The Fly on rhe Wall

 

By Tony Hillerman

John Cotton is a political reporter for a newspaper in a large Midwestern city. He works out of the statehouse along with several other reporters from various other media outlets. 

It's election season and the governor is running for reelection. Roark seems like a competent and honest politician but he is facing a challenge within his party by Senator Clark, who has his eye on the governorship. Any scandal within state government would be a black eye for Roark and give Clark a chance to  become the nominee instead. 

One evening, while Cotton is finishing up work in the capitol press room, another reporter comes in and claims to be working on a really big story. The reporter, McDaniels, is drunk and tosses his steno pad carelessly down on his desk and leaves the press room. But McDaniels shortly ends up dead, of an apparent accident, tumbling over a railing and falling to his death.

Cotton is curious about the big story McDaniels was working on and finds the steno pad which had fallen down between the McDaniels' desk and the wall. Reading the man's cryptic notes, it appears McDaniels was investigating discrepancies in some highway projects. But it all seems to Cotton to be minor stuff and not something anyone would be willing to commit murder to cover up.

Then one night, at a poker game with friends, one man asks to borrow Cotton's car to run an errand. But the man is run off a bridge by a truck and the car plunges into the river, killing him. At first, Cotton assumes it was just an unfortunate accident. But then Cotton comes home soon after to find a fake bomb in his house and receives a threatening message telling him to stop investigating the highway story or be killed.

Fearing for his life, Cotton flies off to New Mexico, only to be tracked down by a hired killer while on a fishing trip. He manages to elude the killer and returns home, desperate to figure out what McDaniels was working on that someone is willing to commit two murders to keep hidden. 

This was a pretty good mystery story with a surprising twist at the end. It is also an interesting look at politics and corruption that is very relevant today. Towards the end of the story, Cotton explains why he believes political reporting is vital to the voting public:

"'You fault Gene Clark for having no political philosophy. Well, I've got one. I believe if you give them the facts the majority of the people are going to pull down the right lever on the voting machine. A lot of them are stupid. And a lot of them don't give a damn. And some of them have closed minds and won't believe anything they don't want to believe. But enough of them care so if you tell them what's going on they make the right decisions.'" 

 
Fifty years later, his description of the voting public still stands.