stared at her in confusion. Riley just stared at her.
Her hands tumbled over each other as she tried to explain. “Have you noticed that political parties pester you for contributions all the time now, not only for a month or two before an election? I remember bawling a kid out for calling me after election results had barely been tallied, but I’ve since stopped arguing. Parties fund-raise all year, every year. So these office holders or candidates or whatever are expected to raise money all the time, election or not, whether they need it or not.”
“Why?” Riley asked, but she had already continued.
“Established incumbents, especially ones from districts where the vast majority of the citizens are one party or the other, can raise money the most easily and need it the least. If you’re the Republican candidate in a district that’s eighty percent Republican, you’re going to win—once you get past the primary. You don’t need to campaign at all, pretty much. But they spend as much time passing the hat and hosting thousand-dollar-a-plate dinners and calling their friends and supporters as the guy who’s a newbie in a swing district. Ask me why.”
Jack felt sufficiently intrigued to turn away from the conference room. “Why?”
“Because no one turns down money,” Riley guessed.
“Exactly. Because they can and because they want to.” She gestured toward the board. “The more money you give back to the party, the more powerful you become, and the more you’re expected to give, and on and on in a circle. It’s pay to play to the nth degree.”
Riley asked, “What does the party do with it, other than use it for their campaigns?”
“That’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question, isn’t it, detective?” Lori asked, making Jack’s partner blush again. “They use it for paying the rent on this place, I’m sure, and paying their salaries, and buying air time and campaign literature for that newbie in the swing district who needs a boost. They recruit candidates when necessary. They throw big-ticket fund-raisers to drum up even more money. Beyond that, I would really like to know what they do with it. That’s a story I’ve been working on for a while, but if you thought the vigilante killer could make like a ghost, the party accountant could give him a lesson or two.”
“Is this legal?” Riley asked.
“Sure. There’s nothing wrong with shifting money around when you’re all in the same club. If you don’t want to do it, don’t be a member of the club.”
This presented Jack with a new theory about the money in Diane Cragin’s safe. Perhaps that had been funds she should have given to the party headquarters and hadn’t. Skimming from the top—something that had gotten people killed since money was invented, and probably before that. “What if someone wants to be a member but wants to hang on to their funds at the same time?”
“They can,” she said. “There’s nothing that says they have to give a certain amount back. They can keep every penny they raise if they want to.”
“But—”
“But you’d better not need the party’s help for anything, ever. If your opponent launches a smear campaign against you and you need some slick TV ads, don’t think the party’s going to give you the funds. If you’re, say, a judge and you want to run for state treasurer, don’t think you’re going to be the party’s candidate for that position. They’ll have already picked someone, and you can run as an Independent if you want to, good-bye and good luck. And if you want a seat on the Ways and Means Committee or Armed Services, forget it. You’ll be lucky to be a junior on the Joint Committee on Printing. How do you think senators and congressmen get assigned to a committee in the first place? The party’s steering committee portion those slots out as they see fit. If you get a plum spot on Foreign Affairs, you’ll be expected to produce more funds than your colleague with a seat on some low-profile thing like Education Workforce.”
“I see,” Jack said. “Hence the board.”
“The wall of shame.”
“Or extortion.”
Riley said, “It’s like we’re back in Stalin’s Soviet. The party is everything, controls everything, dictates everything, and if you’re not in a good position within the party, you’re nobody. Except that instead of one party, we have two.”
Jack glanced at his partner, figuring his mind had formed the same theory about the murder. But how to prove it? Someone, somewhere, must have kept a tally of how much Diane Cragin had raised and how much she had returned to the party and how much she should have returned to the party—unless Diane kept the only sums and that information rested inside her laptop or her phone. But maybe she had been too busy for that and those accounting duties fell to her girl Friday, the hardworking Kelly Henessey.
Lori said, “But back to the vigilante murders. How’s that going? Last time I talked to Rick Gardiner, he had spoken to the Phoenix PD but hadn’t gotten anywhere.”
Not getting anywhere could be described as Maggie’s ex-husband’s modus operandi, but that didn’t comfort Jack now. Officially the investigation of the murders that Jack had committed had been turned over to Jack—a good thing—but Rick had not given up on ferreting out Jack’s connection to them. A bad thing. Maggie had thought that telling him of their fictitious love affair would get Rick to avoid them both, but it had only given him more incentive to deconstruct Jack.
But it sounded as if Rick had at least stopped talking to Lori Russo. Perhaps he had finally figured out that the happily married woman would not be slipping him any benefits in return for a story.
Jack said, “No. Dead end.”
“What about the murders in Chicago and Atlanta?”
If he could feed her enough tidbits—fake tidbits, of course—it would keep her from digging on her own. Especially since they currently had a juicy political assassination to keep her busy. “I’m going back and starting from scratch on those. It’s difficult in Chicago because they have more murders than they know what to do with.”
Lori said, “I wish I could help, but we’ve been so busy with this election coming up.”
He made a sympathetic grunt. At least she hadn’t found the murders in Atlanta and Minneapolis. He needed to keep her away from Rick Gardiner. It would be nice if he could keep everyone away from Rick Gardiner.
“But I may be able to get to Phoenix early next month.”
No, no, no! “Really?”
“The paper is planning a big spread on the immigration crisis, and my editor wants to send someone to Yuma, visit the border, check out the Minutemen and plans for the wall and what all. I’m hoping to get the assignment—it’s practically unheard of for the paper to pay for travel these days—and if I do, I could take an extra day and go to Phoenix. It’s only three and a half hours away.”
He schooled his voice to sound casual, and thought he almost succeeded. “What will you do there?”
“Line up appointments with the officers who worked the cases I found. I know you said they weren’t connected, but it would still make an interesting sidebar to the story. Maybe it’s a national phenomenon. Lawlessness picks up in times of cultural stress, and Lord knows we’re stressed.”
His
