by David Pepper
Everyone expected me to follow in Dad’s footsteps. So did I, for good reason. Name recognition anchors local political success, and Sharpe was a respected moniker in Stark County. My competitive nature fired me up to win just like Dad did. Family, friends and neighbors said I’d be a senator, governor, or even president someday. My goal was to live up those high expectations.
But out of the blue, that aspiration ended as quickly as my football career.
In 1982, Dad lost.
The Reagan wave pushed primary voters to the right that year. A far right candidate rode the rabid sentiment, attacking every compromise Dad had ever made. Under the word “Traitor,” he plastered photos Dad had taken with Democrats onto mailers that filled Republican mailboxes all spring. The voters took the bait, tossing Dad 60 to 40 percent.
As a matter of politics, it was arguable whether my own political future went up in smoke in that loss. Dad and Meredith always insisted I should stick with it. But what sealed it was personal. The loss, and the way it happened, shattered my boyhood optimism about politics.
We never talked about it. But the night of Dad’s defeat, the moment—painfully early in the evening—when the crowd fell eerily silent, haunted us for years. An ungrateful community dumped a good man. Dad’s spirit broke that night, his brand of get-it-done politics crushed by an ideologue. He deserved better. So did Canton.
When my dad’s primary opponent went on to enjoy a long career in Congress, using the same tactics that worked so well the first time, it only made things worse.
So yes, I knew exactly what Lee Kelly was going through. I had felt what he was going through.
* * *
“You hear the news about Lee Kelly?”
The call came in right before noon, six days after I saw Kelly in Steubenville. It was the chair of the Belmont County Democratic Party asking the same question I heard weekly. I began my standard answer.
“Yeah, he’s taking the loss hard. Saw him the other night and he . . .”
“He’s gone.”
“Excuse me?”
“Lee Kelly’s dead.”
A frantic five hours later, my obituary was up on the Vindicator’s website. For my readers’ sake, I sanitized the crash as best I could.
Kelly died forty-five miles west of Philadelphia, heading west on Interstate 76. His Ford Escape had collided with another vehicle, careened off the road, and hammered into a thick oak tree twenty-five feet off the highway. He died on impact. A state trooper found the front license plate about thirty feet from the vehicle, lying past a row of trees, crumpled but legible, and called it in. The dispatcher reported back that it was registered to a Mr. Lee Kelly from St. Clairsville, Ohio. Jody Kelly confirmed it was her husband the next morning.
But this account diluted the violence of it all. Lucky me, between the in-depth accident report and the supervisor’s graphic commentary, I got to hear every horrific detail.
With no seatbelt holding him back, Kelly catapulted forward into the windshield, hundreds of small shards of shattering glass piercing his soft flesh all at once.
“The guy turned to Jell-O,” the supervisor helpfully explained over the phone.
At the same moment, the SUV exploded into a fireball.
Several passing cars called 911 to report a large fire near the highway. Two fire trucks from nearby Elizabethtown arrived at the scene. Seeing the flames enveloping numerous trees around the wreck, they called Harrisburg Fire for backup, who arrived twenty-five minutes later. The intense heat forced them to establish a perimeter fifty yards away. Thousands of gallons of water and forty minutes later, they finally extinguished the flames.
According to the report, the first responders initially assumed the source of the ferocious blaze must have been a fuel or chemical truck.
“We were surprised to discover it was a single-vehicle accident,” the supervisor said.
The report described the grim remains: pieces of a body burned beyond recognition and virtually every part of the Escape, from its tires to its radio, melted or disintegrated into a gray, chalky ash.
Oddly, crash investigators found no trace of a cell phone, usually a key piece of evidence identifying accident victims. Kelly must’ve kept a few tools in his vehicle because the head of a hammer and a small steel wrench were among the only recognizable objects amid the putrid, soupy wreckage. And a blackened but recognizable ribbon of twine lay not far from the body.
Then there were the tire tracks. They showed that a side-to-side collision a few hundred yards back triggered the Escape’s straight-line path off the highway.
“Any sense of what happened to the other car?” I asked.
“The angle of the collision wasn’t extreme, so it looks like the driver of that car recovered quickly. Odd that your Mr. Kelly never did.”
* * *
BELLAIRE, OHIO
Hundreds packed the Friday funeral, which took place in Bellaire, Kelly’s birthplace. From boyhood friends to Notre Dame classmates, from Jim Gibbs and past congressional colleagues to Ohio’s governor and both senators, the honoring of Kelly’s life offered a rare moment of bipartisanship. The sworn political enemies laughed together, shed a tear together, and remembered the days when they were all new to politics. When they would fight like hell on the statehouse floor, then grab a beer two hours later. And all recalled that Lee Kelly stood at the center of any cooperation that took place.
The newspaper didn’t assign me to attend Kelly’s funeral, but I stopped by out of respect. Landslide Lee was one of the good guys. As the service ended, a reporter there to cover the story sidled up to me.
“Wouldn’t it have been nice to hear all this bipartisan praise and respect while he was actually in politics?” I whispered.
“Or at least while he was alive,” she responded. “I can’t tell if this is real, or if they’re just on script.”
“More like a timeout where they get to act like normal people for a few hours.”
As the crowd left the church, the hunched figure of Chairman Rogers caught my eye from ten feet away. He wasn’t a tall man, but he still stuck out in a crowd. Seeing him reminded me that I never followed up on his theory. Feeling a tinge of guilt, I tried to scramble to the door.
But moments later, a forceful poke to the back of my right shoulder stopped me. Rogers could move fast when he wanted to.
“You know, Lee was looking into the voting issues in Monroe County you and I talked about,” Rogers said, much louder than necessary.
“What?”
“I waited for your story. For months. But when it never came, I called Kelly directly. We told him what we told you. Then he talked to Betty Struthers just like you did.”
“When?”
“That’s my point. Just a few days ago. He died the next day! Strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“That is odd.” Did my best to humor him, but my tone gave away how I felt.
Kelly had been polite to the old chair by hearing him out. But linking his car accident to the voting conspiracy theory in little Monroe County?
Ridiculous.
* * *
YOUNGSTOWN
Over the years, technology had dramatically changed the day-to-day work of a reporter.
And I resisted most of it.
When it comes to note-taking, the old steno pad still beats a computer or tablet. And despite our editors’ encouragement, you’ll never catch me tweeting stories or posting links to them on Facebook.
The zeal for online “clicks” to measure the success of stories, and even worse, to generate revenue, creates the worst incentives. Sensationalism over substance. Drama over description. Hype over analysis. Refusing to tweet was my small personal protest on behalf of the vanishing breed of journalists who preferred the old days.
But the iPhone? I ultimately converted. It’s a veri
table reporter’s toolkit. It even can record interviews, putting my 12-year-old Dictaphone out of business.
There was only one drawback. Thanks to my iPhone, I’d occasionally go days at a time without checking messages on my office line. A bad habit made worse when things got busy.
After Kelly’s accident, I failed to check my messages the rest of the week. When I sat down at my desk the Monday morning following the funeral, I cringed to think of the important calls I hadn’t returned.
Six new messages. Five were callbacks on humdrum stories. Nothing urgent. No worries.
But then I listened to the first message. The oldest one. I recognized the voice at the first word.
“Sharpe, it’s Lee Kelly calling.”
Not a lot of people called me Sharpe, but Kelly had for years. His tone was deadly serious, but he talked carefully, softly, so as not to be overheard.
“I understand you spoke to Chairman Rogers and Betty Struthers about the voting issue in Monroe County. I did some digging myself, and I’ve stumbled across something. Something odd. Rogers may be onto something.”
A breeze and the rumbling of vehicles accompanied his words. He was standing outside when he left the message.
“Give me a call as soon as you get this to discuss.”
The message was left at 12:28 p.m. Six days prior.
The day he died.
I replayed the message and jotted down every word. My handwriting was worse than usual, which made sense because my hand was trembling as I wrote.
Listening to the voice of a man whose funeral I just attended didn’t bother me so much.
Far more unnerving was the thought that whatever Kelly had stumbled onto likely got him killed only hours later.
PART TWO
FIRST DRAFT
Chapter 8
LONDON: 105 days after the election
“Kraciva.”
Beautiful.
As Energy 2020 sailed through Congress, the man with the most at stake watched every minute of the hearings. And was pleased.
Unlike Tom Stanton and Jim Mason, he wasn’t in the room. Far from it.
Marcellus may have been the perfectly created Midwest company. Mason may have been its made-for-TV CEO. But the company boardroom where all decisions took place was located 2000 miles away, in downtown London, hidden deep within the financial district.
And while located in Britain, all the trappings of that boardroom—the Aivazovsky paintings of turbulent blue-green seas, the Peter the Great statuette, the photographs of the Neva River—were pure Russian. As was the man who occupied it.
On a large flat-screen monitor that occupied half of one wall, he had watched every moment of his overseas legislative success. And when it was over, after the president had signed the bill, he allowed himself a momentary celebration.
“You performed ably,” he told Mason on their teleconference call.
“Thank you, Mr. Kazarov.”
Except for the day he hired Mason, it was the first time Oleg Kazarov could remember praising his handpicked, all-American executive. He had brought Mason on for moments like these. The man had many weaknesses, but he was perfectly cast to seal deals. And he had performed.
Despite his many talents, Kazarov knew he was unsuited for the role in every way. He was a foreigner. Worse yet, a Russian. American politicians would never want to turn over the vast natural riches of their Midwest to a Russian. At least, not in public.
He also didn’t look the part. Not even close. His physical appearance was a hodgepodge of extreme features that would distract from any presentation of that sort and would breed distrust.
He stood at 6’1”, but his slight frame made him appear taller. Not a commanding height, but an awkward one. Wafer thin, his spindly arms and legs were their thickest at his elbows and knees. His skin was so pale it was hard to see where his white shirt cuff ended and his wrist began.
Oily black hair, slicked back, covered a small, round head. Tiny, dark eyes. Thin lips disappeared into his mouth as he spoke. From the front, a narrow, indistinct nose. From the side, a point that jutted out almost two inches.
He and his small London-based team may have orchestrated every step leading up to Energy 2020, but he definitely could not have sold this deal to Congress. Remaining behind the scenes had worked once again, helping secure his largest opportunity yet.
But he celebrated this conquest for more than its sheer size. It was America. It was historic. And it had been the most complex, the most challenging, by far.
The victory moved him to reminisce like never before.
“My mother and father cheered when Gorbachev tore down the old system,” he said, talking more to himself than to Mason, staring straight ahead. “The change came too late for them. They knew it, but they saw opportunity for their son.”
He paused.
“Still, they never could have imagined this.”
Chapter 9
ST. CLAIRSVILLE: 101 days after the election
“Lee was struggling after his loss. So irritable. Not at all himself. For months.”
He wasn’t the only one. Up close, Jody Kelly was a shadow of her usually striking self. She was at least ten pounds thinner. Her eyes were puffy and blood red, her cheeks pale and thin, her black hair pulled back in a short ponytail. We were sitting in her kitchen, four feet apart. Our conversation was off the record, so I wouldn’t use any of her quotes. But I wrote down every word.
“I’m sure. My dad was a politician. Lost out of the blue in a nasty primary. We were devastated, and he never recovered.”
“I know the feeling now. It was heartbreaking to watch Lee go through that. The irony is that the day before he died, it all changed.”
Good. I had made the long trek down a slippery highway to gather this type of detail, but hadn’t wanted to pry. She led me there on her own.
“Is that right? What happened?”
“Lee went to Monroe County all that day. Came back around 9:00. When he walked in, I was thrilled. The Lee I had married, the one this community elected so many times, was back.”
“What was different?”
“Everything. He burst through the kitchen door, hugged me, and smiled with that old look of intensity. The downcast eyes were gone. Then he rushed into the study and logged onto his computer. He was searching for something. Reminded me of his lawyer days when he had a big case. He didn’t get into bed until eleven.”
The next morning, Lee woke up early and scrambled out of the house before she got out of bed. He’d left a note saying he’d be back in the evening. By late afternoon, she knew something was wrong.
“Even on his busiest campaign days, Lee would check in. But he didn’t call once.”
By 3:00 p.m. her calls jumped straight to voicemail.
“From then until midnight, I called former staff members to see if they’d heard from him. None had. I barely slept the rest of the night.”
At 7:45 the next morning, a gray car pulled up into the driveway. No siren on top but a Pennsylvania Highway Patrol seal on the door.
“I knew as soon as the trooper stepped out of the car.”
I jumped in, not wanting to make her relive a horrible conversation.
“Mrs. Kelly, do you have any idea why Lee was on I-76 that night? Why he’d be in Philadelphia?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t. Whatever he talked about in Monroe County, he was pretty fired up when he got back.”
“Let me be as direct as I can. I think the circumstances of this accident are awfully suspicious. Lee left me a message the day he died that made it clear he was looking into something, and that he had found something. I get a lot of crazy calls and hear a lot of crazy stories, but Lee would not have left that message lightly. And then, hours later, he was dead.”
“Of course,
the sequence of things seemed fishy to me,” she replied. “But I didn’t even know who to say that to without appearing to have lost my mind. He was researching something in his office, but I haven’t been up to going in there since he died.”
“Do you mind if I look around in there?”
“Not at all.”
She led me to the study.
It felt strange poking around the personal items of a dead man, but there was no better way to retrace his final steps.
The place was a mess. Photos, plaques, awards were stacked up in open boxes. Books and files were piled in different corners of the room.
“These are all from Lee’s congressional office. He would start unpacking, but then would get absorbed reading or looking through all his old papers or memorabilia. He was just starting to make some progress.”
We sat down in front of Kelly’s computer.
“Do you mind?”
She shook her head. “Go right ahead.”
When I moved the mouse slightly, the log-in screen flashed on. Good. Kelly had never shut his computer off. It was simply in sleep mode.
“Do you know the password?”
She typed it in. The screen lit up.
The website Kelly most recently logged onto appeared. As did a word I had seen in Monroe County months before. The same word was also scrawled on a small sheet of paper next to the computer, in Kelly’s handwriting. Clearly from his visit to Monroe County.
Abacus.
I shook my head slightly but said nothing. I didn’t want to let on that I had failed to follow up on the most obvious lead from my own meeting in Monroe County.
“He printed out a number of pages the night before he died, but he must have taken the sheets with him.”
Too bad.
But a quick scroll through the browser history showed that Kelly researched and printed out information on Abacus.
