Silken Prey

by John Sandford

“I’m not sure of anything,” Lucas said. He looked at his watch: “Gotta make a call. I’ll talk to you again before I leave.”

  • • •

  THE SUN WAS UP, somewhere behind the clouds, but exactly where was hard to tell. In any case, it was light outside when Lucas wandered down to the end of the driveway and called the governor.

  The governor’s phone rang four times, then Henderson said, “This time of the morning, it can’t be good.”

  “About your party’s senator-elect: her top security guy murdered another one of her security people and tried to bury him by the Mississippi halfway to St. Cloud. We interrupted that and there was a shoot-out and he was killed. The crime scene has found another dug-up area nearby. I think they’ll be pulling Tubbs out of there, in the next couple of hours.”

  After a moment, the governor laughed and said, “You are a piece of work, Lucas. You and that fuckin’ Flowers, both of you. I really get my entertainment dollar’s worth.”

  “The last person who said I was a piece of work, offered to take me to bed,” Lucas said.

  “Well, I’ll pass on that,” Henderson said. Then, after a moment of silence, the governor said, “I’ll have to mediate this. I’ll have to confer with other Important People. Porter, of course, is going to lay an ostrich-sized egg. I don’t see how Grant can stay on as a senator, and frankly, that’s about the best possible outcome I could have imagined.”

  “How’s that?” Lucas asked.

  “Guess who would appoint her replacement?” Henderson said. “I’d have Porter Smalls out of my hair and a new senator who would be wildly happy about supporting me for a better job . . . if somebody goes looking for, say, a vice president.”

  “That hadn’t occurred to me,” Lucas said.

  “Because you’re not a natural politician,” the governor said. He laughed again. “This is the kind of thing that makes life interesting.”

  “Unless you’re Dannon. Or Carver.”

  “Well, yeah, I suppose,” the governor said. “I’ll assign somebody to say a prayer for them.”

  • • •

  AFTER THAT, IT WAS a lot of crime-scene stuff, lawyers and political wrangling. Tubbs was dug up and after a nasty autopsy, he was reburied. He’d been hit on the head with a heavy, rounded object like a baseball bat. Death had not been quick.

  They found the smear of blood that Tubbs had left in Dannon’s car. Unfortunately, the crime-scene tech who found it, and sampled it, unknowingly destroyed the scrawled TG—for Taryn Grant—that Tubbs had hoped they’d see. DNA proved that Tubbs had been in Dannon’s car, but they already knew that Dannon or Carver had killed him. So Tubbs’s last, fading, flickering effort came to nothing.

  • • •

  LUCAS GOT STATEMENTS from everybody and Alice Green had been telling the truth: at the time Grant went to the bedroom with Dannon, Green had been assigned to the door, and could be seen doing that on the security tapes. Connie Schiffer, in particular, had been curious about Grant and Dannon leaving the party, heading back to the bedroom, and had exchanged looks with Green.

  One other politician, arriving late to congratulate the new senator, spoke to Green at the door, and remembered that Grant had not been in the room when he got there. He asked for her, and a moment later she reappeared from the direction of the bedroom, to give him a hug.

  The tapes of the bedroom showed nothing, because the room started out dark. Then there was a flicker of light, apparently when Grant walked into the room, and she’d reached out (automatically, she said) and hit the privacy switch, which turned the cameras off. A minute later, she hit the privacy switch again (again, she said, an automatic reflex) and turned the cameras back on as she left. She left the door open, so there was a bit of light, and then a short time later, the door mysteriously closed again, killing the light. There was nothing more on the tape for several hours, when Grant got back from the hotel and hit the privacy switch on the way to the bathroom.

  The next people on the tape were Grant, Lucas, Del, and the others, going down to investigate the bedroom.

  All of that supported what both Grant and Green had said, except on one point: Grant hadn’t been in the bedroom long enough to get to the bathroom and pee, not unless she’d set the women’s North American land-speed record for micturition. Nor had she reported the cut-out windows, which seemed impossible to miss. The toilet was in a separate booth, and the window was right overhead. But she was sticking to her story, saying that she hadn’t bothered to turn the light on in the bathroom and was in a hurry and simply hadn’t noticed the windows. In reality, Lucas suspected she’d gone back to talk with Dannon, but didn’t want to admit it, because the next thing Dannon did was kill Carver.

  He also suspected the robbery had taken place when the door mysteriously closed, because that must have been when the phone was stolen; and after the party had gone to the hotel for the victory celebration, the house had been closed and the dogs turned loose.

  He further suspected that Green, or possibly Carver, could have had something to do with the robbery: probably through an accomplice. He thought that because they monitored the security cameras, and if Grant had ever forgotten to turn the cameras off, could have seen her opening the safe; they probably knew something about the contents of the safe, and that it would be well worth hitting; and they knew about the security measures outside. Also, both Green and Carver had his phone number.

  He still didn’t understand why either one would call him with the message from “Taryn.”

  That made no sense at all.

  • • •

  ONE OF THE CRIME-SCENE crew had found what appeared to be two small imprints under the arborvitae bush below the bathroom window. One looked like an impression from the outer edge of a hand; the other just a little curve in the dirt, possibly the impression of a heel. He’d taken photos of both.

  When he showed the photos to Lucas, he said, “We’re not sure that they are what I think they are. I couldn’t testify to it . . . I mean, I could say what I think, but any good defense attorney would tear my ass off.”

  “Cut the crap: What do you think?”

  “The curves are small . . . like a small hand and a small heel. Like they were made by a woman.”

  Somebody with large balls, like an ex–Secret Service woman, Lucas thought. Could Green have cut the windows out earlier in the day, to make way for an accomplice? But that seemed unlikely. Why would she think that Grant wouldn’t be going back to pee, and wouldn’t notice the cut-out windows?

  • • •

  THE POLITICAL WRANGLING WAS more amusing than anything. The governor called, laughing again, a week after the murders hit the newspapers, and said, “Well, I called and told our senator-elect what all the Important People said, and she said I should write it all down on a piece of paper, roll it into a sharp little cone, and shove it where the sun don’t shine. She’s not quitting.”

  “Jesus, I thought she had to, from what I’ve been reading,” Lucas said.

  “With a billion dollars, you don’t have to do much of anything you don’t want to, and she doesn’t want to quit,” the governor said. “If she does a few million in political advertising over the next six years, nobody’ll even remember this little dustup. So, we’re moving right along to the important stuff, like revising the estate tax.”

  “That’s the end of it?”

  “Not quite. I’ve invited Grant to a little confab in my office tomorrow, with Porter Smalls. Mitford will be there, and her campaign manager, and I’d like you to sit in. And I’ll get Rose Marie to come along.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I want everybody clear on what happened here, and why everybody did what they did—including you and me,” the governor said.

  • • •

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, they all got together at the Capitol, in the governor’s conference room: Henderson, Grant, Smalls, Mitford, Rose Marie, Lucas, Connie Schiffer, and Alice Green, still working as Taryn’s
security.

  For a political gathering, there was a remarkable lack of even symbolic amity. The governor shook hands with everybody, but nobody shook hands with anybody else.

  The governor sat at the head of the conference table, cleared his throat, and said, “I don’t expect all of us to be pals after this, but I’d at least like to get things clear for everybody. Senator-elect Grant has, of course, made it clear that she didn’t have anything to do with the rogue security people on her campaign staff, and in fact feels that she was being set up for long-term blackmail by those same people. In any case, she will not resign and will take her seat in the Senate in January.”

  Smalls said, “I think that—”

  The governor: “Shut up for a minute, will you, Porter? Let me finish.”

  “I just—”

  “You’ll have your chance,” Henderson said. He looked at Taryn Grant and asked, “Setting aside all the BS aimed at the media, am I correct that this is your position?”

  Grant nodded: “Yes.”

  Connie Schiffer started to say, “I think we all know that Senator Smalls—”

  The governor interrupted: “No. Be quiet. We don’t want any of that. So we know that Senator-elect Grant will take her seat in the Senate. I’ll now turn to Lucas Davenport, the lead investigator in this case. Lucas, do you have any issues that you will continue to pursue?”

  Lucas said, “There are several small mysteries about the whole case that I’d like to resolve, and some minor entanglements—for example, Minneapolis still has to decide what to do about the files that were used to frame Senator Smalls. But at this moment, I see no further possibility for arrests or prosecutions involving anyone in this room. I will tell you that I suspect that Senator-elect Grant is not telling us all that we need to know to effectively close out this case. I have no proof of that, and I see no way to get any proof, unless it turns out that either Douglas Dannon or Ronald Carver has somewhere left behind some evidence of her involvement. We have been through both of their town houses, and through Dannon’s safe-deposit box at Wells Fargo. We found considerable cash, but we found nothing that would implicate Senator-elect Grant in any wrongdoing.”

  “So you’re at the end of that road,” Henderson said.

  “Yes, unless something extraordinary turns up, but I don’t think that will happen.”

  Henderson said, “Okay. I want to tell everybody that I asked that Lucas be assigned to this case, because I trust him absolutely. And now I am ordering him not to speak to any media or to anyone else regarding his suspicions about anybody in this case, unless or until he has absolute proof of wrongdoing. Is that clear to everybody? Lucas?”

  “That’s clear,” Lucas said.

  Henderson turned to Smalls: “Porter.”

  Smalls said, “This is one of the most disgraceful moments in the history of American politics and I’m a student of that history, so I know. I was the victim of the most brutal character assassination ever carried out against an American politician, and the main financial sponsor of that assassination actually benefits, and goes to the Senate. Well, I’ll tell you—there are people on both sides of the Senate aisle who are frightened by what was done here. I will go to Washington for the lame-duck session, and I will talk to my friends there.”

  He looked directly at Grant: “I will tell them that I think you are guilty of the murder of three people and that you were the sponsor of the child-pornography smear, and that I think a person of your brand of social pathology—I believe you are a psychopath, and I will tell them that—has no place in the Senate. And I will continue to argue that here in Minnesota for the full six years of your term, and do everything I can to wreck any possible political career that you might otherwise have had.”

  Grant smiled at him and said, “Fuck you.”

  The governor said, “Okay, okay, Porter. Now, Taryn, do you have anything for us?”

  “No, not really. I’ll be the best senator I can be, I reject any notion that I was involved in this craziness.” She looked at Smalls: “As for you, bring it on. If you want to spend six years fighting over this, by the time we’re done, you’ll be unemployable and broke. I would have no problem setting aside, say, a hundred million dollars for a media campaign to defend myself.”

  “Fuck you,” Smalls said. And, “By the way, I’d like to thank Agent Davenport for his work on this. I thought he did a brilliant job, even if I wound up losing.”

  Grant jumped in: “And I’d like to say that I think Davenport created the conditions that unnecessarily led to the deaths in this case, that if he’d been a little more circumspect, we might still have Helen Roman and Carver and Dannon alive, and might be able to actually prove what happened, so that I’d be definitively cleared.”

  Smalls made a noise that sounded like a fart, and Henderson said, “Thank you for that comment, Porter.”

  After some more back-and-forth, Henderson declared the meeting over. “We all need to go back and think about what we’ve heard here today, think really hard about it. We need to start winding down the war. We don’t need anything like this to ever happen again.”

  The people at the meeting flowed out of the conference room, into the outer office, but then stopped to talk: Grant with Schiffer and Rose Marie, Smalls with Mitford. Henderson pulled Lucas aside and said, “Let’s keep the rest of the investigation very quiet. Back to quiet mode.”

  “Not much left to do,” Lucas said. “I’ll let you know if anything else serious comes up, but I think it’s over.”

  “Good job,” Henderson said. “But goddamn bloody. Goddamn bloody.”

  Lucas saw Green hovering on the edge of the gathering and waved her over. She came, looking a little nervously over at Grant, who was talking with Rose Marie and paying no attention to Green.

  Lucas said, “Governor, this is Alice Green, a former Secret Service agent and Ms. Grant’s security person. I think she’s a woman of integrity, and if you someday have an opening on your staff for a personal security aide . . . she’s quite effective.”

  Henderson smiled and took her hand and didn’t immediately let it go. He said, “Well, my goodness, as we wind up for this upcoming presidential season, I might very well have an opening . . .”

  Lucas drifted away, and let them talk.

  • • •

  OTHER BITS OF THE CASE fell to the roadside, one piece after another.

  The Minneapolis Police Department showed little appetite for investigating itself concerning the possibility that dozens of its personnel had been viewing child porn as a form of recreation. A few scraps of the story got out, and there were solemn assurances that a complete investigation would be done, even as the administration was shoveling dirt on it. Quintana, no dummy, apologized to everybody, while hinting that he’d have to drag it all out in the open if anything untoward happened to him. He took a reprimand and a three-day suspension without pay, and went back on the job.

  Knoedler, the Democratic spy, got lawyered up, and the lawyers quickly realized that everything could be explained by the Bob Tubbs–Helen Roman connection, and there were no witnesses to the contrary. They put a “Just Politics” label on it, and it stuck.

  Clay, the suspect in the Roman murder, was freed, and Turk Cochran, the Minneapolis homicide detective, mildly pissed about that, gave Lucas’s cell phone number to Clay and told him to check in at least once a week and tell Lucas what he was up to. Clay started doing that, leaving long messages on Lucas’s answering service when the call didn’t go through, which threatened to drive Lucas over the edge.

  • • •

  TWO WEEKS AFTER the shootings, a few days after the meeting in the governor’s office, Dannon’s aunt came from Wichita, Kansas, to Minneapolis, to sign papers that would transfer Dannon’s worldly goods to her. She was his closest relative, as his parents had died twenty years earlier in a rural car accident, and he’d left no will that anybody could find.

  The crime-scene people told Lucas that she would be at
his apartment to examine it and to sign an inventory, and Lucas stopped by for one last look. A BCA clerk was there, with the inventory, and Lucas found nothing new to look at. The aunt, after signing the inventory, gave him a box covered with birthday-style wrapping paper; the box had been unwrapped, and opened.

  “I think you should give this to that woman, the senator,” the aunt said. Her name was Harriet Dannon.

  Lucas took out a sterling silver frame. Inside was a news-style photo of Grant on the campaign, shaking hands with some young girls, with Dannon looming in the background. The frame was inscribed, “I’ll always have your back. Love, Doug.”

  “I never thought he was a bad man,” Harriet Dannon said. “But I mostly knew him as a boy. He was a Boy Scout. . . . I never thought . . .”

  • • •

  LUCAS DIDN’T QUITE KNOW why Harriet Dannon thought he should give the picture to Grant, but he took it, and back outside, thought, Might as well. He was not far from her house, and he drove over, pulled into the driveway, pushed the call button.

  A full minute later—there may have been some discussion, he thought—the gate swung back. He got out, walked to the front door, which opened as he approached. Alice Green was there: “What’s up?”

  “Closing out Dannon’s town house. Is Senator Grant in?”

  “She’s waiting in the library. With the dogs.”

  Lucas reached inside his sport coat and touched his .45, and Green grinned at him. “Won’t be necessary,” she said. And very quietly: “Thanks for the governor. That’s going to work out.”

  “Careful,” he said.

  • • •

  GRANT WAS IN THE LIBRARY, sitting in the middle of the couch with the two dogs at her feet, one on either side of her; like Cleopatra and a couple of sphinxes, Lucas thought.

  He walked in and she asked, “What do you want?”

  “I was over at Dannon’s apartment, we’re closing it out. He left this: I guess he never had a chance to give it to you.”

  She looked at the photo, and then the inscription, then tossed it aside on the couch. “That’s it?”