John Sandford - Silken Prey

He put back the gun and all the personal papers, and the money. He took everything else, and called Kidd.

“I’ve got three thumb drives and I need a quick survey, just to find out what’s on them.”

“How big are they?” Kidd asked.

Lucas looked at the drives and said, “Two two-gig, one four-gig.”

“You could put the equivalent of several thousand books on those things, so the survey might not be quick,” Kidd said.

“I just need an idea—and I need to know if that porn file is on one of them,” Lucas said. “I doubt that there are several thousand books on them.”

“Well, shoot, look . . . I guess. We could check for the porn fairly quickly. Come over in an hour. I’ll put a little search program together.”

“Would two or three hours be better? I’ve got something else I could do.”

“Two hours would be better,” Kidd said. “We’re expecting some guests and I’m in the kitchen, being a scullery maid.”

“See you then: two hours.”

Lucas put the pipes back together and screwed the panel back on, walked back to the car, and headed north up I-35.

• • •

SANDRA MAE OTIS LIVED in a manufactured home in a manufactured home park off I-494 north of St. Paul. She also ran an illegal daycare center.

Otis was sitting on the stoop smoking when Lucas pulled into the driveway: she had bleached-blond hair, black eyebrows, and small metallic eyes like the buttons on 501 jeans. She regarded him with a certain resignation as he got out of the car, flicked the butt-end of the smoke off into the weeds, turned and shouted, “Carl, knock it the fuck off,” and looked back at Lucas.

As Lucas walked up, a little boy, maybe three, dressed in a Kool-Aid-spotted T-shirt and shorts, and crying, came out and said, “Carl hit me, really hard.”

Otis said, “I know, Spud, we’ll get him later. You go on back in there and tell him that if he hits you again, I’ll put him in the garbage can and let you beat on it.” Back to Lucas: “How long have cops been driving Porsches?”

“Personal car,” Lucas said. The musky odor of weed hung around her head.

She looked at him for a minute, then said, “So give me some money if you’re so rich.”

Lucas opened his mouth to say something when another small boy, a couple years older than the first, came out crying, rubbing an eye with his fist, and said, “Spud says you’re gonna put me in the garbage can again.”

“Yeah, well, don’t hit him,” Otis told the kid.

The kid said, “Sometimes Spud really pisses me off.”

“But don’t hit him,” Otis said. “You see this guy? He’s a cop and he’s got a big gun. If you hit Spud again, he’s going to shoot you.”

The kid stepped back, his mouth open in fear. Lucas blurted, “No, I won’t.”

But the kid backed away, still scared, and vanished inside. Otis said, “So what do you want? I’m not responsible for Dick’s debts. We’re all over with.”

Lucas looked around for something to sit on: the stoop would never touch the seat of his Salvatore Ferragamo slacks. There was nothing, so he stood, looming over her. “Three years ago, you were picked up and taken to juvie court as part of a prostitution ring that was busted over in Minneapolis.”

“That’s juvenile and it doesn’t count,” Otis said.

“It does count, because it’s probably messed up your head, but that’s not exactly what I want to talk about,” Lucas said. “Sometime in there, when these people were running you, they took pictures of you and Mark Trebuchet and three adults in a sex thing. Did they sell those pictures?”

“I don’t know if they had time, before they were busted,” Otis said. “They were busted, like, two days after the photo shoot. I think the photographer bragged to the wrong guy about it.”

“Now, who was this? Who’s ‘they’?” Lucas asked.

“The Pattersons. Irma and Bjorn.”

“The Pattersons ran the business?”

“Yeah. They’re doing fifteen years. They got twelve to go. And if you’re a cop, how come you didn’t know that?”

“Because I’m operating off a telephone,” Lucas said. “Our guys just found the pictures . . . but the pictures were in court? You, and the two men and the woman and Mark?”

“Yup.”

“Did the cops get them off the Internet? The evidence photos?”

“I don’t think so. The Internet was already getting too dangerous, with cops all over the place. The Pattersons were really scared about that, telling their clients to stay away from the ’net. They mostly printed them out and sent them around that way,” Otis said. “They said they were for my portfolio . They said I was going to be a movie star. Like that was going to happen, the big fat liars.”

“So what happened in court?”

“Well, I had to testify about what we did. The sex and all. And about the pictures. They wanted us to identify the adults, but, you know, we didn’t know who they were,” she said. “I’d seen them around, but I didn’t know their names. I think they took off when the Pattersons got busted.”

“Were there a lot of other pictures put in at the same time? In court? Of you?”

She frowned. “No. When the Pattersons took the pictures, they took a lot of them. I can remember that flash going off over and over and really frying my eyeballs. And this guy I was blowing, he had like a soft-on all the time, I had to keep pumping him up. But the cops had, I don’t know, four or five pictures. Or six or seven. Like that. I think all they had were like these paper pictures, and they took them right off the Pattersons’ desk.”

A little girl, maybe Spud’s sister, came out of the house and looked at Lucas and then at Otis and said, “I pooped.”

“Ah, Jesus Christ, you little shit machine,” Otis said. “All right. You go back in, and I’ll come and change you.”

The girl went back in and Otis asked, “You done?”

“Yeah, but don’t go anywhere, okay?” Lucas said.

“Where in the fuck would I go?” Otis asked. “I’m living in an old fuckin’ trailer. My next stop is a park bench.”

Lucas turned away, then back and said, “This place can’t be licensed.”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “I’m working for minimum-wage dumbasses who either leave the kids with me or lock them in a car. I’m all they can afford, and I’m better than a car. Maybe.”

Lucas said, “All right, but don’t put Carl in the garbage can anymore, okay?”

“Carl gets what Carl deserves,” she said. “But they all like chocolate ice cream. I could get some for tomorrow, Porsche cop, if I had an extra twenty bucks.”

“How many kids are in there?”

“Seven,” she said. “Unless one of them has killed another one.”

Lucas took a twenty out of his wallet. “Get them the ice cream,” he said. “You spend it on dope, I’ll put you in something worse than a garbage can.”

• • •

BACK DOWN I-35 TO Kidd’s place.

Lauren came to the door, said, “Hi,” and then, as Lucas followed her inside, said, “We’ve got a couple of friends staying with us for a few days, with their kids. It could be a little noisy.”

“I just need Kidd to take a look and give me an estimate on what’s inside these things,” Lucas said, showing her the thumb drives.

Kidd was sitting in the front room with a black couple, and Kidd said, “Hey, Lucas,” and to the couple, “This is Lucas Davenport, he’s a cop. Lucas, John and Marvel Smith, from down in Longstreet, Arkansas. John’s a sculptor, Marvel’s a politician. John does some stuff that you and Weather ought to look at.”

“I’ll do that,” Lucas said. He shook hands with John Smith, an athletic guy with some boxer’s scars around his eyes, and smiled at Marvel, a beautiful long-legged woman with a reserved smile; like she might be wary of cops.