The Watch on the Fencepost by Kay DiBianca

Author:Kay DiBianca
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CrossLink Publishing
Published: 2018-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

When Mike arrived back at his hotel, he found members of the press lounging in the hotel lobby, waiting for him, and he spent several minutes filling them in on Representative Hodges’s condition. When he got to his room, he ordered a sandwich from room service and sat on the side of the bed, lost in thought about the task that Hodges had asked him to help with.

Before he finished eating, Hodges called. “Mike, I need you to come back to the hospital right away. Something’s come up that you should be aware of. See if you can get in touch with Jeremy and Elizabeth. They need to be here too.”

“No problem. Be there in a few.”

Actually, it was a problem. Mike was exhausted, drained from the events of the past twenty-four hours. All he wanted to do was go to sleep and forget all the nonsense of the political world for a few hours. But Hodges wouldn’t ask him to come unless it was important. He called Elizabeth and told her to get to the hospital and to bring Jeremy with her.

When Mike entered the hospital room, Hodges was talking quietly with Police Commissioner Blake.

“Mike, thanks for coming back on such short notice. You remember Commissioner Blake.”

“Yes, of course,” Mike said as he shook hands with the commissioner. “We met at the news conference after the shooting.”

“Good to see you again, Mike,” Blake drawled, “although I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances.”

Within a couple of minutes, Elizabeth and Jeremy came in.

Jeremy was beaming. News of the shooting had turned the tide and given new life to the campaign. It seemed that everyone in the state had suddenly become supportive of Robert Hodges for governor. Big donors were tripping over themselves to get on board, and Jeremy was riding the wave.

Hodges told the team that Commissioner Blake had new information in the case. Jeremy’s eyes lit up. Mike could almost see him preparing another headline story for the evening news. Hodges gestured toward Blake. “Commissioner, please tell my staff what you’ve found.”

Blake took a roll of Life Savers out of his pocket and popped one in his mouth. “As Representative Hodges said, we’ve uncovered some new information in the case, and we wanted to report it to you first. There’ll be a press conference outside the hospital immediately after this meeting to present our findings to the public. We’d like for one of you to be the spokesperson for Representative Hodges at the news conference, if possible.”

Hodges spoke up. “Mike will represent me.”

“Fine.” Blake continued, “Now let me tell you our current theory. After a thorough investigation of the videos taken at the rally, we’ve concluded that the intended victim of the shooting may not have been Representative Hodges but could have been Dean Jefferson of the School of Engineering at the university.”

“What?” Jeremy sounded incredulous. “That’s ridiculous. Representative Hodges was the one who was shot.”

I guess this is going to destroy his whole narrative of Hodges as the intended assassination victim, thought Mike.

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