"That's absurd," Grant said. "If anybody even hinted at something like that, I'd not only fire him, I'd do everything I could to destroy him."

"I need to talk to your campaign manager," Lucas said.

"I will give you her number, and you can ask her yourself," Grant said. "She wanted to be here today, but I made her go away. I didn't want her ... using this discussion in some way ... in the campaign."

Felt like a threat, smelled like a threat, Lucas thought. "Like how?"

"I don't know, but I don't know you, and neither does Connie, and she might have asked a little more about your background to see exactly why ... you're here."

"I think I've made that clear," Lucas said.

She leaned back on the couch. "Well, you have. But in my position, which is very delicate right now, Connie would say that we couldn't ignore the possibility that you're lying. She'd want some research."

Lucas asked, "How many armed security people do you have? Is Alice Green the only one?"

He saw a quick flash of uncertainty in her eyes, which vanished as quickly as it came; and quite possibly was a trick of his imagination. She said, "Year-round, there are three, working various hours. During the campaign there are eight, because they have to travel with me. This house is extensively wired for security. There are two safe rooms, I can get to them in a few seconds from anywhere in the house, and, of course, Hansel and Gretel are full-time. They're here overnight. If I put them on guard, they stop being dogs and start being leopards."

"Okay," Lucas said. He thought for a moment, and then stood up. "I'm done. I apologize if I upset you, but this is a very serious matter."

She waved a hand at him and said, "Just be fair."

THE DOGS TOOK HIM through the door to the living room, where Green was sitting with a magazine that she wasn't reading.

"I'll show you the door," Green said.

On the way, Lucas said, "Chicken."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You didn't want to hear that," Lucas said.

"I'm not paid to hear that," Green said. She hesitated, then said, "Do you have a card?"

Lucas gave her a card, taking a second to scribble his cell phone number on the back. "Call anytime," he said.

"Give me an hour," she said.

ON THE WAY OUT to the highway, Lucas thought about Grant's behavior, and came to a conclusion: she was either totally innocent, or totally nuts. A normal person, guilty, could never have pulled off that performance. But he'd known a number of crazies who could have... .

Green called an hour and a half later. Lucas had gone back to the office, having already missed dinner, to check messages and track his agents on their regular assignments. He was most interested in the Ape Man Rapist of Rochester, who was attacking women as often as twice a week, but Flowers reported no progress. Lucas had just turned off his office lights when Green called. He answered: "Yes? Alice?"

Green said, "I don't know where Ms. Grant stands on all of this, but I need to talk to you. We need to keep this private."

"Is she there now?" Lucas asked.

"She's up on a stage. I'm at the back of the room ... keeping an eye out." Lucas could hear a voice in the background, and then a rumbling sound: applause line, he thought.

Green continued: "I wanted to tell you, she works harder than anyone I've ever met. I find her admirable, if a little chilly. But I don't want to have anything to do with any possible crime, and one of the other security men here ... his name is Ronald Carver, conventional spelling ... is pretty rough. I suspect that if you put enough money in front of him, he'd kill somebody for you, and do a thorough job of it. This man Tubbs, the man who disappeared? I'm not saying it's Carver, but if you needed that done, if you needed Tubbs to go away, you'd try to find somebody just like Carver."

"What's his background?" Lucas asked.

"Ex-military special operations of some kind. A master sergeant, which is up there. The head of security, Doug Dannon, is the same kind, ex-military, but much more restrained. His problem is, he's in love with Taryn, so ... I don't know what he'd do for her. But whatever has been done, I don't know about it, and didn't have anything to do with it. I'm not going to spy on Ms. Grant for you, but I wanted to say this. I hope you keep it under your hat."

"I will. But it's an odd thing to tell a cop you don't know," Lucas said, not quite trusting her. "What if I was working for Smalls?"

"I still have friends with the Secret Service," she said. "I had them look you up. I know as much about you as Weather does."

"Well, maybe not," Lucas said, picking up on Green's use of his wife's first name.

"Anyway, you're not working for Smalls," Green said. Longer applause in the background. "I gotta go."

"One more question," Lucas said. "I saw a lot of cameras out there, which must go to what, a hard drive? Or the cloud?"

Long wait, and then Green said, "Oh, God."

"What?"

Another long wait, then Green said, "I wish you hadn't asked that. I wouldn't have called you at all, but ... Ah, damn. I work in the monitoring room, sometimes. There used to be a monthlong video-record sent out to the cloud. I noticed this morning that the wipe time has been reduced to forty-eight hours."

"Forty-eight hours. Why?"

"I don't know. There's no reason to, and it worries me. The cameras only record when they pick up motion, so it's not that much, and a hundred bucks a month would mean nothing to Ms. Grant. But somebody reduced the wipe time to forty-eight hours, and I was thinking, you know ... if you were worried that somebody might get the archived recording with a search warrant, and if there was something on it that you didn't want anybody to see ... I mean, the change was made on Monday-about forty-eight hours after Tubbs disappeared."

Lucas said, "You've got a suspicious mind, Alice."

"Developed by government experts," she said. "I gotta go. Right now. Good-bye."

CHAPTER 13

On the way out the door, Lucas stopped at the BCA men's room, where he found Jenkins, shirtless and shaving. He went to a urinal and over his shoulder asked, "What? You lost all your money gambling and now you're homeless?"

"Got a date," Jenkins said. "She likes it when my cheeks are smooth like a baby's butt."

"So she doesn't get beard burn on her thighs?"

"That's disgusting, but given a person of your ilk, I'm not surprised," Jenkins said.

Lucas finished up at the urinal and walked over to wash his hands and said, "Say you've got a hot, rich politician running for office, but she's losing, then her opponent is hit with a scandal involving child porn on his computers, then the guy you think put it there suddenly disappears and the politician turns out to have armed security people, including a couple of guys with thick necks who were in special operations in the army. What we unsophisticates call 'trained killers.' What do you think?"