Michael Palmer - Oath of Office

Immersed in a forest of angry pickets, most of the anti-Mallory protesters that day were kept at bay behind a sawhorse barrier set up across the parking lot. Darlene estimated their number might be half as many as those attending the ceremony. In addition, signs with unflattering epithets for the president and his administration were nailed to nearly every tree in the area.

The kids were getting a serious lesson in civics, American style.

Undeterred, Darlene smiled and was about to start speaking again when she felt a tiny tap on her right arm. She looked down into the wide, tear-filled eyes of a boy, no more than seven or eight. The child was dressed splendidly in a green and blue striped tie and V-neck pullover sweater.

“Please,” he said. “I promised my mommy and daddy the president would be here. Please.”

Darlene laid a hand on his tiny shoulder and swallowed at the orange-sized lump in her throat. Kim immediately sized up the situation and led the child back to his parents.

“Listen,” Kim said when she had returned. “How about if I cover for you and you try again to get him down here? It’s only, like, a five-minute drive, and the motorcade is probably still standing by.”

Darlene smiled at her friend. “Did you just read my mind?”

“No, I read your eyes-probably the easiest thing I’ll have to do all day.”

“Do you need my talking points?”

“Darlene, I might not spend my free time dissecting every global conflict like some First Lady that I know, but trust me, I could give this speech in my sleep. For now, I’ll just stall them-maybe do a little soft-shoe.”

Darlene stepped back to the microphone, introduced Kim, and then excused herself from the platform stage. A few feet away, she stopped at a relatively secluded area and, with Secret Service agents keeping close watch, called her husband for the second time.

“Darlene, what is it? Is everything all right?” Martin sounded genuinely worried, probably fearing that the protesters had turned violent.

“Everything here is fine, Marty,” Darlene said. “In fact, it’s better than fine. It’s really something special, except you’re not here and you should be.”

“Is that why you’re calling me?”

Darlene heard the anger in her husband’s voice. He had never had much of a temper, but lately outbursts to one degree or another had been coming more and more frequently. At the podium, Kim was entertaining the crowd with stock humorous stories about Darlene’s college days.

“Look, I know you’re concerned about the polls, honey,” Darlene said to Martin, “but you need to stand up for what you believe. Polls don’t mean a thing. Polls didn’t get you reelected; people did. And these people care about you.”

Martin breathed heavily into the phone. “Darlene, what the hell is wrong with you! Are you blind?”

Darlene’s pulse accelerated the way it did in the moments before they fought. She felt defensive and was surprised at how quickly her husband had angered. “Please don’t speak to me that way, Martin,” she said in a harsh whisper.

“Agent Siliphant radioed me. I know how many protesters are there. Do you think I want to come just to get shouted down by an angry mob? Do you know what my approval rating is right now? Do you?”

“Marty … I…”

“Thirty-eight! Down in less than a year from sixty.”

“Please, Martin. Do this for the children.”

“You better have made a good excuse for why it is I’m not there, Darlene. I don’t want to hear on the news tonight that President Mallory is a coward, or doesn’t give a shit about needy kids. That club wouldn’t exist except for my initiative.”

There was a click and the line went dead. Darlene stood shaking, breathing deeply to calm herself. At the podium, the mayor had taken over and was regaling the crowd with a story about his childhood on the harrowing streets of D.C.

Kim appeared by her side. “Let me guess,” she said. “It didn’t go well.”

Darlene’s hands were still shaking. “I’m really worried about him,” she said. “It was never like Martin to behave this way. He’s never run from a fight in his life. What do you think we should do?”

Kim answered with an impish grin. “I say once we’re done here, we’ve got two choices for what we should do next.”

“And those would be?”

“Either we go shopping, or we go get a drink.”

Fighting to control his speed and to maintain at least a modicum of concentration, Lou made the thirty-mile drive from D.C. to DeLand Regional in forty minutes. He hadn’t bothered to change out of his scrubs.

Over the years, like most people with a television, he had sat riveted to the set countless times, watching reports of pathetic souls who had, for whatever reason, lost it and gone postal-murdering at random. In most cases, the explanation for the carnage remained a mystery, cloaked in the catchall of crazy . After a short stay as the lead, the stories inevitably slipped from the news. The killers who didn’t take their own lives, or weren’t shot to bits by the police, vanished to prison someplace, or into an asylum. To everyone aside from their shattered families, and the shattered families of their victims, the memory of them vanished like April snow.

Lou could not recall the name of even one of the killers, no matter how many lives they had taken. But this killer was different. This killer was John Meacham-for nearly four years, his client, and more recently, his friend.

Flipping the tuner on the radio of his Toyota, he checked in on a series of stations. The story was front and center on many of them, and a bulletin on most of the rest. Within fifteen minutes, there was nothing new, and Lou settled back on 103.5 FM, the all-news station.

“… Meacham, a fifty-two-year-old internal medicine specialist had been practicing in Kings Ridge for three years. His partner, sixty-two-year-old Carl Franklin, was one of the seven victims. At this moment, Meacham is listed in critical condition at DeLand Regional Hospital. Police speculate that the recoil of his pistol jerked his shot off line enough to keep it from being immediately fatal.

“They report that all seven victims were pronounced dead at the scene of the carnage, Meacham’s medical office on Steward Street in the Kings Ridge Medical Park. Only one of the victims, a female, whose name is still being withheld, survived long enough to say anything to authorities. A source in the department has told reporters that all she said before she died was, ‘No witnesses.’”

No witnesses.

Lou shrugged and shook his head. Seven dead and one life hanging by a strand.

No witnesses.

What in the hell does that mean?

Emily had gone home with Renee, and the chief of the ER department at Eisenhower had rushed over to finish out Lou’s shift. The severe weather, which had been on and off stormy all day, was on again-fog, wind, and a chilly, pelting rain.

From what Lou knew, Kings Ridge, population maybe ten or fifteen thousand, was a bedroom community for D.C., surrounded by expansive farms, mostly corn. He had driven through it a couple of times, and remembered the downtown as being fairly affluent and well maintained, with a quaint village green, coffee shops, and restaurants spaced along on the main street.

DeLand Regional, a few miles west of the town, was a level-two trauma center, which meant that orthopedics, neurosurgery, and plastics were covered, although not necessarily in house all the time. According to the news, John Meacham had survived a gunshot wound to the right temple. Under usual circumstances, patients with such an injury would have been transported by chopper to the nearest level-one facility, in this case, Eisenhower Memorial itself. Perhaps a neurosurgeon was available at DeLand, Lou speculated, and didn’t want to lose a juicy case. Or perhaps the weather was too chancy.