This is the sixth part in a series, so if you have not already done so, you might want to read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V before continuing.
“I give up,” Charles said as he collapsed into a chair in Frank’s office. Frank was sitting in his office chair with his back to Charles, but Charles kept talking anyway, “I couldn’t find anything in either office. Now what?”
“You’re the one who had this harebrained scheme in the first place.”
Charles smiled. “So now my scheme is harebrained, is it?”
Frank turned to face Charles and there was a glassy quality to his eyes that Charles had never seen before. “I’m just saying that you’re the one who wanted to investigate him in the first place. I always said from the beginning that he had been investigated already and found innocent of any wrongdoing.”
“No, you asked what we could find that they hadn’t already found,” Charles corrected him.
Frank waved a hand in the air. “Tomayto, tomahto. If everyone else has already investigated him without finding a shred of evidence, doesn’t that tell you something?”
“That tells me he’s very good at covering his tracks, as I’ve already mentioned. What’s going on here?”
Frank shrugged. “Just two friends having a conversation.”
“A conversation we’ve already had, but different,” said Charles. “Why are you suddenly taking his side?”
“Who says I’m taking his side?”
“Who says you’re not?”
“Look. All I’m saying is that maybe we haven’t given him a fair shot.”
“Sexual assault, pedophilia, insulting veterans, probably tax fraud. The list goes on. He’s had plenty of chances, but all he’s done is prove how despicable he is. Remember? Does any of that ring a bell for you?”
“The only thing I remember is you insisting we needed to investigate an innocent man after I had already told you he was innocent.”
Charles was very still for a moment as he processed what was happening. “There’s nothing wrong with being thorough, is there?” he said finally. “If we conduct our own, internal, investigation, who could possibly argue with that?”
Frank grinned and Charles thought he had never seen anything more unsettling. “What an excellent idea. I’ll tell him you thought of it.”
Charles felt his stomach plummet through the floor beneath his feet. “Him as in—”
“Of course. He should know of your loyalty. Not to mention your ingenuity.”
“Right,” Charles said after another long moment. “Right, well, I’m just going to go back to my office and work on that … ingenuity. You’ll know where to find me.”
“Always. I know what a hard worker you are.”
Charles got back to his office as quickly as his feet would take him without running outright.
When he got there, he paced back and forth across his office a few times wondering what the hell he was going to do. Frank had been his one confidant, the one person left in the party he had thought he could really talk to. Without him, where did that leave Charles? As he paced and considered and paced some more his eyes landed on the bottle of whisky Matthew had given him. It was barely noon, but Charles figured if any situation called for day drinking, this was it. So he drank straight from the bottle, despite having recently warned Frank against doing just that. Then he sat down to make some phone calls for his next press release.
To be continued…