Invisible Prey

cry.
    Burt Kline sat in his heavy leather chair, all the political photos on the walls behind him, all the plaques, the keys, the letters from presidents, and put his face in his hands, rocked back and forth, and wept. Nothing faked about it. His son, a porky twenty-three-year-old and heir apparent, kept smacking one meaty fist into the palm of the other hand. He’d been a football player at St. Johns, and wore a St. Johns T-shirt, ball cap, and oversized belt buckle.
    Burt Kline, blubbering: “She’s just a girl, how could you think…”
    Flowers yawned and looked out the window. Lucas said, “Senator Kline…”
    “I-I-I d-d-didn’t do it,” Kline sobbing. “I swear to God, I never touched the girl. This is all a lie…”
    “It’s a fuckin’ lie, he didn’t do it, those bitches are trying to blackmail us,” Burt Jr. shouted.
    “There’s that whole thing about the semen and the DNA,” Flowers said.
    The blubbering intensified and Kline swiveled his chair toward his desk and dropped his head on it, with a thump like a pumpkin hitting a storm door. “That’s got to be some kind of mistake,” he wailed.
    “ You’re trying to frame us,” Burt Jr. said. “You and that whole fuckin’ bunch of tree-hugging motherfuckers. That so-called lab guy is probably some left-wing nut…”
    “Here’s the thing, Senator Kline,” Lucas said, ignoring the kid. “You know we’ve got no choice. We’ve got to send it to a grand jury. Now we can send it to a grand jury here in Ramsey County, and you know what that little skunk will do with it.”
    “Oh, God…”
    “Just not right,” Burt Jr. said, smacking his fist into his palm. His face was so red that Lucas wondered about his blood pressure. Lucas kept talking to the old man: “Or, Jesse Barth said you once took her on a shopping trip to the Burnsville Mall and bought her some underwear and push-up bras…”
    “Oh, God…”
    “If you did that for sex, or if we feel we can claim that you did, then that aspect of the crime would have taken place in Dakota County. Jim Cole is the county attorney there, and runs the grand jury.”
    The sobbing diminished, and Kline, damp faced, looked up, a line of calculation back in his eyes. “That’s Dave Cole’s boy.”
    “I wouldn’t know,” Lucas said. “But if you actually took Jesse over to Burnsville…”
    “I never had sex with her,” Kline said. “But I might’ve taken her to Burnsville once. She needed back-to-school clothes.”
    “They wear push-up bras to high school?” Lucas asked.
    “Shit, yes. And thongs,” Flowers said. “Don’t even need Viagra with that kind of teenybopper quiff running around, huh, Burt?”
    “You motherfucker, I ought to throw you out the fuckin’ window,” Burt Jr. snarled at Flowers.
    “You said something like that last time,” Flowers said. He didn’t move, but his eyes had gone flat and gray like stones. “So why don’t you do it? Come on, fat boy, let’s see what you got.”
    The kid balled his fists and opened and shut his mouth a couple of times, and then Kline said to him, “Shut up and sit down,” then asked Lucas, “What do I gotta do?”
    “Agree that you took her to Burnsville. Agent Flowers will put that in his report and we will make a recommendation to the county attorney.”
    “Dave Cole’s boy…”
    “I guess,” Lucas said. “Neil Mitford would like to talk to you. Just on the phone.”
    “I bet he would,” Kline said.
     
    O N THE STREET, Flowers said, “I don’t like the smell of this, Lucas.”
    Lucas sighed. “Neither do I, Virgil. But there’s a big load of crap coming down the line, no matter what we do, and there’s no point in our people getting hurt, if we can confine the damage to Kline.”
    “And the Republicans.”
    “Well, Kline’s a Republican,” Lucas said.
    “Fuck me,” Flowers said.
    Lucas said, “Look, I’ve got loyalties. People have helped me out, have given me a job chasing crooks. I like it. But every once in a while, we catch one of these. If you can tell me who we ought to put in jail here—Burt Kline or Kathy Barth—then I’ll look into it. But honest to God, they’re a couple of dirtbags and nobody else ought to get hurt for it.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” Flowers was pissed.
    Lucas continued rambling. “There’s a guy I talk to over at the Star Tribune. Ruffe Ignace. He’s a guy who can sit on a secret, sit on a source. I’d never talk to Ruffe about something like this—I’ve