Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(96)

“Maybe,” Ritter said after a bit. “I only saw her that one time. We were at a party, all military or ex-military people who worked in the Middle East. Jim invited me to come along. I didn’t hear Suzie speak Arabic, but there was a minute where a couple of guys were speaking Arabic, and she suddenly looked at them, and I got the impression she knew what they were talking about.”

“Know where I could find her?” Lucas asked. “I need to talk.”

“No, I don’t,” Ritter said. “I could ask around.”

“I’d appreciate it. She’s been seen at Heracles, so people there know her.”

“All right, I’ll ask. Should I give her your phone number?”

“Yes. I was on the wrong end of that submachine gun, so she probably wouldn’t want to meet me at McDonald’s.”

“Why do you want to talk?”

“I want to find out if she was hired to shoot me up or if she did it because she bought Claxson’s line of bullshit about me torturing and shooting Jim, if she tried to kill me because she loved Jim.”

“I’d like to know that answer myself,” Ritter said. “I’ll start making some calls.”



* * *



—

AFTER DINNER, Bob needed to catch up with people on the Internet, and Lucas and Rae got Lucas’s car and drove across the river to a Barnes & Noble bookstore they’d seen while driving around Arlington.

“I’m getting tired of the ’Net,” Lucas said, as they crossed the river. “You can’t separate the facts from the bullshit anymore. The constant carping drives me nuts . . . Did I ever tell you that I supervised the construction of our house?”

“Never did,” Rae said.

“Well, I did, and it was interesting,” Lucas said. “Sometimes I wish I’d become an architect. I used to go out on the ’Net for tips, on this one particular building site. I still check it sometimes. The last time I looked, there was this flame war about politics. At a construction site. I mean, why? Is there a difference between a left-wing and right-wing two-by-four?”

“I made the mistake, commenting on a story on the Wall Street Journal’s site, of mentioning that I’m black,” Rae said. “I started getting that ‘you people’ shit. Can’t avoid it.”

The bookstore was located in a California-style outdoor shopping center. After they parked, they got cups of coffee at Starbucks and split up to look at books. Since he was living in Washington temporarily, Lucas browsed the politics section and wound up with Dark Money by Jane Mayer, then hit the magazine rack, while he waited for Rae to finish browsing.

They were back at the Watergate by nine o’clock. Lucas had finished the Hiaasen book, and set it aside to ship home, and had started the Mayer, when the call came in from an unknown number.

A woman with a light soprano voice: “This is Wendy.”

“Wendy who?”

“Suzie . . . Carol. What do you want?”

“I didn’t shoot Jim Ritter,” Lucas said.

“Then who did?” The question was as much a confession that she was the hotel shooter as he was likely to get, Lucas thought. She continued. “Don’t bother scrambling your tech guys—I’m talking to you on an old burner. I’ll throw it in the garbage as soon as I take the battery out.”

“I understand that you’re one of the people who knows all about that kind of thing—burners and taking out batteries,” Lucas said.

She didn’t reply to that. Instead, she repeated, “Who shot Jim? Specifically?”

“I have several suspects,” he said. “And, by the way, I don’t have any techs looking for your phone.”

“I forgot, you’re a marshal, you don’t do tech. Anyway, if you think Jim was shot by Moore or McCoy, you’re wrong.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Absolutely. Put it this way: those guys risked their own lives to keep Jim alive, and he did the same for them. After that, they’re not going to shoot him in cold blood.”

“Tom told me the same thing,” Lucas said. “Did Tom tell you that Claxson bullshitted him on the waterboarding thing?”

“Yes. Claxson lied to me, too. If it’s a lie,” she said.

“It is.”

“You think he did it?”

“No. We don’t think it was Claxson himself. Although I think Claxson could have set it up.”

“Parrish, then.”

“I’m not sure. Do you know Parrish?”

“Yes. If he did it, it was because he was told to do it. Parrish is a bullshit artist, a fixer. He might be able to do it, if you squeezed him hard enough, but he wouldn’t like it. He wouldn’t want to. Not because he’d be killing somebody, but because he might get caught. Or might fuck it up and get shot himself.”

“Okay.”

“That leaves Senator Taryn Grant.” Lucas didn’t say anything, and after six or eight seconds Wendy said, “You’re a U.S. Marshal, so you don’t want to say that.”

“It’s complicated,” Lucas said. “Did you look her up?”

“Yes, and I looked you up, too. You think she was involved in some murders in Minneapolis, but you weren’t able to get her on that. Senator Smalls thinks she tried to assassinate him. You think Jim was one of the people in on that silly fuckin’ stunt.”