having the woman looking at the file, but she was from Arkansas, and Kidd probably wouldn’t have asked her to look at it if she might become a problem. He kept his mouth shut.
The file Marvel was examining was one of the smaller ones, fifteen or twenty pieces of paper that had been scanned into PDF files, as well as three or four fine-resolution JPEG photos. Using a mouse, Marvel clicked back and forth between the images. John and Lauren came into the lab, leaned against a wall to watch.
Marvel took five minutes; at one point, the kids made a noise that sounded like they’d killed a chicken, and Lauren ran off to see what it was. She’d just come back when Marvel tapped the computer screen and said, “See, what happened was, this guy, Representative Diller, got the licensing fees on semi-trailers reduced by about half, so they’d supposedly be in line with what they were in the surrounding states. He said he wanted to do that so the trucking companies wouldn’t move out of Minnesota. But what you see over here is a bunch of 1099 forms that were sent by trucking companies to Sisseton High-Line Consulting, LLC, of Sisseton, South Dakota. Over here is the South Dakota LLC form and we find out that a Cheryl Diller is the president of Sisseton High-Line Consulting. And we see that she got, mmm, fifty-five thousand dollars for consulting work that year, from trucking companies.”
“So if these two Dillers are related . . .” Lucas began.
“I promise you, they are,” Marvel said.
Kidd said, “Marvel’s a state senator. In Arkansas.”
Marvel added, “This shit goes on all the time. On everything you can think of, and probably a lot you can’t think of.”
Lucas said to Kidd, “So what these are, are blackmail files.”
“Or protection files, if they’re all the same kind of thing,” Marvel said. “Whoever owned these files might have been involved in these deals, and kept the evidence in case he ever got in trouble and needed help.”
Lucas looked at the computer screen for a moment and then said, “All right. Give me the drives back, Kidd. You guys don’t want to know anything about this.”
Kidd pulled the drives out, handed them to Lucas, and said, “You are
so
right. Do not mention my name in any of this.”
“I won’t,” Lucas promised. “Can I print these out on my home printer?”
“Probably,” Kidd said. “What kind of computer are you running?”
“Macs,” Lucas said.
“Most of the files are on government machines, Windows,” Kidd said. “I’ll loan you a Windows laptop, a cleaned-up Sony. If anyone asks, you paid cash at Best Buy a couple years ago.”
• • •
B ACK IN THE CAR, the laptop on the passenger seat, Lucas called the governor and said, “I need to talk to you alone, tonight. Without Mitford or anybody else around.”
“That bad?”
“Worse than you could have imagined,” Lucas said. “The problem is, I can’t get out of it now.”
“I’ve got a cabin on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix, north of St. Croix falls. I could be there at six, if it’s that bad.”
“Tell me where,” Lucas said.
He got directions to the cabin, again told the governor to come alone, then went home, said hello to the housekeeper, who said that Letty wouldn’t be back until six o’clock, that Weather had been called to do emergency work on a woman whose face had been cut in an auto accident, and she’d be late, and that the kids were fine.
Lucas took the thumb drives back to his den, hooked the Sony up to his printer, then had to download some printer software that matched the Sony to his printer. He took a few more minutes to re-familiarize himself with Windows, and started printing. There were thirty-four files on the three drives, not nearly filling them, but it took two hours to get them all printed out.
He didn’t print the porn file.
While the printing was going on, he paged through the porn file, image by image, and found the photos that
The file Marvel was examining was one of the smaller ones, fifteen or twenty pieces of paper that had been scanned into PDF files, as well as three or four fine-resolution JPEG photos. Using a mouse, Marvel clicked back and forth between the images. John and Lauren came into the lab, leaned against a wall to watch.
Marvel took five minutes; at one point, the kids made a noise that sounded like they’d killed a chicken, and Lauren ran off to see what it was. She’d just come back when Marvel tapped the computer screen and said, “See, what happened was, this guy, Representative Diller, got the licensing fees on semi-trailers reduced by about half, so they’d supposedly be in line with what they were in the surrounding states. He said he wanted to do that so the trucking companies wouldn’t move out of Minnesota. But what you see over here is a bunch of 1099 forms that were sent by trucking companies to Sisseton High-Line Consulting, LLC, of Sisseton, South Dakota. Over here is the South Dakota LLC form and we find out that a Cheryl Diller is the president of Sisseton High-Line Consulting. And we see that she got, mmm, fifty-five thousand dollars for consulting work that year, from trucking companies.”
“So if these two Dillers are related . . .” Lucas began.
“I promise you, they are,” Marvel said.
Kidd said, “Marvel’s a state senator. In Arkansas.”
Marvel added, “This shit goes on all the time. On everything you can think of, and probably a lot you can’t think of.”
Lucas said to Kidd, “So what these are, are blackmail files.”
“Or protection files, if they’re all the same kind of thing,” Marvel said. “Whoever owned these files might have been involved in these deals, and kept the evidence in case he ever got in trouble and needed help.”
Lucas looked at the computer screen for a moment and then said, “All right. Give me the drives back, Kidd. You guys don’t want to know anything about this.”
Kidd pulled the drives out, handed them to Lucas, and said, “You are
so
right. Do not mention my name in any of this.”
“I won’t,” Lucas promised. “Can I print these out on my home printer?”
“Probably,” Kidd said. “What kind of computer are you running?”
“Macs,” Lucas said.
“Most of the files are on government machines, Windows,” Kidd said. “I’ll loan you a Windows laptop, a cleaned-up Sony. If anyone asks, you paid cash at Best Buy a couple years ago.”
• • •
B ACK IN THE CAR, the laptop on the passenger seat, Lucas called the governor and said, “I need to talk to you alone, tonight. Without Mitford or anybody else around.”
“That bad?”
“Worse than you could have imagined,” Lucas said. “The problem is, I can’t get out of it now.”
“I’ve got a cabin on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix, north of St. Croix falls. I could be there at six, if it’s that bad.”
“Tell me where,” Lucas said.
He got directions to the cabin, again told the governor to come alone, then went home, said hello to the housekeeper, who said that Letty wouldn’t be back until six o’clock, that Weather had been called to do emergency work on a woman whose face had been cut in an auto accident, and she’d be late, and that the kids were fine.
Lucas took the thumb drives back to his den, hooked the Sony up to his printer, then had to download some printer software that matched the Sony to his printer. He took a few more minutes to re-familiarize himself with Windows, and started printing. There were thirty-four files on the three drives, not nearly filling them, but it took two hours to get them all printed out.
He didn’t print the porn file.
While the printing was going on, he paged through the porn file, image by image, and found the photos that
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