Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love (2 page)

Dutch leaned against the door, his black hair ruffled, his glassy green eyes struggling to remain open.
 
“Couldn’t this wait until morning?” he asked in a voice raspy with sleep.

“No, sir, it couldn’t wait another second,” the older, stockier of the two detectives boldly interjected.
 
Crader, alarmed by the man’s balls, glared at him.
 

Dutch stared at the detective, too, and with a look that could chill the sun.
 
That look unnerved the officer, as it was intended to do, but this could be the biggest case of his life.
 
He wasn’t about to back down.
 
“It’s vital that we speak with you now, sir,” he added.

Dutch liked his doggedness, but this was too damn early.
 
“What is this about?” he asked him.

“May we come in, sir?”

“No, you may not come in.
 
Not until you tell me what this is about.”

The Detective, an easily arrogant veteran cop who’d been behaving as if he was visiting some garden-variety suspect and his badge would be enough, quickly realized his error.
 
He straightened his back, swallowed his annoying gum, and addressed the President of the United States in a way befitting his title.
 

“We’re here, Mr. President, regarding a woman by the name of Elizabeth Sinclair.”

Dutch frowned.
 
“Liz?”

“Do you know Miss Sinclair, sir?”

“Of course I know her.”
 
She was once a member of his White House staff.
 
She was once one of his closest friends.
 
She was the woman who gave Crader McKenzie a blowjob and effectively destroyed Crader’s budding romance with LaLa King, the First Lady’s best friend.
 
But Dutch wasn’t about to tell any detective all of that.
 
“What about Liz?” he asked.

“We need to eyeball her, sir.”

“That’s very presumptuous of you, officer,” Crader said, unable to shield his growing displeasure with the man.
 
A woman in the president’s hotel room at this late hour would be scandalous, and this big-mouth detective had to know that.

“I’m asking it for a reason, Senator,” the detective shot back.

“Whatever your reason,” Dutch interjected, “you won’t be able to eyeball her here.
 
She’s not here.”

“Was she here earlier, sir?”
 
The detective asked this quickly in a barely veiled attempt to get the president on record.

Crader, however, was equally quick on his feet.
 
“Don’t answer that,” he advised the president as he moved across the threshold and into the suite, effectively shielding his boss. “Next question?”

The detective ignored Crader and looked at the president instead.
 
“May we search the suite, sir?” he asked.

Crader, known for his bombastic personality, frowned.
 
“Why would you need to search the president’s suite?
 
Will you explain that to me?
 
He said she wasn’t here, pal.
 
Is the word of the President of the United States not enough for you guys?
 
Geez.”

Dutch, however, was puzzled.
 
He couldn’t reconcile in his sleepy brain why it was that two members of the San Francisco police department felt it necessary to disturb him this time of morning just to, as the detective put it, “eyeball” Liz.
 

“It’s not a question of his word,” the detective answered Crader, attempting to maintain his cool.
 
“It’s a question of doing our job.”

“Just tell me what this is about,” Dutch said, his patience wearing thin.

The detective swallowed hard.
 
Before the president answered that door he had given Crader and the Secret Service all kinds of flip lip about how this was his jurisdiction, and they had to allow him to do his job, and he could go straight to the press and make a stink this side of a landfill if they didn’t cooperate.
 
Now, with a simple verbal slap-down by Dutch, he was effectively chaste and humbled.
 

“We received a distressed call from a woman identifying herself as Elizabeth Sinclair,” he said with an odd nervous quiver now accompanying his words.
 
“Although her voice was pretty well slurred, the 911 dispatcher made out that she definitely said the words ‘help me.’
 
She called on a cell phone, but we have cutting edge technology now that allowed us to trace the call to this hotel.
 
And specifically to this suite.”

“The president’s suite?” Crader asked incredulously, reminding the cop of just exactly whom
this suite
was occupied by.

But the detective did not back down.
 
“The president’s suite, yes, sir,” he said.
 
Then he added, his stocky body moving from side to side as if he was readying for a rumble: “And if you continue to find my request objectionable, I can always get a search warrant.”

Dutch shot a look at that detective.
 
“Don’t get cute with me, detective,” he snapped.

“Oh, no sir,” the detective quickly corrected.
 
“I didn’t mean that I would. . . Not with you . . . I meant no disrespect, sir,” he said as he gave up attempting to explain himself.

Dutch really wasn’t feeling this scene at all.
 
He was still fighting sleep, still exhausted after attending three fundraisers in a row.
 
Still jetlagged.
 
But this officer, insufferable though he might be, was only doing his job.
 
Dutch understood that.
 
He stepped aside.
 
“Come.
 
See for yourself,” he ordered.

The detective actually smiled.
 
“Thank-you, sir,” he said as he and his colleague entered the suite.
 
They were forced to enter, and to look around that suite, under full Secret Service escort.
 
The detective found their presence intrusive, but he was no fool.
 
The U.S. Secret Service weren’t about to allow him or anybody else carte blanche to search premises occupied by the president without their constant and methodical hovering.

Dutch began walking toward the full bar inside the suite.

“Please tell me Liz isn’t still here,” Crader said in a lowered tone as he followed the president.

Dutch stifled a yarn.
 
“She left.”

“That’s a relief,” Crader said as he sat on the bar stool.
 
“But this is exactly why Allison didn’t want you bringing her up here.
 
Now look what we’ve got to deal with.”
 
Then he frowned.
 
“But wonder what her game is calling 911 like that?”

Dutch thought about her, and the state she was in before he fell asleep.
 
“You never know with Liz,” he said.

“Ain’t that the truth.”

Dutch yarned again.
 
“Damn,” he said, “I can barely stand up.
 
What time is it?”

Crader looked at his watch.
 
“West Coast time?
 
Four-twenty-eight.”

“Four twenty-eight?” Dutch asked incredulously.
 
“They wake me up at four-thirty in the morning?”

“They woke me up even earlier,” Crader assured him.
 
“I did all I could to avoid disturbing you, trust me, but that cop is asshole extraordinaire.
 
You should have seen him in all of his loudness.
 
And all about some bullshit phone call.
 
But they don’t care.
 
They don’t give a damn that your schedule later this morning is packed solid here in California and then we’ve got to be in Seattle for that economic forum tonight.
 
A forum that’s probably going to last late into the night.
 
But they don’t care.
 
You’re the president.
 
You’re the magic man.
 
You can use jujitsu against their guns and knives.
 
And if you can’t, if your weaponless blows can’t stop their flying bullets, then they’ll wonder why the hell not.
 
And they’ll declare the magic is gone.”

Dutch laughed.

“It’s crazy, man,” Crader added as Dutch handed him a drink and sipped one himself.
 
The idea of drinking at four thirty in the morning was odd for both men, but so was this kind of unnerving wake-up call.

“Excuse me, sir,” the Secret Service agent in charge said as he walked up from the back of the suite.
 
His face, Dutch and Crader both noticed, looked as if he’d had a shock.

“What is it, James?” Dutch asked.

“There’s been a discovery, sir.”

Crader turned and looked at the agent.
 

“What kind of discovery?” Dutch asked.

Before the agent could answer, the detective reentered the living area.
 
This was his time to shine, maybe even gloat, his face revealed.

“What is it?” Dutch asked him.

“I thought you said Miss Sinclair wasn’t in this suite, sir.”

Dutch hesitated.
 
What was he up to, he wondered.
 
“She’s not,” he said.

“That’s not entirely accurate, now is it?”

“Watch yourself, officer,” Crader warned.

“Meaning no disrespect, sir,” the detective added, his eyes never leaving Dutch’s.
 
“But what you told us isn’t being confirmed by the facts.”

Dutch stared at him.
 
“What are you getting at, Detective?”

The detective stood spread eagle, as if even he understood the far-reaching implication of what he was about to say.
 
“We just found, in the bathroom of your hotel suite, sir, the lifeless body of a woman the Secret Service has positively identified as Elizabeth Sinclair.”

When it hit, it hit like a sledgehammer.

Crader jumped to his feet.

The glass in Dutch’s hand slipped and shattered in a trail of broken crystal and spilled liquor, broken dreams and spilled lives, as it violently crashed to the floor.

TWO

Three days earlier

Gina Harber walked cautiously to the water’s edge, dipped her small, brown foot in, and then backed up.

“Ah, come on, babe,” Dutch said coaxingly as he stood some twenty feet away from her.
 
His tall, athletic body was knee deep in the blue waters of the beautiful private beach.
 
“I told you not to worry.
 
You aren’t going to drown.”

“But I’m okay right here,” Gina said, staring at the massive waves in front of her, her eyes filled with apprehension.
 
“You go on ahead.
 
I’m fine.”