Silken Prey

program together.”
    “Would two or three hours be better? I’ve got something else I could do.”
    “Two hours would be better,” Kidd said. “We’re expecting some guests and I’m in the kitchen, being a scullery maid.”
    “See you then: two hours.”
    Lucas put the pipes back together and screwed the panel back on, walked back to the car, and headed north up I-35.
    •   •   •
    S ANDRA M AE O TIS LIVED in a manufactured home in a manufactured home park off I-494 north of St. Paul. She also ran an illegal daycare center.
    Otis was sitting on the stoop smoking when Lucas pulled into the driveway: she had bleached-blond hair, black eyebrows, and small metallic eyes like the buttons on 501 jeans. She regarded him with a certain resignation as he got out of the car, flicked the butt-end of the smoke off into the weeds, turned and shouted, “Carl, knock it the fuck off,” and looked back at Lucas.
    As Lucas walked up, a little boy, maybe three, dressed in a Kool-Aid-spotted T-shirt and shorts, and crying, came out and said, “Carl hit me, really hard.”
    Otis said, “I know, Spud, we’ll get him later. You go on back in there and tell him that if he hits you again, I’ll put him in the garbage can and let you beat on it.” Back to Lucas: “How long have cops been driving Porsches?”
    “Personal car,” Lucas said. The musky odor of weed hung around her head.
    She looked at him for a minute, then said, “So give me some money if you’re so rich.”
    Lucas opened his mouth to say something when another small boy, a couple years older than the first, came out crying, rubbing an eye with his fist, and said, “Spud says you’re gonna put me in the garbage can again.”
    “Yeah, well, don’t hit him,” Otis told the kid.
    The kid said, “Sometimes Spud really pisses me off.”
    “But don’t hit him,” Otis said. “You see this guy? He’s a cop and he’s got a big gun. If you hit Spud again, he’s going to shoot you.”
    The kid stepped back, his mouth open in fear. Lucas blurted, “No, I won’t.”
    But the kid backed away, still scared, and vanished inside. Otis said, “So what do you want? I’m not responsible for Dick’s debts. We’re all over with.”
    Lucas looked around for something to sit on: the stoop would never touch the seat of his Salvatore Ferragamo slacks. There was nothing, so he stood, looming over her. “Three years ago, you were picked up and taken to juvie court as part of a prostitution ring that was busted over in Minneapolis.”
    “That’s juvenile and it doesn’t count,” Otis said.
    “It does count, because it’s probably messed up your head, but that’s not exactly what I want to talk about,” Lucas said. “Sometime in there, when these people were running you, they took pictures of you and Mark Trebuchet and three adults in a sex thing. Did they sell those pictures?”
    “I don’t know if they had time, before they were busted,” Otis said. “They were busted, like, two days after the photo shoot. I think the photographer bragged to the wrong guy about it.”
    “Now, who was this? Who’s ‘they’?” Lucas asked.
    “The Pattersons. Irma and Bjorn.”
    “The Pattersons ran the business?”
    “Yeah. They’re doing fifteen years. They got twelve to go. And if you’re a cop, how come you didn’t know that?”
    “Because I’m operating off a telephone,” Lucas said. “Our guys just found the pictures . . . but the pictures were in court? You, and the two men and the woman and Mark?”
    “Yup.”
    “Did the cops get them off the Internet? The evidence photos?”
    “I don’t think so. The Internet was already getting too dangerous, with cops all over the place. The Pattersons were really scared about that, telling their clients to stay away from the ’net. They mostly printed them out and sent them around that way,” Otis said. “They said they were for my
portfolio
. They said I was going to be a movie star. Like that was going to happen, the big fat liars.”
    “So what happened in court?”
    “Well, I had to testify about what we did. The sex and all. And about the pictures. They wanted us to identify the adults, but, you know, we didn’t know who they were,” she said. “I’d seen them around, but I didn’t know their names. I think they took off when the Pattersons got busted.”
    “Were there a lot of other pictures put in at the same time? In court? Of you?”
    She frowned. “No. When the Pattersons