Silken Prey

by John Sandford

  After all the bullshit was sorted through, a levelheaded professor suggested that he try police work for a year or so. He could always go back to law school, or even go to law night school, if he didn’t like the cops—and the time on the street would be invaluable for certain kinds of law practice.

  Lucas joined the Minneapolis cops, and never looked back: but the four years in American studies stuck with him, especially the literature. He thought Emily Dickinson was perhaps the best writer America had ever produced; but on this day, heading east out of the Cities, then south down the river, he thought of how some of the writers, Poe and Hemingway in particular, used the weather to create the mood and reflect the meanings of their stories.

  Poe in particular.

  Lucas could still quote from memory the first few lines of “The Fall of the House of Usher”: During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. . . .

  And Lucas thought what a literary conceit that all was: he’d gone to a murder scene on a beautiful fall day, and heard children laughing outside. And why not? The murder had nothing to do with them, and old people died all the time.

  Now he, the hunter, was headed south to tackle a couple of probable killers, a fairly grim task; but over here, to the right of the highway as he went by, a man was washing down his fishing boat, preparing it for winter storage; and coming down the road toward him, a half-dozen old Corvettes, all in a line, tops down on a fine blue-sky day, the women in the passenger seats all older blondes, one after the other.

  And why not? Life doesn’t have to be a long patch of misery. There was plenty of room for blondes of a certain age, to ride around in seventies Corvettes, like they’d done when they were girls; a few beers at Lerk’s Bar, and then a dark side street with a hand up their skirts. That was still welcome, wasn’t it?

  He’d made himself smile with all the rumination. He really ought to lighten up more, Lucas thought, as the last of the Corvettes went past. Hell, what are a couple more killers in a lifetime full of them? And he liked hunting, and what better day to do it than a fine blue day in the autumn of the year, with not a cloud in the heavens, when riding through a singularly beautiful tract of country, in a Porsche with the top down?

  Fuck a bunch of E. A. Poe.

  And his Raven.

  • • •

  THE GRANT CARAVAN had pulled to the side of the street in what passed for downtown Afton. A small crowd was hanging around in the park across the street, and a cable TV station was setting up a small video camera in front of a bandstand. Grant and her people were apparently in an ice cream parlor.

  Lucas dumped the Porsche and started across the street to the parlor. As he did, Alice Green came out the front door and moved to one side, and nodded toward Lucas; then Grant came out the door holding an ice cream cone, squinted at him in the sunlight, and licked the cone as he came up.

  Lucas thought, Some women shouldn’t be allowed to lick ice cream cones, because it threw men into a whole different mental state. . . .

  Schiffer came out of the ice cream parlor, also licking an ice cream cone, with markedly less effect; she was followed by a tall, bullet-headed man with fast eyes who Lucas suspected was one of the bodyguards; his eyes locked on Lucas. Then another man came out, smaller than the first, but with the same fast eyes, and the same quick fix on Lucas. Lucas wanted to put a hand on his .45, but instead, called, “Ms. Grant—glad you had the time.”

  “What’s so urgent?” she asked.

  “These two gentlemen,” Lucas said, flicking a finger at Carver and Dannon. “Are they Misters Carver and Dannon?”

  Grant turned, as if checking, then turned back and said, “Yeah,” and nibbled on the cone, which looked like a cherry-nut, one of Lucas’s favorites.

  “Then let’s find a place where we can talk,” Lucas said.

  “Courtyard,” Green said, nodding toward an empty outdoor dining space to the left of the ice cream parlor. “You don’t want to talk to me?”

  “Not at the moment,” Lucas said. “You might keep people away? Even other staffers. This is sort of private.”

  Green nodded; Schiffer said, “I’m going to listen in.”

  They moved over to the empty space, Green hovering on the periphery, listening. Lucas said, “One of Porter Smalls’s secretaries was murdered last night. Shot to death in her house, in Minneapolis. I went through her laptop and she’d been corresponding in a fairly cryptic way with Bob Tubbs before he disappeared, and just before the pornography popped up on Smalls’s computer.”

  He’d been watching Carver and Dannon, and nothing moved in their eyes, which Lucas thought interesting, because he thought something should have.

  Grant said, “Well, that’s awful, but what does it have to do with us?”

  “Tubbs is dead, I’m almost certain of it, at this point, and now Helen Roman has been murdered. It was all done very well, from a professional-killing standpoint. Most people who kill for money are fools and idiots and misfits. This doesn’t appear to be the work of fools.”

  Grant said, “Yeah, yeah,” and made a rolling motion with one forefinger—moving right along—as she simultaneously took another nibble of the cherry-nut.

  “Well, it’s possible that she put the porn on Smalls’s computer to get revenge on him,” Lucas said. “They’d had some personal disagreements, apparently. But if that was what it was, a personal matter, why would anybody kill her? Or Tubbs?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Grant said. “Are you sure she was killed for that reason? Because it had something to do with Smalls?”

  Lucas was forced to admit it: “No. Not absolutely sure. But pretty sure. The other possibility is that the people who paid for the porn to be dumped on Porter Smalls, knowing that doing so involves a number of felonies, are breaking the link between themselves and the pornography. Breaking the link very professionally. I did the obvious: I looked for professional killers. The only ones I could find”—Lucas nodded at Carver and Dannon—“are employed by you.”

  “What!” Schiffer blurted, not a question.

  Lucas had been watching Carver and Dannon again, and again, their eyes were blank; if they’d been lizards, Lucas thought, a nictitating membrane might have dropped slowly across them.

  “That . . .” Grant waved her arms dismissively. “I really do have to talk to somebody about you. Professional killers? They’re decorated war veterans. Were you in the military? Did you—”

  Dannon interrupted her, and said to Lucas, “We had nothing to do with anything like that. We’re professional security guys, end of story. If you have any evidence of any sort, bring it out: we’ll refute it.”

  “I want to have a crime-scene guy take DNA samples from you,” Lucas said. “Doesn’t hurt, nothing invasive—”

  “DNA?” Grant sputtered. “You know what—”

  “It’s okay with us,” Dannon said, and now there was something in his eye, a little spark of pleasure, a job well done. Lucas thought, This isn’t good.

  Grant snapped at Dannon: “Don’t interrupt. I know that you had nothing to do with this, I know the DNA will come back negative, but don’t you see what he’s doing? When the word gets out that my bodyguards have been DNA-typed in a murder case? This guy is working for Smalls—”

  “No. I’m not,” Lucas said. “I guarantee that nothing about the DNA samples will get out before the election. I’ll get one guy to take the samples and I’ll read him the riot act. He will not say a word, and neither will I. If word gets out, I’ll track it, and if it’s my guy, I’ll see that he’s fired and I’ll try to put him in jail.”

  Grant, Schiffer, Carver, and Dannon exchanged glances, and then Grant said to Dannon, “You’ve got no problem with this?”

  “No. It’s
probably what I’d do in his place.” He showed a thin white smile: “Because, you know, he’s right. We are trained killers.”

  He poked Carver in the ribs with an elbow, and Carver let out a long, low, rambling laugh, one of genuine amusement, and . . . smugness. Lucas thought, They know something.

  • • •

  WITH THEIR CASUAL ACQUIESCENCE to the DNA tests, Lucas was left stranded. He asked some perfunctory questions—where were you last night at one o’clock? (At our apartments.) Did anyone see you there? (No.) Any proof that you were there? (Made some phone calls, moved some documents on e-mail.) Can we see those? (Of course.) Did you know either Tubbs or Roman? (No.)

  Lucas walked away and made a call, asking them to wait, got hold of a crime-scene specialist, and made arrangements for Carver and Dannon to be DNA-typed.

  He went back to them and said, “We’d like you to stop in at BCA headquarters on your way back through St. Paul, anytime before five o’clock. You’ll see a duty officer, tell him that you’re Ronald and Douglas—you won’t have to give your last name or any other identifier—and that you’re there at my request, Lucas Davenport’s request, to be DNA-typed. A guy will come down to do the swabs. This will take one minute, and then you can take off. The swabs will be marked Ronald and Douglas, no other identifiers.”

  Carver and Dannon nodded, and Grant said, “What a crock,” and tossed the remains of her ice cream cone into a trash can. “If you’re done with us, I’m going to go shake some hands. I’ll tell you what—nothing about this better get out.”

  “It won’t,” Lucas said. To Carver and Dannon: “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Grant led her entourage across the street, with Green lingering behind. She said to Lucas, “Interesting.”

  “They did it,” Lucas said. “You take care, Alice.”

  “I can handle it,” she said.

  “You sure? You ever shot anyone?”

  “No, but I could.”

  Lucas looked after Dannon and Carver: “If it should come to that—and it could, if they think you might have figured something out—don’t give them a chance. If you do, they’ll kill you.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Ray Quintana was a fifty-one-year-old Minneapolis vice cop, a detective sergeant, and having thought about it, he figured that he’d thoroughly screwed the pooch, also known as having poked the pup or fucked the dog. He didn’t know who’d been calling him about Helen Roman, but he suspected that whoever it was had gone over to Roman’s house the night before and killed her.

  Quintana wasn’t a bad cop; okay, not a terrible one. He might have picked up a roll of fifties off a floor in a crack house that didn’t make it back to the evidence room; he might have found a few nice guns that the jerkwads didn’t need anymore, that made their way to gun shows in Wisconsin; he might have done a little toot from time to time, the random scatterings of the local dope dealers.

  But he’d put a lot of bad people in jail, and overall, given the opportunities, and the stresses, not a bad guy.

  When Tubbs had come to him, he’d put it out there as a straight business deal: Tubbs had heard from somewhere unknown that the Minneapolis Police Department had an outrageous file of kiddie porn. Quintana had known Tubbs since high school; Tubbs had been one of the slightly nerdy intellectuals on the edge of the popular clique, while Quintana had been metal shop and a football lineman.

  Tubbs had said, “I’ll give you five thousand dollars for that file. Nobody’ll ever know, because hell, if I admit it went through my hands, I’d be in a lot more trouble than you.”

  Quintana had asked him what he was going to do with it, and Tubbs had told him: “I’m gonna use it to screw Porter Smalls. I’m gonna get Taryn Grant elected to the U.S. Senate. When that happens, I’ll be fixed for life. I’ll remember you, too.”

  Had Grant hired him?

  “I don’t know—I’m being funded anonymously,” Tubbs said. “But that’s obviously where it comes from. I got the cash, and enough to split off five thousand for you.”

  How much had Tubbs gotten?

  “That’s between me and Jesus,” Tubbs said. “I’m taking all the risk. You get more than it’s worth, and if you don’t want the money—well, I’ll get another file. I know they’re floating around out there.”

  Quintana wanted the five grand. Hadn’t really needed it, but he wanted it.

  Quintana’s problem now was that Marion from Internal Affairs was on the trail, as was Davenport. Quintana knew Davenport, had worked with him, both on patrol and as detectives; Davenport scared him. Eventually, he thought, they’d get to him. Tubbs hadn’t exactly snuck into city hall. They might even have been seen talking together.

  Quintana was thinking all of this at his desk, on a Sunday morning, staring at the wall behind it, over all the usual detective litter. He was so focused that his next-door desk neighbor asked, “You in there, Ray?”

  “What?”

  “I thought you were having a stroke or something.”

  Quintana shook his head. “Just tired.”

  “Then what are you doing in here? It’s Sunday.”

  “I was thinking I shoulda gone to Hollywood and become an actor. I could have made the big time.”

  “Man, you have had a stroke.”

  He went back to staring.

  His delivery of the porn file could get him jail time. Worse, he suspected that whoever was calling him had killed Roman. Even worse than that, he’d talked casually with Turk Cochran when he’d come in from Roman’s place, and Cochran said that Davenport thought it might be a pro job.

  Even worse than that . . . Quintana suspected the same pro might be coming to shut him up.

  If Quintana kept his mouth shut, he might be killed as a clean-up measure. If he kept his mouth shut, Davenport could plausibly come after him as an accessory to murder, especially if word got out that he’d interviewed Roman, or had been seen with Tubbs.

  That all looked really bad.

  There was a bright side: Tubbs was presumably dead, and Roman certainly was. That meant that any story that he made up couldn’t really be challenged. If he could just come up with something good enough, he would probably stay out of jail, and might even hang on to his pension. At least, the half that his ex-wife wasn’t going to get.

  But what was the story? How could he possibly justify handing the file over to Tubbs? He thought and thought, and finally concluded that he couldn’t.

  So he thought some more, and at one o’clock in the afternoon, picked up the phone and called the union rep at home, and said he needed to talk to the lawyer, right then, Sunday or not.

  The union guy wanted to know what for, and Quintana said he really didn’t want to know what for. At two o’clock, he was talking to the lawyer, and at two-thirty, they called Marion. The lawyer, whose name was James Meers, said Quintana needed to talk with Marion and probably with Davenport, as soon as possible. Immediately, if possible.

  Lucas took the call from Marion, who said, “We got a break.”

  He’d set up the meeting for four o’clock.

  • • •

  LUCAS PARKED HIS PORSCHE in one of the cop-only slots next to city hall and threw his BCA card on the dash, which usually managed to piss somebody off; but they’d never towed him. The attorney’s office, where the meeting would be held, was a block or so away, in the Pillsbury building. As he walked along, he spotted Marion, whistled, and Marion turned, saw him, and waited.

  “I thought somebody liked my ass,” Marion said.

  “Probably not,” Lucas said. “You know what Quintana’s going to say?”

  “Well, since it’s you and me . . . I suspect it might have something to do with the porn. We’ve been looking at possibilities, and his name’s on the list. He had access to the relevant computers both in Vice and Domestics.”

  “Ah, boy. I’ve known him for a long time,” Lucas said. “Not a bad cop—give or take a little.”

  “You know something about the take?” M
arion asked.

  “No, no. If he’s taken anything, he’s smart enough that nobody would know,” Lucas said. “That’s what’s odd about this deal—why in God’s name would he give a porn file to anyone? Especially when it was going to be used like this? You know, a public hurricane. That doesn’t sound like the Ray Quintana we know and love. He’s always been a pretty cautious guy.”

  “Mmm. Got a pretty clean jacket, too,” Marion said. He looked up at the Pillsbury building. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  • • •

  QUINTANA AND MEERS were waiting, Quintana was in a sweat, and showing it. Meers was a soft-faced blond with gold-rimmed glasses in his mid-thirties, who looked like a British movie star, but Lucas couldn’t think which one. A guy who’d been in a tennis movie. When Lucas and Marion were seated, he said, “Ray’s got a problem. I don’t think it has to go any further than this . . . it’s not criminal, or anything, but he sorta screwed up.”

  Marion looked skeptical, lifted his hands, and looked at Quintana. “So what is it?”

  Before Quintana could say anything, Meers added: “He also has some valuable information for you, he thinks. The fact is, he didn’t have to do this—he’s doing it voluntarily, this meeting, and he’s not even going to try to deal on the information. He’s just going to give it to you, because he’s a good cop. I hope you keep that in mind.”

  Marion looked at his watch: “Are we done with the introductions?”

  Lucas was the good guy: he looked at Quintana and asked, “How you doin’, Ray?”

  “Ah, man, I messed up,” Quintana said.

  “What happened?”

  Quintana leaned forward in his chair, his hands clenched in his lap, and spoke mostly to Lucas. “About two weeks ago, Bob Tubbs came to see me. I knew him all the way back in high school, and we’d bump into each other from time to time. We weren’t friends, but you know, we were friendly. So, he comes to see me in the office. He sits down and says he’s got a big problem.”