“But Mr. Boyer…”
She was off-balance, and I pushed her the rest of the way. “You should watch Channel Six to get filled in on the details. And I’ll give you access to them, too, if you don’t antagonize me.”
I gave her three seconds. “I don’t want to antagonize you, Mr. Boyer. Could you tell me what will be happening downtown?”
“When that truck is away from here and parked in front of the governor’s mansion, you can call me back.”
“We have more than one truck.”
“You’ll need them all in town,” I said. “Good-bye.”
The men in blue were imposing law and order on the front yard. The truck backed out of the driveway and pulled up to the curb, and its occupants stayed carefully in the road and off private property. One officer came to the door, and I thanked him and sent him back to his post. Then the truck itself drove away.
“What is happening?” Katie said as we sat down for our family meeting.
“A lot of stuff,” I said. “I’m firing the governor today.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m getting rid of him.”
“But… I thought…” Eric said. “I don’t think he works for you.”
“You might as well hear it on the news,” I said. “They’ll probably explain it better.” The curtains were still drawn in the front room, and I opened them. “It has to do with the police thinking that Melvin was murdered.”
“Wasn’t he?” Katie said.
“Now they think Angela was, too.”
“I thought she… Didn’t she do it herself?” Eric said.
“What about her note?” Katie asked.
“On the news tonight, they’ll say it was forged.”
They were approaching overload. Rosita popped in.
“Mr. Jason, you said I should tell you if Miss Glenda Sweeney calls.”
“Thank you. I’ll take it in here,” I said. My audience would benefit from listening in. “And, Rosita-could you bring us some snacks?” I picked up the phone. “This is Jason Boyer.”
“Mr. Boyer. I have a truck at the governor’s mansion. Now, could you tell me what will be happening?”
“This is off the record?”
She paused. “I’d rather it was on the record.”
“All right,” I said. “Then this is what I’ll tell you. It’s been one month since Melvin Boyer died and I took over his businesses. I’ve looked into his dealings with the state government, and I’ve decided to go public with what I’ve found.”
“And what have you found?”
“I won’t say anything else on the record.”
“Mr. Boyer.” Her tone said she knew what I’d found. “You aren’t really blowing the whistle, are you? I don’t believe it. You’d be committing suicide.”
No, murder. And the victim was already dead. “It doesn’t matter to me what you believe. And I don’t know what Governor Bright believes, either. But I think you should be ready to ask him tonight, after Channel Six does its report, and even more after the newspaper comes out tomorrow.”
“Mr. Boyer, what about the report that you interfered with the investigation into your father’s murder?”
“I only urged the governor’s office to not interfere with it.”
“May I schedule an interview?”
“No. I’ll schedule it.”
“Soon?”
“That depends on how well you cover the whole story. I might also talk with some people higher up in your organization first.”
“I understand.” Which meant she knew how far the field was tilted.
“I’ll look forward to talking to you later.”
I set the phone down and looked back to my listeners.
“I don’t get it,” Eric said, finally.
It wasn’t fair to him, either of them, to do it this way. Katie had had some warning, and Eric maybe had a clue, but neither of them were ready for what they were about to see.
And the clock was about to strike six.
We watched Channel Six, with Channel Five up in the corner of the screen. Six led with the story and Five gave it the “coming up later in the show” treatment. They wanted to hear Six’s report first.
We settled comfortably into our chairs, Rosita’s little appetizer snack close by, as the war began.
The opening salvo was massive. The talking head stared us straight in the eye and spoke his words of destruction.
“Good evening, I’m Bill Sandoff. Today we begin with a report on corruption in state government that could reach our highest elected officials, and involves some of the biggest names in the construction industry. Channel Six has obtained key information from knowledgeable sources that details a longstanding system of bribes and kickbacks that has cost the taxpayers millions of dollars and lined the pockets of many senior members of Governor Harry Bright’s administration.
“First, Jill Abernathy reports on the businesses involved, and the man behind the system, the late Melvin Boyer. Before we begin, we have to disclose that the Boyer family is a major stockholder in First Media, the owner of this station. Jill?”
Step by step, they laid it out. Melvin’s death and the cleaning of the corporate house by his son Jason (unavailable for comment on this day). The outline of the bid fixing schemes and a list of the larger state projects and the profits reaped from them. Calls late in the day to the specific Boyer businesses to speak with the named executives, and the reply that those individuals were no longer employed.
Then back to the deaths of Melvin and then Angela-the brief details and the bombshell information that the deaths were being investigated as murders.
There were pictures and video, location shots, even a university expert on state politics. The big guns were leveled at the governor’s mansion, and every shot was blasting another gaping hole.
“Governor Bright’s press secretary has only promised that the governor will make a statement later this evening. Channel Six will bring it to you live,” Bill promised us.
“And finally,” he said in his And finally voice, “even as the governor and his administration are caught in the center of this unfolding scandal, what about the man who opened this Pandora’s box?”
And there I was. It was the same three-year-old wedding shot Channel Five had used a month ago. “Jason Boyer, who inherited his father’s position as the wealthiest and most powerful industrialist in the state, appears to be making a bold move to transform that position.”
And that was it. Bill poured one more bucket of words all over us and he was done. Seventeen minutes of talking, and it was done. The governor was done, Melvin was done-who knows what else. I couldn’t tell how I felt. Well done, maybe.
Channel Five’s report began five seconds after the other ended. It was a very flat version of the murders, mostly the evidence of the brake line and forged suicide note. The victims were portrayed as community pillars, and the perpetrator as obviously an insider who stood to gain from their deaths. Only at the end was there just a brief sentence about some unfounded allegations concerning Melvin’s business dealings. It would have been interesting to see the original version.
We changed venue and sat down to our dinner of salmon quiche. It was quiet at first. Eric was the first to word a question.
“Did you know all of that?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I gave them most of it. They were doing what I told them to do.”
“They said you just found out what he was doing when you looked through his papers.”
“The details. But I’ve always known.”
“I didn’t know.”
What a day he was having-gaining a mother and losing a father. “Fred Spellman was in on it for years. He helped Melvin put it all together.”
“Uncle Fred, huh.”
“‘Uncle Fred’ is about as real as Santa Claus. And Stan Morton, who runs the newspaper and Channel Six, has always known. Senator Forrester got elected in a deal with Melvin. Basically everyone in state government has either known what Melvin was doing, or was even on his payroll.”
Eric was still struggling. “Why didn’t they do anything about it?”
“Why should they? They were all making a lot of money from his deals.”