Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(9)

Lucas had been virtually certain that Grant was behind it, working through a Democratic political operator known to be a bagman and sometime blackmailer. The man had planted a load of child porn on Smalls’s computer at his campaign office, where it was “discovered” by an intern. Lucas had proven Smalls to be innocent, but too late: Grant was elected.

All of that was complicated by the fact that the man who planted the child porn sensed an opportunity and had tried to blackmail Grant. He’d been murdered for his trouble, and three more people had been killed by Election Day. After the election, Smalls had openly accused Grant of orchestrating the murders and planting the porn.

The people of Minnesota had begun to believe him. Two years after losing the first election, he had been voted back into the Senate in the next one. That was not good when you were dealing with a psychopath like Taryn Grant, Lucas thought. If Smalls was proving to be a threat, she would kill her way into the presidency as easily as she’d killed her way into the Senate, if she could do it without being caught.

The last time out, she’d beaten Lucas. He hadn’t forgotten or forgiven. If Smalls was correct about an assassination attempt, he’d have another shot at her.

And that made him happy.



* * *



—

WHEN LUCAS GOT HOME, he kissed his wife Weather and his two kids, sent the kids to bed, told Weather about Smalls and that he’d be leaving again on Monday.

The next day was a Saturday, and since Weather wouldn’t be working and didn’t have to get up early—she was a surgeon who usually left the house at six-thirty—she took Lucas to bed and did her best to wear him out. Feeling pleasantly unfocused, they’d later sat, semi-naked, on the second-story sunporch with lemonades and looked out into the soft summer night, and she asked, “How long will you be gone?”

“Don’t know—I have a couple of friends in Washington, but they can’t help me with this.”

“Not even Mallard?”

Mallard was a deputy director of the FBI who’d worked with Lucas on a couple of high-profile cases.

“Mallard is too political. He wouldn’t want to get caught in a cross fire between Grant and Smalls. Besides, before I do anything else, I’ve got to make sure Smalls’s story makes sense. If it does, I need to talk to somebody who’s got an inside feel for the Senate. Somebody who could tell me who Grant might be talking to . . . who could hook her up with a professional killer. I need to know if there might be somebody who’d want to get rid of Porter even more than Grant does.”

“Porter is an enormous asshole,” she said. “You might have a lengthy list of candidates.”

“He made you laugh, when we had dinner that time,” Lucas said.

“He can be charming,” Weather said. “He has a sense of humor. And he’s got great political stories. But he’s also doing his best to wipe out Medicaid. And ban abortion. And run every Mexican kid out of the country. And make sure every man, woman, and child has a handgun.”

“Yeah, he’s a right-winger all right,” Lucas said. “But you don’t get assassinated for that. At least, not yet.”

“No, but if somebody did assassinate him, I probably wouldn’t march on Washington in protest,” Weather said.

“Shame on you,” Lucas said. “I gotta tell you, not being a big political brain like some of the women I’m married to, I kinda like the guy, even if I don’t care for his politics.”

She let that go, and after a while said, “Great night.”

“Yes, it is,” Lucas agreed, looking up at the stars.

“Just try not to get killed, okay?”





3


When U.S. senator Taryn Grant heard that Smalls had survived, she got Jack Parrish in her basement SCIF and screamed at him for a while. SCIF, short for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, was where you went to discuss classified information, which this sure as hell was.

“You said it was a done deal,” she shouted. “You said it was a perfect setup.”

“It was,” Parrish said, settling on a sofa. “I didn’t tell you it was a done deal—I told you it was ninety-nine percent. Even a hundred-to-one shot comes in every once in a while, and that’s what happened.”

“Now we’ve got a murder on our hands,” she shrieked. She was trembling with rage. “Instead of an accident, we’ve got a murder. You’ll have the FBI on me. Smalls will tell the FBI that I was behind it, and he’ll be right, won’t he? You silly shithead . . .”

She went on for a while, and Parrish, still sitting on the sofa, looked at his watch. He had a meeting with the three guys who’d screwed this particular pooch and couldn’t be more than fifteen minutes late. More than fifteen minutes and they’d be gone, as a routine precaution.

“Don’t look at your fuckin’ watch,” Grant shouted, saliva flying across the room. “Don’t look at your fuckin’ watch!”

“Can’t be late for a meeting,” Parrish said. He yawned, then asked, “Are you done yet?”

“Am I done yet? No, but you might be.”

“I don’t think so,” Parrish said, staying cool. He’d been screamed at before, and by senators with a lot more seniority than Grant. “We have way too many reasons to hang together, because, like the man said, if we don’t, we’ll hang separately. The fact is, the accident should have worked. If it had, we’d have taken a load off our backs and gotten rid of a major roadblock between you and the White House. Sometimes, things just don’t work—but you wouldn’t have gotten better odds—anywhere, anytime—on this one. And there’s no evidence that it was a hit. There’s nothing. The West Virginia cops think Smalls is a head case.”