Free Silken Prey by John Sandford Page A

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.
    “What about his apartment?”
    “What about it?”
    “Close it out yet?” Lucas asked.
    “Not yet,” Morris said. “You want to look around?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’d have to get an okay from Tubbs’s mother, but you’ll get it. She’s frantic,” Morris said. “Why are you interested?”
    “If I told you, you’d have to change your name and move to New Zealand,” Lucas said.
    “Seriously . . .”
    “I’m a little serious,” Lucas said. “I’m doing a political thing and you really don’t want to know about it. And it probably has nothing to do with Tubbs. If it does, I’ll tell you, first thing.”
    “First thing?”
    “Absolutely,” Lucas said.
    Morris reached out and touched his lunch sack, and said, “She made me a BLT. With motherfuckin’ soy bacon.”
    “Jesus, that’s not good,” Lucas said. “Motherfuckin’ soy bacon?”
    “That’s the way us black people talk,” Morris said.
    “What about Tubbs’s apartment?” Lucas asked.
    “I’ve got a key,” Morris said. “Let’s call the old lady. If you find anything . . .”
    “First thing,” Lucas said.
    Morris called Tubbs’s mother, explained that a high-ranking agent from the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension would like to check out the apartment, and was immediately given an okay. Morris gave him the key, said, “Use it wisely,” and agreed to send an electronic copy of the Tubbs file to the BCA, where Lucas could look at it.
    Lucas thanked him, and headed across town to the river, not to Tubbs’s apartment but to Kidd’s.
    •   •   •
    K IDD OWNED HALF A FLOOR in a redbrick restoration condo overlooking the Mississippi. Lucas had visited him a few times, and had watched the condo grow. Kidd had started with a single large unit, added a second one a few years later, and finally, during the great real estate crash, picked up a third unit for nearly nothing. He also owned a piece of the underground parking garage, where he kept a couple of cars and a boat.
    Lucas rode up to Kidd’s floor in a freight elevator that smelled of oranges and bananas and paint and maybe oil, walked down the hall and knocked on Kidd’s hand-carved walnut door, which Kidd said he’d copied from some Gauguin