Silken Prey

by John Sandford

“Talking with a really hot chick,” Lucas said.

  “Hot chick . . . that expression is so disco, so 1979,” ICE said, with disdain.

  Marion, Benson, and Lucas all looked at each other, and then Lucas shrugged and said, “Not for cops.”

  • • •

  THEY HAD BENSON SAVE the files and the information they’d turned up to a new, confidential file, and then ICE took off, after Lucas thanked her: “You’ll get the bill at your office,” she said.

  Marion went to see the chief, and Lucas walked down to the training office. Tom Morgan, the lieutenant who’d put together the original file, and had testified in the child porn case, was now the training officer. The new job could either be a matter of grooming a cop for a move upward, or a dead end for a guy who wasn’t going anywhere; in Morgan’s case, Lucas didn’t know which it was.

  Morgan was poking at a computer keyboard when Lucas knocked on his doorjamb. He turned in his chair and his face fell, and he said, “Lucas. Goddamnit, I was afraid you’d show up here.”

  Lucas said, “Really.”

  “Yeah, everybody in the building is hiding out, afraid you’re gonna want to talk to them. The word’s all over the place.”

  “I only talked to the chief . . . and Marion. And Larry Benson . . .”

  “Might as well have driven down the hall in a sound truck,” Morgan said. He reached back, caught a wheeled guest chair, and shoved it toward Lucas. “Sit down and tell me about it.”

  Lucas explained the situation, and when he was finished, Morgan said, “Well, that’s about what I heard. I’ll tell you what, though. When we busted that place, the Pattersons’, they weren’t putting the files on the Internet. They were too smart to do that. If you wanted pictures from them, you’d get them by FedEx, and they’d be on paper. The Internet was only used for contacts. When we got them, we scanned the paper photos into the system, because that was the only way we had to coordinate them with everything else, for the court case. But they were a separate file. Nobody had access but the people who were working the case. And they should never have been aggregated with other files.”

  “What are the chances that somebody saw an opportunity for a little private enterprise? Put the files together and then sell them?” Lucas asked.

  “I’d say . . . slim to none,” Morgan said. “The thing is, the files were down in Vice, and nobody had access to them but us vice guys. And one thing we all knew, and most cops know now, is that cops and snitches are all over the place on kiddie porn. They’re everywhere. Guys spend their spare time browsing the ’net, looking for it, looking for a bust. You buy kiddie porn off the ’net, you’re gonna lose your job, probably get divorced, and probably go to prison. The vice guys . . . they wouldn’t mess with it. It’s more dangerous than dealing drugs. Way more. And there’s less money in it.”

  “So you’re saying whoever took it wasn’t trying to make a buck, and it didn’t get loose somehow.”

  Morgan shook his head: “Nope. Sad as I am to say it, I’d bet those pictures came straight out of here. Straight out of our system.”

  Lucas asked, “You hear any rumors of guys looking at porn?”

  “Lucas, you know how it is. You worked here, for how long? You hear some guys might be looking at porn, some guys might be getting their knobs polished by the street girls, that some guys have a little too much cash, that some cocaine’s gone astray . . . you hear all that crap. And most of it’s crap. Backbiting bullshit.”

  That was true enough. The brotherhood of cops was fairly tight from the outside, but from the inside, it was more like a bureaucratic knife fight.

  They talked for a while longer, about various possibilities, then Lucas looked at the wall clock and said, “I gotta roll. Thanks for the conversation.”

  Morgan asked, “Is the stuff gonna hit the fan?”

  “Not if Robin handles it right,” Lucas said. “What you need is a lot of promises and a big cloud of smoke . . . and then hope something blows up somewhere, and makes the media stampede that way.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Dannon and Taryn were both on their feet, in the library, feeling the stress, and Dannon said, “We don’t know anything. We’re amazed that people are talking to us. Who is Tubbs?”

  She nodded. “I worked on it last night before I went to bed. I can do it. But I have to have my head in the right place.”

  “I’ll be outside with Carver. Green will be in the monitor room. We want him to see Green, but not us.”

  “Yes,” she said. She frowned. “What are we talking about, anyway?”

  “Exactly.” He nodded, and left.

  A minute later, her walkie-talkie function buzzed, and Alice Green said, “We’ve got a Porsche at the gate.”

  • • •

  LUCAS WATCHED THE GATE roll back and caught the two clear lenses, and two black glassy spots, one of each on the stone gate pillars, on either side of the driveway. Camera lenses and infrared alarm sensors. The security would be excellent. And the hard drives on the security cameras could be gotten with a search warrant: something to know.

  The house was a long and sprawling ranch, built of a yellowish stone and clapboard, with a fieldstone chimney climbing out of one end. The lot itself, just the part he could see, was the size of a football field, dotted with mature oaks, maples, and firs.

  The chimney, Lucas thought, would lead down to a really gorgeous wood-burning fireplace, with logs as long as a big man’s arm. Lucas liked fireplaces, he just didn’t like burning wood—he had few allergies, but burning wood always seemed to set off his nose, and he’d wake in the morning with a sore throat.

  He had designed his own house, and had put in a fireplace, though of a fussier, arts-and-crafts style, green tile surround and black steel—and a really, really good set of fake iron logs, which concealed the gas jets. Instant fire, with the push of a button. He’d been told he should feel guilty about that, but he didn’t.

  Taryn Grant’s house was bigger than his, but not enormously so, at least in appearance; nothing like a southern mansion, which was what he’d half expected. Lucas had been all over the contractor on the fine details of his own house, and so he noticed them in Grant’s, like the copper flashing on the downspouts, the cabinetry-level detailing in the woodwork around the garage doors. He supposed that in this neighborhood, no house would be worth less than a million and a half; but looking at Grant’s house, he suspected that given the size and the detailing, three million might be closer to the mark.

  Though if she were as rich as people said she was, that amount would be insignificant to her.

  • • •

  HE WALKED UP TO the front door, which opened as he approached it. A slender woman, probably in her mid-thirties, waited behind it. She had dark red hair, high cheekbones, and she wore a delicate turquoise necklace that chimed with her eyes. She looked a little like Kidd’s wife, Lauren, Lucas thought.

  She smiled and said, “Agent Davenport? I’m Alice Green. Ms. Grant is waiting for you in the library.”

  Which sounded just slightly snotty. Lucas thought, I’ve got a library, too, and then Green turned away from him and he saw the semiautomatic pistol clipped to the back of her slacks.

  Lucas said, “You’re security?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “I can stay with Ms. Grant where men can’t. Like ladies’ rooms.”

  “Ex-cop or something?”

  “Secret Service,” she said.

  “La-di-da,” Lucas said. Green tilted her head back and laughed and said, “Yes,” and her reaction made Lucas like her.

  • • •

  GREEN LED THE WAY through the house. Through a side door, Lucas saw a gorgeous brick-floored porch with white-plastered walls and green-glass windows that looked out on a huge enclosed swimming pool. The house didn’t look much larger than his from the front, he realized, but was nearly as deep as it was wide.

  The library was modest in size, with dark wood shelves filled with books
that looked like they’d been read. Grant was sitting on a wine-red couch, and stood up when Lucas stepped into the room, putting aside a magazine. She smiled and said, “Agent Davenport . . .” and put out her hand.

  Lucas shook it as he took her in. She was tall and solid, with muscles showing in her neck and forearms; bigger than she’d seemed when he’d seen her on television, but just as pretty. She was wearing a red blouse and black slacks, with a simple gold-chain necklace that looked old.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Lucas said. “I won’t take too much of your time.”

  “I’d say take as much as you need, but I really am jammed up,” she said, as she gestured at an easy chair, and sank back onto the couch.

  Lucas took the chair and asked, “Do you know Bob Tubbs?”

  “Bob Tubbs? I’ve heard of him. He works for the party. Has he done something . . . ?”

  “You know he disappeared?”

  A wrinkle appeared in her forehead. “Disappeared? I’m not tracking this very well . . .”

  Lucas decided to slap her: “Basically, I’m wondering if your campaign employed Tubbs to sabotage Senator Smalls’s campaign by planting child pornography on his computer,” he said.

  Another wrinkle in her forehead, and she sat back and said, “Well . . . no.”

  Lucas had been watching her face for a flinch or any kind of frightened reaction, and what he saw was the beginning of rage. He opened his mouth to ask another question, but before he could, Grant jabbed a finger at him.

  “Wait a minute! Wait one fuckin’ minute, here, buster,” she said. “Who are you working for? Are you hooked up to Smalls’s campaign?”

  “I’m hooked up to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Ms. Grant,” Lucas said. “We believe that Mr. Tubbs planted the pornography on Senator Smalls’s computer. We believe Mr. Tubbs has been murdered to cover up that crime. There’s only one reason for him to have planted the porn, and that’s to sabotage Senator Smalls’s campaign.”

  “Murdered? Did you say murdered?” The anger faded a bit, overridden by something else. Fear?

  Lucas said, “Yes. He’s disappeared, and we think there’s a reason for it. We think he planted the porn, and then had to be gotten rid of, to cover it up.”

  “Well, I mean we, I mean . . . We didn’t have anything to do with that, if it’s even true.” Now the anger came clawing back: “And you didn’t answer the question. Are you hooked up with Smalls’s campaign? Have you ever worked for him? What are your politics? We are less than a week from Election Day, and you come to me with this? An accusation I can’t refute, because you can’t refute a complete negative? When you put this in the paper and on TV—and you will, won’t you?—it’ll kill me. Sabotage and murder? Are you kidding me?”

  The anger was real and was getting hotter and Grant got to her feet and bent toward him: “Answer the question.”

  She was nearly shouting, and Lucas saw movement at the corner of his eye, and two huge German shepherds ghosted into the room, focused on him.

  He said, “The dogs . . .”

  She half turned to the dogs and said, “Hansel, Gretel, easy,” and the dogs’ gazes softened.

  Green, who’d left the room, stepped in and said, “Ms. Grant . . . can I help?”

  Grant said, “No, I’m okay, Alice. Agent Davenport has gotten me a little upset.” She sank back on the couch and said, “Well? What contact have you had with the Smalls campaign? Have you taken any money from him?”

  Lucas was getting angry himself, and strained to contain it: but some leaked into his voice. “No. I’ve spoken to Senator Smalls about who had access to his computer, and I’ve taken information from him. I do not know him, except for the contact involved in this investigation. Personally, I’m a registered Democrat, and my wife has contributed to the campaigns of a number of Democratic candidates, including yours, I believe, though I have not. There’s no politics in this, Ms. Grant. What there is, is a vicious sabotage attempt, which would have reduced Senator Smalls’s reputation to tatters, and very probably a murder. So, if we could get back to the reason I’m here: you say you knew nothing of the pornography, and you didn’t know Bob Tubbs?”

  She seemed to go through a brief internal struggle, then controlled it: “As far as I know, I’ve never met Mr. Tubbs, although it’s possible that he was at some of my campaign events—I know he worked for the party, and there’ve been a lot of people I don’t know at my events. So I may have seen him, though I wouldn’t recognize him. I have not knowingly spoken a single word with him. I’m not heavily engaged with the party—my candidacy is mostly self-generated. And the pornography, I know nothing about it.”

  Green had lingered in the doorway, listening, and one of the dogs moved up to Lucas and put its head on his knees, looking straight in at his groin. Lucas said, “Ms. Grant, you wanna move the dog?”

  “Make you nervous?”

  “Makes me angry,” Lucas said. “If this dog bites me, I shoot it. Then I shoot the other one if I have to, then I throw you on the floor, cuff you, and drag your ass down to the Hennepin County jail and charge you with aggravated assault on a police officer. Then you will go to jail.”

  “Gretel won’t bite unless I tell her to,” Grant said. But she said to the dog, “Gretel, back,” and the dog eased away from Lucas.

  Green said, “Ms. Grant, I’ll be in the nook.”

  “Thanks, Alice,” Grant said, and to Lucas, “I don’t like you, and I suspect you don’t like me, but try to be fair. Don’t stick yourself into this campaign. Don’t sabotage me.”

  “I’m not trying—”

  “Whether you’re trying or not, that’s the effect,” Grant said. “Wait a week or ten days, let the election take place, then do your worst. But give me a chance. I’ve worked very hard for it.”

  “So has Senator Smalls.”

  “Smalls should be okay, after Rose Marie Roux’s press conference. I’m the one who has the problem now,” Grant said. “And listen: even I think it’s possible that you’re right, to some extent. It’s possible that somebody who was trying to help me—this Tubbs person—might have put the porn on Smalls’s computer. But I know nothing about that. There are dozens of people working in campaigns, all kinds of people who don’t like Smalls, and some of those people are a little nuts. So it’s possible that somebody went after him, but it’s just as likely that they were trying to hurt him, as trying to help me. A lot of union people hate him—especially public employee union people—and the pro-choice people go crazy when they talk about him. Look at them!” She tightened up a fist and smacked it into her thigh, and said it again. “Look at them!”

  “We’ll look everywhere,” Lucas said. “So let me go through this. You didn’t know Tubbs, and though you may have shaken hands, or had some slight contact with him, you’ve never had any kind of substantive talk with him.”

  “No, I haven’t. And let me ask you this—how do you know that Tubbs didn’t put the porn on the computer, and then take off? How do you know that he hasn’t deliberately put himself out of reach?” she asked. “Win or lose, after the election’s over, nobody’s going to care much about the porn.”

  Lucas said, “It’s not just that he’s gone, it’s that he left a lot of cash behind, and he also isn’t using his credit cards,” Lucas said. “He hasn’t used them once since he was last seen on Friday night, and he uses them all the time.”

  “But you don’t know,” she insisted.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then don’t fuck with me on the basis of guesswork,” Grant said. “At least, not until the election is done.”

  Lucas stared at her for a moment, and she didn’t flinch. He asked, “What about your campaign manager? Did she know Tubbs? Who, in your campaign, is in charge of dirty tricks?”

  “There are no dirty tricks in this campaign, for the simple reason that anything you can accuse Smalls of doing, he’s already admitted. Has he been unfaithful to his wife? Yes. He’s talked about it on TV
. Made a lot of money as an attorney, screwing over widows? Yes, he’s talked about that on TV. What kind of dirty trick would work with him?”

  “Well, child porn,” Lucas said.

  “That’s absurd,” Grant said. “If anybody even hinted at something like that, I’d not only fire him, I’d do everything I could to destroy him.”

  “I need to talk to your campaign manager,” Lucas said.

  “I will give you her number, and you can ask her yourself,” Grant said. “She wanted to be here today, but I made her go away. I didn’t want her . . . using this discussion in some way . . . in the campaign.”

  Felt like a threat, smelled like a threat, Lucas thought. “Like how?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t know you, and neither does Connie, and she might have asked a little more about your background to see exactly why . . . you’re here.”

  “I think I’ve made that clear,” Lucas said.

  She leaned back on the couch. “Well, you have. But in my position, which is very delicate right now, Connie would say that we couldn’t ignore the possibility that you’re lying. She’d want some research.”

  Lucas asked, “How many armed security people do you have? Is Alice Green the only one?”

  He saw a quick flash of uncertainty in her eyes, which vanished as quickly as it came; and quite possibly was a trick of his imagination. She said, “Year-round, there are three, working various hours. During the campaign there are eight, because they have to travel with me. This house is extensively wired for security. There are two safe rooms, I can get to them in a few seconds from anywhere in the house, and, of course, Hansel and Gretel are full-time. They’re here overnight. If I put them on guard, they stop being dogs and start being leopards.”

  “Okay,” Lucas said. He thought for a moment, and then stood up. “I’m done. I apologize if I upset you, but this is a very serious matter.”

  She waved a hand at him and said, “Just be fair.”

  • • •

  THE DOGS TOOK HIM through the door to the living room, where Green was sitting with a magazine that she wasn’t reading.