The President's Assassin Part 37

"Arrest her right now."

"Why?"

"Because she's brilliant. Because she's smarter than us, and offered the slightest chance she'll outwit us. Because she has access to twelve and a half million bucks, and we have no idea what might spook her."

Mark Townsend's pupils, I noted, were no longer dilated or unfocused. The fish stare was back in full force, and after a moment he said, "You're a lawyer. Could you get a conviction?"

As he well knew, no experienced criminal attorney, no matter how rich the vein of evidence or how persuasive the case, ever promises a conviction. But he also knew that Jennifer Margold had ordered the murder of his wife. I replied, "I'll guarantee you thisif she gets away, we'll never see her again."

He told Larry, "Pick her up now."

In retrospect, Mr. Townsend's decisiveness was timely and providential.

It seemed Jennie departed her office early that day, complaining of an upset stomach. The onset of her illness came only moments after she spoke with Elizabeth, her gabby secretary, who disclosed both my unexpected visit and my interest regarding her early interest in Jason and his father.

So, the good news. Like her now departed colleagues, Jennie had made no real preparations to escape. I don't think it ever dawned on her that she would lose, and in fact, until that moment, she had every reason to believe she had won it all. The bad news was that it took the FBI two hours to find her name on the manifest of a United Airways flight, high above the Atlantic, three-quarters of the way to Paris, and freedom.

But when you murder the wife of the FBI Director, the wheels of justice do not want for grease. Townsend made a few calls, the pilot turned the plane around, the onboard air marshal changed seats, and he and Jennie became acquainted.

We stayed at the house, swilled coffee, monitored our phones, and traded theories about Jennie, none of which made the slightest bit of sense. At 1:30 a.m., Larry's phone rang; the plane had landed at Dulles International, and the air marshal handed over custody of his prisoner to a team of FBI agents on the tarmac. Jennie was being sped to a federal facility, where she would be photographed, fingerprinted, and our collective hope was she would do everybody a favor and confess to everything. I was sure she wouldn't, but my job was done. I went home.

I went back to work the following morning. Unfortunately I don't wear bad moods well, and within an hour people began avoiding me, which made me happy. Phyllis tried hard to keep me busy, flooding my in-box with memos and wasting my time with unimportant meetings. I don't handle that well under the best of circ.u.mstances.

I was haunted by feelings of guilt that I had missed it. I had been right beside Jennie as she ordered those deaths, and had I not allowed myself to become enamored with her, had I kept my eyes open and paid better attention, some of those people might be alive.

Two days after Jennie's arrest, I looked up and Phyllis was standing over my desk. She said, with some insight, "You're useless to me."

"Thank you. I try my best."

"It wasn't your fault."

"No? Who's fault was it?"

"We all missed it."

"You have an excuse. I was with her the whole time."

"By the same token, proximity can be blinding." After a moment she observed, "I worked with Aldrich Ames for years. We often lunched together. I never saw it coming."

"Did you nearly sleep with Aldrich Ames?"

"Oh . . . well, no ... of course not." She examined me a moment, then said, "By the way, we have a very intriguing development in our Oman emba.s.sy. A most valuable source of ours was murdered. Our station chief suspects it may have been the result of an in-house betrayal. A team is being sent over to investigate. We need somebody to head that team."

"Sounds interesting."

"I'm sure it will be. Are you interested?"

"Not in the least."

"I think you should be."

"I've been to Oman. It's hot and dusty, there's no booze, the women wear veils, and they don't sleep with Christians."

She ignored this comment. "When you fall off the horse, you have to get back on."

"No . . . you learn to walk or drive." In case she wasn't getting the message, I reminded her, "Not interested."

"Have I mistakenly given you the impression I was looking for a volunteer?" She threw something on my desk that looked amazingly like an airline ticket. "Depart from Dulles Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Mort will familiarize you with the details in the interim. Do a good job or I'll make your life miserable."

I hate women who think they know what's good for you.

On the third day after Jennie's dramatic midflight apprehension Larry called, which was an unhappy surprise.

As I mentioned, once you know who, you quickly figure out the whats, whens, and howsit's the why that often remains elusive. Larry told me they had sweated Jennie for three days and nights without puncturing her shield of sanct.i.ty. He said, "You know our problem here? She was a profiler. She helped write the manual on interrogations."

"Then get creative."

He replied, a little dumbly, "We threw away the manual two days ago. Nothing's working. I've got two interrogators experiencing nervous breakdowns."

"Then get new ones. Wear her down."

"I'm talking about the fourth team we've thrown at her. Each day she just hardens."

"No new evidence?"

"None. If she's got the money we can't find it."

"Is her lawyer in the act?"

"Says she doesn't need one."

"Because she's completely innocent."

"She swears it. She's making it really hard on us."

"Alibis?"

"She doesn't know who called Clyde Wizner. Says it wasn't her. Sometimes her cell phone was left lying around, and anybody could've used it. Says she stopped her interviews at Fort Hood after the first two suspects didn't pan out, a more important case came up, and she left. Swears she never met Clyde."

"And the Paris thing?"

"You'll love this. The pressure of the case and the crushing burden of her new responsibilities put her on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She had an anxiety attack only French cuisine could cure."

"So she's introducing reasonable doubt, and you have no proof, no evidence. Nothing to convince a jury she did these things beyond a reasonable doubt."

Larry agreed this was so, and added that the Justice Department believed the odds of a conviction for conspiracy were dropping fast, and the chance of convicting her for murder had nowhere to drop as it was already nil. At best, she'd get five years, maybe less. And Jennie's c.o.c.ky obstinance indicated she was aware of it. He finally came to the point of this call and informed me, "She says she wants to see you."

"I don't want to see her. Tell her no."

"Just hear me out."

"I'm very busy, Larry I'm going to"

"You were the one who talked Townsend Into the arrest. You can at least hear what I've got to say."

"Fine. Why does she want to meet with me?"

"You tell me why."

"I haven't got a clue, Larry." Though he and I both knew it was a lie.

But sometimes, Larry explained, recalcitrant witnesses soften up in the presence of people with whom they feel a strong emotional connection. I informed Larry that my emotional attachment with Jennie Margold was the same as a fish to a hook. He laughed. I don't know why; it wasn't a joke.

So we went back and forth for a while, Larry trying to tell me why it was a good idea, me trying to tell him to p.i.s.s off.

Because on one level, I thought it was a lousy idea, and on another, more personal level, I did not want to ever see Jennie again. I still had not the vaguest idea why she did what she did. I did not want to know.

But back to that first level, whatever romantic sparks had flown between us were hot and deluded on my part, and on her part, a calculated pretense. Jennie suckered me, intellectually and emotionallyshe knew it, and I knew it. I was an aching, self-pitying Lothario, Jennie would know this, and Jennie would find a way to exploit it. Putting me in a cage with her was like throwing red meat to a lioness.

Back to that second level, I recalled a warning Jennie once gave me. If you haven't pa.s.sed through the darkest forest, you cannot imagine the ghoulies and monsters that inhabit the back shelves inside people's minds. She was right. I had prosecuted and even defended individuals whose crimes seemed to be the progeny of madness, but on closer inspection, always the roots of those sins were sunk in more ordinary proletarian muck: greed, l.u.s.t, or some other idiosyncrasy of human selfishness.

Jennie was most certainly different. For all her outward sanity, I was sure she was utterly insane, whatever that means these days. Some stew of demons had mortgaged her soul, and I did not want even a peek at them.

But Larry was persistent. He said, "Come on, Drummond. This might be our last chance." After a moment, he added, "Incidentally Townsend asked me to pa.s.s on that he would regard this as a huge favor to him."

Well, what could I say? So Larry and I batted around a few ideas, and I agreed to meet with Jennieconditionallythough not until the next morning, and only after I had had a chance to run down one small detail.

Which was how I ended up pacing in a tiny courtyard tightly enclosed in chain-link and barbed wire, experiencing a quiet claustrophobic fit. Jennie insisted that we would meet out here, or nothing. Probably she was just tired of being ogled by prying eyes through two-way mirrors. Or maybe she thought the outdoor setting would level the playing field a bit. Or maybe both. Nothing was arbitrary with this lady.

Jennie was led to the doorway by a hefty matron, who backed away and allowed her to shuffle into the courtyard alone. The day was warm, though off in the distance dark clouds were gathering, which seemed fitting somehow. She stopped about two yards from me.

We avoided each other's faces and eyes, and the silence grew uncomfortable. I knew she was forcing me to make the first move. I said, "Would the prisoner like a cigarette?"

"The prisoner does not smoke. Neither do you."

"Well, one acquires bad habits on death row. Never too early to get a head start."

She ignored this barb and asked, "Are you wired?"

"No. Are you?"

"Liar."

"Spare me Jennie."

She finally looked up at me. Sounding hurt and annoyed, she said, "I'm sorry . . .I'm having a little trouble trusting you these days. The deal, as I remember it, was you'd watch my a.s.s."

"The deal turned out to be too open-ended."

"Did it? I saved your life."

"Did you?"

Jennie reached up and grabbed my chin. She said, "Look at me. Look at what you did."

So I did. She did look dreadful. She was dressed, appropriately, in a baggy gray hopsack muumuu with matching foot and hand manacles, and white slippers. Her hair was dirty, stringy, and matted and hung in oily clumps and strands. Dark pits were under her eyes, and her shoulders slumped with fatigue. She was still very pretty, but like a rag doll after a playdate with the family rottweiler. In an accusing tone, she said, "Now they want you to finish what you started. Right?"

"I'm here because you wanted to see me."

She acknowledged this truth with an ambiguous shrug. "And how do you feel now that you see me? Proud? Guilty? Disgusted?"

I knew she was trying to put me on the defensive, and if I let her, I knew I'd never get out of the pit. "I feel sorry for you."

She laughed. "You should. I'm innocent."

I replied, truthfully, "In a way, Jennie, I believe you are."

She looked a little surprised by this admission, and I was sure she wondered why I felt this way. In an irony run amok, the profilers at Quantico had taken a deep and incisive look at the woman who had walked among them not so long ago, one of their top guns. Employing their queer skills, they had cast a net far and wide into her past and dragged back a number of revelations that in hindsight were illuminating, breathtaking, and, mostly, quite saddening.

In preparation for this meeting, I had been provided that file, which I read closely.

As Jennie once told me, she was an only child, and in fact, her parents did die when she was only thirteen, though not in a car crash, as she expressed; they were roasted in a fast-burning house fire in the middle of the night. The neighbors told the investigating officer that Mr. Terry Margold was a heavy drinker, a brown-fingered chain-smoker, an abusive husband, and a father whose cruelty was nearly boundless. Jennie's mother, Mrs. Anne Margold, was meek, timid, and overpowered, or as a neighbor described to a police officer after the fire, "Old man Margold ruled that house and beat the . . . well, the d.i.c.kens outta everybody. You'd always hear howls and screams comin' from that place. I got chills just walkin' past it. Good riddance to 'em, I say. Nicer neighborhood now."

And from other neighbors, more of the same. Essentially, people who knew Jennie and her family in those early years universally recalled a monstrous man, and a childhood of d.i.c.kensian horror, a poor little girl born into pathetically harsh circ.u.mstances, molded by brutality and terror.

A few pages later I found this interview, conducted with Mrs. Jessica Parker, Jennie's eighth-grade English comp teacher: "She was an odd girl, brilliant, highly compet.i.tive, though I thought, insular and utterly stressed. I. . . actually, several of us . . . we often saw horrible bruises, and sc.r.a.pes, and scabs. Once she had a cast on her leg. Several times I asked how she got these wounds. She claimed through roughhousing on the playground. She would even make up elaborate alibis about her wounds. She could be terribly deceptive and utterly convincing. I knew she lived in mortal dread of her father. ReallyI felt awfully sorry for her."

I recalled the scars and burns on Jennie's body, and I understood, as I suspected Jessica Parker had understood, that some scars go more than skin-deep, straight to the soul.

On the night of her parents' roast, according to the police report, Jennie had had the rare good fortune to be at a sleepover at a friend's house, only three blocks and a short walk through the woods from her own home. No arson inspectors were brought in to sift through the ashes, as there was no evident cause for suspicion, the house was small and wooden, and the local fire department found traces of cigarette b.u.t.ts sprinkled around the bed of Terry Margold, a known drunk and careless slob.

Beyond the age of adoption, Jennie was shuttled into the foster home system. Twice, she had to be relocated after accusations of s.e.xual abuse that were never proven, though a medical examinationconducted when she was only thirteen and first entered the child welfare systemrevealed that Jennie's virginity was a long and distant memory Her cervix was unnaturally enlarged with unusual erosion, indicating extensive and painful s.e.xual activity with adult-sized male organs.

Reading through the thick ream of reports from various Ohio State Child Welfare Agency officials, over the years Jennie displayed none of the cla.s.sic symptoms of abused childhoods she remained well behaved, no trouble with the authorities, no truancy, no drugs, no alcohol, and no transparent personality disorders. Jennie Margold, in fact, was regarded as a shining exemplar of the welfare system's healing vitality and success. She remained a top student, popular, brilliant, talented, and driven.

I wasn't judging the hardworking welfare officials of that very fine state, nor did I doubt Jennie's precocious flair for deception. Yet somebody should have had enough sense to know that, contrary to all outward appearances, no child sp.a.w.ned in such a shower of horrors could emerge internally intact. In effect, the more normal she appeared the less normal she probably was.

In an a.n.a.lysis of possible motives regarding the recent murders, some anonymous investigator wrote: Jennifer Margold would benefit from the administration murders in two very striking ways. She would exploit her knowledge to humiliate and professionally eliminate George Meany and maneuver herself into position as his replacement. She would also end up with a private fortune, estimated at some twelve and a half million dollars.

No kidding. These were the correct rational motives, but reason and logic had nothing to do with why Jennie killed.

Near the back of the report I found an attachment from a profiler named Terry Higgens with this more insightful description: Serial killers are either internalizers or externalizers. The internalizer likes distance, likes to create separation between him/herself and the victim, and conceivably the crime. Most internalizers are predatory bombers or arsonists. Internalizers are cowardly and normally choose victims who are smaller or weaker, as a fair match is the last thing they want. There are exceptions, however. And when they tackle larger, more powerful victims they unleash a frenzied a.s.sault, a blitzkrieg of ferocity in an attempt to overwhelm and neutralize the victim.

It wasn't hard to see what led Terry Higgens to lump Jennie in this particular pool. In all likelihood, Jennie's first crime was murder through arson, and her MO in these more recent murders was a variation on the theme, killing anonymously from a distance, through surrogates. Also, no prey is more powerful than the United States government. Just as Terry Higgens diagnosed, Jennie had unleashed an a.s.sault that was fierce, unrelenting, and punishing, a frenzy of killing with such centrifugal impact it squashed our ability to react. Her diagnosis went on to say: It should be further noted that many sociopathic individuals, particularly psychopathic serial killers, have a perverse fascination with police work. They attempt to get and stay near the police, hanging around cop bars, shooting ranges, places where the police tend to congregate. In fact, some have been known to attempt to become police.

As a final note, we would point out that pyschopaths are lifelong killers. They start with small crimes, they improve through experience, and they evolve higher-level skills. Recurring success breeds a psychos.e.xual need to escalate their violence and achieve satisfaction by committing ever more heinous crimes.

I thought these observations sounded too clinical and detached to put any human face on. Certainly they did not sound like the Jennie I knew. I had never observed her revealing even a twinge of satisfaction or pleasure at the sight of her victims.