The driver, Larry Elwood, wore a dark suit, was heavyset and black. One of those silly chauffeur's hats with a visor obscured his face. Also he walked slowly, almost haltingly, and slightly hunched over, like he had a stomach cramp or was trying to work a kink out of a bum leg. Or perhaps as though he was hiding his face, disguising his physical appearance from the camera.

Margold picked up on it, too, because she asked Ben, "You're positive that's Elwood?"

"Looks like him. Hell, though, I'm not sure of anything."

I suggested, "Maybe there was more than one of them."

Ben asked, "Who's he?"

I asked, "Who're you?"

"Ben Marcasi." He turned to Agent Margold and again asked, "Who the hell's he?"

Margold looked at me. "I thought I warned you to keep your mouth shut."

"Right. Just, you know… forget what I said."

But obviously she couldn't forget what I said. She informed me, "Ben's Secret Service… the deputy chief of the White House security detail." She waved an arm around. "This house falls under his supervision. These are his people."

Goodness. It all came into focus-the poop was hitting the fan, and clearly they knew it. What wasn't at all clear was who had died upstairs, and what I was doing in range of the splatter.

So to clarify that first point, I asked, "And the dead guy upstairs… Mr. Hawk?"

"A code name. The deceased male upstairs is Terry Belknap… White House Chief of Staff." But she obviously wasn't interested in providing more insights or information. She asked me, “Why do you think there were two shooters?"

"Did I say only two?"

"I don't… uh, okay, two or more. Why?"

I allowed her a moment to digest her own question before I suggested, "You understand that the couple upstairs were shot nearly simultaneously right? He was facing his wife and he took it in the right temple. The geometry suggests his shooter fired from the living room entry into the dining room. Had the same shooter nailed Mrs. Belknap, the bullets would've struck her in the front or possibly left frontal lobe. But the Mrs. was facing the Mr. and she took it in the rear left quadrant of her neck. Ergo, a second shooter popped her from the kitchen entry into the dining room."

Agent Margold nodded and said, "You could be right. But there are-"

"Not could be… It's a fact."

"All right…"

"That's two shooters who gained entry If they found a way to get two inside, why not three? Or four? Lacy opens the front door and takes it in the throat. Two, three, or four guys race in. One moves to the living room, one to the kitchen. The third and maybe the fourth sneak down here."

Margold said, "Let's entertain your theory for a moment. They've got some kind of signaling device-radios maybe-and as you suggested, they launch their attacks simultaneously." She walked over to the dead guy in the lounge chair. "He's armed, he's alert, he's facing the door

… he gets it first. Then her, before she can push the central alarm," she said, indicating the dead lady at the commo console. "The sleeper, he's harmless… he gets it last."

"Nope," said Ben, shaking his head. "Not only are cameras covering the whole exterior of this house, there's also motion detectors. No way you could get even one person approaching undetected. Couldn't happen."

After pondering Ben's blanket assurance, I asked, "No blind spots?"

"Glad you asked-none. Cameras cover the full backyard, the house flanks, and there's two roving cameras mounted high on the columns in the front that give you a panorama of everything approaching this house." He pointed at the monitors. "You saw yourself-driveway, lawn, street out front… everything's covered."

I noted, "I saw a blind spot against the front wall of the house."

"Well, yeah. The cameras had to be mounted on the columns. But we were aware of that. So that space is covered with movement sensors."

"Radar or light beams?" I asked.

"Radar. I oversaw the security architecture and installation myself. One detector spaced every five feet. Foolproof."

Wrong answer, Ben. I asked, "And what happens when two or three bodies breach a beam simultaneously?"

"That's imposs-"

"Like, they're walking in a line, so they all hit the beam at once?" I knew the answer, actually. But sometimes the Socratic method works best.

Ben paused. He then gave the only answer he could give. "Theoretically, you might get one alert."

"So this Elwood guy pulls into the driveway-and one, two, or three other guys are inside the car with him. He gets out; they get out. They stay low, using the car as a visual screen from the cameras till they get to the blind spot by the garage door. They get right against the front wall of the house, inside the blind spot, and move in lockstep with Elwood." After a short pause, I added, "And because the folks down here observe what they think is Elwood moving alone on the walkway, they assume it's him making the movement detectors go off."

The room was suddenly quiet. I asked, "Is that a possible scenario?"

Poor Ben looked like he just understood he was about to have a big career problem. "I… I don't think so."

Margold looked at me, then at Ben, then at the three corpses in the tiny room. She said, "Ben… we better check."

So we trudged back upstairs, through the long hallway and the spacious foyer, past poor Lacy's body, and onto the front entry. Neatly trimmed bushes and shrubbery were up against the front wall of the house, and there was a thick strip of mulch separating the bushes from the well-manicured lawn. But once you knew what you were looking for, and at, the disturbances in the garden mulch jumped out at you. Ben bent forward at the waist and gawked. After an awkward moment, he insisted, "That proves nothing. Could've been a gardener or a wild animal made those tracks."

I suggested to Margold, "They're footprints. You should definitely get molds before it rains."

Margold's nostrils sort of flared. "I'll decide how to do my job, if you don't mind." She contemplated the mulch, then pointed at me and snapped, "You… let's have a word."

We walked, she and I, to the end of the driveway, far enough to be out of Ben's earshot. She studied my face and asked, "Who the hell are you?"

"Nobody. Forget I was here. Now, if you'll please tell your people to give me a lift, I'd like to go back to my office. Incidentally, it was really swell working with you. Tough case. Best of luck."

"Look… in case you haven't noticed, six people are dead inside that house. Including the White House Chief of Staff."

"I noticed. Do I need to walk out of here?" Okay, I was being a little over the top. And maybe Margold's testiness that morning was justified, as she had obviously been shoved in front of a moving train. But she had rubbed my face in the crap, and what goes around, comes around.

She said, "You're staying. Don't pretend otherwise."

Also, I was thinking on my feet. I had no idea why my boss dispatched me to this gig, and if I stayed I'd only sink deeper into the muck. Mrs. Drummond had not raised a complete idiot, and I now knew that what had happened inside that big house was the form of execution subtitled a political assassination. Mention that phrase in the CIA and people go all pale and sweaty on you. The next thing you know, some idiot named Oliver Stone's making a movie with a character named Drummond. I said, "You're the FBI. You're great-handle it."

Ms. Margold ignored me and began talking about the seriousness of this thing and so forth. I tuned her out.

In fact, I was sure this was why my boss had ordered me to keep a low profile. The Agency did not want to be within ten miles of this thing. Actually, the Agency headquarters was only two miles down the road, so I should walk fast.

Apparently Margold saw she had lost my attention, because she swallowed and said, "Okay, I get it. Look… well, I'm sorry if I was… a little brusque earlier."