Invisible Prey

big shopping centers, the Burnsville Mall, was looking to expand, and some of its commercial neighbors thought that was a bad idea.
    Lucas thought, “Hmmm,” and closed his eyes. Dakota County…
     
    L UCAS TOLD the housekeeper to call a plumber, kissed Sam on the head, dodged a spoonful of oatmeal, and went to look up Kidd’s phone number. Kidd was the artist who might be able to help with the reckless painting. Lucas found his book, dialed, and got a dairy. Kidd had either changed numbers, or left town.
    He glanced at his watch: Kidd’s apartment was down by the river. He could drop by after he talked with Neil Mitford. Mitford was the governor’s hatchet man; he tried to cut out at least one gizzard every morning before going out for a double latte grande.
    Lucas finished his coffee and headed up the stairs to suit up; and once outside, it was another great day, puffy fair-weather clouds under a pale blue sky, just enough wind to ruffle the stars ’n’ stripes outside an elementary school. He motored along Summit Avenue toward the Capitol, elbow out, counting women on cell phones making illegal turns.
     
    M ITFORD HAD a modest office down the hall from the governor’s, in what he said had been a janitor’s closet when the building was first put up. With just enough room for a desk, a TV, a computer, a thousand books, and a pile of paper the size of a cartoon doghouse, it might have been.
    Mitford himself was short and burly, his dark hair thinning at the crown. He’d been trying to dress better lately, but in Lucas’s opinion, had failed. This morning he was wearing pleated khaki slacks with permanent ironed-in wrinkles, a striped short-sleeved dress shirt, featureless black brogans with dusty toes, a chromed watch large enough to be a cell phone, and two actual cell phones, which were clipped to his belt like cicadas on a tree trunk.
    Altogether, five or six separate and simultaneous fashion faux pas, in Lucas’s view, depending on how you counted the cell phones.
    “Lucas.” Mitford didn’t bother to smile. “How are we going to handle this?”
    “That seems to be a problem,” Lucas said, settling in a crappy chair across the desk from Mitford. “Everybody’s doing a tap dance.”
    “You know, Burt backed us on the school-aid bill,” Mitford said tentatively.
    “Fuck a bunch of school-aid bill,” Lucas said. “School aid is gonna be a bad joke if the word gets out that he’d been banging a ninth-grader.”
    Mitford winced. “Tenth-grader.”
    “Yeah, now,” Lucas said. “But not when they started, if she’s telling the truth.”
    “So…”
    “I’ve got one possibility that nobody has suggested yet, and it’s thin,” Lucas said.
    “Roll it out,” Mitford said.
    “The girl says Kline once took her to the Burnsville Mall and bought her clothes—a couple of blouses, skirts, some white cotton underpants, and a couple of push-up bras. She said he liked to have a little underwear-and-push-up-bra parade at night. Anyway, he got so turned on that they did a little necking and groping in the parking lot. She said she, quote, cooled him off, unquote.”
    “All right. So…the push-up bra?”
    “She said he bought her gifts in return for the sex.”
    Mitford digressed: “He really said, ‘Oh God, lick my balls, lick my balls’?”
    “According to Virgil Flowers, Kline admits he might have said it, but he would’ve said it to Mom, not the daughter,” Lucas said.
    “Ah, Jesus,” Mitford said. “This is dreadful.”
    “Kline said his old lady never…”
    “Hey, hey—forget it.” Mitford rubbed his face, and shuddered. “I know his old lady. Anyway, he took the kid to the Burnsville Mall and groped her and she cooled him off…Is that a big deal?”
    “That’d be up to you,” Lucas said. “We can make an argument that he was buying the clothes in return for sex, because of the kid’s testimony. And then there was the touching in the car, what you call your basic manual stimulation. So one element of the crime happened at the mall.”
    “So what?”
    “The mall is in Burnsville,” Lucas said, “which happens to be in Dakota County. Dakota County, in its wisdom, elected itself a Republican as county attorney.”
    Mitford instantly brightened. “Holy shit! I knew there was a reason we hired you.”
    “That doesn’t mean…” Lucas began.
    Mitford was on his feet, circling his desk, shaking a finger at Lucas. “Yes, it does. One way or the other, it does. If