“You said you know who killed Lester,” Cat said. “But that’s impossible. He committed suicide. He jumped off the roof of the White House. His body was found in the Rose Garden.”
“You said before that his death was news to you,” Jimmie said.
“I didn’t know if I could trust you.”
“So why didn’t you write about his death, then?” Jimmie said.
“You know as well as I do that this is a click-driven business.”
“So you didn’t even investigate it? He was your boyfriend.”
“Was my boyfriend. Remember that I’m a member of the White House press corps. I’m not paid to investigate,” Cat said. “Besides, ‘Old-School News Reporter Kills Self at White House’ isn’t exactly going to garner many views.”
“Let the people make that decision,” Jimmie said.
She shook her head. “The people did decide-years and years ago. Before the advent of blogging, before the advent of the Internet. There’s maybe some political intrigue there. Maybe. But it’s miniscule. Bottom line is reporters aren’t celebrities. Nobody cares when they drop dead.” Cat pulled a snub-nosed revolver from her handbag. “That’s why nobody’s going to care when you’re found facedown in the Reflecting Pool, drowned.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
Think of the Pageviews!
Jimmie sighed. “I hoped I was wrong about you.”
“How does it feel being right about me?”
“Like a kick to Little Jimmie,” he said.
“We can arrange that. Now get moving,” she said, waving the gun toward the pond. “What tipped you off?”
“You mean, when did I first suspect you had a hidden agenda?” Jimmie said. “You slipped up a few times when we were talking outside the museum. When you tried to slap me and I grabbed your wrist, however, I knew for sure. You didn’t have any rope marks or handcuff imprints.”
“Maybe they weren’t tied very tight.”
“I thought about that, but you’d have at least struggled. You put up a fight the other day when I just tried to say hello,” Jimmie said. “So we know you didn’t struggle. My first thought was that you orchestrated the kidnapping. But using Occam’s razor, the simplest answer is usually correct. You were kidnapped, but you didn’t struggle. Why was that?”
“I suppose you have an answer for that,” she said, prodding him down the steps.
“I do,” he said. “Trump used you as bait-bait for the Socialist Justice Warriors to make a move. I’m guessing that some time ago, you noticed one of their hackers had found a back door into your phone. That’s how they knew where you were going to be last Friday night; that’s why you accepted my invitation to dinner. That’s why you had to set it up a few days in advance-to surreptitiously give them a heads-up.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t suspect something was up when I agreed to go on a date with you. Men. You all think with your dicks.”
Jimmie swung around. “It wasn’t a date. Was it?”
Cat leveled the gun at him. “Keep. Walking.”
“Or what, you’re going to shoot me?”
“I’m seriously considering it,” she said. “The idea is becoming more attractive by the minute. Now move.”
She prodded him with the tip of the pistol. Even though it was a small, snub-nosed handgun like you’d see a dame carrying in an old noir movie, it could probably poke a hole or two in him if she pulled the trigger.
“You killed Lester, didn’t you?” Jimmie said. “It wasn’t Lewandowski. It was you.”
“Is this supposed to be the scene in the little suspense novel running through your head where the villain explains herself? Sorry to disappoint you or your nonexistent readers, Jimmie, but if you don’t know by now, you’re too shitty of a detective to live.”
“You’re not denying you killed him.”
“Trying to get me to implicate myself again?” she said. “I might as well tell you, if only because I think you’d understand why I did it. I lied about the last time I saw Lester alive. It wasn’t in June-it was in July. It had been a few months since we’d split. We saw each other in passing a few days before the Fourth of July, and he asked if I wanted to watch the fireworks from the roof of the White House. Of course, he just wanted to get back together, but how do you say no to that?”
They reached the edge of the Reflecting Pool. In the water, Jimmie could see President Lincoln staring out over Cat’s shoulder. The gun was at Jimmie’s back.
“Wade into the pond,” Cat said.
“Can I take my shoes and socks off first? If I were going to drown naturally, you know, that’s what I would do. You want this to look realistic, I assume.”
She sighed and motioned for him to hurry up. As he stripped his shoes and socks off, she continued her story.
“At quarter ’til nine, we went up to the roof using his orange-level clearance. I guess because he wanted to impress me, he let it slip that he had some ‘explosive’ recordings of things the president had said to him. Due to his nondisclosure agreement, he couldn’t publish them. Or he was too scared to. He was thinking about handing the recordings off to some of his liberal pals. Just handing them over to a bunch of Bernie bros!”
“What a waste,” Jimmie said. He wasn’t ready yet to mention the recordings were worthless. He dipped a toe into the water, and it sent a chill up his spine. Though the weather had been in the sixties all week and was probably there right now, the water felt much, much colder.
“Exactly-that’s what I said. Think of the pageviews! He had hours and hours of this stuff, with the president on tape saying the most outrageous stuff. To use Trump’s own terminology, it was a gold mine.”
Jimmie stepped into the pool. The water came halfway up his shins. Goose bumps rose all over his body.
Cat said, “Lester said he’d hidden the recorder within the White House. Somewhere in his office was my guess. He wouldn’t listen to reason, though. I did the only thing I could do: I went for his badge. There was a struggle… and he went over the edge. I tried telling myself it was an accident… but I know it wasn’t.”
“You didn’t get the badge, I’m guessing.”
She shook her head. “He took it with him, right into the Rose Garden. After the Secret Service shot him to death, I got the hell out of there. I thought the recorder had been tossed or erased… until you showed up. I began to think there might be some hope-and, as it turns out, I was right. You know, that thing was my ticket out of this town. Then you went and fucked that all up. Not only that, but you cracked the case of Lester’s death. I’m not ready to go to jail. Orange is not the new black. I look worse than Christie in orange.”
At least he agreed with her there.
“Why kill me?” he asked.
“This is all your fault-all of this,” she said. “If you hadn’t posted that stupid Ted Cruz sex tape without my approval, neither of us would be in this mess right now.”
“I thought you’d be impressed by it.”
“Impressed that someone leaked you a tape? You were the only journalist with low enough scruples to post something that… disgusting.”
“I thought it would win a Pulitzer.”
“A Pulitzer?” she said. “This is about Lester, isn’t it?”
“Not entirely. But-”
“I didn’t leave you for Lester because he had a Pulitzer Prize,” she said. “I left you for him because he wasn’t so insecure.”
Okay, that hurt. Jimmie inched his way across the cement floor of the pool. If she was going to kill him, why did she have to be so mean about it?
“How far do you want me to go, your highness?” he said.
There was no answer from behind him.
He turned his head.
Ted Cruz was standing at the edge of the pool, his chiseled body illuminated by the moonlight. He had an arm around Cat’s neck. She’d gone limp.