Jess Walter - Land Of The Blind

Jack has finished in the barn and he walks through the gate and sheepishly toward the house. He is older than Caroline first believed, maybe thirty. He is skinny and walks with a limp, and his hair hangs long and greasy in the back. Caroline and Susan both watch him walk up to the house.

"Check's on the table," Susan says to Jack. "I'm sorry-" Again, she doesn't finish.

Jack nods and limps past them. From behind, Caroline can see that his knee seems to bend both forward and sideways and it's not hard to imagine a horse has fallen on that leg. When he goes around the front of the house, Susan stands and watches through the back of the house, her hands on her teardrop hips. Caroline hears the front door open as Susan moves along the house and watches through the back window, maybe to make sure he doesn't steal anything. The front door closes, and when Jack's truck starts, with a choke and a shudder, Susan walks back and resumes her story.

"The night before the election, we finally had it out. We yelled and screamed about all the things we'd done to each other. We each blamed the other for every problem either of us ever had. Grudges from high school. My divorces. His general unhappiness and lost ambition." Susan stares off past the barn. "I was crying; he told me that he'd never loved me. And finally I said, 'Clark, if I'm such a horrible person, if you never loved me, then why did you marry me in the first place?' Do you know what he said?"

Caroline shakes her head slightly.

"He said that he needed a wife, that people wouldn't vote for a bachelor. He said that even in high school, he thought I looked like a politician's wife." She shrugs and meets Caroline's eyes. "So you want to know if I fucked someone else? Yeah. I fucked someone else."

"Who?"

Susan flinches. "It doesn't matter."

"It may be important."

"It's not." She measures Caroline again. "Clark knows I had an affair, but he doesn't know who. I don't want him to know. It doesn't matter now."

"Look," Caroline says. "I'm going to be straight with you, Ms. Diehl. But I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything to anyone about this. We think Clark might've hurt someone. Maybe even killed someone."

"Clark?" She shakes her head. "No. No way." Then she narrows her eyes and stares at Caroline but doesn't really see her, as if thinking about it.

"So let's say he found out who you were with." Caroline lets it hang in the air. "I'm looking for anyone he might have had a grudge with."

"The only person I ever knew him to hold a grudge against was Tommy Kane."

Caroline writes the name down. "Who's he?"

"Guy from high school. I don't even know what it was about. One day they were best friends; next day they hated each other."

"So what about the man you-" She can't find the word. "Did Clark know him?"

"Yeah. He knew him." She gives it some thought. "Look, I really don't want him dragged into…"

"Hey, if it turns out the guy's alive, I won't tell Clark anything."

Susan stares off toward the barn for a long minute and Caroline stares patiently at her, waiting her out. "Ms. Diehl?"

"I don't… Richard Stanton," she says finally. "His name is Richard Stanton."

Caroline writes the name down. "He lives here?"

She shakes her head. "Seattle."

"Have you talked to him recently?"

"It's been more than a year."

"Phone number?"

"No idea." And she offers no more information, just stares at the ground.

"Anyone else you can think of that Clark might want to hurt?" Caroline stands to leave and Susan stands with her, frowning.

She shakes her head. "Why do you think he hurt someone?"

"It's just… a tip," Caroline lies. "There's probably nothing to it."

Just then something occurs to Susan. "You thought it was me." This strikes her as funny and then, apparently, sad. She reaches for the door and opens it, then leans against it and looks at Caroline. "Clark didn't do whatever it is you're investigating."

"How do you know that?" Caroline asks.

She looks at the floor and a trace of shame fills her eyes. "Because if Clark was capable of it – after what I did to him two years ago – he would've killed me."

He sleeps peacefully, slumped over the table in the interview room, his face pressed against the stacked legal pads. Caroline watches Clark Mason through the slim window of the door, wondering if she could pull the pads out without waking him. She can't imagine what could be on all those pieces of paper.

Evan's fax from the newspaper is on the machine. The cover page reiterates that he has better things to do on a Saturday than dig through old files, and that not only does this make them even for the favor she did him, but she is now in his debt. She throws the cover page away and flips through the first pages – which consist of filings with the state and federal election commissions. It includes a list of donations from people and companies, everything from the teachers union to a downtown restaurant to long lists of individual donors. She circles a few, but nothing clicks, although one couple – Michael and Dana Langford – is listed as having donated twenty thousand twice. She writes down their names. Evan has noted on the filings that Clark wouldn't have been required to file records of his own money spent on the campaign.

Also in the fax are news stories from the paper, beginning with the story when Tony Mason launched his candidacy ("A 34-year-old political novice has stepped to the front of a weak field of Democrats trying is a profile and Caroline skims it, sees that Mason grew up in the Valley, that he went to college in Seattle, got his law degree there, and (after a few years company, then landed at a big Seattle law firm, writing contracts and representing high-tech companies. He made a good deal of money. He never left his Spokane roots too far behind, though, and according to the story, he serves on the board of a Spokane computer company called Empire Games.

Clark's teachers expressed no doubt he would one day run for office. "I'm surprised it's taken Tony this long," his old chemistry teacher is quoted as having said. In the picture that accompanies the story, Clark has shorter hair and no eye patch. He must be wearing a glass eye. He is staring straight ahead – lizardlike, as Evan remembered. Susan, much more relaxed in front of the camera, is hanging on Clark's arm. They are in the living room of a big house. Caroline is surprised by the detachment in the story – it offers barely more than the list of contributors – and both the article and the picture seem to her a kind of flat data, devoid of insight. There is a quality to the newspaper stories that intimates that "Tony" Mason is of a certain type – the young, idealistic politician, born to run for something – but this seems overly simplistic, leaves her with no better picture of who he is. His only issue seems to be "getting the technology train to stop in Spokane." She notices that every person who talks about him calls him Tony, and she imagines Clark prepping his friends and acquaintances, instructing them on what to say when the reporters call.

There are small stories about the Democratic primary and about campaign appearances. One story examines "Tony Mason's surprising challenge" of Nethercutt, and reports that his constant hammering of the "technology gap" between Spokane and Seattle has helped him gain twelve points in the polls. Yet he's still ten behind. Even so, Caroline can imagine the momentum he must've felt, and can imagine Clark stepping up to spend more of his money, desperate to get closer.

Then, two weeks before the election, comes another big story, headlined ADS TAINT MASON AS OUTSIDER. The story details an advertising campaign "charging that Tony Mason's strings are being pulled by party insiders from the west side of the state." The story reports that Seattle is about 60 percent Democrat while Spokane is about 60 percent Republican, and quotes television ads in which a deep-voiced announcer reads, "Until a year ago, Clark Mason was a rich Seattle attorney. Do we really want a rich, liberal west-side lawyer representing eastern Washington in Congress? Do we trust Seattle to take care of Spokane?" Apparently the ads never mentioned George Nethercutt, and the Nethercutt campaign denied any involvement. The story lists the sponsors of the ad as a political action committee called "the Fair Election Fund," which came into existence only a few weeks before the ads ran and apparently never cared about the fairness of any other election. In papers filed with the state, the Fair Election Fund is listed as having only two officers. Neither was available to be quoted, and neither had anything to do with the Nethercutt campaign. The ads cost $120,000.