The Machiavelli Covenant Read Online Free PDF

prominent sports and entertainment figures. Many of these people were outspoken liberals, while Mike Parsons, like the president, had been strongly conservative. Marten smiled. Everybody had liked Mike Parsons and which side of the fence you sat on politically meant nothing at all, at least on a personal level. That was, as far as he knew.
    Marten looked around once more. Past Mike Parsons's desk and through the open door to the living room he could see Richard Tyler, Caroline's attorney and executor of her estate, pacing back and forth talking on his cell phone. Tyler was the reason he was there. He had called him the first thing that morning and asked if, in light of Caroline's notarized letter giving him access toher and her husband's papers, he might not spend a few hours in the Parsons' home going through some of their personal things. Tyler had conferred with colleagues in his office and then agreed, with the proviso that Tyler himself be present when he did. Tyler had even picked Marten up at his hotel and personally brought him to the house.
    The drive through the suburbs had been genial enough but in it there had been something odd, or rather something not discussed, something Marten had purposely left for Tyler to bring up, and he hadn't. The same way no one else seemed to have brought it up either, because it wasn't in the papers or on television or the Internet—the suicide of Dr. Stephenson.
    In her own way Lorraine Stephenson had been a celebrity. Not only had she been Caroline's doctor, but Mike's as well. She had also been personal physician to many prominent legislators, men and women, for more than two decades. Her suicide should have been fodder for any number of news outlets, local, national, even international. But it wasn't. Marten had seen nothing about it anywhere. One would have thought that as executor to Caroline's estate Tyler would have been one of the first to know because under the circumstances, where Caroline had given Marten the legal right to examine her medical records, Tyler most certainly would have brought it up. That was, if he knew. So maybe he didn't know. And maybe the media didn't know either. Maybe the police were keeping it quiet. But why? Notification of next of kin? Perhaps. It was as good a reason as any, or maybe there was some other angle the police were working on.
    If Stephenson had played it the way she could haveand just told him she was sorry but she could not give him access to Caroline's medical records without a court order, he might very well have left it in Richard Tyler's hands and gone back to England. Troubled perhaps, but gone anyway, thinking Caroline had been very ill and in a terrible emotional state, and knowing there was little he could do until and unless Tyler got the court order. But she hadn't. Instead she had run from him and then committed suicide. Her last words about
the doctor
and
none of you,
had been said with icy resolve and were followed immediately by her horrifying final act.
    What had Stephenson said to him just before she killed herself?
"You want to send me to the doctor. But you never will. None of you ever will. Never. Ever."
    What
doctor?
Who had she been so afraid of that she'd take her own life to avoid being sent to?
    And who or what was the group or organization she had apparently thought Marten belonged to? The
you
in
none of you?
    Those blanks were enormous.

    Marten stepped behind Parsons's desk and looked at the stack of working files on top of it. Most of it was legislative stuff. This bill, that bill, this appropriation, that. There were more files to the side, labeled LETTERS FROM CONSTITUENTS TO BE ANSWERED PERSONALLY . Another stack on a side table was labeled COMMITTEE REPORTS AND MINUTES. Taken together the material was mountainous. Marten had no idea where to start or what to look for once he had.
    "Mr. Marten." Richard Tyler came into the room.
    "Yes."

    "I just received a call from my office. One of our senior partners