Silken Prey

what?”
    “Like one of the photos may have come out of the Minneapolis cops,” Lucas said. “Maybe the whole file did. Maybe some cops were trying to get rid of Smalls. Maybe Tubbs was killed to seal off the connection.”
    “No, no,” Morris said. A few seconds later, “You don’t have to drive me—I’ll follow you over. I want that receipt. You can keep the papers and the money, too. But I want copies of every single goddamn document on my computer tomorrow morning.”
    “Fast as I can get it to you, Roger,” Lucas said. “I promise.”

CHAPTER 7
    L ucas got the contents of Tubbs’s hidey-hole into the BCA lab, and the tech there, called in on overtime, loaded up the files and began printing out the documents. When he found the porn file, he asked, “What about this trash?”
    “Aw, man,” Lucas said. They dialed into the file, and he switched to full drama mode: “Aw, Jesus Christ.”
    He’d given Morris a receipt for the pile of evidence and Morris had gone home with the promise of complete access in the morning. Now Lucas called him at home and said, “You might want to get over here.”
    “What happened?”
    “We pretty much confirmed that Tubbs–porn connection,” Lucas said. “He’s got the file on one of these thumb drives.”
    “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Morris said.
    •   •   •
    W HEN M ORRIS ARRIVED, THE first thing he asked Lucas was, “If this file was a setup, if Tubbs did it, and if Tubbs was killed the same day the file was found . . . that night . . . then he’d have had to go to Smalls’s office that morning. Right? He couldn’t have put it on the day before.”
    “That’s right,” Lucas said.
    “I’ll tell you what: you can check us on this, but we backtracked Tubbs, to see who he’d talked to, and where he’d been, the day he disappeared, and that night. He didn’t go to Smalls’s campaign office. We’ve accounted for all his time back a couple of days, and he wasn’t there.”
    “Then . . . he had to have an associate.”
    “Who might’ve gotten scared when he saw how crazy this whole thing got,” Morris said. “It might’ve started out as a dirty trick, and all of a sudden, people are talking about multiple felonies and Smalls is going nuts on TV. He figures if it comes out, who put the file on Smalls’s computer, he’s heading for prison. So he talks to Tubbs, one thing leads to another . . . and
bang
.”
    “That seems reasonable,” Lucas said, because it was.
    They talked about the possibilities as Lucas walked Morris up to the lab, where Lucas said to the lab tech, “You need to call the St. Paul computer lab guy. There’s got to be some trigger for the porn file booby trap. Between the two of you, I want you to find it tonight, so Roger and I know what it is when we come in tomorrow.”
    “That’s a tall order,” the tech said.
    “That’s your problem,” Lucas said. “It’s gotta be there: find it.”
    To Morris: “I want to show you this one group of photos.” He ran through the file, found the pictures of Otis and the others in the group sex, and tapped the caption. “These were the pictures that were presented in court. Unless you believe that the Minneapolis cops are posting this stuff on the Internet, then they had to come out of the Minneapolis computer system. In fact, I was told by this girl”—he tapped Otis’s face—“that the photos presented in court were on paper, and were seized when the cops raided the porn operation. I’m thinking . . . this had to come out of Minneapolis’s evidence file. I mean, look at the caption: that’s cop stuff.”
    Morris rubbed his forehead: “You’re saying somebody in Minneapolis helped Tubbs set up Smalls?”
    “It’s a possibility,” Lucas said.
    “Then . . .
that
guy could be the killer,” Morris said.
    Lucas shrugged.
    Morris watched Lucas for a moment, then switched directions: “Have you looked at the document files?”
    “I’m getting them printed now,” Lucas said. “It looks like it’s the same as the other papers—blackmail stuff, cover-your-ass files, whatever. A lot of corrupt bullshit.”
    Morris considered for a moment, then said, “We need a conference. We need the heavies on this. I’ll call you tomorrow at eight o’clock—”
    “Nine would be better,” Lucas said.
    “Nine o’clock, and we’ll both have lists of who should be in the conference.”
    “It’s a plan,” Lucas said.
    He and Morris