Free Oath of Office by Michael Palmer

history of trouble with the medical board a few years back.”
    Lou tensed. This was no hayseed sheriff. For however many years he had been the man in Kings Ridge, Gilbert Stone was not merely rattling about the town, procuring coffee and doughnuts. He was in charge of it. He also hadn’t hesitated to mention Meacham’s history to what should have been, until now, a total stranger. Either Stone was indiscreet to a fault, or somewhere in the course of gathering information about his fiefdom, Dr. Lou Welcome’s name had bopped across his desk.
    Lou warned himself to stay sharp.
    “I wish I could explain why John did what he did,” he said.
    “Me and you both, son,” Stone replied. “It sure don’t make no sense.”
    “I’m glad you understand my concern for Carolyn.”
    “Oh, I do, I surely do.”
    “So just a ticket, then?”
    Stone put his campaign hat back on. “Like I said, I’m sure Carolyn’s been through hell today. Let’s make sure her car drives fine, and I’ll send her off with a warning to be more careful on these slippery roads.”
    “Wonderful.”
    Stone hesitated a beat, then locked on to Lou’s eyes once again. “And I’m going to send you off with a warning as well,” he said.
    “Me?”
    “If you know something about my town, or the people in it such as Carolyn and John Meacham, or anyone on the staff of our hospital, and you choose to keep that information hidden from me, you won’t find me to be so easygoing.”

CHAPTER 11
    The president and First Family lived on the second and third floors of the White House—fifteen bedrooms and fifteen bathrooms, along with a sitting room, kitchen, dining room, and spectacular solarium. Darlene had done her best to make the master bedroom feel homey and familiar to her, but to no surprise, she had yet to completely succeed. At heart, she would always be a farmers’ daughter—a woman of down-to-earth taste in furnishings and art.
    She and Martin slept in an 1820s four-poster tiger maple bed that she had chosen from notebooks of photographs that the Office of the Curator had provided to her. The rest of the room’s décor was more conventional and modern, although piece-by-piece she was changing it. Perhaps if they made it to a second term … at that moment, a big if.
    Despite her well-intentioned efforts at bedtime meditation and yoga, Darlene still felt restless enough at times to accept some help from the vial of sleeping pills in her bedside table. Tonight, with continuous news coverage of the horrific events in Kings Ridge, Russ Evans’s sad visage embedded in her mind, her lingering anger over Martin’s decision to leave her solo at the Boys & Girls Club, and a full schedule facing her in the morning, she had little doubt there was an Ambien in her near future.
    She was sitting upright in bed, rereading a paragraph from the current issue of Food Health. Finally, unable to advance past that page, she set the magazine aside and returned her attention to the eleven o’clock news, which was reporting on the latest developments in the Kings Ridge tragedy. Details of the crime and of Dr. John Meacham’s life were continuing to emerge, but there was still no clear explanation for what the man had done. A physician murdering patients and staff in his office. People remained in shock and desperate for answers.
    She clicked off the television, picked up her magazine again, and had just finished the page when the bedroom door swung open. The President of the United States slipped inside, threw his jacket and power red tie over a chair, bent down, and kissed her on the forehead.
    One look at his tired eyes, gaunt face, and graying temples, and she felt compassion and the stirrings of forgiveness for the man she had vowed to love until death. Martin had been a rodeo jock in college, and it was his piercing blue eyes, powerfully set jaw, and cowboy good looks that had first attracted her to him. Then she came to know his droll wit, tenderness, and