The Next President (53 page)

“Try this,” he suggested, offering him the strap from his camera.

Tom used it to bind the wounded man’s leg just above the knee. The tourniquet seemed to stanch the flow of blood, but Tom was alarmed to see that the reporter, who’d been moaning continuously, had passed out. Tom looked around him. One woman—from a New York paper, he thought—was having her face covered with the jacket of a man who was sobbing piteously.

Looking away, Tom’s face was drawn to the stage. Townes, with his gun still to the little boy’s head, Rawley, and J. D. Cade were walking off the stage, leaving through the wings to the left. Special agents followed at a distance of several yards, and once they were all out of sight, the reporter half expected to hear the roar of gunfire.

Instead he heard the trill of a PCR on the ground next to him. Unable to resist, Hayashi picked it up and said hello.

A man identified himself as Ben Cade and demanded to talk to his cousin

J.D.

“He can’t come to the phone right now,” the reporter replied.

“He really can’t.”

Then Ben Cade told Tom Hayashi to give J. D. this message immediately.

His son had been rescued. He was alive but very seriously hurt. He was on his way to the hospital.

“IfJ. D. doesn’t get this message right away,” Ben warned, “something bad might happen.”

“I’m afraid it already has,” Hayashi replied quietly.

Garvin Townes ordered Del Rawley to close the door to dressing room B and lock it.

Del did as he was told. Now he, his grandson, J. D. Cade, and Townes were shut inside and the rest of the world was locked out. Little Benjamin Franklin Walker had exhausted himself. He could do no more than hang limply in Townes’ grasp and whimper now.

Townes said, “I really don’t think they’ll be foolish enough to rush the door or shoot through it unless they hear gunfire, but just to be safe, Senator, you go lean against it. And you stand next to him, Cade.”

Del leaned against the door, as instructed. J. D. stood to his right.

“You hurt my grandson,” Del said in a flat tone, “you’ll never get out of here alive.”

Townes only smiled.

“Oh, I know that. Senator. But what you should know is I have no intention of leaving this room alive. My time has come, and I’m ready to die. Just ask Cade there; I’ve already told him as much.”

Del looked at J. D.” who did not meet his eyes or respond in any way.

“You see. Cade was supposed to kill you. For me. Almost did in Chicago, but you had to bend over at just the wrong moment and cause all this trouble for everyone. Then tonight Cade was supposed to kill you again. But I misjudged him grievously. The bastard hates me even more than he loves his son. He thought he’d expose me in front of the world, have me captured, and what, Cade… save Junior in the bargain?”

J. D. had nothing to say to Townes, either.

“But I told you I’d never be taken alive, Cade. I told you I’d sooner kill myself, and that’s just what I’ll do. But here’s the real kicker, Cade. You can still save your son. Just do what I’ve always wanted you to do. Kill the senator here. Do it not because it serves a purpose any longer, but just because it pleases me to finally bend you to my will. Do it and I’ll make the call that sets Evan free. Don’t do it and… well, the deadline for saving him expires shortly.”

Del Rawley again looked at J. D.” who still refused to meet his gaze.

Townes continued, “Of course, now I have one additional tidbit of motivation for you, Cade: Refuse me and the senator’s grandson dies as well.”

“Kill me,” Del Rawley said to J. D. Finally J. D. looked at him.

“Do it,” Del pleaded.

“Don’t let my grandson die.”

“The time has come, Cade,” Townes decreed.

“You didn’t sneak into this place tonight without bringing a weapon. Show it to the senator, and then use it to kill him.”

J. D. opened his sport coat and with thumb and index finger removed a

Mont Blanc pen. He twisted the cap off. Townes’ eyes glittered with amusement

“A pen gun? Good for you, Cade. First you use a weapon designed to kill from almost two miles away, then you plan to use one that requires you to be almost close enough to squirt ink on your victim.” Towne shook his head while laughing. Then his smile hardened to ice.

“Well, I’m sure all those heavily armed gentlemen outside are furiously making plans to hatch some sort of rescue attempt, so let’s get on with it. Place the gun to the senator’s head and execute him.”

“Do it!” Del commanded.

“Please … for the love of God.”

J. D. took a step away from Del Rawley and looked at him with the eyes of a lost soul. He flicked up the golden lever in the side of the pen… and then tilted his head back and put the pen under his own jaw.

“Nooooo?” Townes bellowed. Suicide was his way out, not Cade’s. He couldn’t let Cade escape him now. He had to kill him.

Townes at last took his gun away from the little boy’s head and pointed it at Cade. The last thing he saw as he pulled the trigger was a jet of ink squirt Cade under his chin.

Then, while Townes’ eyes were still widening in surprise and even as his bullet tore through J. D. Cade’s chest, Del Rawley used the distraction and grabbed the gun from his pocket. Praying to God Almighty that he didn’t hit Benjamin, he fired a round that struck the bridge of Townes’ nose, killing him instantly.

Del lunged to catch his grandson in midair. Less than a second later, the dressing room door flew off its hinges under the weight of a Secret Service assault. Agents looked around frantically for someone in need of killing, but the only two conscious people they saw were Orpheus and his hysterical grandson.

“Take the child!” Del ordered, handing his grandson to the first available agent. He rushed over to where J. D. Cade sat slumped against a wall painted red with his blood. For a second J. D.‘s eyes seemed to meet his, but then they lost focus.

Del Rawley, the old army medic, put his fingers to J. D. Cade’s throat… but he couldn’t find a pulse.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Inauguration day was bitterly cold, but that wasn’t why President Franklin Delano Rawley kept his stirring speech brief and hurried back to the White House. No, this was his first chance to see J. D. Cade since that horrible day months before in Los Angeles. Cade and his son, Evan, whom Del would meet for the first time, were waiting for him in the Oval Office.

The First Lady was quite put out that she and the rest of the family would not be allowed to meet with J. D. Cade and his son, but the president was adamant. He told them that this was an official visit, not a personal one. He refused to explain what he meant, but was forced to promise he would invite J. D. Cade and anyone he cared to have accompany him to Camp David at his earliest possible convenience.

Striding through the West Wing, Del thought back to how J. D. had been clinically dead when he’d first reached his body. J. D. would have stayed that way if the Secret Service hadn’t had the president’s doctor right behind them when they broke into that dressing room, and if there hadn’t been a helicopter standing by for the two-minute flight to Cedars-Sinai Hospital, and maybe even if Del hadn’t forced his way into the operating room and prayed just as hard as he could for the man who’d saved not only his life but his grandson’s as well.

No absolute proof had ever been found that Del’s predecessor knew of Garvin Townes’ scheme to kill him, though he had appointed him to a specially created post within the Treasury Department. Even so, the

election had been decided when Del Rawley came out of dressing room B not only alive but with Benjamin in his arms. A man who had risked his life for his grandson, entered a locked room with an armed madman, and emerged a hero, he had carried all fifty states by the most overwhelming margins in U.S.

history.

The assassination attempt on Del Rawley’s life in Chicago was attributed to Beauregard “Dixie” Wynne. Information establishing Wynne’s connection to Garvin Townes was first published by Tom Hayashi of the Los Angeles Times, who was still being fed horror stories about the life and times of the late Townes by an unknown source.

The official version of how Del had been able to escape with his life and save his grandson had given a large amount of the credit to the further heroism of Jefferson Davis Cade. He was said to have distracted Townes, allowing Del Rawley to wrest Townes’ gun from him and turn it against him.

The fact that Townes and J. D. Cade were shot with different-caliber rounds was a secret that Del was content to keep. The Secret Service had persuaded him that letting people know he’d been armed during the course of a political debate would not reflect well on him or them.

Once Devree had been told the truth about Del having been armed, she felt compelled to inform her husband that she had placed a secret bodyguard with him from the beginning of the primary campaign: Donnel Timmons.

He’d been left in place when the Secret Service came aboard after the nomination, and she never would have let herself be sent home after the attempt in Chicago if Donnel hadn’t been on hand to call her with daily reports.

Stepping into the Oval Office, Del saw the Cades seated and waiting for him. He sat on the corner of his new desk and looked at them. Their eyes and hair were different colors but the resemblance between father and son was striking. Just looking at them together was enough to understand why J. D. loved his son so much.

The president reached out and extended his hand to Evan Cade.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said.

“I’m Del Rawley.”

“The pleasure’s mine, Mr. President,” Evan answered, shaking hands.

“Pardon us for not standing,” J. D. said with a wry grin.

Both Cades were seated in wheelchairs. Evan had suffered, along with other damage, a spinal injury. Upon entering Evan, the bullet from the Toad’s gun had passed through his liver, ricocheted off a lumbar vertebra, causing a spinal cord contusion, and struck the liver again, causing further severe damage to that organ.

J. D.” once resuscitated, had seemed to be on his way to a remarkable recovery Townes’ shot had struck him outside the nipple line on the

left side of his chest, missing the heart. After a tube had been inserted, en route to the hospital, to drain the blood and air from his chest, he’d seemed like a new man. He’d been expected to remain intubated and hospitalized for three to five days until a tear in his lung healed. But when he learned that his son’s liver had been effectively destroyed, he insisted on donating a not insubstantial part of his own liver to transplant into his son. He’d been flown to Illinois after informing his medical team that there would be grave consequences if his wishes in this matter were not respected. Coming in the aftermath of a serious gunshot wound that had stopped his heart, he had been slow to recover from his liver donation.

The transplant had saved Evan’s life; the contusion of his spinal cord had left him with the use of his upper body but, for the time being, not his legs.

“What are the prognoses for the two of you?” Del asked.

“I’m going to walk again, Mr. President. The doctors say maybe, I say absolutely.”

“They tell me I’ll be okay eventually,” J. D. said.

“Provided I don’t get shot again.”

“See that you don’t,” the president instructed him.

The three men chatted for a few more minutes and then the president asked Evan if he would excuse his father and him. Evan said sure. Del pressed a button on his desk and a Secret Service agent opened the door to admit Belle Cade. Introductions were made.

“Very nice to meet you, Mrs. Cade,” Del said.

“You must be very proud of your son and grandson.”

“Yes, I am, Mr. President,” Belle said, beaming.

After another minute or two of conversation, Evan and Belle took their leave.

When they were alone, Del told J. D.”

“I’ve talked with your mother, you know.”

J. D. was more than a little surprised to hear that.

“I’ve talked with quite a few people about you. Even your old girlfriend.”

“You spoke to Mary’ Ellen McCarthy?” j. D. frowned.

“Her name’s Dr. Mary Ellen Brightman now, I believe. And I understand she has a daughter named Libby who had occasion to meet your son recently and was quite taken with him.”

J. D. had nothing to say about that. He understood what the president was telling him: that he’d had J. D. checked out down to his dental work.

But unless the man had actually had J. D.‘s hospital room bugged—which J. D. doubted—there were still some things Del Rawley didn’t know.

There were still things that J. D. didn’t know.

During his time in the hospital, Donnel had come to see him.

“You sonofabitch,” Donnel had told him, “you just sat there and let me drink a mickey.”

J. D. replied, “The way I remember it, you were pointing a gun at me.”

“I was worried you were going to kill Del.”

“Didn’t turn out that way.”

Donnel had told him that after getting out of auto parts, to make productive use of all the skills he’d learned in the army, he’d become the silent partner in a private security firm that Devree Rawley had hired. She, of course, hadn’t known about Donnel’s PANIC background… and J. D. couldn’t bring himself to ask whether Donnel had been worried that J. D. would try to kill Del because he’d wanted to protect his client or because Donnel had been, in fact, a second assassin.

J. D. didn’t want to know—but maybe it said something that Donnel was as content as he was to let the blame for Chicago be pinned on the late Dixie Wynne.

Pickpocket also came by to see J. D.” looking cockier than ever for having survived a shooting. The little thief brought with him interesting news. He had discovered that one name on the guest list of J. D.‘s gun club had matched a resident of Arlington, Virginia, the location of the PostMaster Plus franchise from which the blackmail letters had been sent to him: Thomas Laughlin.

He’d found public-record pictures of Laughlin that had been taken with his two former associates, Donald Ward and Jenny Crenshaw. J. D. never believed that Jenny played any active part in either the effort to blackmail him or kill Del Rawley, but the coincidence was very disquieting. It made him maintain a little distance when Jenny came to visit him.