Joan looked interested. “Jefferson Parks?”
“You know him?”
“Name sounds very familiar. So they took your gun. And ballistics cleared you?”
“Actually no. It was a match. My gun killed Howard Jennings.”
King had thought over this phrasing very carefully on the drive up, because he wanted to test the woman’s response to it. She almost spilled her coffee. Either she had really boned up on her acting skills or it was a sincere reaction.
“That can’t be right,” she said.
“That’s what I said. But fortunately the marshal and I saw eye-to-eye on the method that someone could have used to make my gun the murder weapon while I thought I had it on me.”
“How?”
King briefly explained his substitution theory. He’d thought about withholding it from her but decided it didn’t really matter, and he wanted her reaction to this as well, mostly for the follow-up statement he was going to make.
Joan thought about this, longer than King felt was really necessary.
“That would take a lot of planning and skill,” she finally said.
“And access to my house. They would have had to get the gun back in my box before the posse showed up to take it, you know, the morning that you were there.”
He finished his coffee and poured himself another cup while she stewed on this. He offered to freshen hers but she declined.
“So you came here to tell me that, what, you think I framed you?” said Joan stiffly.
“I’m just telling you that someone did, and I just told you how I think they did it.”
“You could have told me that over the phone.”
“Yes, I could, but you paid me a visit, and I wanted to return the honor. At least I called first.”
“I didn’t set you up, Sean.”
“Then all my troubles are over. I’ll call Parks and tell him the good news.”
“You know, you can be a real smart-ass.”
He put down his coffee cup and drew very close to her. “Let me just lay it out for you. I’ve got a dead man in my office, and my gun killed him. I’ve got no alibi and a pretty damn sharp marshal who, while maybe he buys my theory on a frame, is by no means convinced of my innocence. And this man would shed no tears if I’m locked up for the rest of my life or given some toxic bug juice to transport me to the hereafter. And then you come to visit me out of the blue and somehow forget to tell me that you’re no longer with the Secret Service. You make a big deal of apologizing, acting all nice, with the result that I let you stay overnight. You try your best to seduce me on my kitchen table for a reason I still can’t fathom, but I can’t believe only has to do with you wanting to scratch an eight-year-old itch. You’re alone in my house while I’m out on the lake, and my gun mysteriously turns out to be the murder weapon after it’s picked up on that very same morning. Now, Joan, maybe I am more suspicious than my neighbor, but I’d have to be on life support and breathing through a frigging tube not to be a little paranoid about that sequence of events.”
She eyed him with maddening calm. “I didn’t take your gun. I know nothing about anyone who might have. I have no proof of that. You just have my word.”
“Again, that’s such a relief.”
“I never told you that I was still with the Service. You just assumed.”
“You never said you weren’t!” he snapped.
“You never asked!” She added, “And that wasn’t my best.”
King looked confused. “What?”
“You said I did my best to seduce you. Just for the record, that wasn’t my best.”
Both sat back now, seemingly out of words or breath or both.
“Okay,” he said, “whatever game you’re playing with me, you just go ahead and play it. I’m not going down for Jennings’s murder, because I didn’t do it.”
“Neither did I, and I’m not trying to frame you. What motive would I have?”
King said, “Well, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be here, would I?” He rose. “Thanks for the coffee. Next time hold the cyanide, it gives me gas.”
“As I told you before, I came to see you for a very particular purpose.” He stared at her. “But I didn’t get around to it. I guess seeing you after all those years made more of an impact than I thought it would.”
“So what was the purpose?”
“To make you a proposition.” She quickly added, “A business proposition.”
“Like what?”
“Like John Bruno,” she replied.
His eyes narrowed. “What do you have to do with a missing presidential candidate?”
“Thanks to me, the firm was hired by Bruno’s party to find out what happened to him. In lieu of our standard rate I negotiated another arrangement. Our out-of-pocket expenses are covered, but we accepted a much lower daily rate. However, it comes with a potentially lucrative bonus.”
“What, like a finder’s fee, no pun intended.”
“A multimillion-dollar one to be exact. And since I brought in the account, under the firm’s policy of getting to eat what you kill, I personally get sixty percent.”
“How exactly did you manage that?”
“Well, as you know I had a pretty good career at the Service. And in the time I’ve been here I’ve brought several very high-profile cases to a successful conclusion, including the return of a Fortune 500 executive who was kidnapped.”
“Congratulations. Funny I never heard about it.”
“Well, we like to keep a low profile to the public. To those who are in the know, however, we’re a major player.”
“Millions, huh? I didn’t think third-party candidates had that kind of war chest.”
“A large part of it is special liability insurance, and Bruno’s wife has family money. His campaign was also very well funded. And since they have no candidate to expend money on, they want to pay me, and I have no problem with that.”
“But Bruno’s case is an ongoing federal investigation.”
“So what? The FBI doesn’t have a monopoly on solving crimes. And Bruno’s people flatly don’t trust the government. In case you haven’t been reading your newspaper, some of them think their candidate was set up by the Service.”
“They said the same thing about me and Ritter, and it’s as crazy now as it was then,” said King.
“But it presents a wonderful opportunity for us.”
“Us? And what exactly is my part in all this?”
“If you help me find Bruno, I’ll pay you forty percent of what I get; it’ll be seven figures to you.”
“I’m not rich, but I really don’t need the money, Joan.”
“But I do. I left the Service before I did my twenty-five years, so I’m sort of screwed on the pension. I’ve been here a year, making a lot more money, and I’ve socked most of it away, but I’m not enjoying myself. In my years at the Service I worked the equivalent of a forty-year career. I see in my future white beaches, a catamaran and exotic cocktails, and this score will allow me to do that. And maybe you don’t need the money, but what you do need is something good to happen to you. Where the newspapers tout you as a hero instead of the fall guy.”
“So you’re now my P.R. person?”
“I think you need one, Sean.”
“Why me? You’ve got all the resources of this place.”
“Most of the experienced people are pissed that I landed the deal, and they won’t work on it with me. The ones who are left are young, overeducated and street-stupid. Your fourth year in the Service you broke the largest counterfeit ring in the Northern Hemisphere working solo from the field office in Louisville, Kentucky, of all places. That’s the sort of investigative talent I need. And it also helps matters that you live two hours from where Bruno was snatched.”