Silken Prey

by John Sandford

  “It’s that fuckin’ Rodriguez, isn’t it?” Carver said. “Listen, I gave him a down-check on an evaluation, stalled him out at E-6, and he never got over it. Said he was going to get me. Now he’s talking to you, right?”

  Lucas spoke right past him: “I can offer you a deal. You give me anything that points at Dannon, or Grant, for that matter, and we’ll let sleeping dogs lie. Nobody will mention the word ‘Afghanistan.’ I can’t offer you immunity for anything you’ve done here in Minnesota, only a prosecutor can set that up, but I can offer to testify in your behalf, in any court case that comes up, to say that you cooperated and aided the investigation.”

  Carver looked at Lucas over the coffee, which he hadn’t touched, and finally said, “That’s it? That’s all you got?”

  “I can’t tell you what else we have—but one reason we came to you, is that we can hang the child porn thing on Dannon, and the two killings that follow the child porn. All by itself, the porn will get him twenty years. We need one more little thing to get him for the whole works—we’re still processing the Roman scene, and we’ve got quite a bit of DNA. That takes a while to come back. If it comes back Dannon, he’s done. If it comes back Carver, and you’ve been stonewalling us . . . then that’s done. No deal. No way.”

  Carver shook his head: “First of all, as a suck-ass small-town cop, you got no idea of what you’re getting into with the army. They cleared me, and if you try to prove otherwise, they’ll hand you your ass. And I don’t give a shit about any governor. The army’s bigger than any governor, and they’ll hand him his ass, too. Not because they’re protecting me. Because those generals, they’ll be protecting themselves.”

  “I’m willing to find out,” Lucas said.

  “Then you’re gonna have to,” Carver said. “Second of all, even if I knew something, I wouldn’t tell you, because you can’t even give me immunity. The best I could hope for, if I knew about these killings, would be what? Life with parole? Twenty years? Say I keep my mouth shut, and you’re right about the governor and all that, and the army pulls me back . . . nothing they do could be worse than what you’re talking about. To tell you the truth, given what happened that whole night . . . heroes in a firefight . . . I don’t see any way they convict me of anything.”

  “So.”

  “So, you can take your deal and stick it up your ass,” Carver said. He leaned back in his chair, as though satisfied with his decision.

  “From what the army investigators say about what happened in Afghanistan, I don’t suppose the murders of a couple more people would bother you—nothing for me to work with, there,” Lucas said.

  Carver rolled his eyes up and sideways, as if to say, Please, the way New Yorkers say it. As if to say, Now you’re wasting our time.

  “That’s like asking me if I feel bad when somebody gets killed in a car accident. I mean, I gotta tell you, if I don’t know them, I don’t feel bad. It’s like that with this Tubbs guy. Don’t know him, never saw him. If I could snap my fingers and he’d come walking through the door, I’d do it. But feel bad, if he’s dead? No. Sorry.”

  “All right. I got nothing more,” Lucas said.

  Carver looked at him for a moment, then pushed his chair back and stood up. As he turned, Lucas said, “I might have a deal for Dannon, too. If he takes it, I’ll put you away forever. Thirty years, no parole. You’ll be an old man when you get out.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Whatever,” Lucas said. “You got my phone number. The deal is open until Dannon talks to me. At that point, you’re done.”

  “Double fuck you,” Carver said.

  “Keep your eye on the TV. You could be a star,” Lucas said.

  Carver walked away.

  CHAPTER 23

  Kidd finally boiled it down to a single line: he said, “I think it’s moronic.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Lauren said.

  “I’m not sure of that. As far as you know, they’ll have a dozen extra guards around the place to keep the starfuckers away,” Kidd said.

  “They’d be out front. I’ll be going in from the dark side, right down the neighbor’s tree line,” Lauren said. She’d been studying satellite pictures all day, including several taken within the past week, with resolution good enough to see the hubcaps on cars. “I’ll have my starlights. The security alarms will be off, the dogs will be locked up, all kinds of people will be walking around the place, and most of them will be either rich or important, so nobody will be inclined to question them.”

  “Jesus.” Kidd dragged his fingertips through his eye sockets.

  “One last time,” Lauren said. “I swear to God, I do this, and I’m done. I’ll go back to being the little housewife.”

  “You’re not a little housewife.”

  “Yes, I am. I’m not a famous painter. I’m not a famous computer hacker,” Lauren said. “People say, ‘You’re that Kidd’s wife? You lucky woman.’ You know—get your cookies in the oven and your buns in the bed, while Kidd takes care of the important stuff.”

  Kidd had to laugh, and she said, “Now you’re laughing.”

  “I’m laughing because it’s so fucking stupid. Why can’t you be a rock climber or something? A scuba diver? You’re smart—go to college, get a degree, become a famous . . . whatever.”

  “Right. Whatever. Even the Famous Kidd can’t think exactly what that might be.”

  They were in the living room, in a couple of easy chairs overlooking the Mississippi. The weather was changing: not only from one day to the next, but from autumn to winter. The sky was gray, overcast, with thick clouds the color of aluminum, not a hint of the sun. Cold. On really bad days, Kidd sat in front of the window and drew the scene, with a pencil or a crayon and a sketchbook, and the scene changed every time. Lauren pushed herself out of her chair and walked to the window, pressed her forehead against the cool glass.

  After a moment, Kidd walked up behind her and draped an arm over her shoulder. “All right. Let’s do it.”

  “Thank you. You can’t tell me this doesn’t light you up, at least a little bit,” Lauren said.

  “The biggest problem is Jackson,” Kidd said. “We can’t both get caught. If they grab you . . .”

  “You have to run,” Lauren said. “But they won’t grab me. . . . I absolutely will not push. I’ll go in with my finger on the abort switch. The first second that trouble shows up, I’ll go right back down the tree line. You get me, and we roll.”

  “One last time,” Kidd said.

  She turned back to him, her face bright. “I’m really stoked, Kidd. I’m high as a kite.”

  • • •

  DANNON WAS DRIVING, TARYN was in the backseat. Schiffer, the campaign manager, was in the front passenger seat with two cell phones, three ballpoint pens, one red, one green, and one black, and a blue-cloth three-ring binder. Inside the binder was an inch-thick stack of paper, much of it given over to a listing of every voting precinct in Minnesota, all 4,130 of them, with the results of the last Senate campaign, which had been won by Porter Smalls.

  Thirty precincts had been designated as critical signposts. For those precincts, the far right column was kept in red, green, or black ink; red for those precincts where exit polls suggested Smalls would exceed his total in the last campaign, green for those in which he was running behind, and black for those in which there was no discernible change.

  Of the thirty, as of three o’clock in the afternoon, he was running behind his previous total in seventeen of the twenty-six where they had been able to gather enough responses to report. In the other nine, there was no discernible change. He was running ahead in none of them. All by itself, that would have been good; but what was happening was actually better than good. People who voted before five o’clock tended to be more conservative than those who voted after five o’clock.

  Taryn had been scheduled to make four appearances during the day, set up to capture the noon and early evening news: going in, they’d thought they mi
ght need the small extra boost from those television appearances. Porter Smalls had ended his campaign with a breakfast at the St. Paul Hotel in St. Paul, so wouldn’t be much of a factor on the news. Besides, the news departments at TV stations in Minneapolis were generally liberal, and would give Taryn a publicity break if they could get away with it.

  In the front seat, Schiffer said into one of her phones, “I don’t want to know about helium. I want some of the balloons to go down, instead of up. Is that too much to ask? Get it done.”

  On her second phone she said, “Well?” She listened for a moment, then grunted and wrote a number in the right column in green ink. She said, “Keep it going,” and hung up and turned to Taryn.

  “Eighteen of twenty-seven, and we’re running stronger in our precincts than Sterling did last time.”

  “You want to make a call?” Taryn asked.

  “I never believe it until I see the actual numbers . . . but yeah. You got it. You’re the new senator from Minnesota.”

  Taryn said, “Yes!” and Dannon slapped the steering wheel and cried, “Oh, my God, it makes my dick hard!”

  Taryn said, “Douglas . . .”

  “I’m sorry, it’s . . .”

  Schiffer: “Don’t worry about it. Makes my dick hard, too.”

  • • •

  AT FOUR-FIFTEEN THEY ARRIVED at St. Mary’s Park for a rally timed to the evening news. Del was there, too, wearing a navy blue suit that was a couple sizes too big for him, with a wrinkled white shirt and a blue-white-and-chocolate-striped nylon tie whose wideness would have made him proud in 1972. His hat had a snap brim and a feather. He looked like a flake and nobody paid any attention to him.

  He got on his cell phone and told Lucas, “Dannon’s still with her. Man, I think she’s gonna win. She’s not saying so, but it’s coming through.”

  “Carver’s still sitting there, I don’t know what he’s doing, but it’s something,” Lucas said. Carver had gone from the Caribou Coffee to a Starbucks, not far away.

  “I’ll call you back if anything happens,” Del said. “It looks like they’re gonna be here for a while. A couple of TV trucks just came in. I’m gonna stick that bug on their truck.”

  “Make sure you can do it clean.”

  “Do that,” Del said.

  • • •

  LUCAS WAS ON THE STREET, ten miles away, in a parallel parking spot, ready to roll out in front of Carver, if he came that way. He couldn’t actually see Carver, but Jenkins could, from a dry-cleaning shop across from the Starbucks. From his vantage point, Jenkins said it looked like Carver had gotten two or three cups of coffee at twenty-minute intervals and spent the rest of the time crouched over an iPad.

  “I don’t think he’s reading the Bible,” Jenkins said, on his handset. “But whatever it is, he’s all over it.”

  “Maybe he’s buying plane tickets,” suggested Shrake, who was on the same net. Shrake was a half-mile up the street, ready to follow if Carver broke that way.

  “That worries me,” Lucas said. “We don’t have enough to pull him in. If he gets on a plane, all we could do is wave good-bye.”

  “I haven’t seen him take out a credit card,” Jenkins said. “I’m more worried that he’s waiting for his dry cleaning.”

  “This guy isn’t dry cleaning, he’s strictly wash-and-wear,” Shrake said. “He’s all Under Armour and nylon shells and combat boots.”

  “Sounds like you,” Jenkins said. Then: “Hey. He’s up. Looks . . . He’s headed out.” A minute later, “He’s turning your way, Lucas. You better move.”

  “Got him on the monitor,” Shrake said.

  Lucas rolled away and said, “I’m gonna jump on 94, bet he’s headed back to Grant’s.”

  • • •

  CARVER HAD SPENT an hour with his iPad, part of the time doing what Lucas had feared: checking planes from Minneapolis to the East Coast—New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Miami. He’d also checked in with old acquaintances working with contractors who supplied private security personnel in Afghanistan and several other nations in the Middle East and Africa; he asked about job openings.

  Time, he thought, to get out of Minneapolis.

  He spent the last minute or two on his cell phone. He was in-house for the party that evening, which Schiffer had said would go until ten-thirty or so, and then they’d head downtown to the Radisson Hotel for the victory party, if there was a victory party. The house party was reserved for political big shots and large donors.

  He punched Dannon’s number, and Dannon came up: “Yes.”

  “Is she winning?”

  “Yes. Looks like it’s in the bag. You at the house?”

  “No, but I’m heading that way now,” Carver said. “I need to talk to you. Privately. Right now. I got hit hard by Davenport.”

  Dannon said, “We’re doing the last show. We’ll be back there by five-thirty.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” Carver said.

  • • •

  KIDD AND LAUREN HAD a bad moment when they turned Jackson over to the babysitter. The babysitter was a middle-aged nurse who was grateful for the extra under-the-table cash money from Kidd; five hundred a month, with babysitting services on a moment’s notice. She worked the day shift, and was available anytime after three o’clock in the afternoon, seven days a week. She adored Jackson, and Jackson liked her back.

  But leaving Jackson, a thin child, tall for his age, strong, with a happy smile morning to night . . . Kidd got desperately tight in the throat, and Lauren said, “I know: but we’re doing it. I need this, Kidd.”

  So they left him.

  • • •

  AT 45 DEGREES NORTH, the night comes early in November. They rolled out a few minutes after seven-thirty into the kind of autumn darkness that comes only with a thick cloud layer, no hint of starlight or moonlight, and no prospect of any. Lauren drove.

  She was already dressed in her black brushed-cotton suit. Her hood, and her equipment, were locked in a concealed box behind the second row of seats. They chitchatted on the way across town, through enough traffic to keep things slow; Jackson wasn’t mentioned.

  They were a mile from Grant’s place at eight-fifteen. The day before, they’d spotted a diner with a strong and reliable Wi-Fi and no protection, with parking on the side and in back, out of sight from the street. Kidd signed on from a laptop and dialed up another laptop, which was hooked into his cell phone, back at the condo. His phone made a call to a friend who, at that moment, was playing a violin in a chamber quartet at the birthday party for a St. Paul surgeon’s wife. Kidd let the call ring through to the answering service, left a message that suggested handball on Friday.

  “Done,” he said, when he’d hung up. An alibi. Both of their desktop computers would be roaming websites all through the evening, and they’d send out a couple of e-mails.

  “Let’s see what’s going on.”

  Kidd signed on to Taryn’s security system. All the cameras were operating, the interior cameras showing perhaps two or three dozen people in suits and dresses with cocktails, all apparently talking at full speed. The bedroom was dark, which was perfect. If it hadn’t been, Lauren would have had to come in through a dead-ended hallway, at a seating area, that would have been more exposed to a visitor, but was free of cameras. This way, she could go in through the en suite bathroom. Outside, the cameras showed several uniformed men behind the fence along the line of the street, and a few people standing in the street, looking at the house.

  “The uninvited,” Lauren said. “Check the backyard.”

  Kidd cycled to the backyard cameras. They saw one guard, moving along the perimeter of the huge lot. A side camera showed the dog kennel, with both dogs sitting inside, alert, apparently watching the guard.

  “There’s the competition,” Kidd said.

  “Not if they’re penned up,” Lauren said. “They can’t see my entry point. As long as they’re not set loose . . .”

  “They’ve got noses like radar,”
Kidd said.

  “Yes. Keep an eye on them. If they turn them loose, I’ll call it off.”

  They watched for fifteen minutes, until Lauren said, “Okay, we’ve got it.”

  Just before Kidd killed the image from the cameras, they saw a security man in a coat walk through the picture. “Mean-looking guy,” Kidd said. “I think that’s Carver.”

  “I’ll stay away from him,” Lauren said.

  “Yeah. Far away.” He reached out, put his hand on top of her head and turned her face toward his, and kissed her and said, “Let’s call it off.”

  “No. I’m going in,” Lauren said. “Tomorrow, I’m back to little housewifey.”

  “Fuck me,” Kidd said, as he started the car. “Fuck me.”

  • • •

  DANNON AND CARVER got together before dark, and Carver laid it out, exactly as it had happened: Davenport was blackmailing him for information.

  “He’s gonna get me, man,” Carver said. He didn’t seem scared, Dannon thought: he looked wired, like he might before a bad-odds mission. “He says that the governor will go on TV and talk about what happened in the ’stan. He says they can force the army to take me back and put me on trial. He said it was a massacre like that one in Vietnam, and there’s no way that Obama could let it go.”

  “That’s bullshit, man,” Dannon said. “That whole thing is buried so deep, and the guys who buried it all have stars now. They’d never get you.”

  “That’s what I told him,” Carver said. “I think he’s going to do it anyway. I’m telling you, he’s a crazy mean cocksucker. He’s got nothing unless I talk, except the ’stan, and he’ll use it to bust my balls.”

  “If you talk, he’ll bust more than your balls. He’ll put you in the penitentiary forever,” Dannon said.

  Carver said, “I know. I been thinking about it ever since I talked to him. He can’t do anything fast enough to keep me off a plane. I’m thinking I fly to Paris, take the train to Madrid, and fly out to Panama. Confuse the trail. I got a buddy there, runs a fishing place over on the Pacific side. By the time they get to Panama, if they even bother to chase me, I’ll be deep in-country. I’ll be wearing a sombrero and talking taco.”