Silken Prey

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.”
    •   •   •
    A FTER 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.
    •   •   •
    L UCAS 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.
    •   •   •
    O