Gospel by Sydney Bauer Page A

those that depicted a broad view of Bradshaw’s suite and finished with the more close-up varieties – of Bradshaw’s bedroom, his body, clothing and so on.
    From where Mannix and Leigh were standing it looked like a disorderly mess, but when Mannix moved around McKay to look at his display from the detective’s point of view, he realised what he was doing.
    â€˜You’re recreating the scene,’ said Joe, ‘. . . from the hotel suite door to the bedroom.’
    â€˜Yep, sometimes it helps,’ said McKay. ‘Creates order. Clears the fog.’
    Susan Leigh moved next to Mannix, looking down on her partner. All three detectives had been permitted access to the Presidential Suite, if briefly, on the night of the Vice President’s death and McKay’s ‘arrangement’ was effectively taking them back to the crime scene, step by step.
    McKay laid the last photograph, a shot showing the contents onBradshaw’s bedside table, before standing up and surveying the collage of images alongside his two colleagues.
    â€˜Susan,’ said Mannix. ‘Hand me that evidence bag will you, the one marked with the number three.’
    Leigh grabbed the bag and handed her boss the index list on its cover which was headed with the filing notation # 3/7. Mannix then took the bag and removed six items, each placed inside its own plastic evidence bag. There was the syringe, the empty vial, the rubber tourniquet, the latex glove, the single Tiffany cufflink and the half drunk bottle of Evian, in other words all the paraphernalia on the Vice President’s bedside table at the time of his death.
    â€˜Look at this picture,’ said Mannix, pointing at the last image in McKay’s menagerie. ‘See how neatly these items are arranged – in perfect symmetry, equidistant from one another, from one side of the table to the other?’
    â€˜I see what you mean,’ said Leigh. ‘If the man decided to get high, why the hell was he so neat about it?’
    â€˜And if he was reaching across from the bed, stoned out of his brain’ said McKay, ‘how did he manage to keep them in such perfect order, and why aren’t the bed covers mussed where his body would have turned to reach the far side of the table.’
    â€˜Exactly,’ said Mannix. ‘And that’s not all. Like I said before, something is missing.’
    The three of them looked at the photograph again, now completely drawn into the mystery which pretty much confirmed someone else was in the room when the Vice President died.
    â€˜
Well, I’ll be
,’ said McKay.
    â€˜What is it?’ asked Leigh, obviously frustrated with her inability to see what the others had discovered.
    â€˜The seventh item,’ said Mannix. ‘The bag is marked # 3/7. Evidence bag three, with seven items enclosed. But we only have six.’
    â€˜Jesus,’ said McKay.
    â€˜Not exactly,’ said Mannix, ‘but close enough. They didn’t give us the Bible.’
    â€˜Why the hell not?’ asked Leigh.
    â€˜I have no idea,’ said Mannix, moving behind his desk to grab his jacket and his shield. ‘But I am going to find out.’
    CIA Director Richard Ryan stretched back in his ergonomic leather chair, in his larger than average Langley office and felt, well, about as comfortable as a baby on a bed of nails.
    It wasn’t the chair and it wasn’t the office, and it definitely wasn’t his job. He loved the job. It was, after all, above and beyond any post an ex-cop from Jackson, Alabama could have dreamed of. It wasn’t even his location. CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia was, in the very least, somewhat removed from the powers that be in that big White House in DC. In fact there was something uplifting about walking over that famous granite seal built into the floor of the headquarters’ original building – the eagle symbolising strength, the