Dead Watch Read Free Page B

response. Bowe had taken an overdose of Rinolat.
    The killer took the .45 out of his pocket, an old, worn gun, made in the first half of the twentieth century, bought at a weekend sale, inaccurate at any distance farther than arm’s length. Which was enough for the task.
    He cocked it with a gloved hand, then thought: “The phone book. Damnit.” He ran up the short flight of stairs, got the phone book off the kitchen table, and went back down, closing the door behind him. The phone book already had two bullet holes in it: tests he’d done out in the Virginia countryside. He placed it on the naked man’s chest.
    He slipped the safety and said, “Linc . . .” and thought:
    Ears . . . damnit.
    He put the safety back on, ran back up the stairs, and got the earplugs. They were two bullet-sized bits of compressible yellow foam, made for target shooters. He twisted each one, fitted them into his ears, waited for them to reexpand. If he’d fired the gun in the confines of the basement, without the ear protection, he wouldn’t have been able to hear for a week.
    He slipped the safety again, teared up, wiped the tears away, pointed the pistol at the point where the phone book covered the naked man’s heart, said, “Lincoln,” and pulled the trigger.
    Without the earplugs, the blast would have been shattering; it was bad enough as it was. The naked man bucked upward, his eyes opening in reflex, the pupils milky with sleep. He stared at the killer for a second, then two, then dropped back flat on the floor.
    “Holy mother,” the killer said, appalled. He stood staring for a second, shocked by the milky eyes, by a possible gleam of intelligence, the hair rising on the back of his neck. Then, after a moment, he stooped and picked up the phone book. The slug had gone through, and blood bubbled from a purple hole in the naked man’s chest. The hole was directly over his heart. He engaged the safety on the .45, slipped the gun back in his pocket, and squatted.
    The naked man wasn’t breathing. His eyes, when the lids were withdrawn, had rolled up, showing only the whites. He pressed a plastic-covered finger against the naked man’s neck, waiting for any sign of a pulse. Didn’t find one. Lincoln Bowe was dead.
    He rolled Bowe up, enough to look at his back. No exit wound. The phone book had worked like a charm: the slug was buried inside the dead man.
    The killer was silent, kneeling, looking at the face of the man on the floor. So many years. Who would have thought it’d come to this? Then he sighed, stood up, pulled the magazine on the pistol, jacked the shell out of the chamber, replaced it in the magazine. Looked at the stairs.
    This would be the dangerous part, moving the body. If the cops stopped him for anything, he was done.
    But they’d made their plans, and he was running with them. He had a lot to do. He stood, still looking at the dead man’s face, then said, “Let’s move, Linc. Let’s go.”

2 

    Jake stopped at home and changed into a suit and tie, and then caught a taxi to the White House. He checked through the west working entrance, walking first past the outer gate, where a guard examined his ID, then through the inner gate with the X-ray machines.
    The X-ray tech, a new guy, spent five minutes looking at his cane, until an older guy came by, glanced at it, and said, “It’s okay. Mr. Winter’s a regular.”

    Once through security, he was slotted into a waiting room that offered coffee, newspapers, and high-speed Internet. The room had recently been redecorated—the walls painted blue, the First Lady’s favorite color, and hung with portraits of former First Ladies.
    One of the formers, Hillary Clinton, smiled down on the bald spot of John Powers, a Georgetown professor and sometime advisor to the Department of Defense. Powers was sitting in an easy chair reading the Wall Street Journal. He and Jake knew each other as consultants, and as denizens of Georgetown.
    “I’m much more