Jim McGill 02 The Hangman's Companion Page 54

  A couple of type-A personalities, however, tried not to take no for an answer, and Deke Ky quickly put a whispered word into their ears. Both hard chargers abruptly turned pale and left the office on wobbly legs.

  McGill appreciated Deke’s concern but didn’t feel that prospective clients, no matter how rude, should be threatened with either lengthy incarceration or swift death. He needed someone to run interference for him. Someone who could discourage the jerks with nothing more than a hard stare. So he got on the phone to Chicago.

  “Sweetie? It’s Jim. If you’re not busy, I’ve got a job for you.”

  Margaret “Sweetie” Sweeney had been McGill’s strong right arm on the cops in both Chicago and Winnetka. She’d even taken a bullet that rightfully should have been McGill’s. A rich suburban punk had kidnapped his ex-girlfriend and locked the two of them in his bedroom. Things got to the point where murder-suicide looked imminent. McGill’s plan had been to break down the door on the count of three. Sweetie went on two.

  “So I’m gonna be what around here?” Sweetie asked when she arrived the day after McGill called. “The office manager, the dragon lady, the anchor on your more outlandish impulses?”

  “My partner,” McGill said. “The bad cop to my good cop. Same as always.”

  Sweetie noticed Deke looking at her. She knew right away McGill had told him about her. Now, the Secret Service hero was wondering: Could he really take a bullet for someone?

  “Only one way to find out,” Sweetie answered the unspoken question.

  Deke pretended he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “Patti would like you to stop by for dinner tonight,” McGill told her.

  The president had a special place in her heart for Sweetie after learning what she’d done to spare McGill. And, of course, the grief Sweetie had later saved her from personally.

  Sweetie smiled, and McGill thought, as he always did, that she looked like St. Michael the Archangel. Or a Valkyrie, if you preferred Norse mythology.

  “Yeah, I’d like to see her, too,” Sweetie said. “Did she get my birthday card?”

  “Made her day,” McGill answered truthfully.

  The card had been addressed to Mrs. James J. McGill, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Chapter 2, Monday

  For the next four weeks, with Sweetie stationed in the outer office like a desk sergeant, not a single lobbyist pestered McGill. Neither did anyone else. Word had gotten around official Washington: The president’s henchman was not a back door to the Oval Office. And the Metro Police seemed to have a mortal lock on all local criminal investigations.

  It was beginning to look like McGill would have plenty of time for ribbon cuttings. Galia Mindel had sent him a request to provide a recipe for his favorite dish — to be included in a new edition of The First Ladies’ Cookbook.

  Things were so slow that first Monday in June that Deke and Sweetie, who’d received her own concealed weapon permit, had gone to a firing range at lunchtime to shoot it out for the office deadeye championship. Leo, parked out front, had been left to hold down the fort.

  Apparently, Leo let Chana Lochlan slip past him. More likely, he decided she wasn’t a threat and got her autograph.

  McGill was eating a turkey sandwich at his desk and reading the Chicago Tribune’s sports section online when “the most fabulous face on television,” as judged by People magazine, knocked on his open door. “Mr. McGill, may I come in?”

  The first thing that struck McGill was her size. With only moderate heels on her shoes, she had to be six feet tall. She was whipcord lean and even in her business suit gave the impression she was ready to compete in a triathlon. Then there was that fabulous face — a proud nose, a generous mouth, a defiant chin, and shoulder-length black hair framing big hazel eyes.

  McGill swallowed the food he’d been chewing and gestured her to a guest chair. He knew who she was, of course. He’d even glimpsed her in person a time or two. Chana Lochlan was the White House reporter for the World Wide News (W2N) cable network. Her job was to cover McGill’s wife. In an honest and forthright way, if you believed in ad slogans.

  To stick a knife in at every opportunity, as McGill saw it.

  “Would you mind if we closed the door?” Ms. Lochlan asked.

  McGill studied her as though she were a painting. It was a pretty darn nice face. All the more so for the first few faint lines that TV makeup usually covered. Still, it wasn’t quite in Patti’s league. But then the president had prepared for a career in politics by working as a model and acting in Hollywood movies. That and graduating from Yale with honors, building houses with Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity, and doing innumerable other hands-on good works.

  Chana Lochlan probably had a long list of virtuous deeds on her résumé, too, but McGill knew that wasn’t what people would talk about if they learned she’d been in his office with the door closed.

  “We’re the only ones here, Ms. Lochlan. No need to close the door. If you’ve come to ask about an interview, there’s someone at the White House who handles those requests for me … I think.”

  “I didn’t come for an interview.”

  McGill blinked. Chana Lochlan was going to be his first client?

  “You know, it’s true what they say about you,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You do look a little like Harrison Ford before he went gray.”

  “I used to say more like Rory Calhoun, but nobody seems to remember him anymore. Ms. Lochlan, are you here to talk about hiring me as an investigator?”

  She looked over her shoulder at the entrance to the office suite.

  McGill glanced at the time on his computer monitor. “We’ll have fifteen minutes to ourselves if you have something to say.”

  “You’re not going to close the door?”

  McGill shook his head.

  “You’re a very careful man.”

  McGill waited. She’d talk or she’d leave.

  “A question or two first,” she said. “Does what I tell you stay with you? Or does it reach the president? I cover her, as I’m sure you know. I ask her hard questions. Maybe you even think some of them are politically motivated.”

  McGill kept himself from nodding.

  “But doing my job would be very difficult if the president knew what I had to tell you.”

  McGill hadn’t considered the question before, but he thought it fair.

  He said, “The president and I don’t keep secrets from one another — about our personal lives. But she doesn’t tell me if she’s going to have the Marines seize Lichtenstein. So it seems reasonable I should keep the details of my investigations from her.”

  “Then I can expect confidentiality?”

  “Yes.” A thought occurred to McGill. “I might, however, consult with my colleague in the firm.” Might. As if Sweetie would stand for his keeping secrets. “She’d be bound by the same obligation to confidentiality I would.”

  That was agreeable to Chana Lochlan, though she took one more look over her shoulder.

  “Two days ago, at my home in Georgetown, I was awakened by a phone call at 4:00 a.m. I picked up the phone and mumbled hello. The caller was a man. His voice sounded white, educated, Midwestern American. At a guess, he was thirty to fifty. He began by asking me a question. He said, ‘Do you remember the last time we made love?’”

  McGill picked up a pen, opened a notepad. “Is your home phone number unlisted?”

  Chana nodded.

  “Is it on your business card?”

  She shook her head.

  “Have you ever given it to a source?”

  “I made that mistake once, early in my career. But that was in New York.”

  “And this man didn’t sound like that one?”

  “Not at all. If I hadn’t been uncertain I’d heard the question right, I’d have hung up before the caller could go on. As it was, I heard him say, ‘Come on, Gracie, you remember.’”

  McGill un
derstood the significance of the remark.

  “Chana is a Hebrew name meaning graceful. Graceful. Gracie.”

  The newswoman raised her perfect eyebrows.

  “My first wife and I have two daughters and a son,” McGill said.

  “I know. I read your bio before coming here. But your girls are named Abigail and Caitlin. Your son is named Kenneth.”

  “Abigail is also a Hebrew name. Meaning: gives joy. When Carolyn was pregnant with Abbie, we bought the best naming book we could find. Three kids later, names and their meanings got to be a hobby of mine. Anyway, your caller knew a nickname of yours. A private one?”

  “Only my dad and my ex used it. I can’t remember anyone else calling me that.”

  Some questions could be asked and answered without a word being spoken. Had the caller been her father? Chana Lochlan’s look said don’t even think about it.

  “And it wasn’t your former husband on the phone?” McGill inquired.

  She shook her head. “Michael died on his honeymoon with his second wife. Hang-gliding in Hawaii.”

  “So some unknown male knows your unlisted phone number, calls you at home, also knows a private nickname, and intimates he was once your lover.”

  “Intimates authoritatively,” Chana said. She took yet another look over her shoulder. They were still alone, but when she resumed speaking, her voice dropped to a whisper. “He took me through a reminiscence of lovemaking. He knows what I like. Knows in such detail that mere guesswork can be ruled out. He also knows …”

  She stopped to look at the notes McGill was making. He tried to alleviate her discomfort. “Tell me only what you need to. If I have questions … I’ll try to be delicate.”

  Chana Lochlan steeled herself and continued. “He knows my body: moles, freckles, birthmarks. Things I need two mirrors to see.”

  “Did you get the feeling he was working himself up?”

  “No. His voice was very gentle. Loving, even. When he finished, he made this little kissing sound and told me to go back to sleep. Amazingly enough, I did … and I dreamed of the lovemaking he’d just described. I could see his body but not his face.”

  McGill thought in silence for a moment. He looked at Chana Lochlan’s eyes. Fear made flecks of yellow burn bright in the hazel irises.

  “You think he’s coming for you, whoever he is,” McGill said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I do investigative work not protection.”

  “And I work in the public eye, Mr. McGill. The minute I hire a bodyguard, I become a story, and that’s not what I want. I hope you can find this man and stop him from doing …”

  “Whatever he has in mind.”

  “Yes.”

  McGill took the case. Chana Lochlan was gone before Sweetie and Deke came back. It was only when Sweetie asked if he’d had any calls while they were out that McGill remembered he was now a businessman and no longer a cop. He’d completely forgotten to discuss money with his first client.

  Somehow, it had slipped her mind, too.

  The President’s Henchman is available for the Kindle from www.amazon.com

  The K Street Killer [excerpt]

  Prologue

  Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, Indiana

  Erna Godfrey, sinking into unconsciousness, felt her tongue slide back and obstruct her airway. She’d learned from her husband’s doctor you couldn’t actually swallow your tongue. It was held in place by a muscle called the frenulum. But many a fool had drunk himself into a stupor, lain down in exactly the wrong position and woken up in hell.

  It was all a matter of the muscles of the throat and tongue relaxing from intoxication and the loss of consciousness. The tongue rolled back in the mouth and blocked the throat, making breathing impossible. Most times, the act of coughing and gasping for air would be enough to rouse a person, sit her up, restore the muscle tone of the tongue enough to thrust it forward and clear the obstruction.

  But if a woman went lights out good and deep the struggle for air wouldn’t rouse her. That was what happened to drunkards. Not that Erna drank alcohol. She considered doing so to be sinful. Also, her jailers wouldn’t have offered her a small beer, had she wanted one.

  They had been considerate enough, though, to provide her with mouthwash.

  They should have gone with an alcohol-free rinse.

  But the federal government was known to make mistakes.

  Before Erna had set out to kill Andrew Hudson Grant, she had considered the possibility she might be caught. That notion hadn’t particularly scared her. She felt the chances were good any jury would include at least one person who felt exactly as she did: The lives of the unborn were sacrosanct. It was the evil of those who had been given the gift of life and refused to extend the same consideration to the unborn that had to be stopped.

  Congresswoman Patricia Darden Grant had been given the chance to vote in favor of the Support of Motherhood Act and she had rejected it. Even after she’d been warned that doing so would cost the life of her husband. Having made that choice, Erna had felt obliged to make Patricia Grant pay for it.

  Erna had asked herself if she was ready to sacrifice her own life for her cause. Looking at things square-on like that had set her back on her heels a bit. It had been her intent to kill a very rich, well-connected man. People like him didn’t get put down without somebody paying full price for it.

  That was exactly what the judge had said after the jury had fooled Erna and come back with a guilty verdict: Her penalty would be death.

  She’d had the last year in her cell to think about that. Had come to accept it. Had come to embrace it. Execution would be her badge of honor, proof positive she’d held fast to her beliefs. She would be remembered. Her example would inspire others.

  But the moment Erna had made peace with the idea of dying the devil put an evil thought in her mind. What if her sentence was commuted? Not that she would ever be set free. She couldn’t fool herself about that. But what if the death sentence got changed to life in prison with no chance of parole?

  Erna knew she wasn’t strong enough to handle that. Her mother had lived to be ninety-two. If she were to do the same, she’d have another forty years left. Might as well be a million if she had to spend all that time in a jail cell. She’d go crazy.

  She was not about to have that.

  She was all but sure that Patricia Grant, who had gone and got herself elected president, would demand that Erna be put to death for killing Andrew Hudson Grant. Ask the executioner to make it right painful while he was at it.

  But the doubt the devil had sown wouldn’t let Erna be.

  What if the president took it to mind that Erna would suffer more rotting away in her cell, day after day, year after year? The very thought scared Erna silly.

  So she made preparations to kill herself, just in case.

  Not that it would be easy to commit suicide. A death row prisoner, even one like her at least a year away from execution, was closely watched. Still, she was determined to find a way. It helped that her demeanor with the prison staff, many of them small-town Christians, was always cooperative. She followed orders without hesitation or complaint. Her serene courage in the face of death earned the respect of even the toughest guards.

  Everyone made a point of not disturbing Erna when she knelt in prayer.

  Anna Lee, the nurse-practitioner who took care of Erna’s female complaints, had bonded so closely with Erna that she had once whispered to her, “I pray for you.”

  To which Erna had responded, “I pray for you, too.”

  She didn’t need to go beyond that. It was enough for Anna Lee to know that Erna thought the nurse-practitioner needed her prayers for playing a part in a system that was about to take a good woman’s life.

  After much thought and prayer, Erna came up with a plan, and the first thing she had to do to make it work was to go on a diet. Not starve herself. The warden would never stand for that. Still, she had to get her weight down a
nd she cut way back on what she ate. When the prison doctor asked if anything was wrong, she told him she’d lost her appetite.

  “A death sentence will do that to ya, Doc,” she said.

  After an examination showed nothing wrong with Erna, her explanation had to be taken at face value. Next, she cut back on the hours she allowed herself to sleep.

  Insomnia was common on death row, especially as an inmate’s time grew short.

  On Anna Lee’s next monthly visit to check up on Erna’s dysmenorrhea problem, the prisoner shared her new complaint.

  “I’m having trouble sleeping,” Erna said.

  With dark circles under her eyes and her death row jumpsuit hanging on her shrinking frame, Erna cut an increasingly pathetic figure.

  Anna Lee offered her the usual over-the-counter sleep remedy.

  “Honey,” Erna said, “that stuff might work in your neighborhood, but it don’t do much good around here. What I’d really like is some hot cocoa.”

  That kind of treat wasn’t on the prison menu and the warden wasn’t about to get accused of coddling a killer. But Erna got the look of sympathy from Anna Lee that she wanted. She squeezed the nurse-practitioner’s hand and lay down on her bed.

  “I’ll just see what I can manage on my own,” Erna said

  She had to wait forty-eight hours for Anna Lee to return. Just stopping by to see how Erna was doing, she said. Having continued to limit herself to four hours of sleep a night, Erna didn’t look good. In fact, if she were anywhere but on death row, she likely would have been rushed to a hospital. But short of a heart attack, a stroke or spontaneous cumbustion condemned prisoners left their cells only to talk with their lawyers.

  Erna told Anna Lee, “I think I might be losing the will to live.”

  The nurse-practitioner didn’t think that was funny.

  “You’ve got to get more sleep,” she said.