“There's always hope,” Jane said. She looked as though she were trying to make a perplexed wrinkle in her forehead. “But to tell you the truth, I'm beginning to think there's nothing missing. We haven't been able to identify a single thing.”
“The Reckless painting,” Lucas said.
“If there was one,” she said. “There are a number of Reckless sales every year. If we find no documentation that suggests that Connie owned one, if all we have is the testimony of this one young African-American person… well, Lucas… it's gone.”
Ruffe Ignace's story wasn't huge, but even with a one-column head, and thirty inches of carefully worded text, it was big enough to do all the political damage that Kline had feared.
Best of all, it featured an ambush photograph of Dakota County attorney Jim Cole, whose startled eyes made him look like a raccoon caught at night on the highway.
Kline was now a Dakota County story.
Ignace had gotten to Kathy Barth. Although she was identified only as a “source close to the investigation,” she spoke from the point of view of a victim, and Ignace was skilled enough to let that bleed through. “… the victim was described as devastated by the experience, and experts have told the family that she may need years of treatment if the allegations are true.
” Neil Mitford led Lucas and Rose Marie Roux into the governor's office and closed the door. The governor said, “We're all clear, right? Nobody can get us on leaking the story?” He knew that Lucas had ties with the local media; that Lucas did, in fact, share a daughter with the leading Channel Three editorialist.
“Ruffe called me yesterday and asked for a comment and I told him I couldn't give him one,” Lucas said, doing his tap dance. “It's pretty obvious that he got a lot of his information from the victim's mother.”
“Is Kathy Barth still trying to cut a deal with Burt?” Mitford asked Lucas.
“They want money. That was the whole point of the exercise,” Lucas said. “But now, she's stuck. She can't cut a deal with the grand jury.”
“And Burt's guilty,” the governor said. “I mean, he did it, right? We're not simply fucking him over?”
“Yeah, he did it,” Lucas said. “I think he might've been doing the mother, too, but he definitely was doing the kid.”
Rose Marie: “Screw their negotiations. They can file a civil suit later.”
“Might be more money for the attorney,” Mitford said. “If he's taking it on contingency.”
“Lawyers got to eat, too,” the governor said with satisfaction. To Rose Marie and Lucas: “You two will be managing the BCA's testimony before the grand jury? Is that all set?”
“I talked to Jim Cole, he'll be calling with a schedule,” Rose Marie said. “There's a limited amount of testimony available-the Barths, Agent Flowers, Lucas, the technical people from the lab. Cole wants to move fast. If there's enough evidence to indict, he wants to give Kline a chance to drop out of the election so another Republican can run.”
“Burt might get stubborn…” the governor suggested.
“I don't think so,” Rose Marie said, shaking her head. “Cole won't indict unless he can convict. He wants to nail down the mother, the girl, the physical evidence, and then make a decision. With this newspaper story, he's got even more reason to push. If he tells Burt's lawyer that Burt's going down, and shows him the evidence, I think Burt'll quit.”
The governor nodded: “So. Lucas. Talk to your people. We don't want any bleed-back, we don't want anybody pointing fingers at us, saying there's a political thing going on. We want this straightforward, absolutely professional.
We regret this kind of thing as much as anybody. It's a tragedy for everybody involved, including Burt Kline.”
“And especially the child. We have to protect the children from predators,” Mitford said. “Any contacts with the press, we always hit that point.”
“Of course, absolutely,” the governor said. “The children always come first. Especially when the predators are Republicans.”
Nobody asked about the Bucher case, which was slipping off the front pages.
When they were finished, Lucas walked down the hall with Rose Marie, heading for the parking garage. “Wonder why with Republicans, it's usually fucking somebody that gets them in trouble. And with the Democrats, it's usually stealing?”
“Republicans have money. Most of them don't need more,” she suggested. “But they come from uptight, sexually repressed backgrounds, and sometimes, they just go off.
Democrats are looser about sex, but half the time, they used to be teachers or government workers, and they're desperate for cash. They see all that money up close, around the government, the lobbyists and the corporate guys, they can smell it, they can taste it, they see the rich guys flying to Paris for the weekend, and eating in all the good restaurants, and buying three-thousand-dollar suits. They just want to reach out and take some.”
“I see money in this, for my old company,” Lucas said. He'd once started a software company that developed real-time emergency simulations for 911 centers. “We could make simulation software that would teach Republicans how to fuck and Democrats how to steal.”
“Jeez, I don't know,” Rose Marie said. “Can we trust Republicans with that kind of information?”
Back at his office, Carol told him that the intern, Sandy, had been up half the night preparing a report on Hewlett-Packard printers and on murders in the Upper Midwest.
He also had a call from one of Jim Cole's assistant county attorneys.
Lucas called the attorney, and they agreed that Lucas and Flowers would testify before the grand jury the following day. The assistant wanted to talk to Flowers before the grand-jury presentation, but said it would not be necessary to review testimony with Lucas himself.
“You'll do the basic bureaucratic outline, confirm the arrival of the initial information, the assignment of Agent Flowers to the case, and Flowers's delivery of the technical evidence to the crime lab. We'll need the usual piece of paper that says the evidence was properly logged in. That's about it.”
“Excellent,” Lucas said. “I'll call Agent Flowers now and have him get back to you.”
Lucas called Flowers: “You're gonna have to carry the load, Virgil, so you best memorize every stick of information you put in the files. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody from Kline's circle has been talking to somebody from Cole's circle, if you catch my drift.”
“After that newspaper story, I don't see how Cole could bail out,” Flowers said.
“I don't see it, either. But depending on what may have been said behind the chicken house, we gotta be ready,” Lucas said. “Tell them what you got, don't get mousetrapped into trying out any theories.”
“Gotcha,” Flowers said. “Gonna get my mind tightly wrapped around this one, boss.
Tightly.”
Lucas, exasperated, said, “That means you're going fishing, right?”
“I'll talk to the lab people and make sure the paperwork is right, that we got the semen sample and the pubic hair results, the photos of Kline's nuts. Copies for everyone. And so on, et cetera. I'll polish my boots tonight.”
“You're not going fishing, Virgil,” Luca said. “This is too fuckin' touchy.”
“How's the little woman?” Flowers asked.
“Goddamnit, Virgil…”
Lucas got his share of the paperwork done, reviewed it, then gave it to Carol, who had a nose for correct form. “Look it over, see if there are any holes. Same deal as the Carson case. I'll be back in five.”
“Sandy's been sitting down in her cubicle all day, waiting for you…”
“Yeah, just a few more minutes.”
While Carol was looking over the paperwork, he walked down to the lab and checked the evidence package, making sure everything was there. Whatever else happened, Lucas didn't want Kline to walk because of a bureaucratic snafu. Back at his office, he sat at his desk, kicked back, tried to think of anything else he might need. But the prosecutor had said it: Lucas was essentially the bureaucrat-in-charge, and would be testifying on chain-of-evidence, rather than the evidence itself.