Marianne Gorman said, “No! Wait a minute! I’m sorry. I—I can’t do this.”
“Why?” Dana asked.
“It’s…it’s dangerous. Could—could I talk to you alone?”
“Yes.” Dana looked at Vernon and Wright. “Leave the camera where it is. I’ll call you.”
Vernon nodded, “We’ll be in the van.”
Dana turned to Marianne Gorman. “Why is it dangerous for you to be on television?”
Marianne said reluctantly, “I don’t want them to see me.”
“You don’t want who to see you?”
Marianne swallowed. “Carl did something he…he shouldn’t have done. He was killed because of it. And the men who killed him will try to kill me.” She was trembling.
“What did Carl do?”
“Oh, my God,” Marianne moaned. “I begged him not to.”
“Not to what?” Dana persisted.
“He—he wrote a blackmail letter.”
Dana looked at her in surprise. “A blackmail letter?”
“Yes. Believe me, Carl was a good man. It’s just that he liked—he had expensive tastes, and on his salary, he couldn’t afford to live the way he wanted to. I couldn’t stop him. He was murdered because of that letter. I know it. They found him, and now they know where I am. I’m going to be killed.” She was sobbing. “I—I don’t know what to do.”
“Tell me about the letter.”
Marianne Gorman took a deep breath. “My brother was going away on a vacation. He had forgotten a jacket that he wanted to take with him, and he went back to the hotel. He got his jacket and was back in his car in the garage when the private elevator door to the Imperial Suite opened. Carl told me he saw a man get out. He was surprised to see him there. He was even more surprised when the man walked back to the elevator and wiped off his fingerprints. Carl couldn’t figure out what was going on. Then the—the next day, he read about that poor girl’s murder, and he knew that this man had killed her.” She hesitated. “That’s when he sent the letter to the White House.”
Dana said slowly, “The White House?”
“Yes.”
“Who did he send the letter to?”
“The man he saw in the garage. You know—the one with the eye patch. Peter Tager.”
22
Through the walls of the office, he could hear the sound of traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue, outside the White House, and he became aware again of his surroundings. He reviewed everything that was happening, and he was satisfied that he was safe. Oliver Russell was going to be arrested for murders he hadn’t committed, and Melvin Wicks, the vice president, would become president. Senator Davis would have no problem controlling Vice President Wicks. And there’s nothing to link me to any of the deaths, Tager thought.
There was a prayer meeting that evening, and Peter Tager was looking forward to it. The group enjoyed hearing him talk about religion and power.
Peter Tager had become interested in girls when he was fourteen. God had given him an extraordinarily strong libido, and Peter had thought that the loss of his eye would make him unattractive to the opposite sex. Instead, girls found his eye patch intriguing. In addition, God had given Peter the gift of persuasion, and he was able to charm diffident young girls into the backseats of cars, into barns, and into beds. Unfortunately, he had gotten one of them pregnant and had been forced to marry her. She bore him two children. His family could have become an onerous burden, tying him down. But it turned out to be a marvelous cover for his extracurricular activities. He had seriously thought of going into the ministry, but then he had met Senator Todd Davis, and his life had changed. He had found a new and bigger forum. Politics.
In the beginning, there had been no problems with his secret relationships. Then a friend had given him a drug called Ecstasy, and Peter had shared it with Lisa Burnette, a fellow church member in Frankfort. Something had gone wrong, and she had died. They found her body in the Kentucky River.
The next unfortunate incident had occurred when Miriam Friedland, Oliver Russell’s secretary, had had a bad reaction and lapsed into a coma. Not my fault, Peter Tager thought. It had not harmed him. Miriam had obviously been on too many other drugs.