Split Second

10

T he worst day of Sean King's life had been September 26, 1996, the day Clyde Ritter died while then Secret Service agent King was focusing on something else. Unfortunately the second worst day of his life happened to be right now. His office had been filled with police, federal agents and technical crews asking lots of questions and not getting lots of answers. Amid all this forensic foraging they'd taken fingerprint samples from King, Phil Baxter and their secretary; for elimination purposes, they said. That could cut both ways, King well knew.

The local press had arrived too. Fortunately he knew them personally and gave vague answers that they accepted with little comment. The national press would be coming very soon, because there was something extremely newsworthy about the murdered man. King had suspected it, and those suspicions were confirmed when a contingent of folks from the U.S. Marshals Service showed up on his doorstep.

The dead man, Howard Je

Je

Je

Now he was a corpse and King's headache was just begi

King was not a suspect in Je

He spent the rest of the day calming down his partner. Baxter was a big, burly former UVA football player who'd spent a couple of years in the NFL riding the bench before going on to become an aggressive and highly competent trial lawyer. However, the ex-jock was not used to corpses in his office. That was a form of "sudden death" he wasn't very comfortable with. King, on the other hand, had spentyears at the Secret Service working counterfeiting and fraud involving very dangerous gangs. And he'd killed men as well. Thus he was better equipped to deal with a murder than his partner was.

King had sent his receptionist, Mona Hall, home for the day. Mona was a frail, nervous type, so the sight of blood and body would not have set well with her. However, she was also a confirmed and accomplished gossip, and King had no doubt that the local phone exchange was being burned up with wild speculation about the homicidal goings-on at the offices of King Baxter. In a quiet community such as Wrightsburg, that could lead the topics of conversation for months if not years to come.

With the building now shut down by the feds and under around-the-clock security, King Baxter had to move its legal operations temporarily to its partners' homes. That evening the two lawyers carried out boxes, files and other work to their cars. As beefy Phil Baxter drove off in his equally large SUV, King leaned against the hood of his car and stared up at his office. With lights ablaze, the investigators were still going hard and heavy in there, scrutinizing the place for any clue as to who had put a bullet into the chest of Howard Je

He drove home, wondering what the next morning would bring. He ate a bowl of soup in the kitchen while he watched the local news. There were pictures of him on the screen, references to his career at the Secret Service, including his disgraced exit, his law career in Wrightsburg and assorted speculation about the dead Howard Je

He changed into shorts and a sweater, grabbed a bottle of redwine and a plastic glass and went down to the covered dock behind his house. There he boarded the twenty-foot jet boat he kept there along with a fourteen-foot sailboat and a Sea-Doo personal watercraft or PWC, which was akin to a motorcycle on water, plus a kayak and a canoe. About a half mile across at its widest point, and perhaps eight miles long with numerous coves and inlets, the lake was very popular with recreational boaters and fishermen; stripers, bluegill and catfish filled the deep, clear waters. The summer was over now, the renters and seasonal residents gone.

His vessels were on power lifts, and he lowered the jet boat into the water, fired it up and turned on the ru

When news spread that a person in the WITSEC program had been murdered in his law office, King would once more be in the national spotlight, something he was dreading. The last time, one tabloid went off the deep end, ru

He sat up on the boat's gunwale, kicked off his shoes, stripped off his clothes and dove into the dark water, stayed under for a bit and then came up sucking oxygen. The lake was actually warmer than the outside air.

His career as a Secret Service agent really came crashing down when a video of the assassination, taken by a local TV news crew covering the Ritter event, was released to the public. It clearly showed him looking away from Ritter far longer than he shouldhave. It showed the assassin drawing his gun, pointing it, firing, killing Ritter, and all the while King had been staring off, as though in a trance. The clip even showed children in the crowd reacting to the gun before King realized what was going on.

The media had chosen to excoriate King, no doubt fueled by the outcry of Ritter's people and not wanting to appear biased against an unpopular candidate.

He could recall most of the headlines: "Agent Lets Eyes Wander While Candidate Dies"; "Veteran Agent Blows It"; "Asleep at His Post." Or the one that read, "So That's Why They Wear the Shades," which under different circumstances might have actually made him chuckle. Worst of all, though, he'd been largely shu

His marriage had fallen apart under the strain. Actually it had started to fall apart long before that. King had been gone far more than he was home, sometimes leaving on an hour's notice, with no fixed return date. Under those pressing circumstances he'd forgiven his wife's first affair and even the second. The third time, however, they separated. And when she quickly agreed to a divorce after his world fell in, well, he couldn't say he'd spent a lot of time crying about it.

And yet he'd survived it all and rebuilt his life. And now?

He slowly climbed back on board the jet boat, wrapped a towel he kept in the boat around his middle and drove back. Instead of going to his dock, he cut the engine and ru