Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love (20 page)

“Of course I didn’t make love to her,” Dutch said, pulling her back into his arms.
 
He kissed her forehead.
 
“I would never do anything like that to you.”

“I know,” Gina said, moving closer against him.
 
He began massaging her bare butt.

“But?” he asked.
 
He could just feel the tenseness now in her body.

“But it’s hard to hear, that’s what, Dutch,” she said.
 
“Imagine if I were to tell you I allowed a man up to my hotel room and I comforted him in my bed.
 
How would you feel?”

Dutch was stricken.
 
“I would trust that you wouldn’t allow anything to happen.”

“Right.
 
I trust the same about you.
 
But how would you
feel
?”

Dutch hesitated.
 
“I wouldn’t like it.”

“And I don’t like it.
 
I hate it!
 
A part of me wants to punch you in the nose.”
 
Dutch smiled.
 
“But I understand it.
 
She came to you.
 
You couldn’t turn her away.”

Dutch smiled.
 
His heart swelled with love.
 
“I should not have done it.
 
I should not have even allowed her in my hotel room.
 
But I saw something in her that night that unnerved me, Gina.
 
It wasn’t just that she was drunk.
 
She was broken.
 
She was disappointed in herself, which was the worst kind of disappointment.
 
She was at the end of her rope.”

“But if she left the way you thought, how did she end up dead in your hotel room?”

Another revelation to be made, Dutch thought.
 
He exhaled.
 
“I fell asleep,” he said.

“You fell asleep?
 
With her in your arms?”

He nodded.
 
“Yes.”

As soon as he admitted it, Gina moved to get out of his arms, to not have to juxtapose her in his arms with Liz Sinclair in his arms.
 
But Dutch pulled her back.

“Gina, don’t,” he pleaded.

“I just need,” she started, but he was too strong.
 
He wouldn’t let her go.

“Stay with me.
 
Please.
 
Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not leaving you, Dutch.
 
I just need. . .”
 
Then she exhaled.
 
She didn’t know what she needed.
 
Besides, she reasoned, it was done now.

They lay there, as he had her completely in his arms, her back now to his front.
 

“When I woke up,” he continued, “she was gone.
 
At least I assumed she was.
 
I didn’t see her, didn’t hear her.
 
So I removed my clothes, and got under the covers and went to sleep.
 
The next thing I know there’s knocking on the door.
 
It was Crader and a couple of detectives.
 
They said there was some disturbance in the room, that they had gotten a distress call from Liz.
 
And that her voice was slurred.
 
I told them Liz wasn’t even in my room.
 
She wasn’t in my bed anymore, I didn’t see any sign that she was still around, so I assumed she had left.
 
She had shed her tears and left.
 
That was what she had planned to do when she initially went to freshen up.
 
But they search the room, anyway, and found her dead in the bathroom, which didn’t help my credibility.”

This shocked Gina.
 
“Could it have been an accident, Dutch?
 
She could have taken some pills or something and passed out, hitting her head against the sink or something?”

Dutch nodded.
 
“That’s what I believe the autopsy report will reveal, yes.
 
An empty glass was in the bathroom, I remember Crader saying he saw that.
 
She mixed liquor with pills and she could have started passing out.
 
When she fell, she might have hit her head.
 
But she wasn’t completely unconscious.
 
Maybe she called out to me, but I was sleeping the sleep of the very exhausted and probably would not have heard a hyena scream.
 
They said she used her cell phone to dial 911, and that was how they were able to track where she was.
 
They said her speech was slurred and that she cried for somebody to help her, but then the phone went dead.
 
She could have lost consciousness then.”

“Did they find pills in the bathroom or an empty bottle?”

“I don’t know.
 
It was immediately declared a crime scene and the Secret Service just as immediately removed me from the room.”

“They didn’t allow you to see her?”

“I saw her,” he said, then sighed.
 
The memory still pained him.
 
“But I wasn’t looking at whether there were pill bottles or anything else.
 
I was just looking at her.
 
At how tragic it all was.
 
At how tragic she was.”

“They say you look peaceful when you die.
 
Did you finally see her peace?”

Dutch shook his head.
 
“No.
 
There was nothing peaceful about it.
 
She looked as anguished in death as she looked that night we talked.
 
There was nothing peaceful about it.”

“But if it was suicide, why are they going around saying she died from some blunt force trauma to her head?”

“Because that was her most obvious injury.
 
She was bleeding from the head, I remember seeing the blood.
 
They won’t know anything for certain until after the autopsy results.”

“It has to be an accident.
 
Or even suicide.
 
But it can’t be murder, not with the Secret Service right outside your door.”

“I agree.”

“But it could be weeks before they’re able to release autopsy results.”

“They’ve made it their top priority, of course, but it’ll still take time.”

Gina leaned against him.
 
“Poor Liz,” she said. “And your instinct to help her, because you saw something different about her that night, was apparently right.
 
She was an accident waiting to happen.”

“Yes,” he said, kissing Gina on the top of her head.
 
“Apparently so.”

“What specifically did you and she talk about?
 
Was it anything specific?”

“It was all about how she felt she lived her life wrong.
 
She kept saying how she got it all wrong.
 
She said you, and women like you who didn’t prostitute their bodies, essentially was what she was saying, did it right.”

“And she was just figuring that out?
 
At her age?”

“I think Liz had figured it out a long time ago.
 
But she was tired.
 
Instead of doing something about it, instead of righting her ship, she decided to sink it.
 
But she could have changed course.
 
It would have taken work, but she could have changed.”
 

Then Dutch frowned.
 
Shook his head.
 
“Poor kid,” he said so heartfelt, so pained, that Gina turned around, kissed his forehead, and held him in her protective arms.

The helicopter landed in the US Virgin Islands, in the backyard of the Rand estate, and two of the most powerful men in America, Vice President Shelton Pratt and Speaker of the House Jed Brightman, alighted out of the craft, buttoned their wind-blown suit coats, and made their way toward the estate’s entrance.
 

Once inside the livingroom, and after waiting only briefly for Robert Rand to make an appearance, all three men sat down to strategize.
 
Their concern: what happened in San Francisco.

“Did either of you gentlemen see that one coming?” Robert asked.

“Hell, no,” the Vice President responded.
 
“But I figure we should play it up for all it’s worth.”

Speaker Brightman and Robert exchanged a glance.
 
Shelly Pratt really was a fool in many ways, their looks seemed to suggest.

“No, Shelly,” Brightman said.
 
“We aren’t touching that particular scandal.”

“Why the hell not?
 
It could bring down his presidency easier than what we have planned.”

“Then let it come tumbling down,” Robert said, “and we’ll forget about our plans.
 
But in the meantime, we change nothing.”

“That’s makes no sense at all to me,” Pratt said, crossing his legs.
 
“They could charge him with murder---”

“They aren’t going to charge him with murder,” Brightman made clear.

“How do you know?
 
It’s possible.”

“It’s not possible.
 
Come on, will you?
 
At the most he’ll be condemned in the court of public opinion for cheating on his wife.”

“Which if I know Dutch,” Robert said with that ever-present smile of his, “and I do, a little thing like a sex scandal won’t be enough to run him out of that White House.”

“Unless,” Brightman added, “that little sex scandal involved his wife.”

“And the evidence was irrefutable,” Robert agreed.
 
“Which is my job.”

“Is it going according to plan?” Brightman asked.

“Exactly according to plan,” Robert assured him.
 

“But why would the governor of Texas want to pardon Marcus Rance?” Shelly wanted to know.

Brightman rolled his eyes.
 
“He’s not going to pardon him, Shelly, have you been paying attention?
 
That’s the line Robert fed to Gina Harber.
 
The truth is, Governor Feingold is going to show up at that dinner in Montreal, meet with the First Lady, hear her plead for her brother’s freedom, and then go back to his life in Texas.
 
And when his term in office is completed, he will receive from Robert a handsome, monetary gift for his trouble.
 
That’s it.
 
That’s all.
 
He is not about to pardon some former drug dealing murderer.
 
He already commuted that boy’s sentence from death to life. That’s enough.”

But Shelly Pratt was still uncertain.
 
He was staring at Robert.
 
He didn’t trust him.
 
“What’s in this for you?” he wanted to know.
 
“Why do you hate Dutch Harber so much?”

Robert smiled, because the Vice President, as usual, was well off base.
 
Robert didn’t hate Dutch at all. In fact, he was one of the few rich and powerful people Robert actually liked.
 
But he was in his way.
 
Robert knew he wasn’t going to get to the presidency by the traditional way.
 
So he had to create a non-traditional route.
 
Dutch resigns, Shelly Pratt automatically would become president.
 
Shelly would have a constitutional obligation to nominate a Vice President.
 
He would nominate Robert.
 
That had already been agreed to.
 
And when Dutch’s term is up, Shelly would then announce that he will not seek to run for a full term as president, and Robert, as VP, would be strategically placed as the heir apparent.
 
The best man for the job.