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with its political jousting.
    “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said. “Now goodnight.”
    “Goodnight Mr. Newman,” the president replied. He really didn’t like this man.

CHAPTER
6

    T he FBI confiscated the camera-original footage that Chuck Wheaton shot at Park Place, but not before he uplinked the entire reel to WRGB and dubbed a copy for himself. It immediately aired in edited form, and then was fed in its entirety to the network in New York. Other news services picked it up and telecast the shocking footage with their own commentary.
    NBC: “…Murder in a small town.”
    ABC: “…An assassin casts a final vote.”
    Fox: “…Who, what, and why?”
    Elliott Strong’s edgy all-night radio show, Strong Nation, fielded dozens of conspiracy theories from listeners. And the next day, The New York Times ran five pictures above the fold. The governor’s endorsement, Jenny’s kiss during the parade, and the fire commissioner desperately applying CPR, the congressman holding his wife, and the photo that would appear on the cover of Time and Newsweek , the high school girl dazed with the turmoil swirling around her.
    A sidebar story ran in the left column written by Michael O’Connell. The agressive, young writer had been chronicling the New York State primary for months. He had recently interviewed Jennifer Lodge and quickly wrote a 1604-word story Sunday night. He hit “Enter” on his computer and the text worked its way through the editorial system to headline writers, layout arts and eventually to the front page. The Times syndicate picked it up for national play. By the time the paper hit the stands Monday morning, O’Connell had the go-ahead to clear his other assignments to tell the Teddy Lodge story from the beginning.
    O’Connell reserved a seat on the noon shuttle to Boston; from there he’d go to Marblehead and begin to put the pieces of Teddy Lodge’s life together. From what he had already learned it had been full of tragedy long before Jenny’s death.
    He wouldn’t be the only one on the trail. After reading the account in his Presidential Morning Briefing package prepared by the chief of staff, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCI) and the White House staff, President Morgan Taylor decided to dispatch a man named Roarke to do the same. It wasn’t intended as an investigation. The FBI had that authority. As a member of the Secret Service, Roarke was asked to prepare a comprehensive profile of Congressman Lodge in order to provide him with maximum security.
     
    In all, America’s phone books listed 5,241 people with the name S. Roarke or Scott Roarke . None of the numbers would ring through to the President’s man. Nor would this particular Scott Roarke come up in any Internet on-line search. A computer hacker might find an extract on an Army Special Forces lieutenant by that name. But there’d be no record of any mission.
    He wasn’t ever officially in Beijing, Tehran, Behrain, or Mazar-I Sharif. But a number of people at the Pentagon knew he had been there and what he had done.
    Roarke maintained Secret Service credentials, but that didn’t begin to describe his access to the president or his work. Scott Roarke was definitely the president’s man, a friend and confidant ever since Morgan Taylor met him a number of years ago quite by accident .
     
    The accident was caused when a Soviet designed SAM-16 surface-to-air missile found one of the General Electric F-110 engines aboard Commander Morgan Taylor’s F/A-18C during a less than successful mission over Iraq.
    Simply put, the meeting occurred when Roarke rescued him. Roarke, a young lieutenant in the Army’s secret Defense Intelligence Agency, was operating well inside the lines of Saddam Hussein’s fierce Republican Guard when Taylor dropped in on him.
    Taylor paid a surprise, uninvited visit to a pair of suspected biological weapons plants from 25,000 feet. He had one more Rockeye bomb left in his stores and was