David Baldacci - Split Second

In a few minutes she located the source of the sound. She went to the edge of the cliff and peered down. It was about a thirty-foot drop to the water. The river was not very wide, but it moved fast and looked fairly deep. There were a couple of thin ledges jutting out from the cliff, and small boulders clung to the sides there as well. Asshe watched, one broke loose and plummeted down, smacking the surface of the water, and then was quickly carried away by the rush of the river. She had a sudden chill watching this spectacle; she'd never liked heights very much and turned and walked back into the fading sunlight.

After slipping through the gap in the fence, Michelle made her way to the massive front entrance; however, it was locked and chained. Moving on, she found a large window farther down the left side that had been broken out, and she stepped through there. She had assumed the electricity was shut off, and so she had brought a flashlight. She clicked on her beam and started looking around. She walked through rooms that were filled with dust, dampness, mold and also vermin, from the sounds of scurrying feet. She also saw overturned tables, cigarette butts, empty liquor bottles and discarded condoms. The abandoned hotel apparently now served as a nightclub of sorts for the slim under-seventy crowd left in Bowlington.

She'd brought with her a copy of the Fairmount's floor plan, which was included in the files her friend had given her. Using this document, she made her way to the lobby and from there to the interior room where Clyde Ritter had been shot to death. It was paneled in mahogany now, with gaudy chandeliers and burgundy carpeting. When she shut the door behind her, it became so quiet and still that Michelle was glad to feel her pistol riding on her belt clip. The.357 she'd turned in had been replaced by a sleek SIG nine-millimeter. Every federal agent had a personal backup.

Her reason for being here was not simply to satisfy her own morbid curiosity. There were some interesting parallels that intrigued her. Bruno's kidnapping had also occurred in an obscure rural town, not too far from here. It had taken place in an old building, albeit a funeral home as opposed to a hotel. There had to have been some inside source relating to the plot against Bruno, she was sure of that. And with what she had discovered so far about the Ritter killing, she was becoming convinced that an insider hadplayed a role there as well. Maybe what she learned here could help with her own dilemma; at least she hoped so. It beat sitting in a hotel room moping.

Michelle perched on a small table in the corner and consulted her file, which had a detailed diagram of the location of all the players on that fateful day. She walked over and placed herself in the spot where Sean King had stood, Clyde Ritter just in front of him. Her gaze moved around the room, and she noted where one Secret Service agent had been stationed, and then another and yet another. The crowd had been behind a rope, and Ritter had been leaning over it exchanging greetings. Various members of Ritter's campaign team had been strewn around the space. Sidney Morse had been on the other side of the rope across from Ritter. She'd also seen Morse on the video. He had run screaming like everyone else. Doug Denby, Ritter's chief of staff, had been over by the door. The assassin, Arnold Ramsey, had been in the back of the room but had slowly made his way forward until he was standing in front of his victim. He'd been carrying an FOC, "Friend of Clyde," sign and, to Michelle's trained eye when she watched the video, he hadn't appeared to be dangerous.

Michelle glanced to the right and saw a bank of elevators. She imagined herself to be Sean King for a moment more, and she gazed right and left, sweeping the room in precise grids, pretending to speak into her throat mic, one hand out, as though touching the back of Ritter's sweaty shirt. Then she glanced, as King had, to the right and kept her gaze there for as long as he had; she counted the seconds off in her head. The only thing of note in that direction was the bank of elevators. The ding she'd heard had to have come from there.

The banging noise startled her so badly that she drew her pistol and pointed it at all corners of the room. She was breathing so hard and shaking so badly that she sat down on the floor suddenly sick to her stomach. She realized quickly that a banging sound was not to beunexpected in an abandoned hotel: It could have been a falling ceiling tile, or perhaps a squirrel had gotten inside and run into something. Still, the timing was abysmal. She had to marvel at King's ability to endure the same surprise and, while wounded, retain enough presence of mind to pull his weapon and gun down an armed man. Would she have been able to ignore the pain in her hand, the chaos all around, and fire? Now that she'd partially experienced the situation for herself, her respect for him rose several notches.

She pulled herself together, looked at the elevator bank and then at her file. She had read more of the official record on the flight down, and had learned that this set of elevators had been turned off, secured by the Secret Service during Ritter's event. Presumably there would have been no ding to be heard. And yet she'd heard one. And King's attention had been riveted on this spot, or at least in this direction. Although he later claimed it was just a matter of his focus wandering, she wondered if it was more than that. She looked at a photo of the room at the time of the assassination. The carpeting had been put in afterward. The floor back then was wood. She rose, pulled out her knife and, eyeballing the spot, cut up the carpet. After she pulled back the rug and exposed a four-by-four square, she shone her light at the exposed spot.

The dark stains were still there. Blood was almost impossible to get out of wood; obviously the hotel had opted to just carpet over it. King's and Clyde Ritter's blood, she thought to herself; it was mixed together for all time. She next went over to the wall beyond where King had stood. The bullet that killed Clyde Ritter and wounded King had lodged here, although it had long since been dug out. The upholstered walls that were present at the time of the Ritter assassination had been replaced with the thick mahogany paneling. Again, this was a cover-up of sorts, as though the hotel owners could wipe away what had occurred. It hadn't worked, since the hotel closed down soon after Ritter's death.

She entered the enclosed office area through a doorway behindthe front desk. Large file cabinets were stacked against one wall, and there were still papers, pens and other office items on the desks, as though the place had been abandoned in the middle of the day. She went to the file cabinets and was surprised to see that they were filled. She started sifting through them. Although the hotel undoubtedly had computers at the time of Ritter's assassination, they also apparently kept backup records on paper. That made things a little easier. Using her flashlight, she found the materials for 1996 and then those for the day Ritter had been there. In fact, the only records here were for 1996 and early 1997. Michelle surmised that the hotel had shut down shortly after the assassination and no one had bothered to clear anything out. If the hotel records had been confiscated during the subsequent investigation, they had been returned.

The Ritter party had stayed over one night at the Fairmount. King had checked into the hotel along with Ritter's entourage. The records showed King had occupied room 304.

She made her way up the main staircase to the third floor. She didn't have a passkey, but she did have her lockpick kit and the door quickly yielded. The things a trained federal agent could do. She went inside, looked around and found nothing except what one would expect to find in such a place: a mess. She saw that there was a connecting door into the next room, 302. She went through and saw a room exactly like the one she'd just left.