Lucas said, "You're security?"

"Yes," she said, looking over her shoulder. "I can stay with Ms. Grant where men can't. Like ladies' rooms."

"Ex-cop or something?"

"Secret Service," she said.

"La-di-da," Lucas said. Green tilted her head back and laughed and said, "Yes," and her reaction made Lucas like her.

GREEN LED THE WAY through the house. Through a side door, Lucas saw a gorgeous brick-floored porch with white-plastered walls and green-glass windows that looked out on a huge enclosed swimming pool. The house didn't look much larger than his from the front, he realized, but was nearly as deep as it was wide.

The library was modest in size, with dark wood shelves filled with books that looked like they'd been read. Grant was sitting on a wine-red couch, and stood up when Lucas stepped into the room, putting aside a magazine. She smiled and said, "Agent Davenport ..." and put out her hand.

Lucas shook it as he took her in. She was tall and solid, with muscles showing in her neck and forearms; bigger than she'd seemed when he'd seen her on television, but just as pretty. She was wearing a red blouse and black slacks, with a simple gold-chain necklace that looked old.

"Pleased to meet you," Lucas said. "I won't take too much of your time."

"I'd say take as much as you need, but I really am jammed up," she said, as she gestured at an easy chair, and sank back onto the couch.

Lucas took the chair and asked, "Do you know Bob Tubbs?"

"Bob Tubbs? I've heard of him. He works for the party. Has he done something ... ?"

"You know he disappeared?"

A wrinkle appeared in her forehead. "Disappeared? I'm not tracking this very well ..."

Lucas decided to slap her: "Basically, I'm wondering if your campaign employed Tubbs to sabotage Senator Smalls's campaign by planting child pornography on his computer," he said.

Another wrinkle in her forehead, and she sat back and said, "Well ... no."

Lucas had been watching her face for a flinch or any kind of frightened reaction, and what he saw was the beginning of rage. He opened his mouth to ask another question, but before he could, Grant jabbed a finger at him.

"Wait a minute! Wait one fuckin' minute, here, buster," she said. "Who are you working for? Are you hooked up to Smalls's campaign?"

"I'm hooked up to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Ms. Grant," Lucas said. "We believe that Mr. Tubbs planted the pornography on Senator Smalls's computer. We believe Mr. Tubbs has been murdered to cover up that crime. There's only one reason for him to have planted the porn, and that's to sabotage Senator Smalls's campaign."

"Murdered? Did you say murdered?" The anger faded a bit, overridden by something else. Fear?

Lucas said, "Yes. He's disappeared, and we think there's a reason for it. We think he planted the porn, and then had to be gotten rid of, to cover it up."

"Well, I mean we, I mean ... We didn't have anything to do with that, if it's even true." Now the anger came clawing back: "And you didn't answer the question. Are you hooked up with Smalls's campaign? Have you ever worked for him? What are your politics? We are less than a week from Election Day, and you come to me with this? An accusation I can't refute, because you can't refute a complete negative? When you put this in the paper and on TV-and you will, won't you?-it'll kill me. Sabotage and murder? Are you kidding me?"

The anger was real and was getting hotter and Grant got to her feet and bent toward him: "Answer the question."

She was nearly shouting, and Lucas saw movement at the corner of his eye, and two huge German shepherds ghosted into the room, focused on him.

He said, "The dogs ..."

She half turned to the dogs and said, "Hansel, Gretel, easy," and the dogs' gazes softened.

Green, who'd left the room, stepped in and said, "Ms. Grant ... can I help?"

Grant said, "No, I'm okay, Alice. Agent Davenport has gotten me a little upset." She sank back on the couch and said, "Well? What contact have you had with the Smalls campaign? Have you taken any money from him?"

Lucas was getting angry himself, and strained to contain it: but some leaked into his voice. "No. I've spoken to Senator Smalls about who had access to his computer, and I've taken information from him. I do not know him, except for the contact involved in this investigation. Personally, I'm a registered Democrat, and my wife has contributed to the campaigns of a number of Democratic candidates, including yours, I believe, though I have not. There's no politics in this, Ms. Grant. What there is, is a vicious sabotage attempt, which would have reduced Senator Smalls's reputation to tatters, and very probably a murder. So, if we could get back to the reason I'm here: you say you knew nothing of the pornography, and you didn't know Bob Tubbs?"

She seemed to go through a brief internal struggle, then controlled it: "As far as I know, I've never met Mr. Tubbs, although it's possible that he was at some of my campaign events-I know he worked for the party, and there've been a lot of people I don't know at my events. So I may have seen him, though I wouldn't recognize him. I have not knowingly spoken a single word with him. I'm not heavily engaged with the party-my candidacy is mostly self-generated. And the pornography, I know nothing about it."

Green had lingered in the doorway, listening, and one of the dogs moved up to Lucas and put its head on his knees, looking straight in at his groin. Lucas said, "Ms. Grant, you wanna move the dog?"

"Make you nervous?"

"Makes me angry," Lucas said. "If this dog bites me, I shoot it. Then I shoot the other one if I have to, then I throw you on the floor, cuff you, and drag your ass down to the Hennepin County jail and charge you with aggravated assault on a police officer. Then you will go to jail."

"Gretel won't bite unless I tell her to," Grant said. But she said to the dog, "Gretel, back," and the dog eased away from Lucas.

Green said, "Ms. Grant, I'll be in the nook."

"Thanks, Alice," Grant said, and to Lucas, "I don't like you, and I suspect you don't like me, but try to be fair. Don't stick yourself into this campaign. Don't sabotage me."

"I'm not trying-"

"Whether you're trying or not, that's the effect," Grant said. "Wait a week or ten days, let the election take place, then do your worst. But give me a chance. I've worked very hard for it."

"So has Senator Smalls."

"Smalls should be okay, after Rose Marie Roux's press conference. I'm the one who has the problem now," Grant said. "And listen: even I think it's possible that you're right, to some extent. It's possible that somebody who was trying to help me-this Tubbs person-might have put the porn on Smalls's computer. But I know nothing about that. There are dozens of people working in campaigns, all kinds of people who don't like Smalls, and some of those people are a little nuts. So it's possible that somebody went after him, but it's just as likely that they were trying to hurt him, as trying to help me. A lot of union people hate him-especially public employee union people-and the pro-choice people go crazy when they talk about him. Look at them!" She tightened up a fist and smacked it into her thigh, and said it again. "Look at them!"

"We'll look everywhere," Lucas said. "So let me go through this. You didn't know Tubbs, and though you may have shaken hands, or had some slight contact with him, you've never had any kind of substantive talk with him."

"No, I haven't. And let me ask you this-how do you know that Tubbs didn't put the porn on the computer, and then take off? How do you know that he hasn't deliberately put himself out of reach?" she asked. "Win or lose, after the election's over, nobody's going to care much about the porn."

Lucas said, "It's not just that he's gone, it's that he left a lot of cash behind, and he also isn't using his credit cards," Lucas said. "He hasn't used them once since he was last seen on Friday night, and he uses them all the time."

"But you don't know," she insisted.

"No, I don't."

"Then don't fuck with me on the basis of guesswork," Grant said. "At least, not until the election is done."

Lucas stared at her for a moment, and she didn't flinch. He asked, "What about your campaign manager? Did she know Tubbs? Who, in your campaign, is in charge of dirty tricks?"

"There are no dirty tricks in this campaign, for the simple reason that anything you can accuse Smalls of doing, he's already admitted. Has he been unfaithful to his wife? Yes. He's talked about it on TV. Made a lot of money as an attorney, screwing over widows? Yes, he's talked about that on TV. What kind of dirty trick would work with him?"

"Well, child porn," Lucas said.