Page 8 of The Night Of
So what was Jonathan seeing? What was he feeling in this darkness he’d been plunged into?
“I think it’s a warning,” Jonathan said. “Read it again.”
I did. My eyes stuttered over the second sentence.If you can’t barge into my office, if something’s happened, call Carl.
Ifsomething’s happened. Notbecause, orwhen, orafter.
“You don’t know when the president put this in your office.”
“I’m nearly certain. I noticed it as soon as I sat down.”
Nearly wasn’t certain. “Are you sure…” I didn’t even know what I was asking. “Are you sure it wasn’t a prank?” Baker loved his jokes. He always had, and I’d seen more than a dozen of them, and his good humor, play out inside these walls. He and the First Lady had surprised Jonathan on his birthday, squirting him with water guns until the Secret Service had pretended to arrest them both while slipping Jonathan his own water gun. He’d brought Jell-O shots on a cookie sheet to everyone in the West Wing after his signature legislation had passed. He’d even brought them to the press pool. He used to tape notes to the outer Oval door:Go away, andGone fishin’, andCall Jonathan instead. “Maybe he was playing a joke on you and you didn’t notice the note before today. What if he was trying to set you up to come into the Oval and ask, What the fuck, and he was going to…”
What, laugh at his best friend for doing exactly what he asked him to do? Baker loved his jokes, but there wasn’t a punch line here.
Jonathan stared at me.
“When do you think he put it under your desk?”
“It wasn’t there yesterday. I left the White House before Steven. He took Marine One to Camp David in the afternoon. I was already at the governors’ meeting by that time. He’s the only one who could have put it there. No one just walks into my office. And in any case, it’s his handwriting. I know Steven’s writing.”
My exhausted mind churned, Jonathan’s words tumbling against each other. Something about Marine One, Baker departing the White House. “Baker was late to Camp David. He delayed the departure. He had a last-minute phone call at the White House, he said. He was fifteen minutes late when he touched down.”
Jonathan’s eyes burned into mine. “I did not know that.”
It hadn’t mattered before this moment.
“That must be when he wrote this.” Jonathan took the note back from me, gently folding the paper and tucking it into his jacket pocket. “And put it under my desk.”
I wanted to askwhy. Why would the president of the United States tape a note under the desk of his vice president? Why wouldn’t he just call him or text him or send one of the hundred aides he had to deliver the message—
The answer was so obvious it hurt when I arrived at it, running face-first into the truth like I was hitting a brick wall. President Baker didn’t trust anyone with the message. He didn’t trust his detail, he didn’t trust his aides, he didn’t trust anyone at all who surrounded him.
Not even his wife? Or had he been protecting her? The First Lady wasn’t involved in politics. What could she have done, if Baker needed help?
No. Baker had reached out to the only man he did trust, Jonathan, in the only way he could imagine wouldn’t be discovered.
And hours later, Baker was dead.
If I had still been on Baker’s detail, could he have reached out to me? I’d been his detail lead. I’d been his right-hand man, inside the inner ring. I didn’t let that thought unfurl further. What-ifs were poison, the fuel of regret. I had enough regret for more than this lifetime. I couldn’t add the president’s death to that toxic ocean inside me.
Two hands wrapped around a gun barrel.Holding the gun… or trying to fight it off? Grabbing the barrel of the gun and aiming at himself, or trying to wrestle it away? Trying to keep it from being shoved into his mouth?
He had been alone in that room, though. We’d scoured the place, agents combing every square inch of Camp David. There was no one walking or running away from the cabin. No one fleeing the scene. None of the heads of state or their staff had gunshot residue on their palms. No one had fired a gun last night except for President Steven Baker.
Baker could have reached out to Jonathan believing he was in danger when, in fact, only his demons had been chasing him. I’d seen it before. Insurmountable stress did agonizing things to the mind. Had he chased himself into oblivion?
“Steven didnotkill himself,” Jonathan said.
He wanted me to believe. I could see it burning inside of him. Fuck, I wanted to.
I wanted to tell him he was right. I wanted to answer that question in the back of his gaze, help dismantle the guilt and rage that were building houses in his heart. I wanted to tell him his best friend wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t have done this without reaching out to him, that Baker didn’t truly think he was alone in this world and then leave Jonathan behind, as alone and bereft as Baker must have been when he stared down that cold iron.
But I couldn’t. I didn’t believe it. At least, not yet.
Also, as fucking horrific as it was to believe the president of the United States—Jonathan’s best friend—had swallowed a bullet…
If he didn’t kill himself, someone else did. Jonathan wanted to believe someone assassinated President Baker in the middle of Camp David, in an otherwise empty cabin, at midnight, in a place so secure we named the flies that crossed its airspace.
