Phillip Margolin - Executive Privilege

“How did everything go?” Claire asked. She was calm, and none of the fury that had greeted his confession of infidelity was in evidence.

Christopher sank onto a chair on the other side of the end table.

“We’ll be okay,” he said as he poured himself a cup of tea. “Holliday is smart and he knows what he’s doing. He had all sorts of ideas.”

“Good. Maureen is behind this scandal. The voters will see she’s trying to smear you, and her plan will backfire.”

“I certainly hope so. My God, the press is calling the investigation MurderGate. Every time I try to talk about my platform all I get are questions about Charlotte Walsh.”

“Are you and Clem working on your speech?”

“Yeah. It sounds pretty good. God willing, I’ll nail Maureen at the press conference and we can put this inquisition behind us.”

Claire reached across the small table, and Chris held her hand.

“I love you,” Claire said. “I have complete faith in you. You will crush Maureen Gaylord. On the day after the election, you will still be the president of the United States and our baby will be born in the White House.”

“I hope you’re right,” Christopher said in a voice that lacked conviction.

Claire squeezed his hand hard. “I know I am,” she said.

“Jake Teeny?” Keith Evans asked the suntanned man in the T-shirt and jeans who answered the door of the suburban ranch house.

“Yes?” Teeny answered, eyeing the agent suspiciously. The photojournalist was five nine with wavy brown hair and hard brown eyes. Evans judged him to be in his midthirties, but he still had the thick chest and narrow waist of someone who stayed in top shape, and his skin had the rugged, leathery look that comes from being baked by harsh suns and blasted dry by cruel winds.

Evans flashed his credentials. “I’m with the FBI, Mr. Teeny, and I’d like your help in an investigation I’m conducting.”

Teeny looked confused. Evans smiled.

“Don’t worry. You’re not involved as far as we know, but your name came up and-like I said-I’d appreciate your help. May I come in?”

“Sure,” Teeny answered as he stepped aside to clear a path for the agent. “Excuse the mess. I’ve been out of the country on assignment and I just got in twenty minutes ago.”

Camera equipment and traveling bags were strewn around the entryway. Evans walked around them and followed Teeny into the living room.

“So, what’s this investigation about?” Teeny asked when they were seated.

“Have you heard of the D.C. Ripper?”

“Sure.”

“And do you know Dana Cutler?”

“Dana? What does she have to do with the Ripper?”

“We came across her name in connection with one of the Ripper’s victims. We’ve tried to find her, but we’ve been unsuccessful. One thing we did get was her phone records, and we found numerous calls to your number.”

“Dana and I are good friends. We call each other frequently.”

“And she stays over?”

“Yeah, on occasion. How did you know that?”

“Her car is parked two houses down. I thought she might be here.”

“She might, but I just got in so I can’t say one way or the other.”

“Could you look through the house to see if she’s staying here?”

“Look, Dana is a good friend. What do you think she’s done? I’m not going to help you if it’s going to get her in trouble.”

“Have you read the article in Exposed?”

Teeny smiled. “They don’t sell Exposed in Afghanistan.”

“Is that where you just were?”

Teeny nodded.

“Okay. Well, I’ll fill you in. A young woman named Charlotte Walsh was murdered by the D.C. Ripper. Miss Cutler works as a private investigator on occasion, doesn’t she?”

Teeny nodded.

“We think she may have been following Miss Walsh around the time she was killed. We know she took photographs of her with President Farrington shortly before Charlotte Walsh died.”

“The president?”

“The story has been front-page news. We want to know what Miss Cutler saw, but we can’t find her. Can you please look around and see if she’s been staying here?”

Teeny led Evans to the bedroom first. “She was supposed to housesit for me while I was away and it looks like she did,” he said, pointing to the women’s undergarments and clothing strewn around the room. Teeny smiled. “Dana isn’t the neatest person. I’m always after her to straighten up.”

In the bathroom, Teeny pointed out Dana’s toiletries.

“She’s probably coming back because her toothbrush and hairbrush are here.”

“Does Miss Cutler have more than one means of transportation?”

“You mean besides her car?”

“Right.”

Teeny suddenly remembered something. “I have a Harley. I let her borrow it the night I went away.”

“So she might be riding the Harley.”

“That would be my guess if her car’s outside.”

“Can you give me the license number of your bike and check to see if it’s here?”

Teeny rattled off the number while he led Evans to the garage. The bike was gone. Teeny had just finished describing the Harley when Evans’s cell phone rang.

“I’ve got to take this,” he apologized. Then he opened the phone and went outside so Teeny couldn’t hear him. Roman Hipple, his supervisor, was calling.

“How soon can you get back to headquarters?” Hipple asked.

“Half hour, maybe less.”

“Well get back here. Justice Roy Kineer has been appointed as the independent counsel in this Charlotte Walsh thing, and he wants you seconded to him because you know all about the Ripper case.”

Evans returned to the garage, thanked Teeny for his cooperation, and promised the worried boyfriend that he would do his best to find Cutler. As soon as he was in his car Evans put out an APB on the Harley.

Roy Kineer looked more like the fifth Marx Brother than a towering legal genius or one of the most powerful men in the United States, which he’d been when he was the chief justice of the Supreme Court. He was partially bald with a fringe of long gray-flecked black hair that always looked uncombed. His Coke bottle glasses and overbite gave him a goofy appearance, and he was always grinning, as if he’d figured out a joke no one else could understand. All in all, Kineer was not someone who was taken seriously unless you knew his biography.

The judge had been born in Cleveland to working-class parents who had been slow to recognize their son’s genius. In fact, they suspected Roy was not too bright, because he was poorly coordinated and didn’t speak until he was three. Once he did speak there was no denying that their child was special. Roy had been first in his class in high school and first in his class at MIT, where he’d majored in physics. After a year at Oxford, Kineer chose law over the sciences and finished a predictable first in his class at Harvard, where he was the editor of the Law Review. After a clerkship at the United States Supreme Court, Kineer surprised everyone by going to work for an organization that handled death penalty cases in the Deep South. Kineer argued three successful appeals before the court in which he’d clerked before joining the faculty at Yale Law School.

Never one to sit on the sidelines, Kineer became actively involved in politics as the legal advisor to Randall Spaulding, the United States senator from Connecticut who went on to become the attorney general of the United States. As soon as he was appointed attorney general, Spaulding asked Kineer to be his solicitor general and argue the position of the United States before the Supreme Court. When the justice for whom Kineer had clerked resigned, the president appointed Kineer, the finest legal mind in the country, to take his place.