Chapter 1
SPOKANE, WASHINGTON'S city hall is a renovated eight-story box of an art deco building that originally housed a Montgomery Ward department store. The roaring falls of the Spokane River tumble just beyond its northern walls. Before the age of dams, wild salmon migrated to the base of the falls but no farther, halted by the torrent. Dams notwithstanding, the Spokane is still a mighty river, and during spring runoff a powerful whirlpool often imprisons huge logs for days where the salmons’ journey once ended.
To the south, a skywalk connects the nerve center of local government to the River Park Square retail complex. This hub of downtown shopping has been owned by the Cowles family since the lost days of the salmon. The skywalk linking city hall to the Cowles mall is a concrete and glass symbol of political reality in Spokane. The Cowleses also own The Spokesman-Review daily newspaper, the weekly Journal of Business, and the NBC-affiliate TV station.
On the Friday afternoon of January 24, 1997, Cherie Rodgers (née Barlow) stepped onto a city hall elevator, punched the button, and descended to the building’s basement, where the council chambers and conference room lay in hushed subterranean quiet. She was a matronly, pretty woman with penetrating blue eyes. The good looks that once made her Miss Hot Springs, a teenage beauty queen, were still there. Her dark hair was pulled into a French braid that fell to the middle of her back.
After a few minutes, a staffer noticed her standing outside the conference room door and said, “Oh, go on in. They’re waiting for you.”
Mayor Jack Geraghty gestured for Cherie to join him and five city council members at the long white melamine conference table. She was being interviewed as a possible replacement for former city councilman Chris Anderson, a man who had recently disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Mayor Geraghty, a distinguished-looking, silver-haired man with a prosperous midsection and a mellifluous, broadcaster’s voice, asked the first question: “Why did you put your name in for this position?”
The truth was that Cherie, now forty-eight years old, was surprised to be sitting there. If friends on the Indian Trails neighborhood council hadn’t urged her to apply for Anderson’s slot, she never would have considered it. She didn’t really want the job.
“Because I believe people should give back to the community,” Cherie answered the mayor. “Be involved, care about where they live. Make it a better place.”
Chris Anderson, a fiery political reformer, had left the city council with a year still remaining in his first term of office. Although Anderson’s house was visible from her patio, up the hill and through the pines, Cherie knew him only to say hello.
But she made a practice of watching council meetings every Monday night on the city’s cable channel, and because of that, she witnessed a puzzling transformation in Anderson. A leather jacket replaced expensive suits. He grew a beard. Once, during the city council invocation, Cherie noticed that Anderson was staring defiantly ahead while his fellow council members piously bowed their heads.
And then he was gone.
When only five people signed up to fill Anderson’s vacancy, Cherie felt bad. Just not bad enough to push herself into the void. But when her friends said, “You’re always telling us to get involved and keep track of what’s going on,” she succumbed and put her name in the hat. Soon afterward, the number of applicants ballooned to forty, and Cherie relaxed. She figured her chances of being selected were nil. Many of the applicants were well-known civic leaders and former political candidates.
“Tell us a little about your background and the kind of activities you’re involved in,” asked the mayor.
Cherie spoke briefly about her work with the Indian Trail growth and development task force and her volunteer activities at her children’s schools. For nearly three years she had also been a director of the city plan commission.
“What kind of support would you bring with you to the city council?” asked Councilwoman Phyllis Holmes. “Who do you interact with?”
“Neighborhood people,” answered Cherie. “And small-business people.” Cherie had joined mom and pop pharmacy owners in opposing—unsuccessfully it turned out—a new Walgreen Drug Store in her Northside neighborhood.
Cherie came across as polite, unassuming, and agreeable. The interview was over in twenty minutes.
She hurried into the ladies room across the hall, quickly changed out of her blazer and turtleneck, and donned a wacky tie-dyed green and gold T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. Emblazoned across the shirt were the words, “Groovy Shoes ’97. Stayin’ Alive! Shadle Park High School.” Leaning toward the mirror, Cherie painted a yellow butterfly on one cheek, a green butterfly on the other. She tied a yellow “Stayin’ Alive!” ribbon in her hair and dashed out.
Cherie retrieved her tired blue 1986 Mazda, picked up her daughter Leigh and a friend at Shadle Park High, then headed over to Salk Middle School for her son, Dean, and another friend. The car erupted in adolescent chatter. With painted faces and glitter in their hair, all the kids wore “Stayin’ Alive!” T-shirts and juggled balloons, miniature pom-poms, and packets of confetti. Nobody asked Cherie about the interview she’d just come from.
Cherie’s oldest daughter, Nicole, an Eastern Washington University student, met them inside the sports arena. Cherie treated everyone to hotdogs and soft drinks.
Half the cavernous arena was a sea of yellow and green, the other half the red and black school colors of North Central High. A girls’ basketball game thundered up and down the boards. The decibel level was shattering. It was that way every year at Groovy Shoes, the “spirit competition” between the two schools. The point wasn’t to win either the boys’ or girls’ basketball games, as it was during conference play, but to out-shout the other side. The coveted Groovy Shoes trophy—a single wooden sneaker, comically painted like a clown shoe—went to the victor. Until the next year.
“Stayin’ Alive!” the disco song, alternately roared from the PA and blasted live from both schools’ bands. Grandparents, parents, students, little brothers and sisters shrieked from the stands, antic faces open-mouthed, hair dyed and sparkling with glitter. Adolescent boys proudly exhibited naked torsos emblazoned with school colors. Alumni who had graduated decades earlier joined the tribal madness.
It was at about 7:30 p.m., during the boys’ game, when someone tapped Cherie on the shoulder. The person next to her pointed to people below who seemed to be shouting something to her. The din was so consuming, Cherie couldn’t make out what they were saying. The people climbed the stands, still hollering incomprehensively. Finally, the person next to her yelled, “They’re saying, ‘Congratulations!’”
The five o’clock news had aired the story: Cherie Rodgers was the pick to succeed Chris Anderson on the city council.
Sitting in their comfortable living room, Earl and Arlene Barlow watched the newscast. A politically savvy educator, Earl had risen to superintendent of education at the Bureau of Indian Affairs before he and Arlene retired to Spokane in 1994. The news announcement did not please him. He felt trepidation about his eldest daughter joining the city council. He believed Spokane was a closed town, run by an inner circle surrounding the Cowles family. Barlow was worried the powerbrokers would “break her down and crush her.”
Following the Groovy Shoes game, Cherie faced the TV cameras and reporters’ questions.
Later, getting ready for bed, she watched herself on the late news. Despite her earlier misgivings, she felt honored and excited.
She turned to a photograph on her windowsill of a handsome couple, a beautiful young woman in a ball gown standing next to a dashing young Army officer candidate in dress uniform. The picture was from another lifetime, a 1970 ROTC ball at the University of Montana.
“You’ll never guess what’s happened now,” Cherie said to the young man in the picture.
Young marrieds: The American lieutenant’s woman,
ROTC ball, University of Montana, 1970.
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