Finks ordered, “Pull back the cover to just under the chin.”
The technician on the other side of the glass drew back the sheet.
McNeal stared at his wife’s gray face. Her dirty, mousy-brown hair had fragments of leaves embedded in the strands. Her eyes were shut. Her mouth turned down.
“Can you identify this person, Jack?” Finks asked.
McNeal tried to gather his thoughts. He pressed his face to the glass.
“Jack?”
He felt his throat tighten. He pressed his hand to the glass. He didn’t know why. He wanted to touch her. “It’s my wife, Caroline McNeal.”
“I’m so sorry.”
McNeal could not look at anything else but her lifeless body. He sensed he was about to break down. Being in the morgue triggered powerful memories. His mind flashed to images of his dead son. He felt as if his heart had been ripped out at its roots. A terrible emptiness opened up within him. He wanted to tell her all the things he hadn’t over the years. How much he loved her. How much he needed her. How much he admired her. But it wasn’t in his nature. Now it was too late. “How did she die?”
“I’m not prepared to answer that.”
Tears clouded his vision, spilling down his face. “How did my wife die?”
Finks sighed. “She was found floating in the Potomac. I’m so sorry.”
Jack McNeal stared at his dead wife. He felt light-headed. Time seemed to stop. Even until the last moment, when the cover was lifted back off of her face, he clung to hope. He prayed it was someone else. A big mistake. But as he stared at her lifeless body, her twisted neck, her beautiful face like gray wax, he felt his body go into shock.
He didn’t want to believe it was her. He struggled to comprehend that she was really gone from his life—this time for good. He felt dislocation, as if it was happening to someone else.
McNeal pressed his forehead against the glass. He closed his eyes as he fell to his knees, weeping, unashamed, at her loss. He thought of everything they had. The love. The years together. The terrible sadness they shared. And then the estrangement.
He never imagined this was how it would end for her. For them.
“Caroline! I’m so sorry!”
McNeal was sorry he hadn’t been there for her. He couldn’t imagine his wife taking her precious life. Never in a million years. He questioned if he could have done more. Caroline always said he was closed off emotionally. It was true. The death of their son had had a profound impact on them both.
He had dealt with it by retreating into his work. Stoic, like his father. He drank heavily. Caroline wanted to talk about it. He didn’t. He never did.
After their son’s shocking death, they had hugged and cried for a time. But then McNeal had locked himself back into his world. She had reached out to him. She had talked to a therapist. Then she began a gradual retreat into her own world. The world of politicians, DC, Capitol Hill, and the media. She didn’t come home as often. Eventually, she didn’t come home at all.
Finks helped McNeal away from the glass partition. “Come on, Jack. It’s time to go.”
Seven
A burnt-orange sun peeked over the horizon, bathing the historic monuments of downtown Washington, DC, in a tangerine light.
Henry Graff was already pounding the cinder path between the Capitol and Lincoln Memorial. It was the way he started each and every day. Athletic gear on, sport sunglasses shielding his eyes from shards of harsh sunlight. He needed the shot of adrenaline and the endorphins to kick in. It was what he lived for. It calmed him, this four-point-three mile run around the National Mall.
He passed the Korean War Veterans Memorial. The main memorial a triangle. He always stopped for a few moments at the monument, which was carved in black granite. It was a war his father had fought in and returned from. A man. A general of men. A leader.
Graff possessed the same fanatical interest in physical fitness his father had. He exercised hard. He worked hard. He abhorred slovenly behavior. The fat Americans who would soon be waddling around such sacred ground enraged him. They didn’t care for the country like he cared for the country. They cared where their next jumbo-sized meal was coming from. Dumb fuckers, the lot of them. An embarrassment to the nation. A nation he himself had fought for. War was a family tradition.
He had joined the Rangers straight out of West Point, served his country. All corners of the globe. Black ops. And he would continue to serve his country until the day he died. Just like his own son, still over in Iraq. That was a place Graff had grown to loathe. The dust. The filth. The 128-degree heat. Maddening. Sickening.