White Widow

By David A. Waples

A president dies of natural causes. A vice-presidential vacancy. A congressman brutally murdered.

America's widowed first lady turns to press secretary Nathaniel Freeman-a dashing former college football star-to challenge the Speaker of the House, an ambitious rival who has become an "accidental" president. The upstart Freeman copes with a critically ill wife, a powerful opposing political machine, his personal doubts, and an assassin's attempt on his life.

Meanwhile, Sandra Sweet, a former female bicycle cop turned rookie detective, and Caroline McRue, an ex-prostitute now tabloid news reporter, form an uneasy partnership to investigate the murder of a powerful congressman. The two suspect a connection between the lawmaker's slaying and the "natural" death of the President. The brash, but inexperienced investigators combine their talents and develop a personal relationship previously unfulfilled in their lives. The intrigue reaches a climax as the latent lust for power and influence places Freeman, Sweet, and McRue in a position to choose between victory or integrity, at the cost of their lives.

White Widow is a nonstop political suspense thriller that questions who the real enemy of the nation is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 21, 2004
• ISBN: 9780595778157

David A. Waples

David August Waples earned a BA in Journalism from Utica College of Syracuse University and a MA in Communications from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. He has written three novels, a goal-setting workbook, and a history of the Appalachian natural gas industry, which will be released by McFarland Publishing in 2005. He is married with four children and lives in northwestern Pennsylvania.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Webster, Virginia, Friday, February 4, 11:45p.m.

Beer nuts.

Not quite the breakfast of champions. But for Congressman Elmore Ring, it was passion fruit. And if the crunchy kernels were submerged in half-melted Devilish Dutch Chocolate Haagandaz ice cream, it was worth more than all the stroke in Washington. Especially now—chaos and leaderless, he thought. A divided Congress and the president a corpse! Without the salty morsels and mushy cocoa concoction every Friday night, the seventy-seven-year-old Iowa politician would toss and turn like a roasting pig on a spit. He was not certain whether it was the creamy sweetness of the chocolate or the briny tang of the coated nuts, but the combination of the two was more satisfying than sexual intercourse as he last remembered it. The eighteen-term lawmaker craved the crunchy echo of the hard—usually stale—nut meat as his dentures pulverized them one by one. The syrupy-saline mixture was the perfect main course to his aperitif—several glasses of bitter bourbon on ice that washed down the choking smoke of an acrid cigar. The ritual stirring of the nuts in a swirl of liquefying ice cream in his bowl calmed his nerves as no transcendental meditation could. The elderly lawmaker from a rural congressional district ninety miles west of Des Moines would set his signature imported Honduran stogie in a bedside ashtray just long enough to savor this weekly rite.

It was nearly midnight when Congressman Ring hobbled into a Stop N Go convenience store on a deserted commercial strip in the sleepy eastern

Virginia suburb of Webster. Aided by a walnut cane, he stepped awkwardly, but determined, like a spawning crab scaling a slippery rock. Fifteen minutes before, Ring concluded his customary weekly poker game with three other tobacco-sucking Midwestern congressmen. After several drinks of whiskey and two complete throat-scorching cigars, Ring now prepared to soothe his scarred esophagus with his cool and creamy treat. Ring was a quintessential undefeatable politician and master of backroom deals. But all of that meant little right now. The only thing that possessed true meaning was the savory anticipation of ice cream and nuts.

The male store clerk behind the counter nodded to his familiar customer. He was clad in a standard loud convenience store combination of orange and blue that resembled a football box-and-chain crewmember holding the lollypop sideline first-down marker. The proprietor sat behind the cash register as if the impulse buying racks of candy, lottery tickets, and butane cigarette lighters jailed him. Ring stared momentarily at the plastic lighters, decorated with the logos of cigarette brands, popular race-car drivers, and cartoon characters of buxom women. Who would want these things?

Ring’s eyes met those of the circus-clown dressed man behind the counter. Huge ears jutted out of the side of the clerk’s ruddy, blemished, and whiskered face, as if they were ornate bookends on a coconut. He appeared of some type of Middle-eastern descent—maybe Indian or Pakistani. Although the congressman was minority chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, all the towel heads from the other side of the globe look the same to me, he told a local news reporter after the World Trade Center terrorist attacks, much to his chagrin. The proprietor’s coal-colored eyes briefly gave his customer a sign of recognition and his oblong bull moose nostrils expelled a snort of recall.

The dim convenience store’s cold and musty interior discouraged long shopping visits by Ring. He shuffled on the yellowing linoleum, still covered with the slush of a wet snow that fell during the day that stubbornly refused to melt on the building’s frigid floor. Layers of dust covered slow-moving products—like tuna fish or corned beef hash—that sat on the shelves as if covered by volcanic ash. The only partly polished articles were those accidentally dusted by the sleeves of store personnel as they affixed new higher-priced labels to soup cans, soda pop bottles, and cereal boxes. However, Ring found the high traffic products of the market—snack foods, breads, and dairy items—possessed surprising levels of freshness. But the goddamn beer nuts were always stale!

The part-time clerk in the colorful court jester getup did not know that the old man was a legendary Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where the ol Sweet hunched over a washed away d fart was coming from, or where he was headed afterward. He was just another regular late night patron—some white geezer who craved ice cream and beer nuts. Though the greasy black-haired cashier expected his old-as-Methuselah customer at this day and hour anyway, he could identify his regular client blindfolded. Both the clanking of the old man’s gold-plated handle walking cane that assisted his nighttime stagger, and the wretched alcohol and tobacco trail that followed him, were telltale signs. The three-hour-long poker game polluted the lawmaker’s clothes with the stench of bourbon and cigar smoke. Few words were exchanged between cashier and customer during their transactions, but both felt comfortable with each other, like the silent acknowledgement between a bored bus driver and an introverted regular patron.

The noted statesman anticipated his nut and ice cream sundae fixings like an excited child. If only his body were as youthful. Ring reflected his age, but the wrinkles that creased his face were not only carved by the machete of time, but also by the surgical blade of years of political doctoring. The jowls drooping from his cheeks resembled that of a contented bloodhound sleeping under the rotting front porch of an Appalachian abode. Ice-blue eyes sparkled behind his aged face, revealing a down-home spirit that appealed to his constituents in and around Parker, Iowa. His swollen arthritic knuckles shook more voters’ hands in one election race than all of his defeated opponents in their political careers. Though comfortable pontificating in front of television cameras, chairing public hearings, and mingling at lobbyist fundraisers, Ring’s hound-dog face disguised a very private personality. He had thousands of acquaintances, but few close friends. The man was approachable, but not within the length of his cane, as he gripped the walking stick as if to fend off those who made the mistake of getting too intimate.

Congressman Ring stopped by the newspaper racks to glance at the rows of daily periodicals. Most of the journals vanished by this time of night, for newspapers were selling at a brisk pace on this day. Though the convenience store carried six different daily papers including the Washington Post, Washington Tribune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and two local Virginia area tabloids, only one copy of the Washington Tri-bune—a struggling nemesis of its rival, the Post—remained. The screaming headline must have used a gallon of ink as it shouted on the front page with the words: Nation Mourns. Ring paused a moment reflecting on the headline, then continued on his journey as if he were a single-minded honeybee on a sweet mission. He continued his beeline to the rear freezer while the ragged store clerk turned up a radio news broadcast on a small, weathered boom box with a broken antenna on the back counter.

The crackled, fuzzy bass voice of a network news announcer was caught in mid-sentence: .. .around the country with a sense of shock and sadness today. The spoken words collapsed into a hiss of static. The clerk fumbled with his thick, nicotine-tarnished, callused right thumb and forefinger, attempting to reel in the fading sound waves. Ring approached the front of the counter with his ice cream, soft drink, beer nuts, and a Slim Jim he impulsively picked up. He plopped the items on the counter and reached for his wallet tucked into his suit jacket. His hands touched an envelope in an inside pocket, and he patted it to make sure it was still there. It had been in his custody for two days; he was terrified of leaving it out of his possession. He turned and looked toward the newspaper racks again, and decided to retrieve the lone copy of the Washington Tribune.

Damn shame, huh? the clerk said like a cowboy with an Arabic accent, nodding his head at the periodical. He gave another twist to the radio knob, and turned the boom box to somehow find an appropriate net to catch the elusive sound waves. The announcer’s voice returned.

Democratic Speaker of the House, George Sydney Simon, who became President Simon after taking the oath of office yesterday, called on all Americans to pray for the wife and family of the nation’s fallen leader.

The radio news story lapsed into an unintelligible sound bite from a man with a voice so shrill that compared to the male news announcer, it sounded like Alvin or one of his brother Chipmunks.

Congressman Ring did not respond to the clerk with anything but a tightened lip that somehow conveyed an affirmative gesture. Who does this sand jockey scumbag think he is anyway? He probably isn’t even an American citizen, let alone a registered voter. Just shut your camel-lip trap and ring up my groceries or I’ll get your Green Card yanked. Ring never much cared for immigrants. A Technical Sergeant radioman in MacArthur’s invading army in Korea, the young Ring despised both the North Korean enemy that shot at him and the South Korean allies for which he fought. They were all gooks as far as he was concerned.

Ring thumbed through a few twenty-dollar bills in his wallet to locate a note of smaller denomination. The alcohol-induced glassy eyes revealed little emotion inside the old machine of a lawmaker. A denizen of Washington for decades, he tucked away a plethora of stories, historic observations, and knowledge of pivotal meetings with influential policy makers in his memory. He had power, influence, money, and one very big secret tucked underneath his jacket.

First elected in the late 1950s during the peak of the Cold War, Ring served in Congress during the administrations of ten American presidents—a record—becoming the Strom Thurmond of the House. He had known all the presidents personally, with the exception of Eisenhower. He did not regret not being a golfing buddy of the General, however, thinking the great Commander of the Allied Forces in World War II a capable military man, but a political dolt. He would speak glowingly of many other presidents, and for that matter, most of his colleagues on both sides of the congressional aisle. Ring was a popular brother in the House fraternity, and well respected for his role as power broker and conciliator—a man of his word. At the very least, even the congressman’s political opponents marveled at his longevity that outlasted many fellow members who either died, retired, or were given a final negative approval rating from the voters at the ballot box. In public office so long, he could not remember what it was like to have a real job. The only other work he had ever known was growing corn and milking cows. However, he pledged to his constituents that this term would be his last.

Ring, a widower, father of three, and grandfather of ten, strongly considered leaving office in the mid-1970s when the Watergate crisis gave Republicans a black eye. However, the problems of President Jimmy Carter took the heat off Nixon’s supporters. The son-of-a-bitch peanut planter has a different crisis each week, Ring said to his staff. Energy shortages, skyrocketing inflation, outrageous interest rates, hostages in Iran, a loudmouth beer-swilling brother, and a malicious swimming rabbit! Crisis sticks to Carter like warm manure on a farmer’s boot.

The attractive life of a congressman, however, insured that Ring would not alter his desire for public service. The celebrity existence of a federal lawmaker, he thought, was akin to receiving a never-ending blowjob from a toothless blond. There were women to be sure through the years, but the continuous adoration of wining and dining lecherous lobbyists and a sycophantic staff attending to your every need would maintain an erection on a comatose man. He had no dying ambition to reach the office of minority leader or speaker if the Grand Old Party recaptured control of the chamber. But his seniority enabled him to claim the minority chair of the influential Foreign Affairs Committee, granting him considerable influence in Congress. However, the ultimate reason behind the decision to settle into a career of a legislator came to that four-letter word—golf.

I’ve played seventeen different top-rated courses in the past two months for free, he bragged to a national dairy industry lobbyist who sat in his office one summer afternoon in 1985, as the long-in-the-tooth legislator flirted with retirement. Jesus, I can’t get a better job! From then on, the cigar-puffing, whiskey-gobbling former farmer from the cornfields of Iowa would make the House his home.

That eight dollar, fifty-seven cent, the clerk said in his creaky English. You know what I dink, he continued in the foreign accent. Ring rolled his bloodshot eyes. Thought to this Timbuktu towel-head market peddler must be as infrequent as bathing.

I dink somebody snuffed him, the clerk said, adjusting his red and blue cloth company mandated turban, ill-designed to keep employees’ unwashed hair out of the deli’s coleslaw.

Ring did not answer to the theory.

I bet he was rubbed out, the llama-faced conspiracy theorist clerk ruminated like a minimum-wage Oliver Stone. He stuffed the articles into a blue plastic grocery bag. He plopped the tub of ice cream on top of the bag of beer nuts in a negligent, almost malicious fashion, as if he was dropping steel ball bearings into a bag full of small live frogs to delight in the squish and crackle. Dey say he was only sixty-two-year-old and healthy as horse. Sound fishy—you dink?

The only thing that seemed fishy was this cretin’s breath. Ring glared at him. This time the clerk’s gaunt stare demanded an oral response from his familiar and faithful Friday night customer.

Sometimes people just die, Ring said in a low and quavering guttural tone. He paid the clerk, received his change, and turned for the exit, grasping the grocery bag by its plastic handles. Tucking the tabloid under the arm of his overcoat, he pushed open the glass door, nodded a perfunctory farewell to the Casbah cashier, and walked out into the night. The clerk returned to his radio as if it were his lone link to the planet from his marooned convenience-store spaceship.

As Congressman Ring entered the stark grasp of the February night air, he twisted his unbuttoned winter overcoat tighter around his cold and brittle body. A gust of bitter wind seared through the crevices in his wool coat, snipping at his skin like cold scissors. The still-inebriated legislator fumbled for his key ring. Finding it, he pressed a button that opened the door locks and illuminated the inside of the vehicle. His callused, liver-spotted hand reached for the cold driver’s side door handle of his black Lincoln Continental, leased at the expense of the U.S. taxpayers.

Hey Pops! someone called from a darkened corner of the store. The voice was husky, though exaggerated, as if to seem more threatening. Ring rotated his head slowly as his hand reached the frigid black metal jamb of the vehicle’s door. His knees creaked and snapped as they turned like they were unlubricated gears in a cold engine. As he looked toward the unlit niche by the side of the store, he saw two silhouettes round the corner. The darkened figures raced at him as if they were speeding stock cars around the last lap at Daytona. The distinguished Representative from Iowa knew this was not a visit from midwestern agricultural lobbyists. The frail man lurched toward his heavy car door and flung it open.

Hey, man—just want to ask you something. This different voice came from the second rapidly approaching shape, his wet whisper speech flavored with a Hispanic inflection.

Congressman Ring was a wary man, his anxiety honed by cautiously negotiating the streets of Washington, DC, at night. But he was not a coward. He survived the Inchon invasion after all, both victory and later withdraw. The cold, the snow, and thousands of fucking Chinese! He turned toward the sudden solicitors, holding his car door open, ready to make a quick retreat if necessary.

What do you want? the indignant congressman asked.

The first figure came into full view in better light. The stranger appeared to be a Caucasian from what Ring could tell—medium height, well built—but wearing a black overcoat too bulky for an undersized frame. The stranger sported a dingy ski cap with a Washington Redskins logo and wore small, brown leather gloves. A small futile mustache hung under a narrow nose. A weak goatee drooped from the person’s chin. The facial hair looked queer to Ring. Sparse whiskers encircled a pair of moist swollen lips that probably spent most of their time caressing the top of a bottle of ripple.

We have something for you, the second person said in a whiny, heavy Latin accent.

Congressman Ring did not know what something was, but he had a feeling it was not a campaign contribution. The wise old pol slipped backward into his front seat in a hasty escape. The Hispanic-sounding stranger pushed the luxury car door closed, catching the retreating congressman in a steel mousetrap. Ring screamed in soaring pain as the heavy door plunged against his shoulder. The bag of beer nuts and ice cream crushed against his chest, breaking open both containers and blending the two delicacies earlier than the prune-skinned man planned. The unidentified attacker thrust his weight against the car’s driver-side window, squeezing Ring, almost snapping his brittle rib cage. Ring’s left hand, free of the car’s door-vice, gripped the end of his wooden cane, and he took a lame swipe at his assailant with the metal handle. The cane landed a direct hit against the side of the attacker’s face, although with limited intensity. However, the force of the blow did distract the aggressor to ease up on the pressure on the door. Ring propelled the object open once again to free himself from the ambush, and this time, swung at the smaller stranger, scoring a weak hit on the neck and chin. Ring’s coat snagged on the top right corner of the car’s entranceway. The smaller assailant with the funny beard responded to the old man’s defense by grabbing the victim by his collar and pulling his thick winter overcoat and suit backward, ensnaring his arms behind his back in a full Nelson. The white envelope Ring treasured tumbled from his suit pocket. No, no, no! With the right leather glove-covered hand, the attacker pulled a thin-handled ball-peen hammer from his front pocket and slammed the tool onto the dignitary’s head, sending him into semi-consciousness. The uncomfortable thud of metal on bone enticed the two thugs into a frenzy of violence. The Hispanic-sounding attacker snapped open a six-inch switchblade from a hidden hand and plunged the weapon into the crafty congressman’s chest. The gasp from the aged lawmaker was weak, the piercing implement puncturing his right lung. The criminal pulled the weapon out and repeatedly knifed his victim until the old man fell defenseless and limp against the metal doorjamb. Ring’s pierced body slid out of his overcoat and onto the pavement below like a toddler’s deflated punching clown. His gold-plated cane dropped to the wet-coated blacktop with a hollow rattle and rolled under the car down a slight incline of the parking lot’s surface until it came to rest under the right rear tire of the Lincoln.

The first criminal held the side of a bleeding cheek, where Ring popped the attacker with his walking stick. The other assailant muttered something in Spanish and kicked at the legislator’s lifeless body in angry, but pointless retaliation. The hammer-wielding murderer held the accomplice’s arm in a stern warning that enough was enough, then reached for the dead man’s wallet inside his suit coat. Without another moment passing, both ran off into the same darkness from which they entered.

The slight scuffle attracted no attention from the store’s clerk, who persisted in his struggle with his antenna-challenged radio. Nor did the fracas raise awareness from the empty street in the dead of the crisp winter’s night. Stores were empty and nearby residences were shut up tight with their occupants asleep. Traffic lights changed in barren intersections with no one there to obey them. The sole notice the incident attracted was that of a stray dog, who barked a raspy yap from across the street in the dormant commercial strip. The mutt’s alert attracted no one but the crooked smile of a half-moon rising in the eastern sky. Congressman Elmore Ring, a feared figure in the congressional rotunda for decades, now lay dead in the ice-cold parking lot of a suburban Virginia convenience store. A stiff gust of wind pushed the opened door of the taxpayer-paid Lincoln Continental closed. The car’s ignition key remained clutched in the lifeless lawmaker’s right hand. The envelope that Ring valued even greater than the Haagandaz lay beneath his corpse, soaking up blood. The beer nuts lay scattered at his side on the frozen ground. At least the ice cream wouldn’t melt.

CHAPTER 2

The White House Press Office, Saturday, February 7, 9 a.m.

The events of the past week left 270 million Americans in a numbing quandary. Not since Watergate toppled the Nixon Administration in 1974 had the government of the United States been so tenuous. Back then, Gerald Ford clumsily took possession of the reins of power sans voter approval or bloodshed. Our Constitution works, Ford proclaimed as the Michigan congressman took the oath of office. This week, the more than two-century-old document and its score of amendments would be called on again to preserve the government of the world’s most powerful nation.

Three days before, at 1:30 a.m., the president’s personal doctor pronounced Stewart Hamlin Kraft dead. The day before the president’s demise was an uneventful one for news in the United States. No plane crashes or celebrity murder trials of nationwide interest. International terrorism had subsided. Political commentary was at a Sabbath-like hush, though it was a presidential election year—just a few weeks before the New Hampshire primary. The Super Bowl was over—the Buffalo Bills finally won one—and basketball and hockey were far from the playoffs. The largest news of the day came from Pennsylvania, where the furry weathercasting groundhog, Punxautawney Phil, seeing his shadow, failed to forecast an early spring. But nothing spruces up a slow news days like a dead president.

President Kraft, recently home from a trip to England to discuss the future of NATO with the allies, contracted a bad cold that doctors said evolved into a light case of pneumonia. Nothing to worry about, the medical experts said, in hindsight hauntingly sounding like the physicians employed by dying Soviet leaders in the 1980s. The sixty-two-year-old president was in excellent health, and would, with rest, medication, and proper nursing, most certainly shake off the bug.

Most Americans arose the following morning the way they always did, clanging the snooze button on the alarm clock radio a couple of times, showering, and preparing the morning coffee. Those who listened to the radio or habitually flicked on the television news shows shook their head a few times or pinched their sides to convince themselves they were not still dreaming. The president died overnight in his sleep, the White House announced. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. Shock hit the nation.

Presidents had died before, and of course in the Nixon case, resigned to avoid impeachment and trial in the Senate. But after a few dazed revolutions of the earth, the nation and the world kept on spinning. The vice president would raise his right hand sheepishly and take the oath with the help of a Supreme Court Justice or any handy U.S. District Judge. The axles of freedom and the wheels of capitalism continued to rotate. Money stops for no man. However, this was a new experience for the country. Today, the United States of America had no vice president. VP Robert Jackson Fisher resigned his post six weeks before after facing charges of bribery from his days as a senator from California, connected with lobbyists from industries employing illegal aliens at sub-par wages.

A popular president among his ideological allies, Stewart Kraft fortunately had no announced opposition in the Democratic primaries, and he hoped the Fisher debacle—potentially a lightning rod general election issue when facing the Republicans in the fall—was now grounded. It was generally agreed among political scientists that vice-presidential candidates did little to help a party’s ticket in the general election. But they could hurt. Fearing the controversial fiascoes of VP nominees in the past including the potato-misspelling Dan Quayle or the shock treatment patient Thomas Eagleton, the Democrats did not want to squander their chances of another four years in the White House. Three years before, Kraft won office by a slim half-percent of the popular vote and only a razor-thin electoral vote count. It was another close election, and the flip-flop in political preferences among a few hundred hillbillies in West Virginia meant the difference between victory and defeat.

Advisors to President Kraft worried about the nightmare scenario that came into reality three days ago. His cabinet and top confidants urged that a vice-presidential nomination be submitted as soon as possible. Several names floated in the Senate as replacements for Fisher, but no one received mutual acclamation. The upper chamber, narrowly controlled by the Republicans, felt they possessed a political weapon in the nomination process, and vowed to procrastinate endorsing a liberal choice for vice president. Although the GOP was as badly fractured as the Democrats as rabid-conservatives struggled for control over leadership posts with the traditional country club Blue Bloods, all Republicans were eager to frustrate a Democratic president at every opportunity.

As outlined in the Constitution, the succession of power led from the vice president to the speaker of the House of Representatives. Since the Democrats controlled the lower chamber, Kraft told his worried staff that the danger of the White House falling into Republican hands did not exist. Once he returned from his European trip, he promised to make an official nomination for vice president, and then press the Senate for approval.

Numerous press stories flung potential vice-presidential nominees before the public like boys flipping baseball cards up against a schoolroom wall at recess. Various names surfaced including moderate state governors, senators, and millionaire entrepreneurs. Some political wonks even toyed with the idea of the president’s own wife, who possessed her own political credentials. One name not mentioned was Speaker of the House George Sydney Simon, the dyed-in-the-wool big government Democrat from Missouri. Kraft and Simon were political rivals since Kraft crushed Simon’s feeble political foray into presidential politics four years before. However, Simon would unlikely give up such a powerful position for the eunuch-like influence of the second spot in the national palace.

Republican critics complained when Kraft left the country with the vice president’s seat empty, but the protest did not garner too much attention from the press. During Kraft’s absence, Chief of Staff Hector Rodriquez held the reigns of power at the White House for his boss. The Latino Rodriquez was the first minority ever to hold such a position. But critics claimed he was unprepared, even for a moment, to run the federal government.

This fateful day, in the silence of the early morning hours, the country’s Speaker of the House was roused from his bed for a midnight sojourn to the White House. Only a short time after the official proclamation of death, the country had a new leader, unexpected and unelected.

The dwarf-sized wine bottle in the right hand of White House Press Secretary Nathaniel Patrick Freeman contained ten ounces of a domestic wine squeezed from the grapes of a little-known Lake Erie shoreline vineyard in northeastern Ohio. It also contained the memories of the previous five years of his life. Freeman’s large muscular hand, which threw footballs many years before, gripped the tinted glass bottle like a gorilla palming a banana. He read the label: Mangelli Estates, Sparkling White Wine, in honor of the presidential campaign of Stewart H. Kraft, Governor of Ohio. A sudden smile erupted on Freeman’s lips as he relived the occasion he received the memento. It was the first official fundraiser after the governor’s declaration that he was seeking the nation’s highest office. Much happened since then. Today would mark Kraft’s official state burial.

Freeman, a corporate public relations executive at his own Cincinnati management-consulting firm, was picked by the governor to direct communications in a grass-roots campaign from the Columbus State House to the White House. Labeled a strong draft pick for Kraft, Freeman possessed stellar credentials. The bright, sociable, and ingenious recruit at the Naval Academy performed meritoriously in the classroom. But his fame was rooted in his clutch ability on Navy’s football team. A third-string disaster quarterback recruited reluctantly from the practice squad after a rash of injuries, Freeman led a hapless Midshipman team to a twenty-five point second-half come-from-behind victory over Notre-Dame, spoiling the Fighting Irish’s quest that year for a perfect season. His fifteen minutes of fame on the Saturday highlight reel was cut short a few weeks later with an Achilles tendon injury that sidelined him for the rest of his college career.

A former Navy Communications Officer, Captain Nathaniel Freeman earned his combat credits in the Gulf War in 1991, spitting out press releases and background information sheets for the battlefield generals in Saudi Arabia. He also was slightly injured in a scud missile attack in Bahrain, earning him a Purple Heart. Most of his naval career, however, consisted of conducting civilian tours of ships and submarines at the U.S. Naval Shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia. There, he once refused to allow a publicity photo to be taken on a nuclear submarine for author Tom Clancy—due to standard security policy—even though the best-selling author knew the designs of the sub like the back of his hand. Freeman’s avocation, however, was the study of the psychology of management, earning an MBA in business from the University of Virginia and another master’s degree in psychology from the University of Maryland on top of his sheepskin from the Naval Academy.

Freeman’s low profile career in Ohio converted into corporate stardom among many major U.S. corporations as he founded his own public relations agency that rode the wave of business re-engineering in the 1990s. Preaching a revisionist concoction of team-centered management, Freeman adequately paid the bills at home with speaking and consulting fees. The former college quarterback garnered large honorariums as he huddled together with industry managers calling corporate plays based on principled leadership, rather than raw, authoritative power. Those firms that closely followed Freeman’s guru guidelines avoided red ink and layoffs while increasing worker productivity.

The Kraft appointment transformed the quarterback, however, from handing off advice to receiving flack. The consultant was never fully satisfied with his accomplishments that included football memories, money making, and corporate elbow rubbing. He wanted his mission in life to be of a higher purpose. Though no political addict, Freeman jumped at the fortuitous opportunity to direct the communications in Kraft’s campaign as if he were leaving the sidelines to direct a critical drive down the gridiron.

Thirteen months of racing around the country with four or five hours sleep a night, as well as kissing his son goodnight and making love to his wife on a cell phone, seemed worth the prize—a victory in the presidential sweepstakes for Stewart Kraft. If the campaign ranked in excitement equal to a rookie’s first stellar game, the next three years were one continuous playoff season as Freeman started in the job of presidential press secre-tary—a position termed by veteran UPI correspondent Helen Thomas as the second toughest job in the White House. Freeman maneuvered from the blitzing reporters with the spinning evasion of Scrambin’ Fran Tarkenton. He earned their respect quickly at the gaggles—the daily press briefings. The experience was thrilling, rewarding, and it made him feel ten years younger. That is, until today. President Stewart Kraft was dead.

The White House press secretary’s handsome face was vacuous of its normal jovial countenance. Powerful dark eyes, a strong Roman nose, and a dimpled chin assured him a spot as a television commentator whenever he hung up his political PR shoes. He stood six-foot-two, had a muscular frame, runner’s calves, and iron-pumped arms.

A gentle knock on Freeman’s partially opened office door was followed by the soft voice of his personal secretary, Kelsey Jackson.

Nate, the thirty-ish attractive black woman said in a half-whisper. Jackson’s silky voice could have been that of a lady jazz singer. A divorced mother of two, Jackson was a classy, striking woman, with distinctive cheekbones and a slender caramel-colored face. She was Freeman’s Girl Friday nicknamed Scoops, because she always was the first to know White House scuttlebutt.

Speaker... she paused with a grieving breath of air. "The president would like to see you," she corrected herself.

Freeman placed the wine bottle gently into the cardboard box next to several picture frames that featured photos of the late president and himself in happy times. He lifted the box gently and placed it on his walnut desk that dated back to the Roosevelt Administration.

Thanks, Kelsey, Freeman finally responded, using her formal name.

I appreciate it.

Why are you packing? Jackson asked. Her pencil-thin eyebrows over her ebony eyes drooped in concern.

Packing? Oh, I’m just putting away some memories, Freeman said with a calming grin. Best to travel light these days.

Freeman’s wavy, silver-brown hair looked grayer today. The forty-seven-year-old’s sky-blue eyes were glazed and unfocused. There was no trace of the broad smile that usually expressed his joyful demeanor. His smiling crow’s feet usually portrayed exclamation points of his normal air of good humor. But this day, the weary wrinkles looked like a dried-up river delta.

Look, Freeman said, gripping her elbows with a heartening touch of his fingers. Everything’s going to be okay, Scoops. I don’t think there is going to be a giant broom sweeping everything clean. The nation needs a familiar face in front of the press. It’s also an election year and President Simon will not want to rock the boat in the Senate with a bunch of new cabinet appointments. Nothing much will happen this year. But after things settle down, it will be up to the president to make his own decisions on how he will run his administration.

He can’t kick you out, you’ve done so much, she pleaded in her syrupy singing voice that sounded like she was crooning a Gershwin tune from Porgy and Bess.

Freeman stopped the protest by the touch of a fingertip to her full lips and kissed her gently on the forehead. The president... he said. The country needs our support now.

Her eyebrows formed a V with her frown.

I still can’t believe it, Jackson said. The president was in excellent shape. I heard he whipped one of the Olympic team track athletes in a handball game, just three weeks ago.

Where in the devil did you learn that? said Freeman.

Oh, a little birdie told me, she said, flashing a broad smile that lit up the gloomy room brighter than high-beam headlights shining down a dark alley.

You know, Freeman snapped in a mock academic manner, that would have made a great press release.

Sorry, I swore that I would not embarrass our Olympic hero by leaking it out.

Freeman gave her a final endearing hug and checked a mirror on the rear of his door. He tugged his prematurely graying chestnut hair and scowled at his appearance. He could have sworn someone sprinkled a brush full of white paint on him making his once handsome mop the color of campfire ashes. This was not the Navy crew cut brown fuzz he would see on video clippings when he tore off his football helmet as he trotted off the field. The hair was longer now, but the ashen tint now looked to him like a creeping mold his shampoo would not wash away. He thought of coloring, but he wasn’t that vain. Besides, right now, his worry about his hair was the least of his concerns. Freeman’s bloodshot, ringed, and puffy blue eyes looked as if he was wearing spectacles on his swollen face. He had not slept more than three hours in a row during the past seventy-two, and he did not have rest on his agenda until the funeral for President Stewart Kraft was over. Even his dashing photogenic presence that the television cameras enhanced would not cover up the agony that was etched all over his face. He left the White House press office for the short walk to the Oval Office.

Webster, Virginia, Same Day, 9:45 a.m.

Detective Sandra Sweet hunched over a washed away bloodstain pool in the parking lot of the Webster Stop N Go where Congressman Elmore Ring’s body fell the evening before. Yesterday’s cold had given way to a thawing, but chilling downpour. She examined the faint crimson oval blemish roped off by the village police department. Though a small community, Webster’s police force was well equipped, due to the ample property taxes collected from the Washington lobbyist firms and spin-off businesses hosting those working beyond the beltway. Detective Sweet received the finest police detective training in the eastern United States, but she still was not sure what she was looking for. This was her first solo murder investigation. And she was not called to the scene until hours after the first report. That pissed her off.

She rotated around the bloodstain with methodical precision, hoping that something would come to her. Facts, she thought. Crime scene investigators already took blood samples; the evidence already sealed in plastic bags and on the way to a FBI laboratory, she was told. The FBI was called to the murder scene hours before Sweet was notified. That really pissed her off, but the police chief in Webster never thought to send a rookie homicide detective because the head investigator was away on vacation. Sweet, the chief of police said, was just filling in. But when the young detective reached the headquarters that morning and found out what occurred overnight, she rushed to the scene. When Sweet arrived, she felt like she showed up too late for a birthday party to which she had not been invited anyway. The cake and ice cream was consumed, and all the party games occurred without her.

Still, this would not stop the determined cop. What else did she have besides this scant evidence? No identification on the body other than the congressional pin found on Ring’s lapel, revealing his probable identity as a U.S. representative. The attacker or attackers did not remove the old man’s gold watch that also bore the congressional seal, nor his wedding ring. Not very observant robbers. Or they were in a hurry. His groceries were damaged, but untouched. The thieves were after cash money, but apparently not hungry. The elderly official’s gold handle cane was found lodged underneath the tire of the automobile. Why didn’t the perpetrators take that? It had to be valuable. Probably didn’t think of it. Robbery and murder—DC style. Brutal and quick. But this was Webster, Virginia, not an alley in a seedy section of DC. This is Anywhere, USA, and Sweet’s young reputation was on the line. This killer must be in custody fast. Again, the bloodstain—it really looked like a pool, a lake, with faint wavy lines that probably outlined the dead man’s overcoat. And a faded imprint of a square, perhaps a rectangle.

The morning rain pounded the detective’s body that was protected only by a beige thigh-length London Fog raincoat and matching wide-brimmed rain hat. Despite the coat and hat, the thirty-three-year-old investigator was soaked to the bone, her short brown locks drenched from the cold storm. As she raised from the kneeling position like a graceful flamingo, her long, muscular legs hidden behind dark pants provided a fantasy for the male imaginations of two blue-uniformed village officers who sipped convenience store coffee in the shelter of a Webster Police black and white Chevy Caprice.

They don’t make crotchety detectives like they used to, said Roger Platz, the senior partner in the police cruiser, tasting the scalding, bitter liquid bean from a Styrofoam cup. His younger partner, a rookie on the force, did not know whether to smile, so he offered no reaction instead. Webster policemen often gawked at Sweet. She could not cloak her athletically trim body in her police blues during her early years as a uniformed cop. Despite her feminine physique, she strode with the confidence of a macho CEO.

Sweet continued her revolution around the crime scene like a police helicopter searching for an escaped convict in a forest. Damn! What the hell can I tell from a bloodstain? As she continued her circle, Officer Platz continued to gape at her in lascivious contempt. Her broad face reflected the aura of an innocent farm maiden—girlish cheekbones, luscious thick lips, and a delicate nose—like Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island, one cop once quipped. But her docile appeal was only skin deep. She was as emotionally controlled and cement-nail tough as any male officer. Friend or foe would not manhandle this marathon runner