Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(49)

“Go ahead and talk,” Chase said, clicking her iPhone to look at the time without sneaking the move. In other words, I’m busy and also I’m the one in charge here.

Lucas outlined the problem with the vehicle armor provided to the Army by Inter-Core Ballistics and the problems with the bidding process. He also gave them the Internet links that demonstrated the problems.

“I think you’ll find widespread corruption involving the bids—Army officers and enlisted men, a high-ranking Senate aide, a military contractor who also provides mercenaries to the countries we’re involved in . . . all of that. Even worse, the products they provided, products that were supposed to protect our military people, had already been proven inferior,” he told the agents.

There were glances around the table, and Chase said, “That would be something we could be interested in. But what’s in it for you?”

“If you could take a quick look at this, and ask some questions that would get back to Heracles . . . that might provide me with a bit of leverage,” Lucas said. “I could explain that I could come talk with you about who at Heracles gets hurt.”

Chase pushed out her lower lip, more glances were exchanged, and she said, “I can’t green-light you implicating us directly in any kind of a deal, but I would be willing to keep you up to date on what we might find . . . regarding Heracles.”

“I seriously appreciate that,” Lucas said. “Seriously.”

“Seriously,” she repeated, and, “If you lie about a deal, of course there’s nothing illegal about that.”

“Right,” Bob said. “We know that. We do it all the time.”

Chase eye-checked Bob, looking for possible cynicism, but Bob’s face was as innocent as the moon’s. She turned backed to Lucas. “Was there something else?” she asked.

Lucas fished a thumb drive out of his pocket and slid it across the table to the woman, who didn’t immediately touch it. “This is a video. I’ve seen—you know, on television—that you guys are good with photo enhancement. We think this is a video of the truck that hit Senator Smalls. We can see the plates, but the faces of the men inside are obscured by reflections off the windows. And they’re wearing sunglasses. But if we could get a peek, get anything . . .”

Chase nodded. “We’ll take a look.”

Back on the street, Rae said, “Suits, but not uninteresting suits. We might actually get something done.”

“If they can find a way to cover their asses while they’re doing it,” Bob amended.

O’Conner asked, “You’re friendly with Deputy Director Mallard?”

Lucas said, “Yeah. We worked a couple of cases together, and we did okay.”

“I’d like to hear that story sometime,” O’Conner said. “The rumor is, Mallard has the AG’s balls in his pocket.”

“Since the AG’s a woman, that would be unusual,” Rae said.

“You obviously haven’t met our beloved attorney general,” O’Conner said. To Lucas, as they waited for a car to arrive for O’Conner and Forte: “Remember: Aggressively cautious.”

Forte: “Or cautiously aggressive. Try not to get them confused.”





13


Weather Karkinnen, Lucas’s wife, was driving her dark blue Audi A5 convertible, the top down, in the soft summer evening, but with the windows up because she didn’t want to tangle her freshly coifed hair.

A bag of groceries sat beside her on the passenger seat, as she drove home from the Lunds supermarket on the Ford Parkway in St. Paul. She was a small woman, her shoulder reaching barely to the bottom of the car’s side window. She enjoyed the curvy ride down Mississippi River Boulevard; the A5 wasn’t a hot car, but it was very driveable.

Weather was thinking about her kids, Sam in particular. Sam was in elementary school, and, unfortunately for a kid enrolled in school in these modern times, engaged in the occasional fight. He wasn’t a bully—all the teachers said so—but he was the kid who stood up for the picked-upon, a role he may have enjoyed too much, according to those same teachers. Lucas had talked to him about it, and needed to talk to him more about it, she thought.

Weather caught a boy on a skateboard in her headlights, carefully arced around him, and continued on down the street to Randolph, still thinking about Sam, and . . .

WHAM!

She never saw it coming.



* * *



—

THE AUDI WAS BROADSIDED by an elderly Toyota Tacoma, accelerating out of the intersection of Randolph and Mississippi River Boulevard. The A5 jumped three feet sideways, the door crushing inward, all the air bags firing simultaneously.

Weather’s head collided with the passenger-side window as it shattered, shards of glass sliced into her scalp, and then her head ping-ponged to the left, but she wasn’t aware of that because consciousness had left the building. The violence torqued her neck, and the smashed-in door broke her arm and drove her elbow into her ribs, cracking several, sending the broken end of one of them into her right lung.

There were four witnesses: a couple out for an evening stroll, who were on the walkway that paralleled the boulevard; a St. Kate’s student, heading back to the school on her bike after getting off her shift at a Ford Parkway restaurant; and the skateboarder.