came back to Lucas: “I say we take a research guy, pull every tax record we can find, run down every asset Kline has got, and attach it. Do a real estate search, put Kline on the wall…”

“Why do you want to steal the rightful compensation from this young woman?” the lawyer demanded. “It’s not going to do her any good if Burt Kline goes to jail and that’s it. She may need years of treatment—years!—if it’s true that Mr. Kline had sexual contact with her. Which, of course, we’re still trying to determine.”

“Motherfucker,” Flowers said.

The lawyer, shocked—shocked—turned to Jesse and said, “Put your hands over your ears.”

Jesse just looked at Flowers, twisted a lock of her hair between her fingers, and stuck a long pink tongue out at him. Flowers grinned back.

“SHE’S HOT,” Flowers said when they left the house. They had to step carefully, because a yellow-white dog with bent-over ears, big teeth, and a bad attitude was chained to a stake in the center of the yard.

“She’s sixteen years old,” Lucas said, watching the dog.

“Us Jews bat mitzvah our women when they’re fourteen, and after that, they’re up for grabs,” Flowers said. “Sixteen’s no big thing, in the right cultural context.”

“You’re a fuckin’ Presbyterian, Virgil, and you live in Minnesota.”

“Oh, yeah. Ya got me there, boss,” Flowers said. “What do we do next?”

THE SECOND INTERVIEW was worse, if you didn’t like to see old men cry.

Burt Kline sat in his heavy leather chair, all the political photos on the walls behind him, all the plaques, the keys, the letters from presidents, and put his face in his hands, rocked back and forth, and wept. Nothing faked about it. His son, a porky twenty-three-year-old and heir apparent, kept smacking one meaty fist into the palm of the other hand. He’d been a football player at St. Johns, and wore a St. Johns T-shirt, ball cap, and oversized belt buckle.

Burt Kline, blubbering: “She’s just a girl, how could you think…”

Flowers yawned and looked out the window. Lucas said, “Senator Kline…”

“I-I-I d-d-didn’t do it,” Kline sobbing. “I swear to God, I never touched the girl. This is all a lie…”

“It’s a fuckin’ lie, he didn’t do it, those bitches are trying to blackmail us,” Burt Jr. shouted.

“There’s that whole thing about the semen and the DNA,” Flowers said.

The blubbering intensified and Kline swiveled his chair toward his desk and dropped his head on it, with a thump like a pumpkin hitting a storm door. “That’s got to be some kind of mistake,” he wailed.

“You’re trying to frame us,” Burt Jr. said. “You and that whole fuckin’ bunch of tree-hugging motherfuckers. That so-called lab guy is probably some left-wing nut…”

“Here’s the thing, Senator Kline,” Lucas said, ignoring the kid. “You know we’ve got no choice. We’ve got to send it to a grand jury. Now we can send it to a grand jury here in Ramsey County, and you know what that little skunk will do with it.”

“Oh, God…”

“Just not right,” Burt Jr. said, smacking his fist into his palm. His face was so red that Lucas wondered about his blood pressure. Lucas kept talking to the old man: “Or, Jesse Barth said you once took her on a shopping trip to the Burnsville Mall and bought her some underwear and push-up bras…”

“Oh, God…”

“If you did that for sex, or if we feel we can claim that you did, then that aspect of the crime would have taken place in Dakota County. Jim Cole is the county attorney there, and runs the grand jury.”

The sobbing diminished, and Kline, damp faced, looked up, a line of calculation back in his eyes. “That’s Dave Cole’s boy.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Lucas said. “But if you actually took Jesse over to Burnsville…”

“I never had sex with her,” Kline said. “But I might’ve taken her to Burnsville once. She needed back-to-school clothes.”

“They wear push-up bras to high school?” Lucas asked.

“Shit, yes. And thongs,” Flowers said. “Don’t even need Viagra with that kind of teenybopper quiff running around, huh, Burt?”

“You motherfucker, I ought to throw you out the fuckin’ window,” Burt Jr. snarled at Flowers.

“You said something like that last time,” Flowers said. He didn’t move, but his eyes had gone flat and gray like stones. “So why don’t you do it? Come on, fat boy, let’s see what you got.”

The kid balled his fists and opened and shut his mouth a couple of times, and then Kline said to him, “Shut up and sit down,” then asked