was incredibly glib, and he connected with a certain element of the voting population. And you also have to understand that in addition to Ritter's own presidential campaign, he'd cobbled together an independent party coalition that had numerous candidates running for various offices in many of the larger states. That could have had disastrous consequences for the major party candidates.'
'How so?' King asked.
'In many elections around the country his slate was splitting the traditional voting bases for the major-party candidates, in effect giving him control over the outcome of perhaps thirty percent of the seats in play. Now, when you have that much leverage in the political arena, well…'
'You get to pretty much name your price?' suggested King.
Jorst nodded. 'What Ritter's price would have been is anyone's guess. After his death the wind went completely out of his party. The major parties really dodged a bullet there. Excuse me, poor choice of words. But I really believe that Arnold thought if Ritter weren't stopped, he'd end up destroying everything America stood for.'
'And that was clearly something Ramsey didn't want to see happen,' said King.
'Obviously not, considering he shot the man,' Jorst said dryly.
'Did he ever talk about doing something like that?'
'As I told the authorities back then, he didn't. Yes, he'd come in here and rant and rave about Ritter, but he certainly never made any threats or anything. I mean that's what freedom of speech is all about. He was entitled to his opinion.'
'But not entitled to kill for it.'
'I didn't even know he had a gun.'
'Was he close with other professors here?' asked Michelle.
'Not really. Arnold intimidated many of them. Schools like Atticus don't usually get such academic heavyweights.'
'Friends outside the college?'
'None that I knew of.'
'How about among his students?'
Jorst eyed King. 'Excuse me, but this seems more like an investigation into Arnold personally, rather than a documentary on why he killed Clyde Ritter.'
'Maybe it's a little of both,' said Michelle quickly. 'I mean it's difficult to understand motivation without understanding the man and how he went about his plan to assassinate Ritter.'
Jorst considered this for a few moments and then shrugged. 'Well, if he tried to recruit any student to help, I certainly never heard of it.'
'He was married at the time of his death?' asked Michelle.
'Yes, but separated from his wife, Regina. They had one daughter, Kate.' He rose and went over to a shelf containing numerous photos. He handed one to them.
'The Ramseys. In happier times,' he commented.
King and Michelle looked at the three people in the photo.
'Regina Ramsey is very beautiful,' remarked Michelle.
'Yes, she was.'
King glanced up. 'Was?'
'She's dead. Suicide. Not that long ago actually.'
'I hadn't heard that,' said King. 'You said they were separated?'
'Yes. Regina was living in a small house nearby at the time of Arnold's death.'
'Did they share custody of Kate?' asked Michelle.
'That's right. I don't know what the arrangements would have been if they'd divorced. Regina, of course, took full custody when Arnold died.'
'Why were they separated?' asked Michelle.
'I don't know. Regina was beautiful and an extremely accomplished actress in her youth. She'd been a drama major in college, in fact. I believe she was going to make that her career, and then she met Arnold, fell in love, and that all changed. I'm sure she had many suitors, but Arnold was the man she loved. Part of me thinks she finally committed suicide because she could no longer live without him.' He paused and added in a small voice, 'I thought she was happy around that time. I guess she wasn't.'
'But she apparently couldn't live
'Arnold had changed. His academic career had peaked. He'd lost his enthusiasm for teaching. He was very depressed. Perhaps that melancholy affected the marriage. But when Regina left him, his depression only worsened.'
'So maybe in shooting Ritter he was trying to recapture his youth,' Michelle said. 'Change the world and go down as a martyr for the history books.'
'Maybe. Unfortunately it cost him his life.'
'What was the daughter's reaction to what her father did?'
'Kate was utterly devastated. I remember seeing her the day it happened. I will never forget the look of shock on that girl's face. And then a few days later she saw it on TV. That damn tape from the hotel. It showed everything: her father shooting Ritter and the Secret Service agent killing her father. I saw it too. It was horrific, and-' Jorst stopped talking and looked intently at King. Hisexpression slowly hardened, and he finally rose from behind his desk. 'You really haven't changed all that much, Agent King. Now, I'm not sure what's going on here, but I don't appreciate being lied to. And I want to know right now what your real purpose is in coming here and asking all these questions.'
King and Michelle exchanged glances. King said, 'Look, Dr. Jorst, without making a long explanation out of it, we've recently discovered evidence that strongly suggests Arnold Ramsey wasn't alone that day. That there was another assassin, or potential assassin, in the hotel.'
'That's impossible. If that were true, it would have come to light before now.'
'Maybe not,' said Michelle. 'Not if enough important people wanted it all to quietly go away. They had their killer.'
'And they had the Secret Service agent who screwed up,' added King.
Jorst sat back down. 'I… I can't believe it. What new evidence?' he asked warily.
'We can't say right now,' King told him. 'But I wouldn't have come all the way down here if I didn't think it was worth checking out.'
Jorst took out a handkerchief and wiped his face. 'Well, I guess stranger things have happened. I mean, look at Kate Ramsey.'
'What about Kate?' Michelle asked quickly.
'She attended college here at Atticus. I was one of her professors. You'd think this would be the last place she'd have wanted to come. She was brilliant like her father; she could have gone anywhere. But here is where she came.'
'Where is she now?' asked King.
'She's doing postgraduate work in Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University's Center for Public Policy. They have a first-rate political science department. I wrote her a reference myself.'
'Was it your feeling she hated her father for what he'd done?'
Jorst considered the question for a lengthy time before answering. 'She loved her father. And yet she may have hated him in the sense that he'd gone away and left her, choosing his political beliefs, as it were, over his love for her. I'm not a psychiatrist but that's a layman's guess. Although she's turned out to be a chip off the old block.'
'How do you mean?' asked Michelle.
'She marches in protests, writes letters, lobbies government and civic leaders and writes articles for alternative publications, all just like her father did.'
'So she may have hated him for leaving her, but she's now emulating him?'
'Appears to be that way.'
'And her relationship with her mother?' asked King.
'Fairly good. Although she might have blamed her mother somewhat for what happened.'
