the edges but unmistakable, and she guessed that someone—Grace, most likely—must have fetched them from her apartment. Reaching for them greedily, sliding them on and experiencing the instant relief of seeing the world around her in focus again, she noticed something else: the TV remote beside the clock.
The temptation proved irresistible. She didn’t want to know, she was better off not knowing, but she couldn’t help herself: She picked up the remote, clicked it at the ceiling-mounted TV just beyond the foot of her bed, and . . .
A close-up of Annette Cooper smiling as she shook hands with someone an unseen narrator identified as Chilean president Jorge Peres de Toros blinked to life. The camera pulled back, and Jess saw that the First Lady looked beautiful in a floor-length white evening dress that shimmered with sequins. Her trademark short blond hair gleamed in the light of the overhead chandelier. Her skin was smooth and tan and glowing. Her eyes were bright.
Jess had expected it, of course, when she had turned on the TV. Still, the shock of seeing Annette Cooper was overwhelming. She caught her breath. As agonizing as it was to watch, she couldn’t look away as the First Lady said something over her shoulder to her tuxedo-clad husband, who laughed and nodded in response.
“. . . such a short time ago Mrs. Cooper was at the President’s side as he ...”
Biting down hard on her lower lip, Jess changed the channel.
A shot of the White House filled the screen. A crowd, an enormous sea of people that seemed to stretch all the way to the Mall, had gathered around it, and the camera panned dozens upon dozens of weeping faces. It seemed to be a live shot, taken in real time, because the sky that formed the backdrop was streaked with sunset colors of orange and purple and gold, and the White House itself cast a long shadow across the lawn.
“. . . thousands gathering in the capital to pay tribute to First Lady Annette Cooper, who this evening is lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. Mrs. Cooper was killed in a car crash shortly after . . .”
Punching the button with far more force than was necessary now, Jess changed the channel again. She was breathing hard, she realized, and her palms were sweaty. Her stomach churned. She felt gorge backing up in her throat.
It was night, and a car, blackened and crushed and flipped over on its roof, filled the screen.
Jess’s eyes widened. She was instantly bathed in cold sweat. The shot seemed to have been taken from above, and it showed the still-smoking undercarriage, the flattened tires, the circle of charred grass in which the vehicle rested, the dozens of firefighters and rescue workers and police officers and military personnel and plainclothes investigators moving around the scene. Make and model were impossible to determine because of the car’s burned-out state, but she knew instantly that it was the black Lincoln that Davenport had sent her to pick up Mrs. Cooper in. It was a night shot, lit up by big orange klieg lights focused on the scene and the bright beams of spotlights crisscrossing the wreck from above—helicopter searchlights, she realized, and realized, too, that the shot had been taken from a helicopter soon after the accident.
So soon that she might still have been lying semiconscious on the dark slope that fell away from the road on the right side of the shot.
Jess started to shake.
“. . . preliminary investigation indicates that the vehicle was traveling at excessive amounts of speed—one estimate suggests as much as ninety miles an hour in a forty-five-mile-an-hour zone—when the driver, identified as Raymond Kenny of Silver Spring, Maryland, who had worked for the company that owned the car, Executive Limo, for fourteen years, lost control and the car went off the side of Brerton Road and rolled down an embankment, killing three of the four people inside, including First Lady Annette Cooper. She was said to be on her way to visit a
The temptation proved irresistible. She didn’t want to know, she was better off not knowing, but she couldn’t help herself: She picked up the remote, clicked it at the ceiling-mounted TV just beyond the foot of her bed, and . . .
A close-up of Annette Cooper smiling as she shook hands with someone an unseen narrator identified as Chilean president Jorge Peres de Toros blinked to life. The camera pulled back, and Jess saw that the First Lady looked beautiful in a floor-length white evening dress that shimmered with sequins. Her trademark short blond hair gleamed in the light of the overhead chandelier. Her skin was smooth and tan and glowing. Her eyes were bright.
Jess had expected it, of course, when she had turned on the TV. Still, the shock of seeing Annette Cooper was overwhelming. She caught her breath. As agonizing as it was to watch, she couldn’t look away as the First Lady said something over her shoulder to her tuxedo-clad husband, who laughed and nodded in response.
“. . . such a short time ago Mrs. Cooper was at the President’s side as he ...”
Biting down hard on her lower lip, Jess changed the channel.
A shot of the White House filled the screen. A crowd, an enormous sea of people that seemed to stretch all the way to the Mall, had gathered around it, and the camera panned dozens upon dozens of weeping faces. It seemed to be a live shot, taken in real time, because the sky that formed the backdrop was streaked with sunset colors of orange and purple and gold, and the White House itself cast a long shadow across the lawn.
“. . . thousands gathering in the capital to pay tribute to First Lady Annette Cooper, who this evening is lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. Mrs. Cooper was killed in a car crash shortly after . . .”
Punching the button with far more force than was necessary now, Jess changed the channel again. She was breathing hard, she realized, and her palms were sweaty. Her stomach churned. She felt gorge backing up in her throat.
It was night, and a car, blackened and crushed and flipped over on its roof, filled the screen.
Jess’s eyes widened. She was instantly bathed in cold sweat. The shot seemed to have been taken from above, and it showed the still-smoking undercarriage, the flattened tires, the circle of charred grass in which the vehicle rested, the dozens of firefighters and rescue workers and police officers and military personnel and plainclothes investigators moving around the scene. Make and model were impossible to determine because of the car’s burned-out state, but she knew instantly that it was the black Lincoln that Davenport had sent her to pick up Mrs. Cooper in. It was a night shot, lit up by big orange klieg lights focused on the scene and the bright beams of spotlights crisscrossing the wreck from above—helicopter searchlights, she realized, and realized, too, that the shot had been taken from a helicopter soon after the accident.
So soon that she might still have been lying semiconscious on the dark slope that fell away from the road on the right side of the shot.
Jess started to shake.
“. . . preliminary investigation indicates that the vehicle was traveling at excessive amounts of speed—one estimate suggests as much as ninety miles an hour in a forty-five-mile-an-hour zone—when the driver, identified as Raymond Kenny of Silver Spring, Maryland, who had worked for the company that owned the car, Executive Limo, for fourteen years, lost control and the car went off the side of Brerton Road and rolled down an embankment, killing three of the four people inside, including First Lady Annette Cooper. She was said to be on her way to visit a
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