Second Honeymoon

Chapter 62

THE ROOM WAS so quiet Sarah thought she could actually hear herself blink.

“Mr. President, I’d like you to consider what would attract the killer to a specific John O’Hara out there, whether it be your brother-in-law or someone else,” she began. “Maybe they were classmates, maybe they had business dealings—in theory, it could be anything. Whatever the connection, though, the killer’s reaction to knowing this John O’Hara would have to be so strong, so violent, that it manifested itself as a need to kill basically anyone named John O’Hara.”

“Are you saying that’s not possible?” asked the president.

“No. Quite the opposite, sir. It’s very possible,” she said. “I’m convinced the killer has a specific John O’Hara in mind.”

“But just not my brother-in-law.”

“Exactly.”

“Why not? Lord knows he’s probably got some enemies out there.”

“I’m sure he does,” Sarah said, a little too casually. The second the words left her mouth she wanted to take them back. “I’m sorry, I meant no disrespect to him.”

President Montgomery let go with a slight chuckle. “That’s quite all right. If Letterman and Leno can rank on him, so can you,” he said. “I do it myself.” He looked across the room. “We all do.”

“What I meant,” she continued, “is that on the surface it would make sense that the killings had something to do with your brother-in-law, given his…well, let’s just say his notoriety. But that idea changed for me.”

“Once you met the killer.”

“Yes,” said Sarah. “I realized that this guy could’ve killed me if he wanted to. Rather easily, too. But he didn’t. Why? And why would he reveal himself to me in that manner?”

The president’s couch consiglieri couldn’t restrain themselves any longer. They needed in on the conversation.

“Because it’s a game to him, right? He’s playing with you,” said Gilmartin, the chief of staff.

“Yes, but it goes deeper than that,” said Sarah. “He wants me to be scared, to live in fear, and I can’t do that once I’m dead. Neither can the real John O’Hara.”

Amanda Kyle, the press secretary, looked like she’d just solved the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune. “So that’s why he kills a bunch of John O’Haras, because he wants the real one to live in fear.”

“That’s what I believe,” said Sarah. “It’s also why I think the John O’Haras who are no longer alive—the well-known author, for instance—are irrelevant. These aren’t tribute killings. There are no shades of John Hinckley here.”

“But this hasn’t gone public,” said Hawthorne, the deputy director of the Secret Service. “Whoever the ‘real’ John O’Hara is, he doesn’t know anything.”

“I’m afraid he’s about to,” said the president. “The whole country is.”

“We could still wait, sir,” said Hawthorne. “God knows how many John O’Haras are out there, not to mention all their family members. Think of the panic.”

“Up until this morning I was,” said the president. “But if another John O’Hara turns up dead and it gets out we were aware of the threat and didn’t warn anyone, we’ll all be eating from a big bowl of shit stew.”

Sarah looked around the room. There was clearly something final about the president cursing, because that was the end of the discussion. Period.

“Shall I start preparing a statement, sir?” asked Kyle, already jotting some notes on the yellow legal pad in her lap.

“Yes,” he said. “But I’m still missing something.” He turned to Sarah. “I still don’t know why my brother-in-law couldn’t be, as you say, the real John O’Hara.”

“If I may, I’ll pose it to you this way,” she said. “If you were to tell your brother-in-law that he’d somehow managed to inspire a serial killer, no less one who was bent on killing not just him but anyone named John O’Hara, what would be his first reaction?”

The president rolled his eyes. He got it. “Funny, the word fear doesn’t come to mind, does it?” he said. “It would be the biggest thing he’d ever done in his life. He’d be over the moon. Everyone knows that about him.”

Sarah nodded. “Including our serial killer.”

No one else said anything. No one needed to. Except the president.

“Nice work, Agent Brubaker. I like the way you think.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Actually, you should be thanking your boss, Dan, here,” he said. “He’s the one who insisted on bringing you here this morning.”

Sarah turned to Driesen, who’d barely said a word the entire time. She couldn’t believe it. He’d told her the president liked being briefed from the “front lines,” that he had specifically requested her being there.

In other words, he’d lied to her.

And she couldn’t thank him enough.