Split Second

The Ritter party had stayed over one night at the Fairmount. King had checked into the hotel along with Ritter's entourage. The records showed King had occupied room 304.

She made her way up the main staircase to the third floor. She didn't have a passkey, but she did have her lockpick kit and the door quickly yielded. The things a trained federal agent could do. She went inside, looked around and found nothing except what one would expect to find in such a place: a mess. She saw that there was a connecting door into the next room, 302. She went through and saw a room exactly like the one she'd just left.

Downstairs she was about to leave when a thought struck her. She went back to the office area and looked for the employee files. Unfortunately here she struck out. Thinking for a bit, she then checked her floor plan of the hotel, located the main housekeeping supply section and headed there. This room was large and filled with shelves, empty counters and a desk. Michelle looked through the desk and then checked a large file cabinet back against one wall. Here she found what she wanted: a clipboard with names and addresses of housekeeping employees on moldy, curled paper. Shetook the list with her and went back to the office to look for a phone book, but the only one she found was far out-of-date and therefore probably useless. Emerging into the darkness outside, she was surprised to realize she'd spent over two hours inside the hotel.

She checked into a motel and used the phone book in her room to check the names and addresses of the maids on the employee list against the phone book. She found three that still lived in the area-at the same addresses they had back then. She began calling. There was no answer at the first, and she left a message. At the other two the phone was picked up by the former maids. Michelle identified herself as a documentary filmmaker working on a project about political assassinations and conducting interviews with people familiar with the Ritter murder. Both women, surprisingly enough, said they'd be very happy to be part of such a film. Perhaps not so surprising, she reflected, for what else was there to do here? Michelle made appointments with both for the following day. Then she grabbed a quick dinner at a country-western roadside diner where three cowboy-hat-wearing dudes hit on her in the span of ten minutes. Vastly fed up by the time the third fellow made his pitch, she munched her cheeseburger with one hand, showed her gun with the other and watched as the would-be suitor fled. Oh, to be so popular. After dinner she spent a couple of hours in her room going over the questions she'd ask the women the next day. As she was doing so, the other former maid called back and also agreed to speak with her. As Michelle drifted off to sleep, she wondered where she was really heading with all this.

Outside Michelle's motel room, the old Buick, its muffler still rattling and its exhaust still noxious, pulled to a stop. The driver cut off the engine and sat there, his gaze fixed on the door to Michelle's room. So intense was his concentration that it appeared the man could see right through the walls, perhaps right into the mind of the young Secret Service agent.

Tomorrow promised to be an interesting day. He hadn't anticipated that Michelle Maxwell would come here to perform her own sort of investigation. Yet now that she had, it would have to be dealt with, delicately. He'd carefully constructed his list of targets and had no desire to add to that number injudiciously. However, plans did change as situations developed; whether Maxwell became a target remained to be seen.

There was a lot left to do, and a young inquisitive Secret Service agent could become a serious source of trouble. He debated whether to kill her right now, actually reaching down to the floorboard for his favored weapon of murder. As his fingers curled around the hard metal, he brooded on the matter further, and then his grip relaxed.

Too little preparation and too many potential complications would flow from her death right now. That was just not his way. So Michelle Maxwell would get to live another day. He put the Buick in gear and drove off.

16

The first two former Fairmont Hotel maids whom Michelle interviewed were not helpful. The assassination was the biggest thing that had ever happened in the town and in their lives, and in their discussions with "filmmaker" Michelle both women were prone to conjure all sorts of outlandish theories without being able to offer anything in the way of solid facts. Michelle listened politely and then left.