James Patterson - Truth or Die

Two steps past the doorway, I saw him. Wittmer, wearing the same clothes as when we’d left him, was lying in the bed on his back. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said he was simply asleep.

But I did know better, if only because Owen knew better.

Wittmer was never waking up.

Means and motivation. The whole story was right there in front of us, exactly as intended. Although it wasn’t intended for us.

On the bed next to Wittmer, where the ghost of his wife surely slept, was a large photo album opened to a spread filled with happy, loving pictures of the two of them in Paris. They were kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower, arm in arm beneath the external Habitrail-like piping of the Centre Pompidou in Beaubourg, and playfully leaning against Louis Derbré’s Le Prophète in the Jardin du Luxembourg, the golden head of the statue — and their faces — beaming in the sunshine.

Claire and I used to talk about going to Paris together. But life is ninety percent talk, isn’t it?

As if connecting the dots, my eyes moved from the photo album over to the empty pill bottle, the orange-brownish variety you get from your local pharmacy. Only, there was no label on it, no indication of a prescription.

Ironically, that made the story even more convincing. Wittmer was a doctor, after all. What pills wouldn’t he have access to?

It all made so much sense. Of course, that was why it was all bullshit.

I was catching on quick, all right. Certainly faster than the police would, if at all. Odds were they never would.

This was no suicide.

“Temazepam, if I had to guess,” said Owen with a nod to the empty pill bottle. “Very effective for insomnia, Michael Jackson notwithstanding. One injection, probably to the carotid artery, and the coroner would never know the drug wasn’t swallowed.”

The image of Wittmer giving injections to the prisoners in Stare Kiejkuty flashed through my mind. Oh, the irony...

Without even thinking, I leaned in, looking at Wittmer’s neck for a needle mark. I didn’t know why, I just did. I felt sorry for him. He’d made his choices, but he didn’t deserve this.

“Christ, we can’t even call the police,” I said.

Wittmer lived alone. There was no telling how long it would be before his body was discovered. The same could be said for the guy in my bathtub back in Manhattan, but I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about him. This was different.

“Maybe we could somehow leave an anonymous tip,” I said. “What do you think?”

I was still staring at Wittmer’s neck, waiting for Owen to answer. When he didn’t, I turned around. Again, he was gone. I called out to him.

“In here,” he responded.

I followed his voice to the only room left on the second floor we hadn’t searched. Wittmer’s office.

Unlike every other room, though, this one looked the part. A large, messy desk, stacked bookcases, and a well-worn leather armchair with an ottoman. There was even a rug — a faded crimson and gold Persian with tassels, some of them frayed, some of them missing altogether.

To call it a lived-in look would be an understatement. In fact, what it really was, was depressing.

This wasn’t Wittmer’s office. This was Wittmer. Period. In the wake of his wife’s death, his life had become defined by his work. This was all he’d had.

“What are you looking at?” I asked.

“Something I shouldn’t be,” said Owen. “Not if they’re trying to cover their tracks.”

He was standing by one of the bookcases, staring long and hard at a picture in a dust-covered silver frame. It was an old photograph of Wittmer from his undergrad days at Princeton, a group shot of some members of the Cap and Gown eating club.

Of course, if it hadn’t been for the engraving at the bottom of the frame saying as much, I never would’ve known that.

So why is Owen staring at it so intently?

I leaned in close, focusing on Wittmer. He looked so young. Happy. Alive. “What am I not seeing?” I asked.

“The whole picture,” Owen said.

If I’d somehow lost the forest for the trees, there was still no finding it as I canvassed the other half dozen faces staring back at me in the photo. Owen all but expected as much, giving me a hint.

“He had a lot more hair back then,” he said.

With that, he reached out with his index finger, tracing a line from Wittmer to the guy on the end, who was lanky and, yes, had only a hint of a receding hairline.

But now I could picture him bald, and in doing so, all I could see — and recognize — was the same smirk masquerading as a smile that he always flashed in interviews as if there weren’t a question in the world that could ever trip him up.

Of course, that was according to Claire, who had, in fact, interviewed him for the Times. She said he reeked of coffee and cockiness.

“Clay Dobson?”

“Exactly,” said Owen.

“Okay, so Wittmer went to school with the president’s chief of staff,” I said. “What are you suggesting?”

“A connection.”

“Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.”

“Yeah, except for one thing,” he said. “There are no coincidences in politics.”

That sounded a lot like an Aaron Sorkin line, but I wasn’t about to debate it. “What kind of connection?” I asked. “Do you mean, like, orchestrated ?”

“Of course not,” said Owen, as facetious as I was incredulous. “Nothing illegal ever happens in the White House.”

Point taken. Multiple points, actually. Arms for hostages... sex with an intern and then lying about it under oath... a certain botched burglary at a hotel only a handful of miles from where Owen and I were standing?

Suddenly, the only thing I could hear in my head was the voice of then-senator Howard Baker during the Watergate hearings, asking one of the most famous — if not the most famous — political questions of all time.

What did the president know and when did he know it?

Then again, maybe we were getting a wee bit ahead of ourselves.

I leaned in again, staring at the images of Wittmer and Dobson. “It’s still only a picture,” I said.

“You’re right,” Owen replied. “It’s possible that it’s nothing. Of course, it’s also possible that Lawrence Bass really did want to spend more time with his family instead of running the CIA.”

I’d forgotten about that. Owen hadn’t. We’d watched the announcement Bass had made with his wife and two young daughters in the East Room of the White House. The guy had been the president’s pick to become the next director of the CIA. Not only was he passing that up, he was resigning from the National Security Council.

Still. Forget Aaron Sorkin. This was starting to feel more like an Oliver Stone fever dream.

“So, now... what? Bass is somehow connected, too?” I asked.

Only, this time, I could hear it in my own voice. That incredulous tone was missing. Owen could hear it, too.

“Just for the sake of argument,” he said, “what if there really was a path to the White House? How would we follow it? ”

Between the two of us, I was the only one with a law degree, but you could’ve fooled me, the way he asked that question. Because lawyers — the good ones, at least — never ask a question they don’t already know the answer to.

I wasn’t the only one with Watergate on the brain.

“For the record, you don’t look anything like Dustin Hoffman,” I said.

Owen gave me a quick head-to-toe. He smiled. “Yeah, and you wish you looked like Robert Redford.”