ELECTING TO MURDER (McRyan Mystery Series - Excerpt)

Chapter 3: "Virginia? Really?"

CHAPTER THREE

"Virginia? Really?"

Sebastian McCormick slumped his angular six-foot-two frame into a soft conference table chair and put his Budweiser to his lips as he looked out the windows of the twenty-second-floor conference room of the Thomson Campaign Headquarters in downtown St. Paul. At thirty-six, he was hitting his stride as a master political operator. Although he'd worked one previous presidential campaign, most of his experience was with Minnesota state politics. But this go around he'd hitched his wagon fully to the Judge, who was the master, and McCormick was soaking up every last bit of knowledge he could from Dixon and had impressed all in the Democratic Party in the process. He now knew every power player in the party, had them on his cell phone and now they all took his calls. In four years he expected to either be running the re-election campaign of President James Thomson or that of whomever the Democratic Party ran. His star had shot that high, with no small thanks owed to the Judge.

He'd just run the gauntlet of the evening political shows with tonight being his FOX News night with The O'Reilly Factor and Hannity. Earlier in the day he taped an interview with Rachel Maddow for her show. It was non-stop now, day after day, interviews during the day, for the network nightly news and the political talk-show gauntlet at night. Tomorrow morning he would do Morning Joe. Such was the life of the deputy campaign director. While there were numerous deputy directors, there was no doubt who was second in command and it was McCormick. The Budweiser was a way to decompress, blow off a little steam before he put another few hours in on his cell phone and laptop and then he might even think about letting his head hit the pillow. With less than a week to go, he'd be lucky to get three or four hours before he had to get going again. But he didn't care. He was made for this game, he loved it, thrived on it; it provided him energy, it was his passion. Sebastian lived, ate and breathed politics.

His passion for politics was shared by the lovely Kate Shelby, also a deputy campaign manager and these days, his frequent bedmate. Sleep was all the shorter in supply with Kate and her five-foot-nine model figure to distract him. Before he could get his three or four hours of sleep, he liked to take a tour of Kate and she of him. He figured they were both feeding off the adrenaline of the campaign. On occasion in the last few months, he wondered what things would be like between them when the momentum slowed, when life returned to a more normal pattern or at least what passed for normal in politics. Would there be something there for the two of them then? He hoped to start finding out in a week.

Tonight, Kate was his savior for another reason. She and her assistant, Sally Kennedy, were carrying in two full bags of Chinese food from Orachon's. Chinese food, pizza, beer, sub sandwiches, coffee and donuts were the key components of the diet of a political operative.

"How'd it go tonight?" Kate asked, having done the political show tour a few nights lately herself.

"I taped with Maddow earlier. She was fine, although there's always an undercurrent of 'we're not liberal enough' from her," Sebastian replied, opening a box of sweet and sour chicken. "O'Reilly wasn't bad, some really good back and forth amongst the bluster. You can tell when he respects you."

"How so?" Kate asked.

"He actually lets you answer. I did Hannity tonight as well."

"Hannity? Really? What's next, Glen Beck?" Sally Kennedy asked. What self-respecting Democrat would even consider going on Hannity since Colmes left?

"Yeah, I've sat in with Sean a few times and he didn't disappoint," McCormick smiled. "He was a tool as usual. He's so used to guests that turn his show into an echo chamber that he's not used to handling someone who can push back and tell him he's full of shit. He doesn't know what to do. If you get him just a little off track the whole thing turns into a train wreck for him."