Dead Watch

his time at our New York apartment,” she said. “He had two cats there. When he disappeared, probably that Friday afternoon, nobody realized that he was gone until Monday, when he missed appointments. When we called the apartment, the maid answered. She said he wasn’t there, but not only that: nobody had fed the cats over the weekend. They had no food or water, they were drinking from a toilet. Linc would never have done that, let the cats go like that. Even if he was planning to disappear, he would have made up some excuse to see that they were taken care of.”
    Jake looked down at his lap and touched his forehead with his middle finger, unconsciously rubbing. In any hunt, any interrogation, there were key moments, when somebody said something that might seem obscure, that looked like a minor point but was, in fact, critical.
    Madison misinterpreted his reaction: “What? You don’t believe me?”
    “No, no,” Jake said, looking up again. “It’s the single piece of information I’ve gotten so far that makes me think you’re right. That he didn’t go away voluntarily.”
    For the first time, her attitude softened. “I’ve been trying to tell everybody that. He’d never abandon the cats.”

    He watched her for a few seconds, then said, “You say he spent most of his time in New York. Did you spend that time with him?”
    “No, I . . .” She stopped, looked at Black, and then said, “We’re not exactly estranged. We’re friendly. But we don’t live together much anymore. He spends most of his time in New York, I spend most of mine at our farm. We mostly intersect here, in Washington . . . when we do.”
    Jake took that as a complex of evasions suggesting that they no longer were in bed together.
    “Do you think . . . if you’re only friendly, that he might have another friend? Somebody that he might have gone off with for a while?”
    She was exasperated: “No, I do not. Frankly, if he was going to do that, he would have told me. And he would have fed the cats.”
    Okay. Enough of that.
    Jake looked at Black, then Madison: “There’s a concept, in the bureaucracy, called The Rule. Have you heard of it?”
    Madison shook her head, but Black nodded. “From Winter’s Guide: You ask, Who benefits?”
    Jake said, “Exactly—though I didn’t think of it. I just picked it up.” He held Madison’s eyes: “In any analysis of a confusing political problem, the rule is to ask, ‘ Who benefits?’ You will find the answer to any political or bureaucratic question, if you can answer that one correctly. Now, Senator Bowe vanishes under suspicious circumstances, and you ask, ‘Who benefits?’ ”
    “So?” she asked.
    Jake shook his head: “It sure as hell isn’t this administration. The biggest beneficiaries so far have been your husband’s political allies. The biggest loser so far has been Arlo Goodman.”
    “But . . .”
    “I know what you think about Governor Goodman, that you dislike him.”
    “He’s an asshole,” she said.
    “So you see my problem. Your husband disappears, and almost nobody is hurt except Arlo Goodman. And, by extension, other Democrats. The election is in seven months . . .”
    Madison looked at Black, and then back at Jake, anger again surfacing as a red flow up her neck and into her cheeks: “All right, let’s work through it again—because you’re wrong about who benefits. It’s not just a few Republicans against Arlo Goodman—a lot of people are scared of him. The Watchmen are like the Klan, or the Mafia, or the Gestapo. They take their orders from Goodman. If Lincoln’s never found, and nobody is ever caught, people become even more afraid of the Watchmen. That’s what they want. They want the fear. They want control. Who benefits if we don’t find Lincoln? The Watchmen do.”
    “That’s a little overblown,” Jake said. “They’re a bunch of guys in leather jackets. Boy Scouts who got old.”
    Her voice rose, never became shrill, but he could feel the anger in it: “That’s how they started. Most of them are still that way. Old Boy Scouts. But some of them . . . In Lexington, the Watchmen came to my house and tried to put me under house arrest. No warrant, no crime, just the Watchmen. Now they’re starting up in other states. You don’t know how dangerous Goodman is. He won’t stop with the governorship. That’s small potatoes. He’s aiming for the presidency.”
    “I’m seeing the governor tomorrow,” Jake