Free The Intern: Chasing Murderers, Hookers, and Senators Across DC Wasn't In The Job Description by Dale Wiley Page B

I had to take care of it or nothing else would be done. I had to eat.
    I ordered room service in my Senator accent and told them to
put a rush on it. It was four o’clock, and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I
decided not to count the fat grams—my worrying would probably burn off those
calories pronto—and I went for the burger and the good stuff that came with it.
    While I waited, I considered how I would handle the other
thing which had been bothering me since that morning—my car. It was still in
the garage, and I wasn’t sure how much longer it would be safe. I flipped
through the channels, saw my face on three of them, and basically got the same
story; Good boy goes crazy and shoots everybody.
    The waiter knocked, and I told him to leave the cart by the
door and give himself a ten-dollar tip. He said, “Yes, sir,” and hoofed it down
the hall. I took a peek, saw no one watched, and pulled my lunch in. It smelled
like heaven on a bun, and I ate it in half a bite.
    While I was still eating, another news report came on. “The
evidence against Trent Norris just keeps on mounting. Police investigators
reported finding bullets matching the brand and caliber used to kill Gregory
Timmons and Roger Downing in a dumpster just two blocks from Norris’s Capitol
Hill apartment.
    “And in Arlington, Virginia, a pawn shop broker reported
selling a gun similar to the one which killed both men to a man matching
Norris’s description. Police have not shared any additional leads regarding his
whereabouts, saying only they have several strong tips.”
    The images rolled while the woman calmly convicted me: my
apartment building, police standing by the dumpster, photos of Roger and
Timmons, and the pawn shops. They all underscored my guilt. After the story,
they cut to a lighter story about a singing pig—it sounded more like humming to
me—and then to a laxative commercial. I turned the TV off, tried to put the
latest round of garbage out of my mind, and began seriously considering what I
was going to do with my car.
    I thought about driving it a few blocks away, getting out,
and leaving the thing running. It would be no time until some industrious
District resident would be piloting my car to points unknown. However, I was mainly
concerned with my car not being found, and I didn’t want to trust anything to
the competency of criminals I hadn’t even elected.
    Driving it into the Potomac and making it look like a
suicide sounded promising, until I realized I liked being me too much for that.
I had known from an early age I would never be cut out for the Witness
Protection Program, because you have to change your name and stuff and that
gets real inconvenient when you want to call in some old favor and score some
free tickets or something. I also wanted to clear my name, make my parents
happy again, and give the networks a better picture of me to run. So the faked
suicide was out.
    Plus, either of these options would involve me losing my car
permanently, something I obviously wanted to avoid if at all possible. It was
hard for me to think of abandoning it. I had driven it to Mardi Gras, to
Savannah for St. Patrick’s Day, and taken it on a hundred adventures. What I
wanted was to put it in a place where it wouldn’t be found by anyone.
    My best chance for this was the old license plate
switcheroo. I considered pulling my blue jeans and T-shirt out of hiding for
this occasion but remembered that regardless of where I ended up taking the car
I was still going to have to somehow get back into the hotel. And I’d be much
less conspicuous coming back in a suit than in a T-shirt. I decided to go with
that reasoning, fully understanding I would look much more unusual doing the
license plate switcheroo in business apparel.
    My shoulder still hurt, even though Howard had done a nice
job. I grimaced a couple of times getting back into my clothes, but it was much
better than it had been. I took the stairs down to the lobby and made