Elimination

Twenty-Eight

I’d planned to catch up on my other races in my room but I was too distracted by the idea of working with Karen Foster to concentrate, so I headed back to the office.

‘Katherine’s in your office,’ Donna said. ‘I told her it would be all right for her to wait for you in there.’

‘Of course.’

In her amber blouse and brown skirt, her blonde hair done in a shining ponytail, Katherine resembled her mother more than usual. It was an elegant look, without quite being disdainful. For once the melancholy in her usual gaze had been replaced with something walking right up to the edge of happiness.

‘I think I’ve come up with a really good idea, Dev.’

‘I’m sure you have. You have a lot of good ideas.’

‘I know you’re just saying that because you’re such a nice guy, but I’m serious.’

‘So am I. So tell me your idea.’

‘That we hold a support rally for my mom tomorrow night. A huge one. If we put everyone to work on it I think we can make it impressive.’

‘Now that’s a good idea.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yes. I want to get your mother out of her “resignation” mood.’

‘I don’t think she’s really serious about that. She’s a lot more serious about the divorce, I’m afraid.’

Katherine was giving me news that could make the campaign even more difficult. I tried not to pound my fist on the desk and start running around screaming.

A divorce?

‘I guess you hadn’t heard about it. The second I said it I regretted it. The look on your face.’

‘When did this start?’

She was talking past the hurt. The eyes were mournful once again but the voice remained purposeful. She was a grownup now. She knew how to fake it.

‘You know Dad has a new one.’

‘So I hear. I thought their marriage counselor had set them up pretty well.’

‘For almost two years. But then he met this intern at his lawyer’s office.’

‘Intern? How old is she?’

‘Twenty-three. She looks like Audrey Hepburn.’

‘Good for her.’

A deep breath. ‘Mom is convinced this one is for real.’

‘She didn’t think that about the other ones.’

‘No. I would never have put up with it, but she did. She even had a small fling herself once — she never told me who with — but she felt guilty about it. Even if Dad wasn’t faithful, she wanted to be. She just waited him out. And it always worked out well. He got tired of them. Mom even had it figured out mathematically. Fourteen weeks tops.’

‘Wow.’

‘She started telling me all this when I was fifteen. I hated him for it but I had to admit in a painful way it was sort of fascinating. Fourteen weeks. She’d tell me when he had a new one — she trained me to see the signs. And hear them. The only time I ever heard my father sing was when he was having an affair. It was so stupid. You’d think he’d be aware of something like that.’ A soft laugh. ‘He has a really terrible voice. And he always sang the same song. “Lost in Love.” The song is as bad as his voice. Really lame. Mom always wondered if he sang it to his girlfriends.’

‘So does he know about the divorce?’

‘Oh, yes. They scream about it every night. He doesn’t want it to happen.’

‘Has it occurred to him that he could give up Audrey baby?’

‘He says she’s not the point. He says it’s just another one of his flings. He keeps saying they should go back to the marriage counselor but she says it’s too late for that.’

‘How do you feel about it?’

Another deep sigh. ‘Crazy as it sounds, I don’t want them to get divorced. I just want him to remember his age and to act it. He has this “star” thing about himself and it can really get embarrassing.’ The smile managed to be dismissive and fond at the same time. ‘It’s like him wearing that black turtleneck for the interview. I wouldn’t have blamed that poor director if he’d shot my father.’

‘I think that crossed his mind.’

‘She won’t do anything about it until after the election, of course. Whatever she says otherwise, she wants to go back to Washington and stay there till she’s about a hundred and forty. You know she was so wealthy growing up that she didn’t value things. She had it all. Holding office is the only thing that she’s ever had to fight for.’

It was time to circle back. ‘I’ll get hold of Abby. She knows all the local people we’ll need to set up this rally. I think I’ll ask your mother if she’d agree to do a short live interview on the local news before the rally.’

‘That could be pretty grim for her.’

‘We need to fight back. We need to reassure the base that we haven’t given up.’ I’d automatically slipped into canned-speech land. But I needed to hear it myself. ‘We know that Cory Tucker is innocent. We know that somebody set him up and set us up. We know that the press has taken Showalter’s word for things without doing any serious investigating on their own.’

‘You’re right. I’ll talk to her about it, too.’

Her cell phone played a Mozart piece. She slipped it out of her small brown leather purse and checked the screen. ‘It’s Mom.’

‘You talk to her. I’ll walk over to Abby’s office and give her the heads-up.’

‘What if Mom says no to the rally and the interview?’

‘With you and me both working on her, what chance does she have?’

For just a moment, her smile redeemed all the woes of the world.

‘I like the way you think, Dev.’

Twenty-Nine

Karen Foster was cute, smart and late.

I finally asked to be seated because I wanted an isolated table and the tables were going quickly.

It was easy to tell that the main restaurant in the hotel had recently been redecorated. The faint odor of paint and sawn lumber was in the air in a few places. Dramatic black and red tables and chairs lent the place a boldness that took a while to get used to. The floor was equally dramatic with striking shafts of gray and red. The light sources were concealed in gleaming black boxes along the black linen-covered walls. I was either in an experimental art gallery or some kind of avant-garde spaceship. I wasn’t sure which.

Abby called on my cell phone. I’d left her a message about organizing the TV interview and the rally.

‘You don’t want much, do you?’

‘I really apologize. But I’m busy, too.’

‘I’m only teasing you. The rally is easy. I just called Jean Fellows and she’ll have the place packed with volunteers and their families. There’s a bandstand we can use. And as far as the TV interview, all three stations’ll want it. I’ll pick the one that’s been least hostile toward Jess.’

‘That sounds reasonable.’

‘I was hoping we’d do something like this. Ted told me that she will barely leave her office at home for food or bathroom privileges. He also said she won’t talk to him much.’

She needed to be aware of everything that was going on.

‘They’re getting a divorce.’

‘What? Where did you hear that?’

‘Katherine. In my office a while ago.’

‘Has Jess lost her mind? No wonder she won’t speak to him.’ Then, ‘It’s the new bimbo, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But he’s had so many in the past. What’s so special about this one? I mean, he’s always been a shitty husband. If they had a national competition for shitty husbands he’d be in the top three.’

‘Jess thinks he’s serious about this one.’

‘He’s serious about all of them.’

‘Fourteen weeks. Jess worked out the math.’

‘I wish he’d stick his dick in a light socket.’

‘He may already have done that. But she’ll wait till after the election.’

She paused before she said it. ‘We’re not going to win this one, are we?’

‘O ye of little faith.’

‘Whenever you get religious I know we’re in trouble.’

I kept thinking of Katherine’s sweet face; seeing it always tugged me back to my own daughter’s face over the years. I was old enough now to realize that I would die knowing that I’d cheated her out of my time and attention. I’d chosen the road over her. There was no way back. The most sacred relationship I’d ever had and I’d violated it. There were no windows in here to see the gathering dusk but, even unseen, it worked on me. I wanted to use one of my lie allotments on myself, convince myself that now it didn’t matter so much anymore because Sarah was about to be a new mother. But I knew better.

She came in quickly and captured many male gazes.

Tonight she presented herself in a becoming combination of blue blouse and gray skirt that fashionably favored her form. She also wore a look of anger.

A waiter tried to catch up with her but didn’t succeed. She had seated herself before he reached the table. ‘I haven’t been able to lose him.’

She wanted Scotch and soda and I wanted a refill on my coffee.

‘Who?’ She was spoiling the pleasure of enjoying her pert good looks.

‘Wade. The assistant chief of police.’

‘He’s following you?’

‘Showalter must have put him on me after I left the station today. I thought I’d lost him about half an hour ago. I ran him around in circles but somehow he found me again. That’s why I’m late — I was trying to lose him.’

‘What makes Showalter so suspicious of you?’

Instead of answering, she said, ‘There’s Wade.’

I don’t know what I expected, but whatever it was I didn’t get it. I must have assumed he was going to be the Showalter Marine type. Instead he was a pleasant-looking man in an inexpensive blue suit. He looked somewhat uncomfortable being in an upscale place like this.

‘Don’t let the next-door-neighbor act fool you, Dev.’

‘What act?’

‘Wade’s act. The friendly, helpful type. He’s the sharpest detective on the force and the best interrogator because he’s so quiet and polite. I enjoy watching him work. It’s like watching a great athlete.’

‘You like him?’

‘Let’s say I understand him. His grandfather and his father were both police chiefs here. He was supposed to be next. But the city council got all hot on Showalter when he sent in his app. Looked macho in the Marine uniform. They wanted Clint Eastwood.’

‘But Wade stayed on?’

‘I don’t know Wade that well — nobody does except his wife — but my sense of things is that he’s just waiting for Showalter to screw up. Then the job’ll be his.’

‘But he’s following you.’

‘He’s doing what Showalter tells him to. He’s very careful to be respectful to Showalter. When the council does turn on Showalter — and three of the six who voted for him now have second thoughts — Wade doesn’t want it to look as if he was anything but professional with Showalter.’

‘But again, he’s following you.’

She grinned with cute little white teeth. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’

When her Scotch came she drank half of it right off.

‘I’m not really a drunk.’ Then, ‘I’m wondering if Showalter somehow found out who I really am. Maybe that’s why Wade is following me.’

‘Who you really are? I’m shocked you’ve been holding out on me.’

‘Sure you are. And I’m shocked that you haven’t admitted that we’re both looking for the same recorder.’

‘How do you know about the recorder?’

A little more Scotch.

‘There are six of them in Showalter’s little group. I put an electronic device on one of their cars. They tavern hop a lot. And talk a lot.’ Then, ‘There were only four of them in the group when Showalter was in Peoria several years ago. One of them was my stepbrother.’

‘Now we’re getting to why you hate Showalter.’

She shrugged her slender shoulders and stared at the hands she’d folded on the table.

‘I don’t blame Showalter for recruiting Denny into his little group of cops. Denny had always been a bad cop. Beating up people. Ripping off drug dealers. He might even have tried a little blackmail.’

‘I can’t see why you liked him so much.’

‘I didn’t. But Showalter killed him and I promised my stepfather that I’d prove it someday. My own father was a miserable drunk. He used to pound on my mother two or three times a month. He hit her so hard one time that she permanently lost hearing in one ear and later on he beat her again so badly that she now has a limp. We finally ran away one night — to a small town in Colorado — and he was never able to find us. Then my mom met a policeman, Don Sheridan, and married him. He was the finest man — finest person besides my mother — I’ve ever met. My real father was a surgeon so we never had the creature comforts he’d given us, but from the time I was eleven I considered Don my real father.

‘I knew I needed to get into Showalter’s police department, so I joined a force in Montana and worked there for three years. In addition to that, I’d gone to college back east for four years so I wasn’t well known in the area anymore. I had a hacker help me create a different background for myself. It all worked out, even though it was a long shot. I just kept thinking of Don.

‘He could have had a happy life with my mother except he was saddled with Denny. There was something missing in my stepbrother. I didn’t learn until later on that it was called sociopathology. Whatever was good for Denny was good for the world. That’s how he thought and lived. He was four years older than me and didn’t like me at all. I think he was jealous of how much Don loved me. He could have turned that around. Don really loved him but Denny had broken his heart so many times by stealing from him, piling up his car and beating kids up. Denny scared me — his temper, I mean.

‘Right out of high school, Denny went into the Marines. Don had hopes they’d turn Denny into the son he’d always wanted. But when he came out he was even worse. He had a real swagger then and his temper was probably twice as bad as it had been. We were living in Peoria then and that was how Denny met Showalter. Oh, I forgot to mention that Denny was a real racist when he got out of the service. He had connections to all these groups. He was always telling Don about them, trying to get him to go to some of these meetings, but Don never would. He wasn’t like that.

‘Showalter told Denny he wanted to build some kind of compound so three of them started robbing banks in other parts of the state.’

‘Including Showalter?’

‘Of course not. He wanted to give them the “privilege” of serving the cause by themselves. They raised a fair amount of money. That’s where Showalter got involved. He “guarded” the money for them. It was a lie, of course. His whole thing with the racism and the compound was just a ruse to get them to collect money for him. They had close to three hundred thousand dollars when two of them got shot and killed during a robbery.’

‘Was Denny along?’

‘Yes. But he got away. Showalter said that they needed to lay low for a while. One day Denny asked him about the money and the compound. Denny was pretty sharp about most things but he hadn’t figured out that Showalter was a con artist. Until that day. Showalter planted some of the robbery money in his apartment and then claimed that he’d confronted Denny about it and Denny had drawn his weapon. Showalter didn’t have any choice but to kill him. That was the story he gave, anyway. It made the national news, then he got invited to this big police convention. I guess the speech he gave about dishonest cops was pretty good stuff. He even got interviewed on 60 Minutes.’

‘How did you learn about all this?’

‘Denny told Don about it a few days before he was killed. Don said Denny didn’t regret anything — not about the racist group or robbing banks, not even the bank teller who’d been shot pretty badly by one of the other men. He just wanted Don to know the truth. He said if he was killed it would be by Showalter. Don had to figure out some of it by himself after Denny died, but I’m sure he was right.’

‘So what did Don do?’

‘Went to the DA. But the DA said that given Denny’s history and the fact that the only person making these claims was Denny’s father...’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You think Showalter’s running the same scam here?’

‘Maybe if we can ever find that recorder we’ll know for sure. But my guess would be yes. Dave Fletcher was perfect for him. He wanted somebody to follow, to believe in. Showalter knows how to play the role. But he didn’t bet on Dave making a recording.’

My eyes shifted to Wade across the way. He had been watching us then quickly looked away.

‘Now do I get to know about Grimes?’

I smiled. ‘Yeah, what the hell.’

I spent a few minutes bringing her up to date: how Cindy had called me, how Grimes had scoped me out and how he claimed at first that he’d suffered a head wound for no apparent reason. And then he’d told me more about Dave Fletcher and the recorder.

The food was good and we relaxed enough to talk about our lives. I probably told a few more stories about my daughter Sarah than I needed to and she probably told a few more tales about her twice-married and very glamorous sister, but I liked her and I sensed she liked me. And I was touched by her relationship with her stepfather. Nailing Showalter was a holy quest for her; she managed not to sound deranged about it. The few people I’d known who were shaping their lives around vengeance had sometimes turned out to be as dangerous as the people they were chasing. But it was pretty difficult to argue with her. Not all dirty cops are menaces to the society they pretend to serve. They’re dishonorable, but taking a few bucks here and there is just the kind of capitalism Wall Street practices. Unfortunately Showalter was the worst kind of cop and needed to be brought down.

‘I’d like to talk to Grimes again. Want to come along?’

‘What about my friend Wade over there? He’ll follow me.’

‘Yeah. But I know a way to shake him.’

Leaning on my army days again, I told her how my first boss, a colonel, had outlined a way to lose a tail. You needed yourself and a cohort to do it.

‘Pretty slick, Dev. As long as Wade doesn’t figure it out.’

‘Worth a try.’

‘You know something?’ Karen said. ‘I’ve really enjoyed this, thanks.’

Thirty

The trick was simple enough.

As we were leaving the restaurant, we agreed on a meeting point, a pharmacy in a strip mall near the constituency office. I’d been in there once and knew that there was an alley behind it.

I got there a few minutes before she did and pulled up next to the back door of the place. It didn’t take long. She came hurrying out the door and climbed into the car, leaving Wade sitting across the street from the front of the pharmacy, waiting for her.

Grimes’s house was once again dark.

A full moon outlined it, doing it no favors.

Even bathed in gold the stark shambles were as ugly as ever. Urban gothic. His Ford was not out front.

We agreed that she’d knock on the front door while I walked around back.

The Ford wasn’t parked on the narrow patch of gravel in back, either.

The neighborhood was quiet. No teenagers driving up and down. No music shaking the stars. No shouts from arguing couples. Her knocks were sharp as gunshots.

A tomcat on the grass behind me got all operatic for half a minute and the smell of an overflowing garbage can made me wince.

The back door was unlocked so it was at this point that I brought out my Glock. Grimes’s religion was paranoia. There was no way he would have left the back door unlocked.

I walked to the front door and let Karen in. Even in the shadows I could see that her Glock was also drawn.

I remembered the American flag table lamp on the end table next to the couch.

I called out, ‘Grimes? It’s Dev Conrad.’

I started checking the house out room by room. None of them gave any indication that there had been trouble. No blood. Nothing knocked over or smashed.

Each room was a museum. The huge TV console with the ten-inch screen in the spare room. The record albums in the living room by Stevie Wonder and Derek and the Dominos and Fleetwood Mac. The closet with two tie-dyed shirts and a pair of red-and-blue-whirled bell bottoms.

The basement smelled from age and disrepair. The floor and the walls were wet and moisture had seeped into the stacks of magazines and newspapers that marked him as a hoarder of some kind.

When we got back upstairs the phone shrieked in the silence. I walked over to it and picked up.

‘Who’s this?’

‘Dev Conrad, Cindy.’

‘Oh — oh, God, Dev. I didn’t recognize your voice and it scared me. How come Granddad didn’t answer?’

‘He’s not here.’

She needed to prepare herself for what she said next. ‘He has Dave’s recorder. He told me that tonight on the phone. Dave gave it to him because he was scared to keep it himself. And this is how crazy he is now. He said he’s going to sell it to Showalter. He said it’s his turn to have some money.’ Finally, she was able to say, shakily, ‘I told him not to do it.’

‘Showalter will kill him.’

‘I told him the same thing. But he said he’d made a deal with them. They were going to pay him a hundred thousand dollars for it and once he got the cash he would tell them where to find it. He wouldn’t listen to me. You know how stubborn he is.’

‘I’ll do my best to find him before it’s too late, Cindy. I’ll call you later.’

After I hung up, Karen said, ‘I could hear pretty much everything. I could almost feel sorry for him. But greed’s making him stupid.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘imagine that. Greed making somebody stupid.’

Then we got out of there.

Thirty-One

‘Be weird if somebody killed her tonight.’

I suppose at most other times he would have irritated, if not enraged me. A woman is shot at and you show up to see if maybe tonight the shooter will return and get lucky.

But most people there were thinking that. Most, being decent prairie people, were hoping that wouldn’t be the case. They worried about it.

I couldn’t judge this man’s intentions for saying that. Certainly there were some at the rally who wouldn’t have minded seeing it happen. They’d turned out to boo and ridicule her. They’d come to support Dorsey. Others just wanted some excitement, the kind you could talk about to your grandkids. Oh, yes, kids, I was there the night that congresswoman got killed. Two shots. One in the head and one in the chest. Never forget anything like that no matter how old you get.

So all I said was, ‘Yeah, but the odds are against it.’

Something in my tone must have alerted him to my disapproval of what he’d said.

‘Hey, I don’t want to see it. I’m just saying.’

‘I know, I know.’

He was a young husband — not even thirty, probably. Bears cap and sad start on a goatee, standing next to an even younger wife. Her holding the blue-blanketed infant, a four- or five-year-old girl clinging to him.

I nodded and moved away.

He’d had no idea who I was but we live in the land of paranoia. In the case that Jess actually was assassinated he’d probably feel guilty. And if he didn’t, his wife would remind him of his words and then he’d be obliged to at least fake feeling guilty. When he’d spoken his wife had frowned and hugged her infant even tighter.

It was colder than I would have liked. I’d been hoping for five, six hundred people. We’d gotten four at most. Thirty-five degrees is a little chilly for many people.

The setting was a large city park with a bandstand. When Jess appeared that was where she’d be when she addressed the crowd.

I counted eighteen uniforms from three different groups. Local, state and a security firm Ted had personally hired. They split up, checking out the crowd, the wooded area and the area near the parking lot. A lean, mean man in a tan uniform and a heavy vest stood on the bandstand, carefully surveying the crowd and the wooded area to the left. Though the AK-47 was the weapon of choice these days, his was an M-16. A bit old-fashioned, but God help you if you ever caught a bullet from one.

There were fifteen minutes to go before Jess appeared.

A nice-looking young black TV reporter and her heavyset white cameraman knew who I was and trapped me between a wedge of crowd and the left side of the bandstand.

‘Susan Harrison, Channel 4, Mr Conrad.’

I knew who she was. She’d been assigned to Jess since the staged shooting scenario had surfaced. She was one of those reporters who was a master at sounding friendly and accusatory at the same time. There’s a special place in hell for these people.

With the camera rolling, she said, ‘Everybody’s asking if the congresswoman is nervous about coming here tonight. Who would know better than her campaign manager, Dev Conrad?’

‘We’re all a little on edge, Susan. I think that’s only natural.’

‘Some people say she has nothing to be nervous about if the shooting the other night was staged.’

‘Well, some people think the earth is flat. That theory has yet to be proved.’

‘One of your volunteers has been arrested for staging it.’

‘He’s been arrested but that doesn’t mean he’s done it.’

‘Are you saying he’s innocent?’

‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying.’

She couldn’t keep the pleasure out of her appealing gaze. She’d gotten exactly the kind of sound bite that would play well at ten o’clock. She’d forced the campaign on the defensive. When you did that you always made the target sound guilty.

‘Well, I join everybody here and at home, Mr Conrad, in hoping that there are no problems for the congresswoman tonight and that everything goes smoothly, whether the other night was staged or not.’

If I’d known where her car was I would have torched it.

For the past twenty minutes Abby had been working the crowd, trying to get them to volunteer for knocking on doors and working the phones at campaign headquarters. She wore a cheery red coat, cut quite fine, and looked damned appealing in it.

Now she stood next to me, the carnal scent of her perfume mixing with the silver of her breath.

‘Well, if they actually come through, I got eight phone people and nine door knockers.’

‘I’d say that’s a very good night.’

‘If they come through. That’s always the problem.’

The brass band came from nowhere. Six older gents in heavy winter jackets and straw hats climbed the bandstand steps and played a Dixieland piece that cleaned your ears. The noise and the cold brought back memories of high-school football games on Friday nights. Ever the athlete, I sat in the stands and smoked Winstons. The music was welcome, giving the freezing crowd new energy.

I heard sudden noise behind me. A small caravan had pulled into the parking lot. Jess had arrived, escorted by three police cars with flashing red lights painting the surroundings.

The officers brought her to the bandstand in a formal way the other side would make fun of. She was lost inside six bear-sized police officers. They marched her to the bandstand and up the steps. The lean, mean sharpshooter with the M-16 managed to look even leaner and meaner.

A man was testing the stand-up microphone. It screeched a few times but the sound was mostly lost in the music of the brass band.

Jess waved and smiled. She wore a severely tailored dark blue coat. She always worried about looking too good — as did every campaign runner she’d ever had — so tonight she’d gone easy on the makeup. The face was a little wan and the dark lines under the eyes suggested concern. I wondered if they were real or if Ted had convinced his makeup person to put them on. Whichever, they were a nice touch.

Now both the band and the applause battled the air for dominance.

I saw the cheeks of women and a few men that glistened with tears.

I saw hands holding up the kind of lighted candles people use at rock concerts.

I saw a huge sign unfurl that read: JESS BRADSHAW FOR PRESIDENT!

She modestly waved for all the celebrating to stop. And then she began.

She did not play to the other night at first. She relied on a version of her stump speech. The issues we faced, the way she wanted to help lead the country, the terrible ways Dorsey wanted to change America. It was her version of a State of the Union address and like that increasingly hollow speech it was contrived for audience participation. Every fourth line got applause. The newsbites would show the genuine enthusiasm she inspired. Not that there weren’t a few boos from a small group at the back. A new sign had appeared in their midst: WE WANT OUR COUNTRY BACK, BRADSHAW. At least they weren’t waving any guns. Small mercies in this era of a Supreme Court bent on turning us into Beirut.

The sudden silence from Jess certainly got everybody’s attention. She spent a few seconds shifting positions slightly, then turned her head so she could clear her throat.

‘I’m sure you’ve been waiting for me to speak to the accusation that the shots fired at me the other night were part of some conspiracy to win this election. I think that those of you who’ve followed my time in the State House and later in the United States Congress trust me enough to know that I would never under any circumstances be part of anything so deceitful. I know I’m in a tough race — the toughest of my career as a public servant.’

The applause was loud enough to sway trees and crack windows.

But she waved it down. ‘I really appreciate your support and faith in me. But this is difficult — painful — for me to talk about, so I’d really appreciate it if you’d just let me finish.’

She paused once again.

‘One of my volunteers has been arrested for setting up the shooting. The police claim that they found the rifle in the trunk of his car. I don’t know Cory Tucker well but the people in my campaign who do assure me that he’s a very intelligent, honest, hardworking young man who’d never do anything like this.

‘The important word in what I just said is “intelligent.” If you were to fake a shooting like this you would have to be very stupid to think you’d get away with it. Law enforcement would see through it pretty quickly, and they have.’

These would be, as she’d told me when I suggested admitting that the assassination attempt had been, in fact, contrived, the most difficult words to speak. Wouldn’t admitting that the incident had been a fraud simply sound like a confession?

‘What I’m saying is that somebody did stage this assassination attempt and staged it in such a way that it would clearly be exposed as a fake — and then planted the rifle in Cory Tucker’s trunk so it would appear that we concocted the whole thing ourselves.’

This time she did not try to stop the applause.

I knew how afraid she was now. I was anxious myself. Those who’d doubted us would cry that we’d come up with this pathetic spy-novel conspiracy story to save ourselves now that everybody knew we were liars. Dorsey would use Showalter to discredit Jess’s words and I doubted that more than one or two on the task force would speak up on her behalf. But I’d also suggested one more thing to say.

‘I’m asking the United States Justice Department to launch an investigation into this attempt to destroy not only my campaign but the life of a very decent young man who is now in great jeopardy.’

She didn’t try to stanch the applause this time either. The boos and shouts were correspondingly louder as well.

Admitting that the assassination attempt had been staged and then calling for a federal investigation to be launched at least demonstrated to our admirers and our detractors that we were eager to fight back.

It was just then that two gunshots cracked through the air. Shouts. Screams. Two state policemen grabbed Jess and rushed her down the stairs.

Some in the crowd were frozen in place. Some gaped and moved around. Some sobbed and grabbed their loved ones. Some rushed to their cars.

They hadn’t been gunshots, of course. They’d been the kind of firecrackers designed to scare folks into believing they were gunshots.

A state officer was now reassuring the crowd that the congresswoman was safe, number one, and, number two, that somebody who would soon be found had set off two firecrackers.

As a matter of fact, another state man dragging a skinny man in a dirty white shirt way too thin for the temperature appeared and basically flung the man into the arms of another state man. Out came the cuffs and a violent shove in the direction of the state police cars.

Now that I could see him in some detail he resembled a poster icon for meth addicts. Even from a distance I could see that the cheeks had caved in and that the eyes had the zombie look that could frighten even old pros. He was screaming: ‘I was just foolin’ around! I was just foolin’ around!’

A half-ass DA could make the case that he had endangered lives in several ways, not least by risking the health of the elderly present tonight. People with heart problems could suffer an attack or even death.

But forget the half-ass mythical DA. I was worried as a campaign manager that this sad, crazed creature had stepped on our message tonight. Would the TV news spend more time on the screaming, terrified crowd than they would on the message we’d carefully crafted over the phone ninety minutes before Jess left the house to come here? We’d thrown out the speech we’d planned and decided that while it was all right to complain that we’d been set up, doing that risked turning Jess into a whiner. Invoking the Justice Department showed that we not only proclaimed innocence, we demanded that it be proven.

The hitch of course, which both Dorsey and the smarter reporters would point out, was that getting the Justice Department interested would likely take some time — if they ever got interested at all. But now we were on the offensive and making at least some average citizens wonder if Dorsey and his associates might not be behind this.

When Jess returned to the microphone it was easy to tell in her voice and posture that the firecrackers had shaken her.

‘I remember when Bobby Kennedy said not long before his assassination that if they wanted to kill you, they would. I’m beginning to see what he meant.’ She was recovering quickly. ‘Now it’s family time, everybody. Time to get home on a cold night like this one. And if you don’t have a family, I hope you at least have a cat or a dog.’ Laughter. ‘Over the years my cats have given me a lot of comfort.’ Then, in a gush, ‘Thank you so much for coming here tonight. Even those of you in the back who don’t like me — I thank you, too. Standing around in the cold listening to me — well, there are a lot better things to do than that.’

More affectionate laughter. No boos this time.

‘Good night, everybody. Stay safe!’

She walked inside the bears again. The sharpshooter on the bandstand redoubled his stance and his scan of every inch of ground his eyes were capable of assessing.

Then Jess was in the police caravan and headed back to the family manse.

Abby was beside me now. ‘I can’t believe how well this went. Except for the firecrackers, I mean. I hope they put him in a cell with a homicidal maniac.’

‘I’ll bet you didn’t learn that from the nuns.’

‘You’d be surprised what I learned at Catholic school.’

‘I probably would be.’

She laid her head against my arm. ‘God, we’ve worked so hard on this one. And it all just came crashing down.’

‘It’s not over yet. And the press should be having sex, they’re so happy with tonight.’ I didn’t mention the possibility that they’d let the firecrackers overwhelm the message. Then, ‘Feel like getting a drink?’

‘I wish I could.’ Abby was sliding away from me now. ‘But I have an actual date.’

‘Well, it was bound to happen to one of us.’ I leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Good luck, Abby. It’s your turn.’

Not too long after I was in my hotel room in my boxers and T-shirt, checking out my other campaigns. My phone rang just before eleven o’clock. Karen Foster.

‘I hope I didn’t wake you up.’

‘I’m glad to hear your voice.’

‘Well, I’m glad to hear yours. So there.’

‘You home?’

‘Yep, and in my jammies watching Jimmy Fallon.’ Then, ‘I wanted to invite you for dinner tomorrow.’

‘Well, thank you. I look forward to it.’

‘I have to tell you I’ve had a number of bad relationships in my life so I’m kind of nervous about putting myself out there again, but you seem like a very nice guy.’

‘I don’t know about that, but I like it when we’re together. I’m not only attracted to you, I admire you. You’re another very rare species of human being.’

‘Yeah? What’s that?’

‘A tough cookie. You’re going to get Showalter no matter what.’

‘I didn’t do a very good job when he murdered my stepbrother.’

‘He’s smart and he’s ruthless and he protects himself with his badge. That makes him a difficult target.’

‘Maybe with both of us working on it—’ She yawned. And laughed. ‘I’ve learned that to get a man in the proper mood for seduction, yawning really works.’

‘No argument here. Just the one yawn and I started tearing my clothes off right away.’

‘Well, I don’t want to get you worked up any more than you already are, so I’ll just say goodnight. Oh, let me give you my address and landline number. Let’s say seven o’clock.’

She might not have wanted me to get worked up, but worked up I was. I had a very nice wild dream about her. About us.

Thirty-Two

There were two press conferences in the morning.

Mike Edelstein had invited a print reporter and two TV teams to our campaign office where he sat behind a long table with a slender, middle-aged bald man in a blue button-down shirt. This, Edelstein said, was Tim Rosencrantz from Chicago, who had testified in numerous trials as a lock-and-key forensics expert.

He’d told me yesterday about this presentation. I had to admit that I’d never heard of a lock-and-key forensics expert. Few in the home audience would have either, making Mr Rosencrantz all the more interesting.

That morning he briefly set the scene, recalling the night of the gunshots and the police discovery of the rifle in Cory Tucker’s trunk.

Edelstein said, ‘The police claim that Cory Tucker’s trunk lock had not been tampered with. This was supposed to mean, I guess, that there was no chance that the rifle had been planted in his car trunk. I found this conclusion to be rash and reckless, so I consulted with Mr Rosencrantz here. I’ll let him take it from here.’

Rosencrantz had duplicated the exact kind of lock Cory had on his trunk. He held it in his hand and turned it over and over slowly so the cameras could get good shots of it.

He then took out a presentation folder that had large drawings of the lock. He flipped through them as he spoke. ‘If a person doesn’t understand how to examine a lock in detail he can easily conclude that it hasn’t been picked. Picking tools are usually made out of aluminum or iron or steel and are very thin. But thin as they are — and as competent as the lock pick may be — the pick and the tension of opening the lock leave marks such as gouges and scratches. You need somebody familiar with lock-and-key forensics to determine this.’

Rosencrantz had flipped through the drawings as he’d spoken. Damn, he was good. Edelstein was a believer in shorter-is-better. Rosencrantz spoke only one time and then it was back to Mike.

‘Since Chief Showalter was so eager to claim that Cory Tucker’s trunk lock had not been tampered with I ask him now — publicly — to let our expert examine the lock with the chief and a few of his officers in attendance. He can always say wait until the run-up to the trial when he has to turn all evidence over to us. But I say in the interest of fairness let us do it right now, and I believe this will make it clear that there will be no need for a trial. That Cory Tucker was set up. That somebody from the opposing side of this election planted that rifle in his trunk.’

Edelstein had laughed about this being a ‘suicide run.’ Jess had all but accused Dorsey of setting up the entire staged shooting, and now Mike had just directly alluded to the ‘opposing side.’ The public was either going to buy our act or not. All we needed was half of them.

The war was on and I was enjoying the hell out of it once again.

Jess’s press conference was longer.

She was in the public room of a Methodist church where a group of Iraq and Afghanistan vets met every Monday and Friday. By now Americans have seen so many injured vets that for the most part the shock of seeing a man or woman without legs or arms has lessened somewhat. Somewhat. But then there is the man whose face has been burned into a horrific mask. Or the woman whose lips are little more than slits. Or the man who shakes every five minutes or so as if he’s having a seizure. The shock of seeing these people has not lessened at all.

We’d fashioned a good standard speech for Jess about the plight of our vets. You can get too angry or sentimental and dull the impact of the issue. After allowing for outrage, we went to statistics and biography. We told the stories of two typical National Guard soldiers who had been drafted into war for three tours. One man, one woman. From right here in Illinois. Both of them wounded on their final tour.

Jason Lindberg lost both of his legs in Afghanistan. The Veterans Administration did well by him at first. The surgery had gone as well as could be expected. The rehab program had also been helpful. What lagged was treatment for his mental issues. Both he and his wife pleaded for help but the only psychologists available were scheduled months out. Eighteen months after his return home Jason swallowed half a bottle of prescription antidepressants and died. His wife Jan was at work and returned to find him dead in his wheelchair.

Caitlin Scalise was a divorced woman who had been in the guard since college. After being shot in the chest three times she learned through surgery that her heart was not functioning properly. The paperwork delays were so extreme she died of a heart attack before the VA scheduled her for an appointment.

‘I don’t want to belong to a party that votes against increasing financial help for our veterans. And I’m sure none of my friends here do either.’

You can’t miss with cops, soldiers or nuns standing behind you when you’re speaking. I once suggested to an especially randy client of mine that he should have all the hookers he’d paid for over the years behind him. He was not greatly amused but then neither was I. In the middle of a close campaign (his aide had told me this) he’d spent two hours in a massage parlor that all but promised ‘happy endings’ right on the front window. A wise, wise man.

The four reporters present were nice enough to ask Jess how she would remedy this terrible situation. Oddly enough, she had a few points prepared. All it lacked was some patriotic music and a couple hundred people saluting the flag.

Two very nice scores for us.

Cindy Fletcher called just as I was leaving for lunch.

‘When Marie got home this morning she said she was sure somebody had gotten in here between the time I left for work and she got home. I left work so I could look things over.’

Marie worked the night shift at the hospital where Cindy worked the day shift. Marie’s was now her hiding place.

‘What makes her think so?’

‘Well, for one thing it rained last night and the ground around the stairs — she lives in the upper apartment — was real muddy. There’s a muddy footprint just outside her door. And the rubber mat she has outside the door shows where mud was wiped off. There’s a — what’s the word? — imprint of a man’s shoe on the mat. A very large imprint. Inside on the living-room rug there’s a little piece of mud, and there’s one in the little room where I’m staying too. Like he didn’t get all the mud off but didn’t realize it.

‘My room’s tiny. It’s only got a small closet and a single bed and a window. I keep my suitcase in the closet but when she got home it was on my bed and open. And like I said — a small piece of mud on the floor there, too.’

‘They think you have the recorder.’

‘I wish I did. I’d give it to them and get this over with. I just want Granddad to be safe.’

‘They’ve focused on Grimes and you.’

‘Like I said, I just want it over with. I don’t even care about it anymore. I wish Dave hadn’t recorded anything.’

I thought of Karen Foster. Only with the recorder could she bring down Showalter. The recorder would give her justice and the recorder would tell me who had ordered the staged assassination attempt. We both had urgent reasons to find it.

‘It really scares me — somebody coming in here like that. Like they could do it any time they want to. Marie’s probably thinking twice now about having me stay here. I’ll probably have to start looking for someplace else to stay now.’

‘I’ll handle that.’

‘Marie’s over at her cousin’s. She just wanted to get out of here. And I can’t say I blame her.’

She was upset enough that my words hadn’t seemed to register.

‘I’ll find a place for you, Cindy. It’s probably a good idea for you to get out of there, too.’

‘I need to get back to work, anyway.’

‘Good. By mid-afternoon I’ll have a place for you to stay.’

‘I appreciate all your help, Dev.’

‘I’m being selfish, Cindy. If the recorder proves that Dorsey was involved in the staged shooting, we’ve cleared Jess’s name and won the campaign.’

‘Be selfish all you want. Just keep me safe.’

‘I’ll do my best.’ But even as I spoke the words I knew I should have played Papa Bear. Sounded confident, even certain. ‘You’re going to be fine. And we’re going to get that recorder.’

‘God, I’m so glad you said that, Dev. Thank you so much.’

The rain started around three that afternoon — one of those blinding downpours that diminished spirits and grayed out a face even as vivid as Abby’s.

Jean Fellows had arranged to house Cindy for a few days with the proviso that she had an entire season of Downton Abbey and would permit only that to decorate her screen when she got home after work. If Cindy didn’t like that, ‘She can read the National Enquirer or something.’ The slashing rain hadn’t done much for Jean’s mood, either. She’d intended her remark as a joke, but there had been an edge to it.

The Dorsey campaign had fielded a new theme: ‘Trust is all that matters.’ I had the radio on so I could hear the first two spots they were running. Nothing surprising and the same kind of thing we’d have done in Dorsey’s position.

I had the teenage notion that Karen Foster would surprise me with a phone call. A little reminder of what was on the menu tonight and how she hoped I was as happy in my anticipation as she was. I kept glancing at the clock on my desk. I even called it a dirty name once. I was far too mature to give it the finger.

The day ended with some new internal numbers that were not quite as bad as I’d feared they’d be. According to our own people we were now four points behind. We had another debate to go and Dorsey’s campaign always had to fear that he would say something intemperate, such as (this was one of his best) unwed teenage mothers should have to register in order to bring back ‘shame’ into our society. ‘Shame’ would make our culture what it used to be, he said. He was probably right. The Salem Witch Trials certainly worked pretty well with shame propelling them.

By the time I drove back to my hotel the rain was little more than a drizzle but the sky was a roiling blackish-gray and the sound of thunder was steady and ominous.

I did fifty pushups, shaved again, showered and put on a fresh white T-shirt, a tan V-neck sweater and a pair of brown trousers. An actual date and I was excited about it. My daughter Sarah would be, too, when I emailed her the results. She wanted me to be married again. She was convinced that in wedded bliss I would be able to answer all the cosmic questions and riddles that had beleaguered mankind for millions of years. But with a fifty-percent divorce rate in this country, wedded bliss sure eluded a lot of couples.

Thirty-Three

Karen lived in a small New England-style cottage hidden behind a long hedge and surrounded by enormous oak trees. The address was clearly marked on a country-style mailbox out front, or I might not have been able to find it.

By now the downpour had returned. My wipers sliced back and forth as I followed the narrow concrete drive that ended adjacent to the house.

Light poured from the front window, welcoming given the rain pounding on my rental and the spider-legged lightning I saw in the distance.

As I passed the lone front window I glanced inside. Cozy. Tan carpeting, earth-toned walls and furnishings. A very small fireplace glowed as flame engulfed timber.

No sign of Karen.

I probably knocked harder than I needed to but when there was no response I assumed that she still hadn’t heard me. Then I saw a tiny button of a doorbell and pushed it. I heard the sound peal inside. For no particular reason I stepped back over to the front window and looked in again. I really wanted to see her. But I didn’t. I tried the bell again and again but got no response. I opened the exterior glass door and knocked hard on the wooden interior one. And the force of my knock pushed it back so that all I had to do was step inside.

‘Karen! It’s me, Dev!’

I stepped up over the threshold and called out again.

A certain kind of emptiness has a feel, a wrong feel. The lights, the fire, the unlocked door. She should have been in front of me by now. Maybe we should have even been making out a little, striking the start of our own kind of fire to get us through this drenched night that would be clogging up sewers and flooding the streets all too soon.

The wrong kind of emptiness. I started moving through the house.

As adult and occasionally fierce as she was, there was a gentleness to the decor that touched me. The large bedroom sheltered fanciful stuffed creatures of many kinds; the kitchen was bright and happy with framed drawings from Victorian-era children’s books. I recognized them because my wife and daughter had loved them, too. No signs of a dinner being prepared.

She’d fashioned herself an office in the smallest room. Desk, computer and bookshelves filled with mysteries and a few romance novels. The desk lamp still shone, lending a noirish shadow to everything else.

There was a back porch. In the shadows I could see return cartons of Diet Pepsi cans. A pair of skis. I flipped on the light and checked for any traces of struggle. None. There was no garage. There was also no car. Lights on, fire going, desk lamp burning and car gone.

The wrong kind of emptiness.

I reversed my course and went back through the house room by room in case I’d missed some explanation of what may have happened to her.

But nothing.

I closed and locked the front door and walked out to my car to retrieve the flashlight. I spent the next ten minutes searching the grounds. The onslaught of rain didn’t bother me much. She took precedence over the weather.

I wanted this to be a TV episode of a crime show. Man searching in the downpour for at least one clue to the disappearance of a missing woman. In my investigator days I was usually able to formulate an alternate plan when I ran out of ideas. The problem was that I didn’t know anybody who knew her. Showalter would never tell me about her day, where she’d gone, what she’d done. As much as she wanted to put Showalter in prison — or on death row — she still had to report to him. So he wouldn’t have any trouble finding her if he’d decided to end their professional relationship violently.

Then I remembered Bromfield and the cop bar.

They didn’t look any happier to see me than they had the other night.

In fact, when Henry saw me he reached down, grabbed his ball bat and set it right on the bar so I’d be sure to see it. He made sure to pop his biceps.

The scene was the same, too. Girlfriends and groupies and the younger cops; the more sedate married pairs. The ones who stared at me the longest were the loners. I didn’t see Bromfield.

‘Get out,’ Henry said as I approached the bar.

‘I was wondering if I’d find Showalter in here.’

‘You got big hairy ones, I’ve got to give you that. ’Course, they may not be attached to your body much longer once I get through with this bat.’

I tried to make my scan of the place casual. I didn’t see Bromfield anywhere. Then he pulled a Clint Eastwood. He shoved the bat across the bar and into my chest. ‘Now get the hell out of here.’

He had now gotten the attention he wanted. We were in another D-minus Western movie written and directed by Henry. And starring Henry as well.

A semicircle of aftershave- and cologne-wearing off-duty cops and a bully boy with a bat glaring at me.

To my right, I saw the door of the office in back open up. I heard ‘Your turn to deal, Stan.’ And then I saw Bromfield leaving the office, laughing and saying over his shoulder, ‘Now I don’t even have enough money for any meth. I’m going home.’

He had a surprised expression when he saw me. Probably wondered why I’d been crazed enough to come back here. But he picked up his cue immediately.

‘What’s this asshole doin’ here, Henry?’

‘Ask him.’

‘I’m looking for Chief Showalter.’

Bromfield played it out. ‘Showalter?’ His eyes scanned his fellow officers. ‘When he’s pissed he’s one of the scariest guys I’ve ever seen. Even Henry here’s afraid of Showalter — even when Henry’s got his ball bat. Just be glad he isn’t here, jerk-off. Otherwise you’d be on the floor. In pieces.’

Now it was my turn to look at them. There was no way to tell if any of them belonged to Showalter’s group. But this was their place, invitation only. And I definitely wasn’t the type who’d get himself invited.

I shrugged. ‘Guess I’ll be leaving now.’

‘Wise decision,’ Bromfield said.

Henry slapped bat against palm again. He needed a new writer. Bad.

I was plum out of smart lines to accompany my retreat. All I did was shrug, turn around and head for the front door.

And hope that Bromfield — who’d been damned convincing, come to think of it — would join me down the block where I’d parked.

The chill rain was little more than a drizzle now.

The ancient ruins of the deserted buildings on both sides of the street lent the night a feeling of despair. Their lives were over and soon enough they would be utterly gone, like the people who had filled them with the day-to-day joys and sorrows of life.

I leaned against my car waiting for Bromfield to show up. I might be waiting forever if he’d decided helping me out would lead to trouble for him. Maybe serious trouble.

I watched the way the raindrops sparkled off the metal hoods of the old streetlamps. They were having a much better time than I was.

He pulled up behind me with his headlights off. Now he wore a black-hooded rain jacket. The hood was pulled so far up I couldn’t see much of his face.

‘Henry’s going to use that ball bat on you next time you go in there.’

‘No “next time” for me. I know when my luck’s tapped out.’

‘This could be real deep shit for me, Conrad. You got a question, you better ask it, and fast.’

‘You notice anything different about Showalter’s behavior the last day or so?’

He’d managed to cup his hand around a cigarette and light it. Two cars splashed by but the puddles were thin and they weren’t going fast.

‘How’d you know about that?’

‘I may be onto something. My guess is he’s acting pretty strange. Preoccupied.’

‘He’s yelling at us a lot, something he doesn’t do very often. Oh, and this afternoon I guess he caught Karen Foster in his office. He was supposed to be testifying in court most of the afternoon and came back early. I hear you know Karen.’

Heartburn and a queasy feeling in my lower stomach. ‘Yeah. I know Karen.’

‘Showalter sure didn’t like that. You and her, I mean.’

She had pushed it too far. It hadn’t been bright, sneaking into his office that way.

‘The secretary had this dental appointment. I guess she must have thought it was safe.’

‘How did it end up?’

‘The secretary got back just in time to hear her scream at him that she was resigning. Then she walked straight out of the station.’

‘You happen to see or hear from her?’

‘Nah. We’re not big buds or anything. But I’ll tell you one thing. She’s the smartest person in the whole place.’

We both heard it down the block. The front door of Batter Up opening and a small flood of people laughing boozily, coming out into the night.

‘I gotta get out of here.’

‘You got a cell phone I could call you on if I needed to?’

‘For what?’

‘Could you use two hundred dollars?’

‘Are you kidding? You know the kind of shit salary a cop in this town makes?’

He got two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and I got a cell number.