Silken Prey

by John Sandford

  “What’re you doing next?” Lucas asked.

  “I’ve got to talk to the chief about that, but I’m inclined to try to figure out who was the least likely to have dumped the porn to Tubbs, and offer him immunity for information.”

  “When are you going to do it?”

  “After I talk to the chief, I’ll have to get with the lawyers . . . I’m thinking it couldn’t be any earlier than this evening, and most likely tomorrow.”

  “Keep talking to me,” Lucas said.

  • • •

  ON THE WAY BACK to his office, he called Smalls:

  “How’s the campaign going?”

  “Not well: that bitch has got everybody she knows whispering that the porn was really mine.”

  “I thought she told the TV people that her campaign wasn’t doing that, and she’d fire anybody who did,” Lucas said.

  “Well, of course she said that,” Smalls said. “She’s lying through her teeth.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because that’s what I’d do.”

  Lucas said, “Okay. Listen, we’re making more progress, but we need to find Tubbs’s accomplice in your office. That’ll break the thing wide open. If this was done for ideological reasons, if it was done by a spy, then somebody in your campaign has got to have doubts about that person. It’s not that easy to hide your basic beliefs . . . especially if you’re a college kid. So, I need somebody, not you but maybe your campaign manager, to talk to everybody about who that might be. We’re trying to catch a spy. I’m going to work it from the other end, the Democratic side, see if I can get them to cough somebody up.”

  Smalls was silent for a moment, then said, “I can do that. In fact, if we leak to the TV people that we’re looking for a spy . . . that might help convince them that there really was a dirty trick.”

  “Whatever,” Lucas said. “I’m not really trying to get you reelected.”

  Smalls laughed and said, “Gotta be killing a good liberal like you.”

  “Ah, I’m not that political. Anyway, if you could do that, I’ll start on the other side.”

  “Four days to the election,” Smalls said. “If it ain’t done by Sunday, I’m screwed.”

  • • •

  LUCAS CALLED KIDD: “Anything happening?”

  “Not yet. It’s delicate.”

  • • •

  FROM HIS OFFICE, he called Rose Marie Roux and asked, “What Democratic Party operator would be most likely to know who is spying on who?”

  “Well, that’d be Don Schariff, but don’t tell him I said so. Why?”

  “I’m going to jack him up,” Lucas said. “Where can I find him?”

  Schariff had an office at the DFL headquarters—Minnesota’s Democratic Party was technically called the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party—and Lucas found him there, by phone, and said he wanted to come over.

  “Should I be worried?” Schariff asked.

  Lucas said, “I don’t know. Should you?”

  “I’m wondering if I should have a lawyer sit in?”

  Lucas said, “I don’t know. Should you?”

  The DFL headquarters was a low white-brick building in a St. Paul business park across the Mississippi from downtown that possibly looked hip for fifteen minutes after it was built but no longer did. Lucas talked to a receptionist, who made a call. Schariff came out and got him, and said, “We’re down in the conference room.”

  “Who’s we?” Lucas asked.

  “Me and Daryl Larson, our attorney,” Schariff said. He was a stocky, dark-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard and dark-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a white shirt with a couple of pens in a plastic pocket protector. In any other circumstance, Lucas would have been willing to arrest him on the basis of the pocket protector alone. “I asked, and everybody said when you’re talking to a cop . . . especially one investigating the Grant-Smalls fight . . .”

  “Okay,” Lucas said.

  Larson was a tall, thin man whom Lucas knew through Weather’s association with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Larson raised money for the orchestra, usually by wheedling rich wives; it’d worked with Weather. When Lucas stepped into the room, Larson put down the paper he’d been reading and stood to shake hands. “Lucas, nice to see you. How’s Weather?”

  “Broke. She’s broke. She’s got no money left. She’s wondering how we’re going to feed the kids.”

  “Hate to hear that,” Larson said, with a toothy smile. “I’ll call her with my condolences.”

  The pleasantries out of the way, they settled into the conference chairs and Lucas outlined some of what he knew and believed about Tubbs’s disappearance. He finished by saying, “You guys are probably not going to want to talk about this, because when the media puts Tubbs’s disappearance together with the porn trick . . . it’s gonna look bad.”

  “I think we can agree on that,” Larson said for Schariff, who’d kept his mouth shut. “But how does this involve Don?”

  “I’ve been told, by somebody who knows these things, that Don knows a lot about the, mmm, tactical maneuverings of the party, and everybody involved in these things.”

  “I don’t do dirty tricks,” Schariff said.

  Larson put up a finger to shut him up, and said to Lucas, “Go on.”

  “So the technical fact of the matter is, the booby trap on Smalls’s computer had to be set the same morning it went off. Tubbs wasn’t there that morning. Hadn’t been there for a few days,” Lucas said. “So, he had an accomplice. That accomplice might have been acting out of pure greed . . . Tubbs might have paid him. But it’s equally likely that it’s an ideological thing, that Tubbs knew that there was a spy among the volunteers and got the guy to set the trap. Since Don knows most of the party’s operators . . . well, we thought he might also know who the spy is. If there is one.”

  “Getting information like that isn’t a crime,” Larson said.

  “I didn’t say it was—but framing Smalls is. Anybody who helped the spy put that stuff on the computer, or knows about it and doesn’t say so, is also in trouble. Conspiracy and all that. Prison time,” Lucas said. “I’m not trying to be impolite here, but you see where I’m going.”

  Schariff said, “Well, I—”

  Larson put the finger up again and said, “No.” Then to Lucas, “Don and I have to talk. I’ll call you later today.”

  “How about in ten minutes?” Lucas asked. “Things are getting really tight with the election.”

  “Later today,” Larson said. And he wouldn’t budge.

  • • •

  OUT ON THE SIDEWALK, Lucas took a phone call from Ruffe Ignace, a crime reporter for the Star Tribune: “We’re getting all kinds of different signals on Smalls. Smalls says he’s been cleared by Rose Marie Roux, and she says she’s made her statement, which, when you look at it, doesn’t quite clear him. In the meantime, people are whispering to our political people that the porn was his. Which way should I lean?”

  “I’d have to go off the record on that,” Lucas said. “Better yet, why don’t you call Rose Marie directly?”

  “She tends to blow me off,” Ignace said. “Anyway, could we stay a little bit on the record? A highly placed source in the investigation?”

  “I’m the only one investigating, so that won’t work,” Lucas said. “I need to go completely off.”

  “Shit. All right, we’re off the record,” Ignace said. “Which way should I lean?”

  “Smalls was framed. . . . He’s innocent.”

  “Thanks. We’re almost even now. You only owe me a little bit.”

  “Call me back in one minute,” Lucas said. “I might have something else for you.”

  “You in the can?”

  “No, I’m in a parking lot, leaning on my car,” Lucas said. “I need to think. One minute.”

  Lucas leaned against the car and thought about it. One minute later, Ignace called back and Lucas said, “Still off the record, okay?”

  “Okay. Against
my better judgment. The public’s trust in both government and the media would be so much higher if we identified—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re off the record. Call Don Schariff—S-C-H-A-R-I-F-F—at DFL headquarters. He’s got some kind of title there, but I’m not sure what. Anyway, he’s involved with DFL intelligence gathering—”

  “Spies.”

  “Yeah. Ask him if Bob Tubbs—”

  “The guy who disappeared . . . Holy shit, Tubbs? Tubbs dumped the porn on Smalls?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Lucas said. “Schariff might possibly have some information for you. But he’ll probably deny any involvement with Tubbs.”

  “You’re saying the Republicans killed Tubbs?”

  “Somebody did, but I don’t think it was the Republicans,” Lucas said. “I think there’s a cover-up going on. But it’s possible that Tubbs is just lying low, until the election is over.”

  “Not from what I hear,” Ignace said. “I hear the St. Paul cops think he’s dead. I hear you do, too.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do,” Lucas said.

  “All right, we’re more than even. You need anything from me?”

  “Not right now. But wait at least an hour before you call Schariff. I just talked to him two minutes ago, and if you call him right now, he’ll figure I talked to you. So wait.”

  “You talking to Channel Three?”

  “No. You’ve got it exclusively. So wait.”

  “I can do that,” Ignace said. “I can probably get one of our political guys to tie Schariff to Tubbs. They must’ve worked together a hundred times. Hot dog. But say it out loud: Tubbs used the porn to frame Smalls.”

  “I can’t say that,” Lucas said. “But I can say that you sometimes, against all odds, seem like a very, very smart guy.”

  “You can kiss my odds,” Ignace said. “But no, wait. Thanks, Lucas. I owe you big. If you’re ever indicted for anything, I’ll take your side.”

  • • •

  LUCAS WENT BACK TO his office, called his agents, got updates—still nothing on the Ape Man Rapist of Rochester—and waited for something from the DFL.

  Larson, the lawyer, called back two hours later. He was angry: “Lucas, I’d call you a miserable motherfucker if I didn’t need Weather’s money. You talked to Ignace, over at the Strib. You got him on Don’s case. He’s going to publicly connect Don to Bob Tubbs and Tubbs to the Smalls scandal.”

  “I’m not talking to anybody,” Lucas lied. “I’m just trying to get a little cooperation from people who might know why a guy got murdered.”

  “You lying motherfucker . . . pardon the language. Don’t talk to Ignace again: don’t, or I’ll find some way to screw you. I promise.”

  “Do your best, Daryl. But if I find out Don knew something that he’s not giving me, he’s going to prison,” Lucas said. “He’ll be part of the conspiracy if he tries to cover it up.”

  “There’s no cover-up,” Larson said. “If there’s a spy in the Smalls campaign, she was placed by Grant’s campaign, not by us.”

  “You said, ‘she,’” Lucas said. “So you know something.”

  “I’ll tell you exactly what we did,” Larson said. “We got everybody together, and we tried to figure out who was working for Smalls, all the volunteers, and then we showed the list to Don. He looked it over and said there was one volunteer, a young woman, Bunny Knoedler, who he was surprised to see working for the opposition.”

  “Bunny?”

  “Yes. Knoedler. K-N-O-E-D-L-E-R.”

  “How surprised was he?” Lucas asked.

  “He said she worked on a couple of our campaigns out-state that Tubbs was involved with,” Larson said. “Don said she seemed like a pretty dedicated DFLer.”

  Lucas said, “If this works out, Daryl, I’ll send you a hundred dollars myself.”

  “Fuck you, Lucas . . . but do say hello to Weather for me.”

  • • •

  LUCAS LOOKED AT HIS WATCH: getting late. He walked down the hall, saw Shrake on the phone at his desk, went that way. Shrake saw him coming, held up a finger, said, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, send me the paper. Okay. I gotta go.” He hung up and said, “You’re quivering.”

  “You got some time?”

  “Ah . . . no. Not if you want me to keep pushing the Jackson thing,” Shrake said.

  “All right. Where’s Jenkins?” Lucas asked.

  “He’s getting his oil changed,” Shrake said.

  “He’s . . .”

  “No, no, not that,” Shrake said. “He was going down to a Rapid Oil Change, getting the oil changed in his car.”

  “Call him, tell him to get back here,” Lucas said. “I need to terrorize a young woman, and I want one of you guys to come along.”

  “Well, hell, that’s right up his alley,” Shrake said. He picked up his phone and dialed.

  With Jenkins on the way back, Lucas called Smalls and asked the question. Smalls made a call and came back immediately: “The girl is working until nine o’clock on the phone bank. Is she the one who did this?”

  “Don’t know—but we got a tip that made us want to talk with her,” Lucas said. “Don’t do anything that would let her know we’re looking at her.”

  “In other words, keep my mouth shut.”

  “I’m far too polite to say that to a U.S. senator.”

  • • •

  JENKINS SHOWED UP and said, “I was next in line.”

  “That piece of shit you drive won’t know the difference,” Lucas said. “You could fill it up with a water hose. Let’s go.”

  Lucas briefed Jenkins on the way over. They got to Smalls’s headquarters a little after four o’clock, and the secretary, Helen, pointed out Bunny Knoedler, a tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed girl with bow-lips, who looked like she might have been Lucas’s daughter.

  The phone room was just another office, divided up into a half-dozen booths with acoustic tiling on the walls, to hush up the multiple voices. Knoedler was sitting in a booth with two hardwired phones and a list, and was dialing a number when Lucas leaned over her shoulder and pushed down the hang-up bar on the base set.

  She turned and looked up at him and said, “What . . . ?” and he could see in her eyes that she knew who he was.

  “We need you to come back into Senator Smalls’s office,” Lucas said. Jenkins loomed behind him, as though to keep her from running.

  “What . . . what?” she asked.

  “I think you know what, but we have to talk about it,” Lucas said. “Come along.”

  She put the phone down, and with the other phone-bank people suddenly gone silent, followed them out of the room, sandwiched between Jenkins and Lucas, like a perp walk.

  Smalls’s office was empty—not even a computer anymore—and Lucas pointed Knoedler at a chair. He and Jenkins remained on their feet, looking down at her. “You’re a Democratic spy,” Lucas said. “A friend of Bob Tubbs, and you worked with him on out-state campaigns. He planted you here to watch Senator Smalls’s campaign.”

  She was scared, and started to reply. She said, “I—”

  Lucas put up a hand to stop her. “We’re going to read you your rights. But I want to tell you, in addition to your rights, if you lie to me, that’s a crime. You have the right to remain silent, to say nothing at all, but you can’t lie to me. At this point, we’re looking for information.”

  Lucas looked at Jenkins and nodded, and Jenkins started the routine. “You have the right to remain silent . . .”

  When he was finished, Lucas asked, “Did you understand all of that? That you have a right to an attorney?”

  “I haven’t done anything illegal,” she said, looking at the two of them, looming.

  She hadn’t asked for a lawyer. This was delicate: Lucas didn’t want to talk about illegalities. Instead, he said, “Bob’s mother is worried sick about him, but we don’t know whether he’s just lying low, or if he’s been . . . killed. We’re afraid that he has been. If he’s still around, we desperately need
to know that.”

  “I . . . I . . . I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I’m worried, too. He was the guy I was supposed to talk to, if I found anything out. Then he just stopped answering his phone. I was calling him every night, and then . . . he was gone.”

  She’d just admitted being a spy. “Do you know where he got the pornography?” Jenkins asked. “Did he get it from a police officer?”

  “The pornography . . . He didn’t have anything to do with that,” she said. “That’s crazy. He didn’t do dirty tricks.”

  “We know you’re a little new with this political campaign stuff,” Lucas said. “But I’m here to tell you, Bob was involved in a few tricks in the past. And you’re sort of a dirty trick, spying on the Smalls campaign.”

  “Everybody does it,” she said. “Everybody. Smalls has a spy in the Grant camp, too. Just ask him. Ask him under oath.”

  “Okay,” Lucas said. Smalls had already as much as admitted that.

  He looked at Jenkins, who was the asshole. Jenkins said, “I dunno. I doubt that everybody does it. Gotta be some kind of a crime. And she’s not all that new with this stuff—she’s worked those out-state campaigns.”

  “It is not a crime,” she said, showing a little streak of anger. “It’s not illegal. I wouldn’t do anything illegal.”

  “We know that you were close to Bob,” Lucas said. “We know that Bob needed somebody to help set the computer so the pornography would pop up—”

  “I had nothing to do with that!” she said, her voice rising. “I would never do something that dirty. That’s rotten. That porn . . . that belongs to Smalls. Everybody knows about his attitude toward women, and sex . . .”

  “Come on,” Jenkins said, the scorn rough in his voice.

  “I didn’t . . .”

  They pushed her for another five minutes, and she claimed that she worked afternoons and nights, and hadn’t been around when the trap must’ve been set. They pushed on that, and she eventually admitted that she thought that Tubbs had been in the office at night, two days before the trap popped. They pushed on that, and finally she said the magic words.