Page 24 of The Night Of
I let go of her hand. “Do you have any idea where he got the gun?”
She shook her head, and another soft, whimpering sob escaped her.
“Did your husband injure himself at all before going to Camp David?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“What does Belgium mean to your husband?”
She started, jerking sideways and staring. Her wide eyes glistened. “Belgium… means everything to Steven. It’s where we met, in Brussels.” She rubbed her lips together. Looked away. “It’s where we all met. Steven and Jonathan and me. Andrew, too. God, those were the best years of our lives.” She stared into the past, watching her youth play out in the middle distance, the memories of her husband falling in love with her, and her with him.
It all goes back to Belgium.A weight settled on my chest. “Did your husband meet someone named Carl Rose in Belgium?”
“Carl Rose?” She frowned. Came back to the present slowly. Blinked. “Carl… yes, Steven worked with Carl in Brussels. They were friends, but… I haven’t seen Carl in years. I didn’t think they were still close.”
Silence grew between us. She picked apart her tissue, flattening the crumpled, tear-soaked Kleenex and then folding it into a square, only to unfold it and do it again. “You have another question,” she whispered. “I know you need to ask it.”
“How would you describe your husband’s mental state in the last few days?” I didn’t want to lead her. I didn’t want to put words in her mouth. Words likedepressed, anxious, at the end of his rope. Desperate. Lost. Hopeless.
“I never thought…” Her eyes closed. “Looking back, in hindsight… Hewasdepressed. He’s been depressed. I think it started a few months ago. The presidency, it’s horrible. And then the Hardacre thing. Then when people were murdered…” She swallowed, looking up at the ceiling and fighting for her voice. “We hadn’t had sex in a long time. He got Viagra from Dr. Fernandez. It helped, at least physically, but he was still not really there. Not in the moment. This job… it can destroy a man, Sean.” She turned to me suddenly, so fast I jerked back. Her gaze seared into mine, pinning me to the couch. “Watch out for him,” she said. “For Jonathan, before this place breaks him, too. He’s a good man, like Steven was.”
“Do you—” My voice cracked. I tried again. “What do you think happened, ma’am?”
She stared at the gauze-covered windows, through the rain-spattered panes. “I think this place broke him. And I think he got lost.”
I waited, watching fat teardrops roll down her cheeks and fall from her chin. Her eyelids were drooping. I helped her lie down and tucked the blanket around her shoulders. “Sean,” she murmured. “What happened? Why weren’t you there? Why weren’t you with us?”
What the fuck could I say? I ran my fingers over her hair as her eyes slipped closed, and then I got the fuck out of there as fast as I could.
On the stairs, I fell against the wall, sliding down until I was crouched against the wainscoting, curling into a ball as I tried to breathe. Nothing worked right, not my eyes, not my lungs, not even my heart. Everything was tingly, clenching, burning. I couldn’t feel my heartbeat, and there was a train roaring at me from somewhere. My fingernails gouged at the old wood, my forehead pressed to the railing as I tried to drag in oxygen that wasn’t there. I tore at my tie, ripping it free, then clawed open the top two buttons of my shirt. This was it. I was dying. I was having a fucking heart attack right here on the steps of the Residence. Fucking served me right.
My breath came back in a rush, and I sucked in air like I’d just surfaced from a free dive down to the Mariana Trench. I gasped, coughed, choked, and fell forward down the next step with my legs sprawling, my forehead against the baseboard.
Why weren’t you there? Why didn’t you save him, Sean?
Why did you do it, Sean? Why did you ruin everything?
What you did, Sean, caused your president to die. Don’t you get that?
When had the voice in my head become Jonathan’s? Hadn’t I had enough punishment for a lifetime? No, of course not.You’ll never be punished enough. Not for what you did.
I could understand, for a single moment, why Baker had looked at his gun and thought,Yes.
Seven
I don’t knowhow long I sat there, slumped against the wall. Eventually I crawled to my feet. Heat and ice rushed through me, waves of fire and freezing curls that wrapped around my bones and dug deep into my veins, into my atoms and my soul.Watch out for him. Watch out for Jonathan.
I had no more answers than I had before. If possible, things were even less clear. I’d wanted the First Lady to be unequivocal, to tell me she knew, like Jonathan knew, that there was no way Baker had done this. That she didn’t, couldn’t believe it. That there had to be a conspiracy, an assassination, a murder.
A depressed man under pressure. A hidden note. A secret gun.Flowerterrible. A bruise on the back of his neck.
It was the bruise, goddamn it. It wasn’t definitive, but I fucking knew how that bruise could have gotten there. And if I was right, so was Jonathan: the president was murdered.
But I didn’t know if I was right.
I’d been wrong about so many things.
I needed to get back to Jonathan.
