Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(77)

“Go fuck yourselves?” Chase said crisply.

“Exactly,” Lucas said. “We didn’t have a lever.”

“Who do you want to go after?” Chase asked. “Specifically?”

“Four names,” Lucas said. “You have them all: Claxson, Parrish, Moore, and McCoy. We think we could bust Moore right now, with a good chance that it would stand up. If you looked at that map in the encrypted documents . . .”

“Yes, I did,” Chase said. “That was the ambush at Smalls’s cabin.”

“Exactly.”

“You might get him with that, and with the other circumstantial stuff, but it’s thin,” she said.

“Which is why we need somebody else to turn on him. To turn on all of them. You might find that somebody in these documents.” He patted the pile of paper in front of Forte. “If we don’t, we’ll have to talk about the possibility of giving a break to somebody who has probably actively participated in at least two murders, and, depending on who killed Ritter, possibly three murders.”

Chase winced: “I’d hate to have to do that.”

“So would I.”



* * *



—

CHASE FLIPPED THROUGH the documents, pulled a cell phone out of her attaché case, punched a couple of buttons, and said, “Can you come down here?”

She clicked off, and said to O’Conner and Forte, “I’m going to have my assistant count the money and the gold and give you a receipt that you can file with your warrant return.” She turned to Lucas. “I will have him copy all the documents so that you can have them to read. Don’t lose them. We’ll talk again tomorrow, after I’ve had a chance to digest their content.”

To the other suits she said, “You all should get in touch with anyone expecting you this evening. We’re going to be here for a while.”

They all nodded without protest.

Chase’s assistant poked his head around the door; he looked like what Lucas thought a Dartmouth grad should look like. “Yes, ma’am?”



* * *



—

COPYING THE DOCUMENTS took half an hour, with a couple of extra clerks working on it. Lucas collected the copies, and he and Bob and Rae got ready to leave. Documenting the money would take longer; it was not only being counted, it was also being xeroxed, bill by bill, so that the Marshals Service would have full paper documentation of each and its amount. Forte would wait for that. O’Conner had already left, saying, “Great work, guys.”

Lucas and Forte agreed to talk in the morning, and as Lucas, Bob, and Rae were leaving, Chase’s assistant poked in again, and said, “The amount, with today’s exchange and sales rates, would be one million thirty-five thousand six hundred and twenty dollars. And fifty-two cents.”

“There’s a vacation home for you,” Bob said.

Chase, who’d gone back to her office while the clerical work was done, caught them in the hallway.

“I wanted to tell you that I appreciate what you people have done,” she said. “This is very useful. We’ve tried to monitor this kind of activity in the past, but so much of it is done secretly, and is classified, and so many documents are encrypted, or simply burned, that we’ve had a hard time finding a wedge in. This could be it. This really is something.”

“Don’t forget about the assassination attempt,” Lucas said. “The other stuff may be good, but that’s what’s going to wind up on the Post’s front page.”

“We’re aware of that. I will be talking to you tomorrow about putting a headlock on some of the Heracles employees,” Chase said. “Don’t expect it at the crack of dawn, though. We’ve got some fairly tedious procedures to go through over here. I’m going to try to shortcut them by talking to your friend Deputy Director Mallard, but I don’t know if he’ll buy in.”

“Tell Louis if he doesn’t, I’ll kick his flabby ass,” Lucas said.

“Yes. I’ll be sure to tell him that,” Chase said, with a second rare smile.





21


As Lucas and the marshals were meeting with the FBI, Claxson pulled John McCoy and Kerry Moore into a back conference room, shut the door, and said, “We’ve got a problem. Maybe all three of us, but you two in particular.”

McCoy and Moore glanced at each other, and Moore asked, “What’s the problem?”

The two younger men looked alike and, at the same time, not alike: both were an inch short of six feet and stocky, athletic, with tanned, nut-hard faces and hands. While McCoy was a strawberry blond, Moore had dark hair. The way they moved made them look like big-league second basemen.

Claxson took a deep breath and exhaled in phony exasperation. “It’s Davenport. He’s back here . . .”

“He ditched his wife?” McCoy asked. “Nice guy.”

“His wife is home and recovering. There was a newspaper story in the St. Paul paper; a columnist named Soucheray says he was talking to a cop and the cop told him that they’re now treating Last’s death as a homicide, not a suicide.”

Moore said, “Shit. How . . . ?”

“The Soucheray column says Last had a heart problem. He couldn’t run half a block. Whoever hit Davenport’s wife’s car ran a couple of blocks—and fast. You know how Jim could run.”