Just the Truth

by Gen LaGreca

  A group of concerned citizens challenged the new statute in court, but the judges, hesitant to undermine a law passed by Congress, put their stamp of approval on it.

  "Americans can now rest assured that our elections are fair and honest, thanks to SafeVote," Diane Harris told her radio audience. "Isn't that correct, Mr. Spenser?"

  "That's the idea."

  Was it her imagination that Spenser sounded half-hearted? Laura wondered. From private conversations with him, she knew he had his doubts.

  "Thank you very much for talking with us today on National Report."

  The program's theme music returned as the segment concluded.

  Laura pulled up a map on her phone's screen. She saw that the cab was now only a few blocks from her destination.

  She wondered if Spenser trusted her enough to speak candidly. He had not contacted her directly but had been discreetly passed on to her by another journalist who had declined to pursue the story. Spenser had reluctantly agreed to speak to Laura.

  On the phone a few days ago, he had shared his misgivings about her, saying, "I hear so many crazy things about you—the attacks on you by other newscasters, by the president's party, by my own boss. I don't know what to believe. They say you want to skewer the president to boost your ratings."

  "They could skewer me in a minute if they put my suspicions to rest," she replied. "Why do they attack me instead of answering my questions about matters they're required by law to make public?"

  "Look, if I talk to you, I could be risking my career and possibly committing a crime."

  Laura couldn't deny that. There were laws to protect informants, but there were also laws to punish those who revealed internal information harmful to their agencies—and there were too many partisan players in the system to try to dissuade Spenser of the danger he sensed.

  "I'm not sticking my neck out so that you can boost your ratings. I work for the administration, and I have a certain loyalty to it."

  "What about working for the truth? Do you have a loyalty to that?"

  She sensed in his pause that he was wondering whether he could trust her.

  She went on, "I don't pursue stories in order to get ratings. I get ratings because I pursue stories—important ones. And the name of my show tells you what I look for." When he still didn't reply, she continued, "It's a pretty big deal that for the first time in our history, the federal government is taking control of the voting process for the presidential election. Don't you think the Feds—the people you work for—should be absolutely transparent and ensure that no suspicions are raised about their activities?"

  "We wouldn't be having this conversation if I didn't."

  "What do you know, Mr. Spenser?"

  "First, tell me what you know."

  For what seemed like minutes, she heard only his breathing over the phone. She decided not to press him when he was hesitant.

  "Okay, I'll go first," she said.

  She described the story she was investigating on how the Bureau of Elections was using the money allocated to it for implementing SafeVote.

  "I discovered that the Bureau of Elections received $400 million that can't be traced. It's not included in their list of contractors and fees. For the way the government spends money, that may seem like a small amount, but for some of us, the unaccountability raises suspicions. I want to know who is receiving that $400 million, and what work is being done with that money."

  "I may have information on that, Laura," he said.

  She noticed his softer tone and use of her first name. Perhaps he was willing to trust her.

  "What do you have, James?"

  Again, there was silence.

  "James?"

  "Our agency finished the programming for SafeVote. As a final step, the program was tested for accuracy and security by a reputable outside company. It passed inspection and was certified."

  "So what's the problem?"

  "Sandra said another company is going to be brought in to do some last-minute programming, what she called updates and patches."

  "Sandra Frank, the director of the Bureau of Elections? Your boss?"

  "That's right. I thought it was odd to be planning more work on the program because the final check on everything had been done. No modifications are allowed after that, or else the program has to have another certification. I asked Sandra about that, and she said there won't be another certification."

  "Did she say why?"

  "She said the changes will be minor. But it's against the law to modify the program after it's been certified. I asked her who will be doing the modifications, and she brushed me off. She said the whole matter was trivial, and she would handle it. I also asked if this extra programming was her idea, and she said no, but she wouldn't say who was behind it."

  "Does that mean someone above Sandra is ordering this work?"

  "It could be. Sandra's a good soldier; she follows orders from higher-ups. When I looked at the records, there was no mention of this work, no line item for anyone to come in at this point to do any updates and patches."

  "Do you think the $400 million that's unaccounted for will be going to the subcontractor doing these modifications?"

  "Could be."

  "Can you find out the name of the company and let me know?"

  "I can ask questions and check around, but . . . " he trailed off, hesitating. "Sandra's been looking at me funny these days. I wonder if they think I could be . . . disloyal. Outliers tend to be watched closely here. I wonder if they . . . "

  He sighed.

  She waited for him to continue, feeling a quiet battle going on inside him.

  Finally, he said, "Okay. I'll meet you on Friday and let you know what I find out."

  Did James Spenser learn anything new? she wondered, as the cab turned onto a side street. An awning over the door of an old brick building bore the name Bailey's. Next to the restaurant was a parking lot that was less than half full at that midafternoon hour, too late for lunch and too early for dinner.

  The driver left Laura in front of the restaurant and drove away. She looked incongruous in that setting, a businesswoman wearing a costly skirt and blouse, with a white linen suit jacket tossed over her arm, in front of what looked like a tavern with a restaurant tossed in as an afterthought. She looked inside a large bay window to see a sparse number of customers sitting on bar stools, amid a dirty tile floor and unkempt shelves where liquor bottles, glasses, and menus had been haphazardly placed. Sports banners papered the walls, and television monitors hung from overhead. About to open the door, she was startled by a loud noise that sounded like a gunshot. The sound seemed to be coming from the parking lot.

  She hurried toward the lot. She saw the back of a man as he ran to the far end of the lot, jumped over the fence, and disappeared onto the street behind the restaurant. She heard a moan and saw what looked like blood trickling along the ground from between two of the parked cars. She walked toward it and saw its source. By the side of a parked car, she saw a man's body lying face up on the pavement with blood pouring over the front of his shirt.

  "James!" she cried, her voice coarse with horror.

  She crouched down to help him, to cover the gash on his chest with her suit jacket to stop the bleeding. The white fabric quickly turned red.

  Two employees came out of the restaurant's side door, heading to the dumpster with bags of trash. As they gazed in horror at the blood-soaked scene, their bags suddenly dropped.

  One of them pulled out a phone and called for an ambulance.

  "I'll get the manager," the other said and ran back into the restaurant.

  "Laura . . . " Spenser's face was twisted in pain. His head rolled, eyes half closed. He had bruises on his face and his clothes were rumpled, showing signs of a fight. His pants pocket was ripped. Had his wallet been stolen?

  "James!" she gasped. "Who did this?"

  "Don't know."

  "Why would someone do this?"

  "Don't know."


  "James, hang in. Help is coming. Hang in, now!"

  He grabbed the collar of her blouse to pull her closer.

  "F . . . Fox . . . " He wheezed, struggling with every breath. His voice was barely a whisper.

  "What? Fox? Fix? What did you say?"

  "Fox," he whispered.

  His eyes shut, and his head fell to the side.

  "James . . . James!"

  There was no reply.

  Chapter 2

  Patrol cars with flashing lights and blaring sirens descended upon the scene. The police weaved their way through onlookers and cordoned off the area. Crime-scene investigators examined the body as a stunned, blood-splattered Laura Taninger waited to be questioned by two detectives.

  She overheard a patrolman who was first to arrive give his impression of the crime.

  "The victim was assaulted, and his wallet was stolen by an armed assailant," he said. Detectives Andrea Stone and Glen Boyer listened, their faces somber, their badges prominent on their plain clothes. "There were blows to the victim's face and body, signs of a struggle that indicated he fought back. That's when, I'd say, the attacker panicked, took out his gun, shot the man in the chest, and fled the scene." The patrolman concluded, "It looks like an assault and robbery that turned into a homicide."

  The patrolman gestured to Laura standing nearby. He introduced the detectives to her and told them that she was the first person to reach the victim.

  "Did you know the victim?" asked Stone. "Who was he?"

  Laura told the officers Spenser's name and that he was the assistant director of the Bureau of Elections. She added that she was a journalist who was about to meet with him to obtain confidential information about what he believed were anomalies in the SafeVote program being developed by his agency.

  "What kind of anomalies?" asked Boyer.

  "I don't know."

  "Did you see the attacker?"

  She told them what she remembered.

  "I saw him, but only as he was running away with his back toward me. He was racing toward the fence at the far end of the parking lot." She pointed in the direction of the fence. "And then he jumped over it. He was a tall, heavyset white male, about 250 pounds, with short brown hair; he was wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt."

  The detectives took notes, their eyes darting from their pads to her face. They continued to take turns questioning her.

  "Did you notice anything unusual about the attacker? Anything about his appearance that stood out?"

  She shut her eyes, trying to visualize the fleeing man. As she replayed the scene in her mind, she remembered seeing something as the man grasped the top of the fence. "Come to think of it, when he reached up to climb over the fence, I noticed a large tattoo on his right forearm."

  "What did it look like?"

  "It was a human skull, with black eye sockets and a full set of teeth."

  "Really?"

  "That's what caught my eye."

  The detectives looked at each other, questioningly, as if wondering if the description jogged a memory, but neither one seemed to recognize it.

  "Was Mr. Spenser conscious when you reached him?"

  "Yes, barely."

  "Did he say anything to you?"

  "I asked who did this to him, but Spenser said he didn't know. I asked why he was attacked, and he repeated that he didn't know. Then, he said a final word that sounded like Fox, and he lost consciousness."

  By the detectives' blank expressions, she knew that Spenser's last word puzzled them as much as it did her.

  "Does that word mean anything to you, Ms. Taninger?" Stone asked, jotting it down on her pad.

  "No, nothing."

  Laura mentioned Spenser's concern that his superior might have suspected him of being a whistleblower.

  "Maybe others suspected him, too. Maybe someone was monitoring his communications and knew about his meeting with me. What I mean is, maybe Spenser was not assaulted by a thief trying to steal his wallet. Maybe he was roughed up by someone who wanted to send him a message—to scare him into silence—and his wallet was stolen to make it look like a robbery and divert the police from the real motive and attacker."

  "And who would this attacker be?" asked Boyer, his tone sharper, as if he were questioning Laura's hypothesis.

  He and his partner paused from their note-taking to study her face.

  "Someone who didn't want James Spenser to talk to the media."

  "Like who?"

  "Maybe someone on the outside who's working for a contractor, or someone inside . . . the agency or . . . higher up."

  "Do you have anyone specific in mind?"

  "No."

  The detectives looked increasingly skeptical, as if she had an overactive imagination. They thanked her for the information and moved on.

  Later, on the set of Just the Truth, Laura took her place, with printed notes and a laptop at her fingertips. She looked pale and tense, still reeling from the events of the afternoon. She sat at a striking glass table that seemed to be floating between brushed nickel columns on each end, its top curved like a crescent with sharp, pointed edges. When she had begun the show two years ago, she had chosen that table design because it was transparent and edgy, like the clear facts and incisive opinions she planned to give. On her laptop, she glanced at the websites of the leading news outlets to see how they were covering the murder of a high-level federal official.

  Man killed in random robbery.

  Man fatally shot in D.C. parking lot.

  Man robbed and murdered.

  The murder was covered as a common crime story on the local news sites. It barely made national news. The fact that James Spenser worked for the Bureau of Elections was mentioned merely as an aside and not treated suspiciously.

  She had decided to handle the matter differently. She began her show each night with a monologue that she called her Daily Memo. She wrote these pieces herself and gave them to her staff to enter into the teleprompter. She had written that night's opening in the frenzied aftermath of the shooting. Her monologue would address James Spenser's murder.

  She took a final look at her notes for the evening's broadcast. Although the lights on the set gave off heat, she had the chills. Spenser's final moments stained her memory. She could still see the blood seeping from his body and the life draining from his face. She would make it her cause to find out what he was going to tell her, to learn the information that could have cost him his life. When she did find out, would she, too, be in danger? She glanced at the studio set, and her eyes paused on the logo for her show, the bold initials of her grandfather, JT.

  For a moment, she thought back to how he had described the work of Taninger News to her when she was a teenager learning the business: We will always report the truth. Then we'll take a stand on it. To JT, obtaining the facts was the first step. Commentary came next. We will never be neutral, he would tell her. For her grandfather, to be alive was to make judgments. How do you make them? she had asked him. Not through partisanship. Political parties aren't sacred. Only facts and principles are sacred. Like a scientist, he'd examined the people, policies, and events of his day through powerful lenses that revealed their essence, the lenses of justice and liberty. Did the objects of his scrutiny preserve or destroy these essential principles? Because his commentary was based on the facts and on the moral code that a free nation depended on, a wide audience considered his opinions to be well-reasoned and persuasive.

  Those were his tenets, and now they were hers. She did not accept them uncritically, which would have been an insult both to her and to JT. She believed in them as wholeheartedly as he did. They powered her spirit as much as they did his.

  She thought of the fierce pride he took in his verbal duels with those he believed were the purveyors of corruption, injustice, and unchecked power. She thought of the calling that was the newspaper business to him, and it somehow gave her the courage to pursue her story as she saw it, regardless of how others were treating it, r
egardless of the ridicule—and danger—it might bring her.

  An attendant adjusted her hair and whisked a powder puff over her face. Another crew member announced the two-minute warning to air time. She thought of her father's order to drop the investigation of SafeVote, following the phone call he'd received from President Martin's aide, Darcy Egan. Why was he so willing to do their bidding? Would JT drop it? Never. Then, in the control room, she saw a hand raised with fingers counting down, and she heard through her earpiece: "Five, four, three, two, one."

  The raised hand pointed to her. They were on the air. She managed a cordial smile for her viewers.

  "Good evening and welcome to Just the Truth. I'm Laura Taninger. The subject of my Daily Memo tonight is: Give Us Justice."

  Her smile faded, her face looking suitable for a funeral. Her voice grew somber as she continued, "This afternoon, yours truly was at the scene of the murder that's shocked our nation's capital. The victim was the assistant director of the Bureau of Elections, James Spenser. He was killed just moments before he was to meet with me to report his concerns over what he believed were anomalies in the programming of the country's new SafeVote system, which is being developed for use in the upcoming presidential election. Our calls to the Bureau of Elections and to President Martin's senior aides for their comments have so far gone unanswered."

  She stared into the camera, her eyes wide and questioning, her face still showing the sadness, shock, and horror of the day's events.

  "While we await the police investigation into the killer and the motive, I can't help but wonder if James Spenser was targeted. Could it really be a coincidence that he was gunned down moments before he was to speak to a member of the press? Other news outlets aren't mentioning this important fact. Instead, it has been reported that the man with inside information about suspicious activities surrounding the controversial federal takeover of our election system has been murdered at random by a street thief looking to lift a wallet." She paused to let her viewers digest her implication. "What was James Spenser about to reveal to me? Just the Truth will find out. We will pursue this story until we have answers."