Lyle Pender?”
“Okay, that’s somebody else. Anyway, Susan was assigned to prep the Barths, but Kathy’s heard that she can take the Fifth, if she thinks she might have committed a crime. Or might be accused of one. So now she says she doesn’t want to talk to Susan, and Susan’s got a date that she doesn’t want to miss. The whole fuckin’ thing is about to go up in smoke. I could use some weight over here.”
“Damnit. What does Barth’s lawyer say?”
“He’s not here. Kathy’s nervous—I don’t think this is coming from her lawyer,” Flowers said. “It might be coming from somewhere else.”
“I’m sure Kline wouldn’t have…Ah, Jesus. You think Burt Jr. might have talked to her?”
“Maybe. The thought occurred to me, that fat fuck,” Flowers said. “If he has, I’ll put his ass in jail. I told Kathy that the grand jury could give her immunity and that she’d have to testify, or go to jail. Nobody told her that. But if she decides to take the Fifth, it’s gonna mess up the schedule and it could create some complications. If Cole started getting cold feet, or Kline’s buddies in the legislature got involved…We need to get this done.”
“Why doesn’t Conoway talk to her?” Lucas asked.
“Says she can’t. Says the Barths have an attorney, and without the other attorney here, she’s not comfortable examining a reluctant witness. That’s not exactly what she said, but that’s what she means.”
“Listen: It’ll take me at least ten or fifteen minutes to get there. I have to walk home, I’m six or seven minutes away from my car,” Lucas said. “What is Jesse saying? Is she letting Kathy do the talking, or can you split them, or what?”
“They were both sitting on the couch. It’s all about the money, man.”
Lucas groaned. “I don’t know why the Klines are holding on like this. You’d think they’d try to deal. Suborning a witness…they’d have to be crazy. How could they think they’d get away with it?”
Flowers said, “Burt’s a fuckin’ state legislator, Lucas.”
“I know, but I’m always the optimist.”
“Right,” Flowers said. “Ten minutes?”
Lucas glanced at Anderson, who at that moment tipped her wrist to look at her watch. “I need a minute or two to finish here, then walk home, so…give me fifteen.”
HE RANG OFF and stepped back into the living room, took a card from his pocket, and handed it to Anderson. “I’ve got to run. Thanks for your time. If you think of anything… About Donaldson, about Bucher, about possible ties between them, I’d like to hear it.”
She took the card, said, “I’ll call. I’ve got what we call a grip-and-grin, trying to soak up some money. So I’ve got to hurry myself.”
“Seems like everything is about money,” Lucas said.
“More and more,” Anderson said. “To tell you the truth, I find it more and more distasteful.”
LUCAS HURRIED HOME, waved at a neighbor, stuck his head into the kitchen, blurted, “Got something going, I’ll tell you when I get back,” to Weather, and took off; Weather called after him, “When?” He shouted back, “Half an hour. If it’s longer, I’ll call.”
There was some traffic, but the Barths lived only three miles away, and he knew every street and alley. By chopping off a little traffic, and taking some garbage-can routes, he made it in the fifteen minutes he’d promised Flowers.
FLOWERS WAS LEANING in a doorway, chatting with a solid dishwater-blond woman with a big leather bag hanging from her shoulder: Conoway. Lucas had never met her, but when he saw her, he remembered her, from a lecture she gave at a child-abuse convention sponsored by the BCA.
A small-town cop, working with volunteer help and some sheriff’s deputies who lived in the area, and a freelance social therapist, had busted a day-care center’s owner, her son, and two care providers and charged them with crimes ranging from rape to blasphemy.
Conoway, assigned as a prosecutor, had shredded the case. She’d demonstrated that the day-care center operators were innocent, and had shown that if the children had been victimized by anyone, it had been the cops and the therapist, who were involved in what amounted to an anti-pederasty cult. She hadn’t endeared herself to the locals, but she had her admirers, including Lucas.
Lucas came up the walk, noticed that the yellow-white dog was gone, the stake sitting at an angle in the yard. He wondered if the dog had broken loose.
Conoway looked tired; like she needed to wash her hair. She saw Lucas coming, through the screen