Murder in the White House (Capital Crimes Book 1) (26 page)

Gimbel glanced at Ron. His eyes were very cold. He nodded curtly.

“You left the West Wing at five-fourteen,” the President said. “I need to know where you were between then and seven o’clock. And can you come up with witnesses?”

Gimbel’s lips were white, rigid, his pallid face stayed fixed in its original hostile mask. He said nothing.

“Fritz?” the President said.

“I went home.”

“When you got there did you call the White House switchboard and tell them where you could be found?”

“No.”

“You always do.”

“I didn’t today. Didn’t feel well, didn’t want any calls—”

“And no one saw you, no one saw you enter your building.”

“No, not that I know of.”

The President looked at Ron. “Ron,” he said curtly.

Ron picked it up. “You received a telephone call from a woman about five o’clock,” he said… it was a guess but an informed guess… all right, a bluff, actually. “Her name would be on your secretary’s telephone log. Who was she?”

“Donna Kemper.”

Donna Kemper. Of course… Martha Kingsley would have been told to use a pseudonym when she called Gimbel at the White House, where a record was kept of every incoming call. “Who’s Donna Kemper?”

“A friend.”

“We can identify her and interview her. In fact if you’ll give us her number we can call her now—”

Gimbel turned to the President. “Bob…” Never before had Ron heard anyone but Catherine Webster call the President by his first name. “…how much of this do I have to tolerate?”

“You can settle it damn easily, Fritz.” He was clearly appealing to Gimbel to do just that.

Gimbel looked at Ron. “I will not allow you to disturb Donna Kemper in the middle of the night—”

“Walter Locke is here,” Ron said to the President. “I’ll give him the name. The FBI can make a quick check to see who she is, or if there really is such a person—”

“A five o’clock telephone call, where I was from five to seven, what does all this have to do with anything—?”

“Martha Kingsley,” Ron interrupted him, “was killed between five and seven. If you weren’t involved you can easily prove it by letting us call your friend Donna Kemper. Except you can’t let us call her, can you? You can’t because Donna Kemper is the name Martha Kingsley used when she called you at five o’clock—”

“I don’t have to prove anything to you—”

“Mr. President,” Ron said—he glanced at Gimbel, then fixed his eyes on the President—“let’s at least find out if there’s a Donna Kemper in the telephone book. Let’s find out if the FBI can identify such a person.”

The President looked to Catherine, as if to see if she could save him from the misery of this confrontation. Then he looked at the Attorney General. Catherine was staring at the floor and did not look up. The Attorney General stared back at the President through the curling
smoke of his cigarette, showing no intention to intervene. The President sighed heavily. “Call the FBI.”

Ron picked up the telephone on the end table, told the switchboard to find Locke, who was in the West Wing, and send him to the Oval Office. The operator told him Les Fitch had also arrived, and Ron told her to send him in.

Gimbel sat stiffly erect during this telephone call. To Ron he seemed caged… he couldn’t get up and stalk out, he couldn’t withstand interrogation. A facade seemed to be breaking up as he sat there.

Locke and Fitch had been waiting just outside, and when there was an immediate rap on the door Ron went to it, separated Locke and Fitch, told Locke what he wanted and led Fitch into the room.

“Mr. President,” Ron said, “I think we can settle another matter. You know Les Fitch. He was head of the Secret Service detail that was assigned to protect Lynne Saturday night. He’s going to tell us what really happened.”

Fitch, ordinarily a self-possessed man, was stunned. Here he was facing the President, Catherine Webster, Gimbel, the Attorney General, and Ron Fairbanks all at once—in the Oval Office, at midnight. “Uh… just what is it you want to know—?”

“Please just answer the question,” the President said in a flat, weary voice without looking up at Fitch.

“We already know a good deal,” Ron told Fitch, “but we’d like your contribution. Just tell us what happened Saturday night.”

“Well… it’s of course not true that you were drinking too much, Mr. Fairbanks. I… I wasn’t the source of that story.” He paused, hoping that he had told them
what they wanted to hear. “I… just somehow lost you, Mr. Fairbanks. We try to be courteous, to combine security with courtesy… that’s the ticket… I guess I overdid the courtesy… I’m sorry…”

“Who told you to drop back?” he asked. “Who told you to leave Lynne and me without Secret Service protection for ten or fifteen minutes?”

Fitch shook his head. “I—”

“Fitch, you’re talking bull and you know it. I’d say you were in a bag of trouble.”

“
Mr. Gimbel?
” Fitch snapped.

Gimbel did not react. During the exchange between Ron and Fitch he’d sat motionless, staring straight ahead. He’d shown no sign that he was even aware Fitch was in the room. He continued to stare ahead.

“
What am I supposed to say, Mr. Gimbel?
” Fitch demanded. “They’re asking questions you promised wouldn’t be asked…”

Gimbel looked up at him, shrugged.

“Well, at least that settles that,” Ron said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Catherine put in, and swung around on the couch to face Fitch directly. “Who ordered you to do what? I want to know exactly what your orders were.”

Fitch’s defiance collapsed. “Mrs. Webster—”

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I want Lynne to hear this.” She picked up the telephone.

“No, Catherine,” the President’s voice was more a plea than an order. “Lynne needn’t—”

“She’s going to hear plenty secondhand. I want her to hear how they left her unprotected, let somebody break her arm… maybe trying to do worse.” She spoke to the White House operator on the line.

“Catherine…” Gimbel said, shaking his head. “Please…”

“Let Fitch tell us,” she said firmly. “Go ahead, Fitch.
Who
ordered you to do
what
?”

“
Catherine
,” Gimbel protested. “
No
, don’t do this… please… leave Lynne out of it…”

“
Fitch
. Enough of this. Tell us.”

The Secret Service man gave up. “All right… I was ordered to drop back,” he said. He swallowed hard. “Mr. Gimbel ordered me to drop back and leave a gap between my detail and the Datsun Mr. Fairbanks was driving. The other men in the detail didn’t know. I pretended I was having trouble with my Chevy. I lost the Datsun just after it entered the park. I was supposed to give somebody five minutes’ time to… interfere with the Datsun—”

“
Interfere
.” Catherine stood up. “Fritz, my God, you actually tried to kill Lynne—”

“
No
.” Gimbel shouted it. “No, Catherine, for God’s sake.
She
wasn’t supposed to be hurt, not even a little. The man who hit them is an expert. He was to run them off the road, scare Fairbanks, make him out to look like a drunken driver. She wasn’t supposed to be hurt, I guarantee you… I knew she always wore her belt in the car, she was
not
to be hurt… There was not to be
any
chance of it—”

Catherine stood looking at him, shaking her head. Gimbel stared at her, whispered something inaudible, then put his hands to his face.

“You valued her… and her life… very very little, Fritz, if you could do what you did,” the President said.

Gimbel spoke through his hands in a voice now clearly breaking.

“No… wrong… my God, I
love
that little girl, I couldn’t possibly hurt her… I watched her grow up, you know that… She’s always been so lovely, so innocent—”

“And the daughter you never had,” Catherine said coldly. “I’ve heard you say it more than once.”

Gimbel nodded. He uncovered his face, pulled off his glasses and dabbed at his eyes with his fingertips. “So I
couldn’t
hurt her… just the opposite—”

Ron broke in. “You wanted to discredit me because I’d been to see Martha Kingsley. I was getting too close to you.”

Gimbel only glanced up at Ron. He did not respond.

“I interviewed Martha Kingsley again this afternoon,” Ron went on. “As soon as I left her she called you. She told you what I had asked. She told you how much she had told me. She told you… just a minute. Fitch, you can leave.”

The Secret Service man left the Oval Office, shoulders slack, red-faced.

Ron spoke directly to Gimbel. “Blaine had told Martha Kingsley all about Mrs. Webster and Stanley Oakes and Lynne. She knew it all. This afternoon she told me she did. And when she called you, she told
you
she knew. Didn’t she?”

Gimbel appeared to sag inside his over-large suit. He sighed and nodded, and he turned to the President.

“Sir, over the last year and a half I’ve paid Martha Kingsley some twenty-five thousand dollars out of the reptile fund—”

“What the hell is the reptile fund?” the Attorney General asked.

Webster explained. “It’s the fund we use for bribing snakes.”

Gimbel went on, ignoring the interruption. “Blaine in many ways was a fool. He ate too much, he drank too much, he even talked too much, and for a man in his position… well, not all of the young women he condescended to sleep with were the little idiots he thought they were.” Gimbel looked at Ron. “Marya Kalisch, who was in his apartment when he was being killed, reported back to Eiseman the things Blaine confided in her. But in Martha Kingsley he met a woman every bit as smart—street smart, anyway—as Blaine. She knew how to work him. She’d played the game before. She was interested in money. I paid her, she reported Blaine’s conversations to me. I’ve known for a long time he was taking outright bribes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” the President said.

“Was I to accuse your Secretary of State, your brilliant, witty friend, on the word of a prostitute?”

The President shook his head. “I didn’t know we dealt with—”

“There are a lot of things you don’t know,” Gimbel said. “They’re my job. The dirtier the better…”

Ron wanted to bring things back on course. “Blaine told Martha Kingsley about Stanley Oakes,” he repeated.

“Is someone going to tell me who Stanley Oakes is?” the Attorney General said.

“Isn’t that right, Gimbel?” Ron said, avoiding the question. “She knew about Oakes… and all the rest of it.”

Gimbel nodded. “Blaine was a damn fool.” He bit off
the words. “When she called me this afternoon she said, ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t tell Fairbanks the big secret.’ I asked her what secret. ‘The one about Lynne,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I won’t tell it. It’s the kind of thing I don’t tell.’ Of course I knew better. She would tell it the first time she saw enough advantage in telling. She would sell the story to the highest bidder. If she didn’t tell Fairbanks here, it was only because he wasn’t important enough. He didn’t shape up as the highest bidder.” He said that last with a certain amount of relish, despite his circumstances.

“You didn’t know before this afternoon that Blaine had told her?” Ron said, not believing it.

Gimbel shook his head. “Blaine spent the night with her the same day he threatened Bob, tried to blackmail him. He told her then, but she didn’t tell me that. She told me all about that night but not that he’d told her about Oakes.”

Ron looked for a moment at the President, then spoke again to Gimbel. “I say you killed Martha Kingsley. If she talked, the whole story would come back around, and it would be obvious who killed Blaine.”

Gimbel stared thoughtfully for a moment at Ron. Then, abruptly, he shrugged and turned up the palms of his hands.

Catherine Webster was quietly sobbing, holding tight to her husband’s hand.

The President stared downward. “I guess this is the end of my presidency… my Chief of Staff involved in…”

The Attorney General seemed not to have heard the
President. “Fritz, will you sign a confession?” he asked Gimbel.

Gimbel looked at him, appearing not to have understood the question. Again he shrugged.

“Well, we—” the Attorney General began, and stopped.

Lynne had just come in. She had knocked once, then walked in. She was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and her
FIRST DAUGHTER
T-shirt, and a black sling for her broken arm.

“Tell her to go back upstairs,” Gimbel said intensely to Catherine. His eyes seemed especially naked without the spectacles that always covered them. “Don’t let her—”

Lynne glanced around the Oval Office, walked over to the couch where her mother sat. “What’s going on?” She sat down beside her mother in the space. Catherine and the President had made for her. She looked at Ron. “Actually, I think I know…”

“Lynne…” said the President quietly, “we are talking about Lan, about who killed him… Fritz has admitted he arranged the automobile accident you and Ron had Saturday night. Also”—the President stiffened and spoke crisply—“also, Fritz has admitted he killed a woman named Martha Kingsley, he did it late this afternoon—”

“
Fritz
…” Lynne was up from the couch, “My God… who is Martha Kingsley? Why did you have to… what’s that have to do with Lan? Why somebody else…?”

Gimbel’s face was a mask of anguish.

“
Lynne
…” The President stood to face his daughter.
“What are you saying? What do you
know
? You said ‘somebody else’? Did you know that Fritz killed Blaine too—?”

“He’s
right
, Lynne,” Gimbel said quickly, and nodded urgently at her. “Don’t say anything more… it’s true…
I
killed Blaine… for good reason—”

She shook her head, spoke with a weird calm. “No…
I
killed Lan. I had to do it… and I did.” She looked from her mother to the President, and finally to Ron. “I killed him,” she whispered.

And repeated, “I killed him.”

***

The President held his daughter in his arms, an island of humanity, abruptly cut off from all trapping of office, from all others except themselves. Lynne finally was able to look away… to Ron, who looked as stricken as the Webster family. He looked away, at Gimbel, sitting there hunched over, his hands covering his face.