Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(89)
“I can’t tell you much about her. I’ve met her, once, and she didn’t want to talk to me. I think she and Jim were in bed together, but she didn’t want people to know it.”
“What’s her name?”
Ritter shook his head. “She was introduced to me as ‘just Suzie.’ Jim seemed to like her—a lot. Like marriage a lot. Made me happy, made me think we were getting him back, so I pried. I can’t swear to any of this, but I believe she’s covert CIA, the division called SAD/SOG. Special Activities Division/Special Operations Group, which is their paramilitary wing.”
“They have women working with them? Combat types?”
“My understanding is, they do. I know Suzie spoke fluent Arabic. You know how cool that would be, a small woman speaking perfect Arabic, dressed in a niqab, with a gun in her underpants? She could go anywhere, and nobody would pay any attention to her. I suspect that’s what she did, and maybe still does.”
“Tried hard to kill me,” Lucas said.
“Then you are a lucky man,” Ritter said. “Those folks don’t miss much.”
“She had some bad intelligence,” Lucas said, “but it was goddamn close.”
* * *
—
WHEN RITTER WAS GONE, Lucas got out his laptop and wrote a long report to Russell Forte about the interview, saved it but didn’t send it. Forte might be worried about possible illegalities being sheltered by the Marshals Service, and Lucas didn’t want to get involved in that argument.
Not yet.
* * *
—
WITH THE REPORT SAVED, he settled back on the bed, dimmed the lights, and closed his eyes. There were several tangled thoughts stalking around his mind, and he needed to get straight with them.
Tom Ritter had emphasized how dangerous the Heracles operators could be. He’d also talked about how loyal they were to each other—not so much to the managers but to fellow operators.
Yet, something was going on—Jim Ritter had been killed, and Kerry Moore had disappeared. Either Claxson—the guy with two loaded pistols on his desk—or Parrish could have killed them. Or—a new thought—so could have Taryn Grant.
Grant might be unlikely, he thought after some consideration. Whoever killed Ritter picked him up and threw him in a dumpster, and Ritter, a muscular man, had probably weighed a hundred and eighty pounds. Grant would have wanted to move him quickly, out of a car and into the dumpster, but he was too heavy for one woman alone. Lucas doubted Grant would have exposed herself legally to direct involvement in a murder. And even if she had commissioned the killing, somebody else had probably carried it out.
If you bought Tom Ritter’s feelings about personal loyalty, the killer wouldn’t have been McCoy or Moore. If it were neither of them, it would have been Parrish or Claxson, or perhaps some third party Lucas didn’t know about yet.
And here was the big problem: whoever it had been, Lucas could see no clear route to implicate Taryn Grant. None of the major actors would see any benefit in selling her out. To do so, they would have to admit they had been conspirators in murder. Even that might not be enough to get her.
Further, Grant’s money would be available to fund the best possible legal defenses for her associates. If she had a real shot at the presidency, there was a possible pardon downstream for those associates, if worse came to worse.
If what he feared came to pass, getting Taryn Grant might not be possible.
Not in the ordinary way.
24
Jane Chase called the next morning as Lucas was shaving.
“We’re going to arrest Claxson this morning. Between the documents and what we’ll get from McCoy, we can arrest him on several counts of illegal trading of restricted weaponry. That will take care of the statute of limitations problem. We’ve got search warrants for both his businesses and his home.”
Lucas: “What’d you give McCoy?”
“Nothing, at this point. Bunch showed up early this morning—”
“It’s early this morning right now,” Lucas objected.
Chase said, “Lucas, it’s ten o’clock. I’ve been here since six. Anyway, Bunch spent an hour talking with McCoy. When he was done, Bunch suggested to one of our attorneys, a DOJ guy, that McCoy could provide detailed information about various weapons shipments and that he got specific, and possibly illegal, delivery instructions from Claxson himself.”
“Then what are you going to give him?”
Chase hesitated, said, “Bunch is looking for immunity for any possible crimes deriving from involvement with employment with Heracles, Flamma, or Inter-Core Ballistics.”
“Well, Jesus, Jane, that could mean involvement in the attack on Senator Smalls and all the subsequent murders,” Lucas said. “You know how Smalls is going to take that? He’ll go on the Senate floor, and he’ll have a crucifix and nails with him, and you’ll be the one nailed to the cross.”
“Well, McCoy denies any involvement with the murders. Bunch says those can be attributed to Ritter and persons unknown. Frankly, Lucas, with what you’ve developed so far, no prosecutor I know would try McCoy for murder. Claxson won’t admit to knowing anything about the murders; Ritter’s dead; and Moore—we don’t know, he may be dead as well.”