Elimination

by Ed Gorman

  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. The
n 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.