Mortal Prey

by John Sandford

  Ross said, “I can appreciate the fact that you get off on hunting Clara, and I hope you get her, but there’s not much more I can do to help. I told you that the last time. There are still some people at the warehouse who knew her, but I knew her as well as anyone. I could tell you where her old apartment used to be, I could tell you where she’d go for drinks, but you gotta remember—that was all before Wichita. This was years ago, and she only worked in the warehouse a couple, three years.”

  “Did your wife know her?”

  “Treena? Yeah, sure. Treena worked in the warehouse along with Rinker.”

  “Could she tell me anything?”

  Ross snorted. “She can barely remember her middle name, Mr. Davenport. She’s basically a great set of tits and a terrific ass being run by a brain the size of a cashew. I can’t imagine that she could give you anything useful on Clara Rinker. But you’re welcome to ask her. She’s around here someplace.”

  “If that’s what you think, why did you marry her?”

  “It gives me about three headaches a week, going over that. She’s got these tits, and I got these hormones. . . . You know what I mean. I should’ve stuck with the last one.”

  “Number three.”

  “Yeah. Number one was probably the best, number two was a rebound, three was pretty good, and four was another bounce. It never made any sense. I’ll think a long time about number five.”

  “Somebody told me that number three died tragically.”

  There was irony in Lucas’s voice, and Ross picked it up and seemed to darken. “She was killed in a hit-and-run. I was in New Orleans at the time.”

  “Good for you,” Lucas said, smiling.

  “Fuck you,” Ross said.

  “If I weren’t working for the FBI, I’d pull you outa your chair and kick your ass,” Lucas said, still smiling. “Just so you’d know.”

  Ross looked at him curiously. “You really think you could take me?”

  Lucas nodded. “Yeah.”

  Ross leaned back, finally shrugged, and said, “Maybe we could try it someday. Be kinda interesting.”

  Lucas nodded and they both sat, and then Lucas said, “So for now, you’re just gonna sit.”

  “No, I’m not just sitting. I go out several times a week—we got three cars, we all go different ways, nobody gets out until we’re under cover, we look at the street before we go. And I got four good boys around all the time. I got the best alarms ever made. I can get on the TV with my remote control, any TV in the house, and look at any direction out of the house, through cameras on the roof. One of the boys has a night-vision scope that he watches with. If she gets me, she gets me, but I don’t think she can get in. Unless she’s got a fuckin’ rocket.”

  “How long can you wait?”

  He shrugged. “I’m a patient man. More patient than Clara.”

  “If you’re so fuckin’ patient, what was all that about in Mexico? You could’ve just left her.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with anything in Mexico, of course,” Ross said. “But judging from what’s been in the paper, I’d say somebody made a big fuckin’ mistake, to use your adjective. A big, stupid mistake.”

  “And she thinks it was you. Was it you?”

  Ross shrugged again and smiled for the first time—an unpleasant smile that said Yes, it was his big fuckin’ mistake. What he actually said was, “I don’t know from Mexico. What happened, exactly?”

  “Bullshit,” Lucas said. Then: “Are you going any place public this week? Any place that isn’t completely shut up?”

  “If I told you that, that’d be a leak. I don’t even tell my boys when I’m moving.”

  “Listen, if you’re going out, it’d be a hell of a lot easier if you told us in advance than if we have to have the cops pull over all three cars until we figure out which one you’re in—all the lights and sirens and so on. Because if you’re gonna act like cheese, we’d like to be there when the mouse comes out.”

  Ross smiled at the image, then leaned forward, lifted a piece of paper from his desk pad, and said, “I’m going one place in public: Friday night, there’s a fundraiser for the St. Louis Chamber Orchestra at the botanical gardens. I’m one of the . . . pillars . . . of the chamber orchestra. And the botanical gardens, for that matter.”

  “Chamber orchestra and orchids. A goddamned refined little thug, huh?”

  “Fuck off,” Ross said mildly, and smiled again.

  LUCAS GOT UP to leave. On the way to the door, a thought struck him, and he went back. “One last thing. You knew both Nanny Dichter and Levy. Are you as well protected as those two?”

  “Nanny was a tough nut, but Levy was a pussy,” Ross said. “I was surprised when she got to Nanny so easy.”

  “That’s not exactly what I was asking. What I’m asking is, are you a tougher nut than Nanny?”

  The question seemed to interest him. He leaned back, put his hands behind his head, thought for a moment, then said, “Yes.”

  “Would you have been tougher if she’d gone after you first? Could she have ambushed you as easily as she did Dichter?”

  No thought this time. “No. As soon as the federal people started calling, even before Nanny, I had an idea of what was going to happen. I shut down everything I couldn’t run by remote control. If she’d called me for a meet, or wanted me to go somewhere to make a phone call, I would have told her to go fuck herself. No. I would have suggested that we meet somewhere that I’d control.”

  “What if all the feds started running around screaming, and then nothing happened? How long before you would have relaxed? Would you do what you’re doing now, indefinitely?”

  The question called for more thought. Ross played with one of his ears, tugged on the lobe, and then said, “Probably not. If she’d waited six more weeks, and if she’d been careful, she would have got me.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah. That is kind of weird,” Ross said. “I’m almost insulted.”

  ON THE WAY OUT ,Lucas ran into Treena Ross in the hallway. She was wearing a lime-green dress and matching lime-green shoes with two-inch heels. She was carrying a dog the size of a walnut that seemed to have been bred to be frightened; it whimpered when it saw Lucas, and then Ross coming up behind. Treena said, “Oh, they’re nice men, Wiener.” Then to Lucas: “I don’t think I’ve met you. Are you working with John?”

  “I’m a cop,” Lucas said. “Lucas Davenport. I saw you once before—you were going to play tennis.”

  “I remember. And you’re working with John. That’s wonderful.”

  “He’s not working with me,” Ross said. “He wants to kick my ass.”

  “Really? Kick your ass? Why?” She looked wide-eyed at Lucas. She was a little top-heavy, Lucas thought, but she had a beautiful oval face and green eyes that seemed to be a promise of good times. He understood what Ross had said about hormones.

  “Never mind,” Ross said. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Off to Sophie’s.” She bent one of the dog’s tiny paws toward Lucas. “See? His teeny-weeny nails are all chipped. They have to be recoated.”

  “We were talking about Clara Rinker,” Lucas said to her.

  “That’s awful what’s she’s doing,” Treena Ross said. “She was always so nice when we worked together. She was very lively. She used to be a dancer.”

  “Do you have . . . do you remember anything about her that might help us run her down?” Lucas asked. “Friends, anything like that?”

  “I was her friend. And so was John. And for a while, I thought I was going to race her to see who got John,” she said, and she laughed, and took her husband’s arm. “He still won’t tell me if he ever slept with her.”

  She was teasing, but Ross snapped, “I didn’t.”

  “Now, see? Is he lying, Mr. Lucas? Anyway . . . her friends.” She pursed her lips and then said, “The only one I can think of . . .” She looked at her husband. “What was that Indian guy’s name? Running Horse, or something . .
.”

  “Tim Runs-Like-Horse,” Ross said. “I don’t think she’s staying with him.”

  “Why?” Lucas asked.

  “He’s dead,” Ross said. “He used to drink all the time, and when he was really drunk, he’d go out in the street with his jacket and play bullfighter with cars. Some redneck ran over him with a Chevy S-10.”

  “Oh,” said Treena, a finger going to her lips. “I didn’t know about that.”

  “Three years ago,” Ross said. “He was a good guy.”

  “Huh. Well, too bad,” Treena said brightly. “That’s the only one I can think of. Old dead Running Horse.”

  “Let me take you out,” Ross said to Lucas.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Lucas,” Treena said.

  RIDING BACK TO FBI headquarters, Malone asked, “How’d it go?”

  Lucas shrugged. “We traded threats. His wife is taking the dog to get a manicure.”

  “Pedicure,” Malone said. “We met her.” Then, a moment later, she said, “I think Treena’s running with one headlight.”

  “Yeah, well, Ross seems to . . . see something in her,” Lucas said.

  “Wonder what that might be?”

  THEY RODE ALONG in silence for a bit, and then Lucas said, “I don’t like the phrase jackshit, but that’s exactly what we learned, talking to these guys.”

  “We found out that they might run.”

  “We knew that anyway,” Lucas said.

  “My big worry is that Rinker might run,” Malone said, looking out the window. “We need to get her now.”

  “She’s not going anywhere,” Lucas said. “She’s too pissed about her brother. She hasn’t done anything about it, but she will before she leaves.” He looked at Mallard. “You guys need better personal security. You need to talk to the AIC and tell him to warn all his people. Don’t answer the door to any strange women. You gotta take it more seriously.”

  “We’ve had experience with this, with these kinds of threats,” Mallard said. “We’re taking them seriously, but you gotta look at it from her angle, too. The FBI is pretty . . . frightening. We look pretty goddamn tough to a crook.”

  “I don’t think she’s scared,” Lucas said. “I don’t think she gives a shit about the FBI, or how tough you are.”

  19

  RINKER HAD A BAD NIGHT .SHE WAS comfortable enough, sleeping on couch pillows, wrapped in clean sheets, but the body in the basement freezer still gave her the creeps, and she thought several times that the basement door was creaking open. She found herself staring through the dark, looking for shapes in the living room, her hand near the Beretta on the floor beside her. Not that the gun would help with a ghost.

  In the very darkest pit of the night, she sat up. She’d had something close to a dream, and in the dream came an idea. She crawled over to a lamp, groped up its stem, turned it on, then went out to the kitchen and dug up a yellow pages. She found what she was looking for under “Investigations.” There were several listings for private detectives specializing in “spousal inquiries”—had to be divorce work—and two of them had women’s names attached.

  She left the kitchen light on, turned the lamp off, and went back to her couch pillows to think about it. Dream about it. And listen for noises from the basement.

  • • •

  SHE WAS OUT of the house by ten o’clock, as the Dark Woman, with dark brown eyebrows and dark brown hair. She wore a loose, green, long-sleeved cotton shirt to cover her arms, the fine blond hair and too-fair skin. She’d moved her own car into Honus Johnson’s garage, and took his Mercedes.

  She scouted Nina Bennett’s address and found that it was a house with a business sign on it, and a black cat sitting in the porch window. A home office for a not-very-prosperous business, Rinker thought.

  Could work, she thought. She rolled away from Bennett’s and went looking for a place to meet. Someplace downtown. She found it at the Happy Dragon, a dark, upscale Chinese place that seemed to be designed for St. Louis’s lunchtime assignations, with shoulder-high booths and bad sight-lines.

  She stopped at Union Station, found a phone and called Bennett, who picked up on the second ring. “Bennett Legal Services.”

  Rinker tried to sound tentative. “I saw your ad in the phone book. Do you check on husbands? I mean, watch them?”

  “We do spousal surveillance, yes. We usually require a reference from an attorney.” The “usually” was not stressed; was made to sound inviting.

  “Oh.” Disappointment. Hesitation. “I can’t hire an attorney. Not yet. I don’t want a divorce, I don’t want to make him angry. I just want to find out.”

  “Ma’am, if we’re going to court . . .”

  “I wouldn’t want that,” Rinker said quickly. “I just want to . . . know.”

  “Maybe you should come by. We can talk.”

  “Oh . . . I don’t . . . Please wait a minute.” Rinker clapped her hand over the mouthpiece, waited for what she thought might be a minute, then came back on. “Could you talk this afternoon? I’m very busy, I’m getting ready to fly down to Miami this evening.”

  “Yes, I could talk to you this afternoon,” Bennett offered.

  “Could you come here? Downtown?”

  “Yes, I could.”

  “Oh, that’s great. There’s a place down the block, the Happy Dragon, if you could meet me there. Wait a minute, let me look at my calendar.” She clapped her hand over the mouthpiece again, waited a few seconds, then said, “Three o’clock?”

  “That’d be fine. The Happy Dragon at three, Mrs. . . . ?”

  “Dallaglio,” Rinker said. “Jesse Dallaglio.”

  LUCAS HAD SPENT most of the day at FBI headquarters, going through paper—all the paper that the feds had put together—looking for anything that might indicate whom Rinker might talk to, anything about the way she preferred to live. Andreno called to say that he’d stopped by John Sellos’s bar and apartment, and Sellos was still missing. “He’s not dead. The bartender got a call from him last night, said he sounded really worried about what was happening to the place. He told the bartender that he was still traveling and playing golf, but wouldn’t say where he was.”

  “He called at the bar?”

  “On the bar’s public phone, right around nine o’clock.”

  “We’ll see where that goes back to,” Lucas said. “Though I’m not sure what he could tell us.” He gave a note to Sally Epaulets, and asked her to find out where the call had come from. Twenty minutes later, she told him that it had come from a gas station near Nashville.

  “Does that help?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Don’t have to be snippy about it.”

  MALONE HAD BEEN in and out all afternoon. She was driving the local cops to find Rinker’s car, while Mallard had disappeared entirely. When Lucas asked, Sally told him that Mallard was teleconferencing with Washington.

  “All of it?”

  “Just the FBI part,” she said.

  A FEW MINUTES LATER ,an agent named Leen stopped by and said that the explosive that had killed Levy had been tagged, and the tags indicated that it was a commercial-grade explosive generally used in quarries, and most of it was sold in New England.

  That rang no bells with anyone, and Lucas went back to the paper.

  MALONE CAME BACK and asked, “Why are you reading all that paper again?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on in Rinker’s head, and I can’t. She’s got all this carefully planned, right? The Dichter thing, then the cell phone. Is there some reason for the order that she’s taking them in? Why didn’t she take Ross first? Even Ross thinks he’d probably be the toughest nut to crack, but if she’d done him first, she could have gotten him.”

  Malone shook her head. “It is possible to plan a thing and then ride the breaks. Maybe that’s what she’s doing.”

  “I’ll tell you what, though,” Lucas said. “Ross ain’t panicking. He’s got a plan. My feeling is that she’s gonna go after one of th
e other guys before she tries for him—I think Ferignetti may be right, that she’s got no interest in him. Give him that. Giancati is taking himself out of it, maybe beyond her reach. So—I think we ought to look really hard at Paul Dallaglio.”

  “Dallaglio may take himself out of it, too, if he goes back to the Old Country, wherever that may be.”

  “Then we watch Ross, and hope she doesn’t take a sabbatical and come back for them next year.”

  • • •

  AT SIX O ’CLOCK ,he left the FBI building and met Andreno, Loftus, Bender, and Carter at Andy’s Bar. They ate cheeseburgers and curly fries and onion rings and batter-dipped mushrooms, and Lucas said, “Guys, we almost got her, but we didn’t. Does anybody have any idea of a move we could make? We gotta make some kind of move.”