Free Invisible Prey by John Sandford Page B

number. Ruffe Ignace, the reporter from the Star Tribune, said, without preface, “This better be good, because I could get laid tonight if I don’t go back to the office. It’s a skinny blonde with a deep need for kinky sex.”
    “You owe me,” Lucas said. “Besides, I’m doing you another favor, and then you’ll owe me two.”
    “Is this a favor that’ll keep me from getting laid?” Ignace asked.
    “You gotta work that out yourself,” Lucas said. “What I’m going to tell you comes from an anonymous source close to the investigation.”
    “Are you talking about Brown? I got that.”
    “Not Brown,” Lucas said. “But to me, it looks like a smart reporter might speculate that the murders and the trashing of the Bucher house were covers for one of the biggest arts and antiquities thefts in history, but one that’s invisible.”
    Open cell phone: restaurant dishes clinking in the background. Then, hushed, “Holy shit. You think?”
    “It could be speculated,” Lucas said.
    “How could I find out what they had in there?”
    “Call Shelley Miller. Let me get you that number. Don’t tell her that I gave it to you.”
    “Motherfucker,” Ignace groaned. “The blonde just walked up to the bar. She’s wearing a dress you can see her legs through. She’s like wearing a thong? In Minneapolis? You know how rare that is? And she wants my body? You know how rare that is?”
    “That number is…You gotta pen?”
    “Davenport, man, you’re killing me,” Ignace said.
    “Ruffe, listen: Tell her the story. The whole thing, the murders, everything. Tell her that Deep Throat called. Take her back to your office, drive as fast as you can, scream into your cell phone at the editors while you’re driving. Fake it, if nobody’s working. Then when you get there, sit her down, write the story, and ask her what she thinks. Then make some change she suggests; joke that she ought to get a share of the byline.”
    “Yeah, bullshit. The Ignace doesn’t share bylines.”
    “Listen, Ruffe, she’ll be all over you,” Lucas said. “You’ll nail her in the front seat of your car.”
    “I got a Prelude, man. With a stick shift. It’d hit her right in the small of the back.”
    “Whatever,” Lucas said. “This will not mess up your night. I swear to God. You’re good as gold—but try to get it in tomorrow morning, okay? I need this.”
    “You need that and I need this—” The phone clicked off.
    But Lucas smiled.
    He knew his reporters. No way Ignace wouldn’t write the story.
     
    A ND LATE that night, in bed, Weather reading the latest Anne Perry, Lucas said, “I’m worried about the Kline thing. The governor’s got me talking to Mitford tomorrow.”
    “I thought you liked him. Mitford.”
    “I do—but that doesn’t mean that he’s not a rattlesnake,” Lucas said. “You gotta watch your ankles when he’s around.”
    “You’ve never talked to the girl, have you?” Weather asked. “It’s all been that fuckin’ Flowers.”
    “No. I haven’t talked to her. I should. But we’ve been trying to keep it at the cop level, apolitical. Now Kline’s trying to cut a separate deal, but Rose Marie says that’s not gonna fly. Nobody’ll buy it. I expect I’m going to have to talk to Kline and then we’re gonna bring in the Ramsey County attorney. That little chickenshit will do everything he can to turn it into a three-ring circus.”
    “Don’t get in too deep, Lucas,” Weather said. “This sounds like it’ll require scapegoats.”
    “That worries me,” he said.
    “And sort of interests you, too.”
    He sat for a moment looking at the book in his lap. He was learning more about antiques. Then he grinned at her and admitted, “Maybe.”

5
    L UCAS READ the paper in the morning, over breakfast, and was happy to see Ignace’s story on the possible theft; and he truly hoped that Ignace had gotten laid, which he, like most newspaper reporters, of both sexes, desperately needed.
    In any case,