Page 12 of The Night Of
My best guess took me to a lower segment of the back wall, someplace the FBI hadn’t hacked to pieces. I ran my hands over the paneling. The wood covered up steel-reinforced concrete walls, and the bullet would have slammed into the concrete and stopped dead, especially after losing velocity.
There. Lower than the fed weenies were looking. They’d been so focused on how right they were with their own trajectories and calculations they missed the buckle and wave in the paneling. It wasn’t obvious to the eye, but when you ran your hand over it, you could feel the impact. I dug the bullet out with my car keys, popping it into my gloved palm. Score one for the FBI champ and his gloves. I pulled the nitrile off, trapped the bullet inside one of the fingers, and shoved it in my pocket.
I walked the perimeter of the bedroom, keeping away from the pool of Baker’s blood and the yellow evidence tents scattered on top of our footprints. I arrived at the opposite side of the room, as if seeing things from 180degrees would change everything. It didn’t. It was the same bloody mess, the same cold, silent bedroom.
The remains of President Baker’s life were littered left and right. A cell phone charger was plugged into the wall next to the nightstand. I could practically see him sitting there, checking his phone, reaching for the cord in the wall, plugging it into the charger.
How was Baker dead?
I used to shake President Baker’s hand every morning and ask him about the ball game. Used to measure how his day had gone by the width of his smile when I walked him back to the Residence. I used to listen to his stories in the elevator, used to trade bad knock-knock jokes and smuggle pizzas up to the Residence for him and his wife, past the White House chefs. Jonathan usually ate dinner with Baker and the First Lady, and that had been just another way for us to sneak more time together. Time to make eyes at each other and trade idle chitchat, and then, when we were bolder, to pretend we weren’t ignoring the president as we talked for an hour, two, then three, while he and the First Lady finished the pizza I’d brought for them. I’d known this man. How was he dead?
Baker’s tie was on the floor, balled up like he’d torn it off and dropped it. Cuff links lay on top of the dresser.
His old, ratty duffel was on the floor beside the bed. That was strange. There was an FBI evidence tag on it: they’d gone through it and photographed everything, then left it there. Not pertinent to the shooting, I guessed. But why hadn’t Baker’s valet unpacked his things? Why weren’t his socks and his underwear put into the drawers? The president could open a drawer in any of the hotel rooms, military bases, or houses he stayed in and find his things waiting for him, set there by the advance team. The advance team were fucking magic elves. Theypoofed the president’s favorite brand of briefs, deodorant, and chewing gum into existence, no matter where they were in the world, every time.
I dug through his bag. Two pairs of boxers, two pairs of socks, two shirts to sleep in. Running clothes. A worn-out paperback, the same one I remembered from two years ago. He’d been trying to read a chapter a month, he’d said. Sneak a page whenever he could get five minutes of downtime. Here he was, still trying to finish it. I don’t think the dog-ear had moved much through the pages.
I didn’t know if I wanted to find evidence of a man on the brink of his rationality, on the edge of a fateful, terrible decision, or if I wanted to find something worse. Something sinister. Did I want to prove Baker had been worried about a conspiracy that wasn’t there, or did I want to learn that the conspiracy he feared had taken his life? Did I want to find a murder hidden in the depths of this tragedy?
So far, I’d found nothing.
I pushed open the door to the president’s bathroom. There was more life in here. Or less death. Away from the overwhelming amount of blood and the stench that had gotten inside my brain, I could think again. I leaned back against the wall and breathed, trying to clear my head.
Baker’s toiletries were on the counter, his toothpaste and toothbrush and floss, his deodorant and his electric razor. The First Lady’s toiletries were there, too, her own toothbrush and toothpaste and deodorant, and a jar of hand lotion and a set of night and day face creams. Her makeup was in a red zippered travel bag, her mascara lying on top like she’d just freshened up and left it out.
Clothes hung on the small ready rack. Baker’s suit for the next day. The First Lady’s outfit, fitted pants and a silk blouse with a tweed sport coat and knee-high boots. Earrings and jewelry were laid out on a velvet shelf. The president’s watch and a fresh set of cuff links were next to her jewelry.
I checked the shower. The soap had been used, and the shampoo was upside down. Baker had been in his rumpled dress shirt and suit pants when we found him, so he hadn’t showered. In the photo from the hospital, though, his wife was in jeans and a T-shirt and a knee-length cardigan. The sweater had flooded around her when she collapsed.
There was a window in the bathroom, overlooking the lower terrace. I had been watching it all night when I passed the back of the cabin on my rounds. The windows were lined with steel shaped into squares, like old English cottage windows, and they opened to a seven-foot drop down to the terrace and the stairs that led to the pool deck. Outside the window to the right was the flat roof of the toolshed. The shed had been made to look like an extension of the cabin, covered in river rock and blending into the woods that hugged the buildings.
I checked the window. It moved easily, noiselessly. The First Lady opened the windows often, here and at the White House, to bring in fresh air. Freaked us the fuck out the first time she did it, setting off all kinds of alarms and bringing a response team to her sitting room in the Residence. She’d been gracious as we flatfooted all over her tea with the spouses of the congressional leaders, even inviting us to sit and stay and have cookies while we calmed both our breath and our blood pressure.
Outside, Camp David was a soggy mess, the president’s backyard a swamp of puddles, rain water rushing down the flagstone steps. Rain spattered on the ground and splashed onto the window panes. If there had been evidence out there before the storm, it was long gone now.
I checked the ceilings, too. Exposed beams ran the length of each room, varnished the same color as the paneling on the walls. Between the beams, the ceiling was smooth and white, boring. But this wasn’t the ceiling of any normal cabin, and we in the Secret Service had a few tricks up our sleeves the FBI didn’t know about. Each of those long, boring panels was removable, and we could—and did—get up into the rafters regularly to check for electronics: bugs, cameras, bombs, or anything else. Hell, we even checked for rodents. No one wanted to smell a dead rat or squirrel while you were up here, especially not if it had been baking in the summer heat.
I clambered onto the sink and pulled the panel back, then grabbed the joist and hauled myself up. My head was on a swivel, moving left and right as I shone my flashlight through the attic space. I didn’t know what I expected to find. Someone would have to stay on the joists if they were hiding up there, or they’d come down through the paneling. The ceiling tiles weren’t that much thicker than drywall and couldn’t support the weight of a man. Especially not a well-fed Secret Service agent. Over the years, we’d had more than one agent step wrong and come crashing through, and then had to make an emergency drywall repair in the hours before the president was due to arrive at Camp David.
But I found nothing. No hidden men, no hidden cameras, no hidden bugs. The attic wasn’t dusty—we were up there too often for anything to settle—and there were no telltale trails for me to find, to point to and say,Aha, here, we have a clue.
My despondency grew, as did my reluctance to go back to Jonathan. Fuck, I’d already come down from Camp David once that day and said the president was dead by his own hand. Did I have to do it again? And to Jonathan’s face this time?
I lowered myself out of the attic and slid the panel back into place.
There was a mark on the edge of the panel, hidden where it tucked into the exposed beam on the left side, right near where I and everyone else had put our hands to slide it back. I peered at the discoloration, no more than the size of a pencil eraser, as if a fly had been squished during the slide of the panel once and never cleaned up. I pulled out my phone and took a photo, zooming in as far as I could. I looked at the photo and frowned.
Something caught my eye at the periphery of my vision. I blinked, trying to focus on whatever it was. Something out of place. Something wrong. I couldn’t see it, though, not yet. The third pass around the bathroom, it registered. There was something written on the mirror over Baker’s sink.
I hopped down and stood in front of the mirror, staring past myself and into the glass, as if I could peel the writing out of the silvered pane. It was impossible to see from this angle, and no matter how I crouched or squatted or pressed my face against the mirror, all I could make out were smudges. As if someone had pressed their finger to the mirror when the glass was fogged, writing a message in the condensation.
I turned on the shower as hot as it would go and let the room fill with steam. Slowly, letters appeared as the steam clung to the mirror everywhere except where oil from the writer’s finger had smeared across the glass. I turned the shower off and took another photo.
Flowerterrible
What the fuck?
I stared at the mirror and my phone, as if my camera had betrayed me and the writing was different, somehow, from what I’d captured. No, it was the same nonsense—two words smashed together. Why? Why write this?
