivan.
She had to admire the way Richmond accomplished his extracurricular
activities. All his “companions” were women of wealth and social
position, and all were married. This ensured that no exposd of his
adulterous behavior would appear in any of the tabloids. The women he
bedded had as much to lose if not more as he, and they understood that
fact very well.
And the press. Russell smiled. In this day and age the President lived
under a never-ending barrage of scrutiny. He, couldn’t pee, smoke a
cigar or belch without the public know- i ing all of the most intimate
details. Or so the public thought.
And that was based largely on the overestimation of the press and their
abilities to nudge out every morsel of a story from its hiding place.
What they failed to understand was that while the office of the
President might have lost some of its enormous’power over the years as
the problems of a troubled globe soared beyond the ability of any one
person to confront them on an equal basis, the President was surrounded
by absolutely loyal and supremely capable people. People whose skill
level at covert activities were in another league from the polished,
cookie-cutter journalists whose idea of trailing down a tough story was