"The AG is gonna run for governor, and he'd love to bag Smalls, so I bet he takes it," Jeff said. Jeff was yet another attorney. "If he does, it'll go to a grand jury for sure. If he loses the case, he can blame the grand jury for the indictment. If he wins, who cares about the grand jury?"

Lucas said, "Well ..."

THEN BRITTANY CHANGED EVERYTHING.

"What a weird summer," she said. "Child porn on Porter's computer and then Bob Tubbs vanishes."

Lucas looked at her for a moment, then said, "Bob Tubbs? What did Bob Tubbs have to do with this?"

"Well, nothing," she said. "But, you know, he was around. You ever met him? Big tall blond guy? He used to call me chica, like the Mexicans do."

"He worked for Smalls?" Lucas asked.

She shook her head. "I don't know the details, exactly, but he was a lobbyist for the Minnesota Apiary Association."

"You mean, archery?" Jeff asked.

"No, apiary, Daddy. You know, honey bees. There was some kind of licensing thing going on," Brittany said. "The state was going to put on a fee, and some of the bee guys said they wouldn't bring their hives into Minnesota if that happened, and Tubbs thought that the bees were interstate commerce and so only the feds were allowed to regulate it. Or something like that. I don't know. I wasn't interested enough to follow it. But Bob was around."

"What about Bob?" Tam asked Lucas.

Lucas said, "He's one of our local political operators. He disappeared ... what, it must have been Friday night?"

"Same day the porn file popped up," Jeff said.

"I'm not sure that's right, though," Lucas said. "I just heard about it from a St. Paul cop. Tubbs's mother claims he's been kidnapped. A couple people have said he might be on a bender somewhere. He did that once before-vanished, and turned up a week later in Cancun, dead drunk in a hotel room. But, I guess he hasn't been using his credit cards, doesn't answer his cell phone, his passport was in his desk, and his car is sitting in his parking garage."

"Boy, that doesn't sound good," Jeff said.

Lucas looked at Brittany. "How'd you even know about him?"

"It was in the paper," she said. "This morning. People are looking all over for him."

Tam's hand went to her throat: "You think ... dead?"

"Don't know," Lucas said. "My agency isn't involved. It's just, you know, what I hear."

WHEN LUCAS LEFT, ten minutes later, Brit, Tam, and Jeff came out on the porch to wave good-bye. He waved, and sped back to St. Paul.

As Lucas was on the way to his office, ICE called and told him that she had the copy of Smalls's hard drive. "Got everything, gonna take you six months to read it. There's about a million e-mails. And old albums. He's got every Bowie album ever made."

"Let's try not to judge," Lucas said. "Anyway, I'm not going home, I'm coming there. Wait for me."

When Lucas got to the St. Paul police parking lot, he found her waiting in a black six-series BMW convertible. She handed Lucas a hard drive about the size of a paperback and said, "Who do I bill?"

"Send it to me personally," Lucas said. "I'll get it back later. Anything happen out of the ordinary?"

"Purely routine," she said. "Tell Kidd that it was Windows 7 ... not that he won't know."

She didn't ask if she could come along, to visit with Kidd.

WHEN SHE WAS GONE, Lucas went inside, badged his way back to the homicide unit, and found Roger Morris peering at a brown paper bag with a small grease stain at one end.

"Is that a clue?" Lucas asked.

"It's my lunch," Morris said. "I'm thinking about eating it early."

"Why?"

"Because I'm starving to death, that's why," Morris said. "My wife's got me on a food-free diet."

"You are looking pretty trim," Lucas lied, since he needed a favor.

"Bullshit. I only started yesterday," Morris said. Then his brow beetled, and he said, "Say, you don't work here."

"I need to see the Tubbs file."

"Ah, man," Morris said. "Of the twelve million things I didn't need to hear this morning, that is number one. Davenport wants to see the Tubbs file."

"You're working it?"

"Nothing to work."

"So let me see the file," Lucas said. "I may have some suggestions."

"That's my greatest fear," Morris said. "After the contents of my lunch bag, of course."

LUCAS PAGED THROUGH the thin file, sitting at Morris's desk, peering at his computer. Tubbs hadn't been seen after Friday evening. Tubbs's mother had called St. Paul on Saturday afternoon to report him missing. Not much had been done-a couple cops went around and knocked on his apartment door, and asked a few questions of his neighbors, who hadn't seen him. His mother had shifted into high hysteria on Sunday, complaining to St. Paul that her son must have been kidnapped.

According to Mrs. Tubbs, Tubbs was supposed to pick her up and go shopping on Saturday, but hadn't shown, and hadn't called to say he wouldn't make it. Mom said he'd never done that in his life. On Sunday, he was supposed to take her to Mass, but hadn't shown up then, either. She couldn't get him at home or on either of his two cell phones, and she'd been trying since Saturday morning.

The cops checked with AT&T and found that he hadn't used either his home or his cell phones, nor had he used his credit cards, which was when they began to take the old woman's complaints seriously: Tubbs had never, in a credit card record going back ten years, gone two days without using one. He paid for everything with a card, his mother said. He hardly used cash at all, because you couldn't deduct invisible business expenses, and almost all of Tubbs's expenses were business.

On Sunday afternoon, Tubbs's mother let the cops into his apartment for a look around. One of the cops said that it was apparent that he'd recently been sexually involved, as there were stains on the bedsheets. Samples had been taken. There was no sign of forced entry, or violence.

On Monday morning, there were a couple of stories in the local newspapers, based on calls by Tubbs's mother. The stories hadn't shaken him loose, nor had he begun to use his credit cards.

"You think he's dead?" Lucas asked Morris.

"That's what I think," Morris said.