We were headed into the final push, and that meant our TV and radio expenditures would quadruple. Not only did we have to create commercials that did us good, we had to create commercials that did us no harm. In every election cycle there is a story of a commercial or a series of commercials that damages the candidate who created them. You then spend your time, your desperate frantic time, trying to undo what you’ve done. This happens most often when you’ve made negative charges that are so nasty even some of your supporters find them unacceptable.
I wanted to know which segments we were still having trouble with. Duffy was a hardliner but not a fool. He ran a careful, persuasive campaign that appealed to voting segments across the board. His chief vulnerability was that he’d been a lobbyist for twenty years before moving back to his hometown and running for office. We were happy to remind voters that he had worked as a hired gun for some pretty odious people and corporations, including one that had replaced local workers with a large number of undocumented ones. We’d decided early on to keep body-punching him with his history. By contrast we reminded voters of how much Susan had done for her district. We’d always known the race would tighten, and the internals we were seeing bore that out. We still had a safe lead. The task now would be to keep it.
Ben finished his press release and we went over it. We acknowledged that there had been a “discussion” between campaign staffers that had gotten heated, but then, “What campaign doesn’t have heated discussions now and then?” We could deny that it had ever happened, that somebody had made up this “fight” story to discredit us, but that would only keep the incident alive. The press would push harder and harder to make us admit the truth. This way, with any luck, they’d quote our release and go on to something else.
The other staffers were gone. Lunch hours were staggered and there was work to do all over the district. During all this Kristin was in and out. She’d asked me twice if I knew where Susan was. There was another radio interview show she was supposed to be doing later this afternoon. I couldn’t help her, of course. The final time she hurried back into the office she said: “She just called me on my cell.”
I swiveled around in the chair. “Susan, you mean?”
“Right. She said she’d call the station at four and would do the interview.”
“Did she say where she was?”
“No.”
“Great.”
Her gaze moved from me to Ben and back to me. “Do I get to know what’s going on here? Why wouldn’t Susan tell me where she was?”
“I don’t know.”
She glanced at Ben. “He’s lying, isn’t he?”
“I can’t tell. He won’t tell me what’s going on, but maybe he doesn’t know where she is.”
“This whole thing is coming apart, isn’t it?”
“Kristin—”
“Don’t play that ‘Kristin’ bullshit, Dev. What’s going on? You’re the boss, but Ben and I are running this campaign. We asked you to deal with Susan only because you seem to be able to get along with Natalie. We deserve to know what the hell is going on.”
Ben said, “I agree, Dev. I’d say if you don’t trust us enough to tell us what you’ve found out, then why did you hire us in the first place?”
“Maybe I’ll just go get drunk and call you later.”
“Ben and I will go with you. We’ll get you so bombed you’ll tell us everything.”
“Susan’s name may come up in the Monica Davies murder.”
“My God. Are you serious?”
“No, Kristin, I’m making it up because I enjoy watching you and Ben go into shock.”
“You don’t mean she actually committed the murder?” Again she glanced at Ben.
“I don’t have any way of knowing. But my guess is no.”
I spent ten minutes laying it out for them. The motel with the blood on the desk. Gwen and Bobby. Larson. The blackmail.
“And you don’t know anything about this red-haired man — this Craig Donovan?” Ben said.
“He’s Bobby’s father. You see the resemblance to Susan when you look closely at Bobby. But he doesn’t look like either one of them to any great degree.”
“So what the hell are we going to do now?” Kristin said.
“There’s only one thing to do,” I said. “Find Donovan and confront him.”
“How do you find him?”
“I’ll have to lean on somebody I don’t want to.”
They stood beside me while I made my next phone call.
The Stay-Rite was a grim little motel on the north edge of Aldyne. It made the place where Gwen and Bobby had been staying look upscale. Two long flanks fanned out from a central office in standard fashion. The white stucco exterior looked as if a giant had pissed on it, long ugly streaks of rust covering much of the surface. In spots the walkway in front of the rooms had been reduced to rubble. One window bore a poster of Toby Keith and a few showed Confederate flags. The motel must have had rates for lengthy stays.
I’d learned about the place when I’d called Gwen from the office.
“Is Bobby there?”
“He’s taking a shower.”
“Good. I need to know where I can find Craig Donovan.”
“Oh, God, Mr. Conrad, I can’t tell you that. Bobby would never forgive me.”
“I’m trying to help Bobby, Gwen, whether he knows it or not. You know that, don’t you?”
She hesitated and then said, “Please never tell him I told you.”
So here I sat on the edge of an industrial zone. The streets were lined with food franchises, tattoo parlors, convenience stores, and strip malls that looked like they’d been lifted from third-world countries.
I didn’t know how I was going to handle it. This was the man with all the answers, and I didn’t much care how I got them.
The sun was behind the clouds. The afternoon had a faint scent of winter on it. Dog shit, what appeared to be dried human vomit, and the stain from a broken bottle of tomato juice covered the walk in front of room 146. Jagged pieces of glass looked like piranha teeth. Welcome home.
A game show played behind the faded red metal door. A female voice shouted, “Go for it, you stupid bitch! Go for it!” I had to knock loudly to be heard.
If you were drunk and forlorn enough, you might take her home when the bar announced last call for the night. She was maybe thirty and pretty in a ruined way. The breasts were balloons trapped inside a yellow terry-cloth halter. The exposed belly was fleshy but not unattractive. The lower legs were shapely but the thighs were heavy. The red-and-blue cobra tattoos that climbed both her arms were nicely done. The teeth showed a heavy tobacco habit. And her right eye was her spiritual résumé. Somebody had punched her very hard and recently. She was a floozy. The hand on the hip, the cock of the head, the insolence of the brown gaze. “Who’re you supposed to be?”
I smiled at the way she’d said it. “Well, I’m supposed to be a doctor. That’s what my folks wanted. But it didn’t turn out that way. Who’re you supposed to be?”
“If it’s any of your business, I’m supposed to be cutting hair at my sister’s beauty shop right now, but she’s such a bitch, I can’t stand to be around her. So what do you want?”
“I’m looking for a man named Craig Donovan.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“I have a message for him.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re a cop. I hate cops.”
“Not a cop. Just a private citizen with a message.”
The insolence was now anger. “You’re lucky he isn’t here. He’d punch your face in.”