Executive Treason by Gary H. Grossman Page B

make the identification.
    “Photograph and cast the footprints,” he told a young lieutenant. They’d take a mold, though he’d never known it to lead to a conviction.
    Ellsworth studied the crime scene again. It seemed odd that there was no sign of a struggle. She was big enough to put up a fight, he thought. At least until he warned her. But the dirt wasn’t even dug up by her heels. Wouldn’t she have resisted? The thought really nagged at him. Her pants are down, yet there’s no sign of resisting? He knelt down to look for some evidence that she had. He shined his flashlight near her feet and where her hands would have grabbed for grass. She would have resisted, he said to himself again. Somehow. There’s always a moment…. But Ellsworth couldn’t find any sign. Unless…unless she was killed very quickly.

Chapter 8
    The White House
Tuesday, 19 June
7:15 A.M. EDT
    President Lamden had taken extraordinary heat for selecting Morgan Taylor as his vice president. Not at first, but soon after. His own party leadership, though caught off-guard, publicly called him “bold and decisive.” Privately, however, Democrats were astonished at the choice. The opposition quietly embraced the spirit of bipartisanship, yet word on the street said it would not last.
    Still, the Senate confirmed the president’s man—the former president. But what and whom did he represent? The American people who voted him out? Certainly not the Democratic majority. Even Vice President Morgan Taylor couldn’t say.
    “You know, Billy, some days I wish I never left Billings,” he confessed to his chief of staff, Billy Gilmore. The president’s appointee was definitely a Billy, a don’t-call-me-Bill kind of Tennessean lawyer. He tried to keep the new president aware, alert, and proactive. But it was usually the other way around.
    “Mr. President—what’s the expression—if it were easy, everyone would be doing it?” Gilmore got the desired response from his boss. He slid into a seat opposite the president’s austere desk and shuffled his papers—a handpicked collection of overnight press reports and MDBs (Morning Daily Briefings). Knowing what the public thought and what the press was telling them was just as important to the president as the facts.
    “Australia SASR disarmed the bomb. They’re going over it now. Could be Abu Sayyaf, al-Qaeda. Don’t know yet. Both scary possibilities. The thing was just waiting for a signal to detonate.”
    “Like having a sleeper spy running for president,” Lamden added. “Tell Evans and Mulligan that from now on all announced travel plans are on hold.”
    “Got that.”
    “What else?”
    “Alerts in Indonesia. Terrorist activity. Police disarmed a bomb in a nightclub. No real interest from the news nets here. About a graph or two in the papers.” The chief of staff spoke in short bites. If the president wanted more, he’d ask for it. “Three dead in a suicide bombing in Baghdad. No Americans. Over in Israel, looks like Blanca is digging in. But she’s all but lost the Knesset. I say Israel gets a new leader by next winter.” Was the president listening? “And my Titans are going to kick butt this year.”
    This brought the first response from the president. “No way. The Seahawks all the way.”
    “Willing to put money on that, Mr. President?”
    “So you add it to your memoirs that Henry Lamden bet in the White House?” he joked.
    “I have to have something to sell my book.”
    “Hey, it’s not my fault you decided to work for a boring old president.”
    Billy Gilmore shook off the comment. Lamden’s presidency was anything but boring. But the president was looking more exhausted by the week. His doctors had adjusted his blood pressure medication just days before the last trip. Though not widely known, the stress associated with the office necessitated constant medical monitoring. Leveling it out through treatments and medications was on the minds of presidents’ doctors