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“What would be my chances of getting a copy of the Merritt baby’s autopsy report?”

“Is this a joke?”

“That slim?”

“Nigh to impossible, Barrie. Sorry.”

“I thought so, but it never hurts to ask.”

“Why do you want it?”

She did some verbal acrobatics as to her reason, which seemed to pacify her source. “Thanks anyway, Anna.”

Disappointed, Barrie hung up. An autopsy report would have been a good starting point, although she was still unclear as to exactly what she was starting.

“What do you want for dinner, Cronkite?” she asked as she loped downstairs to the kitchen. She opened the pantry and recited the menu selections. “Tonight’s specialties include Kibbles and Bits, Alpo chicken and liver, or Gravy Train.” He whined with disappointment. Taking pity, she said, “Luigi’s?” Out came his long, pink tongue, and he began panting like a pervert at a peep show.

Her conscience told her to have a Lean Cuisine for dinner, but what the hell? When you spent your evenings at home in a football jersey and gym socks, conversing with a mongrel and having nothing to look forward to except hours of research, what difference did a few hundred fat grams make?

While she was on the telephone ordering two pizzas, Cronkite began whining to go outside. She covered the telephone mouthpiece. “If it’s that urgent, use your doggie door.” Cronkite glanced disdainfully at the opening cut in the back door. It was large enough to accommodate Cronkite, but not so large that she worried about intruders. As she was reiterating her pizza order, she jabbed her index finger toward the doggie door. Looking humiliated, Cronkite crawled through it. She was off the phone by the time he was ready to come back inside, so she opened the back door for him. “The pizzas are guaranteed in twenty-five minutes or we get them free.”

While waiting for the delivery, she poured a glass of merlot and carried it up to the third floor, which she had converted into a home office. She had cashed in a trust fund to purchase the townhouse, located in the fashionable Dupont Circle district. The building was quaint and had character and was also convenient to everything in the city.

Initially she had leased out the top floor, which was a self-contained apartment. But when her renter moved to Europe with six months left on her lease, Barrie used the extra money to convert the three cramped rooms into one large studio/office.

One entire wall of the room was now devoted to videotape storage. She had shelves upon shelves of them. She saved all her own reports, newscasts of historical significance, and every news magazine show. The tapes were alphabetized according to subject. She went straight to the tape she wanted, loaded it into the VCR, and watched it while slowly sipping her wine.

The death and funeral of Robert Rushton Merritt had been thoroughly documented. The tragedy seemed doubly unfair since it had happened to the Merritts, whose marriage was considered the epitome of perfection.

President David Malcomb Merritt could have been a poster boy for any young American male who aspired to hold the office. He was classically handsome, athletic, attractive, and charismatic to men and women alike.

Vanessa Merritt was the perfect armpiece for her husband. She was gorgeous. Her beauty and southern-bred charm somehow made up for any shortcomings. Such as wit. And wisdom. She wasn’t considered a dynamo in the brains department, but nobody seemed to care. The public had wanted a First Lady with whom to fall in love, and Vanessa Armbruster Merritt had easily fulfilled that need.

David’s parents were long deceased. He had no living relatives. Vanessa’s father, however, more than compensated for this lack. Cletus Armbruster had been the senior senator from Mississippi for as long as anyone could remember. He’d survived more presidents than most Americans remembered voting for.

Together they formed a photogenic triumvirate as famous as any royal family. Not since the Kennedy administration had an American president, his wife, and their personal life attracted so much public attention and adoration, nationwide and around the world. Everything they did, everywhere they went, singly or together, created a stir.

Consequently, America went positively ga-ga when it was announced that the First Lady was pregnant with the couple’s first child. The baby would make perfection even more perfect.

The baby’s birth was given more press than Desert Storm or the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Barrie remembered watching, from a newsroom monitor, the umpteenth story on the Merritt baby’s arrival at the White House

. Howie had sourly remarked, “Should we be on the lookout for a bright star in the East?”

The only event to receive as much news coverage was that same baby’s death three months later.

The world was plunged into shock and grief. No one wanted to believe it. No one could believe it. America mourned.

Barrie finished her wine, rewound the videotape for the third time, and watched again as the funeral scenes sadly unfolded.

Looking pale and tragically beautiful in her mourning suit, Vanessa Merritt was unable to stand without assistance. It was obvious to all that her heart was broken. It had taken years for her to conceive a child, another personal aspect of her life that had been explored and exploited in great detail by the media. To lose the child she’d struggled to bear made her a truly tragic heroine.

The President looked courageously stoic as tears streaked his lean cheeks and ran into the attractive furrows on either side of his mouth. Pundits commented on his attentiveness to his wife. On that day, David Merritt was seen primarily as a husband and father who happened also to be the chief executive.

Senator Armbruster wept unashamedly into a white handkerchief. His contribution to his grandson’s small coffin was a tiny Mississippi state flag, sticking up among the white roses and baby’s breath.

Had Barrie been in the First Lady’s situation, she would have wanted to grieve privately. She would have resented the cameras and commentators. Even though she knew her colleagues were only doing their jobs—indeed, Barrie herself had been in the thick of it—the funeral had been a public spectacle, shared via satellite with the entire world. How had Vanessa Merritt held up even as well as she had?

Barrie’s doorbell rang.