Just the Truth

by Gen LaGreca

  The dean read it, slowly put down the paper, and shook his head. "I can't go that far. She hasn't done anything wrong," he said.

  Ronda Pendleton looked surprised at Dean Folner's comment.

  "I mean, she hasn't done anything to warrant going that far," he added, his tone more tentative. "Tell them I won't do it," Dean Folner replied to Pendleton, who passed his answer to the protestors.

  That night, following the dean's refusal, the ringleader and a few from his squad bypassed the guards and surreptitiously entered the science building. In laboratories close to the dean's makeshift office, a shower was set off and a fire extinguisher activated. Thousands of dollars in property damage resulted. When he heard the news, Dean Folner went numb. His nervous blinking stopped, replaced by a blank stare that resembled the look of the doomed.

  Laura Taninger blasted the rioters and the dean on Just the Truth.

  "The subject of my Daily Memo tonight is: Tools of Silence: The Mob," she told her viewers.

  "History teaches us that unscrupulous governments use many tactics to silence their greatest enemy: free speech. We've discussed several of the tactics and accused the Martin administration of employing them. The tactic I'm going to discuss tonight is in a class by itself. It crosses over a line and resorts to open violence.

  "In America today, civility and the rule of law have been hampered, but they still exist and have a history of being the bedrock of our nation, so the government can't itself use open violence for fear of terrorizing the citizens and turning them against it. Rather than be so crude, the government can instead condone, excuse, and look the other way at violence used by supposedly private organizations, which are actually front groups that have close ties to the administration and receive handouts from it. These groups are the ones that crush their patron's enemies. Let the groups do the dirty work, so the government itself can look uninvolved to the unsuspecting and gullible among us.

  "Paradoxically, this movement toward mob rule enjoys a footing in the institutions that are supposed to be developing the intellect: our universities. What better group can a government try to control than the young, impressionable, future generation? If you can teach the young that an angry mob is more powerful than an argument, you can control them for a lifetime.

  "Colleges are becoming breeding grounds for belligerent organizations aligned with the government to advance the state's causes by bullying and force. Is the Martin administration onboard with these roughhouse tactics used against our most vulnerable young people? Sadly, the answer is, yes."

  Laura showed pictures of Collier University with its stately buildings being overrun by protestors breaking windows, overturning cars, and setting fires in trash receptacles.

  "Collier University was the recent subject of such a mob attack. This attack targeted my sister, Kate Taninger. She's a junior at Collier and editor of the school newspaper called the Collier Voice. Kate was targeted because she wrote an editorial supporting my investigation into SafeVote. She was attacked and denied her prerogative to express her point of view.

  "Who's behind these disturbances? Many naïve or disingenuous journalists are reporting that these are spontaneous demonstrations by caring students troubled by injustices in society. Let's pour some cold facts over those claims. These demonstrations are not spontaneous. Busloads of professional protestors have been dropped in and are being paid.

  "We've identified the hardcore demonstrators, and they are not students, but professional protestors. We see the same people appearing at other riots in other cities. Here, take a look." Images flashed, flagging some of the same people at the Collier protest as also being in the frontlines of other protests in other cities.

  "Who sent them to Collier? An organization called the Foundation to Enrich Student Life. There's no need to guess about this. Although they've declined invitations to appear on this show, the Foundation's director and the ringleader of the protests at Collier have given joint interviews to other media outlets."

  Laura looked into the camera, her face sober.

  "Although it claims to be a nonpartisan charity so that it can receive government funding, the Foundation to Enrich Student Life actually gets out the vote on campuses around the country for President Martin's political party. It's scandalous that this group is funded by the taxpayers. The Foundation's involvement in the Collier protests makes us believe that the Martin administration elicited its help or is accepting it willingly and unethically."

  Next, Laura showed a picture of Kate, a vibrant photo of her in a park, laughing, catching a volley ball, with the sun on her face.

  "And my sister, Kate Taninger, who is an honor student at Collier and an up-and-coming journalist, has been fired from her post as editor-in-chief and her newspaper has been defunded in order to appease these thugs.

  "I stepped in with a personal donation to keep the Voice afloat. However, the brave students who staff the newspaper are still vulnerable to verbal and physical attacks from the rioters. Do we want our beautiful young people—like my sister Kate—to be assailed by a mob while our universities abandon reason, arguments, and debates of ideas?"

  During an evening meeting over wine and hors d'oeuvres in the president's office, Darcy Egan, Zack Walker, and Ken Martin watched Laura Taninger's broadcast. As Laura spoke, Martin downed a glass of wine and poured another, his face growing redder.

  "How many heads does this hydra have? How many times do we need to cut her down before she's finally dead?"

  Brooding, Zack observed Laura on television.

  "It's time to take a new tack," he said, staring hatefully at the screen.

  The next day, hit pieces appeared in the media about Dean Stewart Folner. The dean cheated on a high school exam, said an accuser who was in the same class and who suddenly surfaced thirty-five years later to make the accusation. The dean abused his wife, claimed another reporter, who had gotten that information from a source who was launching a legal action to release the twenty-year-old divorce records of the dean and his first wife.

  The protestors became more virulent, their signs more vicious, their disruptions of students trying to enter campus buildings more numerous.

  The discontents now called for the dean to resign. "It's you or Kate," they chanted from the sidewalk outside his laboratory window. The dean looked with horror at their latest placards:

  Fire the Dean.

  Dean Folner Must Resign.

  End Bigotry or End Your Job.

  Expel Kate or Get Out.

  He heard the shouts of the rioters and watched them being interviewed by fawning reporters. No matter how powerful he was, they somehow had more power. What weapon did they have that was so potent against him? Fear paralyzed his mind before it could provide the answer. On a television news show, he saw the picture that Laura had released of Kate smiling in a park on a sunlit day, catching a volley ball, enjoying a moment worth living. His eyes lingered on the attractive, intelligent student of his university, whose face was filled with innocence and hope.

  He felt like an ancient king being pressured to make a human sacrifice of a fair maiden to appease capricious, powerful gods. Would he?

  Chapter 16

  A gusty breeze lifted Laura's jacket and blew her hair as she approached the glass-and-steel headquarters of Taninger Enterprises. That first week in October, a restless autumn wind pushed through the city, sweeping out the warm temperatures from a lingering summer.

  Laura felt impatient, too, as she walked through the arched entrance of Taninger Enterprises, glancing overhead at the stone engraving of her grandfather's motto: Find the truth wherever it hides. Almost another month had passed since attorney Sam Quinn had filed an appeal to her original Public Disclosure Request. Walking into the building through the revolving door, she felt as if she were on a kind of merry-go-round, stretching to grab a brass ring that was just out of reach.

  She walked across the lobby, greeting the guard at the security desk. Behind the guard's station
she saw the familiar portraits of her family members, who comprised the executive management of Taninger Enterprises. This day, however, the portraits struck her as sitting ducks to be shot down by a pernicious sniper. How many of them have been hit now? Irene lost the Pinnacle contract and a chance at record ratings for her station. Billie is mired in re-dos and delays for the Slammers' new stadium. And now they're trying to pick off Kate! The thought of her kid-sister as the victim of vicious attacks—a college student whose portrait had not yet even made it to the executives' wall—made Laura doubly impatient to get answers from the Bureau of Elections.

  For what purpose were these cruel attacks unleashed on her family? And was James Spenser's murder the deadliest hit of all by the same sniper?

  Her mind buzzed with unanswered questions as she headed toward the elevator. She was impatient to see all communications and documents relating to IFT, which the Bureau of Elections was required to provide in response to her appeal. On the elevator, her phone chimed. She found a text message from Sam:

  Received BOE's response. It's on your desk.

  She dashed out of the elevator and across the busy newsroom of Taninger News to her office.

  She expected piles of paper. After all, this was a significant contract. Surely the trail of correspondences and documents would be massive. She would have to pull various members of her staff together to delve through it all.

  She reached her office, saw her desk, and froze in her tracks. Sitting on her desk were not mounds of paper, or even a small collection of pages. There was just one page. She felt a shocking disappointment. Is that it?

  She picked up the document and examined it. The paper was a memorandum written on official letterhead bearing the seal of the Bureau of Elections. The subject was: IFT to Perform Updates and Patches on SafeVote. Except for the first line, the rest of the text was redacted in heavy black marker. The name and signature of the official at the Bureau of Elections who signed the document was also redacted.

  The unredacted first line was the whole of her mother lode. She carefully read and reread it. The sentence contained new information that identified the organization. IFT was a company based in Ireland whose full name was Integrated Foxworth Technologies. Its president was . . . she gasped . . . Frank Foxworth.

  She slowly dropped the document on her desk. A memory from the caverns of her mind resurfaced to confront her. A mortally wounded man lay before her. She desperately tried to stop a tsunami of blood flowing from his chest, spilling onto her clothes, and staining the pavement red. He grabbed her collar, weakly pulled her closer, and tried to tell her something, but he could barely whisper one word before his eyes closed and his head fell with a sudden finality.

  "Fox," he seemed to mouth to her in his last breath.

  She now posed a question to the man who could no longer answer any inquiries: James, did you mean Frank Foxworth?

  Chapter 17

  "Your Honor, Just the Truth demands that the Bureau of Elections turn over all documents relating to its contractor Integrated Foxworth Technologies and the work it's been tasked with in the development of SafeVote. We have been trying for several months now to obtain information from this agency, first with informal inquiries, then with our Public Disclosure Request, then with an appeal to our request, but to no avail. That's why we're asking the court to intervene."

  Attorney Sam Quinn stood before the judge's bench in the wood-paneled courtroom. On the wall behind the bench hung an oil painting of a scene from antiquity depicting the blindfolded Lady Justice in a diaphanous robe holding her scales, with attendants flanking her. The graceful beauty of the artist's rendition of the goddess of Justice contrasted sharply with the leather-tough features of the black-robed, unsmiling Judge Marianne Rogers, who opened her folder on the case, spread out the papers, and listened without expression. A white lace collar was the only touch of softness to contrast with her no-nonsense countenance.

  A clerk at a small desk sat near the bench that morning when Sam Quinn filed a suit for Just the Truth and attorney Emmett Wallace filed a Motion to Dismiss on behalf of the Bureau of Elections. With no one present in the witness stand or jury box to absorb the sound, the lawyers' voices, full-throated and highly skilled in courtroom drama, echoed off the glossy wood walls.

  Laura was the sole spectator at that hour, quietly observing from a pew in the public area beyond the balustrade. She listened as Sam related their saga with the Bureau of Elections to the judge.

  " . . . So, Your Honor, after we filed an appeal specifically targeted to this one contractor, IFT, we received nothing more than a one-page response. Only one page of documentation, Your Honor, for a $400 million contract. And the information contained on that single page was ninety-five percent redacted, giving us only the full name of the company and its president and stating that it's located in Ireland!"

  Judge Rogers nodded, saying, "You have a point."

  Then, she turned to Emmett Wallace, a young man with a dress-for-success pin-striped suit and carefully styled hair.

  "Good morning, Your Honor," he said, smiling broadly.

  His friendly salutation received no reply from the judge.

  His smile fading, Counselor Wallace continued, "The Bureau of Elections has responded to both the original Public Disclosure Request and the appeal within a reasonable timeframe."

  "But your response was incomplete. Wasn't it?" the judge interjected.

  "We are cooperating as best we can. We have produced thousands of pages of information."

  "But nothing on the contract that Just the Truth is most interested in, the IFT deal. Isn't that the problem?" Judge Rogers asked Wallace.

  "With the rollout of SafeVote just weeks away, the Bureau of Elections is facing exceptional circumstances. The Bureau is responsible for our new national voting system, and the country's eyes are on us! We are unduly swamped with work and will be until this rollout is accomplished."

  The judge nodded. "You have a point, too, Counselor."

  "We can't postpone Election Day for the sake of providing the plaintiff with materials. We are complying, and we will continue to comply with the disclosure requests, without the court's involvement. We ask that the court grant our Motion to Dismiss and give us more time to work this out with the plaintiff."

  Sam objected, saying, "Judge Rogers, we acknowledge that Elections replied, but as you point out, the response was incomplete. We've given Elections ample time. They are not complying with their transparency obligations. We need the court's prodding to get them to move on this."

  "But, Judge," Wallace responded, "there are also serious national security issues at play here. We can't release technical material involving the new voting system for fear of breaching its security. We have to painstakingly go through every document to be sure that security-related information is redacted. This takes time, Your Honor. We can't pull our staff off of the SafeVote project to serve the plaintiff's television channel and shirk our responsibility to the nation to rollout the new voting system on time and without snags."

  "How is a company profile and a general description of the contractor's tasks in layman's terms a breach of national security? We haven't even received that much," Quinn remarked. "Your Honor, this is nothing more than a lame excuse!"

  The judge turned to the defendant. "What about it, Mr. Wallace? Why are you giving the plaintiff the runaround?"

  "Short of halting the agency's work and devoting ourselves to serving Just the Truth, instead of the public, we are already giving them expedited treatment, and we're producing documents in a timely fashion."

  "But you're not complying with the law," declared Quinn. "Just the Truth is engaged in disseminating information to the public, and this is an important matter that must not be hidden from public view. Elections must be transparent, and the public disclosure laws are supposed to ensure that they are, especially at this crucial time when a new voting system is rolling out. This matter now needs intervention from the court, no
t more stalls and delays!"

  The judge's head swiveled from side to side as each contestant served his best shot and hoped it would score. Just as Wallace was about to retort, the judge held up her hands.

  "Enough! I've heard enough." She gathered her papers and placed them back in her folder. "I will give you my answer on Monday."

  "But, Your Honor," Sam Quinn implored, holding his notes in one hand and gesturing with the other, "Election Day is fast approaching. The SafeVote launch is imminent. There's an urgency to inform the public on this matter. We need the court to intervene now to prevent any more stalls, delays, dodges, and withholding by Elections."

  "On Monday, Mr. Quinn."

  "Thank you, Judge," said Emmett Wallace, his charming smile returning. "We're confident the court will recognize how reasonable we're trying to be and give us more time."

  "Don't patronize me, Counselor."

  Judge Marianne Rogers closed her folder and left the room.

  With Sam headed to another appointment in the courthouse, Laura rode alone in a taxi on the trip back to her office.

  She leaned her head back, trying to assess what had just transpired in the courtroom and how the judge would rule. She had to admit that she couldn't read the judge or venture a guess. She would have to wait until Monday to learn the fate of her lawsuit.

  She grabbed her phone and skimmed through the latest postings on her news feed. One article that was just coming across the wires captured her interest. It reported that after ten days, the protests at Collier University had finally ended. At first, she was relieved. Then she read further.