Shock Wave

Virgil checked the number of the letter that nominated Peck, against the secret numbered list, and found that Peck had nominated himself.
    Interesting.
    The desk officer came in and handed him more letters. He put them in the pile, and went back to sorting names.
    Time went by. He was fifteen minutes from finishing when he glanced at his watch and realized he didn’t have fifteen minutes: it was time to get back to LaRouche’s office.
    He went out past the front desk, and found he had sixteen more letters. “Hang onto these, will you?” he asked the desk officer. “I’ll be back in a couple hours to finish up.”
     
     
    WHEN HE GOT TO LAROUCHE’S, the office window was dark, and the door locked, but Good Thunder’s Camaro was parked outside. He knocked, and pushed a doorbell, and a minute later, a clerk-like woman came to the door and asked, “Are you Agent Flowers?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    She let him in, said, “I’m Coral Schmidt, I’m the reporter,” and he followed her down a hall past LaRouche’s office, to a conference room, where LaRouche and Good Thunder were chatting, while Shepard sat next to LaRouche, listening and toying with her purse. Schmidt sat down next to a black steno machine and, as Virgil took a chair, nodded to Good Thunder and said, “Anytime.”
    Good Thunder dictated some time and date stuff to the reporter, the identities and offices of those present, then she and LaRouche agreed that they would abide by the terms of an agreement reached earlier that day, with copies to everyone, etc. With the bureaucratic bullshit out of the way, they started.
    Good Thunder said to Shepard, “Mrs. Shepard, you’ve asserted that your husband, Patrick Shepard, a member of the Butternut Falls City Council, received a bribe of twenty-five thousand dollars to change his vote on a zoning application from PyeMart Corporation, in regard to a PyeMart store to be built on Highway 12 West in Butternut Falls. When did you become aware of the offer from PyeMart?”
    Shepard unrolled the story: the first contact with a PyeMart expediter named John Dunn, a series of discussions between Dunn and other members of the council. The discussions had the effect of softening up the council members, she said, and when an offer came to “help” Shepard with some credit card and income tax debt, it was not unexpected.
    The offer, she said, had not come directly from Dunn, but from Mayor Geraldine Gore, who had also delivered the money. Pat Shepard, she said, had come home and told her excitedly that their problems were over: they might even have enough left to buy a home theater system.
    “Did he buy one of those?” Good Thunder asked.
    Shepard bit her lip, looked away: “No. I have reason to believe that he’d begun a relationship with another woman, Carol Anne Moore, who works for the county clerk, and that he spent a good deal of money on her.”
    Virgil: “Was this a serious relationship? Was this a fling, or did you consider your marriage endangered or over?”
    “The marriage was over. I was just picking a time to leave,” she said. “I don’t know how serious the relationship was. Is. I don’t know if it’s still going on; I assume it is. Why would it make any difference?”
    Virgil asked, “I wonder if he would confide in Miz Moore.”
    She shook her head: “I don’t know.”
    Good Thunder: “In regards to your own personal life, I would suggest that you act with discretion. If it comes to a jury trial, it will be . . . less difficult.”
    “You mean, ‘Don’t fuck anyone new’?” Then, with a quick glance at the stenographer, “Oh my God, I’m sorry I said that, I just . . .”
    “A lot of stress,” Good Thunder said.
    “It’s completely understandable,” said LaRouche.
    Shepard said that her husband had laundered much of the money by giving it to his brother, who owned an auto-body shop in St. Cloud. The brother ran it through his bank, then returned it to Shepard as a “temporary employee.”
    “I don’t know if Bob knew where the money was coming from, but Pat told me it was no skin off Bob’s butt. The money came in, he paid it to Pat, deducted Pat’s wages as a temporary employee, and it all came out even, tax-wise.”
    After they’d wrung her out, Virgil said, “Mrs. Shepard . . . your husband will likely be looking at a jail sentence here. Do you think that if he were offered a deal, a reduction in the sentence, that he would be willing to implicate some of the