Land of the Blind

by Jess Walter

  “And it wasn’t just me. Clark had big clients and was writing contracts and bringing in business. He was considered a legal expert on high-tech companies.” She smiles. “Which, in Seattle, was a pretty good position to be in. And I’m not even talking about the money, which was considerable. We were established. And he throws that all away. Says his name is Tony Mason now and he’s running for Congress. Gives up everything, pisses it all away, to come back here.”

  “Why do you think he wanted it so badly?”

  “I don’t…” Susan leans forward, holds her glass in both hands and watches the lemonade swirl around the glass. “Actually, I’ve given that a lot of thought. I took it for granted because Clark always wanted to be in politics. He used to joke that he was president of his incubator. In high school, he ran for everything.

  “But I don’t think I ever understood just how badly Clark needed it. My therapist says running for office was his way of compensating.” She glances sideways and then whispers, “Because of his eye.”

  Caroline nods. “What happened to his eye?”

  “Some kind of accident when he was a kid.” She shrugs as if it’s not important. “I guess I always thought Clark wanted the power, or the fame, or, you know…to pass laws or govern or even, what…make a better world?” She says the words “better world” like a person might say “flying car.” “But he doesn’t want that shit. Fame, money. He sure as hell doesn’t want power. You know what he wants?”

  Caroline shakes her head no.

  “He wants people to vote for him. Clark just wants them to pick him.”

  They are quiet. Susan leans back and crosses her legs, a move so elegant Caroline has to remind herself that only a few minutes ago those legs were riding the help.

  “And you didn’t want to be a politician’s wife.”

  “No, I was into that part. Go to Washington, D.C., the parties and society there? In a minute. But even if he’d won, that was more than a year away. And when we got to Spokane, it was okay. We got a nice house, joined the Spokane Club and the Manito Country Club. I joined the Junior League. It was fine.

  “Then, one day, I was at Nordstrom and I saw a girl from high school. I don’t even remember her name, but she remembered mine. Do you remember so-and-so? she says. She’s got three kids. So-and-so had an ovary removed. So-and-so works at the Safeway. Jesus—and it was like…My God. I can’t live here. I mean, I lived in a two-million-dollar house on Lake Washington. I owned a boutique in Seattle. But here I was, just another stupid girl from the Valley, and no matter what I did, that’s all I’d ever be. That’s all I can be here.” She finishes her lemonade.

  “In the meantime, the party abandoned Clark. Sent him over here to run, and then cut off the money to the campaign. He won the primary, but he started out thirty points behind Nethercutt in the general and the people who said they were going to vote for him also would’ve voted for a potted plant.

  “Then the attack ads started running, saying that Clark was a puppet, a Seattle guy coming in to take over Spokane. Clark…he went crazy. He should’ve given up, or run a cursory race. Even his campaign manager said that. But Clark wouldn’t listen. He started spending our money. Without telling me. He sold all the stock—Microsoft, Cisco, everything but one stock: this idiotic Empire Game company that belonged to some guy he knew. He traded in his BMW. Tried to trade in mine. Took out a mortgage on our house. I arrived in Spokane the wife of a millionaire, and when we split up we had four thousand dollars and some stock in this worthless game company.”

  Caroline finds herself wanting to defend Clark. “In the divorce records, he accused you of having an affair.”

  Susan’s eyes drift closed. Then they snap open, and Caroline sees something like determination behind the eye makeup. “I love Clark. In fact, he might be the only person I ever have loved. So go ahead and judge me if you want, Detective. I don’t care. But don’t think for a second that you know me. Because you don’t.”

  Jack has finished in the barn and he walks through the gate and sheepishly toward the house. He is older than Caroline first believed, maybe thirty. He is skinny and walks with a limp, and his hair hangs long and greasy in the back. Caroline and Susan both watch him walk up to the house.

  “Check’s on the table,” Susan says to Jack. “I’m sorry—” Again, she doesn’t finish.

  Jack nods and limps past them. From behind, Caroline can see that his knee seems to bend both forward and sideways and it’s not hard to imagine a horse has fallen on that leg. When he goes around the front of the house, Susan stands and watches through the back of the house, her hands on her teardrop hips. Caroline hears the front door open as Susan moves along the house and watches through the back window, maybe to make sure he doesn’t steal anything. The front door closes, and when Jack’s truck starts, with a choke and a shudder, Susan walks back and resumes her story.

  “The night before the election, we finally had it out. We yelled and screamed about all the things we’d done to each other. We each blamed the other for every problem either of us ever had. Grudges from high school. My divorces. His general unhappiness and lost ambition.” Susan stares off past the barn. “I was crying; he told me that he’d never loved me. And finally I said, ‘Clark, if I’m such a horrible person, if you never loved me, then why did you marry me in the first place?’ Do you know what he said?”

  Caroline shakes her head slightly.

  “He said that he needed a wife, that people wouldn’t vote for a bachelor. He said that even in high school, he thought I looked like a politician’s wife.” She shrugs and meets Caroline’s eyes. “So you want to know if I fucked someone else? Yeah. I fucked someone else.”

  “Who?”

  Susan flinches. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It may be important.”

  “It’s not.” She measures Caroline again. “Clark knows I had an affair, but he doesn’t know who. I don’t want him to know. It doesn’t matter now.”

  “Look,” Caroline says. “I’m going to be straight with you, Ms. Diehl. But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to anyone about this. We think Clark might’ve hurt someone. Maybe even killed someone.”

  “Clark?” She shakes her head. “No. No way.” Then she narrows her eyes and stares at Caroline but doesn’t really see her, as if thinking about it.

  “So let’s say he found out who you were with.” Caroline lets it hang in the air. “I’m looking for anyone he might have had a grudge with.”

  “The only person I ever knew him to hold a grudge against was Tommy Kane.”

  Caroline writes the name down. “Who’s he?”

  “Guy from high school. I don’t even know what it was about. One day they were best friends; next day they hated each other.”

  “So what about the man you—” She can’t find the word. “Did Clark know him?”

  “Yeah. He knew him.” She gives it some thought. “Look, I really don’t want him dragged into…”

  “Hey, if it turns out the guy’s alive, I won’t tell Clark anything.”

  Susan stares off toward the barn for a long minute and Caroline stares patiently at her, waiting her out. “Ms. Diehl?”

  “I don’t…Richard Stanton,” she says finally. “His name is Richard Stanton.”

  Caroline writes the name down. “He lives here?”

  She shakes her head. “Seattle.”

  “Have you talked to him recently?”

  “It’s been more than a year.”

  “Phone number?”

  “No idea.” And she offers no more information, just stares at the ground.

  “Anyone else you can think of that Clark might want to hurt?” Caroline stands to leave and Susan stands with her, frowning.

  She shakes her head. “Why do you think he hurt someone?”

  “It’s just…a tip,” Caroline lies. “There’s probably nothing to it.”

  Just then something occurs to Susan. “You thought it was me.” This st
rikes her as funny and then, apparently, sad. She reaches for the door and opens it, then leans against it and looks at Caroline. “Clark didn’t do whatever it is you’re investigating.”

  “How do you know that?” Caroline asks.

  She looks at the floor and a trace of shame fills her eyes. “Because if Clark was capable of it—after what I did to him two years ago—he would’ve killed me.”

  2 | HE SLEEPS PEACEFULLY

  He sleeps peacefully, slumped over the table in the interview room, his face pressed against the stacked legal pads. Caroline watches Clark Mason through the slim window of the door, wondering if she could pull the pads out without waking him. She can’t imagine what could be on all those pieces of paper.

  Evan’s fax from the newspaper is on the machine. The cover page reiterates that he has better things to do on a Saturday than dig through old files, and that not only does this make them even for the favor she did him, but she is now in his debt. She throws the cover page away and flips through the first pages—which consist of filings with the state and federal election commissions. It includes a list of donations from people and companies, everything from the teachers union to a downtown restaurant to long lists of individual donors. She circles a few, but nothing clicks, although one couple—Michael and Dana Langford—is listed as having donated twenty thousand twice. She writes down their names. Evan has noted on the filings that Clark wouldn’t have been required to file records of his own money spent on the campaign.

  Also in the fax are news stories from the paper, beginning with the story when Tony Mason launched his candidacy (“A 34-year-old political novice has stepped to the front of a weak field of Democrats trying to unseat four-term Republican Congressman George Nethercutt…”). The next story is a profile and Caroline skims it, sees that Mason grew up in the Valley, that he went to college in Seattle, got his law degree there, and (after a few years of “youthful meandering and exuberance”) worked for a Bay Area technology company, then landed at a big Seattle law firm, writing contracts and representing high-tech companies. He made a good deal of money. He never left his Spokane roots too far behind, though, and according to the story, he serves on the board of a Spokane computer company called Empire Games.

  Clark’s teachers expressed no doubt he would one day run for office. “I’m surprised it’s taken Tony this long,” his old chemistry teacher is quoted as having said. In the picture that accompanies the story, Clark has shorter hair and no eye patch. He must be wearing a glass eye. He is staring straight ahead—lizardlike, as Evan remembered. Susan, much more relaxed in front of the camera, is hanging on Clark’s arm. They are in the living room of a big house. Caroline is surprised by the detachment in the story—it offers barely more than the list of contributors—and both the article and the picture seem to her a kind of flat data, devoid of insight. There is a quality to the newspaper stories that intimates that “Tony” Mason is of a certain type—the young, idealistic politician, born to run for something—but this seems overly simplistic, leaves her with no better picture of who he is. His only issue seems to be “getting the technology train to stop in Spokane.” She notices that every person who talks about him calls him Tony, and she imagines Clark prepping his friends and acquaintances, instructing them on what to say when the reporters call.

  There are small stories about the Democratic primary and about campaign appearances. One story examines “Tony Mason’s surprising challenge” of Nethercutt, and reports that his constant hammering of the “technology gap” between Spokane and Seattle has helped him gain twelve points in the polls. Yet he’s still ten behind. Even so, Caroline can imagine the momentum he must’ve felt, and can imagine Clark stepping up to spend more of his money, desperate to get closer.

  Then, two weeks before the election, comes another big story, headlined ADS TAINT MASON AS OUTSIDER. The story details an advertising campaign “charging that Tony Mason’s strings are being pulled by party insiders from the west side of the state.” The story reports that Seattle is about 60 percent Democrat while Spokane is about 60 percent Republican, and quotes television ads in which a deep-voiced announcer reads, “Until a year ago, Clark Mason was a rich Seattle attorney. Do we really want a rich, liberal west-side lawyer representing eastern Washington in Congress? Do we trust Seattle to take care of Spokane?” Apparently the ads never mentioned George Nethercutt, and the Nethercutt campaign denied any involvement. The story lists the sponsors of the ad as a political action committee called “the Fair Election Fund,” which came into existence only a few weeks before the ads ran and apparently never cared about the fairness of any other election. In papers filed with the state, the Fair Election Fund is listed as having only two officers. Neither was available to be quoted, and neither had anything to do with the Nethercutt campaign. The ads cost $120,000.

  Caroline writes down the names of both officers of the Fair Election Fund: Louis Carver and Eli Boyle.

  The last news story is from the day after the election. Mason got more votes than anyone predicted, but he was never really close. The story has him planning to stay in Spokane, and to practice law and work on the computer game company, of which he was part-owner. The story goes on to say that he gave an emotional speech to a small room of supporters, and that he broke down twice. “You can be blinded by the glare from your own dreams,” he is quoted as saying.

  She jots down the names of the people quoted in the stories, although she isn’t looking forward to a repeat of the pointless interviews with Pete Decker and Susan Diehl. When she is done, Caroline puts the news stories and election filings in a drawer in her desk and stares across the Major Crimes office to the door of the interview room. She thinks of Clark Mason sleeping in there, and realizes that she’s tired, too.

  She pulls a phone book from a drawer in her desk and opens it to the K’s. There are three Kanes, Thomas, two Kanes, Tom, and one Tommy Kane. She tries that one.

  “Hello.”

  “Tommy Kane?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m calling about Clark Mason.”

  “Look,” he says, “I told the person who called last time. I’m not donating money to his goddamn campaign. I didn’t vote for him last time and I don’t care if he’s running for treasurer of hell. I’m not voting for him. You understand? Take me off whatever list you’ve got there and leave me the hell alone.”

  Caroline considers correcting him, but she has gotten all the information she needs: Tommy Kane is not dead, and she doesn’t really want to get bogged down in some twenty-year-old feud. “I’m sorry,” she says. “We won’t call again.”

  She checks her notes from the interview with Susan Diehl and looks for the name of the man she had an affair with—Richard Stanton. She tries the Seattle directory and comes up with six of them.

  She looks back across the office, to the interview room. This is crazy. Maybe Susan is right; Clark couldn’t kill anyone. After a moment she grabs the extra sandwich she bought, stands and walks to the door, opens it, and steps lightly inside. Clark Mason is breathing deeply; Caroline remembers the last time she watched another person sleep, five months ago, before her boyfriend moved out.

  Clark Mason gulps air and shifts a bit. Caroline stands still. When he’s breathing regularly again she edges forward and looks down at the third legal pad, open beneath his face. His handwriting is careful and neat, but he is covering most of it and she can only make out bits and pieces. Words are crossed out, entire sentences. She tries to figure out what he’s writing about but can only make out that there are people in a hotel room, Clark and someone named Dana.

  He stirs just then and Caroline steps back. Clark sits up, yawns, and rubs his hair. “Sorry,” he says. “I fell asleep.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost three.”

  He nods. “Saturday afternoon,” he says, not exactly a question. He seems sluggish, slightly disoriented from his short, powerful nap. “I’m sorry.�
�

  She shrugs. “You can’t quit now. I think you’re close to the world record.”

  He rubs his temples and then looks down at the legal pad. “I can’t tell if I was just dreaming or if I’m remembering because of the writing.” He looks back at the pages he’s written. “It doesn’t seem real.”

  “What you did?” Caroline asks.

  “Any of it.”

  “People always say that,” she says. “You’d be amazed how many times I hear that. The first time someone fires a gun they always say it didn’t seem real. Watching the person fall. The blood. None of it seems real.”

  “The blood,” he says, as if in agreement.

  She waits for him to say more, but he doesn’t. He just looks at the sandwich in her hand. He seems groggy.

  She slides the sandwich over in front of him. “You like turkey?”

  “Mmm. Thanks.”

  She thinks about just dropping everything she knows on him: his ex-wife, Pete Decker, Tommy Kane, the election. Maybe it would shake loose his confession and get him to abandon this insanity. But she’s not really sure what it adds up to. She’d rather wait until she knows more. She watches him unwrap the sandwich. The bottom piece of bread falls in his lap, smearing mayonnaise and diced lettuce all over his pants. It’s strangely endearing, watching him try to clean up his pants.

  “I shot a guy once,” she says.

  He looks up. “And you killed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He was coming at me. I thought he had a knife.”

  “Did he?”

  “No,” she says. “It turned out he didn’t.”

  “Oh.” He looks down at his sandwich.

  She waits, to see if her own confession brings out his. But he takes a bite of sandwich instead.

  “The reason I bring it up is that I was just thinking about what you said, how the victim wasn’t really important, that the action itself is the…what did you call it?”