Silken Prey

So . . . we’ll see,” Henderson said. “By the way . . . do you know her? Have you interviewed her?”
    “No, I’ve never met her,” Lucas said. “Seen her on TV.”
    “She’d be the main beneficiary, of course, if Smalls went down.”
    “I’ll be talking to her, unless something else breaks before I get there,” Lucas said. “Today, I’ve got one more of Smalls’s staff members to interview, and I need to talk to my computer people about their testimony. Make sure everything is okay.”
    “Stay in touch,” Henderson said.
    •   •   •
    T HE AFTERNOON was like walking through tar: Lucas tracked down and interviewed the last of Smalls’s volunteer staff, and the interview produced nothing. He talked to ICE and Kidd after their testimony, and learned that it had been perfunctory. He talked again with both Rose Marie and the governor, and updated Morris on the state of his investigation.
    “That’s not much of a state,” Morris said when he was finished. “Investigation-wise, that’s like the state of Kazakhstan.”
    “Tell me about it,” Lucas said.
    “What’s next on the menu?”
    “Dinner. It’s just nice enough outside to barbecue. The housekeeper’s out there now with ten pounds of baby-back ribs, sweet corn from California, honey-coated corn bread, baked potatoes with sour cream and butter, and mushroom gravy.”
    “You sadistic sonofabitch,” Morris said. “I already finished my celery.”

CHAPTER 10
    T aryn Grant wore cotton pajamas at night, and had just gotten into them, in a dressing room off the hallway in her bedroom suite, a few minutes before midnight, when she heard—or maybe felt—footsteps on the wooden floor coming down to the bedroom. The security people were the only others in the house, and weren’t welcome in her bedroom wing.
    Something had happened, or was happening. She took down the Japanese kimono that she used as a robe, pulled it over her shoulders, and headed toward the door, just as the doorbell burped discreetly. She pressed an intercom button: “Yes?”
    “It’s me, Doug. I need to talk with you.”
    She popped the door and nodded down the hall: “In the sitting room.”
    “Yes,” he said, and led the way.
    The sitting room had three big fabric chairs arrayed around a circular table; the walls were in the form of a five-eighths dome—as though a big slice had been taken out of an orange—and kept their voices contained.
    “What happened?” she asked, as she settled into a chair facing him.
    “I talked with our source at the AG’s office. The police unraveled how Tubbs set up the computer, and they’ve tied his disappearance to the porn. I’ve got a lot of details, if you want to hear them, but the main thing is, the police will probably want to interview you, since you had the most to gain from the porn attack. You’ll need to figure out a response. The guy coming to interview you will probably be this Davenport, who I told you about.”
    “Give me the details,” she said. “All of them. I’ll forget them later.”
    Dannon spent twenty minutes on the briefing, reviewing what had happened that day at the attorney general’s office, and the results so far of investigations by Davenport and a St. Paul homicide cop named Morris. “We’ve had one piece of great good luck: when they found Tubbs’s hideout spot, there was no mention of the porn or any dirty tricks, other than the porn file itself. They did find some cash, and it may have been from us, but we were careful there, and it’s untraceable.”
    When he was done, Taryn asked, “The fact that you talked to this guy at the AG’s office, could that come back to us?”
    “No, I don’t think so—not in a way that could hurt us,” Dannon said. “I left the impression that we were desperate to work out the political implications of what was going on, this close to the election. Of course, when he took the money, he was technically committing a crime, so he won’t be inclined to talk.”
    “Unless he suddenly starts feeling guilty,” Taryn said.
    “Not a problem with this guy,” Dannon said. “He believes he’s on the side of Jesus, helping us beat Smalls. He knows taking the money was a crime of some kind, but he doesn’t think he’s really done anything wrong. He sees the money more as compensation for his time. A consultation fee.”
    “Amazing how that works,” Taryn said.
    “Yeah. Anyway, it all brings up the question about Tubbs’s girl,”