Split Second

Her reason for being here was not simply to satisfy her own morbid curiosity. There were some interesting parallels that intrigued her. Bruno's kidnapping had also occurred in an obscure rural town, not too far from here. It had taken place in an old building, albeit a funeral home as opposed to a hotel. There had to have been some inside source relating to the plot against Bruno, she was sure of that. And with what she had discovered so far about the Ritter killing, she was becoming convinced that an insider hadplayed a role there as well. Maybe what she learned here could help with her own dilemma; at least she hoped so. It beat sitting in a hotel room moping.

Michelle perched on a small table in the corner and consulted her file, which had a detailed diagram of the location of all the players on that fateful day. She walked over and placed herself in the spot where Sean King had stood, Clyde Ritter just in front of him. Her gaze moved around the room, and she noted where one Secret Service agent had been stationed, and then another and yet another. The crowd had been behind a rope, and Ritter had been leaning over it exchanging greetings. Various members of Ritter's campaign team had been strewn around the space. Sidney Morse had been on the other side of the rope across from Ritter. She'd also seen Morse on the video. He had run screaming like everyone else. Doug Denby, Ritter's chief of staff, had been over by the door. The assassin, Arnold Ramsey, had been in the back of the room but had slowly made his way forward until he was standing in front of his victim. He'd been carrying an FOC, 'Friend of Clyde,' sign and, to Michelle's trained eye when she watched the video, he hadn't appeared to be dangerous.

Michelle glanced to the right and saw a bank of elevators. She imagined herself to be Sean King for a moment more, and she gazed right and left, sweeping the room in precise grids, pretending to speak into her throat mic, one hand out, as though touching the back of Ritter's sweaty shirt. Then she glanced, as King had, to the right and kept her gaze there for as long as he had; she counted the seconds off in her head. The only thing of note in that direction was the bank of elevators. The ding she'd heard had to have come from there.

The banging noise startled her so badly that she drew her pistol and pointed it at all corners of the room. She was breathing so hard and shaking so badly that she sat down on the floor suddenly sick to her stomach. She realized quickly that a banging sound was not to beunexpected in an abandoned hotel: It could have been a falling ceiling tile, or perhaps a squirrel had gotten inside and run into something. Still, the timing was abysmal. She had to marvel at King's ability to endure the same surprise and, while wounded, retain enough presence of mind to pull his weapon and gun down an armed man. Would she have been able to ignore the pain in her hand, the chaos all around, and fire? Now that she'd partially experienced the situation for herself, her respect for him rose several notches.

She pulled herself together, looked at the elevator bank and then at her file. She had read more of the official record on the flight down, and had learned that this set of elevators had been turned off, secured by the Secret Service during Ritter's event. Presumably there would have been no ding to be heard. And yet she'd heard one. And King's attention had been riveted on this spot, or at least in this direction. Although he later claimed it was just a matter of his focus wandering, she wondered if it was more than that. She looked at a photo of the room at the time of the assassination. The carpeting had been put in afterward. The floor back then was wood. She rose, pulled out her knife and, eyeballing the spot, cut up the carpet. After she pulled back the rug and exposed a four-by-four square, she shone her light at the exposed spot.

The dark stains were still there. Blood was almost impossible to get out of wood; obviously the hotel had opted to just carpet over it. King's and Clyde Ritter's blood, she thought to herself; it was mixed together for all time. She next went over to the wall beyond where King had stood. The bullet that killed Clyde Ritter and wounded King had lodged here, although it had long since been dug out. The upholstered walls that were present at the time of the Ritter assassination had been replaced with the thick mahogany paneling. Again, this was a cover-up of sorts, as though the hotel owners could wipe away what had occurred. It hadn't worked, since the hotel closed down soon after Ritter's death.

She entered the enclosed office area through a doorway behindthe front desk. Large file cabinets were stacked against one wall, and there were still papers, pens and other office items on the desks, as though the place had been abandoned in the middle of the day. She went to the file cabinets and was surprised to see that they were filled. She started sifting through them. Although the hotel undoubtedly had computers at the time of Ritter's assassination, they also apparently kept backup records on paper. That made things a little easier. Using her flashlight, she found the materials for 1996 and then those for the day Ritter had been there. In fact, the only records here were for 1996 and early 1997. Michelle surmised that the hotel had shut down shortly after the assassination and no one had bothered to clear anything out. If the hotel records had been confiscated during the subsequent investigation, they had been returned.

The Ritter party had stayed over one night at the Fairmount. King had checked into the hotel along with Ritter's entourage. The records showed King had occupied room 304.

She made her way up the main staircase to the third floor. She didn't have a passkey, but she did have her lockpick kit and the door quickly yielded. The things a trained federal agent could do. She went inside, looked around and found nothing except what one would expect to find in such a place: a mess. She saw that there was a connecting door into the next room, 302. She went through and saw a room exactly like the one she'd just left.

Downstairs she was about to leave when a thought struck her. She went back to the office area and looked for the employee files. Unfortunately here she struck out. Thinking for a bit, she then checked her floor plan of the hotel, located the main housekeeping supply section and headed there. This room was large and filled with shelves, empty counters and a desk. Michelle looked through the desk and then checked a large file cabinet back against one wall. Here she found what she wanted: a clipboard with names and addresses of housekeeping employees on moldy, curled paper. Shetook the list with her and went back to the office to look for a phone book, but the only one she found was far out-of-date and therefore probably useless. Emerging into the darkness outside, she was surprised to realize she'd spent over two hours inside the hotel.

She checked into a motel and used the phone book in her room to check the names and addresses of the maids on the employee list against the phone book. She found three that still lived in the area-at the same addresses they had back then. She began calling. There was no answer at the first, and she left a message. At the other two the phone was picked up by the former maids. Michelle identified herself as a documentary filmmaker working on a project about political assassinations and conducting interviews with people familiar with the Ritter murder. Both women, surprisingly enough, said they'd be very happy to be part of such a film. Perhaps not so surprising, she reflected, for what else was there to do here? Michelle made appointments with both for the following day. Then she grabbed a quick dinner at a country-western roadside diner where three cowboy-hat-wearing dudes hit on her in the span of ten minutes. Vastly fed up by the time the third fellow made his pitch, she munched her cheeseburger with one hand, showed her gun with the other and watched as the would-be suitor fled. Oh, to be so popular. After dinner she spent a couple of hours in her room going over the questions she'd ask the women the next day. As she was doing so, the other former maid called back and also agreed to speak with her. As Michelle drifted off to sleep, she wondered where she was really heading with all this.

Outside Michelle's motel room, the old Buick, its muffler still rattling and its exhaust still noxious, pulled to a stop. The driver cut off the engine and sat there, his gaze fixed on the door to Michelle's room. So intense was his concentration that it appeared the man could see right through the walls, perhaps right into the mind of the young Secret Service agent.

Tomorrow promised to be an interesting day. He hadn't anticipated that Michelle Maxwell would come here to perform her own sort of investigation. Yet now that she had, it would have to be dealt with, delicately. He'd carefully constructed his list of targets and had no desire to add to that number injudiciously. However, plans did change as situations developed; whether Maxwell became a target remained to be seen.

There was a lot left to do, and a young inquisitive Secret Service agent could become a serious source of trouble. He debated whether to kill her right now, actually reaching down to the floorboard for his favored weapon of murder. As his fingers curled around the hard metal, he brooded on the matter further, and then his grip relaxed.

Too little preparation and too many potential complications would flow from her death right now. That was just not his way. So Michelle Maxwell would get to live another day. He put the Buick in gear and drove off.