Page 20 of The Night Of
I pulled out my cell phone and took a photo, moving quickly before Mr. Clean could get his hand between my phone camera and Baker’s neck. He tried to grab me instead, lunging over Baker’s body when I stepped back. “This whole autopsy is classified!” he shouted.
“I’m fucking cleared, jackass. I’m not a reporter!”
“No, you’re the guy who let the president die!”
That almost brought me over the table at him. Fuck this asshole, and fuck his loud mouth, too. I could teach him some fucking manners. “Listen, you motherfucker—”
“That’s it!” Dr. Hendricks roared. “Out!”
I waited for Mr. Clean to move. He smirked. I frowned.
“You!” Hendricks pointed at me, then at the door. “There’s one person in this room who isn’t cleared on my roster. You show up and claim to be here at the orders of the president, but in this room,Iam the president and what I say is the law! Andyouare out. Leave, now!”
Mr. Clean grinned, and he waved when Hendricks’s back was turned.
Fine. Fucking fine. I had what I needed. I had more than enough, in fact. I ripped off my gown and gloves and balled them up. I wanted to hurl them at Mr. Clean’s face, but President Baker’s body was still lying between us. Instead, I threw them in the garbage on my way out, slamming the heavy metal door behind me as I went.
I checked my watch. Six forty. The sun was starting to come up. Bands of orange bled into the navy night. I pulled out the burner cell and texted Jonathan.On the way. You still secure?
The reply came back almost immediately.Yes.
Good.
I turned the key in the ignition and put the car in drive. The burner buzzed with a new text.
You found something.
I squeezed the steering wheel until the leather squeaked.Yeah, I texted Jonathan.I think so.
Six
When I got backto the Naval Observatory, Jonathan had a fresh cup of coffee waiting for me, along with a garment bag and a suitcase. Inside were three suits, briefs and socks and undershirts, and a cheap travel kit of toiletries.
“I asked the Secret Service to bring you spare clothes,” he said. “I told them you were on a special assignment under my direct orders.”
They must have pulled the clothes from the ready room and the lockers we kept over in the Eisenhower Executive. Like so many other agents, I had things stashed in lockers and offices and duffels and the trunks of SUVs across all of DC. Some days I wondered why I bothered to pay rent on my apartment.
I showered and shaved and changed into one of the suits. There was a faint smell of must, lint turning old. Still, I felt human again for the first time in days.
We headed out after that, piling back into the SUV for the trek to the White House. I chugged my coffee as I drove. Jonathan buzzed beside me, his fingers squeezing his coffee cup in steady intervals. He hadn’t said a word since I told him what I’d found at Baker’s autopsy.
“When we get to the White House…” I paused. “Look, the same rules go for today, okay? Stay in public, keep the doors open, never be alone with anyone. Whenever I can, I’ll be with you. But I can’t run this investigation and be at your side all day.”
“I know.”
Nerves clawed through me. The day before, part of me thought I’d end up coming back with proof Baker really had offed himself. The evidence had seemed overwhelming, and it was a tidy, clean narrative. If I were the FBI, I knew how I could close the case and wash my hands of this shit show.
But doubts had crept into that narrative. A hidden note. A secret gun.Flowerterrible. The bruise on Baker’s neck. I wanted it all to point me to one conclusion, but the trouble was, everything was pointing me in different directions. I saw paths leading me, on the one hand, to a murder, and on the other, to a desperate, terrified, lonely man. Two paths diverged in a wood. Fuck me.
And, now that there was a possibility that Baker was murdered, or that he had help getting to that moment on his knees with a gun in his mouth, I didn’t know who the fuck I could trust, or if I could trust anyone at all.
Except Jonathan. I knew, down deep, I could trust him.
I wanted to trust that Jonathan would be safe inside the White House, but I didn’t. And that fucking stung. The place I’d devoted my life to, the place I worked and lived and breathed, and I didn’t know who inside the walls, who in my own goddamn Secret Service, I could trust. And fuck the feds.
So I was stuck with this half-assed security setup, trying to keep Jonathan out of harm’s way by removing the opportunity for an assassin to strike. My logic was, Baker was murdered—if he was murdered—when he was alone. That meant the number of people involved had been small. If this had been a large conspiracy, they would have come through the front door.
No. If there was a plot, it wasn’t huge, and these bastards worked in the shadows. So keep Jonathan in the light. Keep him under observation at all times. In public, or as public as the West Wing could get. My plan was slapdash and more rickety than New Orleans levee, but it’s what I had to work with. And when I was with Jonathan, well. No one was getting close then.
