THE PRESIDENT 2 (24 page)

Gina closed her eyes, rested her forehead against his.
 

Max and the rest of his staff were already insisting, even as he journeyed over to Andrews to meet Gina’s plane, that he parade her before the cameras, to reassure America that the First Lady was okay, but Dutch had nixed the idea in its infancy.
 
Nobody was parading his wife anywhere, he had told them, and least of which in front of that man-eating press.
 
He would brief the press himself and make clear that she was just fine.
 
If that wasn’t enough for them, then tough, he decided.
 
He didn’t give a shit.

“Was it as magnificently terrible as I believe it was?” Dutch carefully asked Gina after a few minutes of deafening silence, his fingers now tracing along her bare back and backside.
 
He knew this was still a horrific memory for her, and always would be, but the only way he could help her, he believed, was to know exactly what she had gone through to begin with.

She nodded her head.
 
“It was bad,” she admitted.
 
“I don’t think terrible is a strong enough word for how bad it was.
 
It was unbelievable.
 
And when I found out that those men had died, that those good men. . .”
 
She shook her head.
 
“I can’t, Dutch,” she said, and looked into his eyes, tears forming in hers.
 
He understood.
 
And pulled her into his arms.
 

After another long period of silence, he slightly changed the subject.

“How did it go with Mr. Rance?” he asked her.

She smiled, which he took to be a good sign.
 
“It was nothing like I expected it to be,” she said.
 
“He says he’s innocent.”

Dutch smiled.
 
“Like every convicted killer.”

“I know.
 
But still.”

Dutch looked down at her.
 
“But still what?”

Gina hesitated.
 
Had to remind herself that this wasn’t about her, but about justice.
 
“But I think it should be looked into, that’s all.”

Dutch stared at her.
 
She was an advocate to her heart.
 
And he wasn’t about to trounce on that.
 
He, in fact, loved that about her.
 
“I don’t want you looking into it,” he did, however, make clear.

“No, not me.
 
An old friend of mine.”
 
Gina hesitated before saying his name.
 
“Roman Wilkes,” she ultimately said.

Dutch knew Wilkes to be a famous criminal defense attorney, a smooth, good looking man of the bar.
 
He also remembered the press attempting to romantically link Wilkes to Gina during the campaign.
 
Gina admitted they used to be romantically linked, but years ago.
 
And Dutch didn’t comment on it now.
 
He, instead, filed it away in the Rolodex of his mind to be retrieved, if needed, some other time.

“What exactly will Wilkes be looking into?” he asked Gina.

“Marcus is claiming that he was working at the time of that drive-by shooting, and that he has plenty of corroboration, including a co-worker and his boss.
 
And as for DNA, according to him, I haven’t confirmed any of this, but he says there was no DNA presented at trial.
 
Just the fact that the assailant was driving his stolen vehicle.”

Dutch frowned.
 
“That’s ridiculous, Regina.
 
Why would the police arrest him if he could prove that he was at work at the time, especially if they had no scientific evidence?”

“It happens, Dutch.
 
Believe me,” she said, her passion released.
 
“Witnesses come forward, but the jury just doesn’t believe them because they aren’t necessarily upstanding citizens themselves.
 
In Marcus’s case, all of the people who worked at that furniture delivery company had rough backgrounds, including, apparently, the owner.
 
That’s why the owner hired them.
 
He had turned his life around, and was trying to help turn theirs around.”

“But the idea that people would say that he didn’t do it and there was no DNA that categorically said that he did, yet they still sentenced him to death?
 
That’s hard to believe, Gina.”
 

“I know it is.
 
That’s why it happens more times than people think, because it just can’t be true.
 
But sometimes it is true.
 
When I was running BBR, and looked into those cases, I was astounded too.
 
I saw it more times than you would believe, Dutch.
 
It happens.”

Dutch still seemed doubtful.

“Remember the Geter case?”

“Not really, no,” Dutch said.

“Well, this black engineer, Lenell Geter, was accused of armed robbery, in Texas too, and sentenced to life in prison.
 
Forget that he was at work at the time.
 
Forget that he had co-workers willing to testify on his behalf, they sentenced him anyway.
 
If it wasn’t for that Morley Safer report on 60 Minutes back in the eighties, which exposed this kind of craziness, that man would have probably still been in jail to this day for something he didn’t do.
 
And don’t forget all of these inmates that the Innocence Project has freed; men who’ve served fifteen, twenty years for murders they didn’t commit.
 
It happens, Dutch.”

Dutch studied her.
 
This was her passion.
 
This was what she did.
 
The fact that it was her half-brother probably heightened her interest and was probably the reason why she asked Wilkes to help, despite the rumors.
 
He was undoubtedly the best at this sort of case and Dutch knew her to be the kind of woman who would put herself out there, in the grind of the rumor mill again, to help somebody else.
 
Especially, as she put it, her father’s son.

“Just don’t get too caught up in this, Regina,” he ordered her.
 
“I don’t want you out there railing against something that may not be what Rance is making it out to be.
 
Wait for the facts, and consult me before you go public with any of it.
  
Understand?” he said this and looked at her.

She smiled.
 
“Understood,” she said.
 
Then she continued to look at him, the terror of last night still planted in her brain.
 
Also planted was the fact that Dempsey had phoned LaLa just after they left the prison and mentioned that Dutch’s mother and some very beautiful woman had come back from Nantucket with him.
 
Gina didn’t call Dutch to find out what that was about, but had opted to wait until she got back home to see for herself.
 

Now the suspense was killing her.

“How did it go for you?
 
At Nantucket, I mean?”

Dutch’s heart hammered against his chest for some reason.
 
“It went okay,” he said.
 
“My mother decided to come back to Washington with me.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

Dutch looked at her.
 
“Do you have a problem with that?”

Gina considered his question.
 
“A problem?
 
No.
 
I don’t like her, and she can’t stand me, but she’s your mother.
 
Your mother will always be welcomed wherever we live.”

Dutch loved her so much.
 
“Thank-you,” he said.
 
Then he wrinkled his brow.
 
“She didn’t come alone,” he said.
 
“There’s been a new development.”

It was Gina’s heart that hammered this time.
 
Was this that other shoe?
 
Was this beautiful, mystery woman some old girlfriend of the president’s?
 
Was he going to tell her that he was in love with this woman and wanted a divorce?
 
It was highly unlikely to Gina, the way he held her last night, and their affirmation this morning seemed to seal the unlikeliness, but given the way her life often went she wasn’t about to put anything past anyone.
 

She stared at him.

“Her name is Caroline Parker.”

Gina was puzzled.
 
“Caroline Parker?
 
But isn’t that the woman. . .”
 
It made no sense.
 
But she remembered that name.
 
Had even Googled that name and stared at the beautiful photos of her on the Internet, all proclaiming her to be the president’s great lost love.
 
She swallowed hard.
 
“Isn’t that the name of the woman, of your fiancée who had died in that plane crash?”

Dutch nodded, a painful look crossing his handsome face.
 
“Yes,” he said.

“But. . . What are you telling me, Dutch?
 
Are you telling me that she didn’t die?
 
That she’s alive?”

“That’s what I’m telling you, yes.”

“So she wasn’t on the plane at all?”

“She was on the plane when it landed in France.
 
But she didn’t come back.
 
She stayed in France.
 
The flight manifest wasn’t changed, and so when the plane crashed, there was no survivor to tell us that she stayed back.”

Gina still couldn’t understand this.
 
“But she survived.
 
If she stayed back, she survived.
 
Why didn’t she tell y’all?”

Dutch exhaled.
 
He felt the same way.
  
“She said the reason she stayed back was because she couldn’t face it anymore.”

“Face what?”

“The pressure of the wedding.
 
In our circles it didn’t get any bigger than our wedding.
 
And she said it was becoming too much for her.
 
Her plan, if she had one, was to stay away for a while, travel around France under assumed names so that I wouldn’t know where she was or come looking for her.
 
At least not until she could gather the strength to face me.
 
But then the plane crashed, she was presumed dead too, so she decided, with no aforethought, she claims, to keep it that way.”

“To stay dead?”

“Yes.”

“So what brought her back alive?” Gina wanted to know.
 

Dutch would have smiled if he hadn’t asked the exact same question.
 
“Her French husband was convicted of some major securities fraud; they lost everything, including the very roof over her head.
 
And so she reached out to my mother.”

“Who, I’m sure, given how she feels about me, welcomed her back with loving arms.”

Dutch didn’t respond to that, and Gina immediately regretted the fact that she just exposed her anger.
 
Instead of celebrating the fact that the woman was alive, she was actually upset by this revelation.