Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(61)

“Probably what happened,” Lucas agreed. “I’ll ask Snyder; maybe she’d know something about a relationship.”

“Be nice if we could find a laptop,” Bob said. “The computer guys might be able to find out if it was used in either Omaha or Minneapolis even if the messages were erased.”



* * *



—

RAE CAME AROUND, and asked, “What’s next, boss?”

“We get the truck towed to the Arlington impound lot. We have the names of four people probably involved in hitting Weather, and those four are also probably involved in the Smalls attack,” Lucas said. “Tomorrow, we’ll track them down. Keep the pressure up.”





16


Ten o’clock was a good time for a raid, even if this wasn’t exactly a raid. At ten o’clock, the employees who were running late should be at the office, but it was too early for lunch.

Rae had filled out the return on the James Ritter search warrant the night before, and Forte would file it. There wasn’t much to report, although the hotel key card was seized as documentary evidence in the case.

Lucas, Bob, and Rae walked out into a bright blue day and hit the greasy spoon at nine o’clock, talked about what they would do that morning, and a few minutes after ten rolled into the parking lot at Heracles’s Virginia headquarters, in an area called Crystal City. Airliners were landing nearby, and Lucas thought they might be close to Reagan National Airport.

Heracles was only one of a half dozen tenants of a nondescript fifteen-story, green-glass cube that just as easily could have been a parking structure as an office building. The parking lot, landscaped with relentlessly green, unidentifiable bushes as nondescript as the building itself, was two-thirds full. An overweight guard in a dull-gray uniform was patrolling the parking lot, and when they pulled into visitor’s slots, he walked over and asked Lucas, “Do you have an appointment here?”

“No, but we do have business here,” Lucas said, holding up his ID. “We’ll be speaking to some of the tenants.”

“No problem, bub,” the guard said. “I’d make sure nobody stole your hubcaps, if you had hubcaps.”

“Keep an eye on the wheels, then,” Rae said.

“I’ll do that,” the guard said.

As they walked up to the building’s entrance, Bob said, “Gonna be hot.”

“You mean, talking to Heracles or walking around outside?” Lucas asked.

“Outside,” Bob said, wiping his forehead with his fingertips.



* * *



—

A RECEPTION COUNTER faced the building’s front door, with a steel fence extending from the counter to the walls on either side. The fence was penetrated on the left by three steel turnstiles. A receptionist, wearing a kelly green dress, and a matching pillbox hat, sat behind the counter, while a guard, this one with a gun on his hip, stood between two of the turnstiles.

They again showed their IDs, signed in, and got badges from the receptionist that allowed them through the turnstiles. Lucas said to her, “You don’t have to announce us,” and she nodded but looked perplexed, since announcing was her job, so he clarified: “Don’t announce us.”

The guard asked, “You here to arrest somebody?”

Lucas said, “Don’t know.”

Heracles was on the second floor. Lucas and Rae took the elevator up, since the fire door on the stairway was one-way—out—and locked. Bob waited for the next elevator to keep an eye on the door, the guard, and the receptionist. Lucas always preferred showing up unannounced, to see the unpracticed reaction of the person he was interviewing. In this case, though, the search of Ritter’s apartment might have served as its own notice.

The entrance to the Heracles office was a double glass door that faced the elevator. Lucas could see no other glass doors, or greeting signs, along the hallway that stretched in both directions to the end of the building. Heracles apparently had the whole floor, he thought. A young woman sat at an expansive desk on the wall opposite the glass doors; there were four red-orange visitor’s chairs, two on each side of the reception lobby, none occupied. When Lucas pulled the door, it didn’t move.

The woman spoke into what must have been a microphone embedded in the desk: “Can I help you?”

Speakers were set into the walls on either side of the door. Lucas said, “U.S. Marshals. Open up, please,” and held up his badge. The woman hesitated, and Lucas said, “Open up now, please.”

She reached out to a black object on her desk, and the doors unlocked with a quiet clank. Lucas pulled the door open, went through, trailed by Rae, and said, “We want to speak to Mr. George Claxson, Mr. John McCoy, and Mr. Kerry Moore.”

The receptionist looked frightened. “Can I tell them what this is about?”

Lucas said, “No. I’ll tell them. Just tell them we’re here.”

“Mr. . . .”

“Marshal Lucas Davenport and Marshal Rae Givens. Marshal Bob Matees will be here in a minute.”

The woman nodded, picked up her phone, pressed a button, and said in a hushed voice, “There are three U.S. Marshals here to speak to Mr. Claxson, John McCoy, and Kerry Moore . . .” followed a few seconds later by, “They won’t say . . .”