Sedition (A Political Conspiracy Book 1) (21 page)

He looked down to see wine seeping onto the bathroom floor from underneath the door. “Are you okay?” In his undershirt and boxers, Davidson stood and felt a rush of panic. His heart rate quickened and he gripped the door handle. He pulled it open.

Her body fell onto his feet.

There was a deep red hole in the center of her forehead. There was a red trail down the side of her face and leaking from the back of her head. It wasn’t wine on the floor. It was blood.

He knelt on the tile floor where it met the carpet, cradling her head in his hands. He called her name. She wasn’t responding. Her eyes were open and fixed with fear. The last thing she’d seen was her killer. Davidson saw a dark stain growing on the robe at her chest. She’d been shot twice.

He pulled her limp body from the doorway and into his lap. The door to the room automatically shut. Blood was everywhere. His mind was racing.

Why would someone kill her? Was it another john? Her pimp? Did she owe someone money?

And then as quickly as the silenced shots had changed his world, he realized who was responsible. Sir Spencer. Davidson knew it. It had to be him. He gently laid her head on the bathroom floor and stood.

With blood on his hands, Davidson picked up his pants to find his cell phone. He couldn’t remember in which pocket he’d stuffed it. Then it rang. He found the phone, pushed ‘C’ and placed the phone to his ear but didn’t speak.

“Bill?” It was Sir Spencer. “I’m assuming you’ve made up your mind?”

Davidson’s jaw was clenched. The vein across the top of his forehead was pulsing against his skin. He was seething but said nothing.

“It had to be done, Bill,” Sir Spencer said with no compassion. “You understand.”

No response.

“Okay.” The knight sighed. “Here’s where we find ourselves. You need to provide to me the information necessary for our success. If you do, the dead prostitute vanishes. Your relationship with her vanishes. The whole bloody mess vanishes.” He paused then laughed. “That pun was intended, Bill.”

“And if I don’t cooperate?”

“I think you know the consequences of that.”

“If I lose either way, then why do I help?”

“Oh, Bill!” the knight said condescendingly. “Don’t you get it? If you don’t help me, someone else will. You will be a two-time loser. Bill Davidson: the killer of a hooker and the Benedict Arnold of the twenty-first century. You are the brains behind this whole operation, right? I mean, you pushed us to this violence, didn’t you? I assure you that is the truth that the rest of us will be telling the authorities if it comes to that.” He paused for effect. “If you do as promised, you have a chance to save yourself, Bill. There is a possibility that you can keep whatever shred of dignity you have remaining. That is up to you.”

Davidson contemplated his options; he had none. He knew that if he called the police, he’d be arrested. Even if they didn’t have a weapon or a motive, he’d be ruined. If he helped the knight, however, there was a chance that he could go on living his life.

Desperate men do desperate things; Sir Spencer knew that. He exploited that.

“Fine. I’ll give you the information you want. Give me a half hour. Then you need to get this cleaned up.”

“When you call me with what I need, then I’ll clean it up. So chop-chop.” The knight hung up.

Davidson stood weak-kneed and turned on the shower. He needed to get the blood off his body. While he waited for the water to warm up, he stepped over the body and into the room. He went to the desk, where he grabbed her purse.

Davidson dumped the contents on the bed. It bothered him that she’d had possession of his journal. He wanted to find out if there was some connection between her and Sir Spencer.

On the bed, there was a pack of cinnamon gum, a small makeup bag, a cell phone, a large headset, some loose change, a set of keys, two condoms, a roll of cash bound with a red rubber band, and a small canister of pepper spray.

He picked up the phone and scrolled through the numbers. He didn’t recognize any of them except for his. He tossed the phone back onto the bed and picked up the headset. Davidson thought it was somewhat large for a hands-free device. It almost looked like something a Time-Life operator would wear. He’d only seen her use a wireless earpiece in the past.

He picked the phone up again and plugged in the headset. It fit. He scrolled down her call list and then randomly picked one that had registered a lengthy call time. He pushed send and slipped on the headset.

Chapter 28

Matti was opening the door to her office when the phone started ringing. She’d decided to skip going home and had headed straight back to work.

On the drive from the Metro park and ride, she’d thought about the troubles that lay ahead for her. There would be a lot of questions in the morning. She needed as much time as possible to organize her thoughts.

There were so many things she’d done to disobey her direct orders, including engaging the subjects and compromising the integrity of three agents.

But as she drove with the windows down and the radio off, she wasn’t apologetic. For the first time in her life she was coloring outside of the lines. She had gained valuable intelligence. She’d gotten herself out of a potentially dangerous situation. Those were good things. And she began to realize that nobody was what they seemed to be. Everyone had shades of gray.

Even my mother.

The wind whipped around her in the driver’s seat of her government-issued Ford, and Matti found that she was more afraid of being pulled off the case because of the rush it provided than because of the eventual career consequences. She reminded herself of that as she walked into the office.

“Harrold.” She was still standing when she picked up the receiver.

“Who is this?” said a robotic voice. Matti recognized it as belonging to the asset.

“This is Harrold.”

“Who are you? Who is Harrold?”

Matti listened to the voice. It was somehow different. The tone was lower maybe.

“I’m Matti Harrold.”

“Matti Harrold? From the art exhibit tonight?” There was something tentative and confused in the asset’s voice. “You were wearing a black dress?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who this is?”

“No.” Matti sat down at her desk. Something was off.

“Do you recognize my voice?”

“No. It’s the same robotic tone you’ve been using with that alteration device,” Matti said. She reached into her desk, pulled out her notepad, and started taking notes.

“Where do you work?”

She noted there was hesitancy, as if the asset really didn’t know the answer.

“You know where I work.”

Matti was concerned now that whoever was calling her was not the asset. She heard a rustling sound on the other end of the line.

“Where do you work?” It was a man’s voice now, the robotic quality gone. Whoever it was had disconnected the device. Matti found the voice familiar, yet she couldn’t quite place it.

“I saw you tonight, running away from three men. They were chasing you. You had your shoes off and you looked frightened.”

“You suggested I attend the event. You thought it would be a good idea. Don’t you remember?”

“I didn’t suggest anything. But I was there. I saw you run out.”

Matti suddenly realized who it was on the other line. It was the only conspirator not chasing her. She’d seen him as she turned the corner to run out of the building.

“You’re Bill Davidson,” she said in sudden realization.

Davidson stood in his boxers and undershirt, finally beginning to grasp what had happened. “You work for the government, don’t you? CIA? FBI? Which is it?”

“Something like that,” Matti said vaguely. “You’re not my asset, are you?”

“No.” Davidson looked over to the dead body lying on the floor. He thought about his journal and how it had ended up in her hands. His mind raced through all of the things he’d told his girl in confidence. He edged on hyperventilating as he thought of the access she’d had to his written thoughts whenever he slept next to her or showered in the adjacent bathroom. He shuddered. Holding the phone in his right hand, he brought his left to his head.

He squeezed his temples. “Your ‘asset’ is dead.”

PART THREE: THE EXECUTION

“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

—Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence

Chapter 29

The smell of death was a counterintuitive aphrodisiac for Laura Harrowby. The odor was more a mixture of embalming fluid and lemon-scented Pledge than the exceptional stench of putrefaction, but it was the scent she most associated with her father’s funeral home.

The fact that the funeral home sexually stimulated her was as much an unspoken commentary on her “daddy complex” as it was on her relationship with the much older Professor Arthur Thistlewood. When she stumbled into the lamp-lit office in the back of the building, she inhaled deeply and moaned, clumsily punching the four numbers on the alarm console to turn it off.

“Shhh!” Thistlewood was already on edge. He didn’t want to alert anyone to their presence. He checked the door as he walked in and made certain it was unlocked.

“There’s nobody here
now
, silly man,” she said, tilting into him and burying her face in his neck. “Just you and me. And me and you and tea for two.” She hummed as she flicked her tongue on his neck and sucked.

He put his hands on her shoulders and forcefully pushed her back to look her in the eyes. She was sloppy drunk and still attractive. He would oblige her, but not in the office.

“Didn’t you tell me that you wanted to show me something as soon as we got here?” he reminded her. “You’ve been anxious about it for hours.”

“Oh yes!” Her eyes widened from the reminder. She giggled. “Yes! Follow me.” She grabbed his hand and led him through a narrow hallway to a wide door. She opened it and reached inside to flip on a light switch.

The light revealed a set of stairs leading down a flight to the basement. She carefully negotiated the steps by bracing herself against the wall to her right and gripping the circulation from Thistlewood’s right forearm.

They reached the bottom of the steps, and Laura flipped another switch, which illuminated a large open room. It extended in front of them some twenty feet and another fifteen feet to either side. The floor was smooth cement. It appeared remarkably clean. Except for a wide doorway at the far left side of the room, the walls and ceiling were a series of crossing two-by-four studs separated by sheets of pink insulation. The room smelled like furniture polish and cedar.

In the middle of the room, on what looked like a gurney, sat a single casket. It was deep brown with hints of red.

Thistlewood could tell it was hand-rubbed mahogany. The fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling reflected against the sheen of the polish. Along its sides were stainless steel support bars that ran the length of the large box. Its Dutch lid was open. Thistlewood could see that the cream-colored satin lining wrapped the entirety of the interior.

“That’s the president’s casket,” Laura said, holding the professor’s right hand with both of hers. “That’s what they’ll put him in.”

“So that’s the coffin, huh?” Thistlewood was studying the wood box for more than one reason.

“Casket,” she corrected him. “Not a coffin.”

There actually was a difference. Modern caskets didn’t come into use in the United States until the mid-nineteenth century. The metamorphosis from the simple coffin to a more ornate casket was first widely recognized in 1885 when President Ulysses S. Grant was buried in a metal casket with a full plate-glass top. There was no question about
what
was buried in Grant’s tomb, even if the
who
was debated for more than a century.

Those in the profession of serving the dead were sensitive to the vernacular. Undertakers had become funeral home directors, and coffins had become caskets.

“Sorry,” he said, but he wasn’t. “It looks heavy.”

“Most of the wooden ones weigh about one hundred to one hundred fifty pounds,” Laura informed him. She released her hands from his and moved them gently to the area between his legs. “Any wooden ones here?” She laughed from her throat.

He flinched and smiled at her. “Okay, just a couple of minutes. I’ve never been in a room like this before.”

“It’s called a reposing room,” she offered. “This is where the casketing will happen. You know, when the body gets put into the casket and arranged. It’s where we keep the body until the funeral.” Laura turned away from Thistlewood and leaned back onto him. She wrapped his hands around her waist as they looked at the casket.

“It’ll get rolled to the dumbwaiter over there and hoisted up to the main floor,” Laura said, motioning to the right side of the room with her head. Thistlewood was surprised that he hadn’t noticed the large elevator-like hole in the wall. There was an electric panel next to the hole with a pair of large buttons.

“Obviously the president isn’t here. If he were, he’d be through the doors to the left. That’s where the embalming room is. Usually that’s where the body would be until after it’s dressed.”

“When does the president get here?”

“Mmm,” she purred, “I’m not sure. I just know that my father said some other company was preserving and dressing the body. For security reasons or something. My father doesn’t know who’s doing it. I think it’s sometime tomorrow morning.”

Thistlewood looked at his Timex. It was late. He knew the others had to be waiting for his signal by now. He lowered his head and placed his lips against her left ear.

“Should we move to another room?” he whispered.

“It’s about time.” Laura turned her head to the left to kiss her boyfriend. She found his lips and sighed. He could taste the bitterness of long ago consumed wine on her tongue.

She pulled away after a moment and then took his hand to lead him upstairs. She was still intoxicated and found the flight up a bit challenging. But she managed it and led Thistlewood into a small parlor at the far end of the hall from the back office. He left the door to the reposing room open.