for Peter for over ten years. I even introduced you to him a number of years ago.
Three nights ago I went into Peter’s office to look for some reports we ran regarding the new machines we delivered to three states, which were Iowa, Wisconsin and Virginia, as well as a memory card replacement we completed for those machines. I’d left the reports in his office. I couldn’t find the reports on the top of his desk so I started looking in his desk and credenza drawers. I’ve told him for years that he needs to lock his desk but he never does. It’s those little details that he always misses.
I found the reports I was looking for in a credenza drawer where there were also five memory cards for our newest voting machines. It was unusual for him to have memory cards in his office. However, he and I were discussing memory cards a few weeks ago with regard to the replacements and the new company he hired to make the new cards. I recalled bringing some cards into the office at that time, so I just assumed they were the cards I left in his office. I took them and stuffed them into my backpack along with the reports I’d been looking for.
When I emptied my backpack at home, I pulled out the memory cards. They looked slightly different than our cards normally do, the gray coloring was slightly darker and there was a red-dot on the cards. I keep DataPoint machines at home in my shop as I like to tinker with them. I decided to test the cards and make sure they worked. I put one of the memory cards I found in Checketts’s office into my machine. After some test runs, including an election morning test run, things looked fine. I was about to shut down the machine when I decided to set the internal clock on the machine to 1:00 p.m. on Election Day. As you know, I am as big a political junkie as there is, especially on presidential politics. So I set the machine up for the presidential election and I put in forty votes, twenty for each candidate. However, the machine registered twenty-one votes for Wellesley and nineteen for Thomson. I reset the machine again with the same memory card, twenty votes for each candidate and again, it was twenty-one for Wellesley and nineteen for Thomson. I checked the other four memory cards and the same results occurred.
I opened one of the memory cards and evaluated the programming. In the attached sheets I show how the memory card programming has been altered to roll back one of every twenty votes for Governor Thomson that is made after 12:00 p.m. on Election Day.
I confronted Peter Checketts about this. Whenever I’ve gone to him with a technical concern in the past, he would automatically say, get it fixed. This time he went off on me for coming into his office, for overreacting and questioning the integrity of the company. It was a side of him I’ve never seen before. It was totally out of character. He was not the man I’ve known.
That was earlier today.
I am not sure what I am onto here. The cards you find in this storage locker are the four remaining ones I found in Checketts’s office. I know what I’m seeing on these cards. The memory cards for our machines have been programmed to run this rollback, but I don’t know on how many. I don’t know how far this goes.
If I am right, the very company I work for has conspired to fix the United State Presidential Election for Vice President Wellesley. You have a deep interest in the issue of election integrity. We have had long talks on this issue and both share a passion for our nation’s election process. If you find this, please succeed where I have failed.
Your friend,
Gabriel Martin
Mac handed the letter to Wire, and in disbelief said: “A murder at The Snelling led to all this?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“You’ve got about three hours to prepare. No sweat.”
Mac leaned back against a car, sipping a Starbucks coffee and devouring a slightly stale glazed donut that Kaufman and Herdine picked up. This was no longer simply a homicide investigation. Upon reflection, Mac realized it stopped being just a homicide investigation last night, when Judge Dixon became involved.
At that point, it became more—much more.
As a detective, Mac didn’t ever like to think there was something bigger and more