Author: Donald Scott Richards
Publisher:
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 432
ISBN-13: 9781410752369
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President Walter Coopersmith selects Richard Thatcher, a professional, as his Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In private, Coopersmith confides his dissatisfaction with Director James Stearne and his plan to replace him with Thatcher. This puts Thatcher in a very uncomfortable position. At Thatcher's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Thatcher loses his temper and clashes with Senator Judy Gonzales. By nightfall, Gonzales is dead, the first victim of a serial killer. The President ignores the media's sensational linkage of Thatcher's committee appearance and Gonzales' murder and pushes Thatcher's confirmation through the Senate. Before the Bureau's investigators can identify the murderer, he strikes again, killing Senator Rashid Jones, one of Gonzales' closest collaborators in her futile campaign to force campaign finance reform on the Congress. Thatcher, chafing under the bureaucratic strictures that require him to delegate responsibility for the expanding investigation, arranges to have Barbara Collins, a long time friend and colleague, to be assigned to the case. Collins' assignment provides members of the Club, a loose clique of senior Bureau officers who resent Thatcher's elevation to command, the opportunity to challenge him. Barbara Collins and lead investigator Orson Dodrill concentrate their investigation on Gonzales's office. The Governor of California selects Gonzales' chief administrative assistant, Charles Stevens, to serve out Gonzales' term. Barbara identifies Stevens as the man with a motive, the one who benefited most from Gonzales' demise. Stevens frustrates the Bureau investigators, but not for long; he soon falls as the killer's third victim. The remaining member of the Gonzales triad, Senator Rae Campbell-Holden who shares the campaign reform issue, turns to the media. Fearing for her own safety, attributing nefarious political motives to the opposition, she demands that the Washington establishment identify the killer of her friends before he decimates the entire United States Senate. Thatcher, inhibited by the restraints of his lofty position and encumbered by the burden of managing a large bureaucracy, frets. Director Stearne, strangely aloof from the sensational investigation, embarks on a lengthy overseas trip. As acting Director, Thatcher decides to delegate his administrative chores to the Club, reviews the reports of his investigators, then sets out on his own doing what he does best: he mounts his own vest pocket investigation. Thatcher decides that the killer is someone closely engaged in Senate business, but not a staffer or senator. With the President's help-the President is, after all, the nation's foremost politician-Thatcher concentrates on the special interests, the lobbying corps that besieges the politicians with their money and favors. Again, the killer strikes. This time the victim is a young staffer in Gonzales' office. Despite the killer's best efforts to deny the investigators evidence, the clues accumulate. The killer, learning as he goes, indulges his strange sense of humor. At each crime scene, he leaves behind an odd message. Tiring of reacting to the killer, Thatcher decides to go proactive. He deliberately provokes the killer, using a venue provided by Thatcher's girl friend, Mavis Davis, a network White House correspondent. Using information provided by Thatcher, Barbara Collins and the Bureau's investigative team narrow the list of suspects. Finally, a black entry to the killer's home provides circumstantial evidence, a few strands of fabric that match those found at each murder scene. Lacking sufficient legal evidence to arrest the suspect, Thatcher takes a chance. The case culminates in a showdown at the apartment of Senator Ca
