John Sandford - Silken Prey

“Let’s see it,” Schiffer said.

They gathered around the living room TV and the media woman plugged a thumb drive into the digital port and brought the advertisement up: Smalls was dressed in a gray pin-striped suit, bankerish, but with a pale blue shirt open at the collar. He was in his Minnesota Senate office, with a hint of the American flag to his right, a couple of red and white stripes—not enough of a flag display to invite sarcasm, but it was there.

He faced the camera head-on and apparently had been whipped into a bit of a frenzy before they started rolling, because it was right there on his face: “. . . spent my entire life without committing an offense any worse than speeding, and now the Democrats and the opposition plant this dreadful, disgusting pornography on me, and yes, my fellow Minnesotans, they still think they’re going to get away with it. They’re still pretending to think that I might have collected this . . . crap, even though they know the name of the man who did it, a longtime Democrat dirty trickster named Bob Tubbs. They’re laughing up their sleeves at all of us! Don’t let them get away with it! This is not the way we do these things in Minnesota.”

When he finished, Schiffer said, “Not bad.”

Taryn was on her second drink: “What do we do?”

“We bought a lot of time tomorrow afternoon and evening. We can pretty much blanket the state. Mary, Sandy, and Carl will write a new advertisement overnight in which you are warm and understanding—but also a little angry. Maybe we’ll say something about how we have to be rational and careful . . . hint that he’s a little nuts. I’ll call you in the morning about wardrobe. I’m thinking maybe something cowgirl, maybe . . . what’s the name of that stables you ride at?”

“Birchmont,” Taryn said.

“Get you out there in jeans and a barn coat, the one you wore out to Windom, and a jean jacket, cowboy boots . . . let your hair frizz out a little . . . and we do something along the lines of, ‘We don’t know where the porn came from, and if we find out, no matter who put it out there, we will support any prosecution. In the meantime, let’s turn back to the serious issues in this campaign. . . . ’”

As she was talking, outlining a possible quick advertising shoot, Booth’s phone rang and she pulled it out and looked at it, while still listening to Schiffer. She saw who was calling and declined the call, but then a second later, a message came in, and she looked at it, and interrupted Schiffer to say, “I gotta take this,” and stepped away.

Taryn was saying . . . “You don’t think they’ll mock me for the cowboy outfit?”

“They won’t have time to, and it’ll look really down-home and honest,” Schiffer was replying . . .

. . . When Booth came back and said, “Oh my God, the Pioneer Press is on the street with a front-page story that says this dead woman, the woman that got murdered, had a long affair with Smalls and that the police are investigating a possible domestic motive for her murder.”

They were all struck silent for a moment, then Taryn said, “Davenport said they had a personal conflict. He didn’t say they had an affair.”

Schiffer said, “Whatever, this could do it for us. It’ll play right through Election Day. I still think the horse thing will work for us. Maybe we’re a little more sympathetic about Smalls’s problems.”

Taryn finished the second drink and said, “While still hinting that he’s nuts . . . let’s do it. This is all so ludicrous that we shouldn’t let anything go.”

Schiffer raised her voice and said, “All right, everybody, let’s clear out. Mary, you get the guys and get going on the ad. You can sleep tomorrow night. Everybody else . . . Taryn, I’ll call you at nine o’clock. I’ll cancel the Channel Three thing, that was the only morning show . . .”

• • •

AS SCHIFFER WAS PUSHING everybody out, Taryn tipped her head at Dannon, saying, “Follow me,” and drifted back to the bar. Dannon followed and she said, quietly, “Who’s got the overnight?”

“Barry.”

“Send him home. You and I need to talk. Carver’s going to be a problem.”

Dannon sighed, pulled a bottle of lemon water out of the refrigerator and poured his second drink over a couple of ice cubes. “Did he say something to you?”

“Yeah. When people clear out . . .”

“Okay,” Dannon said.

He started back toward the group in the hallway, and she caught his sleeve and said, “One other thing. I’m so . . . angry, confused, cranked up . . .”

“It’s been unreal . . .” Dannon began.

“And I really need something that David doesn’t have, to mellow me out. . . . I’d like to see you back in the bedroom. You know. Send Barry home.”

• • •

DANNON HAD UNUSUAL SKILLS in the area of death and dismemberment, but he was like anyone else when it came to sex. He’d slept with twenty women in the past twenty years, but had never really desired one. He’d wanted the sex, but hadn’t been particularly interested in the package that it came in.

Taryn was an entirely different thing. He’d wanted her from the first week he’d known her. He’d seen her naked or semi-naked two hundred times, out in the pool, so that was no big thing, but seeing her naked when he was finally going to consummate that years-long desire was an entirely different thing.

As soon as the words “bedroom” came out of her mouth, he began to sweat: you know, would everything work? He kicked Barry out, made himself do all the checks, and had another beer, thinking that the alcohol might lubricate the equipment.

He needn’t have worried: he walked back to the bedroom with the fourth drink in his hand, and as he walked in, she was coming out of the bathroom, naked except for her underpants, which were no more than a negligible gossamer swatch the size of a folded hankie, and she said, almost shyly, “I’ve been waiting . . .”

And then he was on her, like a mountain lion, and the equipment was no problem at all. He couldn’t remember getting out of his clothes, didn’t remember anything until she screamed, or moaned, or made some kind of sound that seemed ripped out of her, and she began patting his back and saying, “Okay/okay/okay/okay.”

And it was okay for about ten minutes of stroking her pelvis, stomach, breasts, rolling her over, stroking her back and butt, and rolling her again and then they were going once more and he blacked out until he heard once more that scream/moan and “Okay/okay/okay . . .”

He collapsed on top of her, lying there sweaty and hot, until she said, “Whew,” and “We should have done this years ago.”

• • •

THEY TALKED FOR A WHILE, this and that, the campaign and Schiffer and Carver and Alice Green . . . Dannon told her for the first time why he and Carver were so casual about the DNA check: there was no DNA from Tubbs, because the cops didn’t know where to look for it, and there was none with Helen Roman, either, because great care had been taken. “Besides, our DNA profiles are already in the army and FBI files. When there’s a chance that some suicide bomber is going to blow you into hamburger, the army wants to be able to identify the scrap meat. We’ve all got DNA profiles.”

Taryn said, “Ah: so it didn’t make any difference.”

Taryn rolled out of bed and went to a side bar, pulled open the top drawer, and took out a bottle of vodka, two or three drinks down from full. She asked, “You want more water?”

He said, “Sure.”

She got some ice from the bar’s refrigerator and poured the water over it, and made another lemon drop for herself, with enough lemon to bite, brought the drinks back to the bed and put his cold glass on his belly below his navel. He said, “Jesus, cold,” and picked it up, and she laughed, almost girlishly, rolled onto the bed next to him, careful with the drink, and said, “Carver.”