Free Fall

by Kyle Mills

  Templeton decided to blow off the formal permission-asking phase of this meeting and walked across the office to put the tape in the VCR. Anthony, the campaign’s second polltaker, had escaped first, but Templeton wouldn’t be far behind. He’d put feelers out weeks ago and tentative offers were starting to filter in.

  The senator said nothing as Templeton walked back to his chair and the image of Larry King appeared on-screen. The tape had been spliced together in a way that let him start with a section in which Hallorin had done well. Sneaking criticism in so Hallorin didn’t notice was a delicate and subtle art.

  Of course, all this was a waste of time—they were fucking nine points behind with the sand almost through the hourglass. Right now, Hallorin was just spending his money for the ego fix. But what the hell, it was his money.

  ’Tax reform seems to be the cornerstone of your campaign, Senator,”Larry King said over the hidden speakers encircling the office.“But it isn’t as popular as it could be because of the one dollar a gallon gas tax.”

  ’Tax reform is where it all starts, Larry.” Templeton looked over at his boss who was mouthing the words along with his television image. As always, he seemed mesmerized by his own performance.

  “There’s no reason that the tax system can’t be so simple that you can’t have your kids do your 1040s after soccer practice. As it stands, the tax code is so complex that even the IRS doesn’t understand it, and I think that’s unfair to the taxpayer. As far as the gas tax goes, we’re not looking for anyone to pay more. The tax structure I envision will have quite a few different brackets—poorer people will pay much lower percentages to make up for the increase in the cost of gas. And if they carpool, or trade their car in for one that gets better mileage, they’ll save in the end.” Hallorin’s face turned serious.“What we’re after here is a decrease in our reliance on foreign oil to slow down the flow of U.S. dollars to the Middle East.” He looked directly at the camera.“A lot of people didn’t sleep well during the Cold War. I did. Members of the Politburo all had limos, beach houses, mistresses, and Sony TVs—they didn’t want to die. I don’t sleep so well, now, though. Make no mistake—we live in the most dangerous time in history. Technology has put great power in the hands of individuals. And religion and money have given some of those people the will and ability to use it.”

  Templeton hit the PAUSE button.“That was a perfect segue. Senator, we got a lot of positive feedback from that section. The Arabs are a very strong area for you—people continue to be very negative about the Middle East.” He paused for a moment.“Strangely, their concern is less with the threat of violence and more the fact that they see the Arabs as the only people coming through this recession unscathed.”

  “Why would you be surprised by that?”Hallorin said, silencing him.“Americans are stupid and lazy. They spend all their energy worrying about what others have and none on improving their own station in life.”

  Templeton wasn’t sure how to respond to that, or if it indeed required a response, so he pushed the PLAY button on his remote and started the tape again.

  “The Democrats support an increase in corporate taxes that you are passionately against,”King said.

  The expression on Hallorin’s on-screen face turned rock hard. It was that, right there—that pissed-off look—which was costing Hallorin a good seven points in this race. No one could help but feel intimidated by that steel-eyed glare, and people didn’t want to be intimidated by their elected officials. They wanted to feel safe with them.

  “The time for this kind of political double-speak is over,”came Hallorin’s icy response.“When are they going to figure out that this corporate tax boondoggle wore out five years ago? Look, corporations are not faceless organizations bent on raping the work force. You put food on your table working for corporations, corporations pay for your medical care, you own part of them in your retirement accounts and mutual funds, and you rely on the products produced by corporations. So who ultimately pays those increased taxes? The American people do. It’s just a way the Democrats have figured out to stick you for more money without you knowing it.”

  “You let yourself get angry here, Senator,”Templeton said, hitting PAUSE and wondering, once again, what he was doing.“This is the kind of thing that’s killing us.”

  Hallorin’s eyes flashed, just as they had on the television, and Templeton started a halfhearted backpedal.“What you said was right on—the message is getting through. It’s just that people just aren’t used to that kind of intensity from a politician.”

  That seemed to satiate Hallorin for the moment and he sank back into his leather chair.

  There were five problem sequences on this tape. Templeton gauged that Hallorin would sit still for probably only one more. The other three got the garbage can. Hallorin would have to pick up those mistakes from the media coverage.

  Templeton pressed the PLAY button again and they listened to King asking what piece of legislation Hallorin was most proud of being involved in.

  “My declassification program,”Hallorin’s television image answered without hesitation.“The government was spending millions on archives and security to keep things like Civil War intelligence-gathering methods classified, and in the process, making Americans suspicious of their government. I did a simple thing. On the ’classified’ stamp that people use on government documents, I put lines for the name of the person classifying it, why they did, and a date that it should be declassified. Since that piece of legislation was adopted, millions of pages of documents have been released to the public and the amount of new classified material has been cut in half. For five thousand dollars in new stamps, the taxpayer will probably save a billion dollars over the years.”

  Templeton stopped the tape again.“We wrote a response to that that you approved. The welfare reform you—.”

  “It was insignificant,”Hallorin said.

  Templeton heard the finality of the statement and decided not to pursue the issue. His young companion, silent until now, was less experienced with Hallorin and made the fatal decision to show off in front of his new boss.

  “But it made you look sympathetic, sir. People are starting to accept your ideas—they know you’re right. Our polls are showing that the gas tax isn’t a major stumbling block anymore. Even drug legalization isn’t the overriding problem. It’s image. You chose your running mate well….”

  Templeton winced. Strike two. Hallorin hated the man he had chosen for his vice presidential candidate—he wouldn’t even lower himself to speak to him if there wasn’t a camera trained on them.

  “His personal numbers are excellent. Right now we’re showing that there are basically two groups of undecideds at this point. Conservatives who are considering you over the Republican candidate they’d normally vote for, and Democrats who are considering voting Republican over economic issues. Many people are willing to go along with you, but they want to know you feel their pain. I believe—.”

  “I didn’t ask you what you believe,”Hallorin growled, shutting the young man up instantly.

  Templeton felt for his companion. He’d made the same mistakes when he’d started on the campaign. Hallorin’s utilitarian, straightforward image made you assume that he would want utilitarian, straightforward information. In the end, though, he surrounded himself almost solely with kiss-asses and yes-men. The only real exceptions were himself and that little red-haired freak, Roland Peck.

  “Get out,”Hallorin said to the young polltaker.

  “Sir, I…”

  “Get out! Clean out your desk and get the hell out of here!.”

  The phone started to ring, and Hallorin picked it up as the young man gathered his papers and started for the door, obviously unable to understand what had just happened. Templeton could feel him searching for eye contact, but didn’t bother to look up. The firing was less serious than the kid thought. Since there was no one to take his place and Hallorin would continue to want numbers, Templeton would just move hi
m to the off-site location he’d rented months earlier that housed all the people who had dared to challenge the emperor but were too critical to actually let go.

  “Now?”Hallorin said quietly into the phone.

  It was obvious from his tone who was on the other end: Peck. The real manager of Hallorin’s campaign and, for some reason, the only person whose judgment Hallorin rarely questioned.

  David Hallorin watched as Grant Templeton walked from the office and pulled the door shut behind him. It was insulting that he had to pay a man like that to“run”his campaign. Templeton was an idiot; a man who could only regurgitate what had worked before. The only thing his presence brought to the campaign was a certain credibility, and that, he told himself, was worth the exorbitant price.

  ’Templeton forgot something.” The high-pitched voice coming from behind Hallorin was nervous, almost scared.“God. Jesus, our good friend and Savior. We agreed that you would invoke God’s name at least twice an appearance.”

  Hallorin spun in his chair and faced Roland Peck, who had stopped a considerable distance from him. That meant bad news.

  “You haven’t been able to find the girl,”Hallorin said.

  Peck played with his mustache for a time and then shook his head.

  “You promised me, Roland,”Hallorin said in a fatherly voice, carefully controlling his anger. Peck responded poorly to anger and Hallorin had learned to dole it out sparingly, like a powerful drug. Too much could panic the man, and then that perfect brain of his stopped working.“What about the filer’

  “We haven’t found it yet,”Peck blurted out.

  “You haven’t found it yet,”Hallorin repeated.“Time is running out, Roland.”

  Peck walked around to the chair against the wall that he always sat in.“It all looks the same down there. Sand and rocks. Nothing but sand and rocks. We know the general location. It won’t be long.”

  There was something that Peck wasn’t telling him, he could tell by the tone of his voice and the drape of his body. He didn’t pursue it, though. In the end it might be better that he didn’t know.“What about the girl?”

  “She’s got nothing. Just the clothes on her back. It won’t be long now.”

  “Why don’t we have her, Roland?”Hallorin let the volume of his voice rise a notch, showing his displeasure at having to repeat his questions to get a full answer.

  “It’s hard to look. We can’t have any of this traced back. None of it… We’ve hired someone independent. He’s very good. He’ll find her. It won’t be long now. I swear.”

  seventeen

  Mark Beamon gunned the tiny subcompact and cursed his stupidity one more time. He could have rented the enormous four-wheel drive with the CD changer, leather trim, and back massager thing—his new employer didn’t seem to be quite as coy as the government when it came to the expensing of creature comforts. Old habits really did die hard.

  He heard the chassis grind against something as the front end of the car dropped into a deep rut hard enough to whip his neck. Beamon leaned out the open window into the damp, leafy-smelling air and looked at the go-cart-sized front tire. The little of it that was still visible at this point seemed to be slowly sinking into the mud.

  Certain that he wasn’t going to be able to coax it any further forward, Beamon climbed out of the car and slammed the door. He reached in through the open window and grabbed the map off the passenger seat. It had been included in the envelope Chris Humbolt had given him and had seemed ridiculously detailed at first glance. Now, though, Beamon wasn’t so sure. In this part of West Virginia, it wasn’t so easy to tell a dirt road from a place where the grass didn’t grow all that well.

  Beamon kicked at a rock beneath his foot, mostly to hear it skitter across the dirt. The silence and stillness of the forest was kind of disconcerting—no place for a sophisticated urbanite like himself.

  He switched off the car’s headlights and hoped his eyes would adjust to the darkness since he hadn’t had the presence of mind to bring a flashlight. Once the glare was gone, things started to look a little better. The clear sky and full moon cast a colorless glow over the dirt road and reflected black in the puddles that dotted it. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and started forward on foot, instantly breaking into a sweat despite the coolness of the night.

  After about ten minutes he found himself getting used to his surroundings. He even stopped once to look down a steep slope at the moonlit New River, probably a thousand feet below. The problems that had been swirling around him lately—his imminent incarceration and likely bankruptcy, his breakup with Carrie, the fact that he was being eerily overpaid for this no-brainer—seemed to be partially swallowed up by the empty wilderness that surrounded him.

  Predictably, the feeling didn’t last long, fading quickly into the faint glow emerging from somewhere in front of him. He continued toward it, and by the time the trees had turned from moonlight gray to dark green, most of his problems had crept back up on him. The most urgent at the moment was just how to introduce himself to the figures he could see moving around an antiquated little van in the middle of the clearing he was heading for. He slowed, giving himself time to think before he entered into the area lit by no less than five freestanding floodlights and the headlights of two quietly purring police cars.

  Mark Beamon, private dick.

  Not quite the right ring.

  Mark Beamon, crime scene clean up—you club ’em, we scrub ’em.

  Maybe not.

  Hi, I’m looking to buy a piece of shit VW van cheap.

  Not quite right either.

  Beamon entered the circle of light and started toward the van, but was distracted when he saw the cathedral-like cave that guarded one end of the clearing. He could see bright blue slings hanging every ten feet or so on the cliff’s face and then continuing through the enormous roof. He changed his trajectory and walked toward them.

  “They’re called quickdraws,”came a deep but unmistakably female voice behind. He didn’t turn at the quiet scrunch of approaching boots, but continued to examine the eighty feet of overhanging rock in front of him. He’d read all about it. People climbed up these things, clipping their rope through the slings. If they fell, the theory was that the rope would break their fall before the ground did.

  “They’re called quickdraws,”the woman repeated as she came up alongside him. He still didn’t make eye contact, concentrating on the cliff face. In the reflected light, he could see small areas along the route that looked white. Gymnastics chalk, he knew—climbers used it to keep their hands dry. Other than that, he didn’t see much. Little flaws, tiny ledges and holes. He craned his neck and looked up at the roof above him.“I understand the concept, but I sure as hell don’t know how they get up there.”

  He heard the rustle of fabric as the woman shrugged and he glanced over at her, taking in her wide face, thick neck, and the broad hat that identified her as the sheriff. He was starting to feel a twinge of suspicion at her behavior. Shouldn’t she be driving him off her crime scene with a stick by now?

  The answer came to him as he continued to scan the wide stone roof for invisible handholds. After twenty-odd years of dealing with reporters, he was damn near willing to have them shot on sight His small town counterpart, on the other hand, was probably more than happy to see her face in the papers. He turned to her and stuck his hand out.“Mark Beamon. I was with the FBI.” He artfully slurred the was, taking advantage of the fact that the new drama surrounding his life hadn’t yet hit the papers.

  The sheriff leaned to one side to get a better angle on his face, then took his hand hesitantly.“Sure, I recognize you from your pictures. What are you doing here?”

  Beamon smiled at her directness. Clearly a woman he could talk to.“Same thing you are. We have a passing interest in Darby Moore and Tristan Newberry.”

  Of course she would assume that we meant the FBI. But that wasn’t really his problem.

  The as-yet-unidentified sheriff screwed up h
er face as if to say that even she wasn’t that interested in them.“Really? Why?”

  Good question. He wished he knew the answer.

  “It’s not really something I can talk about.” Again, perfectly true. He wasn’t breaking any laws here. No major ones, at least.“I’d love to swap a few notes with you, though.” He held up his hands in an innocent gesture.“Obviously, this isn’t FBI jurisdiction—I’m not interested in the collar. If I should stumble over her first, I’ll hand her over to you.”

  That seemed to satisfy her. She motioned for him to follow and plodded off toward the van. As they came up behind it, she grabbed a nasty-looking implement leaning against the back tire and held it up into the light. It looked like a small pickaxe about a foot and a half long. The handle was covered in rubber to improve grip and the serrated edges running along the business end of it looked razor sharp.

  “Newberry was killed with one of these—the actual one is at the lab.” She gripped it and gave it a short swing in Beamon’s direction, causing him to jump back. She laughed and held a hand out.“I’m sorry, Mr. Beamon. I didn’t mean to scare you. People use these to climb up ice. They have two of them and wear these pointy things on their feet, then up they go.”

  “Crampons,”Beamon said, deciding it was safe to step forward again.

  “What?”

  “The pointy things on their feet. They’re called crampons.”

  “Oh.” She looked disappointed.

  “I’ve never actually seen one of those on the hoof,”Beamon said, pointing to the ice axe in her hand.“Do you mind?”She handed it to him and he took a few practice swings. There was no doubt that you could kill the shit out of someone with the thing.

  He followed obediently, still playing with the axe as she moved around to the other side of the van. When he finally looked up, he froze for a moment.“Jesus.” He let the axe slide from his hand and took a hesitant step toward the open side door.