John Sandford - Phantom prey

“Probably the least amount of trouble of anything you’ve done today,” Lucas said, as he dropped into a leather armchair. “If you get assassinated this week, can I have those socks?”

“No. We pass these down through the generations, to the oldest sons.”

“C’mon. Where’d you get them?"

"Ferragamo.” The governor folded the paper, dropped it in a wastebasket, and said, “The shit is about to hit the fan. The question is, will it hit before the next election?”

“What shit?” Lucas asked. For one crazy moment, he thought the governor might be concerned about convention security.

“The ethanol market is gonna drop dead,” the governor said. “Capacity is outrunning demand, and the big energy companies are moving up to the trough. A whole bunch of farmers who mortgaged the farm to build all these small plants, they’re gonna lose their shirts. Then they’ll want to know what I’m going to do about it.”

Lucas shrugged. “That’s your problem. And the farmers’. Though it’s not your biggest problem.”

“What’s my biggest problem?” The governor’s eyebrows went up. “The convention,” Lucas said. “The protesters are gonna trash the place, right down the hill from your office. If we quadrupled the security we’re planning, it wouldn’t be a quarter of what we need.”

The governor frowned: “I don’t know. This is a pretty lefty state."

"The people causing the trouble aren’t lefties,” Lucas said, rapping his knuckles on the rosewood desk. “They’re vandals. Petty criminals. Jerkoffs. They wouldn’t care if the Blessed Virgin Mary showed up holding hands with Karl Marx. This is their Super Bowl, and it’s sixty forty that they’re gonna tear us a new asshole.”

The governor looked mildly impatient. “Is that what you came to tell me?”

“No, no. Nobody listens anyway,” Lucas said, discouraged. “The planners believe we can count on the goodwill of the people; like the vandals are just another caucus. Fuckin’ morons.”

“The people? Or the planners?"

"The planners."

"Anyway…” The governor didn’t pay any more attention than anyone else, and his eyes strayed back to the stack of newspapers.

“Anyway,” Lucas said, leaning forward, “this is something different. Do you know Alyssa Austin, Hunter Austin’s wife? Or widow, I guess?”

“Yes.” The governor straightened around, picked a pair of black loafers off the floor, and slipped his feet into them, wiggling his toes. “I read about her kid. That’s awful. She’s dead, right?”

“Ninety- nine percent,” Lucas said. “We cover Sunfish Lake on homicides, and we’ve got a new guy looking into it. He isn’t getting much. I’d like to be able to tell people that the governor asked me to poke around, as a personal favor, and that I had no choice but to say yes.”

“So you won’t piss off the new guy. Or Rose Marie,” the governor said. The runt of the litter, but no dummy.

“That’s right,” Lucas said. “Go ahead; I’ll cover for you,” the governor said. “I’ll be raising money there this summer, in Sunfish. Probably know half the people in town. So if you could settle it before then, that’d be good.”

“Not a problem,” Lucas said. “Let them know that you’re out there at my suggestion,” the governor added. “Especially if you catch the killers.” Lucas nodded. “Ferragamo,” he said, and stood up. The audience was over. “Yup. You want a fashion tip?” The governor picked up another paper and checked the front page before turning back to the classifieds.

“I always listen to fashion tips,” Lucas said. That was true; he did. He didn’t always follow them, but the governor had excellent taste.

“You always want your socks and your pajamas to be slightly gay,” the governor said. “Not too gay, but slightly.”

Lucas thought about it for a second, and said, “You’re right. I knew that, but I never explicitly formulated it.”

“Of course I’m right.” The governor glanced at his solid- gold Patek Philippe. “Get out of here.”

Back at his office, Lucas left a message with Rose Marie’s secretary about the governor’s request, made it clear that the message wasn’t too important, then found Jim Benson sitting in his cubicle, fingers knitted behind his head, looking at a whiteboard with a lot of names and arrows. Lucas knocked on the door frame and Benson swiveled, said, “Hey, Lucas, what’s up?”

“The governor called me in this morning, man. He raises a lot of money over in Sunfish Lake, and he’s asked me to take a personal look at the Austin case.”

Benson sat up: “I thought I had the bases pretty well covered.” Lucas said, “You probably do, but old lady Austin and the governor are pals, and she’s one of his big backers… Nothing personal, man.”

“I hate that kind of goddamn politics,” Benson said. “Favoritism for the rich, that’s what it is.”

“Shhh,” Lucas said. “For Christ’s sakes, you don’t know who can hear you.”

Getting the files out of Benson was like pulling a tooth; nasty. But Lucas got them, for a couple of hours, anyway. Told Benson he’d just skim the paper, talk to a few people, kick over a couple of rocks so when the governor asked… He’d already read the preliminary reports. Now he spent an hour looking at the paper, then gave the file to his secretary and told her to xerox it and return it to Benson, as quickly as possible. “It’d be nice if he thought I just glanced at it. Don’t mention that you made a copy.”

“Ah, screwin’ the new guy, huh?” Carol said. By early afternoon, the storm had cleared. Splashing through the leftover puddles, Lucas took the Porsche off Robert Street south of St. Paul, and poked into the bare winter forest that was Sunfish Lake.

The Twin Cities have no really exclusive suburbs, except those that are exclusively rich or poor. No social barriers: if you had the cash or could get the mortgage, you could live there, whatever your race, color, creed, or national origin. Sunfish Lake was one of those.

The first fifty feet of the Austin driveway were gravel, as if to say, We may be rich, but we’re really country. The last three hundred feet were blacktop, which said, We may be country, but we’re not stupid.

The driveway ran slightly uphill, then over a crest and down to the house. The house had three sections that he could see-a center/main section, of stone and redwood, with barren flower beds under the white- painted window trim; and a cedar- shingled wing on each end, bending away from him, toward the lake. The four- car garage was in the right wing.

The house was buried in oaks and spruce, snuggled into the slope, surrounded by a patch of grass that faded into the forest. From the crest of the hill, Lucas could see a broad flagstone path meandering down to the lake. A wheeled dock had been pulled out of the water, next to the path, and a finger of snow hunkered beneath it. More snow hid out in the woods, where it had been protected from the rain.

Lucas parked the Porsche, and got out into the smell of wet old leaves, late- winter woods, and the faintest stink of rotting fish. He walked up to the door, rang the doorbell, and grinned at his reflection in the glass panel beside the door.

He was wearing jeans, a white shirt, Mephisto black- leather athletic shoes, a black leather jacket, and aviator sunglasses. He was packing heat, he thought, and also carried a gun.

Austin glanced at him through the glass, pulled the door open, and said, “I’ve already got a vacuum cleaner.”

“Well, shoot, another wasted trip,” Lucas said. She smiled then, but a sad smile, the kind of smile he might have a month after one of his kids was killed. She said, “Lucas-you look like a rich cop.”