Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(87)

“Because if you have a hideout gun, it’ll be harder for you to get at.” Lucas had put the PPQ on the desktop, letting his hand rest a couple of inches away.

“You’re nervous.”

“Shouldn’t I be?” Lucas asked.

“Maybe, I guess. The guys you’re looking at, they’re the real thing. They’ve all been over in the sandbox both as military and as private contractors. If you get in their way, they’ll flat put a hole in your head. But I’m not one of them.”

“That’s comforting.”

Ritter looked down at his thighs, rubbed his nose, looked up, and said, “Look, a guy named Claxson . . . You’re looking at him?”

“Yes.”

“He told me you were probably the one who killed Jim, and he told me why—your wife. Said Jim was waterboarded and then executed . . . that sounded funky to me. I should tell you that after I talked to Claxson, I cornered the medical examiner, and he said there was nothing to indicate that Jim had been waterboarded or tortured in any way, that nothing like that had been put in the autopsy report. But the report Claxson showed me specifically mentioned the waterboarding. I asked myself why that would be.”

“Claxson wanted you to come after me.”

“That’s why I came up here empty-handed, no gun. I wanted to hear what you had to say.”

“Then you probably know who killed him,” Lucas said. “And why.”

“I’m not sure about the why. He wouldn’t have talked.”

Lucas thought about it, and said, “Because he’d become a problem. If your friends at Heracles are up to date, they’d know—and you probably now know—that we found some logs out in the countryside in West Virginia. They were used to protect the side of your brother’s truck when they pushed Smalls’s Cadillac off the road and almost over a bluff. If it had worked, it would have looked like Whitehead and Smalls accidentally ran off the road, hit a bunch of trees, and landed in the river. It’s a fuckin’ miracle that Smalls didn’t die along with Whitehead. If he had, there would have been nobody to talk about a second vehicle.”

Ritter said, “You’re saying it was a good plan, should have worked, but the targets caught a break?”

“Yes,” Lucas said. “Their problem—your brother’s problem—was, we’d located his truck. You could see the damage where the logs had been tied to the side, and some other forensic evidence that was convincing. If we got him for murder—and we were about to do that—maybe he’d give up the other people involved in return for leniency. We’re more interested in those other people than we were in James . . . Jim . . . He was the trigger. He was paid. We want the people who hired him.”

“He wouldn’t have given up anyone,” Ritter said. “Jim was loyal to his pals. Almost pathologically loyal. It was about all he had left, after his time in the military and with Heracles. He’d gone to jail, before he’d let a friend down. Or died.”

“But would all of those people have known that? They are not the kind of people who think in those terms . . . Not people like Parrish or Claxson. They take care of themselves.”

“Claxson . . . if he had to make a choice between himself and his own kids, if he had any, his kids would be dead meat,” Ritter said.

Lucas poked a finger at him. “Exactly. Those are the guys we want. We’ll take the triggers, too, but they’re not the ones who are driving this thing, the assassination attempt.”

“Do you know the other people involved in these . . . actions?”

“I think I do,” Lucas said. “I think there were two more triggers, two more managers, and somebody who pulls the whole train.”

“Would that be Senator Grant from Minnesota?”

Lucas tipped his head. “Where are you getting this?”

“Like I said, I know these guys, and they know me and trust me. When I was fishing around, I heard all kinds of things. You couldn’t take any of it to court; it’s all rumor, but rumors from guys who are professional intelligence operators, and their rumors are better than most. There are some hints that if things work out, Heracles could have its own office at the White House.”



* * *



—

THEY LOOKED at each other, then Lucas took his hand away from the PPQ and rubbed the back of his neck, and asked, “How far can I trust you? To hear what I have to say and not spread it around? Even if it’ll help you understand what happened to Jim.”

“I wouldn’t tell a soul,” Ritter said. “I mean that: nobody would hear a word from me, of what was said in this room.”

Lucas looked at him for a couple of beats, and Ritter added, “Look, I went to the Academy. I’ll be a general someday, if I don’t screw up, and so far I haven’t. Jim didn’t finish college, joined the Army, took an entirely different path. He wound up with Delta. He was over there way too long, maybe killed too many people, including, you know, civilians. Women. Kids. His circle got too tight; he’d die for the people in the circle, but, outside it, he didn’t give a shit about anything. That pushed him out of the Army. He killed one too many people who didn’t actually need it. The Army gets fussy about stuff like that.”

“So he signed up with Heracles?”