The President's Assassin (2 page)

But maybe they weren’t husband and wife. You have to be careful about assumptions at a murder scene. The dead guy could be her lover, her tax accountant, or her killer. Also, the two gents by the wall kept glancing at the male corpse and largely ignored the woman. As a general rule, all corpses are relevant to a crime, and perhaps not in life but in death, all bodies become equal. Yet in most multiple murders, one corpse is the main event and the rest are simply victims of the three Ws—wrong place, wrong time, wrong company. I wondered if the young lady in the foyer was their daughter.

We all contemplated the corpses for a moment. Margold asked, “Who was the first responder?”

Again the heavier guy responded, “Danny Cavuso. Works out of the Tysons Corner cell. Because of proximity to the residence, the Tysons office is on standby for problems. A telephonic check was supposed to be made every morning when Hawk left for work. When no call came by six-thirty, a call was made here. No answer. So Cavuso was dispatched.”

“Alone?”

“Andy Warshuski from his office was his backup. The front door was unlocked. They swept the house and grounds, and called in the incident. When we arrived, they left together.”

“So they’re the only two who departed the site?”

“Except the killers.”

“Keep it that way. Complete quarantine. Nobody departs unless I say so.”

He replied, “Already got that word,” and she returned to her visual inspection, leaving me to ponder interesting fact number five. Perhaps she was worried about forensics getting disqualifying foot- and fingerprints from everybody who entered the house. Or perhaps I was missing something important.

Anyway, lawyers are not forensic experts, but eight years of criminal law does afford a few skills and insights. The right side of the man’s head had a small entry hole—dead center in the temple—and though I couldn’t yet observe an exit wound, the gray-and-red mess splattered on the expensive wallpaper suggested the bullet had passed through cleanly. I moved around a bit, formed a mental image of the male victim alive and seated upright. The shot had been fired flat and level, I decided, as if the shooter positioned the gun right next to the guy’s temple, and boom. But more likely the killer had taken the shooter’s crouch and fired from a distance, which accounted for the level trajectory. The lady of the house had taken her bullet in the right rear quadrant of her neck. From the debris splattered messily across the near side of the table, the shooter had stood slightly to her right rear with the weapon sighted slightly downward. I made a mental note to think about that.

That the bullet had passed cleanly through the male’s head rather than ricocheting around the skull, as so often happens, suggested a powerful weapon. And from the way the lady back at the front door had been flung backward, you knew it was more than a .22, certainly, though I thought the size of the entry wound in the man’s temple indicated something smaller than a .45.

I walked around and visually checked the exit wound of the male victim. The whole side and rear quadrant of his skull was missing, too large a hole for a .38, unless the bullet had been a hollowpoint or been modified in some nasty way to boost the tissue damage. The bullet had to be lodged in the wall—good news for the ballistics folks.

Also, the attack had come as a complete surprise to the couple at the table. That was obvious. Neither victim had tried to stand up or fend off the attack, or had even acknowledged their killer. Like, “Could you please pass the sugar, Martha,” then—
bang
—“Auugh.” No, actually, more like, “Martha, could you pass another slice of that delicious toast?” “Of course, dear, and would you—”
bang
,
bang
, Augh, Augh.

Special Agent Margold appeared to be in a hurry, because after only a cursory inspection, she asked, “How do we get to the basement?”

The skinnier agent said, “Back by the kitchen. Second door on the right. Ben Marcasi’s down there.”

She glanced at me and said, somewhat curtly, “Come along.”

So I came along.

We went through a short passage to the hallway and found the second door on the right. As we walked, I tried to piece together why the Agency was on the hook for this thing, and more selfishly, was Sean Drummond on the hook for anything? From the looks of things and the presence of the Bureau I ruled out the ordinary stuff: burglary, drug deal gone sour, and so on. In fact, what happened inside that dining room looked like an execution. There had been no conversation between victims and killers, no argument over money, no vengeful message, no negotiation, not even an exchange of good-byes.

Generalizations, like assumptions, can be misleading, yet it’s a fact that executions nearly always are the tradecraft of mobsters and drug gangs. Both like to regard murder as just business, a swift and elegant way to settle a dispute, end a partnership, or terminate a misbehaving employee. But wiseguys would bring in only the Feds, and drug gangs might draw in the DEA but should not concern the CIA. A blown witness-protection thing? That could involve the Agency if the victim was a witness in an international terrorism case, I guess. So that was a possibility. Or was the dead guy at the table a CIA employee? Maybe this was some weird courtesy thing between federal agencies: Hey, one of your guys got whacked this morning—want to come see?

I smelled coffee as we passed the kitchen. For some reason, the odor sent a chill down my spine. Not three hours before three people awakened, never realizing they were dressing for the last time, sharing their final breakfast. Sad. So I followed Agent Margold down the stairs and into the basement, and at the bottom of the steps she yelled, “Ben!...Ben!...”

“Back here,” a voice replied.

The basement was large with a high ceiling, essentially a spacious, open room with tan wall-to-wall, no sliding doors, no exterior entrances, not even windows. It was more casual and sparsely furnished than upstairs, and there was a feeling like it didn’t see much use, but in the far right corner I spotted a tidy pile of toys; an Erector set, two balls, a toy truck, and so forth.

Like that, the couple upstairs were no longer clinical clue magnets; they were now Grandma and Grandpa, they took the grandkiddies to the Smithsonian and remembered all their birthdays, and their murder became more than an incident: It became a tragedy for some family and a matter of more than passing interest for me. Wondering if Margold’s mood reflected some personal connection, I asked, “Did you know these people?”

She faced me and said, “Open your mouth again and you’re gone.”

We were getting along famously.

Anyway, we proceeded to a door and entered a small room that, from the condition of the drywall and unmarred whitewash, appeared to be a recent addition.

A heavyset middle-aged male stood in the middle of the floor, running his hands through his balding hair, and he turned to face us as we entered. The absence of other living beings in the room indicated this would be Ben. The room—small and claustrophobic, because in addition to Ben were some ten wall-mounted video monitors, a high-tech communications console, a brown Naugahyde lounge chair, and a single bed in the far corner. Also, strewn here and about, three additional corpses.

Nearest to the door and us sat a young woman who had taken three or four slugs on the right side of her body. She was seated in an office chair at the commo console, her body pitched to the left, her right hand stretched toward the console, and it struck me she might’ve been reaching for something when she got popped. The other two corpses were males, late twenties and mid-thirties, wearing wrinkled gray suits and more bullet holes.

The younger of the two men had removed his jacket and was prone on the bed, and if you ignored the small hole in his right temple and the splatter of skull viscera on the far wall, the expression on his face was weirdly placid and content—arms crossed, feet crossed; his sleep had turned permanent without so much as a whimper.

The second male corpse was seated on the lounge chair, jacket slung over the chair back, eyes wide open, and his expression, not placid, was a mixture of shock and agony. His fingers were clutched at his throat, just like the lady at the door, where he’d also been shot. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he’d had a heart attack. In a way he had. They all had.

Another thing got my attention. The dead guy on the bed had removed not only his jacket but also a holster containing a Glock automatic. A matching holster and Glock pistol were still hooked to the belt of his dead partner. I eliminated my CIA employee theory and leaned toward the blown witness thing. “Who are these people?” I asked Margold.

Margold was busy feeling the neck of the young lady at the console and said, “Shut up” to me, and then to Ben, “Roughly same time of death as the others.”

“Yeah.” After a long moment, he noted, “Nearly simulta neous.”

“Same weapon as upstairs, right?”

“Uh...maybe. Same caliber. I’m thinking a thirty-eight.”

“About. Had to be a silencer.”

“Had to be,” he agreed. After a moment, he said to her, “Can you reconstruct yet?”

“Yeah...it’s pretty straightforward. Who’s at the front door?”

“June Lacy.” He added, “Been with us three years. From upstate Minnesota, I think...engaged to get married next week.”

“Uh-huh. What time did Hawk’s driver arrive?”

“Same time every morning, 6:15. Name’s Larry Elwood. Anyway, Larry’d pull into the driveway, leave the car idling, come to the front door, and June, or whoever was on shift, took over from there.”

Agent Margold was examining a clipboard on the console, apparently a security log, because she said, “The entry’s right here. Six-twenty, Elwood arrived.” She looked at Ben. “‘Took over from there’? What’s that mean?”

“The team had a morning routine. June would roust the Hawk out. She’d escort him out to the car, and Elwood drove him in. The Hawk liked to be at his desk at 6:45 sharp, even on Saturdays. You can tell by the condition of the house the man was a stickler...We got serious heat if we threw him off schedule.”

“So that’s what happened,” Margold replied after a moment. “Elwood—at least someone who
looked
like Elwood—pulled into the driveway, came to the door, rang the bell, only this time, when Lacy answered, she took it in the throat.” She added, “Nothing arbitrary about that throat shot. Drowned out her warning.”

Ben nodded. “I just reviewed the tape. The car pulled up at 6:20. Like you said—five minutes late. And you’re right, a guy who looks like Elwood walked directly to the front door. Obviously, the cameras only canvass the exterior, though.”

“Yeah, well...it’s fairly obvious what happened inside. After he killed Lacy, he stepped inside, capped the Hawk and his wife, then rushed down here and did these three.” She pointed at the bank of monitors. “Let’s see the tape.”

I didn’t think it was that obvious, but Ben raised no objections, nor did I. Ben moved to the console, pointed to one of the monitors, pushed a few buttons, and rewound till you could see the time was 6:19. He pushed play, and after about thirty seconds a shiny black Lincoln Town Car with impenetrably darkened windows crossed in front of the house and pulled up the driveway, not stopping till it was nearly to the garage door. A male got out, walked to the front of the car, then you lost him for a few seconds as he crossed the front of the car, but he reappeared as he headed up the walkway to the entrance. The camera lost his image again when he walked under the overhang supported by the concrete columns. So you couldn’t observe what happened at the door, though from June Lacy’s corpse, you knew
what
happened, just not how.

The driver, Larry Elwood, wore a dark suit, was heavyset and black. One of those silly chauffeur’s hats with a visor obscured his face. Also he walked slowly, almost haltingly, and slightly hunched over, like he had a stomach cramp or was trying to work a kink out of a bum leg. Or perhaps as though he was hiding his face, disguising his physical appearance from the camera.

Margold picked up on it, too, because she asked Ben, “You’re positive that’s Elwood?”

“Looks like him. Hell, though, I’m not sure of anything.”

I suggested, “Maybe there was more than one of them.”

Ben asked, “Who’s he?”

I asked, “Who’re you?”

“Ben Marcasi.” He turned to Agent Margold and again asked, “Who the hell’s he?”

Margold looked at me. “I thought I warned you to keep your mouth shut.”

“Right. Just, you know...forget what I said.”

But obviously she couldn’t forget what I said. She informed me, “Ben’s Secret Service...the deputy chief of the White House security detail.” She waved an arm around. “This house falls under his supervision. These are his people.”

Goodness. It all came into focus—the poop was hitting the fan, and clearly they knew it. What wasn’t at all clear was
who
had died upstairs, and what I was doing in range of the splatter.

So to clarify that first point, I asked, “And the dead guy upstairs...Mr. Hawk?”

“A code name. The deceased male upstairs is Terry Belknap...White House Chief of Staff.” But she obviously wasn’t interested in providing more insights or information. She asked me, “Why do you think there were two shooters?”

“Did I say
only
two?”

“I don’t...uh, okay, two or more. Why?”

I allowed her a moment to digest her own question before I suggested, “You understand that the couple upstairs were shot nearly simultaneously, right? He was facing his wife and he took it in the right temple. The geometry suggests his shooter fired from the living room entry into the dining room. Had the same shooter nailed Mrs. Belknap, the bullets would’ve struck her in the front or possibly left frontal lobe. But the Mrs. was facing the Mr. and she took it in the rear left quadrant of her neck. Ergo, a second shooter popped her from the kitchen entry into the dining room.”

Agent Margold nodded and said, “You could be right. But there are—”

“Not could be...It’s a fact.”

“All right...”

“That’s two shooters who gained entry. If they found a way to get two inside, why not three? Or four? Lacy opens the front door and takes it in the throat. Two, three, or four guys race in. One moves to the living room, one to the kitchen. The third and maybe the fourth sneak down here.”