The Savage President

d gave you a view of the dumpster, and Wren paid for a we

ept across the ceiling, her hand twitched toward the Glock taped beneath the nightstand drawer. It was not there. The Bureau had forbidden her to carry a weapon

us W

ed, a man who wore his badge like a joke he was in on. He had taught a two-day seminar on undercover tradecraft and bought her a coffee afterward and told her that the se

oating in the Ohio River wit

had only slid a photograph across a bar and said four words. But the meaning

nger's composure and press on it. She had held her face still, and she had said, "Gross," and gone

not good enoug

curtains had turned the color of dishwa

and a gravel lot that held four cars on a good Sunday. On a Wednesday morning it held none. Wren parked two streets down

ee old women who still came to light candles, with a back pew near the confessional where no camera had ever been installed and no one asked what you were doing

O God, Our Help in Ages Past." Slip your report between

ed colors across the floor. Wren knelt in the third pew, bowed her head like a woman at prayer, and let her fingers find the spine of the hymnal. She slid out

ayout. A note about Hatchet's hostility, and another, in smaller print, about the

the rack. Then she did something that Da

chest ache unexpectedly. Jesse had been an altar boy once, in a different church in a different town, with his hair slicked flat and h

ought. You'd have said I was breaki

lf out of old habit, an

◆

ford Hollow with a payphone that still worked, and it was t

minutes. She dropped it, picked up the receiv

arm and measured and brisk as a nur

me tension she had not known she

orty-one, with a daughter in middle school and an unforgivable weakness for candy corn, she had a

rea

you e

an

e one you left at the church." A pause, and the fai

t-Arms, the slick glossy picture on the oak. When she got to the badge cl

t's what Voight told me. Reassigned to the Atlanta

what he

s been dead

I'm going to say this once. Do not follow up on Webb. Do not ask questions. Do not go looking for the people who put him in th

against the cool metal of

u want this one. Whatever you feel for those people, however kind the old woman at the bar is to you, however sad the tragic president loo

I was caring

aid 'the tragic president,' and I've

had not even noticed th

me sleep. Tomorrow, same place, s

stop herself. "If Voight knew abou

g. "Get some sleep, Cardinal," Dana said, and her

licked and

◆

to the motel. She we

s the floor. She told herself it was only to check whether Dana had been faster than expected.

Left side.

ve been. But there was something else tucked into the gutter. Not Dana's neat folded paper.

lanting hand she had never

THIS P

over with fingers that had begun to shake. On the ba

DO

up early

as a question mark, a rosary wound through her knuckles and a bag of votive candles hanging from one wrist.

she said. "Father Michael always

with the smoothness of long practice, and forced

ame to a wick. "I come every day at nine. Fifty-one years, and the only man I ever saw sitting in

th went dr

owed her head over the flame. "Such a shame. Such a lovely

was a

e brief moment the milky eyes were not harmless at

the trouble with a quiet church. Eve

he candle she had lit guttered and steadied. And Wren stood in the colored light with a stranger's warning burning a ho