John Sandford - Silken Prey

How high had Clay been the night before?

“He had this piece of hash he wanted to trade for a couple rocks, but nobody would trade him—I didn’t have any myself—so he took out his pipe and smoked it,” Joe said. “He was pretty high, best as I remember, but I don’t remember too clear.”

Was it possible that he could have gone away during the night and come back?

“Well, it’s possible, but I don’t know why he would,” Joe said. “He didn’t have any money to buy anything. All he had was that little piece of hash, wasn’t bigger than about a nickel.”

“How do you know he didn’t have any money?” Del asked.

“’Cause somebody had one little rock and wanted twelve dollars for it, and he said he could only pay later and they said, ‘Bullshit,’ and he turned his pockets out, and he didn’t have but eighty cents or something. And that little piece of hash.”

“He have a gun?”

“Not that I seen.”

• • •

WHEN THEY WERE FINISHED with them, they got their names, addresses, cell phone numbers—they all had phones—and told them not to leave town for a while. “Be the first chance you have to get a guy out of trouble, instead of in,” Del said.

Out on the sidewalk, Lucas said, “Turk will be pissed. Clay’s stoned on hash at two o’clock in the morning, and he’s sound asleep at six. He’s got no gun, and he doesn’t have enough money even to catch a bus, so how does he get to North Minneapolis from way down here?”

“That’s if everybody’s remembering the right night,” Del said. “Between the four of them, they couldn’t count to four.”

“I promise you something, Del,” Lucas said. “Helen Roman wasn’t killed by that dumbass. She was done by a pro. A guy who isn’t a small-time burglar, and who never had to make a killing look like a burglary. She was killed by Carver or Dannon.”

“Hey, I believe you,” Del said. “But a jury would have its doubts. Especially when the defense attorneys start rolling out the military hero stuff, and they will.”

“Yeah,” Lucas said. “They will. We need somebody who’s inside it.”

“Dannon or Carver.”

“Or Grant,” Lucas said.

• • •

LYING IN BED THAT NIGHT, Lucas realized that it wouldn’t be Grant. Grant was either completely innocent, or completely guilty. For her, there could be no middle ground.

As a rich woman, with her potential election to the Senate, she couldn’t admit to the slightest knowledge of anything, without losing everything. A criminal trial would be brutal, and if she were convicted, she’d be looking at life in prison—thirty years in Minnesota. Even if she were acquitted in a criminal trial, the civil trials by the murder victims’ relatives might still effectively destroy her, as O.J. Simpson had found out.

Logically, if she were guilty, nothing that Lucas could do would pry her open. And if she were innocent, she wouldn’t know anything.

Therefore, Dannon or Carver.

With Dannon, he had Quintana’s belief that Dannon was the man behind the phone call. The phone call indicated knowledge of at least the planting of the pornography on Smalls’s computer, and from there, inductively, the murders of Tubbs and Roman.

With Carver, he had nothing about the specific case, but he did have the army records that suggested that Carver could kill, and in a cold way: the army case involved the execution of bound prisoners. On the other hand, the army killings involved levels of stress and circumstance about which Lucas knew nothing. Might those killings have been somehow justified? That was, he thought, possible.

Sister Mary Joseph—Elle—thought he should go after Dannon, because he was the thinker, and if you convinced him he was in trouble, he might decide to negotiate. On the other hand, she thought, Carver would simply stonewall.

But the army records, and the possibility that publicity might force the army to reopen the case, were a powerful pry-bar. In a sense, Carver had already been found to have murdered people, and if that were pushed into the open, he might already be eligible for a long, unpleasant prison term.

He rolled around, thinking about it, and rolled some more, got up, drank some milk, sat in his underwear in the living room, and finally went back to bed.

Pry-bar. Carver.

• • •

ELECTION DAY.

In the dawn’s early light, he rolled out of bed when he felt Weather moving, and she said, “You had a bad night.”

“Push coming to shove,” Lucas said.

“When are you going to push?” she asked.

“Today, I think. There’s no time left.”

“Take your gun with you,” she said. And, “God, I hate it when I think things like that. Take your gun with you, because somebody might try to kill you and you might have to kill them.”

“Yeah. Well.” He had nothing to say; and he would take his gun. He always did.

“How’re you going to start?”

“By trusting somebody I have no really good reason to trust,” he said.

• • •

WHILE WEATHER WENT IN the bathroom, Lucas walked downstairs to his study and called Alice Green. She came up on the second ring, sounding a little sleepy:

“Yes?”

“Lucas Davenport, the much-loved cop.”

“I think Taryn talked to the governor about you,” Green said. “Tried to get you fired.”

“Yeah? What’d he say?”

“Not to be vulgar, but the phrase ‘Go shit in your hat’ comes to mind.”

“With a person of the governor’s refinement, I’m sure that phrase never occurred to him,” Lucas said.

“This is probably not the time to discuss it, but I wouldn’t mind being on his security detail,” Green said. “I understand he doesn’t have female security at the moment.”

“I could ask him, Alice, but I don’t think it’s extremely likely,” Lucas said.

“He’s got something against women?”

“No, but his wife does,” Lucas said. “You’re far too good-looking to pass the test.”

“Nothing to be done about that, I guess, unless you want to come over and punch me in the face,” Green said.

“What I’d like to do,” Lucas said, “is meet you somewhere to talk, before you go on the job today.”

“Will this get me fired?” she asked.

“Maybe. I’d try to keep you out of it, but if it’s a murder . . .”

“The thing is, disloyalty in one job might keep me from getting any other job.”

“I’m trying to tell you the truth,” Lucas said. “I can’t absolutely guarantee that it wouldn’t get out.”

After a moment, she said, “There’s a Caribou Coffee halfway between my place and Taryn’s. I could meet you there at seven-fifteen. I’m on the job at eight.”

“I’ll see you then,” Lucas said.

• • •

ALICE GREEN WAS DRESSED in green when Lucas arrived: a green blouse the color of her eyes, a much darker green jacket in a kind of knobby fabric, and black slacks that appeared to be form-fitting until you looked closely. She was paying for a cup of coffee, and Lucas looked closely, and realized that everything she wore was functional, nice-looking but tough, rather than luxurious, and well suited to a fight; the jacket was long enough and loose enough to conceal a pistol.

She paid, walked toward a far corner; saw him, nodded, but kept going. Lucas got a Diet Coke and checked the other customers before he walked over to her table, where she was blowing on a paper cup full of dark coffee. She said, “If anybody I know comes in, I’ll have to shoot you.”

Lucas sat down: “I need to talk to Carver, alone, I think. I’ve found a lever that might convince him to talk with me. I’ll call him unless you think it would be a terrible idea.”