The First Patient

CHAPTER 27

Late afternoon shadows stretched across the esplanade as Treat Griswold, driving a two-year-old silver Jeep Grand Cherokee, maneuvered through light traffic. Half a dozen car-lengths behind, Alison followed warily. There was no reason for Griswold to suspect he was being tailed, but he was a pro and he had seen Alison on several different occasions, including just that morning in Baltimore.

After her return by motorcade from the Convention Center, Alison had spoken to Secret Service director of internal affairs Mark Fuller, who had originally sent her undercover into the White House medical office. Careful not to allude to Griswold in any way, she explained that while she was waiting for something, anything, to break regarding the Ferendelli disappearance, she had decided to do background checks on a number of White House employees, including several agents. Fuller considered her request for access to personnel files and then somewhat reluctantly gave her the passwords she needed.

Alison took pains to review the files of a dozen randomly chosen men and women. The last thing she wanted anyone to know was that she had a particular interest in any one of them-especially the president's number-one protector. It was frightening to know that she was dealing with perhaps the most thorough, effective, efficient investigative agency in the country. If she had been asked to keep an eye on the White House, there was no reason not to suspect that someone had been given the task of keeping an eye on her. Mixing her subjects and keeping meticulous records as to how long she spent on the files of each, she began to piece together the story of the man who had been decorated three times for his service to three different presidents but who also seemed to have surprisingly little life outside of his job.

Griswold, a state high school wrestling champion, born and raised in Kansas and educated in criminal justice at K State, had turned fifty-one this past month. He had been married and divorced twice before he was thirty-two-the first time after four years, the second after just two. No children. No subsequent marriages. He lived in what sounded like an apartment complex in Dale City, Virginia, thirty miles south of the capital. There was really remarkably little else to be learned about the man.

He earned a better than decent salary, approaching $175,000 with Senior Executive Service and SAIC-Special Agent in Charge of detail-pay factored in, but didn't seem to live up to his means. He was right up to the minute in terms of using his fairly generous allotment of vacation time, but as far as she could tell, he had never taken a day of sick time. Never.

As part of her training, Alison had taken courses in single and team surveillance. Keep slightly to the right of the car ahead. No sudden lane changes. Anticipate the moves of the quarry, and be ready to react smoothly. Employing every rule she could remember, she followed Griswold across the Potomac and onto I-95 leading south into Virginia. On paper, and indeed in real life, Treat Griswold seemed almost too good to be true. To this point, in addition to his not being among the most physically attractive men in the world, the only chink in his highly polished armor seemed to be the inhaler he carried in breach of regulations, or at least in violation of tradition and unwritten protocol.

The likely explanation, hardly a thrilling one, was that the president had simply found it more convenient to do things that way, rather than having to scout down the doctor on duty each time he felt wheezy while away from the medicine cabinet in the official residence.

Griswold was driving in no particular hurry, but now, for the first time, something curious had happened. He had passed the exit to Dale City and was continuing south on the interstate. Alison pulled her road map up and smoothed it open over the steering wheel. There was no doubt about it. Griswold wasn't headed home. Five miles… ten… twenty…

Alison fished two sticks of bubble gum-flavored Trident from her purse and began working them over with vigor. She had been a serious gum chewer since grammar school, having made her way from Fleers Dubble Bubble, through Juicy Fruit, to Wrigley's Spearmint, and finally to Trident sugar-free, with an occasional jawbreaker thrown in. It wasn't the most attractive habit in the world, she knew, but she was hooked. Over the years, she had come to chew mostly when she was tense, and like a ventriloquist of sorts, she had mastered the art of chewing, when she had to, without visibly moving her jaws.

They were entering Fredericksburg when Griswold eased off the highway. Alison slowed and managed to keep a car between them, but the situation was getting dicey. Still, there was no hint from ahead that she had been spotted. She risked dropping back half a block.

According to her map, the city was located on the Rappahannock River, fifty or so miles south of Washington and the same distance north of Richmond. If her memory was right and Richmond, the capital of the state, had also been the capital of the Confederacy, then Fredericksburg must have been in a hell of a tense spot during the Civil War.

They crossed the river and entered a tangle of streets with rows of minimally maintained buildings. Alison was a block away when Griswold suddenly pulled into a short drive in front of a two-bay cinder-block garage, with separate pairs of doors. She ducked down and peered over the dash as he surveyed the street. Finally, apparently convinced that it was safe, Griswold pulled open the doors of the nearer bay and quickly drove inside.

The street, totally deserted at the moment, had a few duplexes and triplexes but hardly seemed like the sort of place where people paid much attention to their neighbors' business. Five minutes passed. Alison was about to drive past to determine where the man might have gone when he emerged, having changed his black suit for a sporty dark windbreaker and tan slacks and his business shoes for a stylish pair of loafers-European, she guessed. His bulk actually seemed somewhat transformed, although there was little he could do about his thick, stubby neck and bald spot.

He locked the doors behind him and again warily scanned the street. Hunched low behind the wheel, Alison breathed deeply and exhaled slowly, trying to calm herself.

At that moment, again apparently satisfied that he was unobserved, Griswold unlocked the second set of doors. Hinges badly in need of oiling screeched as he swung the doors open and disappeared again into the garage. After a few seconds, the subdued thrum of an engine cut through the still air. Alison slid down even farther, until she could just see up ahead from beneath the top of the steering wheel. The engine noise continued-a low, even, powerful growl. Finally, the agent rolled backward out of the garage at the wheel of a pristine silver Porsche 911 Cabriolet convertible-eighty or ninety thousand at least, Alison guessed.

Clearly anxious to get away as quickly as possible, his pate reflecting the sun, Griswold closed and locked the garage doors, swung out of the drive, and sped back down the street in the direction they had come, passing just a few feet from where Alison was huddled under the wheel.

By the time she dared to sit up and turn her Camry around, the Porsche was gone. Pessimistic about her chances of reconnecting, she guessed that Griswold must have headed toward the interstate. Doing eighty, she weaved through traffic back across the Rappahannock. At the last possible instant, she caught sight of the Porsche-a bullet streaking onto I-95, headed south away from D.C. and toward Richmond. It took a while to catch up, but she strongly sensed she had done it without being spotted. By the time they reached the outskirts of the capital of the Confederacy she had written down the license number.

The car, the clothes, even his swagger-it was as if Treat Griswold had driven into the rickety garage in Fredericksburg and emerged a different man. Now that man was easing off the interstate into the low-rent district of Richmond. Comfortable with the pattern of his driving and his lack of attention to the road behind him, Alison pulled over nearly a block away from where the Porsche had stopped. They were on a street of aging gabled houses that had probably been very special during the Civil War but were now all in need of scraping, paint, and carpentry-all, that is, but one.

Griswold turned right into the driveway of that house-an immaculately restored Victorian, painted gray with maroon trim and white mul-lions on what had to be at least two dozen windows. It was at once massive and elegant, perhaps half-again larger than the other homes on Beechtree Road. The rooflines of its two street-side spires were gracefully curved, and the lower two of three stories featured broad, circular porches. The curtains on most of the windows were drawn, although, like the street in Fredericksburg, Beechtree seemed like one where the residents kept to their own business.

By the time Alison risked cruising slowly past the drive, Griswold was gone and the 911 was locked in the garage.

Out of nothing, something.

An asthma inhaler had led her a hundred miles from the White House to… to what? A brothel of some sort? Her instincts said no, but her instincts had led her astray more than once over the years.

She noted down the address of the house next to the license plate number of the Porsche. There was no way to check on the owner of either without giving away information Alison needed to keep to herself. She would just have to wait until she got back to D.C. The day might come when she would need to blow the whistle on Treat Griswold for something illegal, but when and if she did, her case would be a hell of a lot better documented than the one at the hospital in Los Angeles had been and she would be a hell of a lot more prepared for the counterattack that was sure to follow.

Now she would just have to settle in, be patient, and wait for something to happen.

With the late afternoon sluggishly giving way to dusk, she parked down the street, replaced her Trident with two fresh sticks, and settled in. Three hours, she decided, sliding in a best of Sting CD and seeking out "Fields of Gold." If nothing happened after three more hours, she would head back to the city and resume her one-woman stakeout another day.

Not surprisingly, as the time passed she found herself thinking more and more about Gabe Singleton. There was a sweetness and vulnerability beneath his rugged cowboy exterior that had drawn her in immediately. The men in her past had been, well, slick, she acknowledged-smart, self-assured, ambitious, and, almost to a man, not totally forthcoming. Gabe had lost his faith in her honesty the first night they had met when he caught her in the lie she was forced to tell by being undercover. Still, there was no way she could have let him be killed to preserve her status as an undercover agent and no way she could explain her actions that early morning other than with the truth.

He was even wondering if the whole assassin thing was a setup to gain his confidence and lead him to share some presidential medical secrets. Those suspicions were totally off base, but confronting him and denying his concerns would only strengthen them.

She also had chosen not to share the rumors she had heard that the president was not mentally well. They were grossly unsubstantiated-questions from medical unit personnel, whispered in dim, late night taverns-hardly the sort of thing she would expect Gabe to share with her. Where her attraction to the man might lead, if anyplace, was a total mystery at this point. What she did know was that there was something special she felt when she was around him-an almost little-girl musing of what it might be like to curl up with him on a chilly winter night. But she also wondered why a man as bright, handsome, and caring wasn't married… or a father.

What secret are you hiding, Gabe Singleton? she asked herself now. Why do you seem so vulnerable?

An hour passed.

Inside the house, lights appeared behind a few of the windows that weren't covered by drapes. The two functioning streetlights remaining on Beechtree Road, neither of them near where she was parked, winked on. Then, just as Alison was considering limiting her time there from three hours to two, the front porch light came on, the front door opened, and two people emerged. Alison brought her field glasses up and focused on their faces. One was a statuesque woman with a face about the color of her own. Latino, Alison guessed.

The other was younger-much younger. Possibly ten or eleven at the oldest. Like the older woman, she was mocha skinned and dark eyed, and also like her, she was pretty. No, not pretty, Alison suddenly realized, stunning, with perfect, gentle features, an incredibly sensual mouth, a lithe body-still more girl-like than woman, but with breasts that were already well beyond nubs. Such things were almost always a matter of personal taste, she acknowledged, but the girl was as beautiful as any young woman Alison had ever seen.

What was Treat Griswold doing with such an attractive woman and a spectacularly beautiful girl? It seemed as if the only ones who could supply the answer to that question were the woman and girl themselves. The pair, arm-in-arm, descended the stairs and began to walk leisurely in the direction away from where Alison was parked.

Alison waited, sorting out her options. Then she set the binoculars down, turned off the CD, and followed.