Silken Prey

CHAPTER 19

Taryn fixed herself a lemon drop, with a little extra vodka, as soon as she was back in the house; Dannon helped himself to a bottle of beer, Schiffer had a Diet Pepsi, Carver poured a glass of bourbon, Green got a bottle of Evian water. Schiffer said to Taryn, “All right, enough is enough, if you want to call the governor in the morning, go ahead and do it. But right now we’ve got more important stuff on the table.”

“He thinks we killed somebody,” Taryn shouted at her. “He thinks—”

“You know you didn’t, so he’s got no proof. You gotta keep your eye on the ball,” Schiffer shouted back, the two women face-to-face. “We’ve got one more day of campaigning. We can still lose it.”

Taryn looked at her over the glass, then asked, “Where are we?”

The media woman, whose name was Mary Booth, stepped up: “While you were up north, we’re seeing a new Smalls ad. It ran prime time, Channel Three at seven o’clock, it’s been on ’CCO and KSTP. We’d bought out the KARE slots so it wasn’t there.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, what is it?” Taryn asked.

“Well, all that neutrality thing is done with. He knows there’s no time left, so he dropped the bomb—he says you planted the porn on him,” Booth said. “He doesn’t come right out and say the words, but he talks about the Democrats and opposition dirty tricks, and he gets angry. I’d say it’s quite effective.”

“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.”

“What’d he say to you?” Dannon asked.

Taryn rolled toward him, one of her breasts pressing against his biceps; she wetted a finger and circled one of his nipples in a distracted way, and said, “This afternoon, before we went over to that school, he said that he hadn’t signed up for all this. That’s what he said, ‘signed up.’ I asked what that meant, and he said that he hoped I’d be more grateful than I had been so far. I said that I would be, that if he’d hold on until I was in the Senate, I could take care of him in a lot of ways: money, another army job, get his record wiped out, whatever he needed. He said, ‘Money’s good,’ and said we could talk about the other stuff, then he asked when he’d get a down payment.”

“What’d you say to that?”

“I said too much stuff was coming down right now: that I assumed he’d want a big brick of cash that he wouldn’t have to pay taxes on, but even for me, it takes a while to get cash together. Almost nobody uses it anymore, except dope dealers, I guess.”

Dannon said, “Got that right. I can’t remember the last time I saw somebody buying groceries for cash, except me.”

“He said, ‘Well, better get on that. I’m gonna need a big chunk pretty soon. I got a feeling that when everything settles down . . . my services might not be needed.’ I said, ‘You’ve got a job as long as you want it, and you’ll get paid as much as you need.’ He laughed and said, ‘I kinda don’t think you know how much I need.’”

Dannon said, “That’s the problem with Ron. He’s hungry all the time—more pussy, more dope, more money. There won’t be an end to it.”

“I know, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

Dannon said, “Ron and I . . . he was enlisted, I was an officer. We’re not natural friends. I’m not being arrogant here, lots of the enlisted guys are sharp as razors: but that’s the way it is. He doesn’t think, except tactically. How exactly to do one thing or another. He thinks three days down the road, but not three months or three years. He’ll get us in trouble, sooner or later.”

Taryn said nothing, waiting, watching Dannon think.

He said, finally, “There’s something else.”

“What?”

“I’m kinda worried that from Ron’s perspective, I’m the problem,” Dannon said. “He’ll figure he can handle you. But you and me together . . .”

“You actually think . . . he might come after you?”

“I think it’s inevitable,” Dannon said. “It’ll occur to him pretty soon. After it does, he won’t wait. That’s the three-days-thinking problem again. He’ll think about it, then he’ll move.”

“Oh, dear.”

“I think he has to go away,” Dannon said.

“You mean . . . someday?”

“No. I mean right away. I know it’ll be a political problem, but . . . I know this guy down in Houston. For ten thousand dollars, he’ll fly Carver’s passport to Kuwait. He’s got a deal with one of the border people there.”

“I don’t understand,” Taryn said, though she had an idea about it.

“Simple enough. Ron goes away. I FedEx his passport and ten grand—I’ve actually got the cash in my safe-deposit box—”

“I’ll pay you back.”

“I got this. My guy in Houston flies the passport to Kuwait and walks it across the border into Iraq. We call up this Davenport guy, say that we’re worried because Ron didn’t show up for work on Wednesday and he doesn’t answer his phone. We don’t know where he’s gone.”

“And Davenport thinks it’s possible that he’s run for it.”

“Yeah, because they send out a stop order on him, and because of his background, and what they think—that he killed Tubbs and Roman—they include the border people and the airport security, and they report back that his passport left the country, and then crossed the border into Kuwait and then out of Kuwait and into Iraq.”

“Don’t they take pictures, you know, video cameras of everybody going through the airport?”

“Sure. But IDs aren’t synced with pictures. They ask for your passport when you check in, but going through security, they only ask for a government ID. This Houston guy shows Ron’s passport to the airlines and the security people, who check him through. The cops look at the security video, and they never see Ron, so they figure he ran some kind of dodge, and got through behind security. It’s easy enough to do. Listen, all kinds of people from this country are carrying all kinds of stuff into Kuwait and then across the border into Iraq. This is a very established deal. . . . This Houston guy, it’s his thing. It can be done.”

“If you’re sure . . .”

“It’ll hurt, politically, but once it’s done, we’re really secure,” Dannon said. “We’ll be the only two who know the story. You’re already a senator before the shit hits the fan, another guy goes missing . . . but, if Ron’s passport goes into Iraq, what’s Davenport going to do?”

“How soon?”

“Tomorrow,” Dannon said. “We can’t afford to wait. I can’t give Ron a chance to move on me.” He was on his back and Taryn snuggled her head down onto his chest and he stroked her hair. Without Ron, he thought, the future had no horizon. . . .

• • •

TARYN WAS PRETTY TIRED of the sex by the time Dannon went to sleep. She listened to him breathe, then slipped out of bed, pulled on a robe, and padded through to the living room, closing the bedroom door behind her, poured some vodka over a couple of ice cubes, sat on the couch, and thought about it.

Dannon, once he’d gotten rid of Carver, was going to be a problem. She could see it already: he was looking at a permanent relationship. He was looking at love. When she got to Washington, an heiress and businesswoman already worth a billion dollars or so, a U.S. senator . . . any permanent relationship wouldn’t be with an ex–army captain who carried a switchblade in his pocket.

That their relationship wasn’t going to be permanent would quickly become obvious. Then what? What do jilted lovers do, when they’re men? What do jilted alcoholics with switchblades do?

Something to think about. Dannon, like Carver, would have to go away. But how? She sat on the couch for another hour, and another two vodkas, thinking about it: and what she thought was, Best to wait until we get to Washington.

• • •

THE NEIGHBORHOOD AROUND TARYN’S was quiet and dark and gently rolling. The highest nearby spot was between two pillared faux-plantation manors on five-acre lots, screened from the street by elaborate hedges. From the top of that low hill, any approaching cars could be seen three blocks away.

Lauren was behind the wheel of Kidd’s Mercedes GL550, a large luxury vehicle and one that fit well in rich neighborhoods. Kidd sat in the passenger seat, looking at a hooded laptop that was plugged into an antenna and amplifier focused on one of the manors. Kidd was riding on the manor’s Wi-Fi; and Lauren, looking over his shoulder, said, “We’re not Peeping Toms.”

“I’m not peeping, I’m trying to figure out who in the hell that is,” he said, watching the scene in Taryn Grant’s bedroom. “I think it’s her security guy. The only security guy, if we counted right. I can’t find anyone else.”

“It’s perfect,” Lauren said. “They’re both fully occupied.”

“You’re scaring the shit out of me,” Kidd said.

“I’m so excited I’m gonna have an orgasm myself in the next two minutes,” Lauren said. “Trade places. I’m going.”

Kidd didn’t bother to argue. He got out of the car—no interior lights, they had custom switches, and the switches were off—and walked around to the driver’s side, as Lauren clambered into the passenger seat.

She was wearing trim, soft black cotton slacks, a silky white blouse, a red nylon runner’s jacket with reflective strips front and back, and black running shoes. She had a thin black nylon ski mask in her pocket. The ski mask could be instantly buried; and no burglar in his or her right mind would be out with a red jacket, a shiny white blouse, and all those reflective strips.

Kidd started the SUV and they eased on down the hill toward Grant’s house. As they rolled along, Lauren turned the jacket inside out: the lining, now the outer shell, was jet black. She pulled it back on, and was now dressed head to toe in black. A hundred yards out, Lauren said, “I’ll call.” Kidd tapped the brakes—no red flash on the custom-switched brake lights—and when they were stopped, Lauren dropped out and quietly closed the car door.

Five seconds later, with the hood over her head, she vanished into the woods between Grant’s house and the neighbor’s.

• • •

THE GROUNDS WERE PROTECTED by both radar and infrared installations, but Kidd had switched off the alarms on the rear approach, and had fixed the software so that they couldn’t be turned back on without his permission. Lauren had one major worry: that the dogs would be turned loose. If that happened, she was in trouble. She had a can of bear spray, which should shut them down, but she had no idea how effective that would be.

For the time being, the dogs were in the house—one of them in the living room, where it could see the front hallway and the hall coming in from the garage; and the other outside the bedroom door.

Inside the tree line, she pulled a pair of starlight goggles over her head. They were military issue, and she’d had to pay nine thousand dollars for them six years before. With the goggles over her eyes, the world turned green and speckled: but she could see.

She began moving forward, like a still-hunter, placing each foot carefully, feeling for branches and twigs before she put weight down. Long pauses to listen. Fifty yards in, she crossed a nearly useless wrought iron fence. Any reasonably athletic human could slip right over it; Grant’s dogs could jump it with three feet to spare, and a deer would hardly notice it. Once over the fence, she took nearly fifteen minutes to cross the hundred yards to the edge of Grant’s back lawn. By that time, she knew she was alone. She took out her phone, a throwaway, and messaged Kidd, one word: “There.”

One word came back. “Go.”

Kidd was back on top of the hill, back on the manor’s Wi-Fi. Nothing inside the house had changed. Grant’s lawn was dotted with oak trees and shrubs, and Lauren stuck close to them as she closed in on the bedroom. There were motion and sonic alarms outside the bedroom windows, but Kidd had them handled. When she was below the windows, she took out a taped flashlight with a pinprick opening in the tape. She turned it on, and with the tiny speck of light, looked at the windows. Triple glazed, wired, with lever latches. Fully open, there’d be a space three feet long and a foot high that she’d have to get her body through. She could do that. . . .

She pulled back, listened, crept down the side of the house. A light came on in the living room and she froze. Nothing more happened and she felt her phone buzz. She risked a look: Grant moving. She listened, then began to back away from the house, heard a crunch when she stepped in some gravel, froze. Moved again ten seconds later, backing toward the woods.

From her new position, she could see the lighted living room, and Taryn Grant looking out the window. She was wearing a robe and had what looked like a drink in her hand. A dog moved by her hip, and Lauren thought, Bigger than a wolf.

The phone vibrated. She was into the tree line, and stopped to looked again: “Dogs may know . . . dogs may be coming.”

She thought, Damnit, and texted, “Come now,” and began moving more quickly. She crossed the fence, which should give her some protection from the dogs, and made the hundred yards out quickly, but not entirely silently. At the street-side tree line, she knelt, stripped the goggles and mask off, stuffed them in her pockets, and then Kidd was there in the car.

She was inside and pulled the door closed and they were rolling and Lauren looked out the window, toward Grant’s house, but saw no dogs. “She let them out?”

“I think so—into the backyard, anyway. Didn’t seem like there was any big rush. Maybe she was letting them out to pee.”

“That’s probably it,” Lauren said. “I never saw them. They didn’t bark.”

“They don’t bark, not those dogs,” Kidd said.

“I know.” She took a breath, squeezed Kidd’s thigh. “I haven’t felt like this in years. Six years.”

They came out of the darkened neighborhood to a bigger street, and Kidd went left. They could see a traffic light at the end of the street, where the bigger street intersected with an even bigger avenue.

Kidd asked, “What do you think?”

“Piece of cake,” Lauren said.