“How do I know these are real? It’s easy to fake digital pictures.”
“You publish stories about Bigfoot and alien abductions, Gorman. Why do you care if they’re real?”
“Because this story isn’t about Bigfoot. You don’t call the president of the United States a murderer without unimpeachable proof.”
“Fair enough, Pat. Check the clothing.”
Gorman looked puzzled.
“The pictures of Walsh show the clothes she was wearing when she went to the farmhouse. The Ripper’s victims were all found fully clothed. Find out if the clothes on the corpse are the same as the clothing in my photographs.”
Gorman was quiet for a moment. Then he turned in his seat so he was facing Dana.
“I’m not going to print these pictures if this is hoax, but if they’re real I’ll go after this story with everything I have.”
Part Six.Exposed
Oregon/Washington, D.C.
Chapter Twenty-five
Claire had finished reading this evening’s installment of Peter Pan to Patrick when the president walked into his son’s bedroom.
“Do you think I could fly, Dad?” Patrick asked.
Chris saw the book they were reading. “Definitely,” he said, “if you were sprinkled with pixie dust.”
“Can you get some pixie dust?” Patrick asked hopefully.
Chris walked over to the bed and ruffled his son’s hair. “I’ll get the Department of Defense right on it. Now, hit the hay. I’ve got something I have to talk over with your mom.”
Claire tucked Patrick in and followed her husband into a sitting room near Patrick’s bedroom. The president shut the door. For the first time, Claire noticed that her husband was holding a rolled-up newspaper.
“We have a problem and I wanted to be the one to tell you.”
Christopher held the paper out to her. The bright red headline in Exposed read:
PRESIDENT’S LOVE TRYST WITH TEENAGE MURDER VICTIM EXPOSED.
Under the headline was a photograph of Charlotte Walsh yelling at someone who was half exposed in the doorway of a house and a second photograph of the president standing in front of the house.
Claire stared dumbstruck at the headline and the photographs.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
Christopher looked at the floor, unable to meet his wife’s uncomprehending gaze.
“I fucked up, Claire. I know I promised you I wouldn’t do this again, and I feel awful about betraying you but…”
“Someone photographed you?” Claire asked incredulously as she stared at him wide-eyed. “It wasn’t enough that you cheated on me? You had to make sure the world found out?”
The president continued to look at his shoes. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing you can say, you dumb bastard.”
Claire read the story beneath the photographs. Then she threw the paper onto the polished wood coffee table so hard it bounced.
“You have made me look ridiculous. You have disgraced me and your son. I’m an adult. I can survive this-God knows I survived your other affairs-but Patrick is a child.”
Chris was smart enough to stifle any urge to respond. Claire paced back and forth, her eyes blazing. Then she picked up the paper and threw it in her husband’s face. He made no move to protect himself and the tabloid fell to the floor.
Claire stood inches from him. “You fix this, you hear. You get this fixed. If you lose this election I will leave you. Do you understand me. You’ll be back in Portland chasing ambulances, and Patrick and I won’t be with you.”
Claire turned on her heel and walked out of the room. Just before she slammed the door, Christopher heard her say, “I hope she was worth it.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Brad smiled as soon as Ginny walked into the bar at the Shanghai Clipper. They had started meeting at the restaurant after work, and these get-togethers had become the best thing about his day. The worst part of his day was his job, which had gotten a lot tougher since his disastrous meeting the week before with Susan Tuchman. Brad thought that he might be unemployed if Richard Fuentes hadn’t told the Dragon Lady that Brad had done the right thing when he pursued their client’s claim of actual innocence and turned over the pinkies to Paul Baylor, the private forensic expert, instead of the police. But Fuentes wasn’t any happier than Tuchman that Brad had dug up the corpses and moved the pinkies before consulting with the partner who was supervising him.
“Sorry I’m late,” Ginny said as she dropped onto a chair across from Brad and grabbed a piece of a California roll.
“Not a problem,” said Brad, who was working on his second beer. Ginny noticed.
“Another bad day?”
“I swear Tuchman has ordered everyone to double my workload so I’ll quit.”
“Well don’t. You’re the only person in the firm who keeps me sane.”
“We should both quit.”
“I’ll be out the door as soon as you find me a sugar daddy to pay off my student loans.”
Brad sighed. “I do feel like an indentured servant sometimes.”
“Any word on the pinkies? Has Paul Baylor printed them?”
“I don’t know. Tuchman took me off the brief and assigned it to another associate. She wouldn’t even tell me who it is and she said I’ll be fired if she finds out I’ve done anything connected to Little’s case, including calling Baylor’s lab.”
“Boy is she a bitch.”
Brad shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore what she is. In the near future I’m probably not going to be working for her or anyone else in the firm. I figure I’m done for as soon as the partners conduct the next performance review.”
“Wait,” Ginny said as her attention was drawn suddenly to the television set above the bar.
“What?”
“Shush,” she commanded, holding up her hand for silence.
Brad turned toward the TV where a newscaster was talking about a story in a special edition of Exposed.
“…The photographs published in the supermarket tabloid show Miss Walsh arguing with President Farrington shortly before the medical examiner estimates she was killed. The American University coed is wearing the same clothes she had on when her body was discovered in a Dumpster in the rear of a suburban Maryland restaurant.
“The young woman was originally believed to be the victim of the D.C. Ripper, a serial killer who has been terrorizing the District of Columbia and the surrounding area for several months. A suspect in the Ripper case has been arrested but confidential sources have informed this station that there are reasons to believe that Charlotte Walsh was the victim of a copycat killer.
“Exposed claims that the meeting between Walsh and President Farrington took place on a farm in rural Virginia that the CIA uses as a safe house. The president has not commented on the newspaper article, leaving the public in the dark about why he was meeting a teenage college student at a CIA safe house and why he and Miss Walsh were arguing shortly before she was murdered.”
“Holy shit,” Ginny said.
“What?”
Ginny leaned toward Brad and lowered her voice. “Don’t you see it?”
“See what?”
“Charlotte Walsh, a teenager, has a relationship with Christopher Farrington and she’s murdered. Laurie Erickson, another teenage girl whom the president knew when he was the governor of Oregon, is murdered. In both cases the killer copies the MO of a notorious serial killer. That’s a pretty big coincidence, amigo.”
“Wait a minute, Ginny. I know you like playing detective, but we don’t know if any of what we just heard is true. The reporter said that Exposed is a supermarket tabloid. Those rags have real photographs of UFOs and Bigfoot. They probably phonied up the whole thing.”