First Family by David Baldacci
SHIRLEY MEYERS stared down at the letter, not really knowing what to make of it. She’d collected the mail earlier but hadn’t opened any of it. Now, as she was preparing to leave for work, she had taken a few moments to go through the small stack.
There was no return address on the letter she was holding. When she looked at the postmark, squinting a bit to see it, she shook her head in confusion. She didn’t know anyone in Kentucky. She turned the envelope over. It wasn’t from a business; it wasn’t a solicitation. It was just a plain white envelope. And there was a small bulge inside it. Something besides paper.
She opened the letter, using her pinkie to break the seal. There was one piece of paper inside and a small key. After looking at the key that had some numbers engraved on it, she unfolded the letter. It was typed and it wasn’t addressed to her. Shirley covered her mouth when she saw the name of the person the letter was actually for. She read through the words and then quickly put it back in the envelope along with the key. For a long moment she just stood there. Things like this were not supposed to happen to people like her.
But she couldn’t just stand here. She pulled on her coat and left her little house. She rode the bus into the city. She checked her watch. Shirley prided herself on punctuality. She was never late for work. Yet part of her didn’t want to go to work today, not with the letter in her pocket. She continued to fret as she walked to the entrance, went through security, and gained admittance to the building, nodding at people she knew as she passed by them.
She entered the kitchen, took off her coat, and hung it up. She washed her hands and turned to her job of food prep. She kept sneaking glances at her watch as other people came and went. She tried not to look at them, only nodding when they said hello. She didn’t know what to do. Every thought that flitted through her head was worse than the one before. Could they put her in jail? But she hadn’t done anything other than open her own mail. But would people believe her? Another terrifying possibility assailed her. What if they thought she had stolen it from here? But wait, they couldn’t, she told herself. Her address was on the envelope, not this one.
At one point she looked so upset that her supervisor finally asked her what was wrong. She at first tried to resist telling him the truth, but the fact was, if she didn’t tell somebody she was just going to collapse.
She slid the letter out of her pocket and showed it to the man. He read through it, looked at the key, and then glanced sharply at her.
“Damn,” he said.
“It’s addressed to her,” Shirley said.
“All mail coming here has to be checked out first, you know that,” the man said in a scolding tone.
“But it didn’t come here, now did it?” Shirley shot back. “It came to my house. No law against opening my own mail,” she added defiantly.
“How’d they know to send it to you?”
“How do I know? I can’t stop someone from mailing me something.”
The man thought of something. “There wasn’t any white powder in it, was there?”
“You think I’d be here if that was the case? I’m not stupid, Steve. It was just the letter. And that key.”
“But you might have messed up fingerprints and stuff like that.”
“How was I to know? I didn’t know what it was until I opened it.”
Steve rubbed his chin. “It is addressed to her.”
“The letter was, but not the envelope. But I can’t take it to her. I’m not allowed. I mean, you know that, right?”
“I know. I know,” he said impatiently.
“So what do I do?”
He hesitated and then said, “The police?”
“You read what the letter said. You want her to die?”
“Damn! Why did I have to get involved in this?” Steve complained, but lowered his voice when more kitchen staff walked in. He looked like he wanted to go and attack the White House wine cellar to fortify his sagging spirits. If he did, his choices would be limited. The place had only carried American-made wine since the Ford administration.
“We have to do something,” she hissed. “If somebody finds out I got this letter and then didn’t do anything about it… I won’t have her blood on my hands. I won’t! And now you know too. You got to do something.”
“Just calm down.” Steve thought for a few moments. “Look, let me make a call.” He thrust the letter back in her hands.
Five minutes later a woman dressed in a black suit walked into the kitchen and asked Shirley to follow her. They passed into a part of the massive house Shirley had never been to before. As she looked around at all the people rushing this way and that, and then the stoic men and women standing at attention outside doorways, and still others in military uniforms or else nice suits carrying thick binders and looking harried, she felt her mouth drying up. These were folks you saw on the TV all the time. Important people. She just wanted to run back to the kitchen and finish making her fruit and cheese platter.
When they arrived at the woman’s office she wheeled on Shirley and said sternly, “This is highly irregular.”
“I didn’t know what to do. Did Steve tell you about it?” Shirley added nervously.
“Yes. Where’s the letter?”
Shirley slipped the envelope from her pocket and handed it to the woman. “Read it for yourself, ma’am. What else could I do?” she said.
The woman put the key on her desk, unfolded the letter, and read through it, her eyes widening as she did so. She quickly put the two items back in the envelope. “I want you to go back to work and forget you ever saw this.”
“Yes, ma’am. Are you gonna give it to her?”
The woman had already lifted up her phone. “That’s not your concern.”
After Shirley left the room, the woman punched in a number and spoke quickly. Minutes later a man, even more stern-looking than her, arrived and took the envelope.
He walked hurriedly up a staircase, crossed a broad foyer, headed down another hall, and finally arrived at a door. He knocked quietly. A woman opened the door, took the letter, and closed the door without exchanging a word with her visitor.
A minute later the letter was placed on the woman’s desk, the door was closed, and the lady sat alone staring down at the plain white envelope.
Jane Cox took out the letter and read through it. The writer had been concise. If Jane wanted Willa Dutton back alive and well, the next letter that would be sent could not be shown to anyone else. If the police got hold of it, the writer said that he would know. And the contents of that letter, the writer claimed, would destroy everything if the public became aware of the contents. And it would cost Willa Dutton her life.
She read through one critical part several times. It said, I do not want to kill the girl, but if I have to, I will. The next letter you will be sent will reveal a lot. In some ways, it will reveal everything. If the public finds out, all will be lost for you. I know that you know what I mean. If you follow the instructions, Willa will come back to you alive and well. If you don’t Willa dies and everything else will be over. That is the only way it can be.
The writer informed her that the next letter would be sent to a P.O. box in D.C. that was identified for her in the letter. That was what the key was for. To open the mailbox.
Jane sat back in her chair. There was a creeping dread working its way through her body that was nearly incapacitating. She picked up her phone and then put it back down.
No, she would not make that call. Not yet. She locked the letter away in her desk and slipped the key in her jacket pocket.
She was hosting a reception in ten minutes for a delegation of female governors and other women in politics who were in town for a caucus on healthcare reform. She was to give brief remarks, all carefully typed out and waiting for her at the lectern set up in the East Room. It was the sort of thing she had done hundreds of times before, and almost always flawlessly. She’d had lots of practice. The White House typically entertained thousands of such visi
Now she knew it would take all her willpower merely to walk to the lectern, open the book, and read the words someone else had written for her. As she walked down the hall five minutes later surrounded by her staff and security, her mind was not on healthcare reform. Nor was it on the contents of the letter.
After she pressed him mercilessly, her brother had finally told her what Sean had asked him over the phone.
Was Willa the adopted one?
She stumbled a bit as she thought this, and a Secret Service agent immediately took her arm.
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
“Fine. I’m fine. Thank you.”
She marched on, going into full-scale First Lady mode.
But one terrible thought pierced this usually rock-solid armor like it was paper.
Is the past finally catching up?
CHAPTER 40
QUARRY DROVE. Gabriel was in the middle, and Daryl on the other side of him. The truck rocked, pitched, and rolled until it reached the firmness of asphalt. They’d spent pretty much all day in the fields and were bone-tired. But this visit was not an option. They’d headed out right after dinner.
Gabriel looked out the window and said, “Mr. Sam, I think you were right about old Kurt. He moved on. Not hide nor hair of him.”
Daryl glanced at his father but said nothing.
Quarry said nothing either, just kept one hand on the wheel and stared dead ahead, the smoke curling off the end of his Winston. They pulled into the parking lot of the nursing home. As they climbed out Quarry snatched a cassette recorder off the dashboard, crushed his smoke out on the pavement, and they all headed in.
As they moved down the hall, Quarry said, “Been a long time since you visited your sister, Daryl.”
Daryl made a face. “Don’t like seeing her like that. Don’t want to remember her that way, Daddy.”
“She didn’t have any choice about it.”
“I know that.”
“She might look different on the outside, but your sister is still in there.”
He pushed open the door and they walked inside.
The nurses had turned Tippi on her right side, so Quarry slid chairs over that way. He slipped the Jane Austen book out of his pocket and handed it to Daryl.
“I ain’t no good at reading,” Daryl said. “Especially that old stuff, Daddy.”
“Give it a whirl. I’m not handing out prizes for performance.”
Daryl sighed, took the book, sat down, and started reading. His delivery was halting and slow, but he was doing his best. When he made it through four pages, Quarry thanked him and then handed the book to Gabriel.
The little boy was clearly the superior reader and he whipped through an entire chapter, getting into the personalities of the characters and changing his voice to accommodate them. When he was done Quarry said, “Didn’t sound like you were too bored that time, little man.”
Gabriel looked sheepish. “I read the book back at Atlee. Figured if you and Miss Tippi liked it so much I needed to give it another go.”
“And your verdict?” Quarry asked, a smile playing across his lips.
“Better than I thought it would be. But I still can’t say it’s my favorite.”
“Good enough.”
Quarry set the cassette recorder on the nightstand next to the bed and turned it on. He picked up Tippi’s hand and held it tightly as the voice of Cameron Quarry, Sam’s dead wife and Tippi’s mother, engulfed the room. She was talking directly to her daughter, expressing words of love and encouragement and hope and all the things she was feeling in her heart.
Her voice grew weak toward the end because these had been Cameron Quarry’s dying words. At her insistence Sam had recorded his wife at the end of her life, as she lay in bed at Atlee slowly passing on.
The last words were, “I love you, Tippi, darling. Momma loves you with all my heart. I can’t wait to hold you again, baby girl. When we’re both healthy and fine in the arms of Jesus.”
Quarry mouthed these last words his wife had spoken, ending exactly when she did. He cut the recorder off. As soon as the name Jesus had passed across her lips Cameron Quarry had taken her last breath and just died. For a God-loving woman, Quarry felt, it was a dignified way to head on. He’d closed her eyes and put her hands across her chest, much like he’d done with his own mother.
Daryl and Gabriel had tears in their eyes. They both brushed them away while steadfastly not looking at each other.
“Momma was the best damn woman that ever lived,” Daryl finally said in a hushed voice while Quarry nodded in agreement.
Quarry touched Tippi’s cheek. “And this one here is right up there with her.”
“Amen to that,” said Gabriel. “Is she ever going to get better, Mr. Sam?”
“No, son. She’s not.”
“You want to say a prayer for her?” Gabriel put his hands together and started to kneel.
“You can if you want, Gabriel. But I don’t go down that road anymore.”
“Momma says you don’t believe in God. Why’s that?”
“Because he stopped believing in me, son.”
He stood and put the small recorder in his jacket pocket. “When you’re done I’ll be outside in the truck smoking.”
Quarry sat in his junk of a truck, the window down, an unlit smoke dangling from between his parched lips. The Alabama heat was in all its glory at nearly nine o’clock at night, and Quarry flicked a bead of sweat off his nose as a mosquito buzzed at his right ear.
The skeeter wasn’t bothering him too much. He was watching a meteor flame across the sky, the Big Dipper serving as a celestial backdrop to the show. After it was over his gaze dropped to the low cinderblock building that was his daughter’s home now. No husband, no kids, no grandkids for Tippi. Just a dead brain, a beaten body, and a feeding tube.
“You messed up there, God. Shouldn’t done that. I know the ‘work in mysterious ways’ crap. I know the ‘everything has a purpose’ BS. But you got it wrong. You’re not infallible. You shoulda let my baby girl alone. I’ll never forgive you for that, and I don’t give a damn if you never forgive me for what I got to do.” He spoke in a lurching, halting voice before he fell silent. He wanted the tears to come, if for no other reason than to relieve the pressure on his brain. On his soul. But they wouldn’t bleed through his eyes. His soul apparently was scorched earth, no water left to give.
When the two came out and climbed in the truck, Quarry tossed his unlit cigarette out the window and they drove back to Atlee in silence.
Quarry went immediately to his library, sat behind his desk, fortified himself with a slug of 86-proof Old Grand Dad, lit the fire, thrust the poker into it, rolled up his sleeve, and held it against his bare arm, making a second mark perpendicular to and at the right end of the long burn already there. Ten seconds later the poker fell to the carpet, burning another hole in it, and Quarry collapsed back in his chair.
Breathing heavily, his eyes staring up at the sooty ceiling that had caught the flameouts and driftbacks of centuries of his ancestors, Quarry started talking. Most of it made little sense except to Quarry; he found it crystal clear. He started out telling folks that he was sorry. He named names and his voice rose and sank at odd intervals. He took another pull of Grand Dad, holding the bottle to his lips for the longest time.
More came from his mouth, his entire heart and soul poured forth. Planted on the ceiling up there were Cameron and Tippi, in each other’s arms. He could see each so vividly he wanted to rise to them, hold them both. Let them soar off together to a better place than the sorry one he was in right now.
He sometimes wondered what the hell he was doing. One little uneducated man against the world. Outrageous, unbelievable, foolish. It was all those things. Sure. But he couldn’t stop now. It wasn’t just that he’d come too far to quit. It was that he had nowhere else to go.
When he closed his eyes and then reopened them his wife and daughter were gone. The fire alrea
This was Sam Quarry’s cross to bear. It certainly was. Not just the square miles of Quarry land reduced to almost nothing. Or the ramshackle house that would never again see better days. Not just the dead wife, the ruined daughter. The dim son and the distant other daughter. Neither was it just the history of the Quarry family that was so wrongheaded in many respects as to be a shameful badge for any decent-minded descendant.
It was that Sam Quarry was no longer the man he once was. He was unrecognizable to himself. And not because of the burns on his arm. But because of the hellish scorch marks on his inner self. He’d lied to Gabriel. Maybe he’d lied to himself too. He didn’t not believe in God. He feared him. With all his heart and soul. Because what he’d done on this earth meant that he would not be reunited with his beloved wife or with his beautiful, resurrected daughter, when the time came. His price for justice was eternal separation. It was why he listened to his wife’s last words over and over. It was why he visited Tippi as often as he did. Because when it was over, it was really going to be done.
He looked back at the ceiling and said so softly it could barely be heard above the tired pop of the fire, “Eternity is damn well forever.”
Outside the closed door Gabriel skittered away. He’d come down to get another book to read, and heard far more than he’d wanted to. Far more than the little boy, smart as he was, could possibly understand.
He’d always looked up to Mr. Sam. Never knew a man who treated him any better than the current head of the Quarry clan did. And yet even with that, Gabriel ran all the way back to his room, locked the door, and slipped under the bedcovers.
And he never did fall asleep that night. It seemed the wails of Sam Quarry from down below were able to leach into every square inch of Atlee. There seemed to be nowhere that was safe or free from them.