The Dirty Secret (24 page)

“What printing company sold the optical scan ballots your office used in this election?” she asked. Her tone of voice sounded like what one might use whilst petting a jittery rabbit.

Marcus exhaled. “Duffey & Gould. Their office is down in Beckley.”

“Who is the company’s sales rep that serviced your account?”

“Heather Anatakis,” he replied. “Your sorority sister from WVU.”

“What did you tell Heather was wrong with the
first
batch of ballots Duffey & Gould sent to your office in October?” Monica brushed her shoulder-length blonde hair behind her right ear with her fingertips. Glancing at her brother, she noted his posture had relaxed a bit.

“That the ovals weren’t aligned properly,” Marcus dutifully recited, as if reading from a memorized script. “The scanning machine wouldn’t read them.”

“Right,” Monica coaxed. “So what did you do?”

“I asked her to send us another batch of ballots with the same serial numbers, but to make sure the ovals were aligned right this time.”

“And she did that, correct?”

Marcus nodded. “Yes. Three days later.”

Monica casually flipped her turn signal and turned left onto Foxcroft Avenue, heading toward the throng of restaurants there.

“And where did your office buy the blue seals used to lock up the ballot boxes?” she asked, turning the steering wheel counterclockwise and crossing through traffic.

“From Heather’s company, again. They sell every kind of election material an office like mine needs, except for the actual voting machines.”

“And what did you do when your office received those seals?”

Staring straight through the windshield, the Berkeley County Clerk subconsciously smacked his lips. “I opened the box and confirmed the seals were in good order.”

“What else?” she prompted.

“I wrote the serial numbers down on a piece of paper and gave the list to you.”

“Yes, you did,” Monica agreed. “And unbeknownst to you –
right?
– I contacted the sales rep for the little firm in Shanghai that Heather told me manufactures those seals. And I ordered two more batches of those seals – in the
same color
, with the
same serial numbers
– which they shipped to a mailbox I rented at a shipping store in Winchester, Virginia. Correct?”

“Correct,” Marcus parroted.

Monica maneuvered her Mercedes into a parking space. Shutting off the engine, she calmly removed her sunglasses and turned to face her brother. “Once the results were reported on Election Night, I took a printout from your office home with me where I had stashed the first batch of ballots from Duffey & Gould. And what did I do then?”

“You filled in the ballots with a pencil.”

“No, Marcus. That’s like saying the Sistine Chapel is ‘a church ceiling some Italian guy painted.’ It doesn’t do justice to the labor and devotion involved in creating that masterpiece. What
I
did, dear brother,” Monica explained testily, “is sit at my dining room table for two straight weeks, hunched over a mountain of ballots with a box of number two pencils,
recreating the entire election
. Eighteen hours a day, for fourteen straight days, I meticulously shaded ovals on almost
38,000
ballots. And I took great care to make sure that the results for
every other race
on the ballot were essentially unchanged, while comfortably widening Governor Royal’s margin of victory in the presidential election.”

The young woman’s eyes flashed with pride. She raised her right hand so that Marcus could get a good look at its mangled and bruised appearance. “Do you think I
enjoyed
doing that to my hand? Do you think I
enjoyed
spending hours studying how those optical scanning machines worked, so that I could improperly shade hundreds of Senator Wilson’s ballots in such a way as to make this story believable? Do you think I did all that for my fucking
health
?”

“No,” he replied sheepishly.

“You’re damn right, I didn’t! But I did it anyway, because this country
needs
Jonathan Royal to be our next president. I did it because we both know that if we didn’t do
something
to protect his interests, those sorry, corrupt, inbred pieces of shit from the coalfields would find some way to steal this election.

“And have you heard about what’s going on down in Mingo County, Marcus?” she continued ranting. “The Democrats have
magically
found
hundreds
of new votes for Senator Wilson, and as of this very moment, Governor Royal might actually be
behind
in the vote tally. And less than an hour ago, the folks at his campaign headquarters said Berkeley County is our only hope to hold on to victory in West Virginia.

Marcus gulped. “Really?”

Monica took a deep breath and nodded solemnly, consciously softening the look in her eyes. “Really,” she replied, lowering her voice almost to a whisper. “We – you and I, Marcus – are
literally
the last ring of defense between Melanie Wilson and the White House. We can’t sit back and let them steal this election. We have a moral obligation to stop them.”

Marcus stared into his twin sister’s face for a few moments, contemplating her words. Monica returned the gaze unwaveringly. She knew she had said everything she needed to say.

Finally, he relented. “I know you’re right. But I’m still scared out of my mind.”

Monica reached over and gently patted her brother’s cheek. “I know you are. But you have nothing to worry about. If this thing blows up, I’ll take the heat. You didn’t know anything at all about my actions. Your only crime was to leave the keys to your office at the courthouse lying around where your diabolical twin sister could grab them.

“It’s not your fault that the County Commission left your office in the old courthouse annex instead of moving it to one of the newer buildings with better security systems. Who could have predicted that a formerly law-abiding pharmaceutical sales rep like me would be so devious as to single-handedly use her loving brother’s keys to gain access to his storage room, cut the locks off 20 ballot boxes and replace the stacks of unused ballots inside them with ingeniously forged replacements? Hmmm?”

Marcus chuckled nervously. “That
does
sound pretty preposterous.”

“Of course! So don’t sweat it. Just watch for my signal whenever you open a new ballot box the rest of the day.”

“What kind of signal?” Marcus asked. “Are you going to use sign language like Grandma taught us when we were kids?”

Monica shook her head emphatically. “No. Someone else who knows how to sign could catch us and we can’t run that risk. We’ll have to use something more simplistic … If my arms are crossed, pull the stack of original ballots out of the box to be recounted – those are the ones stacked on the
left
side as you’re looking down from the lock side of the box.

“But if I’m standing there with my hands on my
hips
, you should grab the stack of ballots from the
right
side of the box. In that case, flip the original ballots over face down, which will reveal the ‘spoiled’ label I stuck on the transparent plastic wrapper they’re stored in when I cut the locks off and put my forged ballots in there.”

Marcus sighed and nodded. “Okay. I’m with you. You’ve not led me astray yet.”

Monica smiled proudly. “And I never will. Stick with me, Marcus, and you’ll end up in the Governor’s Mansion someday.”

CHAPTER 49

WEST VIRGINIA STATE CAPITOL
CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1:45 P.M.

Vincent and Bowen huddled in front of a plasma TV in the governor’s private office that was tuned to CNN. Seven of the network’s reporters were posted at courthouses around the state, conveying returns to the world.

Suddenly, the ticker tape scrolling across the bottom of the screen changed colors from red to blue. A new caption materialized above the scrolling results, which read:

“BREAKING NEWS: WILSON OVERTAKES ROYAL IN WV”

Bowen leaned backwards at the waist, balled up both of his fists and emitted an unrestrained war whoop. Vincent beamed and clapped his hands, still watching the coverage. On the other side of the door, shrieks of joy wafted through the Governor’s Office suite.

Vincent turned up the volume with the remote. “The final results from Braxton County are in,” the anchor woman excitedly announced. “Senator Wilson has gained an additional thirty-five votes there. That development, coupled with the stunning news from Mingo County earlier today, has given her the lead.”

Vincent remained transfixed on the TV, rubbing his mouth and chin with his palm. “How big is the lead? Tell us.”

“According to our calculations,” the anchor said. “Senator Wilson is now leading Governor Royal by the miniscule margin of eleven votes.” Her eyes widened and she let out a deep breath, sagging in her seat slightly. “Could things
possibly
get more dramatic than this?”

Bowen heartily slapped Vincent on the back. “How do you like
them
apples?”

Vincent grinned and raised an eyebrow. “I’d like ‘em a lot better if it was the end of the day. But I feel better right now than I have in a long time.”

“And we haven’t finished working our magic yet,” Bowen added. “Yeah, we’re still in for a rocky ride, but doesn’t it feel good to be in the driver’s seat for a change?”

Vincent nodded, a satisfied look in his eyes. “If you’re not the lead dog, the view never changes. And I like the view from this angle just fine.”

CHAPTER 50

WEST VIRGINIA REPUBLICAN HEADQUARTERS
CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 3:15 P.M.

“So it all comes down to two counties,” Dave mumbled, staring out the window overlooking the heart of downtown Charleston. People who lived and worked in the non-political “real world” – bankers, plumbers, secretaries and nurses – walked past the headquarters without a second glance. Totally focused on their own affairs, their minds were far from the recount. Dave could scarcely comprehend what it must be like to live in such a sheltered, happily-insulated kind of world.

On days like this, he suspected it was fantastically …
normal
.

Gil circled the conference table, lost in his own thoughts. “What did you say?” he asked.

“That it’s hard to imagine after all the fundraising and debates, redeye flights from the West Coast, opinion polls and blah blah blah blah
blah
, this whole election is going to come down to what happens in two little counties in West Virginia.”

“Mingo and Berkeley,” Gil said. “One’s in the southern coalfields and the other’s a six-hour drive away in the Eastern Panhandle. It’s crazy.”

Dave shook his head. “Unbelievable,” he said softly.

Gil stepped over to the whiteboards. Scanning the results, his eyes batted back and forth before resting at the bottom of the last whiteboard. Two entries scribbled in black read, “Royal 375,155. Wilson 375,169.” To the right of those was an entry written in red: “-14.”

Today’s recounts largely had gone off without a hitch. As a result, all the team’s other reps had reported their final results and went home, while Monica Boley and Spence remained in contact from Martinsburg and Williamson.

The phone rang. Gil speed-walked over and hit the speakerphone button. “Hello?”

“Hi, Gil,” Spence said. “We just finished another precinct down here.”

“I’m hoping you have some
good
news to report for a change.”

Spence sighed. “It depends on what your definition of ‘good’ is. The recount of Red Jacket is over, and we only lost another two votes there.”

Gil’s face turned red. “Well, I don’t know what they taught you in Mingo County, Spence. But digging ourselves deeper in a hole would never fall within the definition of ‘good’ I learned here in Kanawha County.” His teeth were clenched and his eyes simmered.

“Maybe not,” Spence replied tersely. “But Kanawha County actually
elects
Republicans from time-to-time, Gil. And in places like Mingo County – where Republicans are
never
elected, and those crazy enough to run don’t
dream
of doing better than losing by a two-to-one margin – keeping the damage that low is borderline miraculous.”

“All right, fellas,” Dave loudly interjected. “We’re all under a lot of stress, and you both need to chill the hell out. Spence … how many precincts are left to go there?”

The faint sound of heavy breathing came over the line. “Only eight. And there haven’t been any major surprises since that nasty Gilbert precinct.”

“All-in-all, things could be much worse when you consider how outnumbered we are down there,” Dave conceded. “But the other precinct with memory card problems is still floating around out there.”

“Matewan. You don’t need to remind me. Every time they pull out another box, I’m afraid it’s Matewan, and I almost piss myself.”

“Don’t strain your bladder. That will be the last one they count.”

“Why do you say that?”

Gil glanced over at Dave, and by the look in his eyes, he had an epiphany. “Because they don’t want us to know how many votes they’ll gain there,” Gil said. “They want to wait until the last second to play their hole card so we don’t have time to react to it.”

Dave smirked and pointed his finger at Gil, like a professor pleased with his star pupil. “Exactly. I bet you’ll see Democrats working on the recount down there suddenly taking more bathroom breaks or smoke breaks. Doing whatever they can to delay things, so
they
can see how things unfold in Berkeley County before the Matewan precinct gets recounted.”

“Come to think of it,” Spence noted. “The County Clerk
has
been giving them more breaks lately. It all makes sense now.”

“All right, Spence. Make sure you guys scream bloody murder every time they try to take a break. Speed up the process at every turn. We might not be able to stop those bastards from stuffing the ballot boxes in Mingo County. But we can force ‘em to put their cards on the table before we lay down ours.”