Silken Prey

CHAPTER 18

Ray Quintana was a fifty-one-year-old Minneapolis vice cop, a detective sergeant, and having thought about it, he figured that he’d thoroughly screwed the pooch, also known as having poked the pup or fucked the dog. He didn’t know who’d been calling him about Helen Roman, but he suspected that whoever it was had gone over to Roman’s house the night before and killed her.

Quintana wasn’t a bad cop; okay, not a terrible one. He might have picked up a roll of fifties off a floor in a crack house that didn’t make it back to the evidence room; he might have found a few nice guns that the jerkwads didn’t need anymore, that made their way to gun shows in Wisconsin; he might have done a little toot from time to time, the random scatterings of the local dope dealers.

But he’d put a lot of bad people in jail, and overall, given the opportunities, and the stresses, not a bad guy.

When Tubbs had come to him, he’d put it out there as a straight business deal: Tubbs had heard from somewhere unknown that the Minneapolis Police Department had an outrageous file of kiddie porn. Quintana had known Tubbs since high school; Tubbs had been one of the slightly nerdy intellectuals on the edge of the popular clique, while Quintana had been metal shop and a football lineman.

Tubbs had said, “I’ll give you five thousand dollars for that file. Nobody’ll ever know, because hell, if I admit it went through my hands, I’d be in a lot more trouble than you.”

Quintana had asked him what he was going to do with it, and Tubbs had told him: “I’m gonna use it to screw Porter Smalls. I’m gonna get Taryn Grant elected to the U.S. Senate. When that happens, I’ll be fixed for life. I’ll remember you, too.”

Had Grant hired him?

“I don’t know—I’m being funded anonymously,” Tubbs said. “But that’s obviously where it comes from. I got the cash, and enough to split off five thousand for you.”

How much had Tubbs gotten?

“That’s between me and Jesus,” Tubbs said. “I’m taking all the risk. You get more than it’s worth, and if you don’t want the money—well, I’ll get another file. I know they’re floating around out there.”

Quintana wanted the five grand. Hadn’t really needed it, but he wanted it.

Quintana’s problem now was that Marion from Internal Affairs was on the trail, as was Davenport. Quintana knew Davenport, had worked with him, both on patrol and as detectives; Davenport scared him. Eventually, he thought, they’d get to him. Tubbs hadn’t exactly snuck into city hall. They might even have been seen talking together.

Quintana was thinking all of this at his desk, on a Sunday morning, staring at the wall behind it, over all the usual detective litter. He was so focused that his next-door desk neighbor asked, “You in there, Ray?”

“What?”

“I thought you were having a stroke or something.”

Quintana shook his head. “Just tired.”

“Then what are you doing in here? It’s Sunday.”

“I was thinking I shoulda gone to Hollywood and become an actor. I could have made the big time.”

“Man, you have had a stroke.”

He went back to staring.

His delivery of the porn file could get him jail time. Worse, he suspected that whoever was calling him had killed Roman. Even worse than that, he’d talked casually with Turk Cochran when he’d come in from Roman’s place, and Cochran said that Davenport thought it might be a pro job.

Even worse than that . . . Quintana suspected the same pro might be coming to shut him up.

If Quintana kept his mouth shut, he might be killed as a clean-up measure. If he kept his mouth shut, Davenport could plausibly come after him as an accessory to murder, especially if word got out that he’d interviewed Roman, or had been seen with Tubbs.

That all looked really bad.

There was a bright side: Tubbs was presumably dead, and Roman certainly was. That meant that any story that he made up couldn’t really be challenged. If he could just come up with something good enough, he would probably stay out of jail, and might even hang on to his pension. At least, the half that his ex-wife wasn’t going to get.

But what was the story? How could he possibly justify handing the file over to Tubbs? He thought and thought, and finally concluded that he couldn’t.

So he thought some more, and at one o’clock in the afternoon, picked up the phone and called the union rep at home, and said he needed to talk to the lawyer, right then, Sunday or not.

The union guy wanted to know what for, and Quintana said he really didn’t want to know what for. At two o’clock, he was talking to the lawyer, and at two-thirty, they called Marion. The lawyer, whose name was James Meers, said Quintana needed to talk with Marion and probably with Davenport, as soon as possible. Immediately, if possible.

Lucas took the call from Marion, who said, “We got a break.”

He’d set up the meeting for four o’clock.

• • •

LUCAS PARKED HIS PORSCHE in one of the cop-only slots next to city hall and threw his BCA card on the dash, which usually managed to piss somebody off; but they’d never towed him. The attorney’s office, where the meeting would be held, was a block or so away, in the Pillsbury building. As he walked along, he spotted Marion, whistled, and Marion turned, saw him, and waited.

“I thought somebody liked my ass,” Marion said.

“Probably not,” Lucas said. “You know what Quintana’s going to say?”

“Well, since it’s you and me . . . I suspect it might have something to do with the porn. We’ve been looking at possibilities, and his name’s on the list. He had access to the relevant computers both in Vice and Domestics.”

“Ah, boy. I’ve known him for a long time,” Lucas said. “Not a bad cop—give or take a little.”

“You know something about the take?” Marion asked.

“No, no. If he’s taken anything, he’s smart enough that nobody would know,” Lucas said. “That’s what’s odd about this deal—why in God’s name would he give a porn file to anyone? Especially when it was going to be used like this? You know, a public hurricane. That doesn’t sound like the Ray Quintana we know and love. He’s always been a pretty cautious guy.”

“Mmm. Got a pretty clean jacket, too,” Marion said. He looked up at the Pillsbury building. “I guess we’ll find out.”

• • •

QUINTANA AND MEERS were waiting, Quintana was in a sweat, and showing it. Meers was a soft-faced blond with gold-rimmed glasses in his mid-thirties, who looked like a British movie star, but Lucas couldn’t think which one. A guy who’d been in a tennis movie. When Lucas and Marion were seated, he said, “Ray’s got a problem. I don’t think it has to go any further than this . . . it’s not criminal, or anything, but he sorta screwed up.”

Marion looked skeptical, lifted his hands, and looked at Quintana. “So what is it?”

Before Quintana could say anything, Meers added: “He also has some valuable information for you, he thinks. The fact is, he didn’t have to do this—he’s doing it voluntarily, this meeting, and he’s not even going to try to deal on the information. He’s just going to give it to you, because he’s a good cop. I hope you keep that in mind.”

Marion looked at his watch: “Are we done with the introductions?”

Lucas was the good guy: he looked at Quintana and asked, “How you doin’, Ray?”

“Ah, man, I messed up,” Quintana said.

“What happened?”

Quintana leaned forward in his chair, his hands clenched in his lap, and spoke mostly to Lucas. “About two weeks ago, Bob Tubbs came to see me. I knew him all the way back in high school, and we’d bump into each other from time to time. We weren’t friends, but you know, we were friendly. So, he comes to see me in the office. He sits down and says he’s got a big problem.”

Quintana told it this way:

Tubbs said, “You guys have an extensive file of kiddie porn somewhere in your computers. Here in Vice, and down in Domestics. I don’t care about that, but there’s one picture in there that I need to see. I need to see it off the record.”

Quintana: “What’s this all about?”

Tubbs: “A very large person in the state legislature is banging a girl on the side. Young, but not too young. But now it turns out that she might have been involved in some kind of porn ring and probably prostitution, and was busted by you guys. I need to look at her picture. I can’t get at it through regular sources, because she was underage when she was busted, and the file is sealed.”

Quintana: “Why do you need to look at it?”

Tubbs: “Because this guy is in a pretty tender spot. He’s in the process of getting a divorce. His wife’s lawyer is a wolverine, and if she gets a sniff of this chick—and maybe she already did—they’re going to make an issue of it. Then, it’s all gonna come out. He needs to know if this girl’s the one involved in porn and prostitution and all that. I’ve seen his girlfriend. Now I need to look at the file.”

Quintana: “Even if she was, what would he do about it?”

Tubbs: “Put her ass on a plane to Austin, Texas. He’s got a buddy in the Texas legislature who’ll give her a job, and his old lady won’t be able to find her.”

Quintana: “Why doesn’t he do that anyway?”

Tubbs: “Because it’ll cost an arm and a leg. If she’s not the one, he won’t do it. The other thing is, he doesn’t want to ask the girl, because he’s afraid it’ll change things. And she might decide to ask for a little cash herself. If she’s the one. All he wants to do is know.”

Lucas asked, “You gave him the file?”

Quintana shook his head. “No. All I did was sit at the computer and call up the file. I knew what he was talking about, the girl, because it went back to Tom Morgan’s case three years ago.

“I showed him the picture, and he asked me to enlarge it, the best shot of her face. He looked at it and then he said, “Close, but no cigar. She’s not the one.”

Marion: “Then what?”

“I closed the file and he said thanks, and he went away.”

Marion: “Didn’t give you a little schmear?”

“No, no. Nothing like that,” Quintana said. “Look, this was a fast favor for a guy. Didn’t look at the porn, didn’t do any of that. A favor for a guy big in the legislature. You know how that works.”

“You believed all that bullshit?” Marion asked.

Quintana shook his head: “It looks bad now, but yeah, I believed him. Like I said, I knew him forever.”

Lucas said, “If you didn’t give him the file, how’d he get it?”

Quintana shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. But I’ve got my suspicions.”

“Like what?”

“He was standing behind me when I signed on,” Quintana said. “He might have seen my password . . . it’s . . . this sounds even stupider . . . it’s ‘yquintz.’ And I mean, he was right there. Once you’ve got the password, you can get in even from outside, if you need to. After I signed on, I looked up the file. He saw that, too.”

Marion said, “Unbelievable.”

Quintana ran his hands through his hair. “Yeah, I know. Oldest goddamn trick in the book,” Quintana said. “I never saw it. I mean, all he wanted to do was look at one face.”

Lucas mostly didn’t believe it, but was willing to buy it if he got anything that would aim him at Carver and Dannon. He asked, “What was this information you got?”

“Yesterday I was working over on Upton—we think there might be a high-ticket whorehouse over there, don’t tell anybody. Anyway, I was sitting in my car taking down tag numbers and taking pictures of these girls coming and going, and I get this phone call. The guy says that he bought the pornography file from Tubbs and Tubbs said he got it from me. I say, ‘That’s bullshit, I didn’t give him anything.’

“The guy says, ‘Well, he said he got it from you, and I think he might have told a woman over in Smalls’s office. And he might’ve told her about me, too. She’s the one who put the porn in. Nobody knows who I am, but somebody needs to go over and talk to this woman, this Helen Roman. Like a cop. Needs to ask her where the porn came from, and where it went.’

“I said, ‘I didn’t give anybody any porn. Who is this, anyway?’

“He said, ‘A guy who doesn’t like Porter Smalls.’

“I said, ‘I don’t like Porter Smalls either, but I didn’t give a thing to Tubbs.’

“The guy says, ‘Look, all you have to do is check with her.’

“I say, ‘Not me.’

“Then the guy hangs up,” Quintana said.

“And you’ve got the phone number,” Lucas said.

Quintana nodded: “I do.” He dug in his pocket and handed Lucas a slip of notepaper, with a phone number on it.

Lucas took the paper, and Marion said, “I’m gonna need that.”

Lucas nodded, took out a pen and a pocket notebook, and wrote the number down, and passed the original slip back to Marion. “I’m going to run down the number and look at the activity on that phone,” Lucas said. “If this is real, it could be a serious break.”

“I just hope I get credit for it,” Quintana said.

Meers said, “That’s pretty much the story. A simple request from a friend, to help out a guy in the legislature. If you go after a guy for that, we wouldn’t have a police department left.”

Marion said, “You know the problem, though: it’s not important unless it becomes important. Ray’s now all tangled up in what could be a double murder case. One way or another . . .”

Quintana said, “Come on. If I hadn’t told you, you’d never have found out. I could’ve lied. Instead, I came right in, as soon as I worked it out. I even gave you what Lucas said could be a break. A serious break.”

Marion looked at Lucas and asked, “What’s the BCA think?”

Lucas said, “This is all on you guys. Do what’s best: I don’t care. I just want the phone number.” He looked at Quintana: “Where’s the phone they called you on?”

“In my pocket.” He fished it out: an iPhone.

“I’m going to need to take it with me. I need to take it to our lab, we’ll get in touch with your . . . Who’s your service provider?”

“Verizon.”

“We’ll get in touch with Verizon, and when we know where our targets are, we’re going to want you to call them,” Lucas said.

Quintana shook his head. “You can take my phone, but these guys are way too smart to be using their own phone. I’d give you ten to one that it’s a disposable.”

“That’s why we need to catch them with it. We’ll be monitoring the call and the location it comes from,” Lucas said. “I’ll probably get back to you tonight. Where you gonna be?”

“Without my cell . . . I’ll probably go home if Buck is done talking to me. I’ve got a landline there.”

“Okay. You sit there, wait for my call,” Lucas said. “You go along with all of this, I’ll testify on your side in any kind of proceedings.”

Quintana nodded. “I’ll do that.”

He passed Lucas his cell phone, and Lucas said, “If you’ll all excuse me . . . I gotta run.”

As he headed for the door, Quintana called, “You believe me, right?”

Lucas paused at the door, then said, “No, not the whole story. Not even very much of it. But I believe the phone number.”

• • •

THEN HE HAD a lot to do. From his car, as he headed back across town to the BCA, he called Jenkins and told him to find Shrake: “I know it’s Sunday, but I need you to babysit some people for me. Only until tonight. I need to know where they are, all the time.”

“How complicated is this going to be?”

“Not complicated. You have to tag a campaign caravan.” He told Jenkins to find out where Taryn Grant was going to be, described Dannon and Carver. “It’s those two guys you’ve got to stay with. I want you to go separately so if they split up, you can follow both of them. But they should stick pretty close to Grant for as long as I need you to watch them.”

“Good enough,” Jenkins said.

• • •

LUCAS HAD TO MAKE some calls, first to the director, and then the deputy director, and between them they found a technician who was willing to come in and set up the phone monitoring system. When he got there, the tech came up to Lucas’s office and said, “We don’t usually need a subpoena for Verizon, if we just want a location, but I’ll check with them first. That’s not usually a problem, though.”

“Then get it going,” Lucas said.

He was a little cranked: if this worked out, there’d be somebody in the bag by midnight. He called Jenkins: “Where are you guys?”

“Grant’s up in Anoka. We’re on the way. Then she’s going to St. Cloud for an eight-o’clock appearance and then back home. Probably back in the Cities between ten and midnight.”

“Keep me up to date,” Lucas said.

Lucas called Quintana: “It’ll be late—I’ll probably come get you around nine or ten o’clock.”

Lucas needed something to eat. He called Weather to find out what the food situation was, and was told that the housekeeper was making her patented mac & cheese & pepperoni. “I’ll be there,” he said.

He was pulling his jacket on when Virgil Flowers called: “I was talking to Barney and he didn’t know what you were up to, but he said you might use my help. I’m down in Shakopee. I can either go home, or head your way.”

“My house,” Lucas said. “Helen’s making her mac and cheese and pepperoni.”

“What happened to that vegetarian thing you guys were doing?”

“Ah, that only lasted a month or two. Besides, pepperoni isn’t meat—it’s cheese made by pigs,” Lucas said. “Anyway, we’ll be going out later. I’ll tell you about it when you get there.”

He called Weather and told her that Flowers was coming to dinner, and she said, “We got plenty.”

Which was true: the mac and cheese and pepperoni usually went on for the best part of a week.

• • •

LUCAS GOT HOME, changed into jeans, a wool vest over a white dress shirt, and an Italian cotton sport coat, blue-black in color that would be excellent, he thought, for nighttime shoot-outs. It hadn’t yet been tested for that. When he got back downstairs, Flowers had come in, wearing a barn coat, jeans, and carrying a felt cowboy hat. His high-heeled cowboy boots made him an inch taller than Lucas.

“There better not be a fuckin’ horse in my driveway,” Lucas said.

A bit later, Lucas took a call from the BCA tech, who said they were set with Verizon, and they could give him a real-time location as soon as Lucas called the other phone, which, as it happened, also used Verizon. There’d been no calls on the phone for two days; the last call had been to Quintana’s number.

They all ate together at a long oblong dinner table, Flowers and Letty happily gabbing away—Flowers, a part-time writer with a developing reputation, had done a biographical piece about Letty that had been published in Vanity Fair, with photographs by Annie Leibovitz. They were all now dear friends, Annie and Letty and Virgie.

Leibovitz had taken a bunch of pictures of Lucas, too, but the magazine had used only one. Lucas thought it made him look like a midwestern prairie preacher from the nineteenth century. As for the friendship, he thought Letty and Virgie were getting a little too dear. The issue came up before dinner, and Weather told him he was losing it if he thought Flowers had untoward ideas about Letty.

“When it comes to being around women, I wouldn’t trust that guy further than I could spit a Norwegian rat,” Lucas had grumbled.

“Why? Because he reminds you so much of your younger self?” she’d asked.

“Maybe,” Lucas had said. “But not that much younger.”

“He’s not interested in Letty,” Weather had declared.

“Okay,” Lucas said. “How about in you?”

“Don’t be absurd,” she’d said, ostentatiously checking her hair in the mirror.

• • •

AFTER DINNER, Lucas and Virgil went to Lucas’s study, with Letty perching on a side chair, and Lucas briefed him about the situation. “Basically,” Flowers summed up, “we’ve got nothing, but if their phone’s GPS says that they’re in a certain spot, you think that’s good enough for a search and seizure.”

“I know it is, because there’s been another case just like it,” Lucas said. “It was in LA, but the federal court refused to order the evidence set aside.”

“And so this could prove that these two highly trained killers were involved with the porn, and we know for sure that they’ve got guns.”

“Uh-huh.”

Virgil thought about that and said, “Okay.”

They’d sat down to eat at seven, had finished with the food and talk at eight, and at eight-thirty, sitting in the den, Lucas took a call from Jenkins. “This is going to wind up sooner than I thought,” Jenkins said. “She finished talking, the TV is pulling out, now she’s going around mixing with the kids, but that’s not going to last long, once the TV is gone. I think we’ll be out of here in fifteen minutes, and then it’s an hour back to her place.”

He said to Flowers, “Let’s go. Excuse me—I meant, ‘Saddle up.’”

“Yeah,” Virgil said, getting his hat.

“Don’t let him push you around,” Letty told Virgil. “That hat looks good on you. Not everybody could pull it off, but you can.”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Flowers said, and he and Lucas were out the door.

They took Flowers’s truck, and as they backed out of the driveway, Lucas noticed that Flowers was smiling.

“What’s the shit-eating grin about?” Lucas asked.

“Ah, I love pimping you about Letty. And Weather, for that matter.”

“I don’t mind, as long as you keep your hands off Helen and that mac and cheese and pepperoni,” Lucas said.

• • •

JENKINS CALLED TO SAY that Taryn Grant’s caravan consisted of three cars. The first carried what appeared to be three lower-ranking campaign people, one of whom was probably the media liaison. The second car was a big American SUV, and carried Grant, a short, heavyset woman, and one of the bodyguards; from Lucas’s description, he thought it was probably Carver. The third car carried the other bodyguard, Dannon, and a thin woman who was apparently also security.

“Alice Green, ex–Secret Service,” Lucas said. “Where are you guys?”

“Shrake is out front, I’m a quarter mile back, with four cars between us.”

“Stay in touch,” Lucas said. “Let me know for sure when they hit 494.”

Quintana lived in Golden Valley, a first-ring suburb west of Minneapolis. He was standing on his front porch when Lucas and Virgil arrived. He got in the backseat, and Lucas introduced Flowers. Quintana said, “I appreciate the chance.”

“Like I said, it’s up to Minneapolis what they do about this,” Lucas said. “But you kinda blew it, Ray.”

“I know that,” Quintana said. “But tell me you don’t do a little off-the-record relationship stuff. I thought Tubbs might be something for me: a guy to know.”

“I understand that,” Lucas said. “I don’t buy all that other stuff.”

“Ahhh . . .” Quintana shut up and looked out the side window.

After a couple minutes of silence, Virgil said to Lucas, “At least we know he’s not lying to us now.”

“How’s that?” Lucas asked.

“His lips aren’t moving.”

Quintana began laughing in the backseat, and then Lucas and Virgil started.

• • •

THEY PULLED INTO a mostly empty strip mall parking lot a mile from Grant’s house. The streets were good between the mall and her house, and they could be there in a couple of minutes. They talked about Tubbs and Roman, but not about Quintana’s problem.

“I wish that motherfucker Tubbs wasn’t dead,” Quintana said. “Then I could kill him myself.”

Lucas asked Flowers how his most recent romance had been going.

“I think it’s gone,” Flowers said. “We’re apparently friends, now.”

“That’s not necessarily the kiss of death,” Quintana said from the backseat, and they talked about that for a while.

Jenkins called when the caravan got off I-94 and headed south on I-494, and then when it got off I-494 and headed west. Lucas called the tech and said, “I’m making the call.”

And at that moment, as he hung up on the tech and prepared to call the unknown phone, another call from Jenkins came in. “Man, we got a problem. We got a problem.”

“What?”

“I got a cop car on my ass, and so does Shrake. The caravan has pulled over ahead of us. Shit! They made us. I gotta talk to this cop.”

“Goddamnit, where are you?” Lucas asked.

He got the location, and told Flowers to go that way, and then made the call on Quintana’s phone and handed it to Quintana. It rang, and rang, and rang, with no answer. The tech called and said, “We’ve got a location for you. The phone’s at Hampshire Avenue North and Thirtieth.”

“What?”

“It’s at Hampshire Avenue North and Thirtieth. There’s a park there.”

Lucas asked, “Where in the hell is that?”

“Well, if you’re at Grant’s house, it’s about eight miles east. As the crow flies.”

“Sonofabitch,” Lucas said.

“What’re we doing?” Flowers asked.

“Got no choice, now. We’ll try to shake them, see if anything comes loose,” Lucas said.

He turned around in his seat and said to Quintana, “I’m going to point out these guys and tell you to look at them. Like you’d seen them before. I want you to take a long look, then come over and mutter at me. Don’t let them hear what you’re saying.”

“I never saw them,” Quintana said.

“Ray, for Christ’s sakes, I’m trying to shake ’em. We’re doing a pageant.”

Quintana cracked a smile. “All right.”

“What do you want me to do?” Flowers asked, as they turned a corner and saw the lights on the squad cars.

“Well, given the way you’re dressed, you could ask me if I want them hog-tied,” Lucas said.

“Don’t take it out on me,” Flowers said. “I’m not the one who . . .”

“. . . poked the pup,” Quintana said.

“Shut up,” Lucas snarled, no longer in the mood for humor.

• • •

WHEN THEY CAME UP on the lights, the street was full of cops and politicians. Flowers turned on his own flashers, and a cop who started toward them stopped and put his hands on his hips. Lucas, Flowers, and Quintana got out, and the cop waited for them to walk up, and then asked, “Any chance you’re the BCA?”

“BCA and Minneapolis police,” Lucas said.

At that moment, Taryn Grant, who was in the street with a half-dozen campaign workers and her security people, came steaming toward them and shrieked, “I knew it was you. I knew it.”

“Shut up,” Lucas said, but without much snap.

“This is the last straw.” She was wildly angry; her blond hair had come loose from whatever kind of spray had been keeping it neat, and was fluttering over her forehead. Her campaign manager, Schiffer, took her arm and tried to pull her back, and Grant pulled free.

Dannon, Carver, and Green had come up behind Grant. Lucas turned to Quintana and said, “Take a look.”

Quintana, with the unpleasant grittiness of a vice cop, stepped up close to Carver and looked him straight in the face for a long beat; then stepped over to Dannon and did the same thing. Neither man turned away, but they didn’t like it.

“Who’s this guy, and what does he want?” Dannon asked.

“I’m a cop,” Quintana said. “You got a problem with that?”

“I don’t like somebody standing two inches in front of my face breathing onions on me,” Dannon said. “So back off.”

Quintana did. Carver nodded at Flowers and asked, “Why’s there a cowboy with you?”

“Lucas might’ve wanted you hog-tied,” Flowers said. “He thought I’d be the guy to do it.”

Carver stared at Flowers for a minute, then asked, “You in the military?”

“Yeah, for a while.”

“Officer?”

“Yeah.”

“MP?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought so,” Carver said.

Quintana had stepped over to Lucas and said, in a low tone, “I can’t hardly believe it, but I think it really is that second guy I talked to.” He looked back over his shoulder at Dannon and Carver and said, “The smaller one. He’s got that funny accent—Texas. Like George Bush.”

Dannon stepped toward them and said, “We gave you those DNA samples.”

Lucas nodded and squared off with Grant. “We’ve got two days before the election and this whole thing is coming to a boil. We’re watching everybody, because we don’t want anybody else to show up dead: there have been two murders so far. We don’t need a third.”

“We don’t have anything to do with any murders,” she shouted, and Lucas could see little atoms of saliva spray in the headlights of Flowers’s truck.

“We can’t take any chances—you could be a target,” Lucas said. “We had no plans to stop you. We were making sure that everybody got home all right.”

“Fuck you,” she shouted.

• • •

LUCAS TOLD SHRAKE and Jenkins to go home, and back in Flowers’s truck, Lucas asked Quintana, “How sure are you?”

Quintana shrugged. “Hell, Lucas—he sounded like the guy. It’s not like he’s some random asshole and I’m trying to pick him out of a hundred people by the tone of his voice. He’s your suspect, and I can tell you he’s got that accent, and that was right, and his tone was right, and the way the words came out, that’s exactly right. He sounded exactly like the guy on the phone. You say you’re looking for professional killers and you find two professional killers, and then I listen to one of them . . . what are the chances that it’s not him?”

“Slim and none, and slim is outta town,” Lucas said. “I want you to go back to the office and write this down. A standard incident report and e-mail it to me. I’ll talk to Marion and tell him you’re working with me.”

“I appreciate it,” Quintana said, and he looked like he did. “In the meantime, I might move out to a motel for a couple of weeks.”

“Stay in touch,” Lucas said to Quintana, as Flowers pulled away from the curb. “I don’t want to wonder what the hell happened to you.”

Flowers asked, “We’re going to Hampshire and Thirtieth?”

“Yeah, if we can find it.”

Lucas called up the Google Maps app on his iPhone, and fifteen minutes later they pulled to the side of the road, houses on one side, a park on the other. Dark as tar on the park side.

Flowers got a flash and Lucas dialed the phone. They walked up and down the road, and then Virgil heard it buzzing down in the weeds. It took a minute or so and a couple of calls to find it. Flowers bagged it and handed it to Lucas.

“Have them check the battery,” Flowers said. “They probably had to pull an insulating tab off. Maybe they forgot to wipe it.”

“Fat chance,” Lucas said. “But I’ll do it anyway. I’m pulling on threads, ’cause threads are all I’ve got.”