Leslie nodded. “Right . . . the video of the governor’s rally. Ted Canan is in it, and I think one other character who started that fight.”
“Yeah, I need to see that before Canan gets extradited back here. I want to know if he’s got any immediate friends I can pressure.”
“I’ll have it for you tomorrow.”
Henderson looked over the scribbled notes in his hand, notes from the conversations he’d had with Shannon, with the Brewers, with John and Leslie, and now from the playing of the 911 tape. “A lot of pieces here . . . but a lot of the puzzle.” He flipped a page over. “Looks like Governor Slater either lied or somebody lied to him. I’d like to get to the bottom of that, find out who and why—” He cut off any objection from Max by looking at him and adding, “—for sure. And then . . .” He looked at John. “You know, that whole pipe rack theory of yours makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it? With no clear fingerprints on the forklift, we’ve needed another trail of some kind. Well, now we’ve just about got ourselves a smoking gun here, a motive and a possible connection to the party who pulled the trigger. It’s getting credible . . . very credible. But I still have one big question: just how the heck did your father get that 911 tape?”
John answered, “We’ve looked in the governor’s direction. I have a friend who’s trying to find out if the governor’s made any recent enemies, someone on the inside who’d know about all this.”
Henderson tightened his lips at a difficult thought. “You’re talking about somebody way inside.”
“Maybe so. But the guys at the warehouse say Dad did have a visitor that day I dropped by to see him and saw him with Chuck’s Walkman.”
“I’ll drop by and get the description from them. We’ve got to find the guy, whoever he is.”
“He may have just been a courier for someone else, we don’t know.”
“No, we sure don’t.” Henderson flipped to a page with some room on it. “John, if you don’t mind my asking, why do you think your father got that tape? I mean, the guy was a plumbing wholesaler! Why give a tape like that to a plumbing wholesaler?”
“Well . . . remember what I said about his religious leanings?”
Henderson gave a big nod. “Ah, yeah, the pro-lifer making pro-choice enemies. So he did have his hands in the political realm.”
“And he was making the governor nervous, I know that. He wrote to the governor about his daughter and apparently knew all about the abortion before he even got this tape.”
Henderson looked up from his notes. “How’d he know?”
John shrugged. “He was a prophet.”
Henderson’s face got a little lopsided. “You want me to write that down?”
John smiled. “That’s the predominant theory at this time, yes.”
Henderson wrote it down. “This case is full of surprises, I want to tell you . . .” Then he looked at all of them. “So all right, I’m going to make a nearly impossible request of all of you. Try to control yourselves. Don’t blab this around. It’s just too big, too dangerous, and if something gets blown before we’re ready, we could lose it all, you understand? And that goes for you people in the media!”
Leslie retorted, “And you too, Henderson! Let me remind you that there are beat reporters around the police precinct all the time who would just about kill for a scoop like this. But you know and I know that we’re dealing with people who specialize in lying and phony images, and if they suspect we’re onto them . . .”
Henderson laughed. “Suspect? They know! Their hired thug just got arrested, for crying out loud!”
Leslie backed off. “Yeah, good point. So . . . how about we all move fast and move quiet?”
“And keep our cool! We don’t know anything for sure yet. Keep telling yourself that—and don’t jump to conclusions. Let’s get the whole picture first.”
“Fair enough,” said John.
“Agreed,” said Leslie.
“I’d say you better hurry,” said Max.
“Okay, I’m outa here,” said Henderson, rising. “I’ll be in touch. Leslie, give me a call and we’ll see that tape. And, John, if Shannon has anything more to say, let me know.”
John rose to shake Henderson’s hand. “I’ve contacted a friend at a TV station over there. He’s going to interview Shannon on-camera and send me the raw tape. We’ll be in constant contact getting ready for that.”
“Good enough.”
“Oh, and Leslie . . .” John beckoned to her.
“Yeah?”
“You’ve got a copy of the ‘Post-operative Instructions’ from the clinic?”
Leslie dug into her carry bag. “Oh, yeah, right.” She handed a photocopy to Henderson. “Here . . . I got the original from Shannon, and she got it direct from the Women’s Medical Center. You can see the Center’s name and address right at the top.”
Henderson was intrigued.
John continued, “And, Leslie, make sure you get one of those to Mrs. Westfall at the Human Life Services Center. Tell her about Shannon. Maybe Mary will come forward now that she has a corroborating witness.”
“Maybe Mary has her own copy,” Leslie mused.
Carl gave a clap of his hands. “Man, wouldn’t that be something? That would cinch both abortions happening at the same clinic for sure!”
“I’ll call her tomorrow,” said Leslie.
“And I suppose Aaron Hart, the lawyer, needs to find out what’s going on,” John considered.
They were all busily chattering when Henderson closed the door to John’s apartment behind him and walked slowly down the stairs to his car, deep in thought, heavily perplexed, still dumbfounded. This was turning out to be some kind of day, almost more than he could take all at once.
He got to his unmarked squad car and leaned against it for just a moment.
“Qui bono?” he asked himself, looking out over the city. It just seemed that all the arrows pointed in the same direction. Hoo boy. A bigger can of worms he’d never find.
He got into the car, his mind still processing a substantial load of data, sorting it, filing it in little slots and folders in his head, arranging it all into some rather unthinkable revelations.
“Who benefits?” he asked again and then let his head rest with a bump on the steering wheel at the obvious answer.
THE MEETING BEHIND the tall oak doors of the Executive Conference Room convened early on Tuesday morning, with all those invited arriving promptly despite the short notice.
Hiram Slater stood at the head of the long conference table. At his right sat his special assistant and the meeting’s organizer, Martin Devin. At his left sat Wilma Benthoff, the governor’s campaign manager, and to her left sat Mason Hartly and Eugene Rowen, the governor’s innovative publicity team.
The others sitting at the table were their special guests, handpicked by Slater and Devin, persons crucial to the carefully laid plan they were about to present.
The first was Tina Lewis, close business acquaintance of Martin Devin and executive news producer for Channel 6.
To her right, Gretchen Rafferty, red-haired, grim-faced feminist, political activist, and director of the League for Abortion Rights.
Next to her, Candice Delano, a well-weathered, white-haired pillar of radical feminism and president of the United Feminist Front, a woman who hated men and was never timorous in saying so.
Across the table from them was an attractive and articulate black woman named Fanny Wolfe, president and spokeswoman for the Federation for Controlled Parenthood.
Next to her, with weathered face and thinning gray hair combed straight back, was Murphy Bolen, news editor for the city’s biggest newspaper, The News Journal.
They had just heard the truth about Hillary Slater’s death from Hiram Slater himself, followed by a quick report from Tina Lewis about the news story now brewing somewhere behind the scenes at Channel 6.
Gretchen Rafferty turned red and set her jaw more firmly than ever. Candice Delano let out an unabashed
string of obscenities. Fanny Wolfe started jotting questions of strategy on her yellow legal pad. And Murphy Bolen raised his eyebrows, leaned his chin on his knuckles, and whistled one long, mournful note.
Gretchen Rafferty was the first to speak. “Well, whose business is it anyway? Nobody needs to know.”
Candice Delano added quite loudly, “Whatever happened to privacy? Isn’t that what we’ve been marching for all these years?”
Tina waved her hand for a chance to respond and then answered curtly—the pressure was going to be on her and she knew it, “It’s going to come out. That’s a given we all have to accept.”
Candice Delano was not about to accept it. “From your own people? You’re telling us that you have no control over these muckrakers?”
“I can do what I can, but—”
“Then stop them, fire them, do something! We don’t need this kind of—”
Tina became angrily defensive. “I’m in no position to fire anyone, and I can’t stop them from snooping—it’s a free country—”
“Snooping? You can’t stop them from snooping?”
“Now hold on,” said Murphy Bolen, coming to Tina’s rescue. “The fact of the matter is, for some people this news is gonna be hot. It’s gonna be just the thing they’re looking for to cook the governor’s goose. So you can take up our time blaming whoever you want, but Tina’s right—it’s going to come out. If her people don’t spread it, somebody else will.”
“Anti-choice bigots . . .” Candice muttered.
“Of course,” Gretchen Rafferty agreed.
Martin Devin grabbed for control. “This is the reason we’ve called you all together. Now the way we see it, we can’t keep the news from getting out. But look around the room, folks. We do have the power to control how it comes out, how it sounds, how it looks. We can take control of it and put it out our way first. What are a few little people down at Channel 6 compared to our combined efforts, especially if we scoop them on this?”
Fanny Wolfe was ready to jot down ideas. “So what are you proposing?”
Devin had an outline already printed and passed it out to all those present. “This is an initial battle plan, wide open for discussion, improvement, comment, whatever. But remember, we have to move on this today if we’re going to get the jump on the enemy. If the story breaks before we have a chance to break it first, we’ll lose the high ground. But if we can move first and build some momentum in molding public opinion, our enemies will look pretty feeble trying to catch up from behind.”
They all perused the notes Devin had passed out. No one jumped for joy or remarked how clever the plan was, but no one had any better ideas.
Hiram Slater guided them through the outline himself. “You’ll notice we’ve called for some pretty harsh measures, maybe even some sacrifices on the altar of the cause, and that’s one reason I had to have you all here to see this. If I hadn’t called you in and shown you this and made it clear to you, I’m sure some of you would have thought I’d betrayed you, that I’d become a turncoat.”
“I dare say,” Gretchen Rafferty replied.
Fanny Wolfe nodded to herself. The plan seemed to make sense to her.
Murphy Bolen just smiled as headlines paraded through his head.
Slater referred to his copy. “Now, to quickly outline the plan, Phase One will be a press release from myself, possibly a press conference or a speech in which I’ll release the information that Hillary died from an abortion—”
Candice Delano slammed the table and let out a cry of indignity. “No! That will never work, Governor! You’ll be walking right into the enemy’s cannons!”
“Now, Candice,” cautioned Fanny Wolfe, “hear him out. There are times to be forceful and direct, and there are times to be subtle.”
Gretchen agreed. “Go ahead, Governor.”
Slater continued, “Fanny used the right word: subtle. I’m sure we’re all aware that how we say things can have a great effect on the public’s reaction. What I’m proposing is that I go ahead and release the information about Hillary’s death, but deliver it from the position that I never knew about it until recently—and that even upon knowing it, I have no regrets that I didn’t know because Ashley and I respected Hillary’s privacy—and even though an unfortunate accident occurred, the higher ideal of personal privacy remained intact. Listen, if we truly believe in total reproductive privacy, then the rules have to apply to everybody, including me and my own children, and that’s what I intend to say.”
Now Candice mellowed a little, chewing on this new morsel. She liked the taste of it.
“So . . .” Slater continued, “we’ll work out the details on that later. But then will come Phase Two, which is to answer the questions that are going to arise about the safety of legal abortions in this state. This is where some sacrifice might be necessary, and that’s why you people are here. I need your input on this.
“My PR men here . . .” The governor looked toward Rowen and Hartly. “. . . have a nice little slogan I’ve adopted: Image Is Everything. Based on that idea, we must deal with the cause of Hillary’s death publicly to assuage any fears that might arise in the public mind. So publicly I’m going to launch an investigation into abortion malpractice, not because I have anything against abortion, but because—and our PR program will emphasize this—Governor Hiram Slater cares about women.”
Now Candice got agitated again, but this time Gretchen and Fanny joined her.
Candice spoke first. “Sir, you can’t investigate the clinics! That would mean government interference, and that would mean war! Our friends would never stand for it!”
Gretchen added, right on top of Candice, “They absolutely will not stand for it; I won’t stand for it! It would be tantamount to harassment!”
Fanny tried to sound reasonable. “You would be opening a dangerous crack in the wall of privacy, sir, and who knows how large a flood of invasion and regulation would break through after that?”
Candice quoted an old marching chant, “Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate!”
Devin tapped the table with his pen to call for order. “Ladies . . . gentlemen . . . please hear us out. We are dealing with cold, vicious reality here. The anti-abortion forces are going to be crying for just such an investigation. They will most certainly cash in on this politically, and we have to find a way to defuse it, all right?”
Governor Slater was visibly feeling the stress of all this. “If I must defend my own sincerity . . . Let me inform you that we did our best to conceal all of this when it first happened because I knew it would be politically devastating. If I’d taken any action at the time, you people would have branded me as anti-choice, and you know it; if I did nothing, then the opposition would have branded me a heartless politician who doesn’t care about what happens to his own children. I didn’t want to find myself in such a position, and I definitely didn’t want your interests jeopardized. But now we—and I mean all of us—are in this position, and we have to do whatever is necessary to dig ourselves out.”
They quieted themselves and were ready to listen again.
“Now let me just say, I don’t know which clinic is responsible for my daughter’s death, I don’t want to know, and I have no intention of finding out.”
“Well, we won’t tell you either,” Candice blurted.
“May I finish?” the governor said in rebuke and then continued, “When I say that I’ll publicly launch an investigation, I mean I’ll be doing something for the public to see. I’ll appoint some people, or I’ll have Martin handle that . . .” Devin nodded. “He can make some calls, ask some questions, interview each of you, perhaps even get you to serve on a committee. Together you can compose some effective sound bites on the safety of the industry, get some pictures of your activities on-camera for television, go through the motions, all right? We’ll do something for the public to see and hear, and we’ll structure the information so as to calm the public mind, just put the whole th
ing to rest. And then . . .” The governor looked at Tina Lewis. “With help from our friends in the media, the story can just fade away—am I right?”
Tina commented, “Well, it’s going to be a big story initially. There isn’t much we can do to change that. But with that as a given, there are two factors that come into play here, as I see it. Number One, the subject matter is something the media in general are not going to want for very long. It’s like a hot potato; no matter how you report it, you’re going to have somebody screaming at you, and that gets tiring real fast. So far as my own associates are concerned, I don’t think the story will be carried for long. Second, in our medium, old news is virtually no news. We have to get people to tune in, which means we can’t tell them old things they already know. They want new stuff that’s hot, fresh, immediate. Well, this story has oldness built into it; it happened months ago. I think that if we drop the story onto them quickly, with all the loose ends tied up right from the start, sure, it’ll hit big and play big on a newscast, but it’ll hit complete, which means we can drop it just as quickly with no need for follow-up and let it die from neglect. After the initial shock, the public will eventually lose interest and want to hear about something else. It happens all the time.” She looked at Murphy Bolen, petitioning his view.
Murphy nodded resignedly. “Ehhh . . . yeah, it would get buried pretty quickly. A story as unsavory as this one won’t be followed for very long. I know a lot of reporters who won’t want their names on it. Whoever does write it is going to be walking a thin line back at the office, if you know what I mean. And once it’s over with, once it’s buried, I can’t imagine any reporter’s gonna stick his professional neck out to dig it up again.” Then he added, “But, Governor, just be sure that whatever you say you’re gonna do, at least do something that comes close. If we’re gonna report something we have to be honest.”
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