Absolute Power by David Baldacci

This was Baldacci’s first novel.  It centers around corruption of the worst kind at the highest office in the land.  A rich old man, who was responsible for putting the president in office, goes on vacation to Jamaica.  At the last minute, his wife decides to stay behind.  Her real reason is to bed the president, who is all too willing to cooperate.

A thief, who knows a maid at the rich man’s house, enters, quiets the alarm system and proceeds to the master bedroom where behind a mirror, is a room sized safe filled with money, jewels and collections.  But before he can leave, the president and the rich man’s wife enter the bedroom.  The thief is trapped in the safe and discovers that the mirror is a one-way window and watches the scene develop.

Both the woman and the president are drunk.  When he slaps the woman too hard, she hits back, this enrages the president and he begins to beat the woman.  She grabs a letter opener and slices his arm.  He yells and his secret service men burst into the room in time to see her on top with the letter opener poised to plunge into the man.  The secret service men kill the woman.

The president’s chief of staff enters the scene, gets the secret service men and the president out of the room.  She finds the letter opener and bags it and puts it in the top of her purse.  When the secret service men come back, she has them sanitize the room, removing all evidence that the president had been there.  While doing that, they knock over the purse, and the letter opener falls behind a table to the floor.

When they leave, the thief leaves the safe, grabs the bagged letter opener for future insurance and climbs out the window.  The chief of staff realizes she left her purse behind and the secret service men go back for it.  Only once they’re in the room, they see the open window and the rope the thief used to climb down.

They give chase but fail to catch the thief before he gets away.

The local homicide detective called-in when the local patrol sees the open window, notices impossible aspects of the case.  No fingerprints anywhere, not even of the victim or her husband.  The floor has been vacuumed, the woman checked for having had sex, and a blood spatter pattern that shows something or someone was near when she was shot – and two bullet holes in her head from different directions, one still inside her head and the other already dug out of the wall.