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Authors: Phillip Margolin

Tags: #Washington (D.C.), #Private investigators, #Murder, #Mystery & Detective, #Political fiction, #Crime, #Private investigators - Washington (D.C.), #Political, #Women college students - Crimes against, #Crimes against, #Fiction, #Women college students, #Investigation, #Suspense, #Murder - Investigation, #Thrillers, #Mystery fiction, #General, #Espionage, #Political crimes and offenses

Executive Privilege

BOOK: Executive Privilege
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Executive Privilege
Phillip Margolin

On January 8, 2007, at 1:40 in the afternoon, Doreen,
my wife for thirty-eight years, passed away.
She was my hero, the personification of class,
and as close to perfect as a human being can be.
Everyone loved her. She lives on in my heart.

Contents

Prologue

Brad Miller woke up at 6 A.M. even though his…

Chapter One

Dana Cutler’s cell phone rang moments after Jake Teeny’s pickup…

Chapter Two

Charlotte Walsh looked up from the economic report she had…

Chapter Three

Early in his presidency, Christopher Farrington had felt like a…

Chapter Four

Dana Cutler was bored out of her skull. After three…

Chapter Five

The light from dozens of crystal chandeliers illuminated the tuxedo-and-evening-gown-clad…

Chapter Six

As soon as Charlotte Walsh was in the backseat of…

Chapter Seven

When he arrived at the farm, Charles Hawkins was escorted…

Chapter Eight

Jake Teeny had an exciting job that took him to…

Chapter Nine

Shortly after moving to Portland to take a job with…

Chapter Ten

The trip down I-5 from Portland to the state penitentiary…

Chapter Eleven

Keith Evans was exhausted. As the agent-in-charge of the D.C.

Chapter Twelve

Dana drove random routes until she found the type of…

Chapter Thirteen

The chambers of the United States Senate were impressive but…

Chapter Fourteen

“Where the hell have you been?” Perry demanded angrily when…

Chapter Fifteen

Christopher Farrington had been in Iowa campaigning when the police…

Chapter Sixteen

Keith Evans had no social life, so spending the weekend…

Chapter Seventeen

On Saturday morning, Brad Miller drove to Salem for his…

Chapter Eighteen

Sunday morning, Brad and Ginny drove down I-5, past the…

Chapter Nineteen

“Sit, sit,” Susan Tuchman said when her secretary showed Brad…

Chapter Twenty

“There’s a call on two,” the receptionist told Keith Evans.

Chapter Twenty-One

Andy Zipay’s office was on the third floor of an…

Chapter Twenty-Two

Half an hour after leaving Dale Perry’s law office, Keith…

Chapter Twenty-Three

There was nothing friendly about the surroundings in which Eric…

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was the third item on the eleven o’clock news…

Chapter Twenty-Five

Claire had finished reading this evening’s installment of Peter Pan…

Chapter Twenty-Six

Brad smiled as soon as Ginny walked into the bar…

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Exposed was under siege. Arrayed behind barriers erected by the…

Chapter Twenty-Eight

When Charles Hawkins drove through the east gate of the…

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Jake Teeny?” Keith Evans asked the suntanned man in the…

Chapter Thirty

Brad Miller had not had a chance to carry on…

Chapter Thirty-One

Unlike an incoming attorney general of the United States who…

Chapter Thirty-Two

When Keith Evans and Maggie Sparks followed the Webster’s Corner…

Chapter Thirty-Three

In junior high school, Brad had erased a file with…

Chapter Thirty-Four

Dana Cutler drove aimlessly to give the adrenaline in her…

Chapter Thirty-Five

Keith Evans stayed at the hospital with Maggie Sparks while…

Chapter Thirty-Six

“We have problems,” Charles Hawkins told President Farrington.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“Good morning, Brad,” Susan Tuchman said.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Brad was pacing the fifth-floor corridor of the St. Francis Medical…

Chapter Thirty-Nine

At the crime scene, as best he could remember, Brad…

Chapter Forty

A week after the West Coast shoot-outs at the hospital…

Chapter Forty-One

Gary Bischoff ’s law office occupied part of the first floor…

Chapter Forty-Two

Brad got back to his apartment just before three after…

Chapter Forty-Three

The events that followed Brad’s call to Keith Evans would…

Chapter Forty-Four

Keith Evans had survived gunfights and gone one-on-one with hardened…

Chapter Forty-Five

Dana Cutler and Brad Miller were watching CNN’s coverage of…

Chapter Forty-Six

Morton Rickstein was exhausted. It was 9:30 P.M. and he’d…

Chapter Forty-Seven

By midnight there were no cars in the remote section…

Chapter Forty-Eight

Dana finished giving a detailed statement to the FBI at…

Chapter Forty-Nine

Brad Miller wrapped his arm around Ginny Striker’s shoulders, and…

Epilogue

Christopher Farrington sat by himself in his mansion in Portland’s…

Prologue

Brad Miller woke up at 6
A.M.
even though his meeting with Roy Kineer, the retired Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was scheduled for nine. He was too nervous to get back to sleep, so he went into the bathroom to get ready for the most important meeting of his life. Under normal circumstances Brad would have been anxious about being in the presence of an intellectual giant. Not so long ago, he had been reading Kineer’s landmark opinions in law school. But it wasn’t Kineer’s stature that made Brad’s hand shake as he shaved. What frightened him was the possibility that he was wrong, that he’d misinterpreted the evidence. And what if he was right?

Brad stared in the mirror at his half-shaved face. Nothing about his average looks or personal history was outstanding. He was twenty-six, with curly black hair, a straight nose, and clear blue eyes—not ugly but certainly not male model material. He was a fair athlete who was good enough to be the second best player on his college tennis team, but his athletic skills had never been championship caliber. Brad had done well enough in law school to make the
Law Review
, but he hadn’t won any other academic prizes, and he was employed as a junior associate in Oregon’s largest law firm, which meant that he occupied the lowest rung on a very high ladder. Until today, he had been a fairly insignificant member of the human race. If he was right, he was about to become a key figure in the biggest political scandal in American history.

 

The sound of running water woke Dana Cutler, who never slept easily. It took her a moment to remember that she was in the FBI safe house and another moment to decide that there was no threat. Brad Miller was in the room next to hers, and he was probably taking a shower. While her breathing eased, Dana lost herself in the shadows that were shifting across the pale white ceiling. When she was calm she got out of bed.

Dana had been sleeping in a T-shirt and panties and she looked sexy until she took off the T-shirt, revealing the scars on her breasts and stomach. Plastic surgery and time had turned most of them into pale, oddly shaped souvenirs of something really bad. While she washed and dressed, Dana turned her thoughts to the meeting she would attend later this morning. She prayed that it would usher in a return to normalcy. She was tired of the violence, tired of being hunted; she longed for calm and quiet days.

 

Brad finished in the bathroom and dressed in his best suit. Before going downstairs, he pulled the shade aside and looked out the window of the safe house, which was separated from the woods by a wide field. The leaves were changing from green to vivid reds and yellows. The sky was clear, and the colors looked even more intense in the strong sunlight. Below his window, an agent was patrolling the grounds. The guard exhaled and his breath turned white in the chill fall air.

Brad turned away from the window and headed down to the kitchen. He had no appetite, but he knew he had to eat. He would need all of his energy when he met with Justice Kineer, who had come out of retirement to head up the investigation that was occupying the front page of every newspaper in the country. United States presidents had been suspected of sexual infidelities, financial schemes, and criminal activity, but no president had ever been the subject of a murder investigation while serving in office.

Brad didn’t recognize the agent who was making coffee on the kitchen counter. He must have come on duty after Brad went to sleep.

“Want some?” the agent asked, pointing at the pot.

“Yeah, thanks. What is there to eat?”

“There’s a full larder. Take your pick—eggs, bacon, cold cereal.”

Normally Brad was a pancake and omelet man, but he didn’t have much of an appetite this morning so he settled for a bowl of cold cereal and then carried a mug of coffee into the living room. He would have liked to get a breath of fresh air, but Keith Evans, the agent-in-charge, had instructed him and Dana Cutler to stay inside and away from the windows. Brad suddenly felt sick when it dawned on him that he’d made himself a perfect target for a sniper when he’d pulled aside the shade to look outside earlier.

“How’s the coffee?”

Brad turned and saw Dana descending the stairs. She was wearing a business suit, and it threw him. He had never seen her dressed up before.

“It’s good, strong,” he said. “I didn’t sleep so well last night and it’s just what I need.”

“I didn’t get much sleep either.”

“You should have something to eat before we go.”

Dana nodded and walked into the kitchen. Brad watched her. Even though they were on the same side, Dana made him nervous. He had grown up in a nice, middle-class family. Until the Clarence Little case entered his life, he had followed one of the approved middle-class routes through life—college, law school, employment in a good firm with plans for a family of his own and a house in the suburbs. There was no place in this design for acts of extreme violence, the exhumation of corpses, hanging out with serial killers, or trying to bring down the chief executive of the United States of America, things he’d been doing way too much of lately.

Brad heard the guard in the kitchen say good morning to Dana before walking toward the back of the house. Plates rattled on the kitchen table, Dana making something for breakfast. Brad knew for a fact that he wouldn’t be sitting in this house surrounded by armed guards if it weren’t for her. He would probably be in his broom closet–size office working on a memo for one of the partners concerning some minuscule aspect of a multimillion-dollar real estate closing. Of course, some would say that being bored to death was better than being dead for real.

BOOK: Executive Privilege
8.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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