Greg Bear - Mariposa

"Four go through the window. Three hit me."

Rebecca watched the woman's eyes soften with puzzled wonder, like a little girl looking at a dying pet.

The president sat up and hardened her features. "They tell me the shooter was using the same algorithms and technology that astronomers use at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. That's what the Secret Service says. They couldn't stop me from getting shot, and they couldn't save Beth-Anne from that… bastard. Screw all the ingenious bastards and all their high-tech devices. But enough about that. Someone told me a good story about you."

"Uh-oh," Rebecca said.

"Eighteen months ago, just after you returned from Mecca, you were asked to help investigate a case involving a young woman kidnapped and transported across state lines, then murdered."

"Fort Lewis," Rebecca said.

"Tell me more."

"Not much to tell."

"Believe it or not, I've cleared two solid hours for this meeting." The president settled back with a sigh, as if getting comfortable at story time.

Rebecca leaned forward, dubious. "It's an old case, Madam President. I'm not sure what it has to do with anything here."

"Hiram Newsome says it highlights the way your mind works. He says you can be spooky. Spooky might be useful to us now."

"News thinks of me as his daughter, ma'am. He's not objective."

The president pushed her lips together in her trademark, sharp-eyed smile. "Please."

Rebecca hated going down memory lane, but this had the air of an executive order. "She was found in the base apartment of a soldier just returned from Arabia Deserta. She had been traded to the soldier by her kidnapper. She was only fourteen."

She looked through the ripple glass toward the south lawn. "Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis was handling a lot of troubled vets. Counselors, psychiatrists, researchers-the northwest center for treating post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. More than 350,000 cases. But this sort of violence was rare. Family troubles-abuse by young soldiers hooking up with girlfriends who had babies by another father-that sort of thing is much more common, planned for by the commanders, almost expected. The criminal mistakes of marginal recruits forced through tough times, suffering back-to-back stop-losses. But true psychopathic behaviors catch everyone's attention, because some experts are worried our gen-z boys might react to PTSD differently than past generations. So the authorities, both military and civilian, wanted to nail this suspect and work up the chain to the kidnapper, find out how they had hooked up and why. They had a second suspect, but the girl was dead, and the soldier was pretty much out of it. So the Bureau came in to examine the evidence.

"I asked to see the girl in the morgue at Fort Lewis."

The president looked away. "Fourteen," she said.

"Thin, just a wisp," Rebecca continued, "and young. Hair cut short, pert little nose-pretty before they got hold of her. The kidnapper used her for two or three weeks, until he got tired of her, then opened an anonymous Flickface account and offered to trade the girl for drugs. The Fort Lewis soldier took him up on his offer. I examined the body."

"Tweezers," Larsen said, sitting up. "Sorry. Go on."

"The kidnapper apparently wanted to keep her face intact. The rest was a mess. When the kidnapper delivered her to the soldier, outside Fort Lewis, in a van, he had cleaned her up and scrubbed out his DNA. The younger man objected to her condition. Still, they reached an agreement and smuggled her onto the base.

"After a while, the soldier killed her with an overdose of morphine. Their only mercy. The kidnapper took his drugs and left while the soldier was busy. A roommate found the soldier in a stupor-along with the girl's body, a few hours later."

"Unbelievably cruel and stupid," Larsen said.

"The case against the soldier was solid. He raped her before he killed her. But even when he plea-bargained to avoid the death penalty, he couldn't provide enough of a description for us to ID the kidnapper."

Rebecca had seen enough mutilated bodies in her career, but her response never changed. She hated being reminded that flesh was like pudding: soft and easily smashed.

She swallowed. Other violent memories accompanied this one, having nothing to do with the dead girl. Not long ago, those memories would have made her break out in a cold sweat.

"In the morgue, I pulled back the sheet. The girl had been autopsied, fumed for fingerprints, pretty much desecrated every which way you could think of. But she looked peaceful enough if you ignored the scars and sutures. I touched her cheek. Took off the glove and just smoothed her skin with a bare finger. Something like the tiniest splinter poked up-a bristle. I asked for a pair of fine tweezers, sterile.

"Once I pinched a boyfriend's beard to get his attention. I found hair tips stuck in my finger pads. When men use electric shavers, the blades do a rough job. The ends look like porcupine quills, with a sharp pointy tip and little barbs.

"This bristle wasn't from the soldier. He had hardly any beard and didn't shave. We bagged it and sent it off to Quantico for keratin extraction. They got enough DNA to locate the perp in CODIS. We got a warrant and apprehended him within two days.

"He was forty-two, a white male transient with a long sheet, nearly all violent felonies. Washington state convicted him, life without parole in Walla Walla. Hard time.

"That was all I had to do with it," Rebecca finished. "Nothing spectacular."

Larsen murmured polite disagreement. "Now tell me what you know about Edward."

"The vice president hit his wife on the neck and back of her skull with a lamp, crushed her windpipe with his hands, and left her to suffocate. When the Secret Service entered the house, Quinn was reading to his daughter in an upstairs bedroom. His infant son was asleep. No motive, no disputes, no history."

"The last guy anyone would suspect," the president said. "War hero, family man, best damned governor Ohio has had in decades… A good campaigner and a shrewd but honest advisor. My husband thought of him as his best friend. Now he's locked up in a special compound at Fort McNair while everyone figures out what to do-where and how to indict and try him, whether to go for the death penalty… all that dreadful crap. I'll announce a new veep in the next few days. Then-we'll do our damnedest to act as if it never happened. We have to move on.

"But the bottom line: we almost had a psychopath become president of the United States, Rebecca. I wonder how long before anyone would have noticed."

Rebecca looked down at her hands.

"You've gone over our early briefing," Larsen said, shifting her hips to get more comfortable. "Thoughts?"

Rebecca took a moment before answering. "He revealed a history of drug use during the campaign. Has he indulged in the last three years, to your knowledge?"

"To anybody's knowledge, he has not."

"There are drugs that can slip by even the best tox screens. Designer metaboloids like tart or syncrom." Rebecca looked squarely at the president.

Larsen did not blink. "Believe me, if we could use that as an excuse, we would."

"Nobody in your administration has been implicated in any sort of drug activity?"

The president shook her head.

"Because this does look like a doped horse."

"It does," Larsen admitted. "A thoroughbred."

"Food testing-here and abroad-all secure?"

"The best."

"No secret snacks, nipping out to the ice cream parlor at midnight in Istanbul with the kids or the mistress?"

"Edward was lactose intolerant-strictly soy. No mistress. You know this already."

Rebecca nodded. "I like to hear it from someone close. Better than a briefing from someone who's never met the man."