and the blood with specimens of the President of the United States. It
would sound like a joke, but they would do it. Of course they would do
it. Richmond’s prints were already on file. His DNA would be a match.
Her body would be found, her blood would be checked and they would be
confronted with more questiorts than they could possibly have answers
to.
They were dead, they were all dead. And that bastard had just been
sitting in there, waiting for his chance. Not knowing that tonight would
bring him the biggest payoff of his life. Nothing as simple as dollars.
He would bring down a President, in flames and tatters, crashing to
earth without a chance of survival. How often did someone get to do
that? Woodward and Bernstein had become supermen, they could do no
wrong. This topped the hell out of Watergate. This was too fucking much
to deal with.
Russell barely made it to the bathroom. Burton looked over at the corpse
and then back at Collin. They said nothing, their hearts pounding with
increased frequency as the absolute enormity of the situation settled
down on them like the stone lid of a crypt. Since they could think of
nothing else to do, Burton and Collin dutifully retrieved the PI
sanitizing equipment while Russell emptied the contents of her stomach.
In an hour they were packed and gone.
THE DOOR CLOSED QUIETLY BEHIND HIM.
Luther figured he had a couple of days at best, maybe less. He risked
turning on a light and his eyes went quickly over the interior of the
living room.
His life had gone from normal, or close to it, straight to horror land.
He took off the backpack, switched off the light, and stole over to the
window.
Nothing–everything was quiet. Fleeing from that house had been the most
nerve-racking experience of his life, worse than being overrun by
screaming North Koreans.
His hands still twitched. All the way back, every passing car seemed to
bore its headlights into his face, searching out his guilty secret.
Twice, police cars had passed him, and the sweat had poured off his
forehead, his breathing constricted.
The car had been returned to the impoundment lot where Luther had
“borrowed” it earlier that night. The plate would get them nowhere, but
something else could.
He doubted they had gotten a look at him. Even if they had, they would
only know generally his height and build.
His age, race and facial features would still be a mystery, and without
that they hadnothing. And as fast as he had run, they probably figured
him for a younger man. There was one open end, and he had thought about
how to handle that on the ride back. For now, he packed up as much of
the last thirty years as he could into two bags; he would not be coming
back here.
He would clear out his accounts tomorrow morning; that would give him
the resources to run far away from here.
He had faced more than his share of danger during his long life. But the
choice between going up against the President of the United States or
disappearing was a no-brainer.
The night’s haul was safely hidden away. Three months of work for a
prize that could end up getting him killed. He locked the door and
disappeared into the night.
CHAPTER FOUR
AT SEVEN A.M. THE GOLD-COLORED ELEVATOR DOORS opened, and Jack stepped
into the meticulously decorated expanse that was Patton, Shaw’s
reception area.
Lucinda wasn’t in yet, so the main reception desk, solid teakwood and
weighing about a thousand pounds, and costabout twenty dollars for each
of those pounds, was unmg manned.
He walked down the broad hallways under the soft lights of the
neoclassical wall sconces, turned right, and then left and in one minute
opened the solid-oak door to his office. In the background, a smattering
of ringing phones could be heard as the city woke up for business.
Six floors, well over one hundred thousand square feet in one of the
best addresses downtown housing over two hundred highly compensated
attorneys, with a two-story library, fully equipped gymnasium, sauna,