John Sandford - Silken Prey

She was twisting her hands, as she spoke. She was a slight woman, who might have been attractive if she’d done anything to make it so. But she didn’t: her clothing—she wore dresses—might have come from the 1950s. She wore neither jewelry nor makeup, but did wear square, clunky shoes. She looked at Lucas from under her eyebrows, and at an angle, as though she were worried that he might strike her.

Lucas tried to be as soft as he could be; it wasn’t his natural attitude. “Ambiguous . . . how? Was this a sexual relationship?”

“Yes. Twice. I mean, we . . . yes, we slept together twice. When he went away, wherever he went, it’s hard to believe that he might be dead, because he was so upbeat when I last saw him. . . . Anyway, I thought maybe the police would ask me about him, but nobody did, and I didn’t know what to do about that. I was scared. . . . I didn’t know what happened to him, and when he didn’t call me Saturday or Sunday, I thought he wasn’t interested anymore.”

“When was the last time you heard from him?” Lucas asked.

“Friday night, about . . . nine o’clock,” she said.

“And when did you last see him?”

“Friday night . . . about nine o’clock. I didn’t stay over.” Her eyes roamed the small office, meeting Lucas’s eyes only with difficulty. “I just . . . visited for a while, and went home.”

“Then people began looking for him, and you didn’t say anything?”

“Well . . . yes. I did think I should,” Fey said. “But one day came and went, and nothing happened, and nobody seemed to really know where he was, and some people thought he was drinking . . . and I just . . . let it go. I really didn’t have anything to contribute, and I thought I might get in trouble.”

“Did he ever ask you . . . or suggest to you . . . that he might want to pull some kind of dirty trick on Senator Smalls?”

“Oh, no, he would never have done that,” Fey said. “I mean, he might have tried to pull a dirty trick, but he wouldn’t have spoken to me about it. I like Senator Smalls and Robert knew that. The senator and I have common interests. He likes classical piano and he likes Postimpressionist art. If Robert had asked me to do a dirty trick on Senator Smalls, I would have refused and I would have told Senator Smalls. Robert teased me about that. About me being loyal.”

Lucas worked her for a while, but in the end, believed her. “Are you friends with Ramona Johnson?” Lucas asked.

“Ramona? Well, yes, I guess. We don’t socialize or anything, but we’re friendly.”

“What is her attitude toward Senator Smalls?”

“Well . . .” Fey’s eyes flew off again. “Oh . . .”

“Nobody will know who said what in here,” Lucas said. “Did Ramona have some kind of grudge against Senator Smalls?”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t think so,” Fey said. “Just the opposite. I had the impression, mmm . . .” She trailed away.

“You think they had a relationship?”

“I, mmm, I thought it . . . possible,” Fey said. “ Please don’t tell her I said that.”

• • •

JOHNSON WAS THE LAST of the ten people he’d question that day. Before he called her in, he phoned Smalls and said, “I have a somewhat delicate personal question to ask you.”

“Ask.”

“Ramona Johnson?”

“No. Though the thought has crossed my mind,” Smalls said.

“Would she have felt . . . neglected, or spurned?”

“I don’t believe so. . . . No. I don’t see it. You think she had something to do with the porn?”

“I don’t think anything in particular. I’m just trying to get everybody straight, and to cross-check what I can. Looking for motives,” Lucas said. “If you wanted to talk to somebody on the committee staff about art or music, who would you have talked to?”

“You’ve interviewed Sally Fey . . . and she’s the one I would have talked to. I didn’t sleep with her, either.”

“Okay. That’s what I needed.”

“Wait a minute,” Smalls said, “I’ve got a question for you, before you hang up. Have you heard any rumblings from the AG’s office?”

“I haven’t heard a thing. Should I have?”

“Mmm. I don’t know,” Smalls said. “He had that guy over at the St. Paul police when this ICE woman copied the hard drive. Now there’s a rumor around that he wants to know what we found that brought about Rose Marie’s announcement.”

“I think she told him.”

“I’ve heard that he wants it in detail,” Smalls said. “He wants to know how it all came about. But all I’ve got is a rumor.”

“I haven’t heard a thing,” Lucas said.

• • •

RAMONA JOHNSON was a fleshy, dark-haired woman with intelligent eyes and a smoldering, resentful aggression that piqued Lucas’s curiosity. He began by asking about her career, first as a researcher and then as a senior staffer. She had three degrees, she said, both a B.A. and a master’s in political science, and an MBA in business. She’d spent most of her life bumping against various glass ceilings, she said, and was presently planning a number of political initiatives involving Republican women’s work issues—glass ceiling issues.

She had nothing to do with Tubbs, she said, and resented the fact that she’d been asked to talk to a police officer investigating his disappearance. “I know you think you’re just doing your job, but there are more and more police-state aspects to the way our various security apparati are conducting themselves. Really, your questions are no more than a fishing expedition.”

“That’s what most investigations are ,” Lucas said. “So, you had nothing to do with Tubbs lately. Have you ever had anything to do with Tubbs?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve always been Republican policy, he’s always been Democratic operations. We’ve worked on opposing political campaigns, of course, and we sometimes go to the same parties. I’ve known him for years, but we’ve never been . . . intimate. I don’t mean that just in a sexual way, either. I mean, we’ve never really shared confidences.”

“You know that possession of that child porn is a crime, and that the use of the child porn in an effort to smear Senator Smalls would be another crime, and that Tubbs, if we could find him, if he’s not dead, could be looking at years in prison? As would an accomplice?”

“Is that a threat?” she asked.

Lucas shook his head: “No. I’m telling this to everyone. I want everybody to understand the stakes involved. We’re naturally more interested in the possible, the likely, murder of Mr. Tubbs than we are in an accomplice who might not even have understood what he or she was getting into. We’d be interested in discussing a possible immunity, or partial immunity, with that person, if we could find him or her. We’d also want that person to know that if Tubbs was murdered, then he or she might be next in line.”

“But that’s not me,” Johnson said. “Why are you telling me?”

“Because if it’s not you, I’d expect you to talk to your friends about this. I want the word to get around. There almost certainly is an accomplice, and we really need to talk to that person . . . for her own protection.”

“Well,” she said, “not me. Are we done?”

Lucas spread his hands. “If you’ve got nothing else . . . we’re done.”

• • •

WHEN SHE WAS GONE, Lucas took out his cell phone, went online and looked up the plural of apparatus , and found that it was apparatus , or apparatuses , and not apparati . He said, “Huh,” turned the phone off and thought about Johnson.

She was the most interesting of the staffers he’d spoken to, because of the underlying self-righteousness, anger, spite . . . whatever. She wore it like a gown. He’d seen it often enough in government work, people who felt that they were better than their job, and better than those around them; a princess kidnapped by gypsies, and raised below her station.