The Castle: A Ripped-From-The-Headlines Thriller

by Jason Pinter

  “Thank you, officer,” Rawson said.

  Mason continued. “Now, here’s where it gets tricky. Paul is an adult. Which means that unless we can confirm he’s been the victim of a crime, or has committed a crime himself, he does not legally need to be found. Meaning that if we can’t prove anything has actually happened to Paul, all we can do is look and hope and file paperwork and wait.”

  Alena held back tears, but looked like she could crumble. Rawson spoke, his voice laced with a quiet anger.

  “Could somebody have taken him?”

  “It’s on the table, Mr. Griggs,” Mason said. “Given your prominence, and that Paul and Alena had been targeted previously, it is a possibility somebody could have taken Paul. Whether that’s for political reasons, to hold for ransom, we don’t know. And we still don’t know whether Dastan Nogoyev and Alexay Usenov acted alone or were part of a domestic terror cell. Nobody has claimed responsibility, which lowers the probably of them being aligned with an actual group. If they were, it’s possible that cell could have operatives still working here. But this leads me to believe the two aren’t connected. But ransom demands tend to come when the victim’s families are at their most desperate.”

  Just then, Wanda LeFebvre entered the conference room.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, looking at Rawson. “Sir, Governor Richard Bertrand is on the phone. He wanted to extend his sympathies and to offer any assistance he can to find Mr. Bracewell. What would you like me to say to him?”

  Rawson thought for a moment. “Tell the governor we appreciate his call, but we’re going to keep this private among ourselves and law enforcement. Nothing more. Tell him if he says a word to the press about Paul’s disappearance, I’ll buy the Louisiana Governor’s mansion and turn it into a sewage treatment center.”

  “Yes, sir,” Wanda said. She left the room.

  Mason turned back to Alena. “Mrs. Griggs. I know how difficult this must be for you. But can you think of anywhere your husband may have gone after you parted ways last night? Family? Friends? Maybe a favorite bar? The only ingoing or outgoing texts or calls to Paul’s cell last night were the ones from you at three a.m., and one outgoing text from Paul to a Michael O’Brien in Spokane, Washington sent a little after midnight. The text itself was gibberish due to Paul’s inebriated state. O’Brien responded several times asking if Paul was alright. He did not respond. We’ve already spoken to Mr. O’Brien who confirms that those texts were his only correspondence with Paul last night.”

  “Michael O’Brien is Paul’s best friend,” Alena said. “We don’t see him very often. He was actually there the night Paul and I met. There’s nobody here he would have gone to I can think of.”

  “Mrs. Griggs, this is a hard question to ask, but you understand that I have to. Was there anyone else?

  “What do you mean, ‘anyone else’?” Alena said.

  “I won’t have you make those insinuations here,” Rawson said. “Nobody would ever step out on my daughter if they wanted their limbs to remain attached.”

  “I understand that,” Mason said. “But our number one priority is finding Mr. Bracewell. I don’t have time to be polite. You can understand that.”

  Rawson grunted but stayed silent.

  Alena said, “There was nobody else, as far as I know. Paul’s parents still live in Spokane. His sister lives in Georgetown with her family. I suppose it’s possible he woke up and went to visit them?” Her voice sounded hopeful, but doubtful.

  Mason nodded. “We found no records of any flight or train tickets purchased in Paul’s name.”

  “What about bus?”

  “We’ve checked passenger manifests from all major bus lines and come up empty. We currently have agents in Spokane speaking with Paul’s parents, Craig and Mary Bracewell, and his sister, Alice Belitnikoff, and her husband, down in Georgetown. So far, none of them claim to have seen or heard from Paul at any point in the last twenty-four hours.”

  Mason looked at Remy. “Mr. Stanton. Did you go directly home after the event? Did you see Mr. Bracewell at all last night after she parted with Mrs. Griggs? Did you notice anything else?

  “I didn’t see him after,” Remy said, a little embarrassed. “I saw part of their argument as I was leaving, but that’s all.”

  “And did you go right home?”

  Remy hesitated. Then said, “I did not. I went with a…friend for a nightcap.”

  “Can that be corroborated?”

  Remy felt his face grow red. “I can show you my credit card statement confirming we were at the bar. And if it’s absolutely necessary, I can give you the name of the person I was with, but only if it’s absolutely necessary. She has nothing to do with the campaign and I met her last night after the event ended.”

  Mason said, “I might ask you for that information.”

  “If you need it,” he said.

  He had trouble looking at Alena as he spoke.

  “So what do we do now?” Alena asked. Her voice was shaky. She sounded like a small girl alone on a raft sinking in the middle of a storm. Rawson looked like he could rip a safe right off its hinges. Alena needed comfort, not anger. Remy wasn’t sure if Rawson was fully capable of that.

  Mason said, “We’re coordinating with the NYPD and have alerted hospitals, train and bus stations, and all airports within two hundred miles. If anything comes up on the surveillance footage from the area around the Hyatt from last night, we’ll let you know. On the federal front, we’ve alerted intelligence agencies to see if they’ve picked up on any threats made towards Mr. Bracewell or Mrs. Griggs. Right now, our hope is that he just had a rough night and is sleeping it off somewhere. Mrs. Griggs, we’ll have an officer escort you home.”

  “No,” Alena said, firmly. “I want to stay. Here. With my family.”

  Mason nodded. He passed his card around the table. Everyone except Rawson Griggs picked it up and looked at it. Rawson let it sit there on the table like a morsel of rancid food.

  “Detective Ferguson here will be in contact if the NYPD turns up anything or has any more questions. In the meantime, we won’t rest until we find Paul. Let us know if you can think of anything else from last night. Even the smallest details could matter.”

  “We will,” Alena said.

  Rawson stood up. “Find my son-in-law.”

  Mason said, “We’ll do our best.”

  Mason offered no guarantees. Remy knew he couldn’t.

  “Oh, and on a personal note,” Mason said, “Mr. Griggs, I think what you’re doing is terrific. This country needs fresh blood. You’ll have my vote. But don’t go telling people that or I might lose my job.”

  “I appreciate that, Agent Mason. Thank you all for your efforts. You know your agency and all law enforcement will have the full support of a Griggs administration.”

  Mason nodded, and then the agents and officers left. The room went silent. Remy looked around, waiting for someone to say something. Alena looked like the slightest touch could cause her to crumble into dust.

  “Alena,” Rawson said, “if you need to go home, we’ll understand.”

  She turned to her father, a look of steel resolve replacing the sadness on her face. She wiped her eyes and nose and said, “I’m not leaving. This is my family.”

  Rawson nodded. “Phillip,” he said to the ex-mayor. “Anything else we can do to augment the NYPD’s effort?”

  Costanzo said, “I spoke to Commissioner Ragsdale this morning. They’re using all available manpower to try to find Paul.”

  Rawson seemed sated by that answer. Once again, Wanda Lefebvre entered the room.

  “Mr. Griggs,” she said, “Doug Rimbaud from Senator Shaw’s office is on the line. He says the senator sends her prayers and wants to know if there’s anything she can do.”

  Remy hoped nobody else noticed his scowl.

  “So Bertrand and Shaw both know,” Rawson said, “which means it’s only a matter of time before the press catches wind and this mess goes
public.”

  Remy saw Alena flinch when Rawson used the word mess.

  “Jerry. Jeremy,” Griggs continued. “We need to get ahead of this. I want a press release draft on my desk regarding Paul’s disappearance before eight o’clock. Keep it short, vague, and deferential to law enforcement. Make sure people know there will be no further statements on Paul Bracewell until we have more information.”

  Rawson turned to Alena. “I don’t want you leaving the tower today until we know what’s going on. If someone took Paul, they could be looking for you as well.”

  Alena hesitated for a moment, but then nodded her acceptance. Here, she was with her family, and she was safe. And Remy knew Rawson would tear the earth apart to keep her that way.

  Rawson said, “There’s nothing else we can do right now. But we still have a campaign to run.”

  Remy’s head snapped to attention. Was Rawson really going to hold a strategy session now, with Paul in the wind? He knew Rawson was a focused man, but this seemed heartless, especially with Alena in the room. He surveyed the room. Nobody spoke. They didn’t look entirely comfortable holding a meeting. But nobody spoke up against it.

  “No time to waste,” Rawson said. “Rebecca, have the new polling numbers come in? Where do we stand?”

  Rebecca Blum opened up a briefcase and laid out few sheafs of paper. She passed copies to everyone at the table. Alena didn’t take one.

  “As of right now, we have a lead that’s outside the margin of error. But not much. Our internal polling of a three-way matchup between Bertrand, Shaw, and Rawson shows Rawson polling at thirty-one percent, Shaw at twenty-six percent, and Bertrand at twenty-four percent, with the rest undecided or going for small party candidates. CNN’s poll of polls gives us a little more cushion. Rawson has a seven-point edge over Shaw. I’m confident our polls are more accurate. We’re winning white males without a college degree by twenty points, and we’re making headway with white women. Minorities are breaking for Shaw. We need a strategy on how to change that.”

  “It’s all a waste of time,” Griggs said. “We need to solidify our base. We can spend months and millions trying to move the needle two points. But even if Shaw pulls eighty percent of blacks and Latinos—which is a reach—we’ll pull enough from her base and Bertrand’s base to splinter both parties. Focus on whites. I’d rather win eighty percent of the majority than twenty percent of the minority.”

  “How do we do that?” Blum said.

  “I have some ideas,” Rawson said. “For another time.”

  Blum added, “I also think many undecideds will swing our way as the campaign expands and we ramp up our ground game. We currently have campaign headquarters set up in thirty-seven states, and we’ll be running in all fifty by the spring. Volunteers are coming in by the busload.”

  Rawson seemed energized, despite the somber mood. “And we’re just getting started.” Rawson was smiling like his son-in-law wasn’t missing. The casualness unnerved Remy.

  “Where else can we improve our numbers?” Rawson said.

  “Evangelicals,” Blum said. “Bertrand is leading substantially among voters who identify themselves as religious or very religious. He’s ahead of you by ten points, and ahead of Shaw by thirty-six. Our polling suggests, though, that enthusiasm for Bertrand is low, meaning evangelicals can be swayed.”

  “They’re voting for Bertrand because the pious are used to voting Republican. But the religious care more about sympathy than empathy. I want to set up a red state church tour. Two full weeks. I want to be in front of every man who wears a white collar you can find, from West Virginia down through Georgia and out to Alabama. Jerry, Jeremy, work with Rebecca. Finalize a schedule within forty-eight hours, get it online and then blast media in each city. Send several cartons of my books to every church as well. Gifts for the parishioners. Rebecca, coordinate with Brent Scott’s Super PAC for finance and organization.”

  Remy looked at Jerry Kapinski, confused by that comment. Brent Scott was a former Senator-turned-influential energy lobbyist, primarily working on behalf of non-OPEC oil producing nations. He had founded a pro-Griggs Super PAC called TEETH OF THE TIGER, which had raised nearly fifty million dollars to support Rawson. FEC laws, however, prevented any sort of coordination between campaigns and their Super PACs, since there was no limit on the amount of money they could raise. It seemed like Rawson was aggressively flaunting that law. And if that was the case, and it went unchecked, it meant Rawson would have an almost unlimited war chest to spend.

  Rawson said, “Everyone has their marching orders. Press release draft on my desk by eight. Let’s go.”

  “Consider it done,” Blum said. “Jerry, Jeremy, get to work on the release about Paul. Ken and I will work on the tour. I want to kick it off with Joseph Meyer at the Woodlake Church in Texas. Seven million people watch his sermons every week on television and seventeen thousand people go to every service. I want Rawson in the front pew of that church and then a sit-down to get Meyer’s endorsement. That’ll be the first domino.”

  Remy and Kapinski left the conference room and went to Kapinski’s office.

  Kapinski sat down and Remy closed the door. He said, “What was that back there? Are we coordinating with Brent Scott’s Super PAC? Isn’t that against FEC regulations?”

  Kapinski looked at Remy like he was a teenager asking to borrow his dad’s car for a road trip.

  “You’re seriously asking me that?”

  “I’m seriously asking you that.”

  “You can’t be so naïve, Remy.” Kapinski sat back and put his hands behind his head. “FEC regulation is an oxymoron. It’s like saying ‘civil war.’ We’re not ‘breaking’ the rules. We’re just slipping through the cracks that already exist.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The FEC is a blind guard dog. They sit there barking and hope to scare away the morons. But you walk around the dog quietly, ol’ Fido just sits there licking his balls.”

  “Okay, so how are we evading Fido, exactly?”

  “Well, we can’t directly coordinate with Brent Scott’s PAC. But they have access to any information available to the public, right? So when we announce our scheduling, or post it on the campaign website, it becomes public knowledge. And if we announce, say, we’ll be in Des Moines on February 18, then the Super PAC can book the Iowa Event Center and pay for the space rental and event staff. We’re not coordinating with them, since the information is public. We’re just putting it out there and letting them do the rest.”

  “That’s an awfully large crack.”

  “We didn’t make it,” Kapinski said. “Washington is broken, so we use the breaks. Let’s say we post a video of a Rawson Griggs speech on YouTube. Any Griggs Super PACs can then use that footage and splice it into their advertising. If they produce an ad Rawson likes, he’ll tweet a link to it. If they produce one he doesn’t like, he won’t. And as long as the FEC has their dicks tied behind their backs, there’s no reason we can’t use them to our advantage.”

  “That’s not exactly self-financing,” Remy said.

  “We don’t have the fundraising apparatuses of the RNC or DNC or their infrastructure,” Kapinski said. “As a third party, we need that money. Rawson is rich, but even I don’t think he wants to spend as much money as he says he does. Not when other people can pick up part, or all, of the tab.”

  “Doesn’t that kind of make us hypocrites?”

  “Welcome to politics, kid,” Kapinski said with a laugh. “Who do you think picked up the tab for your coming out party at the Grand Hyatt?”

  Remy felt slightly nauseous. Had he lied to all those people, telling them that Rawson was paying for his campaign when, in reality, he had no idea who was picking up the tab. If Brent Scott had raised that money for his PAC, where had it all come from?

  Jerry opened his word processor and pulled up the Griggs press release template. He added the date and began to write. Remy tried to ignore the unease knotting his gut and helpe
d Jerry draft a release about Paul disappearance.

  When they had a working draft, Kapinski emailed it to Blum and Rawson.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Remy said.

  “Shoot,” Kapinski said, rubbing his eyes.

  “How well do you know Paul?”

  Kapinski thought for a moment.

  “Not very. To be honest, we were always a little confused by that marriage. They love each other, don’t get me wrong. Or they did. But to Rawson, Alena is more valuable that all the money, all the property, all the jewelry in the world. You don’t store your valuables in a shoebox.”

  “So you’re saying Paul is the shoebox.”

  Kapinski shrugged, as if to say it is what it is.

  “For years,” he said, “Rawson tried to fix her up with a who’s-who of the world’s most prominent heirs and scions. Rawson wanted to create a dynasty. He paraded heirs to half the companies on the Forbes 400 to Alena. But she never bit.”

  “So she went for Paul because he’s the regular guy,” Remy said. He remembered their conversations in the hospital, Alena’s defiance at having full-time security watching over them. Her resistance to being defined as simply Rawson Griggs’s daughter. She had power and influence, but seemed to wield it carefully and almost hesitantly, as if part of her had to apologize for having been born into such privilege. Marrying Paul Bracewell proved Alena was her own woman.

  “It would never have lasted with Paul,” Kapinski said. “Once you go on Rawson’s shit list, you never get off.”

  “So maybe he left,” Remy said. “Maybe he realized that and just had to get away for a while.”