The Buckhannon City Hall meeting room, the day after the election, was a place of bureaucratic panic. The town council was gathered in an emergency session, their faces a blend of exhaustion, disbelief, and horror at the mess they now had to clean up.
At the head of the long table, in the seat recently vacated by the disgraced and suspended Mayor Bob Thompson, sat Ralph Hardwick. The humiliation of his own campaign failure had been replaced by a more potent fuel: the fury of a man who had been made to look like a fool. He was now the acting chair of this broken, leaderless council, and he was a man with a mission.
"I still don't see how this is legally possible," a councilwoman named Martha muttered, for the third time in the last ten minutes. "The people can't just... elect a picture."
The town's lawyer, a weary-looking man named Jack whose primary job was usually to deal with minor zoning disputes and the occasional lawsuit over a cracked sidewalk, sighed. He adjusted his glasses and looked at the assembled council members with the tired expression of a man explaining a difficult concept to a room full of toddlers.
"As I have stated," he said, his voice a dry, legalistic monotone, "according to Section 4, Subsection B of the official Buckhannon Town Charter, as well as West Virginia State Election Code 3-6-5, any write-in candidate who receives a plurality of the vote in a certified election is the legal winner. The charter has no stipulations regarding the candidate's species, political platform, or, for that matter, their corporeal existence." He took a sip of water. "The election result is legally binding. You are now legally obligated to identify and certify the winner."
A silence fell over the room. Ralph Hardwick slammed a hand down on the table, the bang making the other council members jump.
"Then that's what we'll do," he declared, his voice a dangerous growl. "This council will immediately form a 'Mayoral Identification Committee.' We will follow the trail, we will find out who is behind this... this mockery of our democratic process. And we will certify them." He looked around the table, his eyes burning with a vengeful fire. "And I will be the chair."
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The first stop for the newly formed committee was the Upshur County Clerk's office. Ralph Hardwick, accompanied by another councilman, marched into the small, cluttered office with the air of federal agents executing a raid. The clerk, a harried-looking woman who had been on the receiving end of Denise Radclyffe's righteous fury just days before, recognized Hardwick immediately.
"Can I help you, Mr. Hardwick?" she asked, her voice a flat, weary monotone.
"We need to see the official candidacy filing for the write-in, 'Bucky Watcher,'" Hardwick demanded, his tone leaving no room for argument.
The clerk sighed, a sound of bureaucratic suffering. She disappeared into a back room and returned a moment later with a manila folder. She slid it across the counter. Hardwick snatched it and flipped it open. The document was sparse. Most of the fields were blank. But one crucial piece of information was there, printed in the clerk's neat, looping cursive. The filing fee had been paid in cash, by one Denise Radclyffe.
Ralph stared at the name, a predatory smile spreading across his face. He had his first thread.
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Denise Radclyffe was in her garden, humming to herself as she pruned a row of vibrant tomato plants, when the two official-looking sedans pulled up to her curb. She watched as Ralph Hardwick and another man she recognized from the town council got out of their cars. They walked up her driveway, their faces a picture of self-important seriousness.
Denise felt a small, satisfied smile touch her lips. She had been expecting them. She wiped her dirt-stained hands on her apron and walked to the front porch to meet them, the very picture of a calm, unassuming small-town mother.
"Mr. Hardwick," she said, her voice a sweet, southern drawl that belied the hard knot of fury in her chest. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Mrs. Radclyffe," Hardwick began, his tone cold and official. "We are here on behalf of the Buckhannon City Council. We are investigating the identity of the mayor-elect, 'Bucky Watcher.' We have records indicating that you paid the filing fee to place this... entity... on the ballot."
"That's right, I did," Denise said cheerfully, as if admitting to baking a pie for the church bake sale.
Hardwick seemed taken aback by her unhesitant confession. "And... why did you do that?"
"I believed in Bucky's message of holding bullies accountable," she said, her eyes meeting his with a direct, unblinking challenge. The memory of the deputy in her living room, of the warrant for her son's internet records, was still a fresh wound. "I felt our town needed a candidate who represented integrity and who wasn't afraid to stand up to the abuse of power. Bucky seemed like a perfect fit."
Ralph's face tightened. "And who is this 'Bucky,' Mrs. Radclyffe?"
Denise gave him a look of innocent confusion. "I have no idea," she said, her voice full of sincerity. "I'm just a supporter. I saw the movement online, and I was inspired to contribute. Isn't that what civic engagement is all about?"
She was a brick wall of polite, unhelpful stonewalling. She freely admitted to what they already knew, and she denied everything else. She clearly enjoyed watching the frustration build on Ralph's face, the slow reddening of his cheeks, the tightening of his jaw. He was a powerful man who was used to getting what he wanted, and she was a protective mother who was not going to give him the satisfaction.
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Chris was in his bedroom, trying to distract himself from the election results by grinding his physical stats. He was in the middle of a shaky push-up when his phone buzzed with a news alert. He collapsed onto the floor, his arms giving out, and grabbed the phone. The headline from the Record Delta sent a fresh spike of ice-cold terror through him.
"COUNCIL ISSUES SUBPOENA FOR 'BUCKY WATCHER' FACEBOOK DATA IN SEARCH FOR MAYOR-ELECT."
He stared at the screen, his breath catching in his throat. A subpoena. A legal, binding order for his online ghost. He had deleted the profile. He had scrubbed the evidence. But he knew, with the sick, sinking feeling, that the server logs were forever. The trail was there. And now, they were coming for it.
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The data from the subpoena came back with an unnerving speed. In the City Hall meeting room, which had been converted into the official headquarters for the Mayoral Identification Committee, a young Sheriff's deputy stood before Ralph Hardwick's whiteboard.
"The profile itself was deleted," the deputy explained, pointing to a printout of a server log filled with almost incomprehensible log entries. "But the creation logs are still on the Facebook servers. We were able to trace the IP address used to create the Bucky Watcher account."
"And?" Hardwick asked, his voice a low, impatient growl.
"The IP address is registered to the internet service account of one Misty Woody," the deputy said, reading from his notes. "At 685 Rural Route 4."
A heavy silence fell over the room. Misty Woody. The bingo winner. The wife of that loudmouth, Pete. The mother of...
Ralph Hardwick stood before the whiteboard, a black dry-erase marker in his hand. He felt like a detective in a movie, the final pieces of the puzzle falling into place. On one side of the board, he had written in large, angry letters: "DENISE RADCLYFFE (MOTIVE: REVENGE FOR SON)." He drew a line from her name to the center of the board.
On the other side, he wrote: "IP ADDRESS: WOODY RESIDENCE." He drew another line, connecting it to the first. He looked at the two pieces of evidence. A woman with a clear motive to embarrass the political establishment that had targeted her son. And a digital trail that led directly to a different family's home. It didn't make sense.
And then, it hit him.
"The Woody family," Hardwick said, his voice a dawning realization. He looked at the other committee members, his eyes wide. "They have a son. A thirty-year-old man who lives in their house. A recluse. Spends all day on the computer, playing those ridiculous video games." He turned back to the whiteboard and, with a decisive stroke of the marker, he wrote the name that connected it all.
"CHRISTOPHER DAY."
The trail, both the legal paper trail and the internet IP trail, had led them to an unbelievable suspect. The quiet, unemployed man-child who lived down not far outside of town.
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The Mayoral Identification Committee had officially, and with a great deal of confused reluctance, concluded their investigation. Ralph Hardwick stood up, his face a mix of weary triumph and disbelief. He had found his culprit.
He addressed the other members of the committee, his voice heavy with the weight of his own recent defeat. "Well, gentlemen," he said, a long, tired sigh escaping his lips. "It appears the citizens of Buckhannon have chosen their new mayor-elect." He picked up his car keys from the table. "Let's go and officially inform Mr. Christopher Day of his victory."
A small motorcade—Hardwick's Ford Explorer, another councilman's sensible sedan, and the town lawyer's modest hybrid—pulled out of the city hall parking lot. They turned onto Main Street, their destination a quiet, rural home not far from town, where the new, and highly unqualified leader of their town was probably in the middle of a video game.