The Voting Machine

The Business of Democracy

Stevens excused himself from the table and left the restaurant abruptly. We waited and watched Annabelle. She only ate a few bites of her meal before asking for the check. We followed her down Sahara to her motel, where she parked and carried the files up to her room.

Annabelle came back out of her room ten minutes later and got back in the car.

"Where you think she's headed now?" Luke wondered.

"My guess would be she's headed over to UNLV."

"You think she'll find something they missed?"

"She found the files didn't she?"

"Should we keep trailing her?"

"No," I said. "I'd rather get into the room and take a look at those files."

Once Annabelle was gone, Luke entered to the empty front office and slipped behind the desk. He returned to the car with a room card.

"I'll go in," I said. "I know what to look for in the files."

"OK," Luke said, he handed me one of Brenda's pre-paid phone from the glove compartment. "I'll watch her location through the GPS and text you if she heads back here."

I felt like a creep in her empty room, stepping in between clothes and bras scattered on the floor alongside a pilates ball and yoga mats. The sink in the bathroom was cluttered with skin toner, hair coloring and bottles of anti-depressants. On the bed stand, there were several bouquets of flowers. It was very easy for Annabelle to attract men. They were usually lawyers or business owners who dealt with the foundation, good-looking, well-educated and successful. They were all much better catches than me by any objective standard. But Annabelle didn't trust them. They couldn't look into her past and understand what she'd been through. And so she kept them at a distance.

I was relieved to find there were no drugs in any of her old tell-tale hiding spots. No junk hidden by the sink or in balloons underneath the bed. I scanned the surfaces for anything unexpected. I finally noticed one of the square panels out of alignment on the ceiling. I stood on the bed and pried open the panel. I found two legal folders fastened to the wooden beam of the ceiling. The first folder was labelled with David's home address in his handwriting. There were maps of the Babylonian and Chinese language brochures of the Paiza Club. There were also color photographs of Temo Salinger and Sandy Turner, the two opposing Senate Candidates, meeting with J.P. Breton inside the casino.

The first folder also contained a stack of computer print-outs from a web site in Arabic, Chinese and Spanish. Small black-and-white photos displayed men in ski masks mixing chemicals and assembling electronic devices. The same word appeared again and again throughout the language versions of the text.

الريسين\

蓖麻毒素

Ricina

The second folder was marked with Zeke Legend's address in what I assumed to be his handwriting since it was very different than David's. There was an internal company report for Globaltech, a name I remembered from my meetings with the FBI right after the murders. Agent Stevens had explained to me that this privately-held company designed and manufactured voting machines for Nevada as well as a dozen other states and more than 30 foreign governments. The report predicted a booming market as more nations around the world started running elections.

A second section of the report marked "Confidential" described Globaltech's proprietary processes for engineering and manufacturing. The software was designed in India, the electronic components came from foundries in China. Then the final end product was assembled in Mexico and shipped over the northern border via a freight company with ties to Juan Ricardo Fernandez.

I turned through the documents page by page, photographing everything with my phone. I was about twenty pages into the process when I heard someone at the door. I grabbed the files and hid in the closet, expecting someone to come in. But nobody entered. I raised the legal folders into open panel and tied them to the wooden beam the way I found them. Then my phone buzzed with a text from Luke.

SHE'S COMING BACK. NEED TO GET OUT.

After setting the ceiling panel back in place, I left her apartment. When I shut the door from the outside, I saw something new on the door knob: a dangling statuette of Santa Muerte. Now I understood who had come to Annabelle's room while I was inside. A month earlier, the cartel boss Juan Ricardo left me the same present in my motel room. I called Luke on the phone.

"Something's wrong, Luke. The narcos are after Annabelle."

"The ones Stevens was talking about?"

"Yeah, I think it's the same guys who cornered you down in the sewer."

By the time I reached the parking lot it was too late. Annabelle sat her Prius next. She looked terrified. Juan Ricardo sat next to her in the passenger seat, the tip of his pistol creating a bulge in his jacket. He whispered something in her ear and she pulled out of the parking lot. A black Escalade followed after them. They drove in a straight line down Sahara, beyond the city limits, into Red Rocks country, where the land opened into orange stone hills and the city was a fading memory.