Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(56)

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BOB AND RAE were waiting when he got in, and they met in Lucas’s room, where he told them all about the accident.

When he was done, Bob said, “This . . . You can’t do this kind of thing out of your hip pocket. They had to do some intel work; they must have had some computer access to spot the drunk . . . If he was living with his girlfriend, he wouldn’t even have an address of his own. How’d they find him?”

“Probation records,” Lucas said. “If they have a good computer guy, he could get into state files . . .”

Rae nodded. “We’ve had that problem on the federal level. The files are designed to provide a fast response to people who aren’t computer jocks. For a serious hacker, getting in there would be child’s play.”

“And we’re dealing with people who probably have access to federal computer systems,” Lucas said.

“The safest bet here would be to make a hard move on Ritter. We know he used a truck once, so I have to believe he was probably there in Minnesota,” Bob said.

“I agree,” Lucas said. “We don’t have enough for an arrest or a search warrant, but we can roust him, impound his truck, get Carl Armstrong to take a look at it. I’ll get Russell looking for a way to put Ritter in St. Paul—run his credit cards, look at airlines.”

“Put this Parrish guy in there, too,” Rae said.



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THEY’D MOVE the next morning, they decided. Bob and Rae had been watching Ritter’s truck during the week Lucas was gone. They would continue with that the next day, while Lucas would work with Forte on a computer search of electronic records on both Ritter and Parrish.

When the other two had gone, Lucas called Forte and told him what he wanted to do, and Forte agreed to start pulling all the records he could think of, that might track the movements of the two men during the days before and after Weather was hit.

With that under way, Lucas called Carl Armstrong in West Virginia, to get the latest results on the logs they’d pulled out of the mountainside ditch.

“The news is mixed,” Armstrong told him. “The paint on the logs came from the Cadillac, but we knew that was probably the case. The other side of the logs, the ones that would be on the attack truck . . . we’ve got white canvas fibers. I think they padded the logs, probably to minimize damage to the side of the truck. They must’ve taken the padding with them after they threw the logs in the ditch—we’ve got no paint on the logs themselves.”

“Damnit,” Lucas said.

“Well, you told me they were pros,” Armstrong said. “That sounds professional.”

“Talk to you tomorrow, Carl,” Lucas said.



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FORTE GOT BACK with the information that Parrish had probably been in Washington the night that Weather got hit.

“I pulled his credit card charges, and he uses his cards a lot. We have charges for most days leading up to the attack on Weather, on the day itself, and every day since, all around Washington. But Ritter . . . Ritter has MasterCard, Visa, Chase, and Amex cards, but he went dark three days before Weather was attacked and didn’t pop up again until two days later. He doesn’t use his card as much as Parrish, but he uses it every day or two. I couldn’t find any other five-day periods when he didn’t use one or the other. Not when he was in the States.”

“He was trying to avoid anything that would put him in the Cities.”

“I think so. That’s negative proof, not so good for a jury. But now we know,” Forte said. “No airline tickets, no trace of any cars rented in the Twin Cities, but we have George Claxson’s private plane flying into Omaha the first day Ritter goes silent.”

“Who’s George Claxson again?” Lucas asked. The name rang a bell, but he couldn’t place it.

“Ah, yeah—he runs Heracles. They call him the director,” Forte said. “Anyway, there’s no sign that any names that we know rented a car in Omaha. Probably used phony IDs.”

“They fly into Omaha . . . What’s that? Six hours from the Twin Cities?” Lucas asked.

“I checked on Google Maps. It’s six hours if you pay strict attention to the speed limit. If you let it out, seven miles over the limit, drive straight through, with one gas stop, less than that.”

“Cell phone?”

“Okay, there’s a problem,” Forte said. “Ritter placed a half dozen calls to various people around the D.C. area the day Weather was attacked. There were more calls the day before, and the day after, and every day since, all in the Washington metro area. Of course, everybody but a complete idiot knows that calls can be traced. His phone made the call; we don’t know that Ritter did.”

“You know who he called?”

“That’s where it gets interesting. In the days before and immediately after Weather was hurt, he called only four different guys, including Parrish and Claxson,” Forte said. “Parrish made quite a few other calls, but Claxson, Ritter, and the two other guys didn’t call anyone but Parrish and each other.”

“Tell me that again,” Lucas said.

“They only called each other and Parrish,” Forte said. “We know that if Ritter was the driver in West Virginia, he had at least one other accomplice, because that old lady saw two guys in the black truck. There may have been a third if they had a spotter, and they probably did. Then there’s Parrish and Claxson.”