Choppy Water - Stuart Woods Page 0,28

him with his own gun, clean up after herself, and leave the body to be found the following morning by his maid.”

“She had an alibi, too,” Sykes said.

“Yes, and it stood up. The man who said he was with her in a bar died in the line of duty at a later time.”

“You think she killed the colonel?”

“She certainly had an excellent motive, didn’t she? Drugged and raped, then he’s found not guilty by a jury that included a buddy of his.”

“Was there a tox screen on the body of her former CO?”

“There was an autopsy, but the local ME didn’t think a tox screen was indicated. And the body was cremated. I tried to search the records of the drugstore where he had his prescriptions filled, but they were dumped a long time ago.”

“So here’s a headline for you: PRESIDENT-ELECT A SUSPECT IN A COP MURDER AND FAKED SUICIDE. COP’S MEDICAL RECORDS VANISHED.”

“Pretty good,” she said, “but not all his medical records, just his prescriptions.”

“Picky, picky, picky,” Sykes said. “I know a fellow with a radio talk show who’s really good at turning a news story into a walking, talking myth, and he has an audience who’ll eat it up.”

“That sounds like Jake Wimmer,” she said.

“You’re absolutely right,” Sykes said.

“It’s a little late, isn’t it? She’s already been elected.”

“It’s not too late to make her life hell for a while,” Sykes said, “and it could come back to bite her in the ass when she’s running for reelection.”

“You don’t want it traced back to you,” Bess said. She hadn’t counted on this.

“Jake knows when to talk and when not to talk,” Sykes said. “And if he should talk, he knows how to blame the right people.”

“You’d better be very, very careful,” Bess said. “You might get more than your fingers burned.” She tossed back her brandy and got up. “Time for me to go,” she said. “I don’t need a hangover tomorrow morning.” She thanked him for dinner, found her coat, and drove away from the house.

* * *

—

All the way home she thought about what she had done, and the possibility of unintended consequences. She was going to have to find a way to turn this back onto Sykes.

At home, she sat down and made a list of people to contact, especially people in the printed press and the television political shows.

Then she sat down at her typewriter and wrote a description of what she had seen in Holly Barker’s file and what Sykes’s reaction was when he read it, then she faxed it to a contact.

That was all she could do for now.

22

When Elizabeth arrived at her desk on Monday morning, there was an encrypted e-mail waiting for her. She ran the app, then read the message. Alfresco lunch today? 12:30? She responded: OK.

She bought a deli sandwich at noon, then drove to Rock Creek Park and left her car in a legal space. She walked down a trail and found a picnic table; he was already there.

He rose to greet her, a cool handshake. “Have a seat,” he said.

They both opened their bags and began eating their sandwiches.

“Is anything wrong?” she asked.

“I’m concerned by your lack of progress,” he said.

She frowned. “What more do you expect me to do?”

“I want you to tie Sykes and his cohorts to the shootings of the Secret Service agents in Maine.”

“Well, I know that, but I can’t find a provable connection.”

“Have you found a connection that you can’t prove?”

“No, no connection at all; only the visit to the Georgetown house.”

“That’s breaking and entering with a deadly weapon at best,” he said.

“Do you think I don’t know that?”

“I know you know it.”

“There’s something else you should know about, though.” She handed him the passage from the Barker file, and he read it.

“So what?” He handed it back to her.

“I may have made an error in judgment,” she said.

“How so?”

“My hope was that reading it might jolt Sykes into talking about her, telling me more. Instead, it may have set off something that could be difficult to control.”

“Tell me everything.”

She did, and when she was finished neither of them said anything for a while.

“You’re right,” he said. “This could open a can of worms we don’t want to go near. That guy, Wimmer, is a rumor machine. This will end up on Fox News as a conspiracy theory that could be difficult to handle, and for years to come.”

“I had hoped that you might be able to think of a way