President's assassin

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Using Mr. Townsend's phone, I called Larry, who rushed over with his apostles, Bob and Bill. They were anticipating a confession and looked a little demoralized when that turned out not to be the case.

Also, I called Chief Eric Tanner, who arrived alone.

Any cop will tell you the hardest part of the job is narrowing the suspects. Once you know who, the whats, whens, and hows come fairly easily Once you know who, you wonder what took you so long.

Jennie's plan relied on misdirection. She led the dogs as we chased the fox, and we never once thought to sniff her tail. She was confident we wouldn't, and as I mentioned previously, we all know what overconfidence breeds: sloppiness. The trail of breadcrumbs she left in her wake was long and reckless.

Within a few short hours, Larry obtained her record of travel five months earlier, the three-day round trip to Killeen, the hotel she stayed in, the meals she charged, the rental car she used, and so forth. It wasn't hard, really. It was all there on her Bureau Visa card.

Bob obtained her cell phone records from the week of the killings. What those records revealed were Jennie's repeated calls to several cell phones registered under the name Chester Upyers, though billed to a guy named Clyde Wizner. That Clyde, what a wicked sense of humor. Who would've guessed?

Bill worked on becoming my buddy again. Fat chance.

Eric Tanner really didn't need to be there, but he had earned a front-row seat at the endgame, and I wanted him to have it. And to justify his presence, he updated us on what the CID gumshoes at Fort Hood had learned about Clyde Wizner, about MaryLou Johnson, and about Hank Mercer.

There's always something, and in Clyde's case it was a voracious gambling problem. He was a high roller on a low roller's dime, and from accounts at various casinos he had visited, Clyde didn't know how or when to push away from the table. His only winnings from Vegas were frequent flyer miles and, according to a scrub of his medical records, two cases of clap. As Mom, in her more ruminative moments, used to warn me, one vice always begets another. Also, interviews with his neighbors and some talkative regulars at a local redneck dive indicated Clyde and MaryLou were a hot item and had been for years.

Regarding MaryLou, she had a record: three counts of prostitution, two for passing bad checks, and sundry lesser offenses. Born and bred in a dilapidated trailer park on the western outskirts of Killeen, she never came close to the American dream. Also, people who lived there a long time remembered that Mary-Lou's mother, who never married, many years before used to date a guy named Clyde something-or-other, a soldier at Fort Hood, if they recalled rightly. The possibility here was fairly ugly and, we all agreed, more than we needed, and a lot more than we wanted to know.

Hank lived three apartments down the hall from MaryLou, had twice been institutionalized, and had an IQ of 72. Neighbors in the apartment complex were shocked and dismayed to learn that he was an infamous thief and murderer. He was widely recalled as a gentle giant, helpful and compliant, a playful guy who liked to horse around with the little kiddies on the playground.

Eric Tanner had another interesting tidbit to pass on. Two of the civilian employees on his list of suspects at Fort Hood recalled being interviewed some five months earlier by a lady agent from the FBI. No, they didn't remember her name, but she was a looker and they'd know her if they ever saw her again.

So day turned Into evening, and we gathered together in — Mr. Townsend's tiny, overheated study We were all, I think, shocked and thoroughly depressed. Larry said to Townsend, "What we have, sir, is damning… but not damning enough. We can justify an arrest for conspiracy. Unfortunately nothing we have ties her directly to the most serious crimes, murder and extortion."

Bob seconded that view and further advised, "We could get a warrant, but an arrest would be premature at this point. We'll dig all night, but we shouldn't jeopardize our chances of a conviction."

Bill nodded agreeably Bill was everybody's pal. Bill would probably smile and nod even if I said we should just forget the whole thing. For the record, I preferred Larry over Bill. With Larry, you saw it coming, at least.

Mr. Townsend for some reason looked at me. He asked, "What do you think?"

"Arrest her right now."

"Why?"

"Because she's brilliant. Because she's smarter than us, and offered the slightest chance she'll outwit us. Because she has access to twelve and a half million bucks, and we have no idea what might spook her."

Mark Townsend's pupils, I noted, were no longer dilated or unfocused. The fish stare was back in full force, and after a moment he said, "You're a lawyer. Could you get a conviction?"

As he well knew, no experienced criminal attorney, no matter how rich the vein of evidence or how persuasive the case, ever promises a conviction. But he also knew that Jennifer Margold had ordered the murder of his wife. I replied, "I'll guarantee you this-if she gets away, we'll never see her again."

He told Larry, "Pick her up now."

In retrospect, Mr. Townsend's decisiveness was timely and providential.

It seemed Jennie departed her office early that day, complaining of an upset stomach. The onset of her illness came only moments after she spoke with Elizabeth, her gabby secretary, who disclosed both my unexpected visit and my interest regarding her early interest in Jason and his father.

So, the good news. Like her now departed colleagues, Jennie had made no real preparations to escape. I don't think it ever dawned on her that she would lose, and in fact, until that moment, she had every reason to believe she had won it all. The bad news was that it took the FBI two hours to find her name on the manifest of a United Airways flight, high above the Atlantic, three-quarters of the way to Paris, and freedom.

But when you murder the wife of the FBI Director, the wheels of justice do not want for grease. Townsend made a few calls, the pilot turned the plane around, the onboard air marshal changed seats, and he and Jennie became acquainted.

We stayed at the house, swilled coffee, monitored our phones, and traded theories about Jennie, none of which made the slightest bit of sense. At 1:30 a.m., Larry's phone rang; the plane had landed at Dulles International, and the air marshal handed over custody of his prisoner to a team of FBI agents on the tarmac. Jennie was being sped to a federal facility, where she would be photographed, fingerprinted, and our collective hope was she would do everybody a favor and confess to everything. I was sure she wouldn't, but my job was done. I went home.

I went back to work the following morning. Unfortunately I don't wear bad moods well, and within an hour people began avoiding me, which made me happy. Phyllis tried hard to keep me busy, flooding my in-box with memos and wasting my time with unimportant meetings. I don't handle that well under the best of circumstances.

I was haunted by feelings of guilt that I had missed it. I had been right beside Jennie as she ordered those deaths, and had I not allowed myself to become enamored with her, had I kept my eyes open and paid better attention, some of those people might be alive.

Two days after Jennie's arrest, I looked up and Phyllis was standing over my desk. She said, with some insight, "You're useless to me."

"Thank you. I try my best."

"It wasn't your fault."

"No? Who's fault was it?"

"We all missed it."

"You have an excuse. I was with her the whole time."

"By the same token, proximity can be blinding." After a moment she observed, "I worked with Aldrich Ames for years. We often lunched together. I never saw it coming."

"Did you nearly sleep with Aldrich Ames?"

"Oh… well, no… of course not." She examined me a moment, then said, "By the way, we have a very intriguing development in our Oman embassy. A most valuable source of ours was murdered. Our station chief suspects it may have been the result of an in-house betrayal. A team is being sent over to investigate. We need somebody to head that team."

"Sounds interesting."

"I'm sure it will be. Are you interested?"

"Not in the least."

"I think you should be."

"I've been to Oman. It's hot and dusty, there's no booze, the women wear veils, and they don't sleep with Christians."

She ignored this comment. "When you fall off the horse, you have to get back on."

"No… you learn to walk or drive." In case she wasn't getting the message, I reminded her, "Not interested."

"Have I mistakenly given you the impression I was looking for a volunteer?" She threw something on my desk that looked amazingly like an airline ticket. "Depart from Dulles Saturday afternoon. Mort will familiarize you with the details in the interim. Do a good job or I'll make your life miserable."

I hate women who think they know what's good for you.

On the third day after Jennie's dramatic midflight apprehension Larry called, which was an unhappy surprise.

As I mentioned, once you know who, you quickly figure out the whats, whens, and hows-it's the why that often remains elusive. Larry told me they had sweated Jennie for three days and nights without puncturing her shield of sanctity. He said, "You know our problem here? She was a profiler. She helped write the manual on interrogations."

"Then get creative."

He replied, a little dumbly, "We threw away the manual two days ago. Nothing's working. I've got two interrogators experiencing nervous breakdowns."

"Then get new ones. Wear her down."

"I'm talking about the fourth team we've thrown at her. Each day she just hardens."

"No new evidence?"

"None. If she's got the money we can't find it."

"Is her lawyer in the act?"

"Says she doesn't need one."

"Because she's completely innocent."

"She swears it. She's making it really hard on us."

"Alibis?"

"She doesn't know who called Clyde Wizner. Says it wasn't her. Sometimes her cell phone was left lying around, and anybody could've used it. Says she stopped her interviews at Fort Hood after the first two suspects didn't pan out, a more important case came up, and she left. Swears she never met Clyde."

"And the Paris thing?"

"You'll love this. The pressure of the case and the crushing burden of her new responsibilities put her on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She had an anxiety attack only French cuisine could cure."

"So she's introducing reasonable doubt, and you have no proof, no evidence. Nothing to convince a jury she did these things beyond a reasonable doubt."

Larry agreed this was so, and added that the Justice Department believed the odds of a conviction for conspiracy were dropping fast, and the chance of convicting her for murder had nowhere to drop as it was already nil. At best, she'd get five years, maybe less. And Jennie's cocky obstinance indicated she was aware of it. He finally came to the point of this call and informed me, "She says she wants to see you."

"I don't want to see her. Tell her no."

"Just hear me out."

"I'm very busy, Larry I'm going to-"

"You were the one who talked Townsend Into the arrest. You can at least hear what I've got to say."

"Fine. Why does she want to meet with me?"

"You tell me why."

"I haven't got a clue, Larry." Though he and I both knew it was a lie.

But sometimes, Larry explained, recalcitrant witnesses soften up in the presence of people with whom they feel a strong emotional connection. I informed Larry that my emotional attachment with Jennie Margold was the same as a fish to a hook. He laughed. I don't know why; it wasn't a joke.

So we went back and forth for a while, Larry trying to tell me why it was a good idea, me trying to tell him to piss off.

Because on one level, I thought it was a lousy idea, and on another, more personal level, I did not want to ever see Jennie again. I still had not the vaguest idea why she did what she did. I did not want to know.

But back to that first level, whatever romantic sparks had flown between us were hot and deluded on my part, and on her part, a calculated pretense. Jennie suckered me, intellectually and emotionally-she knew it, and I knew it. I was an aching, self-pitying Lothario, Jennie would know this, and Jennie would find a way to exploit it. Putting me in a cage with her was like throwing red meat to a lioness.

Back to that second level, I recalled a warning Jennie once gave me. If you haven't passed through the darkest forest, you cannot imagine the ghoulies and monsters that inhabit the back shelves inside people's minds. She was right. I had prosecuted and even defended individuals whose crimes seemed to be the progeny of madness, but on closer inspection, always the roots of those sins were sunk in more ordinary proletarian muck: greed, lust, or some other idiosyncrasy of human selfishness.

Jennie was most certainly different. For all her outward sanity, I was sure she was utterly insane, whatever that means these days. Some stew of demons had mortgaged her soul, and I did not want even a peek at them.

But Larry was persistent. He said, "Come on, Drummond. This might be our last chance." After a moment, he added, "Incidentally Townsend asked me to pass on that he would regard this as a huge favor to him."

Well, what could I say? So Larry and I batted around a few ideas, and I agreed to meet with Jennie-conditionally-though not until the next morning, and only after I had had a chance to run down one small detail.

Which was how I ended up pacing in a tiny courtyard tightly enclosed in chain-link and barbed wire, experiencing a quiet claustrophobic fit. Jennie insisted that we would meet out here, or nothing. Probably she was just tired of being ogled by prying eyes through two-way mirrors. Or maybe she thought the outdoor setting would level the playing field a bit. Or maybe both. Nothing was arbitrary with this lady.

Jennie was led to the doorway by a hefty matron, who backed away and allowed her to shuffle into the courtyard alone. The day was warm, though off in the distance dark clouds were gathering, which seemed fitting somehow. She stopped about two yards from me.

We avoided each other's faces and eyes, and the silence grew uncomfortable. I knew she was forcing me to make the first move. I said, "Would the prisoner like a cigarette?"

"The prisoner does not smoke. Neither do you."

"Well, one acquires bad habits on death row. Never too early to get a head start."

She ignored this barb and asked, "Are you wired?"

"No. Are you?"

"Liar."

"Spare me Jennie."

She finally looked up at me. Sounding hurt and annoyed, she said, "I'm sorry… I'm having a little trouble trusting you these days. The deal, as I remember it, was you'd watch my ass."

"The deal turned out to be too open-ended."

"Did it? I saved your life."

"Did you?"

Jennie reached up and grabbed my chin. She said, "Look at me. Look at what you did."

So I did. She did look dreadful. She was dressed, appropriately, in a baggy gray hopsack muumuu with matching foot and hand manacles, and white slippers. Her hair was dirty, stringy, and matted and hung in oily clumps and strands. Dark pits were under her eyes, and her shoulders slumped with fatigue. She was still very pretty, but like a rag doll after a playdate with the family rottweiler. In an accusing tone, she said, "Now they want you to finish what you started. Right?"

"I'm here because you wanted to see me."

She acknowledged this truth with an ambiguous shrug. "And how do you feel now that you see me? Proud? Guilty? Disgusted?"

I knew she was trying to put me on the defensive, and if I let her, I knew I'd never get out of the pit. "I feel sorry for you."

She laughed. "You should. I'm innocent."

I replied, truthfully, "In a way, Jennie, I believe you are."

She looked a little surprised by this admission, and I was sure she wondered why I felt this way. In an irony run amok, the profilers at Quantico had taken a deep and incisive look at the woman who had walked among them not so long ago, one of their top guns. Employing their queer skills, they had cast a net far and wide into her past and dragged back a number of revelations that in hindsight were illuminating, breathtaking, and, mostly, quite saddening.

In preparation for this meeting, I had been provided that file, which I read closely.

As Jennie once told me, she was an only child, and in fact, her parents did die when she was only thirteen, though not in a car crash, as she expressed; they were roasted in a fast-burning house fire in the middle of the night. The neighbors told the investigating officer that Mr. Terry Margold was a heavy drinker, a brown-fingered chain-smoker, an abusive husband, and a father whose cruelty was nearly boundless. Jennie's mother, Mrs. Anne Margold, was meek, timid, and overpowered, or as a neighbor described to a police officer after the fire, "Old man Margold ruled that house and beat the… well, the dickens outta everybody. You'd always hear howls and screams comin' from that place. I got chills just walkin' past it. Good riddance to 'em, I say. Nicer neighborhood now."

And from other neighbors, more of the same. Essentially, people who knew Jennie and her family in those early years universally recalled a monstrous man, and a childhood of Dickensian horror, a poor little girl born into pathetically harsh circumstances, molded by brutality and terror.

A few pages later I found this interview, conducted with Mrs. Jessica Parker, Jennie's eighth-grade English comp teacher: "She was an odd girl, brilliant, highly competitive, though I thought, insular and utterly stressed. I… actually, several of us… we often saw horrible bruises, and scrapes, and scabs. Once she had a cast on her leg. Several times I asked how she got these wounds. She claimed through roughhousing on the playground. She would even make up elaborate alibis about her wounds. She could be terribly deceptive and utterly convincing. I knew she lived in mortal dread of her father. Really-I felt awfully sorry for her."

I recalled the scars and burns on Jennie's body, and I understood, as I suspected Jessica Parker had understood, that some scars go more than skin-deep, straight to the soul.

On the night of her parents' roast, according to the police report, Jennie had had the rare good fortune to be at a sleepover at a friend's house, only three blocks and a short walk through the woods from her own home. No arson inspectors were brought in to sift through the ashes, as there was no evident cause for suspicion, the house was small and wooden, and the local fire department found traces of cigarette butts sprinkled around the bed of Terry Margold, a known drunk and careless slob.

Beyond the age of adoption, Jennie was shuttled into the foster home system. Twice, she had to be relocated after accusations of sexual abuse that were never proven, though a medical examination-conducted when she was only thirteen and first entered the child welfare system-revealed that Jennie's virginity was a long and distant memory Her cervix was unnaturally enlarged with unusual erosion, indicating extensive and painful sexual activity with adult-sized male organs.

Reading through the thick ream of reports from various Ohio State Child Welfare Agency officials, over the years Jennie displayed none of the classic symptoms of abused childhoods- she remained well behaved, no trouble with the authorities, no truancy, no drugs, no alcohol, and no transparent personality disorders. Jennie Margold, in fact, was regarded as a shining exemplar of the welfare system's healing vitality and success. She remained a top student, popular, brilliant, talented, and driven.

I wasn't judging the hardworking welfare officials of that very fine state, nor did I doubt Jennie's precocious flair for deception. Yet somebody should have had enough sense to know that, contrary to all outward appearances, no child spawned in such a shower of horrors could emerge internally intact. In effect, the more normal she appeared the less normal she probably was.

In an analysis of possible motives regarding the recent murders, some anonymous investigator wrote:

Jennifer Margold would benefit from the administration murders in two very striking ways. She would exploit her knowledge to humiliate and professionally eliminate George Meany and maneuver herself into position as his replacement. She would also end up with a private fortune, estimated at some twelve and a half million dollars.

No kidding. These were the correct rational motives, but reason and logic had nothing to do with why Jennie killed.

Near the back of the report I found an attachment from a profiler named Terry Higgens with this more insightful description:

Serial killers are either internalizers or externalizers. The internalizer likes distance, likes to create separation between him/herself and the victim, and conceivably the crime. Most internalizers are predatory bombers or arsonists. Internalizers are cowardly and normally choose victims who are smaller or weaker, as a fair match is the last thing they want. There are exceptions, however. And when they tackle larger, more powerful victims they unleash a frenzied assault, a blitzkrieg of ferocity in an attempt to overwhelm and neutralize the victim.

It wasn't hard to see what led Terry Higgens to lump Jennie in this particular pool. In all likelihood, Jennie's first crime was murder through arson, and her MO in these more recent murders was a variation on the theme, killing anonymously from a distance, through surrogates. Also, no prey is more powerful than the United States government. Just as Terry Higgens diagnosed, Jennie had unleashed an assault that was fierce, unrelenting, and punishing, a frenzy of killing with such centrifugal impact it squashed our ability to react. Her diagnosis went on to say:

It should be further noted that many sociopathic individuals, particularly psychopathic serial killers, have a perverse fascination with police work. They attempt to get and stay near the police, hanging around cop bars, shooting ranges, places where the police tend to congregate. In fact, some have been known to attempt to become police.

As a final note, we would point out that pyschopaths are lifelong killers. They start with small crimes, they improve through experience, and they evolve higher-level skills. Recurring success breeds a psychosexual need to escalate their violence and achieve satisfaction by committing ever more heinous crimes.

I thought these observations sounded too clinical and detached to put any human face on. Certainly they did not sound like the Jennie I knew. I had never observed her revealing even a twinge of satisfaction or pleasure at the sight of her victims.

Like the rest of us, Jennie appeared horrified and appalled, though it was now clear that the Jennie you saw and the Jennie you got were very different species.

But as I thought about it, the ingredients of this foul casserole-an internalizer, a psychopath, a need to escalate the violence-clearly linked the perpetrator to the crime, nor was there the slightest doubt who choreographed this carnival of slaughter. Still, there's a wide gap between knowing it and proving it beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Likewise, I thought Jennie's background and Terry Higgens's prognosis explained why Jennie plucked poor Jason Barnes from the immense and varied pool of government servants undergoing background checks. Essentially, Jennie hunted for herself, at least a reasonable mirror of herself, a psychological doppelganger she could knowingly bring into sharp focus for the rest of us, because, really, Jennie was describing someone she knew intimately: herself.

Ergo, Jennie was self-aware enough to know who she was, and how she got there. I knew that if I talked with psychiatrists they would tell me that for most, self-knowledge is the first step on the road to salvation and self-perfection. Yet for others, I think, it is the direct path to self-resignation. For whatever reasons, Jennie chose not to fight her inner demons; she chose to feed their terrible urges.

Perversely it was probably this same self-awareness that drew Jennie to the study of psychology-as girls of the sixties used to say, to find herself-just as it gave her the extraordinary acuity to understand other twisted minds. Recalling her words when we discussed Jason, she insisted that he was a victim of his past, that predestination grasped and led him, just as it guides us all. I think, looking back on it, that Jennie wasn't talking about Jason; she was offering me her Jungian rationalization for her own state of being.

But crazy as she might be, an insanity plea was out of the question. She knew right from wrong, and she knew that what she had done was in every moral sense wrong, because she went to such fierce and imaginative lengths to escape detection. In fact, Jason was a shadow of her own sad history in almost every way, except one-Jason eluded the conscription of fate, Jennie did not.

But in Larry's words, the Bureau now had a problem of Holy Shit proportions flopping around its plate. The scale, sophistication, and difficulty of the recent murders suggested a killer with long practice and varied experience. There had to be a long treadmill of escalation in Jennie's past. The Behavioral Science Unit now had to sift through every case Jennie ever worked-particularly her most notable successes-to determine whether the investigator might also have been the predator. Scary thought. But I had my own big problem.

As though reading my mind, Jennie interrupted my musings and asked, "So are we here to talk about your problems, or about mine?"

"You are my problem."

"Oh… Poor little Sean got his feelings hurt."

We were getting nowhere. Which was exactly where Jennie's taunts were meant to land us. But this was her idea, so somehow I was on her agenda, I thought I knew why and suggested, "You must be wondering how I knew."

"Why would I wonder? You made lots of blunders and misjudgments. You've made another"

"Have I?"

"Don't kid yourself. Look, a few months ago, I might have seen Jason Barnes's file. Maybe I even saw his father's file. Thousands of files roll across my desk. They certainly never stuck in my mind."

"You know, Jennie, I wish I could believe you. But you lied about your background, you lied throughout the case, and you're still lying. It's too late for the truth to set you free, but it can keep fifty thousand volts from ruining your hairdo."

She stared at me a moment. "I had a reason for that."

"For what?"

"Misleading you about my background."

Apparently this topic was sensitive for her. "Tell me about it."

"It's simple. Every time I tell people, I get this look, and they say, 'Oh, you poor little thing.' I find pity disgusting."

"And I thought you were just trying to hide a bad memory."

"You're a bad memory. You're here."

She was beginning to annoy me, and I decided to annoy her back. "I'm curious, Jennie. Did you stand outside and watch your parents roast? Did you peek inside the window and watch their skin bubble and fry?"

"That's sick. Stop it."

"Did you listen to their screams and howls? Did you sniff the air and relish the odor of their burning flesh? Tell me, Jennie. How did it smell?"

A flash of anger showed in Jennie's eyes. She started to speak, and I said, "Share it with me, Jennie. I want to hear. How did it feel to murder your own parents? This is a new one for me-I am sincerely curious."

But she knew where I was going with this, and she smiled and said, "The shock and awe's not working, Sean." She added, in a tone that was surprisingly nonchalant, "Read the police report. It was an accident. My father smoked. We always warned him it would be bad for his health."

As she said, this wasn't working so I changed the topic and informed her, "They'll get you on conspiracy, at a minimum."

"Will they? Where's the proof I called Clyde? Where's the proof I knew Clyde?"

"As your lawyer will eventually advise you, Jennie, in court not everything has to be proved. All cases have elements of circumstantial construction."

"Yes, and all winning cases are built on evidence and facts. Not conjecture," she pointed out.

"Good point. In fact, I thought it might be enlightening for you to learn how much we do know."

As I expected she might, Jennie liked this suggestion. "It would be very interesting to hear what you think you know. Please proceed."

After a moment I said, "Well, you'll recall that I spent a lot of time with MaryLou, and later, a little time with Clyde."

"Don't hold that against me. You should recall that you volunteered for that."

"No, you volunteered me. You told Clyde to pick me."

"Conjecture again."

I ignored her and said, "You should know that I informed MaryLou that the Feds knew about Clyde, and that in short order they would know about her."

Jennie looked a little annoyed by this news. "Didn't we tell you not to do that? Didn't we warn you it was dangerous?"

"Very emphatically." I added, "Jennie, I have to tell you, MaryLou did not take this news well. She became very… agitated. An interesting verb, don't you think?"

Jennie gave no indication that the word was interesting.

"She never mentioned your name," I admitted, "but she talked at some length about the scheme, starting with you going to Fort Hood and tracking down Clyde." This wasn't the complete truth, but true enough.

"How? How did I find Clyde and meet with him?"

"I don't know how."

"Then you're in a difficult position. You can't prove I met Clyde. Nor will you ever, because I never did."

After a moment, I said, "But it's not hard to guess. He was the third suspect you looked into, and the moment you laid your profiler's eyes on him, you knew. So you shook him up good and then offered him salvation. Kill for you… and he walks, scot-free, with a boatload of money. Otherwise, he and his pals are going into the slammer until their grandkids' teeth rot."

"Is that how it'll be presented in court, Sean? A guess."

I said, "At first, MaryLou thought it was a bad deal and a worse idea. Right? Until Clyde assured her that their new friend would do more than provide information… their new friend would actually head up the effort to stop them. Wow-what a deal. What could go wrong?"

Jennie said, "Complete nonsense. I always agreed they might have an inside source. But it wasn't me."

"But let's assume for a moment it was you."

"This is silly."

No, this was surreal. In every way she seemed to be the same Jennie I knew, yet she wasn't in any sense the same Jennie. The Jennie I knew was brave, noble, and resourceful. This Jennie was a lying, conniving, murderous bitch. I said, "For this to work, first you had to eliminate the man who took your job. Clyde was an expert marksman in the Army, a lifelong gun nut, and poor John Fisk had not a clue he was being hunted. Boom, boom-Fisk was maggot meat, and Jennifer Margold has his desk and his mantle."

Her face remained perfectly composed, as though we were talking about some other Jennie. "Ridiculous."

"Should I go on?"

"You're very clever, Sean. This is almost comically entertaining. By all means."

"Only one problem-how to ensure these killings ended up on your desk. There are like… what?… four, five SACs in the D.C. Metro Field Office?"

"Four."

"Thank you. The problem is, if it's plain and simple murder, the SAC with homicide on his slate gets the crack at it. So about a month before this thing kicks into gear, you slap up a Web site and put a bounty on the President. You tip the Al Jazeera network to be sure it's advertised, and we learn about it. As the honcho for national security in D.C. you were in the loop when the bounty was detected. Right?"

"I was informed, yes."

"Why did you deny that when I asked?"

"It was compartmentalized knowledge, Sean. The government has this crazy idea that sharing state secrets with strange men I've just met is taboo. Silly, isn't it?"

"Oh, please. The cat was already out of the bag. Phyllis informed the whole group."

"And did that give me authorization to discuss it with you?"

Obviously she had an answer for everything. I said, "Anyway, suddenly it looks like assassinations with national security overtones, and it's yours."

She laughed. "You're concocting a plot so convoluted it will sound outrageous to any jury."

"You're right. It's completely outrageous. Do you mind if I jump ahead to the endgame?"

She rolled her eyes. "Why not?"

"Let's begin with a little setting. I'm in the townhouse with the bad guys, MaryLou's scared that she might get caught, and Clyde's bitching about how his source screwed him. So now I know they've got an inside source and I ask myself, Hey, don't these idiots know I've got a transmitter in my intestines? I'm a cop magnet. Haven't they been warned?"

"Go on."

"Well, I've got a gag over my mouth so I can't ask."

"And if you did ask, they would’ve killed you and run."

"There was that, too."

"Did you ever think they didn't know because I wasn't their source? Let me remind you, I knew about the transmitter."

"And your lawyer should make exactly that argument to the jury I would." I added, "But you knew they'd been compromised. And you knew that if any of those three were captured alive… Well, that's always the problem with a conspiracy. Someone always turns stoolie."

"Is that a fact?"

"Cut the crap, Jennie. It's beneath you."

"Go on."

"Ergo it was time to improvise. It's not complicated. The secret had to go to the grave."

"And how would I arrange that?"

"You tell me."

She was shaking her head. "You know what I think, Sean?"

"Jennie, I haven't got a clue how you think, much less what you think."

My outburst seemed to amuse her. She chuckled, and after a moment she said, "We'll get to what I think in a moment. Finish telling me what you think."

"Well… where was I?"

"You were with Clyde and MaryLou." She pointed out, "I believe I was about to save your life."

"You mean spare my life. After all, had I not uncovered Clyde-as you know-the initial plan was to kill me the instant I handed over the money."

She appeared to be confused and said, "You seem to be implying that I told Clyde to keep you alive." After a moment of pretending to think this through, she chuckled. "Oh… I suppose you're thinking I wanted you alive to draw us to them."

"It was… a brilliant betrayal. You advised Clyde that if the cops found them, they would need barter. Just be sure I'm electronically sterile, and in the event of a turn for the worse, I was their way out."

She thought about that a moment. She said, "More nonsense. They had you as a hostage, yet there was no negotiation."

"No, but you knew there wouldn't be. In fact, that's why you had them murder Joan Townsend. She wasn't on the original kill list, was she?"

Jennie looked at me curiously. In her worst nightmare, she was probably sure nobody would ever put this together.

"As you surely told Clyde," I continued, "things were heating up, and all the good targets were too heavily protected. But Joan was soft, unsuspecting, and vulnerable. Poor Clyde was too ignorant to know that wasting the wife of the FBI Director was tantamount to putting a gun to his own head. Feds are still cops and all cops hate cop killers. Cops really hate killers who murder cop families-and to murder the top cop's wife in such a public, in-your-face fashion was a humiliation on top of an insult. There would be no negotiations, and Clyde and his pals had no chance of surviving a shootout."

"Sean, listen to yourself. You're accusing the Bureau of executing those three. I sure hope you don't intend to repeat that in court."

She was right, of course. Though it didn't really matter. I said, "So we're at the point where the HRT guys are crashing into the room, lusting for blood, you're right behind them… and you… Well, there sat the final loose end, poor Jason Barnes."

Jennie shook her head. "I was cleared in Barnes's death three days after the shooting. It's public record, Sean. You gave a statement to that effect yourself." With a look of staged anguish, she said, "All that smoke and confusion… it was… a terrible mistake. I regret it, of course… but we can't change the past, can we?" She asked me, "Incidentally, aren't the investigation findings admissible evidence?"

I nodded.

"Thank you for pointing that out. They exonerate me. In fact, I'll suggest to my lawyer to make sure it's entered as evidence."

We stared at each other a moment. Clearly I was losing this battle of wits and wills. She knew it and I knew it. From that very first murder scene at Belknap's house, I now knew, Jennie had chosen me. I had impressed her with my bright deductions and pissed her off with my cockiness, and Jennie had decided I was the one to beat. She would cozy up to me, she would partner with me, we would share intimacies and grow close, perhaps she would even fuck me. And then she would kill me.

Recalling the look on her face at the instant before she blew Jason's brains out of his head, I was sure she toyed with the idea of popping us both. Had she thought she could fabricate an excuse, had she thought she could get away with it, I wouldn't be in this prison yard, I'd be a chalk outline. She was now settling that belated score by letting me know she was smarter than me, she would get away with these murders, she would win.

In fact, Jennie said, "But neither Clyde nor MaryLou ever mentioned my name, did they?"

"No… they never did."

"Nor can you prove that I met Clyde, or that I ever called him."

"There are no surviving witnesses."

"I've already offered perfectly plausible explanations for the evidence you have, haven't I?"

"Plausible enough."

She nodded. "You don't see the fatal problem with your fantasy, Sean?"

"Tell me."

"They never mentioned my name because I wasn't their source. There are no witnesses… there is no evidence, because it wasn't me." She sounded sincere, without a wrinkle of dishonesty on her face or even a hint of insincerity in her blue eyes. In fact she was so utterly convincing, no jury in the world would disbelieve her. She stepped toward me and took my hands. She smiled. "I'm afraid you're going to make a lousy witness."

"Am I?"

"Were you falling for me, Sean?"

I wasn't going to answer that.

Of course she already knew the answer. "Because you're obviously brokenhearted and embittered. You're allowing your hurt and anger to cloud your judgment."

"Is that right?"

"Look, it's time to be honest with yourself. You were a decent partner and mildly entertaining company, Sean. That's all there ever was. I'm sorry if you thought there was more." She squeezed my hand and added, "There wasn't."

"I know."

"I hope you do know." We stared at each other for a long moment. Endgame. She had gloated at her victory and was administering her coup de grace. She looked at me long enough to be sure I knew she had won before she glanced at her watch and said, "Oh my, look how the time flies. My exercise period starts in only two minutes. You don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all."

I turned and started to walk away. About ten feet from Jennie, I turned back around and faced her. I said, "Back at the town-house, you nearly killed me, didn't you? You thought about it, didn't you?"

She shrugged, a gesture of complete neutrality. Yet, given the nature of the question, anything but neutral. In that moment Jennie wanted me to know, wanted me to fully appreciate that I was, in her mind, entirely disposable. She could kill me or not; I was that irrelevant.

I informed her, "Not killing me was the one mistake you made."

"And why would that be, Sean?"

"Because yesterday I remembered something. The Bureau was so focused on the killings up here, it's the one thing they… actually, the one lead we all overlooked."

Though she clearly knew this was not going to be good news, she did not bat an eye. "Go on."

"I asked Eric Tanner to have his people conduct a second search of Clyde's house in Killeen. I told him to use jackhammers this time, tear it to pieces, right down to the foundation." When she did not respond, I informed her, "They found it in the basement, behind a false wall."

"Found what?"

"Knowing Clyde, as you surely do, he had a great fondness for weapons. Apparently, the idea of discarding one-even one he used for murder-It was simply too much for him. A military surplus M14 rifle with a long-range scope was found behind that wall. The ballistics match with the bullet that killed John Fisk was made this morning."

For the briefest instant, Jennie's scrupulous composure left her, and I saw in her eyes a flicker of fear, of anger, and something I've never seen in any human eye… something indescribable I was sure was madness. As fast as it appeared, it disappeared, replaced by an expression of chilling complacence. But she surely understood the game was truly over. She understood that the rifle tied Clyde Wizner to John Fisk's murder, and it tied Jennifer Margold to Clyde Wizner, and as she herself had underscored throughout this conversation, once that connection was made, she was toast.

Also, Jennie had guessed right, I was wired. On that signal the door was shoved open,' and two large matrons and Larry emerged. The matrons took Jennie's arms and tried to lead her back inside. She said, "Wait… I'm not ready-just give me a minute. Please."

The matrons appeared confused and looked to Larry for guidance. He signaled with his arm for them to release her.

Then Jennie did the strangest thing. She walked straight to me, bent forward, and kissed me. Then she spun around and left with her two matrons in tow, leaving me alone with Larry.

I knew Jennie would not be going to her exercise period. She would be brought to another interrogation room, where two fresh faces she had not yet defeated would take another whack at her. Larry and the interrogation experts had predicted that the emotional shock of this damning new evidence, would crack Jennie wide open. They would go back to the textbook, using one lie to expose the next, and would elicit, if not contrition, at least a partial confession.

I was certain they were wrong. And I was certain it no longer mattered.

I watched the door close behind her.

Larry watched, too, then said to me, "Great job, Drummond. You really rattled her."

"But she never confessed," I pointed out.

"She didn't have to. The rifle is the prybar. We'd get it out of her."

Since I was sure he was wrong, I offered no reply.

He looked at me and said, "You okay?"

"No. I'm not."

"Forget about her. She was bad news, Drummond."

"She was beyond bad news, Larry." After a moment I asked him, "What's your best federal prison?"

"I don't… Well, I guess… probably Leavenworth."

"Put her there. Give Jennie her own cell in her own wing. Keep her in complete isolation. Throw away the key. Pray she never gets out."

"If she ever did, I wouldn't want to be you."

I did not respond because Larry's observation required no response.

The kiss-it is the most universal gesture and, thereby, easily the most misread. In America it signifies affection, or lust, or even love, whereas in other cultures, and in other societies, its meaning can stretch from a modest greeting to a fraternal gesture, to a mark of revenge or even a promise of death.

Jennie made her own rules, and I knew that her kiss was no ordinary gesture, and that, in any normal sense, it defied a simple or innocent classification. She was a trapped animal and that kiss was her last feral growl. As a rancher brands a cow or, I think, more uniquely, as a dog marks a tree, Jennie's kiss was both territorial and an implicit promise that she was not through with me, and this was not over.