Primary Storm (11 page)

He passed over a business card. "My name is Chuck Bittner. I'm with Tucker Grayson's presidential campaign. I'd like to talk to you."

I tossed the business card on the passenger's seat of the Explorer. "Sorry, Mr. Bittner. The feeling's not mutual."

He tried to lean into the open window. "Mr. Cole, look, General Grayson is what this country needs, and I'm dedicated to seeing him elected. Just a few minutes of your time, and I'm sure you'll agree with me, and agree to help his campaign by ---"

I raised the window and kept on driving, and when I got down to my house, there was yet another visitor, standing outside the front door. I had an urge to keep on driving, to see if I could make my visitor run into the snowbank, but I was a good boy and turned into the garage.

I parked my Explorer, got out, and said, "Last time somebody stood there, he claimed to be a Secret Service agent. Glad to know your credentials seem to be in order. Or at least I hope."

Secret Service Agent Glen Reynolds didn't smile at my little gibe and said, "Do you want to see them again?"

"Nope."

He said, "I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes."

I scratched at my face. "Thought my attorney was pretty clear, Agent Reynolds. You weren't to talk to me without his say-so."

"Maybe I tried to call him. Perhaps I didn't reach him."

"Perhaps," I said.

"Or maybe I just wanted to see if I could talk to you without your hiding behind your attorney."

"I'm not sure if 'hiding' is an appropriate term, Agent Reynolds."

A quick nod. "My apologies then."

"All right. I guess we can talk away."

I stood there, and he stood there, and he said, "Well?"

"Yes?"

"Can we go inside?"

"Oh. Can you say the magic word?"

A slight grimace. "Mr. Cole, can we please go inside to talk?"

"Sure," I said, smiling at him.

I unlocked the front door, went inside, and dumped my coat on a nearby chair, and Agent Reynolds followed me and sat down on my couch. From inside his coat he pulled out a section of newspaper, which he tossed on the coffee table. I saw the familiar layout and typeface of the
Tyler Chronicle.

"This article is not helpful," he said.

"Really?"

"Really. Not helpful at all."

"Then I suggest you talk to the reporter. Who was it?"

His voice got sharp. "You know who wrote it."

"So talk to her. Why talk to me?"

"Because of what she said in the story. Lots of juicy information and quotes about the shooting at the conference center, all of the quotes anonymous. None of them from me, none of them from the state police or anybody else officially involved in the investigation. So it was you. Why?"

"Seemed to be the right thing at the time."

"To interfere with the investigation?"

"Some investigation," I said. "You thought you had it wrapped up in a nice little package with my arrest. A one-day investigation, with everything all confirmed and concluded, no more work to be done. Right?"

His face flushed. 'We followed the leads that were there. Beginning with your weapon, your fingerprints, your presence at the campaign rally. To do anything else would have been foolish."

"Well, it seemed foolish to me."

"Then consider yourself lucky that you don't have to worry about such things."

"All right, I'll do just that."

Reynolds said, "The investigation is continuing, Mr. Cole. Both into the shooting at the campaign rally and this supposed Secret Service agent who saw you the other day." He gestured to the newspaper on my coffee table. "Question I have is this. Do you intend to keep on interfering with our investigation?"

"Guess it depends on your definition of interfering, Agent Reynolds."

"All right. Here's my definition. Talking to the press again about what happened at the campaign rally. How's that?"

"Fair enough," I said. "And just to let you know, my press appearances have officially ended. That sound good to the Treasury Department?"

"That sounds excellent, Mr. Cole."

"Glad to be of service."

"Now, about this Spenser Harris. Do you have any information as to who he is, or where he came from?"

"No," I said. "Do you?"

He paused for a second, like he was debating what to tell me, and he said, "No, not a whit. We've done a canvass of what passes for a neighborhood around here, talked to the people at the Lafayette House and other nearby hotels and motels to see if someone by that name was registered. Nothing."

"Sorry to hear that," I said.

Reynolds said, "I'm sure it won't come as any surprise to you that we now believe this fake agent was connected with the shooting at Senator Hale's campaign rally."

"No, it's not a surprise."

"And you'll let me know if you find out anything about who he really is?"

"Of course."

"Thank you," he said, picking up the offending piece of newsprint and putting it back into his coat. He got up from the couch and I walked with him to the door, and before he left, he said, "One more thing, Mr. Cole."

I had to grin. "You know, there's always one more thing, isn't there. You learn that at the training academy or something?"

His smile didn't look particularly inviting. "Here's the deal. I'm in no position to tell you what to do with your personal life, but I think it would be a very good thing if you stayed away from the senator's wife over the next several days. Some of the senator's staff and supporters ... well, they may make your life difficult if such news were to be made widely known."

"Really?"

"Really. Even if you both do enjoy spending time at the local bookstore. Have I made myself clear?"

"Quite."

"Good."

And then he left, and I went back into my house.

I called Annie and got her voice mail and then I sat on the couch and just brooded for a bit. Somewhere out there was Spenser Harris and his friends, and I so wanted to talk to him again, to find out who they were and why they wanted me to be their patsy. But where to start? Felix was out there, sniffing around, and I knew he would do a better, quicker, and more thorough job than I could imagine. Plus, trying to poke around on my own to find out who Spenser Harris was, coupled with the publicity tagged on me with the assassination attempt, that would pretty much take care of my promise to Annie not to do anything to disturb the Hale campaign.

So instead of spending the rest of the day on the couch, thinking useless thoughts, I went upstairs and tried to decide what kind of column I was going to write for the June issue of
Shoreline
. It being January, it was hard to get in the mood to write for an issue of the magazine that would be published in bright sunshine and warm nights. Part of the fun challenges of being a magazine columnist: your writing clock is always three or four months off.

The phone rang and I picked it up, waiting for my old and trusty Apple iMac to boot up. "Hello?"

"Mr. Cole?"

"Yes."

"I'm calling from CNN and was wondering ---"

"Sorry, not interested."

I hung up the phone, opened up my word processing program. Looked at my blank computer screen. I suppose I could write about the annual migration of tourists to the beach communities of New England, and how their presence changed the atmosphere of these little towns, and how this caused tension between the tourists and the year-round residents. I started writing down a few thoughts but then stopped. Practically every other newspaper or newsmagazine that covered this region did the same outsiders impacting-the-locals story, and who was I to inflict another such story upon the long-suffering readers of
Shoreline
?

The phone rang. "Hello?"

"Mr. Cole?"

"Yep."

"Mr. Cole, I'm calling from
The New York Times
."

"Really?"

"Um, yes, I'm from
The New York Times
and I was wondering --"

"Well, thanks for calling, but I get the paper from across the way. At a local hotel. It seems I can't get a subscription to my residence. Why's that?"

"Ah, Mr. Cole, I'm not calling from the circulation department. My name is George Mulvey, I'm a reporter from the
Times
, and ---"

"Oh, a reporter: I apologize. I thought you were trying to sell me a subscription. But I guess you want to talk to me about a news story."

"Yes, I do, and I'd like to know --"

"Sorry, not interested."

I hung up.

Before me was the screen, still very much blank.

Why not a story about the islands of the New England shoreline? Too often my columns had been about the actual coastline of New England, about the communities and fishing villages, and why not expand it a bit? Across the way was the Isles of Shoals --- All right, maybe not those islands, they'd been written about more than enough times. But there was Block Island down in Long Island ... nope, overwritten as well. Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard? Please. How many forests had to die to churn out copy about those two special places every year? Long Island sound again, but Plum Island had been claimed by a well-known and well-regarded novelist a few years back, and there were the islands off the coast of Maine, all one or two hundred of them, and how could I choose, and ---

The phone rang. "Mr. Cole?"

"The same."

"Mr. Cole, it's Chuck Bittner again, from the Tucker Grayson campaign. Look, I really think it would be in your interest to talk to me, so that your story can get the proper attention it deserves, about your relationship with the --"

"Mr. Bittner."

"Yes?"

I turned in my office chair. "You're an oppo researcher for the general's campaign, am I right?"

That seemed to make him pause. "Suppose ... suppose I say no?"

"Then I'm not going to talk to you for even a second."

There was a sigh. "All right ... yes, yes, I do perform opposition research for the general. But each campaign has such researchers, and I really need to talk to you, about you and the senator's wife. It's a story that really needs to be fleshed out, and ---"

"Nope."

"But you said you'd talk to me!"

"No, I said I wouldn't talk to you if you denied being an opposition researcher," I said. "But you know what? I'm still not going to talk to you, even if you did admit to being an oppo researcher."

Then I hung up the phone. I was getting pretty damn good at it.

All right, back to the patient and blank computer screen.

Maybe it was time to think outside the box. Maybe I could do a column about odd aspects of history that had happened along the New Hampshire coastline that not many people knew about. Like the evidence that Vikings had settled here more than a thousand years ago. Or the case of the German U-boats that had been interned at the end of World War II up at the Porter Naval Shipyard. Or ---

Or give it a rest, I thought. Who'd want to read offbeat stories like those two?

Another ring of the phone. "Hello?"

"Lewis? It's Annie. How's that sickness treating you?"

"Sickness seems to be bored with me and is leaving. How are you doing?"

There was pause, and I wondered if she hadn't heard me, and there was the briefest of Sighs. "Lewis ... I was talking to some senior staff here this morning. About you. And the shooting. And one other thing that somebody slipped out, a big-ass secret that only a few in the campaign know about."

"Yes?"

"Lewis ... I've come to know you're a man with secrets. You've not told me much about the scars you have. Or what you did at the Pentagon. Or how you ended up in a prime beachfront home on a magazine columnist's salary. You've joked and fooled around and have really never answered my questions directly, and I've put up with that. Your other ... your other assets have outweighed whatever questions or concerns I've had."

My hand tightened on the telephone receiver. I knew where this was going.

"So, having said all of that," she went on, "would you mind telling me why you've never told me about you and the senator's wife? Barbara? Why you decided to keep that little secret from me? Good God, I can't believe the news media have picked up on it already ... her former boyfriend being initially charged in the shooting. So far, it’s only the staff who knows this."

'We knew each other in college," I said. "Just for a while. It was ... I didn't think it was that important, Annie."

Another sigh. "I'm working on a campaign for a man who might be the next president of the United States, and you used to date the future first lady when you were in college. And you didn't think to tell me?"

"I was ... it just didn't ... well, to tell you the truth, I didn't think Senator Hale was going to make it this far. So I didn't think it was worth bringing up."