Capital Crimes

“At the time, I thought he was crazy, and I told him so, but he actually did the things he said he would do. Think back: During the summer before the election, after the president’s stroke and Joe’s becoming acting president, what would have happened if Freddie had managed to expose Joe’s illness and the fact that Joe had told you about it? I’ll tell you: Joe would have been forced to resign, you would have been disgraced, and the speaker of the House-your opponent in the race-Eft Efton, would have become president.”

Will thought about that. “I suppose you’re right.”

“So, looking at it from your point of view, and incidentally, mine, Ed Rawls performed a valuable service for his country by keeping that shit Efton out of the White House.”

“You have a point,” Will said. “Was Rawls the one who leaked the story about Freddie and his lover later on?”

“Yes, but he did it with a light touch, so that it could never be substantiated. Freddie denied everything, and it all went away.”

“And what would the CIA’s position be on a pardon for Ed Rawls?”

“Until recently, dead set against it, but that position is softening.”

“Why?”

“Because Ed still has friends at the Agency, and because I’m now director of Central Intelligence.”

“So you’re sympathetic?”

“Ed is not well. He’s had some health problems, and he’s seventy now. He still has that house on the island of Islesboro, in Maine – you remember, I went to visit him and his wife there once?”

“Yes, vaguely.”

“He says he wants to die there. If it were up to me, I couldn’t deny him that.”

“Kate, I might as well pardon Aldrich Ames or that FBI agent who was selling stuff to the Russians for years and years. It would be worse than that stupid pardon that Bill Clinton granted that fugitive in Switzerland on his last day in office.”

“Will, I can’t tell you that this is politically feasible; all I can say is that, if you felt grateful enough to Ed to pardon him, I could make it all right at the Agency. Certainly, you couldn’t do it during your first term. You could pardon him on grounds of ill health. All I ask is that you think about it. Neither of us has to mention this to anyone else.”

“All right, I’ll think about it,” Will said.

There was a sharp rap on the door, and Cora Parker stuck her head in. “Mr. President, CNN has something on Senator Wallace’s death,” she said. “Shall I turn it on?”

“Please, Cora.”

There were four television sets in the Oval Office, tuned to the three major networks and CNN. Cora switched on the CNN set.

A reporter was standing a few yards from a rustic cabin beside a lake.“… and the senator was standing in the kitchen, only a few feet from the window.” He pointed, and the camera zoomed in on a smashed windowpane. “What has a lot of people in Washington worried is that Senator Wallace was rumored to have kept extensive files on various people in government and that the information in those files might find its way into the media. According to the rumor, only J. Edgar Hoover had more dirt on more important people. Now back to the studio.”

“You think that’s true?” Kate asked.

“I wouldn’t put it past Freddie,” Will said. “And next week, I’m going to give a funeral oration for a man who did everything he could to destroy my political career and my reputation.”

“If Freddie kept files like that, who would have them?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Will said.

IN CHESTER, South Carolina, Elizabeth Johnson opened a desk drawer in the den of her home and took out a key. She went down the stairs to her basement and to a pile of boxes in a corner. She moved one, exposing a small filing cabinet, the kind that holds index cards. Tentatively, she inserted the key into the little cabinet and pulled open one of the four drawers. She switched on a light, illuminating a row of precisely filed cards, all of them labeled with the neatly printed names of some of the best-known, most powerful people in the country. Freddie had always been a splendid record keeper.

Elizabeth had meant to look through them, but instead, she stared at the cards as if they were a poisonous reptile. She closed the drawer, locked the cabinet, and went back upstairs. Instead of returning the key to the desk drawer, she went into her bedroom closet and pushed aside the clothes hanging there. She opened the wall safe that she had bought to keep the jewelry that Freddie had given her over the years, then she put the file cabinet key inside, closed the safe, and returned the clothes to their original position.

She would wait awhile, until the furor over Freddie’s death had died down, then she would burn all those index cards in her fireplace.

5

JAMES HELLER, back in his office at the Hoover Building, called a meeting of the half-dozen highest-ranking people at the FBI, all of them men.

“Gentlemen, I have some news for you,” Heller said, self-importantly. “Senator Frederick Wallace of South Carolina was murdered this morning.” He waited for a response.

“Yes, sir,” the deputy director for criminal investigations said. “It was On CNN a few minutes ago.”

Heller blinked. “But the president himself told me about it only a few minutes ago. He got it from the sheriff down there.” He somehow viewed this as a personal betrayal by CNN.

“Yes Sir,” the DDCI said.

“Bob,” Heller said, fixing the DDCI with his gaze. “I want you to call the agent in charge of the Columbia office on the phone right away and have him get some men over to Chester and talk to that sheriff.”

“I have already done so, sir,” the DDCI replied.

Heller blinked. “Oh.” He took a deep breath and tried to think. “As I’m sure you know, the murder of a federal official is a federal crime-”

“Yes, sir, I know that.”

“So we’re taking over this investigation. This small-town sheriff isn’t going to have the resources to properly investigate this killing.”

“I have already given those instructions to the AIC in Columbia,” the DDCI said. “The investigation is ours now.”

“Good. So, what do we know so far?”

“I spoke to Sheriff Stribling, and he tells me that Senator Wallace was shot through a kitchen window by a sniper, who was probably three hundred yards or more away, since the land around the cabin was cleared to that distance, affording no hiding place for a shooter. A single twenty-two-caliber bullet struck him in the left temple, killing him instantly.”

“Good, good. And what have our people turned up there?”

“Sir, Chester is more than an hour’s drive from Columbia. They would have left Columbia no more than fifteen minutes ago.”

“Do we have any suspects?”

“Sir, as you know Senator Wallace was a very popular man on the right wing of the Republican Party.”

“I didn’t know there was any other wing of the Republican Party.”

“Be that as it may, sir, the senator was very unpopular with almost everybody to the left of him. He was a very skillful obstructionist in the Senate, managing to block many pieces of legislation and judicial appointments, some of them sent up by Republican presidents. He had many enemies, and the first assessment of people with motive to kill him would run into the hundreds, perhaps thousands. By the time we eliminate everyone who could not have been in Chester, South Carolina, this morning, we may have pared the list to dozens.

“It’s possible that he was killed for political motives, but it’s just as possible that he was killed because of some personal grudge, by someone in his own hometown. We expect Sheriff Stribling to be valuable in that part of the investigation, so I’ve told our AIC to leave the sheriff in charge of the local investigation, liaising through one of our agents, who will be assigned to assist him.”