John Lescroart - Nothing But The Truth

Valens laid a protective hand on his knee. The message bore repeating. ‘She and Ron were happy, Damon. The marriage was a good one. He had no reason to kill her. You have to remember that.’

Kerry turned his face to the tinted windows. Valens continued. ‘If Ron and Bree were unhappy, she never mentioned it to you, OK? Right?’

For an answer, Kerry blew out a long breath. ‘Look,’ Valens pressed on, ‘let’s concentrate on the good news from this front. Look what’s happening on the talk radio shows.’

Kerry snorted. ‘I hate those people.’

‘I know. I agree with you. But they don’t hate you. And Bree in the news is good for you.’

Throughout the campaign, the talk radio campaign against MTBE had been one of his strongest weapons. Never mind that it was funded by Baxter Thorne’s client, SKO, or that several callers linked themselves to groups that had targeted oil refineries and corporate offices with bombings and other vandalisms. Valens didn’t mind terrorists, so long as they were his terrorists.

Valens patted Kerry on the leg. ‘But like these folks or not, Damon, they are doing you a lot of good right now. They’re getting your message out.’

‘My message isn’t just about gasoline additives, Al. It’s about the public trust, public safety.’

Valens bit back his reply. There were worse things than a sincere candidate, he supposed. He tried to recall the great line – was it George Burns? – ‘The politician’s best friend is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it licked.’ Instead, he said, ‘Yes, of course. I agree with you. Public safety, public trust. But the public has a handle on MTBE. They’re nervous around it…’

‘They should be.’

‘Granted. But my point is that these people are keeping the issue hot, and it’s your issue. You’re against this bad stuff.’

‘Damn straight.’

‘And the oil companies are making it.’

‘To the tune of a three-billion-dollar-a-year industry, Al. When only five years ago-’

‘Agreed, agreed.’ Valens had to stop him or he’d go into his whole speech right there in the limo…

… about how the oil companies had gotten together and decided that hey, maybe it was dirty -burning gasoline that was causing air pollution after all. They should do a study and if that radical theory turned out to be true, they should – out of the goodness of their corporate hearts – do something about it.

And sure enough, that’s what the study – draft written by Bree Beaumont, Ph.D. – had found. Gasoline wasn’t burning cleanly enough. It needed an ‘additive’ to burn more completely away the hydrocarbons that contributed to smog. The California legislature and the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency fell all over themselves passing laws that mandated the use of this magical additive, if a good one could only be found.

Valens had to admit Kerry was good at this next part. He’d heard it from dozens of podiums up and down the state and it always played beautifully, the great American public hating rich corporations as it did.

‘So guess what these noble oil companies did? They spent lots and lots of their own money developing the very additive that their own gasoline needed to become clean and efficient – our old friend MTBE.’ Here, Valens was pleased to note, there was often if not always a chorus of well-orchestrated ‘boos.’

After which Kerry would continue: ‘And then, as it turned out – just a coincidence, my friends, I assure you – it turned out that the oil companies found that their production of MTBE, made of a by-product of gasoline refining that they had earlier been throwing away – well, would you look at that? Here’s a surprise! MTBE started to bring in a yearly income of three billion dollars!’

More boos.

‘Oh, and darn, they forgot to tell us one last little detail.’ A moment of suspense. ‘Wouldn’t you just know it? The dang stuff causes cancer and respiratory degeneration. Actually, the oil companies didn’t really forget to tell us that. What they did was tell us the opposite – that MTBE was nearly medicinal in its impact on human health. The air so much cleaner we’d have a new Eden. Why, read the initial reports’ – again, drafts by Bree – ’and you’d almost come away believing it’s so safe you could drink the stuff.

‘Except for one other problem.’ And here Kerry would turn his most serious. ‘Except it makes water taste like turpentine. It leaks out of holding tanks and jet ski engines and everywhere else liquids leak out of. And once it gets into the groundwater, the wells and waterways of our great state, it never comes out. Never. Ever. It doesn’t evaporate. It doesn’t break down chemically. Ask the city of Santa Monica, which had to shut down five of its wells – that’s half of its water supply – because of MTBE contamination from local corner gas stations.

‘And even now, ladies and gentleman, even today as I’m talking to you, this stuff is added to every gallon of gasoline sold in California at a rate of up to fifteen per cent per gallon. That’s fourteen point two million gallons of MTBE every single day.’

This statistic usually stunned the crowd into silence.

The candidate would wait as long as it he could, then hang his head a moment. His timing was excellent. He’d look up, sometimes even able to summon a tear. ‘It can’t go on. For our children and our future, it’s got to be stopped. My name is Damon Kerry and I’m here to stop it.’

‘So, bottom-line, we can’t comment about Ron and Bree. We have to stick to the issues. We’ve been through this all before, Damon. It’s only a couple more days.’

‘I know, but…’

But Valens knew there couldn’t be any ‘buts.’ ‘Listen,’ he said with intensity. ‘Every day in every major city in this state, the callers to these shows are spreading the word that the oil companies killed Bree to punish her for betraying them – changing her mind and campaigning against MTBE because she changed camps and came over to your side.’ Valens stopped any reply, a hand up. ‘Look, Damon, here’s what I’m saying. You know it as well as I do – people love conspiracies, they love to hate these oil guys. This helps you.’

‘But I’m not accusing the oil companies of-’

‘And that what’s makes it so brilliant!’ Valens knew that his candidate could see this clearly, so why did he have to keep explaining it? ‘Damon, you’re Mr Clean. But your worthy opponent, who favors pumping MTBE until more research can be done? Guess what? He looks like he’s with the oil interests-’

‘Which he is.’

Lord! Valens couldn’t get over Kerry’s fascination with the literal truth. ‘Yes, of course he is, but what matters for you is that we couldn’t buy the radio time they’re giving us. If we get them thinking about Ron Beaumont as a villain, it all gets diluted.’

‘I don’t know, Al. I wish they would come up with some villain, some suspect. Somebody to take the heat off.’

‘Take the heat off who?’

‘Who do you think, Al? Me.’

‘What about you?’

‘And Bree.’

‘You had a professional relationship. What’s to talk?’

Kerry gave him a look. ‘This would be a bad time for somebody to find out, though, wouldn’t it? She’s back in the news, the story’s no longer dead, reporters start digging.’

‘And find nothing. Do you hear me? You have to relax. They find nothing.’

The limo had pulled to a stop. Kerry hated to keep his crowd waiting. He needed to get out and press the flesh, keep connected to his voters. He reached for the door handle. ‘All right, Al, I hear you. I hear you.’