Chapter 23

Sammy and I played around with Timmy until Judy came out dressed and ready to join in. She was almost as reluctant to touch Sammy as Timmy had been, but got over it soon enough. It wasn't long before both children flanked Sammy, hugging him from both sides and giggling happily. After weeks and weeks out in the cold, it had to please Teri whenever he children smiled and laughed.

I stayed out on the front steps with them until I saw a small convoy heading for the house. Since the guards were taking it all in stride, I suspected they already knew who was coming and shooed the kids and Sammy inside to stay while I dealt with whatever those men were bringing to me.

It was the Judge.

His entourage had grown, so the news had to be bad. One thing was certain, I'd know soon enough ... Rather than dwell on it, I called in and asked Teri to fix coffee and some cinnamon rolls for our meeting, and told her that I would be receiving my guests in my upstairs study.

The Judge and I rode the elevator up and disappeared behind closed doors with our coffee and rolls. He remained silent until we were seated, and he had a chance to test drive Teri's coffee.

"Well Kevin ... you certainly have a gift for causing trouble. The name you tortured out of the shooter led us, via a painstaking investigation, to another highly placed name, which led us on another wild, painful investigation that led us to yet a third highly placed name.

"That last name led us to the scariest name of all." He shifted around, uncomfortable with the news he was about to dump on me.

"That second to the last highly placed name was none other than the US Attorney General. And the last highly placed name was none other than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It seems the General and the Justice mistakenly believed that if he could use enough people, subvert enough officials, send enough false leads, lead us enough wild goose chases, and get enough people killed, he could convince the other justices to set aside the law, and make himself President for the foreseeable future."

He paused to let that one sink in.

And sink it did...

What could they possibly think I knew about them that would collapse their plans?

I didn't trust myself to speak, so I remained silent, waiting for another shoe to drop. When it did, I was too stunned to speak, so keeping my mouth shut became an involuntary exercise.

"It seems that you are at the end of this entire problem. If you hadn't interrupted John Gray's assassin, and if you had the good sense to die when you were shot in the head, AND if you would have just stopped thinking when you recounted some of the memories of the night of the assassination, and had you simply died any one of the other times that killers were sent to permanently silence you, then we would never have kept pushing, and digging, and comparing notes, and basically beating ourselves to death trying to find the real puppet master of this conspiracy.

"So, you can see, this is all your fault."

If the Attorney General and the Chief Justice used all their power to subvert democracy, they could pretty much block any attempt to restore it, at least as long as it took to consolidate power. Once the military decided who they were going to follow, it was too late for anyone else to intervene...

The Judge was sort of smiling when he blamed me for the whole thing, but I could see his point. Somewhere along the line, the Chief Justice decided I had to die to keep some part of the conspiracy from coming to light, and in going after me, he kept the investigation energized.

Each time his manipulations resulted in a shooting attempt on me, the Judge ended up with another thread to pull, which led to all kinds of things that would have never come to light.

I WAS to blame. How the heck do you like that?

He had more to share, and the things he told me should have turned my hair white, but instead of letting it all get to me, I concentrated on the facts, and worked on solutions. If the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was capable of manipulating circumstances to cause, or help to cause the former Vice President (Cutler), the sitting Vice President, (Stanton), and others to conspire to murder Presidents, then what else can he cause, and what else has he already set in motion?

"Judge," I said. "You might want to get the President to the secure bunker under the White House. If the Chief Justice has this kind of reach, he might already have killers closing in on the President." I explained my thoughts about a joint overthrow and how the pieces could be maneuvered into place to blockade any examination of the events that got the country to that place to begin with.

The Judge looked at me like he wished he could strangle me, then said, "We had no clue, not even a hint of a clue as to what was really happening here, until you got your crazy idea out at Camp David. Kevin, are you sure you're sixteen? You are more perceptive than the vast majority of my best investigators, and I can't understand how it takes twenty of us to find our way to conclusions you hand us, day after day, after day..."

"Judge," I said. "I bet you didn't come all the way out here to tell me about this. What brought you to the edge of nowhere, Sir?"