The Mormon Candidate - a Novel (7 page)

She watched.

“
What’s he saying?
” Ben paused the
slideshow
. “
At first t
he lips are closed. What letters do that?” He counted on his fingers. “B, F, M, P, V
, or W
.”

“
He could be
praying.”

Ben ran the photos quickly forward. “He only said one word before—”

“Oh, Jesus!” Keera turned away as the man in the photo twisted and slumped, never to move again. “I don’t want to see this!”

“Don’t you see people dying in the hospital?”

“It’s not the same!”

“
Look again. Here. He
’s saying
something
.” Ben played it slowly. “It’s a message. Or
a name. Could be that
he kn
ew
the guy on the Ducati
and was trying to name him
.
What do you think
?”

“His wife,” Keera said. “
I think he’s
saying the name of his wife, the person he loves most.”

“How do you know he’s married?”

“
You can tell when a guy is married.
He’s
groomed, well-dressed, clean. I mean, look at him. He’s like…
together.”

“I’m not married and I’m like…together
. A
m I not?”

“No.”
Keera
combed his h
ai
r with her hand, clearing his face, tacking it behind his ears. With the back of her hand she felt his
cheek. “
How long
since you
’
ve
shaved?”

“Okay. He’s married.” Ben flipped through the photos quickly. They were taken in quarter-second intervals, which
turned t
he rapid slideshow into a virtual video clip. “The guy knows he’s
dying
. T
he last thing he
can
say
should be an
important
message
.”

“You’re really clueless,” Keera said.
“I’ll bet you it’s the wife’s name.”

Ben ran
through
the photos back and forth. “His lips close twice, so the word has two of th
e letters
B, F, M, P, V
, or W
.
”

“Barbara,” Keera said. “Or…Mirabelle.”

“Pamela,” Ben said.

“
Could be
something more exotic:
Villanova
?
”

“That’s a university, not a girl’s name.”

“Wilhelmina?”

“
Come on,” Ben said. “Even if he’s married, the guy rides a Harley. He can’t be with a Wilhelmina. It doesn’t jive.
How about Barbie
?
”

“You wish.”
Keera thought for a moment. “Could also be two names, like Mary
-
Beth.”

Peering at the
Ca
non’s feed on the
TV screen, Ben was unconvinced. “
Look at his face.
I
can’t believe
he ma
d
e that kind of effort to stay alive another minute just to say someone’s name.”

“
Don’t you
believe in
true love
?
” Keera dropped a tea bag in a cup and filled it with hot water.
“Wouldn’t you call my
name
—”

“Wait a minute!”
Ben grabbed his iPhone and got on the Internet. “I can Google him.
Zachariah Hinckley Maryland
.” He
typed the search and
waited a minut
e. “I’ll be damn
ed
. Here they are,
in
Silver Springs
. Zachariah and Palmyra Hinckley.”

“See? Pal…my…ra.” Keera pointed at the man’s lips
in the slideshow
on the TV. “P, then M.”

“Maybe.”

Ben drove Keera’s
twelve-year-old
Mustang
while she used the vanity mirror to put the finishing touches on her makeup.
“Your mom called,” she said. “We had a nice chat.”

“Yeah? What about?”

“About you. What else?”

He downshifted and went faster.
“And?”

Keera
flipped back the
visor
and sat back, wrapping the winter coat tightly around herself. She grabbed the door handle as he
took a turn
without slowing down, tire
s
screeching
, and sped up on the straightaway
.
She tried to whistle a tune, not very successfully, and it deteriorated into laughter.

“You blinked first,” he said
, lifting his foot off the
accelerator
. “You’re dying to tell me.”

“Nothing to tell,”
Keera said innocently. “
G
irl talk.
You know.
”

“Come on, out with it!”

“She’s concerned about you
. T
hat’s all.”

“And you happen to agree with her.” Ben
took another turn and stopped in front of the club
. “Let’s see. First, he’s still riding that stupid motorcycle. Second, he’s still pursuing that foolish freelancer gig. Third, he’s still not—”

“—eating enough,” Keera ended the sentence. She leaned across toward him, threaded a hand under his jacket and shirt
and rubbed
his belly
while imitating his mother’s voice.
“He’s a skinny weed!
Make him eat!
”

“I’
ll
eat you any time.”
He took Keera’s fa
ce in his hands and kissed her. “Any time
.
”

“How about
tomorrow
night
?
”
S
he stepp
ed
out of the car. “At your mom
’s place
. She’s m
aking chicken soup with those go
lf balls.”

“
Matzo balls.
”

“Yes, those.” Keera
raised her coat collar. “Bye.”

He watched her trot to the door in her high heels and long legs.
Wisteria’s
Secret was a
n upscale version of an
unsavory
night
club
. It
s location,
on Wisteria Avenue,
gave it
its
name
, a clever play on
the famous lingerie catalogue
company
. Ben waved at the bouncer and
drove off
. At the end of the dark street, he
turned
the
corner
and sped up the road toward the circular neon sign of
Starbucks.

Chapter 5

The usual faces were there, pecking at their laptops while the
baristas
joked around
about something
. Ben didn’t have to
ask, and t
he cashier yelled, “
Skinny
c
h
a
i
l
atte
, hot,
for Ben,” and collected the money
while exchanging pleasantries
.

The table in the back was his favorite, providing a full view of the place while ensuring pri
vacy. Ben set aside Zachariah’s
iTouch
and
untied
the plastic bag
that held
the
debris
he had
collected at the accident site.

There were perhaps twenty items.
He
examined
each one and
passed
it from one pile to the other
. The bolts could have come from anything, but even if they
came from
the Harley, it meant nothing. A shard of hard plastic had most of a white star agains
t blue and red
. A metal brace with two little holes could have fallen off the engine. A hose
clamp, made of rubber, looked
as if
it had torn
away from
its position
. A zipper
tab
, bent badly,
had the
tiny letters
US
sta
mped into it. And
a
chrome
cap
from
a
gas tank
.
He set it aside, but then picked it up again a
nd held it up. The top part
was an
original Harley Davidson piece, but the bottom part
—the
threads
that
would screw into
the
fill-in hole in the gas
tank
—seemed
disproportionately large.

He took paper napkins, grabbled each
end
, and tried to detach the cap from the
threads
part. It took some wriggling, but the
y started to
turn in opposite direction
s
until the thread
s
section
separated from the chrome
cap, which had its own
original thread
s
stamped in
. It appeared that the original
cap
had been
made for a smaller
tank
opening
and was fitted with a larger threads
part to fit
a larger opening
.

He
set aside
the two pieces.

Taking a sip of
c
h
a
i, Ben turned on the
iTouch
. No password was required. He checked the e-mail folder. It was empty. Same with text
messages
.
Past sites visited on the Internet had a list of addresses, all of them for the
Washington Post
news website.
He clicked on one of the links and
an
article appeared.

Presidential Candidate
Joe
Morgan to Speak at Watergate Hotel
:

In an appearance jokingly dubbed ‘I’m not a crook
!
’ GOP presidential candidate Joe Morgan will deliver
a
speech
tonight at the Watergate Hotel
, where
burglars paid by the Nixon reelection campaign
once
broke into the
headquarters of the
Demo
cratic National Committee
.

Morgan is expected to sprinkle a few potent jokes meant to emphasize the stark differences between
the dirty politics of four decades ago and his own campaign
to
‘Restore
America’s Soul
.
’

The fundraiser
, at
$10,000
per attendee, comes
with
a seven-course meal
and
a video presentation of the candidate’s achievements as a single-term Maryland governor
and
a
successful
business
man
. A
Mormon bishop and
a rabbi
will
say
a
joint
prayer
in line of
the first-ever Mormon presidential candidate
’s declaration that he’ll
govern the country “on behalf of all faiths
.
”

With the elections
only weeks
away and his lead in the polls widening every day,
the campaign’s
aggressive fundraising
reflects
GOP
confidence
that victory is at hand
– provided
there’
s enough cash to continue dominating the airways with anti-incumbent commercials while making sure that nothing happens between now and
November
to disrupt Morgan’s
confident
march
to Pennsylvania Avenue
.