Acts of Mercy by Bill Pronzini, Barry N. Malzberg Page A

study, had a somber, uneasy appearance.
    Augustine gestured him inside, shut the door. “My God, Christopher,” he said, “what is it, what’s happened?”
    Justice said heavily, “It’s Mr. Briggs, sir.”
    “Briggs?”
    “Yes sir. He ... I’m afraid he’s dead.”
    “What!”
    “It’s true, Mr. President. I was walking on the south lawn, getting some air because it was so hot in my room, and I noticed that the window in the press secretary’s office was open and the lights were on. But there was nobody inside, so I went over to have a look. I found him lying in the bushes under the window.”
    “But how —how did it happen?”
    “I’m not sure, sir. It looks as though he was leaning out for some reason and lost his balance and fell. He must have hit his head on one of the rocks.”
    A hollowness had formed under Augustine’s breastbone, but he seemed to have no other reaction beyond a kind of shocked confusion. Sometimes you came up against something so stunning that you lacked the emotional language to deal with it immediately. He shook his head, walked over to the nearest piece of furniture—a leather couch—and sat on the arm and stared down at the carpet.
    Across the study, the door to the presidential bedroom opened and Claire entered. “I thought I heard voices,” she said. “Is something—” Then she stopped speaking and ridges appeared on the smooth surface of her forehead.
    Augustine said, “Claire, something terrible has happened.”
    A shadow passed across her face. She caught the fabric of her blouse at the throat—she was still fully dressed, or she would not have entered as she had—and then came over to where he was sitting. “What is it?”
    “It’s Austin Briggs. He’s dead.”
    Her mouth opened and her face went white. “Oh my God,” she said.
    “Christopher just found him, outside his office window.”
    “Where?”
    “It seems to have been a freak accident, Mrs. Augustine,” Justice said. He went on to tell her what he had told Augustine.
    Claire said, “Are you certain he’s dead?”
    “Yes ma’am. I checked his pulse.”
    “Have you told anyone else?”
    “No. I thought the President should be the first to know.” She closed her eyes, put her hands to her temples as though trying to clear her thoughts. Watching her, Augustine thought dully that the news seemed to have hit her even harder than it had him; he had never seen her quite so shaken.
    Justice said, “Do you want me to notify the security chief, Mr. President?”
    Before Augustine could answer, Claire lowered her hands and turned abruptly. “No,” she said. “Not yet. Don’t call anyone yet.”
    “But Mrs. Augustine ...”
    “Don’t argue with me, please. We need time to think.”
    Justice looked at Augustine, who nodded mutely. “Yes ma’am,” he said then. “Whatever you say.”
    Claire bit her lip, and her eyes, dark and glistening, rested on Augustine for a long moment. Then she pivoted and hurried out of the study.
    When the bedroom door closed behind her Augustine roused himself, went slowly to his desk and poured water into the tumbler there; drank it to ease the dryness in his throat. Some of the numbness began to leave him then, and in his mind he heard the echo of Claire’s voice saying We need time to think. Time to think about what? Briggs was dead, he had died in a tragic accident. In one sense it was unfortunate; and yet, looking at it another way, coldly and practically, it solved the problem of his political threat.
    Time to think about what?
    But it was already beginning to break in on Augustine, the same realization that must have struck Claire immediately: it was not the fact of Briggs’s death that demanded careful reflection, but the probable repercussions of it. He had died here at the White House, and under circumstances which were as bizarre as they were tragic. There had probably never been an accidental death on the White House grounds, no deaths of any kind