They both knew the other members of Prairie Storm, they said,
which was mostly a Cass County group. The members were all fairly old and mostly wrote letters to the editor. “Don’t think you’re gonna find an assassin here. Maybe some assholes, no assassins,” said the younger one.
They said they’d ask around about a white-haired lady with a gray-eyed son, who’d been tied into Prairie Storm. “But I’ll tell you what you need—you need a better description.”
Lucas remembered the photo on his phone and showed it to them. The younger one looked at it for a moment, then said, “You know who that looks like? Who was that guy, maybe . . . five years ago . . . grew all that weed in the Wilsons’ cornfield?”
“Not him,” said the older guy. “That’s the guy who ran off with Bob Hake’s wife. They’re long gone to California and they ain’t coming back if they know what’s good for them.”
“Oh, yeah. Boy, she was one hot kitty, huh?”
“Okay,” Lucas said. He got out two business cards, wrote his phone number on the back of them, gave them to the deputies, said, “Call anytime, day or night,” and got back on the road.
—
LUCAS DIDN’T HAVE
many feelings about the fight, one way or the other, because it hadn’t been much of a fight. Leonard wouldn’t want to cough or laugh for a few weeks, and Lucas would have a black eye. He’d had a number of them over the years; it was an occupational hazard you put up with.
He hadn’t even gotten much of a shot of adrenaline; it’d been more a matter of taking care of business than a desperate struggle. Which was fine.
—
FROM ATLANTIC
to Mount Pleasant, Iowa, was a drive of roughly three and a half hours, or three hours if you were behind the wheel of a turbo-charged 4.6-liter V8.
Lucas drove back across the top of Des Moines, then southwest through Oskaloosa and Ottumwa, the towns from which the e-mails had been sent. He didn’t stop in either place, even to look around, because after he got out of the Des Moines traffic, he called Norman Clay, Michaela Bowden’s weasel, on the number that Mitford had given him. Clay told him that Bowden would be speaking until about three-thirty in Burlington, and Lucas could stop by any time after three o’clock to talk.
He’d get to Mount Pleasant a little after two, he thought, which gave him an hour to find and interview Joseph Likely, and then move on to Burlington to talk with Clay.
—
MORE BEANS AND CORN.
Lots more.
Lucas crossed the Skunk River into Mount Pleasant at two-thirty. He hadn’t had anything to eat except some peanut-butter crackers at a pee stop on I-80, but ignored a café, which made him feel virtuous, and went looking for Joseph Likely’s place. Mount Pleasant was an older town, where no two houses, standing side by side, seemed to come out of the same architectural style, with nineteenth-century Victorians up against pastel-colored postwar ramblers. Most of the houses had traditional flower gardens with marigolds and zinnias, and some with head-high sunflowers.
Likely lived in one of the ramblers; he wasn’t home. A neighbor, a chunky, shirtless sunburned man, was lying in a canvas hammock, reading a battered copy of
The Sun Also Rises
, and he called, “If you’re looking for Joe, he got out of here early with his canoe up on his car roof. Probably out on the river. The Iowa River, not the Skunk.”
Lucas ambled over. “You need a shirt,” he said.
“Probably,” the neighbor said, looking at his chest. “I don’t mind toasting the shoulders, but it does hurt when your tits get singed. But I feel too good to get up and go inside. Say, you look like you ran into a door.”
“Yeah, it’s embarrassing,” Lucas said. He touched his cheekbone and winced. “You know when Joe’s getting back?”
“Usually about dark,” the neighbor said. “He tries to get off the river before the bugs get bad. You want me to tell him you were here?”
“That’d be great,” Lucas said. He took the card case out of his jacket pocket and took out a card. Weather had gotten them for him and the card said nothing but “Lucas Davenport” on an expensive-looking cream-colored stock. He wrote his cell phone number on the back and said, “I’ll stop back again this evening. If he gets here earlier than that, tell him to give me a ring.”
The man looked at the card, apparently puzzled by the lack of information on it, and asked, “Can I tell him what you want?”
Lucas thought it over for a few seconds, then said, “Yes. Tell him I’m a political researcher.”
“I’ll tell him,” the man said. Before Lucas could go, he asked, “Say, could you step inside that back door there? That’s the kitchen
and the refrigerator is right there. Get me a beer. Get one for yourself, if you want. And there’s a shirt on the counter—toss me that.”
Not a man who got nervous about strangers in his yard, Lucas thought, as he handed him the beer and T-shirt.
—
BEFORE LEAVING TOWN,
Lucas had a few minutes, so he stopped one more time, at the Dairy Queen, got a chocolate-dipped vanilla cone, which didn’t do much for his virtue but a lot for his sense of well-being, found his way back to Highway 34, and headed southeast to Burlington.
—
BURLINGTON WAS A HARD-CORE
Mississippi River town, the best kind, to Lucas’s mind. Bowden’s event was at the Burlington Municipal Auditorium, which was located on the banks of the Mississippi and looked quite a lot like Uncle Scrooge’s Money Bin, for those whose comic-book memories went back that far.
After a quick phone call, he found Norman Clay sitting on the wall that wrapped around a fountain at the back corner of the building, eating a Popsicle and looking out at the river and one of the prettiest bridges to cross it. Clay was a fleshy, square-shouldered man about Lucas’s size and age, but blond, and tired-looking, and wearing a non-wrinkle blue knit suit, with a striped tie, the knot pulled open.
He stood up when Lucas approached, held out his hand and said, “Davenport?” and sat back down. “What’s up?”
“Did Neil tell you what I’m doing?”
“Yeah, yeah. We’ve got solid security and I don’t know exactly what Henderson’s doing, hiring you,” Clay said. “We looked you up, by the way. You’re the cop who got tangled up with Taryn Grant.”
“Yeah, that was me,” Lucas said.
“And she’s now a respected senator from our very own party,” Clay said.
“A psychopath, but don’t tell anybody I told you so,” Lucas said.
“You don’t really have to tell me,” Clay said. “I met her a couple of times, around town, and I got that distinct impression.”
“That doesn’t worry you?”
“In D.C.? Hell, psychopaths are a dime a dozen inside the Beltway, and about a quarter a dozen outside,” Clay said. “Gotta be more than rich and crazy to raise an eyebrow in Washington.”
Lucas sat down, looked out at the river. “I don’t often use the word, but she’s the bitch from hell,” he said. “Believe me, you don’t want to get on her wrong side. She could send somebody after you with a gun.”
“That seems a little extreme,” Clay said.
“She
is
a little extreme,” Lucas said.
“I meant your statement, not the senator,” Clay said.
“Yeah, well, you don’t know what I know. She’s a murderer,” Lucas said. After a few seconds of silence, he added, “Anyway, you know I’m not a cop anymore.”
“Yes. Neil said that.”
“I still have some pretty good resources,” Lucas said. “I ran those e-mails past the best psychologist I know, who has quite a lot of experience with criminal psychology, and she’s afraid that something serious may be happening here.”
He told Clay about Elle Kruger’s opinion and about tracking the e-mail language to some radical political groups. He concluded with, “Since you put every single move Bowden is going to make on your website . . . she’s always easy to find.”
“The thing is, we’re not going to go away,” Clay said. He walked over to the river and threw his Popsicle stick in, then came back. “After talking to Mitford, I kinda thought we should. Maybe spend a few extra days in New Hampshire and then the South, but Mike doesn’t want to hear it. She wants Iowa and she doesn’t want to be run off it.”
“Tough to win an election if you’re dead,” Lucas said.
“You’re right—but you have to understand, Mike has lived with this . . . with the vague threats and so on . . . for half her life. She’s been in and out of Iraq, in and out of Afghanistan. Nothing’s ever happened, so she doesn’t tend to give these threats much credence.”
“Is your security going after the threat? Or is the security static?” Lucas asked.
“Not going after it. We have to rely on the Iowa cops for that—we passed Henderson’s concerns along to their election security team. Haven’t heard much back,” Clay said.
He stretched, yawned, and sat down again. A door must have opened on the side of the auditorium, because they heard a burst of cheering, which quickly faded. He said, “I’m not dumb. I’m worried. But Henderson told me you’re the best possible guy to be chasing down the threat. If there is one. So . . . God bless you. Mike ain’t going away.”
“Ah, boy.”
People began streaming out of the auditorium.
“Had a good crowd,” Clay said, standing up. “How’s the governor doing? Hitting a lot of colleges?”
“Up at the University of Iowa tonight and more of them tomorrow,” Lucas said.
Clay flashed a grin. “Well, if you’re a lefty . . .”
“. . . you hit a lot of colleges,” Lucas finished.
Clay said, “C’mon. I’ll introduce you to God.”
—
MICHAELA BOWDEN
was a tall woman, thin, ramrod-straight, brown hair with copper highlights, attractive in a front-office way. She was talking to a small group of fawning locals, called a couple of them by name. Lucas picked out a half-dozen security people, four men, two women, within twenty feet of her. Every one of them eye-clicked Lucas, maybe smelling a guy with a gun, though he wasn’t wearing one. When they saw Clay pulling him along, they looked elsewhere.
Bowden was backing away from the group around her and one of the security women was edging between the locals and the candidate, separating them, and then Bowden said, “Well, I’m late for a riverboat . . .” and somebody said, “We got a riverboat right here, Mike,” and everybody laughed as though that were hilarious, and then Bowden was moving away toward the back of the auditorium with the security screen building both in front and behind her.
Clay pulled Lucas along and as they were approaching the back door, he called, “Madam Secretary . . . I need you to meet this guy.”
She stopped and turned and looked at Lucas and then Clay, did a quick price check on Lucas’s suit, and asked, “How do you do?”
Before Lucas could answer, Clay said, “This is Lucas Davenport. He’s the former cop hired by Henderson to try to dig out those supposed threats. I wanted you to see him, so you’ll know who he is, if you see him again, in a crowd.”
Bowden nodded at Lucas and showed a half-inch smile: “I understand you’re close to Taryn Grant.”
Lucas smiled back. Bowden projected an effortless charisma and he had to resist the urge to tug at his forelock: “Not close enough. A little closer and she wouldn’t be in the Senate—she’d be in a different federal institution altogether.”
“Interesting,” she said. And, “Good luck with your investigation. Are you seeing Elmer soon?”
“Maybe tonight.”
“Tell him I’m not leaving Iowa,” she said.
She started to maneuver away, but Lucas said, “Ms. Bowden—I don’t know how well you really know the governor, but he’s a good guy. The last thing in the world he’d want is for you to get hurt. He wouldn’t pull anything like this threat thing to bullshit you out of the state. This is a serious matter.”
Bowden took a longer look at him, and then said, “Okay. So it’s up to you to save my butt, Lucas. I’m not leaving.”
—
AS BOWDEN,
her security force, advisers, and hangers-on streamed out to a line of Chevy Suburbans and a bus, Clay said to Lucas, “We’re running late. I don’t have time right now, but I’d like to introduce you to all our security people. What are the chances you could make it to Davenport this evening?”
“Maybe,” Lucas said. “I’ve got to talk to a guy in Mount Pleasant first.”
“Mount Pleasant . . . is what, a half hour from here? You could make it to Davenport, if you don’t take too long in Mount Pleasant.”
“I’ll try,” Lucas said.
“See you then,” Clay said, and he hurried after his candidate, who had disappeared into a silver Suburban.
L
ucas headed back to Mount Pleasant, knocked on Joseph Likely’s door, got no answer, went back to the café he’d seen earlier in the day, and ordered the open-faced roast beef sandwich, fries, and a Diet Coke.
The whole restaurant smelled of grease and Campbell’s mushroom soup, which was about right. Lucas had eaten open-faced roast beef sandwiches all over the Midwest, the kind that came soaked in brown gravy and little bits of things you didn’t want to know about and rated this one at about sixty-nine percent.
He added a slice of coconut cream pie after he finished the sandwich, and the waitress, when she dropped the pie plate on his table, asked, “Who won?”
“What?”
“The fight. Who won the fight?”
“I did,” Lucas said, catching on. He touched his face, and it hurt.
The waitress smiled and said, “You got a heck of a shiner, that’s for sure. Shoulda put a beefsteak on it. Too late now.”
Lucas left a few dollars on the table, and went looking for Likely.
—
JOSEPH LIKELY’S FORD TAURUS
was parked in his side yard, a red canoe still up on the roof, the bottom white with cuts and scratches. Lucas knocked on the screen door, and a moment later Likely came to the door.
He was a tall, thin man with a scraggly black beard on his cheeks and a down-curving mustache on his upper lip. He was older, somewhere in his middle to late sixties, Lucas thought, tough-looking, in the way of Abraham Lincoln. He was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved blue cotton shirt, and a rain-faded gold Iowa Hawkeyes Football cap. His hands were gnarled, either from arthritis or work, or both.
Lucas introduced himself and explained what he was doing. Likely said, “You told my neighbor that you were a political researcher.”
“I am. I’m looking into who might be a threat to Mrs. Bowden,” Lucas said.
“But you’re basically a cop.”
“I was. I quit a while back,” Lucas said. “Right now I’m working for Governor Henderson.”
“Yeah, but I really don’t talk to cops of any kind, actual or pro tem,” Likely said. “I wouldn’t inform on my worst enemy.”
Lucas looked at him for a second, then said, “Listen, Joe. I don’t give a rat’s ass about your political inclinations. I believe there’s a serious threat against Mrs. Bowden. If it turns out it comes from you or one of your political people, and you know about it, and something happens, you’ll be looking at the inside of a really ugly
prison for the rest of your life. That ain’t bullshit—that’s the fact of the matter.”
“I don’t respond very well to threats, either,” Likely said.
“Joe, you’re thinking in slogans,” Lucas said. “You don’t talk to cops, you don’t inform on anybody, you don’t respond to threats. You’ve got to
listen
to what I’m saying. This isn’t make-believe. This isn’t political bullshit, or a TV show—this is a real thing.”
“Yeah, well, I suggest you talk to my attorney,” Likely said.
“What for?”
“She can tell you about the ins and outs of the law on this, and all about illegal harassment.”
“Hey, I’m not trying to harass you. I’ll talk to your attorney and I’ll tell you now what she’s going to say—if you know anything, speak up.”
“I don’t believe she’ll do that.” Likely rubbed the back of his hand across his nose, then said, “No, sir, I don’t think she’ll say that. She doesn’t like oppressive police actions any more than I do.”
“Ah, Jesus . . .” Lucas shook his head. “Give me the attorney’s name. I’ll call her right now.”
“Not while you’re trespassing on my sidewalk. I’ll give you her name and then you go somewhere else to call her.”
—
LUCAS’S SUV
had been sitting in the sun and was uncomfortably hot, so he started it, and jacked up the air-conditioning. The attorney’s number that Likely had given him turned out to be a state public defender named Carmen Wyatt, whose office was back in Burlington.
Lucas talked his way past a secretary to get to Wyatt. He explained what he was doing, including his brief conversation with Bowden in Burlington. Wyatt replied that she didn’t represent Likely in any current criminal case, though she had represented him in the past, in several protest-related arrests. She would not be representing him in any negotiations about a private inquiry involving a possible election problem.
“I don’t want to seem like a jerk, but this doesn’t fall under our purview,” Wyatt said, “especially since you’re not a police officer conducting an official investigation.”
“What would you suggest?”
“I’d suggest you stop bothering Joe,” she said. “If you, as a private citizen, have a specific complaint, bring it to the attention of an Iowa law enforcement authority. If a crime has been committed, or if it’s found that a conspiracy is under way—”
“You do understand what I’m saying, right? That I’m trying to figure out—”
“Not my problem,” Wyatt interrupted.
Lucas said, “Look, I’ve explained this wrong. Let me try again. If there’s a conspiracy and if Mrs. Bowden is shot, or even shot at, and if Likely is involved, in the investigation afterwards you’ll almost certainly lose your job because you wouldn’t help me.”
“I don’t take threats any more than Joe does,” Wyatt snapped.
“I’m not threatening you,” Lucas said, getting even more exasperated. He was starting to sound like a broken record. “I’m providing you with information. I’m not trying to oppress Likely. I’m not threatening to arrest him—I’m not a cop. I’m looking for a little information. He’s refusing to give it to me out of a knee-jerk
anti-cop attitude, or maybe because he does know something and he’s covering up. If that’s what’s going on . . . if Mrs. Bowden gets shot or even shot at and missed, and you failed to cooperate with any inquiry, including mine, you’re done. That’s not a threat. That’s what’s going to happen. If you spend more than ten seconds thinking about it, instead of hiding behind a lot of bureaucratic BS, you’ll understand what I’m telling you. Doesn’t make any difference if you get fired for real obstruction or because you’re a scapegoat, you’ll still get fired. Believe me, if something happens, there’ll be a full-on scapegoat hunt. What do you think the job prospects will be for a lawyer on the wrong side of an assassination?”
“I’m done talking here,” Wyatt said. “You have to understand that we hear a lot of vague threats—”
“These aren’t vague. And I’m not crazy—check with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St. Paul. Or hell, check my name on the Internet.”
“I’ll look,” Wyatt said. “Now I’m going to hang up.”
—
LUCAS WAS SITTING
across the street from Likely’s house. He’d seen the curtain move a couple of times in a front window as he was talking to Wyatt—Likely checking to see if he was still there, he thought. Frustrating, not being a cop, and not having that weight behind his questions. What to do?
One possibility: he called Bell Wood at the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. Wood had left for the day, but the duty
officer said he’d give him a ring on his personal cell and pass Lucas’s number along if Wood wanted to call back.
Wood called a minute later: “What’s up?”
Lucas explained what had happened, and then asked, “I was wondering if push came to shove, if one of your election security people could have a chat with Likely?”
“I’d have to check with the guys on that team, see if they could have somebody run down there. I could do that in the morning.”
“That’d be good. When you don’t have a badge, getting anything done is like wading through mud,” Lucas said.
“Then you oughta get a badge,” Wood said. “By the way, I called Henderson’s campaign people and got their hotel for the night. You’ll be getting a FedEx there first thing in the morning, with a carry permit.”
“Excellent.”
“I expect some kind of under-the-table payoff. I’ve got a steak house in mind,” Wood said.
“Count on it,” Lucas said.
—
AFTER THINKING
about it for a moment, Lucas pulled the iPad out of its seatback pocket, brought up Michaela Bowden’s website. After a fund-raising riverboat ride, she’d be at the Hotel Blackhawk, in Davenport, for a public speech and then a fund-raising cocktail party.
He brought up a map program and checked distances and times. He could be in Davenport in an hour and a half, check out
the meeting and party, look for gray eyes and long hair, introduce himself to all the Bowden security, and still make it back to Iowa City for the night.
He punched the Blackhawk hotel location into his nav system and was about to pull out, when the phone rang: unknown, from Burlington, Iowa.
“Lucas Davenport.”
“This is Carmen Wyatt. I talked to Joe. I told him that you were unofficial, but that you were probably right about his getting in trouble if something serious happened,” the lawyer said. “I told him that he didn’t
have
to talk to you, but he could listen. Then if he
wanted
to respond, it might save him some trouble later. He said he’d listen. Go knock on his door.”
“I appreciate it. I’ll do that,” Lucas said.
“Do not threaten him. That’s a violation of Iowa law and you have no status here,” she said. “I don’t want to wind up defending you, because I don’t think I’d like you.”
—
LIKELY WAS ALREADY STANDING
at the door when Lucas came up the front walk. He pushed open the screen and said, “I’ll listen.”
They went into the parlor. The house smelled of old plaster, wallpaper, and cooked vegetables; the late-afternoon light sifted through yellowed-lace curtains, reflecting off framed modernist woodblock prints that crowded the plaster walls. Lucas told him the story, the same one he’d already told several times that day, with Likely sitting in a wooden rocking chair, nodding as he rocked.
When Lucas was finished, Likely said, “I personally can’t help you. I’ll talk to some other folks in the party, but I know everybody associated with it. This doesn’t sound like anybody I know.”
“If you could do that, I’d appreciate it,” Lucas said. “I have to tell you, I don’t have much interest in your kind of politics, but if you were to pick out any one person who you folks might vote for, it’s the guy who hired me. Governor Henderson takes your position on a number of issues and you might keep that in mind. We’re not trying to oppress anyone or mess with you guys in any way. We’re trying to prevent what could be a tragedy.”
“You don’t even know for sure if there is a plot,” Likely said. “If there isn’t, and you find this gray-eyed man you’re looking for, and given the way the world works now, he’ll be slapped in jail whether or not he’s up to something. He’ll be lucky if they don’t get renditioned to some CIA hellhole, and tortured, just in case.”
“That doesn’t happen—”
“Bullshit. You need to open your eyes and look around, Mr. Davenport. This country isn’t what it used to be, even twenty years ago. People are herded around like sheep, and willingly go, because the government’s got everybody scared to death about terrorism. Three thousand people died at nine-one-one fourteen years ago. That’s terrible, but we’ve way overreacted. We’ve hired tens of thousands of anti-terrorism secret agents and fought two major wars and all kinds of brushfires because of it, and we’ve gotten to the point where we actually torture people,
torture people
, in the United States of America, and in the meantime, more than thirty
thousand people die every year in highway accidents and we can’t even lower the speed limit to fifty-five. Open your eyes—there’s some real terrorism, of course there is, but the government’s using it as an excuse to put its thumb down on everybody.”
“I can’t tell you how little interest I have in politics,” Lucas said. “Fixing things is up to people like you. All I’m doing is trying to stop a potential assassination.”
“But don’t you see, you’re part of the whole problem . . .”
Lucas stood up. “If you could talk to your friends and see if anyone knows this lady and her gray-eyed son, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
“I’ll do that, but you should spend some time looking into your own soul, and thinking about your part in this vast conspiracy that’s coming down on us all,” Likely said.
“I’ll do that,” Lucas said. “Use my card, though, and call me if you hear anything, even if it doesn’t seem like much.”
—
LIKELY TOOK HIM
to the door and watched as Lucas pulled away from the curb, then touched the cell phone in his pocket. He didn’t really believe in cell phones, but he’d gotten old, and he still liked to ramble around in the woods on his own. If he had a heart attack out in the woods, or on the river, having a cell phone was a practical kind of comfort.
Even as he touched it, though, the thought occurred that he shouldn’t use it to make the call to the mother of the gray-eyed boy. Davenport was certainly a government agent of some kind and they’d be watching his phone. What he needed was a pay phone.
Where, he wondered, would he find a pay phone in this day and age?
Something a person like himself should know . . .
—
THE PAY PHONE
was hanging on the wall at Walmart.
Likely walked half the aisles in the store, looking for anybody who might be watching, and saw nothing suspicious. Of course, there were cameras. He’d have to take the chance, he decided.
He’d found Marlys Purdy’s phone number in his files, hoped it would still work. After one last look around, he dropped some quarters in the phone and dialed. Marlys said, “Hello?”
“I don’t want to say my name or your name, but you come to my house every three months with pies. You know who this is?”
“Yes?”
“There was a man here looking for you and a gray-eyed son,” Likely said. “All he had was a description and a poor picture of the man. He thinks you may be conspiring to . . . do something to a . . . lady candidate. I’ve got to be careful here, no names.”
“I understand. Does he have names?”
“No. All he has is some basic descriptions. He said the candidate from the North saw you and a fellow he believed was related to you, and passed along the description. If he starts asking around among our people, he’s going to find you. I won’t ask if . . . you know . . . you’re planning something. I’m already in enough trouble, lying about not knowing you.”