Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(90)

“So McCoy walks?”

“He won’t walk. We’ve got him on the weapons stuff with or without any additional testimony. He’ll do time—we’re going to tell Bunch that we want between ten and fifteen years on the weapons charges. He won’t take that, but he’ll take five. McCoy’ll only get that if he hangs Claxson. Otherwise, we take him to trial and ask for fifteen.”

Lucas said, “Then you’ve got to go after Claxson hard. You’ve got to talk about a deal to implicate Parrish and Grant.”

“He won’t take a deal,” Chase said. “He’ll go to trial and hope to beat it. If he doesn’t, and can’t win on appeal, he’ll try to deal on the sentence. You’ve said it yourself—the only way he could implicate Grant would be to admit that he set up at least two murders, and maybe three. He won’t do that. It will be hard enough to get him on the weapons. He’ll try to drag in CIA and military operators for the defense, and they’ll resist on grounds of national security.”

“Ah, shit,” Lucas said. Chase waited him out, and Lucas finally asked, “What are you doing today? Other than arresting him.”

“The searches. You and your team are welcome to observe,” Chase said. “We’ll be at McCoy’s town house, and Heracles and Claxson’s office, grabbing files, and Claxson’s house. The warrants are in hand; we’ve got teams on the way. I’ll probably go to Claxson’s house to get a feel for what he’s like.”

“I’ll tell you what he’s like: he keeps two loaded automatic pistols on his office desk.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

“Remember what I said about Smalls and the crucifix.”

“It won’t be me that he goes after—it’s the attorney general who’ll be fronting this, and I doubt that Smalls would take her on.”

Lucas said, “Give me Claxson’s address.”



* * *



—

CLAXSON LIVED off the heavily wooded Kurtz Road in McLean, Virginia. The house was a stark, red-brick three-story structure that sat back on a large lot, ten or fifteen feet above street level. There was a two-door double-car garage at the end of the blacktopped driveway, and two stone pillars at the front door. Four SUVs crowded the driveway, and a man with the air of a junior FBI agent leaned against one of them, smoking a cigarette.

“‘Mistah Kurtz, he dead,’” Lucas quoted as he rolled by, looking for a place to park.

“I know that,” Rae said. “Heart of Darkness. I’m surprised you know it, being, you know, a hockey puck.”

“Actually, it’s from ‘The Hollow Men’ by T. S. Eliot,” Lucas said. “‘This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.’”

“Bullshit,” said Rae. “Heart of Darkness.”

“Nope, ‘Hollow Men.’”

“Jesus, now I got to look it up,” Bob said. He took his phone out and started typing with his thumbs. There wasn’t enough space to park in the driveway, so Lucas found a place a couple of hundred feet down the street where he could pull all four wheels off the pavement. As they got out of the truck, Bob said, “Ah, got it.”

“Who wins?” Rae asked.

“I do,” Lucas said. “I know the whole poem.”

“And I know the whole Joseph Conrad novel practically by heart,” Rae said.

Bob said, “You’re both right. Conrad wrote it, Eliot quoted it as the first line of his poem.”

“I was right first,” Rae said.

“Eliot’s poem is far better known,” Lucas said.

Bob said, “Shut the fuck up, both of you. We’re cops, not some literary, you know, fairies.”

“Well, I’m not anyway,” Rae said. “Lucas is the one who quoted the fruity poem.”



* * *



—

THE CIGARETTE SMOKER was fieldstripping his Marlboro, as they walked up the driveway, and he snapped the filter into a hydrangea bush. “This is an FBI undertaking,” he said, carefully checking them out. “I suspect you know that.”

“U.S. Marshals,” Lucas said. “Jane Chase should have cleared us through.”

“If you’re Davenport, Matees, and Givens, she did.” He looked at his watch. “She should be here in the next few minutes.”



* * *



—

THE IMPRESSION Lucas had of Claxson’s house was rugs and cigars. A thin odor of smoke hung in the entry hall like a signal of masculinity, a dozen oriental carpets in a variety of sizes spotted the russet-colored plank floors like high-dollar islands. The place had been done by a decorator apparently told to make it into a British men’s club, with everything but spittoons.

“Wooden boxes,” Bob said, and when Lucas looked around, he noticed lots of antique boxes.

“And mirrors,” Rae said.

There were a dozen FBI agents inside the house, slowly taking it apart. They were mostly looking for documents but hadn’t had much luck. A Bureau locksmith had failed to open a wall safe in the study—the house, naturally, had a study, two walls of bookcases, an oil portrait of a woman on a third wall, and the requisite cut-stone fireplace on the fourth. The safe was hidden in one side of the fireplace.