The Dirty Secret (2 page)

Dave grinned. “Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.”

CHAPTER 3

ST. MARYS, PLEASANTS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 8:45 A.M.

An expansive collection of brownies, cookies, cupcakes and donuts sat arrayed upon a folding table in the back of the room. Examining the caloric cornucopia, Sarika Gudivada pursed her full lips and briefly contemplated declining the temptation to start her day off with a torrent of sugar.

She quickly dismissed that thought, hoisting a German chocolate brownie, two white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, and a big white frosted cupcake onto a Styrofoam plate. Clutching a tall mocha latte from the local coffeehouse in one hand, she balanced her decadent breakfast in the other and returned to her seat; silently promising to make up for her weakness by running a few extra miles in the days ahead.

“Are you sure you don’t want a couple of donuts, too, Rikki?”

Sarika heard her nickname at the precise moment she bit into a cookie. The unexpected jibe caused her to bite down harder than intended. A few wayward crumbs slid past her lips and onto the front of her black suit jacket. Looking to her left, she saw State Senator Jack McCallen casting his trademark shit-eating grin her way.

Sighing softly, Rikki brushed the cookie debris from her chest with the side of her right hand. “Why do you ask, Jack?” She drew her long black hair behind her right ear as she spoke. Her light green eyes sparkled mischievously, starkly contrasted against her smooth, mocha-hued face. “Are you calling me fat or something?”

McCallen wagged his finger at her. “You know I’m too smart to call my own lawyer fat. I’m sure I’d pay for that one way or another.”

Rikki laughed aloud. It was a contagious laughter that turned heads her direction and brought smiles to the faces of three older women clustered around the cookie table. “You’re a smart man, Mr. Senator!” Rikki moved her plate from the folding metal chair to her left and placed it in her lap. McCallen took the cue and sat down beside her. “So how’ve you been?” she asked.

“Sleeping better now that the election is over. How about you? Was your first time on the ballot as bad as you thought it’d be?”

Rikki paused to finish a bite of her cookie. “Piece of cake. My opponent wasn’t nearly as popular as yours.”

“Everyone in this county knew the guy you ran against was a no good piece of crap,” Jack interjected. “Everybody knows he knocked that little high school girl up, regardless of what he says. I, on the other hand, had the pleasure to run against a retired middle school principal with a rap sheet cleaner than Mother Theresa’s. She scared the hell out of me!”

Rikki grinned broadly, her magenta lips parting to reveal perfect white teeth. “Better you than me, Jack. That’s why I ran for prosecutor:
Easier pickings
.”

McCallen sat silent for a moment, his face the picture of envy. “You chose a good race. Only lawyers can run for prosecutor and it’s not like little ol’ Pleasants County is crawling with them. Best of all, it’s a part-time position, so you can still run your practice on the side and make a little money keeping people like me outta trouble in civil cases. Sounds like a good gig to me.”

“Keeping you out of trouble, Jack, is a
full-time
job,” Rikki said dryly. “If I have to keep handling your stuff, I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to be prosecutor.”

McCallen squinted his left eye and nodded slightly, apparently conceding the point. “Speaking of which, I need to talk to you soon about that Schoolcraft lease cancellation suit. I about died when I saw all the stuff their evil lawyers sent you last week.”

“They’re not evil, Jack. They’re just doing their job.”

“Easy for you to say,” he grumbled. “They’re not trying to destroy your business. I say they’re evil, greedy, blood-sucking assholes.”

“Of course you’d say that. You’re a Republican. You have a congenital hatred of lawyers who sue businesses even when they deserve to be sued.”

“And you’re a bleedin’-heart Democrat who just managed to get elected prosecutor because the only lawyer we could put up against you was a bigger waste of oxygen than the bottom-dwellers who’re suing me.”

Rikki reached over and playfully patted his hand. “Maybe. But I’m also the best oil and gas lawyer in the state, and that’s why you put up with my granola-crunching politics.”

Jack rocked his chair back on its hind legs and belly-laughed. “Ah, hell, Rikki … Granola-cruncher or not, I’d still vote for you. As long as you weren’t running against me, that is.”

The county commission’s hearing room was about twenty feet wide by thirty feet long. A large, well-worn oak desk sat atop the twelve-inch-high platform from which the commission would conduct its post-election canvass. An old cloth American flag bearing oversized white stars was suspended from the ceiling behind the middle of the desk.

The room’s décor was much like that found in any other rural courthouse in America: Hanging prominently on one wall was an oversized map of the county with boundaries depicted by broad black lines while thinner red and blue lines identified the locations where engineers imagined new water and sewage lines would be laid. Large aerial photographs taken in the 1970s hung elsewhere around the room, depicting both long-gone businesses as well as empty fields where new subdivisions now stood. A litany of framed certificates from local organizations like tee-ball teams and the March of Dimes also lined the walls, tokens of esteem to the commission from the grateful recipients of its largesse.

Hanging on the back wall above the table of brownies and cookies was a large color photograph of the three commissioners and other local honchos clad in yellow construction helmets. They were plunging shiny ceremonial shovel-heads into a large chunk of dirt along the Ohio River where a Japanese company was building a new factory. Rikki snarkily decided the picture should be entitled
Jobs Being Created by Politicians and Alchemy.

A pen-and-ink drawing of the county’s Depression Era courthouse, accurately depicted in its fortress-like position atop a hill overlooking the rest of St. Marys, hung next to the politicians’ large, self-aggrandizing picture. It looked both outsized and out-of-kilter by comparison.
I may be a politician now
, Rikki noted silently.
But I will
never
stoop so low as to wander out into a field full of mud with a yellow plastic helmet on my noggin just to score a few votes.

Rikki realized her pediatrician father would roll over in his grave if he knew his only daughter had spent the past two months trudging up every holler in the county, knocking on doors in search of votes. Her decision to become an attorney was one he had eventually stomached. But a
politician?
Rikki snorted, knowing all too well what the man locals had called “Doctor G” would have thought about
that
career trajectory.

Pleasants County had a reputation as a relatively open-minded place where people voted for individual candidates based on their perceived merits regardless of party affiliation. Thus, the courthouse was populated by office holders from both parties, and it was largely (although not entirely) devoid of the political posturing and backbiting that was common elsewhere.

Staring toward the open door at the rear of the room, Jack flipped Rikki’s arm with the back of his hand. “Speaking of rock-ribbed Republicans,” he announced dramatically. “Here comes the sheriff.”

A barrel-chested man about six feet three stood in the doorway with a broad-brimmed deputy’s hat atop his buzz-cropped head. Clad in a button-up gray shirt with black epaulettes, he had a silver badge clipped to his left chest pocket. A small paunch crested the waistband of his black Sansabelt trousers as he crossed the room toward Rikki and McCallen. “Mornin’, Senator,” he said. Then he nodded curtly her way. “Mornin’ to you, too, Rikki.”

“How’s everything goin’ today, Sheriff?” Jack inquired.

Doug Vaughn shrugged. “We busted a meth lab up on the Pike last night. City boys had a DUI down by the Wendy’s. That’s about it.”

“Pretty quiet night then, huh?” Rikki asked rhetorically.

“Yup,” the sheriff replied. Then an awkward silence developed.

No wonder they call him “Silent Doug,”
Rikki thought. She had initially suspected that Vaughn’s quiet demeanor would be an impediment on the campaign trail. But his reputation for diligence and integrity had helped him win re-election by the widest margin on the ballot.

“So how long do you think we’ll be here?” Rikki asked, hoping the question would breathe some life back into the conversation.

“Coupla hours at most,” Jack answered. “There’s only 18 challenged ballots, so there’s not a whole lot of fighting for the lawyers to do here.” He motioned with his head toward the front of the room, where two men were sitting at separate tables facing the commission’s platform. Apparently oblivious to the discussion around them, their faces were buried in thick green books. From the looks of their virtually identical black pinstriped suits, Rikki surmised they must have gone shopping together at Peckerheads R Us.

“Good,” Silent Doug said. “I need to get the paperwork done on that meth lab anyway.”

Rikki stared at the sheriff and struggled to remember which one of his eyes was the “good” one. For the life of her, she could never remember whether it was the right eye or the left that had been replaced with a glass orb after some hideous incident in Vietnam. She had heard a variety of stories over the years about what supposedly cost Silent Doug his eye, but she had no idea if any of them were true and her sense of decorum dictated she not ask him about it directly. After a few moments of intense scrutiny, Rikki detected the tell-tale inch-long scar beneath the sheriff’s left eye. Thereafter she directed all of her attention toward his right eye, feverishly trying to devise a mnemonic to burn that detail into her brain for future reference.

“All right, folks,” a raspy female voice called from the front of the room. Rikki turned and saw Alice Snyder, the sole Republican on the county commission, taking her seat on the platform as her two Democrat counterparts followed suit. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Rikki took a bite of her brownie and hoped “the show” would be over soon.

CHAPTER 4

CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 12:45 P.M.

Luke Vincent could not imagine what Tabatha must have looked like at twenty, because staring at her now – as she approached
forty
– she was simply stunning. Standing five-ten in her bare feet, her long legs were smooth and carved, leading up to the spectacular ass that first caught his eye the previous year at a Christmas party. Her stomach was flat as a washboard, and although her breasts filled D-cups, they simultaneously felt soft
and
firm, seeming to defy gravity as she rode herself to climax again and again.

After Tabatha satisfied herself, she slid off the bed and knelt in the floor. Governor Vincent recognized the cue and stood before her, weaving his fingers into her long, silky red hair. Vincent gently guided her as she took him in her mouth. The long, slender fingers of her left hand gingerly cupped his balls while her full lips gracefully slid up and down him, working their magic.

Vincent gripped her hair tighter, pulling her toward him with increasing force. Tabatha moaned with excitement and stared up at the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee. Her blue eyes were ferocious and determined, and she worked him like an engine piston.

After rolling around with Tabatha for a half-hour, West Virginia’s fifty-three-year-old governor could take no more. His breaths grew shorter as the expectation rose. Sensing the moment of truth was nigh, her pace quickened and her muffled moaning grew more urgent. At last, Vincent let loose and cried out in ecstasy. His legs felt jelly-like, and his eyelids fluttered spastically, mimicking the synapses firing in his brain.

At his release, Tabatha emitted one last moan then began chuckling softly. Although Vincent had seen this reaction before, it still unnerved him. As she consumed the last drops of his discharge, staccato bursts of laughter somehow escaped her full mouth and Vincent silently scolded himself again for his carnal weakness.
I’ve got to stop doing this! She’s a demon in bed, but crazier than a rat in a coffee can!

Finally spent, the governor closed his eyes and shook his head from side-to-side as if clearing out cobwebs. “Whew!” he exhaled, leaning away from Tabatha as if to detach from her mouth. His progress abruptly halted when he felt her fingernails digging into his butt cheek.

Vincent stared down and saw displeasure burning in her blue eyes as she unwrapped her lips from him. Squeezing out the last of his essence with her right hand, she dabbed it off with a fingertip and inserted it between her pouted lips. “I wasn’t finished,” she declared. Her voice was sonorous, sensuous and gravely serious.

“Sorry. I must have forgotten how thorough you are.”

Tabatha stood and casually brushed her hair from her face. Standing naked, her statuesque figure glistened with sweat. She ran her palms across the governor’s chest. “Of course you have. You haven’t seen me in almost three months.”

Vincent sighed.
I knew this was going to happen.
“The press has been all over me since the convention. There’s no way I could risk seeing you.”

Softly illuminated by a brass lamp sitting beside the bed, Tabatha’s face turned chilly. “The press can’t do anything that even compares to what
I
could do to you, Governor.”

Doused by an icy blast of reality, Vincent’s mind reeled. The campaign’s rigorous pace had pushed the power Tabatha wielded to the periphery of his awareness. Now it was staring him square in the face once more, and he hated it more than ever.

The governor tried to assume a conciliatory tone. “I know. But think about what that would do to my wife and kids.”