Flanagan's aide stood in the corner of Arthur Bedderson's old room, trying the knob to the bathroom. "Ken? Ken, you in there? It's Mark. Ken?" he repeated, more loudly this time. The aide turned to face Arthur Bedderson, who had just walked into the room.

"No sign of him in the back wing," Bedderson announced.

"The knob turns, but this door won't open."

"Bolted from the inside. Someone forgot to unlock it when they were done and left by the other door. We'll have to go around." The two men walked back out into the hallway, knocked on the door, then entered the bedroom at the west end of the house. Bedderson flicked on the light switch. The aide walked over to the bathroom door and knocked.

"Ken? You in there?" He turned the knob and opened the door.

"Ohmygod!" he almost screamed, and stepped back.

"What is it?" Bedderson said quickly, rushing to the doorway. "Shit! He's not a pussy hound, he's a fucking junkie!" Arthur Bedderson bent over the corpse and felt for a pulse at both the wrist and throat. "And he's dead as a hammer."

"But...he can't be...I mean, he's not...he doesn't...I've known Ken Flanagan for-"

"You think that's an insulin syringe there, sticking out of his arm?"

"Oh God...are you sure he's...?"

"Dead? Christ, take a look. You want to practice your mouth-to-mouth, see if maybe his name's really Lazarus?" Bedderson shook his head and snorted. "My mother wondered why he looked so gaunt. Well, there's her answer. No wonder his kid had to go to rehab-whole family's fucked up." Flanagan's son had a history of substance abuse problems which the papers had chronicled.

"Okay," Bedderson said, looking the former aide straight in the eye. "It's your call. I'm sure my mother would prefer not to have the papers print that Ken Flanagan OD'ed at her house the night she had a dinner party for him. But she's eighty years old and been around, so if they do, she won't lose any sleep over it.

"You want to call your own cleanup crew, or some friendly cops, fine. You want to straighten him up before the ambulance crew gets here, fine. You want me to get a couple of your buddies up here from downstairs, then stand out in the hall and act like I never came in here and saw him, I'll do that, too. But you are not going to ditch anything on this property, got it? Take a pillowcase off the bed if you want a sack to put everything in, but the stuff goes in your car and gets taken off the property before anyone gets called, okay? Either that, or we leave him as is, and let his widow deal with the reporters."

The aide nodded slowly. With everything that had happened, he was in a very suggestible mental state. He had at first been appalled at the idea of Ken Flanagan running off to a spare bedroom for a quickie with another guest, but had admitted the possibility once Bedderson had initiated the discreet search. Similarly, the notion of Flanagan using illegal intravenous drugs would have been ludicrous to the aide an hour earlier. When Bedderson mentioned the ex-Governor's gaunt appearance and his son's court-ordered treatment at a rehab center, however, the man immediately saw a horrible logic to the corpse on the tile floor.

"So what's the deal, you want me to go downstairs and bring someone up to help, or you want me to just hang out in the hallway, let you straighten up a little before word gets out?"

"Uh, don't get anyone just yet."

"Okay. Collapsed in the bathroom, water didn't revive him. That'll explain any wet clothes or towels. Heart attack, stroke, you don't know. That the story?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. I'll leave you for a bit, then I'll get that other guy. Elliot, that's his name, isn't it?" "Yeah. But don't you say anything to him. You know, about..."

"I got the picture-you want to tell him yourself, keep me out of the loop. Like I said, use the pillowcases. And bolt the doors if you don't want anyone walking in on you while you work," Bedderson added as he left the room.

"I feel so awful for his wife," Lois Bedderson said as she watched the ambulance depart. "As thin as he was, it's hard to imagine his heart giving out at that young an age. I don't think he was much over fiftyfive."

"It wasn't his heart."

"What do you mean?" Lois Bedderson asked, turning to face her son.

"Two of the fellows that came with him were cleaning up everything before the ambulance showed up, but I got a look at what they were doing. I told them they had to dispose of everything off this property or I'd rat them out to the cops. They took the dirty towels and Flanagan's kit away in pillowcases off my old bed."

"I thought I saw a man carrying a cloth sack. But what on earth...?"

"Ken Flanagan's heart attack was caused by an intravenous drug overdose." The woman's jaw dropped when she heard this news.

"I asked them what kind, and they shut up. They probably know, but wouldn't tell me. It was bad enough I caught them cleaning up." He took a deep breath. "But it does explain a lot of his erratic behavior in the legislature before he left office." Lois Bedderson's eyes narrowed as she considered that. Then she nodded, accepting the evidence before her.

"A shame it spoiled your party, Mom."

"That's life," she said with a shrug.

"I'm going to go get a drink," Arthur Bedderson told her. As he walked back in the house, Bedderson took a slip of paper from his pocket. It had a phone number at Barnes Hospital on it.

"Nurse Stands or Nurse Ewing, please," Bedderson said into the receiver. "It's about one of the patients on their floor." Bedderson waited while he was put on hold. The nurse who had lobbied for concealed carry and then been killed in a carjacking had been a woman named Elicia Boulton. After her death, many of Boulton's friends and professional colleagues had joined local grassroots groups championing the right to self-protection. Stands and Ewing were male nurses at Barnes who were now members of the Second Amendment Coalition of Missouri.

"Ewing here."

"Okay, listen up. Ken Flanagan, the former governor, just dropped dead at a dinner party half an hour ago and his body's on its way over to Barnes in an ambulance right this second. His cronies pulled a Ted Kennedy and cleaned him up before the paramedics got there, and they're all pretending he just had a heart attack. Check his blood and you'll find out the truth-he OD'ed. Guy was a fucking doper."

"Jesus. How close is the ambulance?"

"Party was a couple miles from you, so they should hit the ER in a minute or two. Check his body and his clothes, I don't know how good a job they did. You might find something."

"Uh, can you tell me who you are?"

"I'm in SACMo. That good enough?"

"Yeah."

"Don't put yourself out on a limb. Grab a doc that doesn't like to be lied to, and tell him about this call. You'll find out it's the straight goods," Bedderson assured him, and broke the connection.

Arthur Bedderson went to the kitchen and poured himself a bourbon on the rocks. He sipped the liquor as he mulled over the plan he had developed concerning Donny Rivetts. Rivetts was the Missouri senator who had sold out to Flanagan in 1995 on the promise of a new prison in his district, and he was next on Bedderson's list.

The bourbon, Arthur Bedderson noted with a smile, tasted even better than usual.

August 7 "Got another weird one, Alex," the D.C. FBI agent said, holding out the FAX. "Former Governor of Missouri, Ken Flanagan. Heroin overdose last night in the bathroom of some mansion in St. Louis. It was a dinner party in his honor."

"So Missouri had a heroin junkie for a Governor. Missouri borders Arkansas, doesn't it?" The other man laughed and Neumann waggled his fingers in a 'never mind' gesture. "Sorry, I'm getting cynical. And punchy, too. Lack of sleep. Okay, tell me about this-what's it got to do with us?"

"Well, nothing, probably. The guy's kid is a doper, or was, at least. Got a couple DUIs, court-ordered rehab, that kind of thing. No heroin, though."

"This was while Dad was Governor?"

"Yeah."

"Go on."

"Well, according to the guy I talked to, the wife is going batshit. Says someone had to have thumped her husband on the head and given him the hotshot, although cops found Flanagan's thumbprint on the plunger."

"Any bruises? Knot on his head?"

"No, and no little burn marks on his shirt, like you usually get from a stun gun."

"Needle marks on his arms?"