Stranglehold by Ed Gorman

more depth. Public polling is about the horse race; internal polling goes after demographics—age, occupation, general political beliefs—and delves into issue details. Another factor is where respondents come from. Public polling tends to use random numbers from the phone books. Internal polling uses registered voters. What made me happy this morning was the sudden shift we were seeing in rural voters supporting Susan. We’d been lagging behind. But now we’d jumpedup by four percent and that was encouraging. Same with blue-collar males. Duffy was still ahead with this group, but in the past week we’d added three percent blue-collar males. The trend was up, and we were sitting on a story tying Duffy to some union-busting operations done by two companies he owned part of. We had decided to hold these until the next debate. This would help us get more blue-collar votes.
    Ben came in with his hand wrapped around a large paper cup of coffee and the scent of autumn morning on his clothes. “You don’t look too bad.”
    â€œThanks, neither do you.”
    â€œYou think we’re getting respectable in our old age?”
    I laughed. “You’re going to have us buried before our time.”
    He sat down at his desk. “Well, since you’re so young and studly, did
you
get lucky last night?”
    â€œNope.” Then I looked up from the internals I was still going over. The way he’d said it—“You mean
you
got lucky last night?”
    He swiveled in his chair so I could see him and his big happy face. “Hold your applause, but yep, I did indeed get lucky last night. This reporter from Channel 6. The NBC affiliate. Forty-three and worried about her job with all these hotties coming right out of college and working for half of what she’s making. I like her.”
    â€œGood. Now that you’ve lost your virginity I’ll have to see about losing mine.”
    He pointed to the desk two down from his. “You know who sits there?”
    â€œOh, no. No, thanks.”
    â€œLast night Kristin told me that she had a very serious crush on you.”
    â€œShe’s too young.”
    â€œShe’s not that much younger.”
    â€œYou know what happened last time.”
    â€œHey, Kristin isn’t like—what the hell was her name?”
    â€œDonna.”
    â€œKristin isn’t like Donna. Donna was all fucked up.” Pause. “Plus she was making it with Neil Ransom on the side, anyway. You know, when she was seeing you.”
    â€œAre you serious?”
    â€œYeah. That’s why everybody in the office hated her. She was doing this stalking number on you, but she was also getting it on with Ransom.”
    â€œI thought they hated her because she was bragging about sleeping with the boss.”
    â€œWell, I’ll be damned. You mean you really didn’t know?”
    Ben’s phone rang. Just before he picked up, he said, “Well, I told Kristin I’d tell you that she’d like to go to dinner tonight. She ended up going out with her cousin last night and having a pizza.” Then: “Hello?” And: “Who’s calling, please?” He covered the speaking end of the receiver with his hand and said, “She sounds very young and very upset. Line three.”
    â€œNo dinner, Ben. Seriously.” I picked up my phone.
    â€œMr. Conrad?”
    I recognized the voice immediately even through her tears. “Gwen?”
    â€œYou said I could call you.”
    â€œYes. Of course. Are you all right?”
    â€œI am, but Bobby isn’t. He’s in jail. They arrested him this morning. They said he killed that woman. Somebody saw him running from her hotel room. I’m scared for him and I’m scared for my baby.”
    Full circle. The motel room to the red-haired man to Monica Davies to Bobby. “Where are you now?”
    â€œI’m at the police station. They won’t let me