Twisted Prey

by John Sandford

  The scene was chilling, as it was intended to be. There were people down there, dead, executed while they slept. They were terrorists, probably deserved what they got, but they were still people, snuffed out in an instant.

  The Post story, combined with what Lucas had been told by Rose, reflected the same kind of bureaucratic attitude as the Clancy scene: people more interested in taking care of their operational lives, their political lives, than the fact that a whole lot of people died at their hands.

  Parrish and Grant hustling around to shift the blame . . . Forget about the women and children blown to bloody rags in a split second.

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS GOT HIS CAR BACK, and let the navigation system guide him across the Potomac to a neighborhood of neat brick homes and crooked, elderly trees on a blacktopped lane in Arlington, Virginia. Another bedroom community, but at least a hundred years older than Rose’s place in Maryland. Of the three additional names on Carter’s list, Lucas had gotten no answer with two of his phone calls, but the third call had been picked up by a woman named Gladys Ingram. She was a partner in an Arlington law firm, and said she could be home for an hour or so.

  “If I’m going to talk to a marshal about anything, I’d rather it not be here,” she said, referring to her office. Lucas looked up the firm, found that it had two dozen partners, and more than eighty associates, and did a lot of lobbying.

  Ingram’s car, a silver Mercedes SL550, was parked in the driveway when Lucas arrived. The street was so narrow that he pulled in behind her car to keep from blocking it.

  Like Rose, when she came to the door, Ingram asked to see Lucas’s ID.

  Unlike Rose, after Lucas’s original call, she’d gone straight to a computer and looked him up on the Internet. There were several hundred references to his time as a cop, with two different Minnesota agencies, and there was a brief note in a Star-Tribune gossip column that he’d moved to the U.S. Marshals Office. There were also a dozen photos taken over a twenty-year span of Lucas at various crime scenes. Not content with that, she’d used a law office code to check his credit rating.

  “Okay, if you’re spoofing me, you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to do it,” she said, still standing in the doorway. “I have to say, you’re apparently the richest marshal I’ve ever met.”

  “I got lucky with a computer start-up when I was between police agencies,” Lucas said. “You’re the second person I talked to today who worried about being spoofed. ‘Spoofed’ means, like, a fraud or a deception, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. She was a gawky woman, with reddish brown hair that barely escaped being mousy. She had brown eyes, looking at him through tortoiseshell glasses, and wore a dress that was conservatively fashionable. Lucas thought she might be forty. “It’s ’Net slang. So, what are we talking about here? You said you were investigating an automobile accident that has nothing to do with me—but that I might have some information about. I don’t know about any automobile accident.”

  “Like I said, your information might be important, but it’s . . . peripheral to the accident.”

  “What accident?”

  “An auto accident involving Senator Porter Smalls,” Lucas said.

  “Was there something unusual about it? I thought that was all settled,” she said.

  “He’s a U.S. senator. We’re taking another routine look at it,” Lucas said.

  “Okay.” She nodded.

  Lucas said, “Now, I understand you know a man named Jack Parrish . . .”

  She said, “Oh boy . . .” then stopped and put two fingers to her lips.

  Lucas: “What?”

  “Oh my God. Did Parrish try to kill Porter Smalls?”

  Lucas, astonished, smiled. “I see why you’re a partner.”

  “Well, did he? I mean, Smalls’s accident . . .” She stopped again, gazing past him at the street, thinking. They were still standing in the doorway, and she suddenly said, “Come in. Come in. This is interesting.”

  * * *

  —

  INGRAM’S HOME was simply but expensively furnished. One living room wall held a single painting, but it looked a lot like a painting that Lucas had seen at the Minneapolis Institute of Art when Weather made him go to a reception there. He bent to look at the signature: RD.

  Ingram, standing behind him, said, “Richard Diebenkorn. Do you know him?”

  “I think I saw something by him at the Minneapolis museum,” Lucas said. “Looks nice.”

  “Well, yeah!” Her tone suggested that of course it looked nice because it was a fuckin’ masterpiece. “Part of the Ocean Park series.”

  “Cool.” Lucas had never heard of the guy, but what else was he going to say? He turned and gazed at her for a few seconds, and asked, “What’s your opinion of Parrish?”

  “He’s a bad man,” Ingram said. “You must have gotten my name through the Malone case.”

  “I don’t know the Malone case,” Lucas said.

  “Then how’d you get my name?”

  “I can’t tell you. I got it from a confidential source who’s involved with the government. If you say there’s a Malone case, that could be where she got it.”

  “Hmph. She, huh? I’ll think about that. Anyway, the Malone case involved one of my clients, Malone Materials. Malone lost a military procurement bid to another company and didn’t understand why since the other company had no expertise in the required area, which involved retrofitting certain military vehicles with lightweight side-panel armor as protection against improvised explosive devices. We sued. There was never any absolute proof, but it became quite clear to me and others who were handling the case that Parrish had been involved in discussions between the Army procurement people and a number of members of both the House and the Senate. Their discussions ended with the other company, Inter-Core Ballistics, getting higher procurement grades despite its lack of experience and markedly higher prices for the panels. I believe money changed hands in a variety of ways, and some of it stuck to Parrish’s hands and probably the hands of some members of the procurement team. A good bit probably wound up in reelection funds.”

  “Bribes,” Lucas said.

  “Not only bribes—but bribes that channeled money to a company with no experience in a mission critical manufacturing operation and so risked the lives of American troops,” Ingram said.

  “That’s . . . ugly,” Lucas said. “Parrish seems to be doing quite well in his continuing military career. In the Army Reserve.”

  “I didn’t know that, but, now that I do, I’ll ask around. Do you really think that he tried to kill Smalls?”

  “That’s a conclusion you jumped to.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Davenport, it won’t work. I saw your face when I mentioned the Smalls accident.” She turned away, thinking, snapped her fingers, turned back, and said, “Got it: Smalls and Taryn Grant. Parrish now works for Grant. That is very, very, interesting. Very.”

  “Don’t jump to more conclusions . . . And don’t try to use that,” Lucas said.

  “I don’t think I’m jumping to anything,” she said. “You’ve got something about the accident, don’t you? What is it? I’d love to get something good on Parrish and/or Grant.”

  Lucas said, “Miz Ingram, let me suggest you forget about all these . . . speculations. I’m afraid if you go somewhere with them, somebody might come to your nice brick house and hurt you.”

  “Really.” Skepticism, not a question.

  “Really,” Lucas said. “Listen, we’re looking at a . . . at a bare possibility. The most likely thing that happened in the Smalls accident is that he and the driver both had a little to drink, she lost it and went off the road. We need to check, and that’s what I’m doing. I’ve gotten the impression from . . . other people . . . that Parrish is a dangerous guy. If you try to stick it to him, or he thinks you will, you
could have a problem.”

  “I will take that under advisement,” she said.

  “Sit tight for a couple of weeks—that’s all you have to do,” Lucas said. “By that time, I’ll have figured out whether Parrish was involved in the accident. If he was, I’ll handle it. If he wasn’t, I’ll let you know. No point in taking risks that you don’t have to.”

  “I will take that under advisement as well,” she said. “Boy—Taryn Grant and Jack Parrish. That’s a mix ’n’ match, huh?”

  “They actually—” Lucas cut himself off.

  “Are well suited to each other, that’s what you were about to say,” Ingram said. “I don’t know much about Grant, but I do know about the controversy when she was elected. Were you involved in that investigation?”

  “I led it; for the state,” Lucas said.

  “Now you’re a federal marshal. There wasn’t any political influence involved in that, was there?”

  Lucas shook his head. “I didn’t know you were a trial attorney.”

  “So, I’m starting to see it. U.S. senator gets jobbed by an opposition candidate, who takes his seat. He gets himself elected again and immediately begins peeing on his opponent’s shoes—or, in Grant’s case, her Christian Louboutin pumps. Grant is a murderous witch who lands on the Senate Intelligence Committee, where she connects with a hustler who has ties both to the military and the CIA and does her a favor by trying to kill the U.S. senator who’s peeing on her presidential chances. Smalls, who has used his influence to get the man who saved his bacon an appointment as a federal marshal, gets the marshal to investigate the witch,” Ingram said, finally taking a breath. “Man, is this a great country or what?”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS SAID he’d stay in touch, and Ingram said, “Oh, do. I’m fascinated.” Back in his car, he tried to call the other two people on the list and again got no answer, so he headed back to the hotel.

  After leaving his car with the valet, he was walking through the lobby when the security chief, who he’d met when he was checking in, flagged him over. He’d learned the man’s name was Steve Schneider.

  “Did you . . . have a friend in your room? A male friend, maybe another marshal?” Schneider asked.

  “A friend? No . . . what happened?”

  “One of my guys was doing routine floor checks and he heard a door close. A guy was coming down the hall, and my guy got the impression he’d come out of that stub hallway to your room. There was no reason to stop him, so he went on his way. There’s nobody in the other room on that hall. I thought I should mention it.”

  “Thanks. Any sign he’d actually been inside my room?”

  “No, no. We would have stopped him if we thought he had been,” Schneider said.

  “Can I talk to your guy?”

  “Sure. I think he’s down in the parking structure, if you want to wait in the bar . . .”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS GOT A DIET COKE, and Schneider and his guy showed up five minutes later. The second security man was named Jeff Toomes, white-haired with a ruddy face, in a gray suit—an ex-cop, Lucas thought.

  “There wasn’t any reason to stop him, at first,” Toomes told Lucas. “What happened was, I was doing my checks, and I came out of the stairwell and started toward the hallway that goes to the rooms. I heard a door close as I turned the corner and there was a guy walking toward me. I’d say six feet, maybe a half inch either way, close-cut brown hair, brown eyes. Looked to be in very good shape. Clean-shaven, decent pale blue summer suit, polished lace-up shoes. If he was carrying a gun, it would have been in the small of his back—no gun sag on the sides, and the suit wasn’t cut for a shoulder rig. I suppose he could have had an ankle wrap, but who has those?”

  “And he was by my room,” Lucas said.

  “That’s what I realized as I was walking by. I think he had to come out of your hallway. There’s only two rooms down there, and when I checked later I found out there’s nobody checked into the other one.”

  Lucas said, “You heard the door actually close.”

  “Yes. Another thing . . . you’re on four, and I realized that I didn’t hear the elevator bell, the one that rings when the doors open. I went back: I was going to see what room he was in or who he was visiting, but he was gone. He had to have taken the stairs. That’d be unusual, unless you were in a hurry. I called Steve, but nobody saw him again. He would have gotten lost in the lobby.”

  “He’d have been in a hurry because he’d been surprised by a guy he recognized as security.”

  “The thought crossed our minds,” Schneider said.

  Lucas said, “Well, hell.”

  * * *

  —

  SCHNEIDER CAME UP to the room with him. Lucas popped the door, and they both eased inside. Lucas looked at his luggage and briefcase, but nothing seemed out of place, missing, or added. Schneider tipped his head toward the door, and Lucas followed him into the hall.

  “I know a guy who could sweep it for you,” Schneider said. “Or, better, I could move you across the hall but leave you registered in this room.”

  “Let’s do that,” Lucas said. “Then if somebody else shows up, I’ll actually be behind them. I might even hear them going in.”

  “If you shoot somebody, try not to hit any guests,” Schneider said. “Unless it’s an old lady with a mink hat carrying a rat.”

  “A rat?”

  “Okay, a Chihuahua. That’d be Mrs. Julia Benson, grass widow. She lives here. Eighteen thousand a month, and she doesn’t care—she likes servants. I’m apparently one of them. Biggest pain in the ass in the building. I wouldn’t want you to kill her, but wounding her a little would get you some free drinks.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Lucas said.

  7

  Lucas settled into his new room, across the hallway from his previous one and without the view of the Potomac. He struggled briefly with a spasm of paranoia: did guys in nice suits break into hotel rooms occupied by U.S. Marshals? In Washington, D.C., in a place called Watergate? Really?

  When that moment had passed, he called Smalls, who blurted, “Can’t talk at this exact minute, call me back in . . . four minutes.”

  Lucas called back in four minutes, and asked, “You were with somebody inconvenient?”

  Smalls said, “No, I was standing at a urinal. I’m at a luncheon. Try not to call when I’m taking a leak.”

  “All right.” He told Smalls about the possible illegal entry, and asked, “Have you told people that I’m looking at the accident?”

  “I had to tell a couple of people at the office. I trust them, and I told them not to talk to anyone else. I took my wife to lunch and I didn’t even tell her.”

  “There’s a leak somewhere, Senator, and it’s probably Grant. You might think about that,” Lucas said. “Now I’ll be working out in the open, I guess. If this was an entry and not a mistake by the security guy . . . If it’s not a mistake . . . I mean, they knew where my room was.”

  “I think a mistake’s most likely—though given the shot they took at me, the attack, you can’t know for sure, can you?”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS CARRIED a Sony voice-activated recorder in his pack, a unit only five inches long and less than an inch and a half wide. He dug it out, checked the battery, found a place to leave it—tucked under the mattress at the head of the bed, with only the microphone sticking out. He recorded precisely ten seconds of sound from the room television, a CNN news report. If somebody found the recorder and erased it, or simply took it, he would know as much as he would if it recorded somebody coming and going.

  * * *

  —

  HE CALLED the last two names on Carter’s list, still got no answer. Since both numbers were supposedly good, and both supposedly to cell phones, he suspect
ed that the calls were being ignored. He’d decided to drive back across the river, find the houses, hang around until someone showed, when a call came in to his cell phone from an unknown number.

  He said, “Lucas Davenport.”

  “Marshal Davenport? This is Carl Armstrong, the accident investigator.”

  “Hey, Carl. What’s up, man?”

  “You mentioned that lawn mower lady saw a black Ford F-250 going through town. There’s a nursery there with a video camera that covers the street. I asked them to let me take a look, and I spotted the truck and got the tags. It’s outta Virginia. But there’s a problem.”

  “Like what?”

  “The truck I saw on the video was black, like the lawn mower lady said, but when I looked up the registration it says the truck is blue.”

  “So what do you think?” Lucas asked.

  “If I was gonna do something like run another car off the road, and I thought somebody might see me or remember me, I’d steal the plates off another 250 and change them.”

  “I would, too,” Lucas said. “Give me the details, I’ll look into it . . . What about faces? Could you see the guys in the truck?”

  “You can see them, but you can’t quite make them out. I could see sunglasses and black hats.”

  “Could you send me the video?”

  “Sure, I got it here—I’ll email it to you. I had our computer guy make it the highest resolution he could.”

  “This is good stuff, Carl.”

  * * *

  —

  THE VIDEO CAME IN, but it wasn’t much to look at. The black pickup rolled past the camera, but the two people in the cab were obscured by reflections off its windows. Lucas agreed with Armstrong that the men were wearing sunglasses, but he wasn’t sure about the hats. To Lucas, it looked more like one of the men had long dark hair.

  The truck was registered from a place called Centreville, which Lucas found on a Google map. A D.C. suburb, it was straight west, across the river, in Virginia. He turned on the tape recorder, tucked it into the mattress, put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob, and went down to get his car.