The President's Assassin (41 page)

“They have no idea
how
it disappeared?”

“They have
an
idea.” After a moment he explained, “There’s only one way it could have happened. Somebody who works at the unit removed the file and carelessly failed to log it out.”

That was exactly what happened, I was sure, and carelessness had nothing to do with it. I now knew what I needed to know, and I bid the general farewell.

As she had with Jason, Jennie had probably sifted through hundreds of opened cases before she located Clyde, MaryLou, and Hank, who, individually and collectively, personified the résumé for her plan. Or maybe not—maybe it was vice versa. Thinking back, the murders were tailored to fit their peculiar skills, each mirroring in some way their crimes at Fort Hood. As Jennie knew, practice makes perfect in crime, as in most human endeavors.

She gave them intimate insights into the defenses they needed to breach, and into the vulnerabilities and mindset of their victims, and their victims’ defenders. After all, Jennie’s office reviewed and provided physical support for the Secret Service and Supreme Court protection plans—she knew which victims were accessible, how, and when. As the task force responded to the wave of killings, as we adjusted our strategies and defenses, she adjusted hers, shifting from the most protected targets to the most careless, like horny Danny Carter, or to the most clueless, like poor Joan Townsend.

It now
looked
so obvious I couldn’t believe we never even suspected it. But it wasn’t at all obvious. In fact, it was the most stunning fakery I had ever seen. Only one piece, in fact, could not have been more apparent.

We should all have noticed the intensely psychological nature of the campaign waged against us, a psychic blitzkrieg. We awoke one morning to a disaster, behind the power curve, gripped with desperation, and the relentless fusillade of ensuing murders ground us down—left us sleepless, demoralized, frantic, clawing at one another’s throats, and, in the end, so myopically focused on the facts that we missed the overall pattern.

The Army has an entire branch dedicated to the pursuit of psychological warfare, an art intended not to kill and maim, but to incubate panic, fear, and confusion, to create division, and ultimately, to cause defeat. Jennie directed the campaign from the outside, and from the inside, she worked on our brittle psyches, selfish impulses, and frayed egos.

I got out of my car and walked slowly back to Mark Townsend’s door. I rang the bell again, and pretty young Janice answered again. I walked back down the hallway to the office and sat down with Mr. Townsend and told him everything I knew.

CHAPTER THIRTY - FIVE

U
SING
M
R
. T
OWNSEND
’
S PHONE
, I
CALLED
L
ARRY
,
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 MaryLou’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—”