Premeditated Murder (6 page)

But six months ago that had all been ancient history. So the fact that the President had wanted Matt to come to Washington was strange enough. But the fact that he wanted to name him Vice President was surreal.

For one thing, the last job in the world Matt wanted was politician. Hell, he hadn't even registered as a member of either party in the last election. He'd voted for Graham, even with his fake Hollywood smile, simply because Matt thought he was the candidate best qualified to do the job. Graham had been a senator for eight years, he had business and foreign affairs experience, and he seemed like the kind of person that could bring together a badly divided Congress.

And for another, Matt hadn't the slightest idea how to be Vice President, much less, God forbid, President of the United States.

“Mr. President, we're in our final approach. We should be on the ground in a minute or two.”

But here he was anyway, on the verge of plunging headlong into an explosive United Nations, about to decide who was going to scrub the outhouse in East Africa.

Detroit, Michigan

THE FIRST THING THAT LENA TAKAMURA DID when she got off the bus in front of the Andrews Funeral Home was step into an ankle-high puddle of Detroit's famous midwinter slush. Her mother would have been comforted by the fact that the damage was minimal—Lena's thick and very practical boots were made to withstand such missteps.

What her mother wouldn't have been so comforted by was the fact that her daughter was about to attend the wake of another complete stranger. The third one in less than two weeks.

It had been a nasty winter so far, and the salt and sand that was sprinkled on the funeral home steps crunched under Lena's boots as she made her way to the door. But it was mercifully warm inside, and she unbuttoned her coat, took off her gloves, and looked for the sign that would direct her to the wake of Phillipe LeClerq.

Lena had stopped talking with her parents about this part of her work long ago. Regardless of what she said, her mother refused to believe that there was any explanation for Lena's actions except that she had been turned into a total freak by all those horror movies she had watched as a kid. Her father was more interested in learning why Lena was still living by herself in a tiny apartment in Detroit. Why couldn't she move back home and try to be a reporter in Tempe?

But to Lena, there was nowhere like metropolitan Detroit for an aspiring investigative crime reporter. The city was bursting with the kind of passionate energy that generated stories that she longed to uncover and write about.

Now if only she could actually uncover one and write about it.

It had been a year since she quit the job she had gotten right out of college, at the
Ypsilanti Sentinel,
covering boring community events in boring suburbia for boring Mr. Olafsen. At the pace things moved at the
Sentinel,
Lena figured that by the time she was about ninety years old, they'd let her cover the most recent rash of bicycle thefts.

So she'd moved to the city and become a part-time waitress, a part-time convenience store clerk, and a full-time snoop, reading obituaries and police blotters, looking for the story that would break her career wide open.

But ten funerals and sixteen wakes later, her career remained quite firmly shut.

There were about thirty people inside Salon B, where Phillipe LeClerq had been laid out. Most were adults. They stood around in small groups, talking quietly. According to the obituary, Mr. LeClerq had died suddenly and unexpectedly from a heart attack. He had been a native of Haiti. Everyone at the wake looked like they were from the Caribbean as well.

And here Lena was, a five-foot-nothing Japanese American with the roundest face in the world, about to crash the party. Cultural diversity, anyone? Just once, Lena would have liked to walk into a room and not feel like she was auditioning for the role of the spunky little Asian girl.

At the University of Michigan, it seemed like everyone else in her dorm was tall and blond and had big boobs. Okay. That wasn't exactly true. Lisa and Sherry were African American. So they were tall and dark and had big boobs.

Of course, none of that would have mattered as much if Lena had managed to find a good boyfriend. Yet somehow, she had made it though four years at a gigantic university with little more than a handful of awkward dates and the night she'd spent with Tad Spellman.

The Night of a Thousand Mistakes.

To be fair, though, if Lena hadn't met Tad, she never would have met his sister, Becca, who worked as an administrative assistant at Precinct Four, and who was Lena's closest friend and most reliable source of information. It was Becca who'd told Lena about the eleven-year-old named Giselle LeClerq who called 911 and who feverishly administered CPR to her dying grandfather until the paramedics arrived.

There had been a few recent cases of foul-ups in the 911 system, so Lena thought she'd look into the case. It was way not the hottest lead she'd ever followed, but there was something so courageous in what Giselle did that Lena wanted to meet her, even if it turned out that there was no story there. So Lena watched the obits for the funeral information.

The area around the open coffin was decorated with sprays and vases of colorful flowers, but Lena was drawn to the small table that stood off to the left on which had been placed some memorabilia, including two photos. One was of Mr. LeClerq and a gray-haired woman his age. Their arms around each other, cheek to cheek, they smiled at the camera. The obit had said that Mr. LeClerq's wife had died three years ago. And the other was a team photo of a high school state championship soccer team. From the hairstyles of the boys in the picture, it looked like it was from about thirty years ago. Mr. LeClerq was the coach.

Lena turned and saw a little girl she hoped was Giselle, sitting in the front row of chairs that had been set up in front of the casket, next to a woman who was probably her mother. Lena walked over to them.

This moment was always the worst. It was hard convincing some people that to investigate unusual or suspicious deaths was to honor those who died. Most people thought that since Lena didn't know the deceased, she didn't care about them.

Lena understood their suspicions, but her job really was an honorable one. People's lives were important, and so, therefore, were their deaths. And if there was something unusual about a death, then that needed to be understood. Anything less would cheapen the life of the deceased.

When she reached the little girl and her mother, both stood up to greet her. She cleared her throat and plunged in. “Hi, my name is Lena Takamura. I'm a freelance reporter, and when I heard about Mr. LeClerq's death, I wanted to pay my respects, and after some time has passed—”

But she never got a chance to finish. The woman turned to the little girl, hugged her, and said emphatically, “I
told
you they wouldn't get away with it.” The girl smiled tentatively—she had obviously been crying and her eyes were still wet with tears. The woman then turned back to Lena and said, “My name is Rhonda LeClerq. Mr. LeClerq was my husband's father. And this is my daughter, Giselle. You can ask us anything you want to, because I know as sure as I'm standing here, those men killed Giselle's grandfather.”

U.N. Headquarters, New York City, New York

IF HE HADN'T KNOWN BETTER, CARLOS WOULD have thought that President Ferguson was greeting a bunch of old friends at a reunion, not shaking hands with a room full of dignitaries he'd never met before, including two who were about fifteen minutes from starting a war with each other.

The atmosphere in the conference room of the U.N. Secretary-General was so tense Carlos could barely breathe. It was swarming with important people—government officials, advisors, military officers, U.N. diplomats and translators—all just milling around, talking to each other. Just from looking, it was impossible to know who was ignorant of the situation and who knew just how dangerous things were.

The Secretary-General, a gray-haired man who looked a little like Carlos's grandfather, was speaking to the Ugandan Prime Minister, a small man with the whitest teeth Carlos had ever seen, and the President of Tanzania, who was flanked by two grim men in military uniforms.

President Mwanga of Kenya was on the other side of the room. His very dark skin contrasted sharply with his bright white shirt and light tie. Mwanga looked way too young to be the president of a country, and was trying hard to look relaxed. President Ferguson walked over to him, gave him a big friendly handshake, and pulled him into a corner.

Carlos couldn't hear the conversation, but after about ten seconds, it was clear that the discussion was very one-sided. President Ferguson was talking, and President Mwanga was listening.

And then he was mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.

After only about three or four minutes, they split up. President Mwanga went to talk to someone Carlos didn't know, who immediately pulled out a cell phone and started talking. After a few seconds, he turned and nodded to President Mwanga.

Meanwhile, President Ferguson went over and whispered something to the Secretary-General. And then, like magic, everyone in the room suddenly started to be ushered outside, except the Secretary-General, President Ferguson, President Mwanga, and the rulers of Uganda and Tanzania. Just before Carlos left, President Ferguson leaned over and said into his ear, “This shouldn't take more than twenty minutes.”

Actually, it turned out to be closer to ten. And then, just like that, it became a normal day for the President of the United States, and Carlos was riding with him to the airport, where they'd take Air Force One back to Washington for a full afternoon's business.

The President called the Chief of Staff from the road. “Yeah, well, after I explained the situation to President Mwanga, all of the interested parties got together and Mwanga told them that he had discovered what he suspected were chemical weapons in a munitions storage facility outside the capital, and was going to turn them over to U.N. weapons experts for identification and destruction. He also said that he was calling for elections within a month, and would need U.N. help with that, too.”

The President paused for a minute and took a bite of a sandwich that had been waiting for him in the car while he listened to what Mr. Browning was saying.

“No, he sure wasn't happy. He didn't think the country was ready for elections, and he didn't want to let go of those weapons, either. But I told him that if he didn't, he should start looking around for extra guest towels, because in about two days, he was going to be hosting several thousand U.S. Marines.”

Another pause.

“Yes, we'll still set up offshore, both to support the weapons inspectors and to do what we can to make sure the elections go smoothly. I figure that's the best way to make sure everybody gets something. Mwanga, the rebels, and the people of Kenya get a new shot at electing leaders without a civil war destroying the country; Tanzania doesn't have to worry about chemical weapons killing their people in droves; and we get a more stable situation in that part of the world, and destroy some very bad stuff in the bargain.”

The President listened to Mr. Browning and took another bite of the sandwich.

“Yeah, well, sometimes you've just got to go with your gut, Vernon.” He took a swig of his water. “And by the way, I'd like to be briefed on what happened to that judge who committed suicide in Michigan.” There was a pause. “Good,” he said. “I'll see you in a few hours.”

Northampton, Massachusetts

“ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE OKAY WITH THIS CASE, Richard? I can probably give it to Barbara if you don't want it.”

Judge Richard Cottonwood was scheduled to retire in less than a year—judges in Massachusetts were required to step down by their seventieth birthday. And for somebody who didn't really know him, they might have thought that was welcome news. After all, everyone knew that Judge Cottonwood was suffering from arthritis in his hips, and it was getting harder and harder to get through the day without the pain pills. What people didn't know was that Richard was almost entirely blind in his right eye. The doctors called it macular degeneration.

“That's all right, Harold, I'll take it,” he told Baumgartner. “I might as well go out with a bang.”

Judge Cottonwood was one of the Commonwealth's most senior judges. He had been presiding over trials for more than a quarter century. His reputation as a hard-ass, especially in criminal trials, was well deserved. He was brutal on defendants. He meant to be.

“The media scrutiny is going to be intense, because this'll be the first death penalty case under the new statute. You sure you want to deal with all that?”

Professional courtesy prevented Baumgartner from coming right out and asking the question he really wanted answered, but Richard got the message. “I'll be fine,” he said.

Judge Cottonwood couldn't care less that he had a reputation for having more than his share of criminal convictions reversed on appeal. Let those wimps in the Appeals Court give out new trials like candy at Halloween. He'd keep locking up scum that needed to be locked up. Period.