Chapter 12: Daniel Performs Madness Before the Senate Judiciary Committee

The invitation came on official Senate stationery, which Daniel thought showed a certain institutional confidence. The Select Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs was convening a closed-format hearing on presidential protection protocols — a procedural exercise, the kind of thing that generated three paragraphs in the back of the paper and a fourteen-minute C-SPAN segment nobody watched. The committee's ranking member, Senator Patricia Holloway of Vermont, had personally requested Daniel's testimony as a witness to the circumstances surrounding the assassination. As the President's son. As a grieving family member. As someone who had been present in those first hours.

As, the letter carefully phrased it, a voice the committee wished to honor.

Horatio read the letter twice and then set it on the kitchen table between them like something that might require disposal.