The Candidate (26 page)

THE HELICOPTER BANKS OVER THE sweeping hills and valleys of northern Marin County. Inside the chopper Erica is filming with her iPhone—it's a stunning landscape, but she wouldn't care if it looked like Gary, Indiana. She's only after one thing.

“You thinking of buying a place?” the pilot—handsome, starstruck—asks.

Erica nods.

“A lot of celebrities have places up here. You can have real privacy.”

“You could almost hide away in these hills,” Erica says.

“A lot of people do,” he says.

Then Erica sees the long, low wood-and-glass house that swoops out over the ridgeline, its infinity pool seeming to float on air. And there's the courtyard surrounded by the three guesthouses.

“Let's take a look at that place. But don't get too close, I don't want to disturb anyone.”

“Sure thing.”

The pilot is expert and he hovers a distance away from the compound while Erica films, zooming in, making sure she gets the periphery, the wooded hills that surround the estate.

“Sweet spread. I bet somebody powerful lives there,” the pilot says.

“No doubt.”

“Maybe some tech billionaire. Or it could be Chinese money. There's a whole lot of that pouring in.”

And then Erica notices a car on the road that leads to the estate. It pulls up to the gate, and a moment later the gate swings open. The car speeds up the long drive. Maybe it's the caretaker. But would a caretaker drive a Porsche? The car pulls into the courtyard and a man gets out. Erica zooms in as tight as she can—he's dressed in a black suit and he looks Asian, but she won't be sure until she studies the footage. She expects the man to head into Lily's house, but he turns toward one of the guesthouses. Another man in a black suit comes out of the guesthouse. They shake hands and then look up toward the sky, toward the helicopter.

“Let's head back,” Erica says.

“Will do.”

“It's gorgeous up here.”

“God's country,” the pilot says.

As the helicopter heads south back to SFO, Erica turns, takes a last look at the estate, and thinks,
That depends on who your god is
.

ERICA IS IN HER ROOM at the Huntington the next morning. She's wearing jeans, a blouse, a light Windbreaker, and hiking sneakers. She's studied the footage of Eagle's Nest and the surrounding countryside a dozen times. Her rental car is waiting downstairs. She's keyed up, but as long as she's moving forward her anxiety stays in check. There's one last thing before she sets off. She sits down and writes an e-mail to Greg, Moy, and Mark, telling them what she's about to do. If something happens to her, they'll know where to look. She hits Send and then closes the computer before checking to see if the e-mail went through.

As Erica drives down to Lombard Street to pick up Route 101, she looks in her rearview mirror and sees a black sedan behind her. The visor is pulled down and she can barely make out the driver in the shadow. Male. Wearing dark glasses. Unshaven. She turns on Lombard, and so does the sedan. Erica changes lanes, it follows. She gets on the Golden Gate Bridge, the sedan stays on her tail. She can feel her pulse quicken and sweat break out on her brow. She crosses the bridge and heads through the tunnel and into suburban southern Marin. She changes lanes several times, the sedan is right with her.

Erica gets off 101 at Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. So does her eager
suitor. Now her heart is thumping in her chest. She follows Sir Francis Drake into the rich suburb of Ross. She's in the middle of the shopping district, there's a stoplight up ahead, it turns from green to yellow, and Erica sees a chance. At first she slows, then when the light turns red—at the last possible second—she swings a fast left onto Lagunitas Road. She looks in her rearview—her tail is stuck at the red light. She races up two blocks and comes to Ross Common, where she takes a left and then pulls over in front of a parked SUV, which hides her car. She sits frozen, her eyes glued to the side-view mirror, which shows the traffic behind her on Lagunitas. The black sedan drives by and she can just make out the driver's head frantically twisting left and right. The car behind him honks. Erica executes a tight U-turn, goes right on Lagunitas, and then left on Francis Drake. She checks the rearview. There's no sign of her tail.

Suburbia fades out as she drives through San Anselmo and Fairfax and reaches rustic Woodacre, where she turns right and heads north on Nicasio Valley Road, into the undeveloped reaches of northwest Marin. She turns right and heads up Old Rancheria Road. After six miles she reaches the gate to Eagle's Nest. She keeps going past the gate for about a quarter of mile and then turns on the overgrown, barely visible dirt road she found on Google Earth. She drives up about a quarter of a mile, pulls in behind a copse of trees, and gets out of her car.

Erica is sweating and she's scared. But there's no way she's turning back. She starts to make her way through the woods. There's not a lot of underbrush to hide in, and she stays hyperalert for any movement or sound—the crunch of shoes on the leaves, a cough, a shadow behind a tree. She moves steadily, to the beat of her thumping heart. After a half hour she reaches the base of Eagle Nest's hilltop. She's approaching from behind the guesthouses, which are partially built into the slope, made of stacked stone. They look as solid as death. The whole compound has a secretive, forbidding air. Even though she isn't moving, Erica is now sweating profusely and she feels dizzy with fear.

She begins to move closer, slowly, deliberately, looking down before each step, landing as silently as she can. Now she's just below the
guesthouses, ready to make the final climb. She searches for any sign of activity. It's a still, blue day, and all she can hear is the wind rustling the leaves and an occasional birdcall. It's quiet. Too quiet. Then she feels a mosquito bite her neck. She reaches up and slaps it, but there's no bug. Then everything goes black.

CELESTE IS IN SOME DREARY backstage holding room at a Mike Ortiz rally in Des Moines. At least she thinks it's Des Moines. They all blur together, these rallies in dead-end cities Celeste wouldn't be caught alive in at any other time. She can hear the muffled screams and cries from the masses in response to Mike's rising cadences. Women, of course, go crazy for her husband, in his shirtsleeves, his muscles straining against his shirt.

Scream all you want, ladies, he's mine. Not that I really want him. Well, occasionally. Just to keep him happy and in line. Oh, all right, I enjoy it too, but the most exciting part for me is the head game. The fact that I control him. He's in my power. He worships me. And my body. But he'll never be
numero uno
. That spot was taken twenty-five years ago.

Celeste is bored. She looks around at the minions—the sweaty aides and pollsters and volunteers and speechwriters and strategists. The whole apparatus
.
She wishes she could just apply the accelerator to Father Time and speed up the next two weeks. Yes, it's just two weeks until election day. Until she and Lily accomplish the seemingly impossible. Celeste shivers at the thought. At how brilliantly they've engineered the whole thing and dealt with every obstacle. They're one
of history's great teams. Why, they make Franklin and Eleanor and Ron and Nancy look like minor leaguers. Books will be written about them, movies made, statues built, schools named.

There's only one possible speed bump and that's the last debate, which is in three days. But it will be fine. Celeste and her tight team have tutored and nurtured their star pupil until he glows with confidence and sincerity, with thoughtful answers to a hundred possible questions at his fingertips.

There are several television sets on in the room. One of them is turned to GNN, and suddenly there's that urgent pulsing sound and a headline scrolls across the bottom of the screen
Update: The Disappearance of Erica Sparks.
Celeste moves closer to the set.

Anchor Patricia Lorenzo is saying, “It's now been two days since journalist and GNN host Erica Sparks's car went off a cliff on Highway 1 just north of San Francisco.” Footage plays of Erica's rental car, smashed on the wave-lashed rocks below a sheer cliff.

“The search for her body continues in the frigid waters of the Pacific.” Footage of scuba divers in the surf.

“Investigators have said it's likely that Sparks was ejected from her car on impact and that her body was carried out to sea by the strong currents in the area. Her fiancé, television producer Greg Underwood, arrived from Australia the day after the accident to supervise the search. He is also looking for answers to the mystery of what Sparks was doing in Marin County that day. He has been joined by Sparks's oldest friend, Moira Connelly, a newscaster on KTLA in Los Angeles. They have set up a command center in the Huntington Hotel in San Francisco, where Erica was staying on the day she disappeared.”

Footage of an earlier interview with Greg appears on-screen, with Moira standing beside him. They both look haggard, stunned, and sad. Greg says, “This makes no sense to me. Why haven't we found Erica's body? And why was she on Highway 1? It's the slowest route back to San Francisco, and Erica was a woman in a hurry. Why didn't she inform anyone of her plans for that day? This is completely
unlike her. And frankly, I'm not sure she was in that car when it went over the cliff.” Footage of the car being hoisted up the cliff face is shown.

Lorenzo continues, “Adding to the mystery of Sparks's disappearance is the fact that her computer, which she left in her hotel room that day, was completely scrubbed. The computer has been analyzed by experts from the FBI, and they have confirmed that there is nothing on it. Everything was erased.”

Shots appear of a distraught Jenny being escorted out of school. “Sparks's eleven-year-old daughter, Jenny, is with her father in Framingham, Massachusetts. Dirk Sparks has asked the country to please respect his family's privacy.

“All that is known for sure is that Erica Sparks left her hotel at approximately ten thirty on the morning of October 26 and got into a rented gray Honda Accord. According to the odometer and the records from Hertz, she drove 104 miles that day, meaning that she did not simply drive north to the vicinity of where the car went off the cliff, which is about fifteen miles from San Francisco. The accident occurred at approximately 2:40 that afternoon, just past a very sharp turn, with no witnesses.” Footage of the vertiginous stretch of road is shown.

Patricia Lorenzo pauses for a moment and her face fills with emotion. “On a personal note, all of us here at GNN are deeply shaken by Erica's disappearance. She was part of our family. Our thoughts go out to Greg and Jenny. Erica had millions of fans, and we have been inundated with messages of love and support. We will, of course, keep you updated on any developments in the story.”

Celeste walks away from the television set. Out in the arena, the screaming crescendos as her husband reaches the climax of his speech. Erica made a fatal mistake—
Well, not fatal,
Celeste thinks with a smile. Not yet anyway. She made a
major
mistake in messing with Lily Lau. What happened to her is her own fault. They were so good to her, feeding her scoops and green-lighting her as debate moderator. And
in return she was sticking her nose where it didn't belong. Foolish girl. Life is so much easier if you just go along to get along.

But Erica will change. Of course she will. The change has already started. When Lily is finished with her, Erica will be one of
them
. She'll be much happier. She's such a complex woman. Too complex for her own good. Soon she won't have all those awful conflicts that bedevil her. She'll be free.

MRS. MORRIS WAS ERICA'S KINDERGARTEN teacher. She was about thirty-five, tall, at least five feet nine, with shoulder-length auburn hair. She wore running shoes every day. She had an unconscious habit of scratching her chin with her index finger when she was thinking about a question from one of the kids in class. The other kids gave her little presents at Christmas. Erica didn't have any money for a present, but she did make her a card out of red construction paper and she cut out letters from old magazines that spelled out
Mary Christman!
Mrs. Morris said, “This is my favorite card, Erica!” That made Erica so happy and proud.

Mrs. Brullette was her first-grade teacher. She was older, chubby, probably in her forties, and she had short dark hair that she held off her face with a barrette. She was strict and she sighed a lot. One day Erica raised her hand—

Oh no, an itch!

On the bottom of her left foot. A fierce itch. Erica tries to squirm. But she can't. She can't move her feet. Or her legs or her torso or her arms or her head. She can't see. She can't hear.

But she can feel. Something is in her arm. It must be an IV. And
she's catheterized. And she can feel the air coming in through her nostrils.

But she can feel more than that. She can feel like she's going insane. But she won't go insane. Because that's what they want.

This is the tenth time she's worked her way through all of her teachers from kindergarten through Yale. She's also gone through every job she ever had. And every man she ever went out on a date with. And any place she has ever lived. And every birthday present she ever gave Jenny.

Jenny! Where is Jenny? Is she safe? Her mommy is gone. They took her mommy. Oh, Jenny, oh baby, my baby, please stay strong, stay strong for Mommy. And Mommy will stay strong for you. My life. My child.

Erica struggles to move, to move anything, she marshals everything she's got and desperately tries to move—but it's useless and she knows it . . . She's struggled a thousand times before over the last . . . the last . . .
what . . .
She has no idea how long she's been here. Like this. The last thing she remembers is the quiet in the woods, the eerie quiet and then the mosquito that wasn't a mosquito. It's been days, she knows that much. What time is it? Noon? Midnight? She feels as if she's hurtling through time and space, through infinite blackness, untethered and alone.

If only she could scream, she'd feel so much better if she could scream. Just scream and scream and scream. But she can't. Her mouth is taped shut. Tight.

And suddenly Erica wants to cry because all she wants to do is scream and she can't. And Jenny has no mother. Tears well up and seep out from her eyes, but she can't move her eyelids, which are covered with something thick and suffocating.

She's suffocating. Suffocating. She's dead and she's in hell. No, she's in a nightmare. They drugged her and put her into a nightmare. It's all real. It's a real nightmare. And she's in it. Forever.

Then a beautiful thought breaks through: Jenny's not in the nightmare. Jenny is free. Jenny is laughing and happy. She's on green grass and the sun
is shining. Oh, look how pretty she is. Erica can handle the nightmare—sure she can—as long as Jenny stays on the green grass in the sunshine.

And then, with a sharp inhale through her nostrils, Erica knows that it isn't working. All the cataloging of teachers and boyfriends and jobs isn't working anymore. She is going crazy. Is she crazy already?

And the tears keep seeping out of her eyes. And she tries to blink, to blink them away. And she can't. But she keeps trying. Because the tears remind her that she's in a nightmare and she wants to forget it. As she keeps trying to blink, to blink away the tears, she asks herself where she left off. Then she remembers. Second grade. Yes, second grade. Mrs. Nealy. She was older, in her fifties, and she smelled like the cigarettes she pretended she didn't smoke, and Erica's tears keep coming and she keeps trying to blink and . . .

She blinks!

Not a full-fledged blink, not even close, but her eyelids opened a little, they opened and tears escaped. And it feels like she just won the US Open or an Olympic gold medal or leapt a tall building in a single bound.