split-log fencing; the smell of their manure was pungent here. He walked around past the stable, looked in through the open double doors and noticed three ranch hands in Western garb working inside.
And came to an abrupt halt. Threes, he thought. Three gardeners, three riders, three horses, three ranch hands. Clusters of three. Things happen in threes.
He was not a superstitious man; he did not believe in omens. And yet he felt a sudden portent, a vivid and overpowering intimation of tragedy and violence. There’s going to be another murder here at The Hollows. The hairs on his neck prickled; he could feel the staccato throb of his pulse. And the victim could be anyone too. It could even be… God, it could evens the President himself.
Chills capered along Justice’s back. He could not keep his suspicions to himself, not any longer; he couldn’t take the risk or the responsibility. He had to tell the President.
Justice hurried back to the manor house. No one answered his knock on the front door; everybody was apparently either at the back of the house or gone out elsewhere. Maybe the President is in his study, he thought, and came down off the porch and started back along the north wall.
The French doors to the family room were open now, to admit the faint noonday breeze, and when he reached them he heard the voice of the First Lady from inside, carried clearly on the still air. He hesitated, glancing inside, thinking that she might be talking to the President. But she was alone in the room; she stood with her back to the French doors, speaking into the telephone.
“.. stress too strongly how important this is,” she was saying. “No, I don’t care to go into details on the phone. How soon can you locate him and have him fly out to California?” Pause. “Yes, all right, I understand. Do whatever you can.” Pause. “Yes. Good-bye.”
She replaced the receiver, turned immediately before Justice could move, and saw him standing outside. She blinked twice in surprise, put a hand to her breast.
Justice said quickly, “I didn’t mean to startle you, Mrs. Augustine. I’m sorry.”
She looked at him for a long silent moment, then lowered her hand and came across to the French doors. “What are you doing prowling around out here?”
“I wasn’t prowling, ma’am.”
“Then what were you doing?”
“Looking for the President,” he said.
“He’s not here. He left fifteen minutes ago-to go riding, he said.”
“Oh, I see.”
She gave him a long probing look, and Justice began to fidget under the scrutiny. He felt awkward in her presence, as he always seemed to; she was such an imposing, inscrutable woman that she made him aware of his inadequacies, his inconsequentiality. It was not a conscious domination on her part, but it was a domination nonetheless. He could understand at moments such as this exactly why she was and had been such a powerful motivating force in the President’s life.
At length she said,“I suppose you overheard me on the phone.”
“Only for a moment, Mrs. Augustine.”
“Do you know to whom I was talking?”
“No ma’am.”
“Well, I’ll tell you. I was talking to the FBI in Washington. Director Saunders isn’t available, but I’ve asked that he be located and requested to join us here as soon as possible.”
“Because of the search for the attorney general?”
“Among other reasons.”
“Other reasons?”
“They don’t concern you, Christopher.”
“Yes ma’am.” It was plain to Justice that she wanted to terminate the conversation. “I won’t bother you any longer, Mrs. Augustine,” he said. “I’ll see the President later, after he returns.”
He pivoted away, walked back to the front of the house. He sensed that she had stepped out through the French doors and was looking after him, but because he was frowning in contemplation he did not glance back. Why had she asked Saunders to come to The Hollows? he was thinking. What were those other reasons she had spoken of?
Did she also suspect that Briggs and Wexford had been murdered?
Six
Harper rode awkwardly at the President’s side on the trail which angled across the valley meadowland to the northeast. Unused to horses, he was filled with the panicky intimation that at any moment the aged gelding would break from trot to canter and then into a full gallop, and that he would be pitched off to shatter a hipbone, fracture his skull, even break his back on the hard earth. He was aware of what had happened to jockeys such as Anthony DeSpirito and Jackie Westrope, not to mention the best of them all, Willie Shoemaker, who had been crushed by a highstrung filly and had lost a year of his career to traction and pain. If it could happen to Shoemaker, rider of six thousand winning races, it could happen to the effete Eastern intellectual Maxwell Harper.
He clung nervously to the reins, body tilted forward over the horse’s bobbing neck. Fifty yards ahead of them, the two Secret Service agents riding point (Augustine’s term, “riding point”; dialogue from a puerile Western movie, for God’s sake) were just entering the dense forest on the northeast slope; the other two agents trotted along thirty yards behind them. The giant redwoods and the mountain peaks loomed above, dark against the clear sky, and looking at them, Harper felt his stomach clench in agoraphobic reaction.
He wished that he had not agreed to come out riding with the President. But Augustine had been persuasive, and Harper had not felt strongly enough about it at the time to argue. It was an opportunity to talk to him, at least. Still, how could you discuss grave political matters with any degree of substance when you were jouncing along on the back of a damned horse?
Harper glanced at the President beside him: sitting erect in the saddle on Casey Jones, his big sleek bay, wearing riding boots and a fringed leather jacket and a broadbrimmed cowboy hat. Like LBJ at his Texas ranch, he thought disgustedly. Trying to prove to the end that he has his own natural element, playing the dual role of Rough Rider and country squire as though his administration wasn’t in a state of near-shambles. The Teddy Roosevelt syndrome.
As they followed the broad path upslope into the trees, Augustine gave him a faint smile and said, “You ride like a dude, Maxwell. Relax, sit up straight, grip the saddle with your knees.”
“I’m doing the best I can. I’m no horseman.”
“I’ll say not. You really should take lessons from one of the men.”
Lessons, Harper thought. We’re facing political annihilation and he sits there talking about riding lessons. “Nicholas,” he said, “did you call Saunders?”
“Claire took care of it, yes.”
“Why didn’t you do it yourself?”
“What difference does it make who called him? He’s been called, that’s all that matters.”
“All right. Did you prepare a statement yet?”
“Statement?”
“For the press when Wexford’s body is found.” Augustine did not say anything. They were into the woods now and it was cool and dark and quiet; the only sounds were bird calls, the creaking of saddle leather, the faint clopping of the horses’ hooves. The path, carpeted here with pine and redwood needles, had begun to hook to the north, still climbing. Eventually, Harper knew, it would come out of the heavy forest growth near the gorge through which the Yurok River ran, and then parallel the rim of the gorge to an area of high ground called Lookout Point. Augustine claimed the view from there was spectacular. Harper thought it was terrifying and found himself dreading the time they would spend there before turning back.
He said, “About that statement, Nicholas.”
Augustine sighed. “Yes,” he said, “I’m preparing a statement for the press.”
“I’d like to read it when you’re finished.”
