Tom Clancy Duty and Honor Read Free Page A

studied it for five seconds, glancing from it to Jack’s face several times before nodding slowly. “Huh. Are you—”
    “Yep,” Jack replied.
    “Aren’t you supposed to have a Secret Service detail or something?”
    “Officially, maybe, but I complained to their boss, so they gave me a pass.” Jack smiled.
    The cop didn’t reciprocate. “What were you doing down there?”
    Jack had been mulling this over in his mind. The odds were decent that sooner or later he was going to come into contact with the police over this. He wasn’t expecting it to be this soon, however. Had the witness come forward?
    Jack hesitated, partially because he thought it would look right and partially because he’d started second-guessing his decision, then replied, “I was here last night.”
    You’re committed now, Jack. Whether the lie he was about to tell was going to save him trouble or buy him more was yet to be seen.
    The cop’s brows furrowed. He gave Jack the kind of hard-eyed stare that seemed to come standard-issue to all cops. “When it happened?”
    “I think so.”
    “Tell me. From the start.”
    “I went to the gym—”
    “Which one?”
    “Malone’s, on Foundry, near the DMV.”
    “Keep going,” the cop said.
    “Then I came here for groceries. Must have been around eight.”
    The cop held up his finger and glanced down at Jack’s driver’s license. “This address . . . that’s the Oronoco, right? Supermercado’s not exactly in your neighborhood, is it?”
    “They have the best fruits and vegetables. So I paid and came out. It was raining.”
    “About what time?”
    “Eight-fifteen or so. I walked to my car and then heard—”
    “Before or after you got in your car?” asked the cop.
    “Before,” replied Jack. “There was a flyer or something stuck to my windshield. I grabbed it, then heard honking coming from down there. It sounded like a truck, an eighteen-wheeler.”
    A flyer, Jack thought. The word caught in his head. Before he could think about it, the cop said, “Then what?”
    “I put my grocery bag down—”
    “Where?”
    “On the hood of my car,” Jack said.
    “Peppers and tomatoes?”
    “What?”
    “The responding officer found some peppers and tomatoes on the ground right about here.”
    “Oh. Yeah, I was making chili. Anyway, I walked to the guardrail and looked down. I heard skidding, saw headlights, then heard a crash—I think.”
    “You think?” the cop asked. “What’s that mean?”
    “I mean it was raining and dark and I’m not sure what it was. It didn’t sound like your standard car crash. When I got up this morning I saw the news, about the guy that was hit, and put two and two together.”
    “And then drove down here to . . . what? Render aid?”
    Jack didn’t take the bait. For cops, biting sarcasm was often an effective interview tool, a way to put people on the defensive: Find an inconsistency, the scab of a guilty conscience, then pick at it and see what happens. It wasn’t personal.
    Jack replied, “I don’t know why. Wish I did. Guilt, maybe. If what I saw was—”
    “It probably was. Why didn’t you call it in?”
    Jack shrugged. “I wish I had.”
    The cop took this in, then nodded slowly. “Well, it wouldn’t have made any difference. He was dead on scene. Just parts. Did you know him?”
    “I don’t know. Who was he?”
    “We’re trying to figure that out.”
    “What’d he look like?”
    “You mean before?” the cop said with a grim smile.
    “Yeah, before.”
    “Tall, thin, white, mid-thirties.”
    Jack shook his head. “Don’t think so. He didn’t have any ID? Nobody’s come forward?”
    “Nope. So, tell me: What’s it like? The Oval Office, I mean.”
    The question caught Jack off guard. Perhaps as planned. “Like you see in the pictures. I’m not there much anymore. Dinner once a week, parties here and there.”
    “You don’t like being First Son?”
    “It’s okay,” Jack replied. “I prefer my privacy.