The President's Assassin (40 page)

Was I? No—I was two beats short of a heart attack. I could not keep the shock and amazement from my face. I felt a numbness beginning in my chest, working its way up to my throat.

“Can I get you some water?” Elizabeth asked, peering at me closely.

“No...I’m...I just remembered...”

“Remembered what, Mr. Drummond?”

It was none of Elizabeth’s business what I remembered. Without another word, I left.

CHAPTER THIRTY - FOUR

A
QUICK CALL TO
P
HYLLIS DISCLOSED THE ADDRESS AND DIRECTIONS TO
Mark Townsend’s home in Vienna, a stone’s throw from where Joan was blown to pieces at Tysons Corner.

I slid the radio dial to a golden oldies station and listened to Fleetwood Mac and Heart, zoned out the whole way.

Townsend’s home was on Bois Avenue, a French word, I believe, for “woods.” True to the appellation, the neighborhood was filled with tall, leafy oaks and well-manicured, unostentatious middle-class homes. I pulled into the driveway, parked, and made my way to a front door neatly wreathed in black velvet. I pushed the buzzer, and after a moment a young lady opened the door.

I said, “Good afternoon. My name’s Drummond. You must be...?”

“Janice Townsend.”

Obviously this was the daughter we rushed home from college. She was quite pretty, petite, and thin, and I assumed the good looks and svelteness came from Joan. I said, “I’m very sorry about your mother, Janice. I worked with your father. Is he in?”

“Is this important?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“All right. Follow me.”

So I did. The house was not at all stiff and formal like its master, probably reflecting the taste of its mistress; it was homey and furnished fairly tastefully, which is as much as you can hope for on Uncle Sam’s paychecks. We passed by a living room on the right, a dining room and kitchen on the left, and she and I ended up at a small study in the rear. Janice asked me to wait, then pushed open the door and entered alone. She emerged a moment later, stepped aside, and I went in.

Her father sat leadenly in a heavily worn leather chair beside a small fireplace, with a fire roaring, and the newspaper resting in his lap was unopened and unread. I was surprised to note that Mark Townsend, a man who probably slept in starched PJs, was unshaven, uncombed, and sloppily dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He had aged at least ten years.

I said, “Good afternoon, sir. Allow me to start with my condolences.”

“Yes...thank you.” He said, sort of absently, “Would you...uh...”

I thought he was offering me a seat, and I fell into the cozy cloth easy chair directly across from him, uncomfortably aware that this was probably Joan’s chair, and this was probably the room where Mark and Joan had spent their Sunday mornings, and I was intruding on his reveries.

As I mentioned, Mr. Townsend looked awful, and, less charitably, I thought, a little out of it. The eyes that were once unblinkingly laserlike now flitted epileptically, and his pupils appeared glassy and dilated. I presumed he had been prescribed some form of medication, which was better than drowning his grief in booze, and probably cheaper.

One of us had to speak, but I had rushed over here in a mental blur, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to start this, much less where I wanted to take it, or definitely where it would end. Fortunately, he looked at me and said, “I heard about your role in catching these...Well, you took a big chance. I thank you.”

I nodded.

After a moment he asked me, “What were they like?”

I knew why he asked, and I wanted to tell him the people who murdered his wife were worthy foes, that our collective failure to get them before the ax fell had nothing to do with our ineptitude, it had everything to do with their staggering genius. But he deserved the truth.

I took a deep breath. “I spent considerable time with the woman, MaryLou. She was wild and trampy, viscerally cunning and treacherous. I observed Hank for only a few moments. A large man, physically powerful, though a hair’s breadth from a moron. Wizner had more brains than the others, and certainly he had impressive technological skills.”

“He was the ringleader?”

“I think he planned the killings—the single acts themselves. But he had neither the talent nor the background to construct the overarching plot, to arrange the environment, to track the targets, or to design the complexities that surrounded each of the murders.”

“What about what he and his ring accomplished at Fort Hood? Some of those thefts showed impressive ingenuity and boldness.”

“That was Fort Hood, where he spent much of his life, and where he was on the inside. Also those were thefts committed against a community that had no idea he was preying on them and failed to take proper precautions. This was Washington, our turf. We were aware he was here, we were aware what he was doing, and we did our best to take him down.”

He contemplated this, and me, a moment. He said, “I hadn’t realized they were so utterly dependent on Barnes. All this, over...over what? Family shame.” He added, “In thirty-two years in the Bureau, I went up against all types. It’s dismaying to see the shades of evil that reside in some people’s hearts.” He stared at his hands a moment, and I knew this was a deeply troubled man who had spent his professional life fighting crime, and, in the end, it landed on his own doorstep in the most horrible way imaginable. He was struggling to understand why, but the truth was why no longer mattered.

After a moment he looked up at me and said, “I believe that most of us have the capacity to kill, but it is the rare few with the capacity to murder. Don’t you think that’s so?”

“Certainly that has been my experience. I served with men in combat who killed without hesitation or the slightest remorse. But if you told them to commit murder, to kill for self-gain or for a cause that was immoral, illegal, or trivial, you’d better be able to run fast.”

He said, “We come from different worlds, yet not all that different.”

“No, not all that different.”

“Well, it’s over.” He looked at me and asked, “Are you a religious man?”

“I am.”

“We buried Joan last week. At least I had the satisfaction of standing at her grave and telling her the people who murdered her are all in hell.”

I nodded. Though I was no longer so sure of it.

In fact, the time had come to find out, and I said, “If you don’t mind, I have a few questions.”

“You’ve earned that right.”

“Perhaps not.” I asked, “A few months back, you appointed a new SAC for National Security at the D.C. Metro Office. How was that decision made?”

The swift change in topic momentarily confused him. “What’s this about?”

“I’m not ready to answer that. Please.”

“All right. Well...Andy Sinclair retired from the job about seven months ago. Our board that manages sensitive selections put two names before me, John Fisk and Jennifer Margold. John’s qualifications were, in my view, more impressive than Jennifer’s. She had some brick time and she did well. But essentially she was an ace profiler without Washington or high-level bureaucratic experience, which is important for that sensitive job.”

“So you chose Fisk?”

He nodded. “Damned shame what happened to him. John was a good and able man.”

“He was killed three months ago?”

“Murdered. Yes...though closer to four months, I think.”

“Did Jennie at any point make it known to you, or to others, that she didn’t want the job?”

“I’m unaware of it. But it was my practice not to discuss personnel decisions with others, and certainly not with candidates. The FBI is not a democracy.”

“Of course. Then John Fisk was murdered, and you appointed her?”

“That’s right.”

“Maybe she mentioned then that she wasn’t interested.”

“No. She was quite pleased. Why?”

“One more question...please.” I was stretching his patience. But I saw a reluctant nod and before his mind changed, I asked, “Why Jennie in the first place?”

“Her record at Quantico.”

“She was good?”

“Good is inadequate, Drummond. From a technical standpoint, she was a virtuoso. You’re familiar with the program down there?”

“Essentially.”

“They are our seers into the minds of our society’s most serious criminals. A lot of science and fact-based study goes into their craft, but the best of them, like Jennifer, seem to have an uncanny instinct, almost a sixth sense for it.”

He got up and placed another log in the fireplace. It was April, so the room was already stuffy and overheated, though I think his medication left him immune. Sweat was running down my forehead, and I felt like I was smothering. He said, “Jennifer’s genius was recognized early. We paid for her advanced degrees. She was assigned some of our most difficult cases. Believe me, she helped stop some of the worst monsters you can imagine.”

Either it was the stifling heat or something else, but I suddenly felt ill. Truly ill. Ideas were popping off in my head, little firecrackers, and I was reeling. I abruptly stood and said, “Sir, thank you...for your time...I...but I have to leave.”

“And I’d like you to tell me what the hell this is about.”

“It might be about nothing.”

But Mark Townsend was a smart man, with a lifelong cop’s read on people. He looked annoyed and said, “Don’t try that on me. Why are you here?”

I looked him in the eye and said, “I’m not sure I understand why I’m here. But I’ll know shortly, and you’ll be the first to hear.”

He examined me a moment. “I suppose that will have to be good enough.”

“In fact, sir, it will.”

“I see. Well, thank you for stopping by.”

“Again...my deepest condolences.”

I walked out of Mark Townsend’s office and his home. I could see his daughter, Janice, observing me through the living room window blinds as I made my way down the steps and across their driveway. I sat down in the car and drew a few heavy breaths. I tried to gather my thoughts, and after a few moments, I dialed the office of Major General Daniel Tingle.

His secretary answered and I identified myself. The general came on a moment later, and unfortunately, he remembered me and said, “Drummond, don’t you and I have an appointment for a small talk?”

“And at the appropriate moment, General, I’ll be there, ass in hand, and you may gnaw to your heart’s content.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” He laughed.

“But first, I need you to do something. I need you to do it very badly, and I need you to do it very fast.”

He said, “Does this have to do with—”

“General, I need you—not an assistant—you, personally, to call the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico. I need
you
to ask what happened to Tanner’s request for assistance on that Fort Hood case. This is very fucking important.”

I gave him my cell number, and he agreed to call as soon as he had a response.

Sometimes that which should be plain and obvious is too obvious. Fact: Jennifer Margold was a renowned criminologist—in Townsend’s words, a prodigy in the foggy art of comprehending the criminal mind, criminal behavior, and criminal techniques. I could barely bring myself to think it, but who more than she had the know-how, opportunity, and means to put this together?

The Secret Service’s background checks flowed like a river through her office. She could pluck fish from that stream and apply her particular wizardry to decide whom among those mostly normal men and women best met her need, best fit her notional construct of a homicidal maniac.

She had feigned complete ignorance when Townsend first raised the connection between Jason and his father. Yet I now knew Jennie had read the file on Jason Barnes, had read it months before—noted his father’s name—put two and two together, and asked Elizabeth to retrieve Calhoun’s background report.

As a profiler and a trained psychiatrist, she would put Jason under her peculiar microscope and unmask—even contrive and embellish—a web of connections and aberrations ordinary investigators would never guess or imagine. With a little more patient digging, she would understand the unique pathologies of Jason Barnes’s family. She would be confident of her ability to create an intoxicating illusion around Jason and, through guile and cleverness, persuade the rest of us that an ugly seed in Jason Barnes’s soul had metastasized into a bloodlust.

I conjured a mental picture of Jason Barnes in the moments before his death, seated in the chair beside me, inert, confused, fearful, helpless. He had absolutely no clue what he was doing, hog-tied to a chair in that room. He was not a killer. Possibly, he was forged to become a killer, but Jason Barnes, by finding refuge in his better self and in the higher callings of his God and country, eluded whatever destiny intended for him.

I thought back over the frantic two days Jennie and I had shared, from the moment we entered Terry Belknap’s house to the final shootout. She had led me, and she had led the rest of the task force, down the road of leads and breaks, of miscues and misdirections that marked and marred the handling of this case.

It was Jennie who insisted that we interview Belknap’s Secret Service detail. She knew Jason had been kidnapped the day before, and she drew our attention to him. His running shoes were lifted from his townhouse, worn probably by Clyde Wizner at Belknaphouse, and then returned to his closet. Jennie made sure we found that damning clue, and afterward, it was a simple matter of following Jason’s trail, as Jennie filled in the colors and contours of a paint-by-numbers portrait of a tortured soul, enraged and conflicted, punishing us for the sins of his monstrous father.

The phone rang. It was Tingle, and he said, “Drummond, I think Agent Margold was right.”

“Right about
what
?”

“The folks at Quantico tried to find that file. It disappeared.”

“But...”
Think
, Drummond. “Don’t they have a logging...a tracking system...something?”

“Of course. The request was logged in six months ago. When it arrived, it was assigned a lower priority and placed in a sort of hold status. Just as Agent Margold said, their procedure is to work emergency and higher-profile cases first, then the hold cases as they get to them.”