Electing to Murder

CHAPTER THIRTY

“God help him if he is.”

“Iowa, I need you to help me bring about the kinds of changes our country needs, good schools, a fair wage and a clean environment. Only with your help and your votes can we make that happen. You’ve seen what’s happening in our country, you’ve seen what these Super PACs are doing with this negative advertising, telling these lies. You’ve seen that someone out there is conspiring to steal your vote, manipulating voting machines.” Thomson pounded the podium, “Are you going to let them?”

“Noooo!” the crowd of 17,000 in Des Moines Wells Fargo Arena roared.

“Are you going to let them!” Thomson implored again.

“Nooooooooo!” the crowd screamed louder.

“I can’t hear you,” the governor encouraged, holding his hand to his ear.

“Nooooooooooooooooo!”

“I didn’t think so,” Thomson growled back, exhorting the crowd with his right fist, the combative wrestler showing through. “If the day’s events have taught us anything, anything at all, it is we can’t take this for granted, folks. We can’t. We can’t afford it. There is simply too much riding on this, our economy, health care, education and our environment. My friends, get out and vote on Tuesday. Get your friends and family out to vote. Protect your rights and let’s take back the White House, Iowa! Thank you!”

The crowd screamed its approval as Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run roared over the arena sound system. Flags and placards waved and balloons dropped as Governor Thomson and his wife waved and smiled to the crowd.

The governor made his way back off the stage, shaking hands and giving hugs to the various local politicians and officials, people who’d been working for him the last eighteen months of the election, the people who delivered the caucuses back in January that got him rolling towards the nomination. A state that he had to have on Tuesday, and with what he and the Judge had learned in the last twenty-four hours, one they could have easily lost if it weren’t for the discovery by McRyan and Wire over in Wisconsin.

Judge Dixon and Sally Kennedy were waiting for Thomson at the end of the stage. When the governor reached them, the Judge said, “They loved you.”

“Great crowd,” Thomson replied happily. “They were really responding.”

“The people are fired up over this election fraud story, sir,” Sally Kennedy stated. “They want blood over this. They’re pissed off.”

“Sally’s right, Governor,” the Judge added. “Speaking of which, I think we should take a few questions here backstage, kind of impromptu. The media is waiting and we have a few questions planted for you.” Dixon explained who the governor should respond to.

“Let’s do it,” the governor replied and his campaign manager and friend led him underneath the arena and then turned him left down a cordoned off walkway which led towards his limousine. The reporters were penned in an area off to the left. Thomson abruptly veered that direction to the surprise of many of the media horde. The mass of the media quickly recovered and started shouting questions. The governor found his first questioner and gestured, “Heather.”

“Governor Thomson,” Heather Foxx with NBC asked. “What is your reaction to the press conference held by Attorney General Gates and FBI Director Mitchell?”

“Heather, I have several. I’m outraged at the attack on our electoral system and the deaths that have occurred because of this. We are free to disagree in this country and use every legal method to have our voices heard. However, to manipulate the votes, to tamper with voting machines to overturn the will of the people and then to murder to cover it up is beyond the pale. Whoever is behind this is not only guilty of election fraud but they are a murderer. That person or the persons behind this face a very dark future for they will face the full wrath of the American people.”

“Governor, have you had a chance to speak with Attorney General Gates or FBI Director Mitchell?” Sandy Bay of CNN asked.

“Sandy, I have not but I hope to sometime soon. As you know, I did get a quick call from President Barnes, which I greatly appreciated. He, as I, was shocked and dismayed by the audacity of what has taken place here. He has acted quickly and decisively to get to the bottom of this and because of the quick actions of his administration, it looks as though we can avoid issues with voting on Tuesday. The FBI, which has jurisdiction over election fraud, is using all of its vast resources to investigate this case and bring those responsible to justice. But having said that, let me just say that what I am truly gratified by and thoroughly impressed with is the work of the St. Paul and Milwaukee homicide detectives in this investigation. I think in the days to come we’re going to learn a lot about the bravery and brilliance of these people in discovering this conspiracy and saving the integrity of our electoral process. We are going to owe them a huge debt of gratitude. We’re also going to learn about the bravery of some others who were murdered as part of this conspiracy, people who, whether wittingly or unwittingly, made the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good. As this story unfolds, I hope those people are not forgotten in the wash of all of the politics.”

“Governor,” Dan McLean of the Washington Post asked, “have you learned at all who is behind this?”

“Dan, I have not,” the governor answered. “It is my hope that now that the investigators involved in this case have discovered what this conspiracy is all about, they will now be able to turn their complete attention to determining who is behind all of this, both the manipulation of the voting machines, but more importantly, the murders.”

“Governor, a follow-up question,” McLean pressed. “We’re hearing reports that Heath Connolly is a person of interest in this investigation, do you have any comment?”

“God help him if he is.” Governor Thomson waved to the reporters and fell in with his Secret Service detail and Judge Dixon as they marched towards the motorcade.

“Just right,” Dixon said quietly as they made their way to their limousine.

* * *

At 1:53 p.m., Heath Connolly arrived at the Hoover Building in the backseat of a Suburban. The political operative held up a manila folder to shield his face from the photographers and to avoid the cameras of the news media as they pulled in under the Hoover Building.

Ever since Kentucky he’d been walking on egg shells, worried that this time would come. This was particularly so when he learned that the Bishop’s men failed to retrieve the last of the evidence at McCormick’s house. When that all fell into the hands of the authorities, he knew this moment was coming.

The vice president was incensed.

The arrangement between Vice President Donald Wellesley and Heath Connolly was never one of mutual admiration or desire. Vice President Wellesley was the next in line for the Republican nomination and there were no real serious challengers for the job. Heath Connolly was the best political operator in the Republican Party, had never lost an election, was good friends with Donald Wellesley Jr. and there were no real serious challengers for the job.

Yet, while the pairing seemed like a natural combination on paper, the two men were very different.

Vice President Wellesley was a gentle man, a quiet leader and someone who didn’t believe every Democrat was evil. His career was one of building bridges, working across the aisle and being bipartisan. He believed how you won mattered as much as winning. The vice president truly believed in the nobility of politics and was willing to work with anyone who held the same view, regardless of their political convictions. There was always a way to find common ground for the good of the country.

Connolly was the antithesis of the vice president. Heath Connolly was a brawler, a political pit bull who believed the ends always justified the means. Winning was everything, no matter the cost. The political operative could have cared less about being bipartisan, he was a partisan. In his world there was no common ground. There was only the ground he’d won by pounding his opponent mercilessly into submission.

In one way it was yin to yang. In another, one man’s values clearly were not a match for the other.

Connolly lied and professed his innocence to the vice president.

The vice president called bullshit.

“Heath, you screwed us with that fiasco in the Florida Keys and all those Super PAC people. Now you doubled down on that mistake and got yourself involved in election fraud and murder.”

It was not difficult, in what was undoubtedly the last conversation the two men would ever have, for Vice President Wellesley to tell Connolly, “Get on that FBI plane to DC and don’t come back. You’re fired and if it’s the last thing I ever do I’ll see that you never work in Republican politics again. That is if you can find a way to keep your ass out of prison, a place to which, if even half of this is true, I’ll only be too happy to see you go.”

Now, he was in self-preservation mode as the car pulled underneath the Hoover Building and came to a stop by a set of double doors. His lawyer, a DC heavyweight named Vincent Chase, greeted him as he exited the Suburban. There were two conversations between them earlier in the day and they had a plan.