John Sandford - Silken Prey

He further suspected that Green, or possibly Carver, could have had something to do with the robbery: probably through an accomplice. He thought that because they monitored the security cameras, and if Grant had ever forgotten to turn the cameras off, could have seen her opening the safe; they probably knew something about the contents of the safe, and that it would be well worth hitting; and they knew about the security measures outside. Also, both Green and Carver had his phone number.

He still didn’t understand why either one would call him with the message from “Taryn.”

That made no sense at all.

• • •

ONE OF THE CRIME-SCENE crew had found what appeared to be two small imprints under the arborvitae bush below the bathroom window. One looked like an impression from the outer edge of a hand; the other just a little curve in the dirt, possibly the impression of a heel. He’d taken photos of both.

When he showed the photos to Lucas, he said, “We’re not sure that they are what I think they are. I couldn’t testify to it . . . I mean, I could say what I think, but any good defense attorney would tear my ass off.”

“Cut the crap: What do you think?”

“The curves are small . . . like a small hand and a small heel. Like they were made by a woman.”

Somebody with large balls, like an ex–Secret Service woman, Lucas thought. Could Green have cut the windows out earlier in the day, to make way for an accomplice? But that seemed unlikely. Why would she think that Grant wouldn’t be going back to pee, and wouldn’t notice the cut-out windows?

• • •

THE POLITICAL WRANGLING WAS more amusing than anything. The governor called, laughing again, a week after the murders hit the newspapers, and said, “Well, I called and told our senator-elect what all the Important People said, and she said I should write it all down on a piece of paper, roll it into a sharp little cone, and shove it where the sun don’t shine. She’s not quitting.”

“Jesus, I thought she had to, from what I’ve been reading,” Lucas said.

“With a billion dollars, you don’t have to do much of anything you don’t want to, and she doesn’t want to quit,” the governor said. “If she does a few million in political advertising over the next six years, nobody’ll even remember this little dustup. So, we’re moving right along to the important stuff, like revising the estate tax.”

“That’s the end of it?”

“Not quite. I’ve invited Grant to a little confab in my office tomorrow, with Porter Smalls. Mitford will be there, and her campaign manager, and I’d like you to sit in. And I’ll get Rose Marie to come along.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I want everybody clear on what happened here, and why everybody did what they did—including you and me,” the governor said.

• • •

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, they all got together at the Capitol, in the governor’s conference room: Henderson, Grant, Smalls, Mitford, Rose Marie, Lucas, Connie Schiffer, and Alice Green, still working as Taryn’s security.

For a political gathering, there was a remarkable lack of even symbolic amity. The governor shook hands with everybody, but nobody shook hands with anybody else.

The governor sat at the head of the conference table, cleared his throat, and said, “I don’t expect all of us to be pals after this, but I’d at least like to get things clear for everybody. Senator-elect Grant has, of course, made it clear that she didn’t have anything to do with the rogue security people on her campaign staff, and in fact feels that she was being set up for long-term blackmail by those same people. In any case, she will not resign and will take her seat in the Senate in January.”

Smalls said, “I think that—”

The governor: “Shut up for a minute, will you, Porter? Let me finish.”

“I just—”

“You’ll have your chance,” Henderson said. He looked at Taryn Grant and asked, “Setting aside all the BS aimed at the media, am I correct that this is your position?”

Grant nodded: “Yes.”

Connie Schiffer started to say, “I think we all know that Senator Smalls—”

The governor interrupted: “No. Be quiet. We don’t want any of that. So we know that Senator-elect Grant will take her seat in the Senate. I’ll now turn to Lucas Davenport, the lead investigator in this case. Lucas, do you have any issues that you will continue to pursue?”

Lucas said, “There are several small mysteries about the whole case that I’d like to resolve, and some minor entanglements—for example, Minneapolis still has to decide what to do about the files that were used to frame Senator Smalls. But at this moment, I see no further possibility for arrests or prosecutions involving anyone in this room. I will tell you that I suspect that Senator-elect Grant is not telling us all that we need to know to effectively close out this case. I have no proof of that, and I see no way to get any proof, unless it turns out that either Douglas Dannon or Ronald Carver has somewhere left behind some evidence of her involvement. We have been through both of their town houses, and through Dannon’s safe-deposit box at Wells Fargo. We found considerable cash, but we found nothing that would implicate Senator-elect Grant in any wrongdoing.”

“So you’re at the end of that road,” Henderson said.

“Yes, unless something extraordinary turns up, but I don’t think that will happen.”

Henderson said, “Okay. I want to tell everybody that I asked that Lucas be assigned to this case, because I trust him absolutely. And now I am ordering him not to speak to any media or to anyone else regarding his suspicions about anybody in this case, unless or until he has absolute proof of wrongdoing. Is that clear to everybody? Lucas?”

“That’s clear,” Lucas said.

Henderson turned to Smalls: “Porter.”

Smalls said, “This is one of the most disgraceful moments in the history of American politics and I’m a student of that history, so I know. I was the victim of the most brutal character assassination ever carried out against an American politician, and the main financial sponsor of that assassination actually benefits, and goes to the Senate. Well, I’ll tell you—there are people on both sides of the Senate aisle who are frightened by what was done here. I will go to Washington for the lame-duck session, and I will talk to my friends there.”

He looked directly at Grant: “I will tell them that I think you are guilty of the murder of three people and that you were the sponsor of the child-pornography smear, and that I think a person of your brand of social pathology—I believe you are a psychopath, and I will tell them that—has no place in the Senate. And I will continue to argue that here in Minnesota for the full six years of your term, and do everything I can to wreck any possible political career that you might otherwise have had.”

Grant smiled at him and said, “Fuck you.”

The governor said, “Okay, okay, Porter. Now, Taryn, do you have anything for us?”

“No, not really. I’ll be the best senator I can be, I reject any notion that I was involved in this craziness.” She looked at Smalls: “As for you, bring it on. If you want to spend six years fighting over this, by the time we’re done, you’ll be unemployable and broke. I would have no problem setting aside, say, a hundred million dollars for a media campaign to defend myself.”

“Fuck you ,” Smalls said. And, “By the way, I’d like to thank Agent Davenport for his work on this. I thought he did a brilliant job, even if I wound up losing.”

Grant jumped in: “And I’d like to say that I think Davenport created the conditions that unnecessarily led to the deaths in this case, that if he’d been a little more circumspect, we might still have Helen Roman and Carver and Dannon alive, and might be able to actually prove what happened, so that I’d be definitively cleared.”