The museum quality of the lower levels had given way to something more like a home up here. There was plush blue and gold carpeting, a baby grand piano, several built-in bookcases, with hardbacks that looked like someone had actually read them.
I’m not so jaded that I wasn’t tripping out a little on where I was, either. It was impossible to be there and not think about all the presidents and First Ladies who had walked through these very rooms for the last two hundred years — all the way back to John Adams.
I guess the word for what I felt is humbled.
The hall narrowed and then narrowed again through a deep arch that opened to a sunny sitting room on the other side.
Mrs. Coyle was there with two female aides. To my right was the Lincoln Bedroom. This was just shy of surreal. I was definitely in the loop now.
The First Lady’s deputy chief of staff started the introductions.
“Mrs. Coyle, this is —”
“Detective Cross. Yes, of course.”
As Regina Coyle came over to shake my hand, I could see her eyes were still red from whenever she’d last cried. Probably not long ago.
“Thank you so much for being here,” she said. “I’m hoping you can be of some help to me.”
“MRS. COYLE, I’M so sorry about every thing that’s happened,” I said. “I’ll do whatever I can.”
She gestured me inside while the others quietly left the way I’d just come. A few seconds later, the First Lady and I were as alone as we were going to get in that building, even upstairs in the private quarters.
She sat on a long couch with a view of the Treasury Department building behind her. I took one of the yellow upholstered chairs, the same color as the walls and curtains, while she poured coffee from a service of White House china.
“You have some relevant experience with kidnap investigations, isn’t that right?” she started in. “The Gary Soneji case and others?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Three major cases since Soneji. It’s not my primary expertise —”
“But you’re good at it,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but she waited for an answer anyway.
“Experience is probably the best teacher,” I said. “So yes, I’m pretty good.”
Mrs. Coyle nodded, then looked down. She seemed to be building up to something.
She was a quiet First Lady, as they we
nt. More Laura Bush than Hillary Clinton. Both she and her husband were originally from Minnesota farm stock, and I don’t think she ever relished the high-profile aspects of this job.
When she looked up again, her gaze was steady. More focused than before. I realized she was as strong as her husband.
“I know that most of the people looking for Ethan and Zoe right now probably don’t expect to find them alive,” she said all at once. There was no outward emotion to it. Just a fact. “I’m not blind to the statistics on this kind of thing.”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “But I hope you also know that you’ve got some of the best people in the world on this. You have since day one.”
“Of course,” she said, and fell back into another silence. There was obviously something else. I did what comes naturally to me and waited quietly for her to go on.
Then she said, “Your son was held hostage for several months, wasn’t he? Around the time he was born?”
That one, I didn’t see coming at all. Mrs. Coyle had done her homework and then some. It was true. Ali’s mother, Christine, had been kidnapped while she was still pregnant with him. The memory of it cut right through me. Christine and I had never recovered from the incident and its trauma.
I nodded. “It was the worst year of my life,” I said. “Ali’s mother’s as well.”
“And how is your son today?” she asked.
“He’s great, actually,” I said. “A little bigger every day. I’m very proud of him.”
“So you understand,” she said. The look on her face was as close to a smile as anything I’d seen. Just a softening around her eyes, really.