Head Shot

52

'I always meant to ask your father about this thing American men have with their dens,' Bob murmured, as he and Sarah looked around the converted cellar space beneath the mansion. It was a big room, with walls and ceiling panelled in pale beechwood, comfortably furnished, and geared to play rather than work.

'Simple; they express the part of them that never grew up. That was well over fifty per cent in some men I've met, I can tell you. In my father's case, probably about five, but he wasn't exempt, as this place shows.'

Like the rest of the house, the den bore the marks of a thorough sweep by the police and Bureau technicians. 'This photograph you remember,' asked Bob, 'he would have kept it here, would he, rather than in one of the public rooms?'

'Here, for certain,' she said, without a moment's hesitation. 'My dad wasn't showy; he met presidents and senators, and he had been one of those himself at state level, but he never talked about it unless he was asked, and he never displayed any photographs from those days. All those, and his few bits of memorabilia, were down here.'

Skinner laughed. 'I was in a guy's office once and you could hardly see the walls for pictures of him with the rich and famous. They were arranged in a sort of pecking order. The actors and pop stars were on the bottom rung, then politicians, then up one more to the royals, and right at the top of the ladder was him and the Pope.'

'Whom you'l be meeting yourself, quite soon.'

'Yes, but don't let's go into that. Where did Leo keep his photographs?'

'They were in albums. Let's see.' She pointed to a sideboard against one of the wal s. 'In there, I think.'

Sarah stepped across to the cabinet, knelt beside it and opened a door on its right. 'Yup. Here they are.' She reached in and withdrew a stack of red leather-bound volumes. She passed them to Bob, then reached into the small fridge in the corner, took out two bottles of Budweiser, uncapped them with a tool fixed to the wal and handed one to him.

'Wassup,' he muttered, as he sat in a rocking chair, the albums on his lap. He glanced at the covers and saw from their labels that they were in decade order, from the thirties on.

Laying the others on the floor he opened the 1960s volume and handed it to his wife. 'This is where it should be,' she muttered, sitting on a three-seater couch and wiping a line of foam, back-handed, from ' her top lip. He watched her as she looked at the first few pages, smiling at some photographs, passing others by quickly. She had reached only the seventh page, when she stopped and turned the album towards Bob.

'Look.'

Skinner had only known his father-in-law as an old man; even then he had been strikingly handsome. The photograph that his wife showed him filled a page of the book. Leo Grace smiled out at him, in his early thirties, with movie-star looks that made even the man by his side seem ordinary. The man by his side; Bob had been a child on the twenty-second of November, 1963, barely halfway through primary school, yet the memory of his parents' shock when the news-flash confirmed his death had remained vivid. The president must have been at least fifteen years older than Leo, a veteran of the war before his, yet an innocent looking at the two of them, razor-sharp in their evening dress, could have been forgiven for wondering which of the two was the leader.

'They seem to be fairly chummy,' he murmured.

'They were; it was Bobby whom Dad never liked. No, it was real y the other way round; the Attorney General didn't get on with him. My father didn't care about him one way or another. He never talked about it, though; that was the way Jack Wylie told it.'

'What else did Jack say?' he asked, as she turned back to the album.

'He reckoned that Bobby was jealous of Dad, and that he was afraid the New Yorkers would pick him for the senate vacancy when it came up.'

'I can see why they might have. But your father never ran, did he?'

'No. He decided against it.'

'Was he warned off?'

'You're kidding. If anyone had tried that he would have gone for it.

The truth, for it was one of the few things he did tell me, was that he felt it would have put the president in a difficult position, if he had run, having to choose whether to endorse his brother or his friend. So when the offer to join the firm was made, he decided to accept, thinking that he might give it a run when he was a little older, and a little richer.'

'He never did though. Did he tell you why?'

Sarah nodded. 'Yes, he did,' she answered. 'It was the assassination; the effect it had on him. He wasn't afraid,' she added, quickly. 'He wasn't afraid of anything after Korea; he said he left all his fear out there. The thing that horrified him was that when they shot the president, the first lady was in the car. She could have been hit rather than him; as well as him.

'Dad said that he'd only have gone into politics with the intention of making it to the top of the tree. But when he saw what happened in Dal as, he decided there and then that he could never put my mother in that position.' She stopped, as she realised that he was gazing at her with a faint, curious smile on his face.

'You said "they", just now. Did you realise that?'

'Did I? Well if I did, that's what my father said; because I remember having that discussion with him, as clearly as if it was only an hour ago.

I was barely in my teens and President Reagan had just been shot.'

'Are you sure? Think again.'

She closed her eyes for a second or two. 'No. I don't need to think again. That's what he said.'

'He didn't say, "When the president was shot"?'

'No, Goddammit. He said, "When they shot the president." But so what? It's a col oquialism, almost. Lots of Americans say that.'

'I suppose so,' he admitted, letting the matter drop as Sarah went back to the book.

She had not gone much further when she stopped, staring at the pages that lay open in front of her. 'Look here,' she exclaimed. He jumped from the rocking chair in a single easy movement, and sat on the arm of the couch, looking down at the album. He saw two photographs, one on each facing page. The image on the left showed Leo Grace and another, older man… Bob realised with a start that it was J. Edgar Hoover… with the vice president of the United States; in the other he stood alongside Dr Martin Luther King. But it was not the photographs at which his wife was staring; beneath each one was a rectangular shape, whiter than the rest of the backing page. 'Two photographs have been taken from here,' she said. 'The corner fixings are still in place, even.'

'Go through it and see if any others have been removed.' She did as he asked, no longer studying the photographs, only flicking from page to page looking for what might not be there.

'No,' she said at last. 'Only those two.'

'Stil, you should check the rest of the book, just in case Leo took those two out, and they're not the ones we're looking for. The photos you remembered could still be there.'

She seemed to nod, then shake her head al in one movement. 'Yes

… no… wait. There was something else.' She turned to look behind her, at a series of shelves, fixed so that they seemed part of the panelling. 'Dad had a football,' she exclaimed. 'It was signed by the president and by al the guys; they gave it to him after the last game he played with them. He kept it on a shelf up there… and now it's gone.'

He sensed her hesitation. 'Bob, I hate to say this… but this has been done by someone with access to all sorts of files and places; someone who knew about the connection in the first place. Are you sure about Joe Doherty? Can you trust him in this?'

Bob drew in a deep breath. 'I hear what you're saying, honey. This could be coming from inside, and Joe is inside, very high up, too.

Except… Joe didn't hold us back on Saturday, when we went to see Jack Wylie. I did. If it hadn't been for me stopping on the boardwalk, we'd both have been on that cruiser when it went up.

'On that basis alone, I can trust him. I trust my own judgement too.

Joe's straight.'

'If you're sure of that, it reassures me. But even at that, where do the two of you go from here?'

'Good question. If we go anywhere, we go very carefully, however important Joe might be. But we do have a couple of leads; for a start there's the mysterious hunting trip.'

'What?'

'Exactly. Your father and Jackson Wylie took themselves off on a trip to the Appalachians last January, ostensibly to shoot deer.'

'Dad? Never!'

'Maybe not, but the two of them did go off somewhere and that was the cover story. I'd like to know where they stayed and who else was there… although I can make a pretty shrewd guess. Then there are the laptops,' he added.

'What?'

'Computers. Wilkins, Garrett and Wylie all had portable computers; the first two were stolen from the crime scenes in Montana and Las Vegas. We think that Wylie's went up with the boat. Do you know if your father had a computer, apart from that thing over there?' He pointed to the Compaq on a table beside the television set.

'If he had, I've never heard of it. But…'

The ringing of the phone on the computer table interrupted her. Bob walked across and picked it up. Lieutenant Dave Schultz was on the other end. 'No gun in the car, sir,' he said. 'I've just searched it, as thoroughly as I've ever searched a vehicle without cutting open the panels. There is no firearm there. Also I've rechecked the crime scene inventory, and there is definitely nothing of that nature listed. Do you want me to check with AT and F?'

'I've done that,' the Scot answered, 'or at least Mr Doherty has. Mr Grace bought two matching Glock 19s a couple of months back. He kept one in his Jaguar; my bet is that the other was for the house, and that he'd have taken it to the cabin.'

'You want me to run another search?'

'No, it would have been found by now if it was stil there.' As he spoke to the detective, the cathedral tones of the doorbell boomed out in the hall above: Sarah ran upstairs to answer its summons. He thanked Schultz and hung up, then fol owed her out of the den.

He had assumed that the cleaning service had arrived, finally, and so he was slightly surprised to see a youngish man in the doorway, fol owing his wife into the house. Taken off guard. Skinner gave him the classic enquiring look of policemen everywhere.

'Bob,' said Sarah, with the faintest hint of sharpness, 'this is lan Walker, our Lutheran minister. I've told you about him. As well as being our pastor, he's an old friend. Ian and I were at high school at the same time, then later at college.'

'Yes,' the newcomer concurred, 'for a while. I graduated two years before your wife.' He was a medium-sized man, with dark, crinkly hair, and round, piercing eyes, informal y dressed in a sports shirt and slacks… sure confirmation in the circumstances, Bob thought, that they were old friends. Indeed, there was something in the way they looked at each other that made him wonder, for a moment, just how friendly they had been. 'The mortician told me you were due in town this morning, Sarah,' the clergyman continued. 'I had to come right away, to express my condolences and to pay my respects.'

'Thank you, lan; that's much appreciated. We'd have cal ed you later today, in any case; we need to discuss the arrangements for the funeral service. Come through to the drawing room. Will you have coffee?' She realised that she had brought her Budweiser upstairs with her. 'Or a beer?'

Walker smiled. 'Coffee will be fine. You know how it is with us guys; we can't be breathing fumes over the faithful… not even us Lutherans.'

'I'll make it,' Bob volunteered. 'You go on through.' He headed for the kitchen, as his wife ushered the minister through to the reception room.

'I can't tell you how appal ed I am by what's happened,' he said, as the door closed on them. 'Babs is distraught too.'

'How is she?' asked Sarah. 'How are the kids?'

'She's very well; she still looks like a teenager, just like you knew her in school. And Matthew and Daniel are growing by the day. And yours?'

'Mark, our adopted son, is turning out to be a mathematical whiz; the other two, James Andrew and Seonaid, are just ordinary, peaceable children; even if Jazz is built like an outhouse, and eats more than his brother, who's twice his age. I'm happy to hear that Babs is just the same; I couldn't imagine her any other way than just as she is. I must see her. Can you get a sitter, tomorrow or Wednesday maybe, and come to us for dinner?'

'No,' said lan, 'we've thought of that. Much better if we do it the other way round. We thought that you might like to come to us on Wednesday, a couple of nights before the funeral service, to talk about the running order, as wel as to catch up.'

She yielded to his logic. 'Okay, that's a date.'

'Good; I have to tell you that we're getting in first. If you see all the people who've asked me to pass on condolences, and ask if they can cal on you, then you'l have little or no time to yourself. I have a list of all their names.'

'Thanks.' She smiled at him, but as she did, she read something in his eye.

'There is one in particular, though. When you and the baby were back home a couple of years back, that time that you and Bob had troubles in your marriage; remember you came to see me, and we had a heart-to heart about a guy you were dating? The guy you were with when we went out on that foursome?'

She smiled at him. 'Heart-to-heart, indeed; that's a sweet way of putting it. Truth was, I used you like a confessor; I told you that I had had sex with him.'

'Sure, and I didn't have any problems with that. I'm one of your newfangled clerics, Sarah; you know that as well as anyone. But the thing is, you'l find the name Terry Carter on that list. He cal ed me last week and said that because he knew that I was your friend as well as your family minister, he'd like to ask me a favour. He said that he'd like to meet you when you got here, to express his condolences in person.'

'Damn,' she whispered. 'Is he in Buffalo?'

'No, he told me that he works in New York, and he gave me a cellphone number for you to cal, should you decide to.'

'Should I decide to? Yes, should I?' she asked herself. 'Not if I've any sense, but… Fact is, lan, I've always felt just a little guilty about the way I treated him. I know he probably didn't want any more than to get himself fucked… Pardon my language, padre… but I didn't even want that, not real y.' She shrugged her shoulders and flashed him a quick grin. 'Okay, I can't lie to you of al people; sure I wanted it, but I had other things in mind too.

'I used him deliberately as a counter-balance against Bob, not to get even with him as such, but to put us on the same footing for the future.

Afterwards, I tried to hate myself for it, but I couldn't, not like I did after you and I had our col ege fling, when I knew al along how Babs felt about you, even if you didn't.'

Walker looked at the floor. 'Yeah,' he murmured. 'But we were just kids then, and we didn't do anyone any harm. I've never felt guilty about that, and I've never seen why you should, any more than I see why you should feel guilty about Terry Carter, or hate yourself for having a relationship with him, given your circumstances at the time. To lapse into professional language, I don't see the sin in it.

'As far as you and I went, Babs and I weren't dating then; that's in the past and it can stay there. You and Terry, though; I'm not advising you, understand, but from what you're saying, it sounds as if there's some closure lacking there.'

The phone rang, beside her, but she made no move towards it, knowing that Bob would pick it up in the kitchen. 'Maybe,' she conceded, as it fell silent once more. 'I'll have to think about it.' She looked up at him. 'You got that list on you?'