Murder at the Kennedy Center (27 page)

Lodge owner Zach Filler was waiting when the limousine and two accompanying vehicles pulled up to the main house. Backus was shown to the largest cabin on the
grounds. It contained two bedrooms; Agent Jeroldson was assigned to the second.

“You really threw me a curve, you rascal,” Filler told Backus as the senator settled into a rocking chair and accepted a glass of bourbon from his friend. A roaring fire took the chill off the room. There were bottles of bourbon, buckets of ice, and a large tray with cheeses, breads, cold shrimp, and smoked salmon and trout. “I had to shift some good regular customers around to fit you and your people in.”

“And I appreciate it, Zach. Hope it wasn’t too much of an imposition. The fish bitin’?”

“Yes, they are, mostly on black ants and nymphs.”

“Damn it, Zach, the fella in the store said they were risin’ to mayflies and caddis. I bought myself a whole bunch a’ nice flies tied by Walt and Winny Dette.” The Dettes, who lived in Roscoe, were considered among the world’s leading dry-fly-tying experts.

Filler laughed. “Beauty … and what catches fish are in the eye of the beholder. Don’t worry, Jody, I’ll take care of you. You’ll catch yourself a fish.” Filler closely observed his old friend. Obviously, running for president took its toll. Backus looked considerably older, more fatigued, and less healthy than he had the last time they’d been together, a year ago in Georgia. He asked, “How is it going, Jody?”

Backus scowled at him and drew on his drink. “Could be better, Zach.”

Filler asked whether Jody wanted another drink. “Not right away, Zach. I got some heavy thinking to do, and I’d better get on the phone. You heard any news today about my opponent, Senator Ewald?”

Filler laughed. “Can’t say that I have, but that’s why I bought this place. The rest of the world doesn’t exist up here, which suits me fine.”

Backus grunted and yawned. “I may have a visitor in the morning, Zach, a special one. I’d just as soon keep that between us.”

“Absolutely. You ready for a good dinner? I brought in a fine Indian cook for you. I let my regular one go last week. Son of a bitch was stealing me blind, not money, but food, which comes down to the same thing.”

“I figure I can put off dinner for a while.” Backus tapped his large stomach and grinned, which pleased Filler. It was the first demonstration since he’d arrived that his friend was relaxing. “Look, Zach, anybody calls for me, I’m not available, hear? The others’ll take calls. I got to get as far away as possible from them.”

“I can understand that, Jody,” Filler said, laughing. “I only keep a phone here for city guests who can’t seem to be out of contact with their businesses. Some of them spend more time on the phone than on the stream. Don’t know what they catch—but they can have it.”

Backus closed his eyes.

“Let me get back and see how dinner’s shaping up,” Filler said. “There’s five of you?”

“Right. I appreciate this, Zach. I feel better already.”

“Always glad to help a good friend, Jody. I’ll be back.”

Backus sat alone in the cabin, the flames of the fire casting a ruddy, healthy glow over his round face. He’d shed his coat, tie, and shoes, and felt himself sink into the rocking chair’s well-worn cane seat. Then, as though he’d suddenly forgotten something, he looked in the direction of the room assigned to Jeroldson and shouted, “Bobby, come out here.”

Jeroldson, who’d been reclining on the bed reading a copy of
Service Star
, the Secret Service’s employee publication, got up and stood in the doorway.

“Come, sit, Bobby, and let’s talk while we got the chance.”

The dour agent took a straight-back chair near the fireplace.

“Help yourself,” said Backus, gesturing toward the platter of food.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Then have yourself a drink.”

“Not on duty.”

Backus started to laugh, but it turned into a sputter. “You are some strange breed, Bobby,” he said. “Duty? The only duty you have right now is to relax and talk to me. Go on now, have a drink. You don’t like bourbon? Go on up to the house and tell Zach what it is you do want—gin, beer, moose piss, whatever.”

“I’ll have bourbon.” Jeroldson poured a small amount of it into a glass filled with ice cubes, popped a shrimp in his mouth, and returned to his chair.

“Well, now, Mr. Bobby Jeroldson, tell me how the senator and Mr. Farmer felt when you were transferred over to me last week.”

Jeroldson shrugged. “They didn’t say anything.”

“Seems to me the senator from California would be pleased. I heard he wasn’t especially fond a’ you.”

The comment brought a small smile to Jeroldson’s wooden face.

“You want to say the feelin’s mutual, don’t you?”

A shrug.

“All I can say, Bobby, is that you’ve done a fine job keeping this ol’ boy up to date on what my friend and colleague Senator Ewald has been up to. I’m sincerely appreciative. I figure you’re smart enough to know that whether it’s me in the White House, or Vice-President Thornton, you’ve got yourself a fat job up on top of the Uniformed Division. Be a nice spot for you, Bobby, about a thousand men under you, respect, make a real name for yourself.” He was referring to the Secret Service’s special uniformed unit charged with protecting the White House, embassies, consulates, and chanceries. Although it had been the subject of considerable criticism because of its use of extensive manpower and excessive money to patrol Washington’s safest streets and best neighborhoods—while the MPD had to deal with the city’s worst crime areas—it had been considered a political sacred cow ever since Richard Nixon established it in 1969.

“I didn’t do much.”

“More than maybe you know, Bobby. Is he still sleepin’ around with that opera star, Gateaux?”

“Yes.”

Backus laughed. “Wonder if she’s as good at shatterin’ glasses in bed as she is on the stage.”

“I don’t think much about things like that,” Jeroldson said.

Backus yawned and scratched his sizable belly through a gap in his shirt. “You see, Bobby, although Senator Ewald
and I are colleagues in the Senate, we never seem to see eye-to-eye on certain things that I feel this country vitally needs. People like Senator Ewald, even though they might think they’re patriotic, seem to be hell-bent on selling this country out to the Commies and their friends. I won’t mince words with you. Havin’ Ken Ewald in the White House could mean the end of this beautiful democracy of ours, and you have made a fine contribution to preserving this country I know you love as much as I do.”

“Thank you.” He said it with a lack of expression that matched his face. Jeroldson’s evaluation report at the completion of his training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia—where Backus first met him—and at the Secret Service’s own academy in Beltsville, Maryland, had noted, “Agent Jeroldson possesses all the physical and mental attributes to become a useful agent. He is, however, a young man with unbending ideals and principles, which, perhaps, will have to be tempered if he is to develop into an agent with growth potential.”

“I figured now that we’re smack dab in the middle of the end of this campaign, it was better for you to be with me. Now, all you have to do is keep an eye on this fat ol’ Georgia boy and make sure some crackpot doesn’t mistake me for a moose.”

“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen, Senator.”

“Good, good. Best you take a walk now, go on up to the main house and read a magazine. I’ll let you know when to come back. Nice country up here, isn’t it?”

“Beautiful.”

“A little chilly. Keep the fire goin’.”

After Backus had dined with Zach Filler on fresh bass, vegetables, and corn bread, the two friends took a walk. Backus wore old, wrinkled Sears work pants, a nubby green sweater over the dress shirt he’d worn that day, and a heavy black-and-red wool jacket.

They crossed a bridge, went up a lonely road, and stopped on a bridge from which they could see the famed trout streams of Roscoe. The night was crystal clear, and chilly.
The black sky above was blistered with millions of bright white stars.

“Good dinner, Zach,” Backus said, staring out at the stream.

“Joey’s a good cook, when he’s sober.”

“Sometimes it’s better not to be sober, Zach. Sometimes it’s better for a man to miss what’s going on around him.”

“You feel that way these days?”

“Sometimes. My daddy always told me that when things get too complicated, all you’ve got to do is to stand back, give it some room, and it’ll all clear up. He was right, only he wasn’t dealing with the problems of keeping this country free. That’s a little more complicated. You see, Zach, sometimes a man has to do things that are personally distasteful to him. He has to do those things because there is somethin’ a lot bigger at stake, and in this case, it’s the future security of these United States.”

Filler, too, gazed out over the stream, where light from an almost full moon caught the ripples and sent them dancing. He said, “I’ve never pried, Jody, not where I’m not wanted, and I won’t start now, but you look like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. If I can help …”

“You already have, Zach. Comin’ up here is what my daddy said to do when things get rough.”

“Ewald?”

“Yup.”

“I could never understand how anybody could consider him for president, especially compared to you.”

Backus let out a gruff laugh. “That, my old friend, is a gross understatement, and I won’t pretend modesty. I have to hand it to Mr. Ewald, though, I really thought this country was finished with his kind of politics, and that I wouldn’t have a hell of a lot of trouble whuppin’ him in the primaries. The man proved me wrong. I gave it my best shot, Zach, and now that the handwriting is pretty much up there on the wall, I …” He shook his head. “Even though I’m a Democrat, I truly question what this country will be like if he ends up our president. Of course, I’ve got to go around sayin’ I’ll back him if he wins.” He slowly turned and looked
at Filler, who had been staring at him. “That a bad thing for me to be thinkin’ and sayin’?”

“Not to me, Jody, but you’re not the only one faced with that dilemma. Think of voters like me, who truly care about this country and sure as hell don’t want the likes of California Ken Ewald in the White House.”

“You understand, then.”

“Of course I do, but all I have to do is vote. I wouldn’t be in your shoes.”

“I don’t want to be in my shoes, either.”

Filler didn’t have any words for a few moments. Then he asked, “Do you think you can somehow still win the nomination?”

Backus’s grin was illuminated by the moon. “Well, things have been better lately, Zach, only you never know. I know one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I know that it’s either goin’ to be me or Raymond Thornton in the White House. Either way, this country will sail an even course.”

Filler looked at his large friend with admiration in his eyes. “This country was built by people like you, Jody, and thank God we still have your breed.”

The next morning, another limousine arrived at Filler’s lodge. Two men wearing chest waders, bulging fishing vests, peaked hats, and large polarized sunglasses stepped from it and immediately got into a Voyager minivan that was waiting for them. The driver, Secret Service agent Jeroldson, left the parking lot and drove the new visitors, along with Jody Backus, to a point on the stream where it curved, and where a deep trout pool existed. Backus and his visitors went down a gentle bank and stepped with care into the fast-flowing water, using wading staffs for support. They’d said nothing from the moment the men got into the van. Now, after they cast their flies into the water and stood silently for several minutes, Backus said, “I think we might be goin’ a little too far.”

The older of the two men who’d arrived that morning
said agreeably, “I think everything is going just fine, Jody. Perfect, you might say.”

“I don’t know, there’s a point where—”

“If there’s a
point
, Senator, it’s that we could come close as a fly is to a tippet to losing this country, to losing democracy all over the world.”

“I couldn’t live with that,” said Backus.

“You won’t have to. God is all-giving.”

“God? Seems like a few of us mortals have done a speck more, of late.”

The older man made another cast. As the line snapped forward after looping behind him, the hook on the small fly caught in the fabric of his hat. He removed his hat and glasses, and worked to disengage the barb.

Zach Filler, who’d strolled down to the stream and watched the action on it from a distance, narrowed his eyes and focused on the older man as he attempted to remove the hook. Filler hadn’t had any idea who Senator Backus’s visitors were, nor did he care. Now, nonetheless, he knew. There was no mistaking him—the flowing silver hair, the handsome tanned face, the smile. He’d been on television too many times to not be recognized as America’s most famous television evangelist.

“Dr. Thelen, I’m Mackensie Smith. This is Ms. Reed.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Smith, Ms. Reed. You didn’t waste time getting here.”

“No, Mr. Buffolino is—”

“He’s told me how close you are. You’re partners, I understand.”

“Partners? Well, it’s more a matter of …” He could see Annie grinning. “Yes, we’re partners. How is he?”

“Doing very well, considering the amount of blood he lost. His right thigh looks like it went through a meat grinder, but I’d say the prognosis is good. He’ll heal nicely, won’t lose too much leg function.”

“ ‘Lose leg function’?” Annabel said. “We didn’t realize it was so serious.”

“Let’s just say he won’t be winning any medals for the high hurdles, but he won’t need a cane, either,” Thelen said. “He’s lucky. That previous injury to his right knee was very severe. If he’d been hit
there
again … No, no, I think he’ll do just fine.”

“Can we see him?” Annabel asked.

“Of course. He’s still under sedation, but he’s fairly alert,
sitting up, as a matter of fact. The woman who shot him, a Ms. Zaretski, is with him.”

“She is … 
with
him?”