Vindicator

by Denney Clements

  “Then why didn’t you announce his firing?”

  “It was Christmas Eve. Bad news at Christmas is bad politics.”

  Emery turned to Richards. “Is she telling the truth, Fred? Who told you to take care of Complet? Or did Edsel and this Wolfowitz go rogue?”

  Richards looked at Hodge and shrugged. “No comment.”

  Hodge said, “Well, this audience has been a disaster, Mr. Emery. I guess I’ll leave it to Natascha to spin me out of trouble, fast. I take office next week, without Vernal, it looks like. It’ll be good punishment for her for getting so …”

  “Creative?” Emery interjected. “Don’t be too hard on her. She’s unfailingly loyal to you but can’t help messing up. Example: Did you know she came to visit me in Los Llanos in an Alpha-Omega car driven by Fred’s son? Its license tag number, which I wrote down, led me to the ARC, to Mr. Ramsey’s secret database and ultimately to Alpha-Omega. And during our more recent phony reporter-secret source relationship, Natascha provided me numerous clues to what’s really going on, including Complet’s murder, than she realized. The schemes she was spinning on me were so complex she couldn’t keep track of the details. She tripped herself up and clued me in. It’s not her fault she’s not that smart.”

  “Screw you, Emery,” Schroeder screeched.

  Hodge leapt to her feet and slapped Schroeder’s face, hard, leaving an angry red mark on her cheek. “Be quiet, Natascha, you little fool.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Schroeder quavered, a tear running down her cheek.

  “I’m weary of you, Mr. Emery. It’s time for Buster and Fred to take you away.” To them, she said, “Take him somewhere else. His little Internet stunt drew too much attention to the Capitol.”

  “One last question before I go,” Emery said. “Why, Mrs. Hodge? Why cause incalculable property damage and the murders of three people in Colorado? It’s a horrendous crime.”

  Hodge sat down. “The answer is simple. I was in trouble from the day I took this office. I campaigned on reforming the public education system, you’ll recall, and on getting the 12 percent of Kansans without regular health care covered for insurance. These were great ideas, but I got nowhere, thanks to you in the media – though not you personally. You were always fair to me. But many of your brethren were always sniping at me, questioning my competence and resolve, including those terrible editorial writers at your former newspaper.

  “The poisonous atmosphere they created emboldened the Republicans in the Legislature to thwart and ultimately wreck every initiative I proposed. They just would not work with me. So after a year of this nonsense, I figured the hell with it. I’ll just enjoy being the governor and win a second term. Maybe then I can do some things for the people.

  “That experience was no fun, but the rest of being governor is really fun. The power. All the people who work for me. Those wonderful events I get to attend. The free food and drinks. The mansion I get to live in. Economic development junkets like the one I just took to China. The use of the new state jet. And my Town Car with its rich leather seats. I love it all, Mr. Emery.

  “I just love it. I'd worked so hard to get this office. I had to hang onto it for four more years. I just had to. So I did what the polling numbers told me to do: Win in western Kansas, win big. And since the politics out there is mostly about water, I began to focus on the symbolic power of water.

  “The lawsuit against Colorado, with its negotiated settlement, caused me to focus further on the Kiowa River, particularly the Gunderson dam, the cause of so much unhappiness in western Kansas for decades. So two years out, after the Republicans increased their majority in the House, making the politics of my job even harder, I began to dream of doing something big to dramatize my commitment to water for western Kansas. I started by making a public fuss about being excluded from the water negotiations under the special master appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court, even though I had no legal right to be part of them.

  “Then I found out that the powerful Sen. Vernal Barnes, who’d taken delight in ruining my every plan while saying bad things about me, was running Fred and his thugs through my Ag Department and my Revenue Department to help his telephone company eliminate competition. Harold Ramsey, God bless him, alerted me to the situation; that’s why he’s still alive. I'm loyal to the people who are loyal to me. Because of him, I own Vernal Barnes.”

  “I was wondering about that,” Emery said. “So you co-opted Vernal’s operation.”

  “I revived it,” Hodge said. “Kan-Tel had achieved its quest for telecom dominance in rural Kansas by then, and more power to them. As a telephone and Internet customer out there in Ouimet, you have to admit they do a good job.”

  “Except when they listen in on a conversation and kill the person you’re talking to.”

  She waved a hand. “I know nothing about that. All I know is that once I got Alpha-Omega the big fee increase they wanted to take on the dam project, they delivered. I won a second term. And now, with Vernal neutralized – and maybe soon in jail – I can revive my plans and get the Legislature to enact them.”

  “Tell it to the Kempfers,” Emery said, not bothering to hide his disgust.

  “Hey,” Richards said. Emery turned toward him. “Michael tried hard to get them to move to the campground above the dam but the stupid father refused. We did pretty well at keeping the body count down. We hoped for one but three ain’t bad.”

  Emery had no reply to that. As he turned back to Hodge, edging to his left, he said, “Fred and Buster missed the other two cameras, and there’s another laptop. Keep the Dell. Thanks for taking part in our webcast.” He bolted past the governor to the stairwell door, jerked it open, jumped through and pulled it shut.

  “Get him,” he heard Hodge shout as he bounded down the stairs.

  Emery emerged onto the first floor behind the elevator cage. Footfalls thundered from the stairwell. He turned right past the elevator, strode quickly down the wide east corridor and turned right down a small side corridor. Just past the door to the lobbyists message center sat Jenkinson in a quiet corner, where the Wi-Fi reception was excellent, packing his Toshiba and the camera receivers into his tech bag.

  “Did you get it?” Emery asked as Jenkinson shouldered the bag.

  “Got it all. Went out live on ColoradoMuckrakers and The Vindicator. Worked beautifully. My producers in Colorado Springs were even able to switch views from your belt cam to your shirt-button cam and your glasses cam – until they shut that one down – and back, depending on which had the better angle. They recorded the feeds for users who missed the live-streaming. The Barnes video is already viral on both sites and YouTube. The Hodge one should go up momentarily. It’ll go viral, too. Page views for both sites are off the charts. Comments are flooding in. We did good, Joe. Thank for letting me in on it.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without your help. Good thing we used so many cameras.”

  “Yeah, redundancy pays. Oh, J-3 said to tell you the feed from the Dell went blank right after Barnes started confessing to you.”

  “FBI shut it down, no doubt. We only did the dummy webcast on the Dell to alert them to what’s going on here, though they don’t seem to have arrived yet.”

  “J-3 and Carol are out in the Supreme Court parking garage still making calls, I think. Carol checked in about 20 minutes ago. They reached the local cops, the Kansas cops, the AG’s office and a bunch of news organizations and told them the state’s top two officials were confessing their crimes on the Internet. They told the law enforcement folks that you might need help. I’m not sure where Viviana is.”

  “She can take care of herself. Let’s get out of here. You go first, out the south door. I'll follow in about a minute. We’ll all meet up in the garage.”

  Jenkinson nodded and strode down the hallway and turned west into the main corridor. Emery counted slowly to 60, then followed. As he passed the elevator, he spotted Fred and Buster to his right at the Rotunda information desk, talking to one of th
e clerks. Another man stood with them. He was professorial-looking: brown tweed suit with vest, longish brown hair, a bushy mustache, round steel-rim glasses.

  The men saw him, too, and broke toward him. Where the hell was the law? Emery ran toward the south door. Jenkinson was outside the door, looking back at him. Emery did not want to lead the goons to Carol and his son so he ran downstairs. He heard them clomping down after him.

  The tunnel to the State Office Building beckoned to his left, but the hyenas were close behind and the tunnel, at least 100 yards long, offered no place to hide. Emery ran through the basement, which was deserted, to the northeast stairway. He started to run upstairs but heard footfalls above and retreated to the bottom of the stairwell.

  He’d remembered that there was a door recessed into the wall of the stairwell shaft. Ed McKeesy had shown it to him years before. It led to the Catacombs, as old Capitol hands called only remnant of the building’s original foundation.

  He pulled on the doorknob. The lock was still broken. He could hear the goons running north through the basement. The door gave onto a floor of sand. He slipped inside, gently closed the door and removed his shoes. He extracted his little Swiss Army pocketknife, a Christmas present from Carol, from the waistband pocket of his jeans. He turned on its LED flashlight. He crept farther into the Catacombs, obscuring his tracks with his socks as he moved down a line of limestone columns. About 30 feet in, he put his shoes back on. He could hear the men outside calling to each other as they clomped up the stairs.

  Emery walked deeper into the triangular chamber looking for another way out, moving his LED light around. After a few minutes, he determined that there was none. He hid behind a broad limestone column in the middle of the space and settled down to wait, taking deep breaths to calm himself. If they found him, his only recourse now was to push back.

  Chapter 49: Wetwork

  January 4, 11 a.m.

  Not long after, the door creaked open and Buster yelled, “Come out, Emery. We know you’re in there.” A beam of light pierced the dark, waved back and forth. Muttering, “Fuck it,” Emery palmed the stiletto and stepped into the light. “I’m coming out,” he yelled.

  Buster kept the light on Emery’s face as he moved toward the door. To preserve his vision, Emery kept his eyes down.

  “Let me out of here, please, Buster. I’m claustrophobic,” he said as he approached the big man, working a quaver into his voice.

  Buster, holding a long-barreled .22 revolver against his right trouser leg, turned aside to let Emery pass by him. As Emery went through the doorway, he jabbed the stiletto against Buster’s left chest and triggered the blade. It slammed in smooth and deep.

  Buster’s eyes widened. Blood seeped from the wound. The flashlight clattered to the floor. Emery left the knife in place and eased the pistol from the big man’s right hand. As Buster sank to his knees, eyes glazing over, Emery made sure the cylinder was loaded and the safety off. He stepped out into the basement.

  The third man was standing maybe 20 feet away with a pistol in his hand. A silencer was attached to the muzzle. He lifted the gun toward Emery.

  Emery drew a bead on him and began to squeeze the trigger. Before he could shoot, the man’s face registered pain and surprise. He collapsed face down, his gun, another .22, skittering along the floor. The black handle of a throwing knife, buried to the hilt, protruded from his upper back left.

  “Got him,” Emery heard Stephens yell.

  She ran up and hugged Emery. As he hugged her back, he said, “Fred. What about Fred?”

  “Never saw him,” she said.

  Emery had a chilling thought. “Got your phone?”

  She pulled a phone from her purse and handed it to him. He keyed the number of Carol’s phone.

  She answered on the first ring. “Is everything OK, Viviana?”

  “It’s me, sweetie, I’m fine and so is Viviana.”

  “Thank God, Joe. Armand said some goons were chasing you.”

  “They were, but we got two of them. Fred Richards is the one I’m worried about. I don’t think he knows where you are but be on the lookout for him. He’s a tall skinny guy in a gray suit with wavy gray hair. Please pass the word to the others.”

  “OK, but please come out of there.”

  “I’ll be right there, sweetheart. Bye.” He closed the phone and handed it back to Viviana.

  Careful to avoid the blood pooling around Buster, propped up by the door jamb and still on his knees, Emery wiped down the .22 with his shirttail and dropped it next to him. He withdrew the stiletto, cleaning the blade on Buster’s suit coat and retracted it. He dropped the knife into his jacket pocket. He wiped both doorknobs and tucked his shirt back into his jeans.

  Kneeling beside her victim, Stephens, dressed like a tourist in a green-and-red plaid wool skirt and white cable-knit sweater, was gently pulling the throwing knife from his back. After wiping its blade in the man’s armpit, she stashed it in her purse.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s exit through the State Office Building.”

  They hurried through the tunnel, slowing as they approached the security station under the State Office Building. He took her hand. The guard smiled and nodded as they walked by. They ran up the stairwell to the first floor and out through the east door into the winter sunlight. As they trotted south on the sidewalk, Emery looked to the left across the wide, brown Capitol lawn. Five or six police cars and two TV satellite trucks were parked in the driveway. He could hear sirens in the distance.

  Against the light, they ran across 10th Street, dodging three cars. They ran behind the Supreme Court building to the parking garage. They climbed to the third floor, where their vehicles were parked.

  As they emerged from the stairwell Emery saw, to his horror, Fred Richards behind the Caprice, pistol in his hand, peering at the license tag. The two parking slots to the right side of the car were vacant.

  “Hey, Fred,” Emery yelled, wishing he had his pistol. “It’s me you want, not her.”

  Richards turned and shouted, “She’ll do.” He walked around the right side of the Caprice, pistol at the ready. As he reached for the front-door handle, a red laser dot appeared beside his ear and the muzzle of the 12-gauge protruded into the light, at belly level. Richards halted and backpedaled. The blast blew him backward. He writhed on the floor a few seconds, then laid still, eyes open but glazed over. A puddle of blood formed rapidly around his midsection.

  Astonished, Emery scanned the scene. J-3 stood next to his Jetta, parked in the row behind the Caprice, holding Stephens’ pellet rifle. The kid grinned, gave him a thumbs up, turned off the laser sight, stashed the rifle in the back seat of his car and walked over. Stephens and Jenkinson were approaching. Carol got out of the Caprice.

  She ran into Emery’s arms, kissed him and cried, “I blew that asshole away, Joe. It felt so fucking good.”

  “He was the last one, sweetheart,” Emery murmured, stroking her face and hair as she held him. “We’re free of them.”

  “I think Fred saw me run behind the Supreme Court building,” Jenkinson said. “This could be my fault.”

  “It’s OK, Armand,” Emery said. “He’s down.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  “He’s probably dead,” said J-3. “When Carol told me this asshole was on the loose, I gave the pellet gun 10 pumps for maximum wallop. I was ready for the money shot. But she got him first.”

  “Should we call the cops?” Jenkinson asked.

  “To hell with them,” Stephens said.

  Still clinging to her husband, Carol said, “Viviana’s right. I called the KCID and Topeka police at least 45 minutes ago.”

  “The shotgun blast could attract attention,” Emery said. “Let’s disperse. Carol and I are going home to Ouimet. We can all get in touch later by phone.”

  After a round of hasty hugs and goodbyes, they got into their vehicles and drove off.

  Carol at t
he wheel, they headed for the turnpike. Fifty-five minutes later, as they were exiting onto U.S. 56 at Admire, Jenkinson behind them, Emery’s phone chirped.

  He dug it out of Carol’s purse and looked at the display. “Harmon,” he told Carol as he punched the answer button. “Might as well get it over with.”

  “Where are you?” Harmon demanded.

  “Heading home to Ouimet.”

  “Well, come back here so we can interview you. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  “So do you, Mike, so back off. You have everything you need from the webcasts. Beyond that, I’m invoking reporter’s privilege. Call Tom Bernier if you have a problem with that. He’s expecting to hear from you. I’m going home.”

  “We found two dead men in the basement. Buster Lonigan and, um, another guy. We found Fred dead in the Supreme Court parking garage with huge hole in his abdomen. What can you – ”

  “Don’t ask, Mike, unless you’re prepared to explain why it took you so long to get to the Capitol this morning. You hung me out to dry. Just be thankful that law enforcement won’t have to worry about the goons any more. Gotta go. Don’t call back. I’m going to spend some quality time with my wife.”

  “Um, OK,” Harmon said as Emery broke the connection. He shut off the phone.

  “That was great,” Carol said. “I can’t tell you how good I feel.”

  Emery said, truthfully, “I feel great, too, sweetheart.”

  She took his hand. They rolled westward, watching the broad Kansas landscape unfold before them.

  Chapter 50: Familiar Face

  February 7, 11:30 p.m.

  On a cold, gray Monday morning, Emery sat in a leather club chair at the Ouimet Free Library reading newspapers from across the state, east to west. He could have read the same stories online from the comfort of his easy chair in the study, wood fire crackling in the fireplace that he and Carol had recently installed in the back corner. But Emery still craved the tactile sensation of paging through newspapers. He loved second-guessing the editors’ headline, display and story-selection decisions as the sour odor of the ink wafted up to his nostrils, triggering the occasional sneeze.