The People's House

by David Pepper

  “These American bureaucrats are demanding,” he complained.

  A pittance had usually secured Kazarov what he needed in former Soviet and developing countries. The officials involved there made very little to begin with. The Americans earned more in salary, and this was a far less common transaction for them. Therefore, they demanded a higher reward for what they considered a very high risk.

  A man named Snyder in Cincinnati insisted on $150,000 for his spirited effort to replace Diebold with Abacus. Others demanded around the same. And knowing that they controlled his fate, Kazarov rarely pushed back.

  “Yes they are,” Andersson replied. “We only paid people when it was an absolutely essential location. But then we must also track every one of them.”

  Every individual they dealt in presented additional risk. So Kazarov watched their every move. When several got cold feet along the way, Kazarov’s coup saw its second, third and fourth casualties. A car accident, a tragic fall, and a rare but aggressive infection. Expertly disguised, none of the killings aroused any suspicion.

  Despite his complaining, Kazarov considered the $72 million a small investment for the value of his purchase.

  “For control of a nation’s legislature? A bargain,” Kazarov said as their meeting ended.

  His other investment, in the more standard expenditures of American politics, remained a complete waste. Energy 2020 remained stillborn. But his plan B would only work if plan A continued to play out on the surface, so he funded both.

  Chapter 30

  WASHINGTON, DC: 14 months before the election

  “Congressman, I really think you need to look more closely at what’s going on with that Abacus company we talked about several months ago.”

  Her stomach knotted tightly with nerves, Joanie could tell her statement caught him off guard. But his response was not as hostile as before.

  “I had forgotten about all that,” he said. “What did you find?”

  “Here you go. It’s all here.”

  She handed him the memo that she had worked on for months. She had spent the evening before editing it on paper and then had printed out the final version in the office earlier that afternoon. But she chose to share it here, in the privacy of his townhome, where she knew she had his ear.

  “It sounds crazy, but I’m convinced Abacus strategically placed its machines in all the swing districts across the country. Here’s the list. You’ll recognize every district where they have established a presence. The extent to which they went to secure these locations is incredible.”

  Stanton looked seriously at the list she pointed to at the back of the memo. He slowly nodded as if just beginning to comprehend her words.

  “I honestly think they’re trying to steal the election by stealing all the swing districts. Nothing else makes sense.”

  Stanton read through the memo, page by page. When he finished, he looked up.

  “I’m afraid you may be right. This is serious. These are almost all the swing districts in the country. Have you mentioned this to anyone else?”

  She shook her head rapidly.

  “I haven’t. Really wanted to tell you first after I finished my research. I’ll leave it for you to tell others.”

  “Good for you. This goes way beyond party. It’s an attack on the heart of our democracy,” Stanton said. “I’m going to bring this to Speaker Williams and Leader Marshall immediately, then get the authorities involved. We need to get our arms around this before any more time passes.”

  Simpson smiled, her breathing eased.

  “I couldn’t agree more. Just think of the positive press you’ll get by exposing this. You’ll have stopped an enormous scandal.”

  Stanton shook his head and flashed a frown of disappointment, cutting her short. “This is so much bigger than my own career,” he said.

  They finished their conversation slightly before 11:00, about thirty minutes longer than they had ever talked before.

  “I’ve got a lot to think about. It’s probably best if you head home now. Let’s meet in the office Monday to discuss our next steps.”

  * * *

  Saturday morning, iPod earbuds jammed in each ear, Joanie charged out of her apartment door faster than usual. Fall weekends were her vacation, and with the sun beaming overhead, this looked to be a perfect one. Plus, Thursday night had liberated her. The congressman took her memo seriously. They were going to stop Abacus.

  A mile into Rock Creek Parkway, Joanie ran through a section of the trail that wound away from the road, under a thick canopy of trees and out of sight from traffic. Her head bobbed slightly, tilted to the left, as she was consumed with the Taylor Swift lyrics blaring through her ears.

  She saw it coming, but only at the last moment.

  Far too late.

  From behind an oak tree, the thick metal barrel of a baseball bat struck her square in the chest. She tumbled backward. Her shoulder blades crashed down first, then the back of her head pummeled into the concrete.

  Flat on her back, ears ringing, Joanie tilted her head slightly up to discover the source of the brutal blow. He was a thick figure, with a dark hat and mask over his head, otherwise dressed as a jogger. The man leaped past her, then reached down and clamped his large, gloved hand into her right armpit. He dragged her off the trail and further away from the road.

  She attempted to scream. But somewhere in her chest, the air she needed was escaping—a light whistle was all that the effort produced. The sharp throbbing in her head now gave way to the even greater pain of what felt like 1,000 pounds of pressure crushing her ribcage.

  Sticks and brush scratched her face and legs as he pulled her deeper into the woods. After twenty yards, he stopped. She groaned as he placed his right foot on her hip and pushed down hard, pinning her to the ground. Unable to move, she could do nothing but watch as he raised the bat over his head one more time, then swung again.

  Chapter 31

  WASHINGTON, DC: 14 months before the election

  “Did you see that story about the jogger?” Stanton asked as he walked through his office door on Monday morning.

  “Yes, was on the news all day yesterday,” his assistant answered. “Awful. Looks like they still don’t know who the victim is.”

  “Yeah. Just a terrible crime. Scary.”

  The Washington Post had run the Rock Creek mugging death on Page 1 of Sunday morning’s Metro section. A young female jogger—white, tall, thin, brunette—had been brutally beaten to death on the popular running course. Cash and credit cards stolen. No hint of sexual assault. No identification found. Investigators estimated that the battered corpse lay just off the trail for most of the day before a park ranger doing her night rounds discovered her.

  Stanton sat down at his desk and picked up Monday’s paper. Below the fold, a police sketch of the victim’s face appeared.

  He froze. Felt instantly sick to his stomach. Stared at the image for five minutes before calling his chief of staff.

  “Get in here. Right away.”

  Don Young entered the office three minutes later, closing the door behind him. The two huddled together for ten minutes. Young made several calls from the desk phone then looked at his boss.

  “Went straight to voicemail both times.”

  Young called police headquarters. Stanton sat only a few feet from him, staring directly at his long-serving aide as he dialed.

  “This is the office of Minority Whip Tom Stanton. Can I speak to Chief Procter?”

  Young waited thirty seconds as Stanton stood up and paced behind his desk. Sweat seeped through his white shirt.

  “Good morning, chief. This is Don Young, chief of staff to Minority Leader Stanton. One of our employees has not reported for work today, and we think she may be the victim of the Rock Creek mugging.”

  Another pause.

 
“I’m on my way.”

  Young left the office. Thirty minutes later, he called Stanton’s cellphone.

  “It’s her.”

  * * *

  Two days later, at 11:00 in the evening, Stanton got the call.

  “Chief Procter here. We cracked the case, but the murderer’s dead.”

  “What happened?”

  “The prints on the murderer’s baseball bat traced back to a Johnny Rutherford, of southeast D.C. We’re talking a rap sheet seven pages long: drug use, drug dealing, resisting arrest, trespassing, and assault. All told, the guy spent years in some form of penal institution. Most recently, he failed to appear for a required probation check-in, so already had a warrant out for his arrest.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it. What the hell happened?”

  The chief explained that on the same day that Simpson’s photo appeared on the front page, a judge granted D.C. police a warrant to enter Rutherford’s apartment.

  “Earlier tonight, our SWAT guys surrounded his apartment, and when they tried to enter, he jumped out a window, broke both ankles as he landed in an alley, and popped off a few shots before our guys took him out.”

  “And you’re sure it’s him?”

  “Oh yeah. It’s him. If the fingerprints were not clear-cut enough evidence, our investigators later found Simpson’s car keys, identification, and credit cards in the trash bin of Rutherford’s apartment complex.”

  * * *

  When the news hit that the Rock Creek Killer was off the streets, Washington breathed a sigh of relief. Worry-free jogging could recommence.

  The House minority whip, on the other hand, still nervously paced his office the morning after Rutherford died.

  At first, he had feared the prospect of speaking at Simpson’s funeral. Pulling off that performance would have challenged even him. But her family had decided to fly her body back to St. Louis for the funeral, allowing Stanton to videotape a message instead. Much easier. Bullet dodged.

  But that didn’t take care of his bigger concern—eliminating any paper trail regarding Abacus, and doing so without raising any suspicion.

  The memo itself was gone. Minutes after she left his townhouse the night she handed it to him, he removed the two-page appendix that so helpfully listed the Abacus districts. That was a keeper. But the rest of the document was soon burning in his fireplace.

  But what about her electronic files? She typed that memo up somewhere, probably at work.

  Now, on the Friday after her death, having waited what felt like an appropriate length of time, he made his move.

  “Joanie was working on some sensitive things for me,” he told Young late in the afternoon when only he and his chief of staff remained. “I would love to review her main research projects to find all the pressing stuff I need.”

  “We can always have a staff member do that for you,” Young said.

  “No.” Stanton shot him an intense glare. “These are very sensitive.”

  It helped that Young knew his pattern with women staffers. Keeping his behavior from going public was a top, joint priority.

  “I understand. Her documents would be stored on a shared drive, so you can go through those.”

  “Thank you,” Stanton replied, satisfied.

  Young sat down at Stanton’s computer, clicked the mouse a few times, and brought the office’s shared drive up onto the screen. “There you go,” he said, standing up and leaving Stanton alone at his desk. Except in true emergencies, they had an unwritten rule that Stanton cleaned up his own messes.

  He scrolled through Simpson’s documents. Of the 218 files stored in her research folder, none displayed the word “Abacus” in the title. Only two documents appeared to address voting, one on voter fraud and another on voter identification.

  Because she typically worked on issues that he directly assigned her, Stanton recognized most of the documents and skipped those. He instead focused on the titles and subjects he didn’t recognize, opening memoranda and notes about topics she had pursued on her own. Farm subsidies. Clean coal. School vouchers. Ukraine. She got into everything.

  Then the one-word title caught his eye.

  “Epeius.”

  Odd name. He’d heard it somewhere before.

  More importantly, the document was created three months before, not long after he had asked her to look into Abacus.

  He double-clicked on the mouse, and in two seconds, stared directly at the electronic version of the Abacus memo he had destroyed.

  He looked up at the door like a nervous kid preparing to steal something, making sure no one was watching. He skimmed through the memo one last time, pushed the delete button, and watched it vanish from Simpson’s research folder.

  Before shutting the computer down, he went online and googled Epeius. That’s right. Freshman year English, The Iliad. Epeius was the Greek soldier who designed the Trojan horse.

  Stanton shook his head, impressed yet again. Only a debate champ would see that the low-cost, vote-rigging Abacus machines were the twenty-first century version of the ancient ruse.

  He closed down the computer, turned off the light, and walked out of the office.

  For the first time since Joanie Simpson had handed him the memo, he relaxed.

  * * *

  GREATER PHILADELPHIA

  All afternoon, she eyed them: A dozen red roses, sitting in an ornate glass vase, the new centerpiece of the marble island in her kitchen.

  They had arrived just before noon, with a simple note. “Love you, darling. Tom.”

  By four, her initial delight at the unexpected gesture had worn off. She now glared at them. At first with suspicion, now with anger.

  They were too much. One gesture too many.

  She knew.

  Irene Stanton knew now. She had known for years.

  She had heard the talk about her husband. She knew what others said. The rumors of infidelity had circled D.C. for years. But she knew long before any of that, before he even ascended to Congress.

  The way he looked at other women was obvious. He didn’t casually observe their beauty, something she would understand. She did the same thing, of men and women. Everybody did.

  His look was more intense. Too intense. He eyed them as conquests to be made. Right in front of her. Right in front of their kids.

  She recognized the look as the same one he cast her way years ago. But she hadn’t minded back then.

  A small-town beauty queen, Irene Rettof grew up not far from Scranton. Her schoolgirl life was consumed by cheerleading practice all week, Friday night games, pageants on Saturdays, and Mass every Sunday, no exceptions. A steady, stable, pleasant childhood in a small Pennsylvania town.

  But by the time she reached her senior year, she was bored, ready to get out of there. Penn State, teeming with kids from across the state, provided her ticket out. And cheerleading for the Nittany Lions all over the country expanded her sights even further. After graduating, she joined a mid-sized Philadelphia law firm as a paralegal. Dull job, but it covered the costs of enjoying the big city life.

  Three years and two boyfriends later, State Representative Tom Stanton passed through the firm for a fundraiser. Irene wasn’t at all political, but when too few people outside the firm RSVP’d, the partner in charge had pulled all staff from their workstations to fill the room. Irene stood several people deep as they gathered in a semi-circle to watch this young charmer make his case.

  He spotted her halfway through his speech. Her shoulder-length blonde hair, blue eyes, and full lips always inspired double takes, but his intense gaze continued for the rest of the talk. The whole room noticed. Her fellow paralegals ribbed her for the rest of the evening.

  After that, he came on strong, and she loved it. He was as good-looking as they came, wealthy, charming. People said he was a star in the making, a
nd the potential for the limelight excited her.

  They married eighteen months later.

  “I should have known better,” she often told her best friend, the only one she could confide in. She had scolded herself for years, and then stopped caring.

  “You couldn’t have known, Irene,” her friend would always respond. “You’re a different person now. You were a kid, looking for a ticket out.”

  On the one hand, her friend was right. She was a wholly different person than the young paralegal Stanton wooed. Through her years as the first lady of Tom’s statehouse and congressional districts, she had evolved into a sophisticated and worldly woman. She served on highly respected non-profit boards, dedicated to battling the related problems of domestic violence and child abuse. She became a gifted public speaker, making numerous public appearances on her own right. In recent years, pundits speculated that she might seek office herself shortly.

  On the other hand, she remained angry at herself. Angry because even from the outset their relationship had been shallow—physical attraction, mutual personal ambition, and little else. During the courtship, those surface-level factors had trumped the cold reality that there was no actual emotion between them or in the man she had agreed to marry. But that reality set in only months after their honeymoon ended.

  Unsatisfying almost from the start, the marriage tumbled downhill even more rapidly after their second child was born. Irene remained strikingly beautiful, but she was no longer youthful. Apparently that’s what Tom wanted because that’s when he first started gawking at younger women so noticeably. That’s when he began to disappear for hours at a time, without any good explanation. And when she talked about the issues she cared about, he’d tune her out.

  Once Tom entered Congress, it only got worse. And other clear signs emerged.

  Before they both went to Washington, Stanton’s law school buddy Oliver Ariens had been loud, talkative, fun to be around. Irene and Oliver had hit it off from the first time they met. When Ariens and Stanton entered Congress together, she had looked forward to seeing the Ariens often. But when the two couples dined together, Oliver wouldn’t look her in the eye. He couldn’t hold a conversation. He appeared sheepish, too quiet. But only with her.