“Oh, shit,” said King. “Our little political activist is involved in some serious stuff here. And regardless of whether Bruno deserved it or not, she’s tagged him as a crooked prosecutor who ruined her father’s life.”
“What I don’t get,” said Michelle, “is that these stories were printed before Kate was even born. Where did she get them?”
“The man in the Mercedes. The guy making her hate Bruno for what he did to her father. Or didn’t do.” King added, “And maybe she blames Bruno for her father’s death, reasoning if he’d been at Harvard or Stanford, he would’ve been happy and his wife wouldn’t have left him and he never would have gone gunning for somebody like Ritter.”
“But all that for what purpose?”
“Revenge? For Kate, for somebody else.”
“How does that tie into Ritter and Loretta Baldwin and all the rest?”
King threw up his hands in frustration. “Damn it, I wish I knew. But I do know this: Kate is only the tip of the iceberg. And now something else makes sense.” She looked at him. “Kate wanted to meet so she could tell us about this suddenly new revelation about Thornton Jorst.”
“You think she was prompted to do that? To throw us off track?”
“Maybe. Or maybe she did it on her own, for another reason.”
“Or maybe she’s telling the truth,” offered Michelle.
“Are you kidding? Nobody has so far. Why should the rules change now?”
“Well, I have to say, Kate Ramsey is a world-class actress. I never pegged her being involved.”
“Well, her mother was supposed to be a superstar in that regard. Maybe she inherited those genes.” King looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, “Get Parks on the horn and see what he’s come up with on Bob Scott. I’m suddenly very interested in my ex-detail leader.”
As it turned out, Parks had been very busy in the last several hours. He’d confirmed the address in Tennessee for Bob Scott and told Michelle that it had several intriguing attributes. It was a thirty-acre parcel in the mountainous rural eastern part of the state. The property had also been part of an army encampment during World War II and for twenty years thereafter, before it was sold to private owners. Since then it had changed hands several times.
Parks told Michelle, “When I found out it was once owned by the United States Army, I started wondering why Scott might want to own a spread like that. He’d been living in Montana for a while, real militia person, I guess, so why the move? Well, I’ve been poring over maps, blueprints and diagrams, and I found out the damn property has an underground bunker built into a hillside. The government and military had thousands of them constructed during the Cold War, from small and simple to the gargantuan one at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia to house the United States Congress in the event of nuclear war. The one Scott owns is pretty elaborate, with bunk rooms, a galley, bathrooms, shooting range, water and air filtration facilities. Hell, the army probably forgot it was even there when the property was sold. One other interesting thing: it has cells for housing prisoners of war, in case of invasion, I guess.”
“A prison,” said Michelle. “Pretty handy for holding kidnapped presidential candidates.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. And on top of that, this place in Tennessee is barely two hours by car from where both Ritter was killed and Bruno was kidnapped. Those three places roughly form a triangular shape.”
“And you’re sure it’s the same Bob Scott?” asked Michelle.
“Pretty damn sure. But for this old warrant, it would have been tough to track him down; he’s gone pretty far underground.”
“Are you still planning to go down there?” asked Michelle.
“We found a friendly Tennessee judge who issued us a search warrant. We’re going to pay that place a visit, but under a pretense because I don’t want anyone getting shot. And once inside, we see what we see. It’s a little dicey from a legal point of view, but I figure if we can get Bruno out before something happens to him, and bag Scott, then it’s worth it. We’ll let the lawyers figure it all out later.”
“When are you leaving?”
“It’ll take us a while to get everything set, and we’ll want to do it in broad daylight. I don’t want this Scott wacko to open fire on what he thinks are trespassers. It’s about a four- or five-hour drive, so really early tomorrow morning. You still want to go?”
“We do,” said Michelle with a glance at King. “And we may find somebody else there.”
“Who’s that?” asked Parks.
“A graduate student holding a long grudge.” She clicked off and filled in King on the events. Then she pulled out a sheet of paper and started scribbling out some bullet points.
“Okay, here’s my brilliant theory number two, which assumes that Jorst is not involved. Let’s take it point by point,” she began. “Scott sets up the Ritter killing with Ramsey; he’s the inside guy. For what motivation I don’t know, maybe money, maybe he had some secret vendetta against Ritter.” She snapped her fingers. “Wait a minute. I know it sounds crazy, but maybe Scott’s parents gave all their money to Ritter when he was a preacher? You remember what Jorst said about that? And when I was doing background on Ritter, I confirmed he was a very rich man, basically because of these ‘donations’ to his church, a church he was somehow sole beneficiary of.”
“I thought about that too. But unfortunately that theory doesn’t fit the facts. I worked with Scott for years and know his history. His parents died when he was a kid. And they didn’t have any money to leave him anyway.”
She sat back with a frustrated look. “Too bad. That would have been a good incentive. Hey, what about Sidney Morse? His parents were wealthy. Maybe they gave their money to Ritter. Then maybe Morse was involved in Ritter’s death.”
“No. She gave her money to Morse when she died. I remember hearing about it when Morse came onto the campaign, because she passed away during that time. And in any event, we know the Ritter and Bruno cases are somehow connected. Even if Sidney had something to do with Ritter’s death, he couldn’t have been involved with Bruno’s kidnapping. Not unless he knocked him out with a tennis ball.”
“Okay, that’s true. All right, let’s still assume Bob Scott was behind it. That’s the first part. Let’s just say he was paid off to help orchestrate the assassination. It costs him his career, but so be it. He goes off and lives in the wilds of Montana.”
“But what about Bruno? What connection could Scott have to the man?”
“Well, what if when he set up Ritter he did it because he and Ramsey were friends somehow, way back when? I know it seems crazy. Scott fought in Vietnam and Ramsey protested against it, but stranger things have happened. Maybe they met at some protest. You know, Scott was sick of the war and jumped to Ramsey’s way of thinking. So maybe if he helped set up the assassination of Ritter with Arnold Ramsey, he also knows Kate Ramsey. And then he’s also aware that Bruno ruined her father’s career with trumped-up charges, and he told Kate that. Now Kate grows up hating Bruno, and Scott comes back in the picture somehow, and they team up to kidnap him and make him pay for what he did. That would pretty much explain it all.”
“And the man who visited Arnold Ramsey, the one Kate overheard saying Thornton Jorst’s name—you’re saying that was Scott?”
“Well, if Kate is really involved, she could have just lied about that to throw us off the truth, like we talked about. So what do you think?”
“Those are pretty good deductions.”
“Well, I think we make a pretty good team.”