John Sandford: Silken Prey

Lucas was halfway through the Star Tribune ’s comics when his cell phone buzzed. He took it out of his pocket, looked at the caller ID, clicked it, and said, “Good morning, Neil. I assume you’re calling from the Cathedral.”

Neil Mitford, chief weasel for the governor of Minnesota, ignored the comment. “The guy needs to see you this morning. He should be out of church and down at his office by ten-thirty or so. He’s got to talk to a guy at ten-forty-five, more or less, until eleven-thirty or so. He’d like to see you either at ten-thirty or eleven-thirty.”

“I could make the ten-thirty,” Lucas said. “Is this about Tubbs?”

“Tubbs? No, Tubbs is just off on a bender somewhere. This is about Smalls.”

“What about Smalls? That’s being handled by St. Paul.”

“He’ll tell you. Come in the back,” Mitford said. “We’ll have a guard down at the door for you.”

• • •

LUCAS CHECKED HIS WATCH and saw that he would make it to the Capitol right on time, if he left in the next few minutes, and drove slowly enough.

“Wait,” Weather said. “We were all going shopping.”

“It’s hard to tell the governor to piss up a rope,” Lucas said. “Even on a Sunday.”

“But we were going to pick out Halloween costumes . . .”

“I’d just be bored and in your way, and you wouldn’t let me choose, anyway,” Lucas said. “You and Letty will be fine.”

Letty shrugged and said to Weather, “That’s all true.”

• • •

SO LUCAS IDLED UP Mississippi River Boulevard, top down on the Porsche 911, to Summit Avenue, then along Summit with its grand houses, and over to the Capitol.

The Minnesota Capitol is sited on a hill overlooking St. Paul, and because of the expanse of the hill, looks taller and wider than the U.S. Capitol. Also, whiter.

Lucas left the car a block away, and strolled through the cheerful morning, stopping to look at a late-season butterfly that was perched on a zinnia, looking for something to eat. The big change-of-season cold front had come through the week before, but, weirdly, there hadn’t yet been a killing frost, and there were still butterflies and flowers all over the place.

At the Capitol, an overweight guard was waiting for him at a back door. He and the guard had once worked patrol together on the Minneapolis police force—the guard was double-dipping—and they chatted for a few minutes, and then Lucas climbed some stairs and walked down to the governor’s office.

The governor, or somebody, had left a newspaper blocking the doorjamb, and Lucas pushed open the door, picked up the paper, and let the door lock behind him. He was standing in a darkened outer office and the governor called, “Lucas? Come on in.”

• • •

THE GOVERNOR WAS A tall, slender blond named Elmer Henderson, who might, in four years, be a viable candidate for vice president of the United States on the Democratic ticket. The media said he’d nail down the left-wingers for a presidential candidate who might prefer to run a little closer to the middle.

Henderson might himself have been a candidate for the top job, if he had not been, in his younger years, quite so fond of women in pairs and trios, known at Harvard as the “Henderson Hoagie,” and cocaine. He certainly had the right pedigree: Ivy League undergraduate and law, flawless if slightly robotic wife and children, perhaps a half billion dollars from his share of the 3M inheritance.

He was standing behind his desk, wearing a dark going-to-church suit, open at the throat, the tie curled on his desktop. He had a sheaf of papers in his hands, thumbing them, when Lucas walked in. He looked over his glasses and said, “Lucas. Sit. Sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning.”

“It’s okay.” Lucas took a chair. “You need somebody killed?”

“Several people, but I’d hesitate to ask, at least here in the office, on the Lord’s Day,” the governor said. He gave the papers a last shuffle, set them aside, pressed a button on a box on his desk, and said, “Get in here,” and asked Lucas, “You’ve been reading about Porter Smalls?”

“Yeah. You guys must be dancing in the aisles,” Lucas said.

“Should be,” said a voice from behind Lucas. Lucas turned his head as Mitford came through a side door, which led into his compact, paper-littered office. “This is one of the better political moments of my life. Porter Smalls takes it between the cheeks.”

“What an unhappy expression,” the governor said. He dropped into his chair, sighed, and put his stocking feet on the desktop. “But appropriate, I suppose. He’s certainly being screwed by all and sundry.”

“And it kills the Medicaid nonsense,” Mitford said, as he took another chair. “He was carrying that on his back, and anything he was carrying is tainted. You want to pass a bill sponsored by a kiddie-porn addict? What kind of human being are you? ”

“Grossly unfair,” the governor said. He didn’t seem particularly worried about the unfairness of it. He’d been looking at Mitford, but now turned to Lucas. “You know what the problem is?”

“What?”

“He didn’t do it. Wasn’t his child porn,” the governor said. “I talked to him yesterday afternoon, over at his house, for a long time. He didn’t do it.”

“I thought you guys were blood enemies,” Lucas said.

“Political enemies. I went to kindergarten with him, and knew him before that. Went to the same prep school, he went to Yale and I went to Harvard. His sister was a good friend of mine, for a while.” He paused, looked up at the ceiling, and smiled a private smile, then recovered. “I tell you, from the bottom of my little liberal heart, Porter didn’t do it.”

“He could’ve gone off the rails somewhere,” Lucas suggested.

The governor shook his head. “No. He doesn’t have it in him, to look at kiddie porn. I know the kind of women he looks at. I can describe them in minute detail, and nobody would call them kiddies: he likes them big-titted, big-assed, and blond. He liked them that way in kindergarten and he still likes them that way. Go look at his staff, you’ll see what I mean.”

“Can’t always tell . . .” Lucas began, but the governor held up a finger.

“Another thing,” he said. “This volunteer said she walked into his office and put some papers on his keyboard and up popped the porn. If it really happened like that, it means that he had a screen of kiddie porn up on his computer, and walked away from it to a campaign finance meeting, leaving the door unlocked and the kiddie porn on the screen. The screen blanked for a while, but was still there, waiting to be found. Vile stuff, I’m told. Vile. Anyway, that’s the only way her story works: the screen was blanked when she walked in, and popped back up when she put the papers on the keyboard. Porter was near the top of his class at Yale Law. He’s not stupid, he’s not a huge risk-taker. Do you really believe he would do that?”

“Even smart people—”

“Oh, horseshit,” the governor said, waving him off.

“Suicidal . . .”

“Porter goes to the emergency room if the barber cuts his hair too short,” the governor said. “He wants and expects to live forever, preferably with a big-titted, big-assed blonde sitting on his face.”

Lucas thought for a moment, then conceded the point: “That thing about the volunteer—it worries me.”

“It should,” the governor said. He kicked his feet off the desktop and said, “I want you to look into this, Lucas. But quietly. I don’t want to disturb anybody without . . . without there being something worthwhile to disturb them with.”

“One more question,” Lucas said. “This guy is a major pain in your party’s ass. Why . . . ?”