Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(97)

“Jim was involved, for sure,” Lucas said. “He was one of the triggers, but he wasn’t doing it for himself. His orders came from someone else, and since he worked for Claxson . . . But what would Claxson get from killing Smalls? Nothing that I can figure out. We need to find somebody who needed to get rid of Smalls.”

“You say that but you won’t say her name,” Wendy said.

“Like I said, it’s complicated. I don’t really know who I’m talking to.”

“Let me give you a hypothetical,” Wendy said. “Do you think a person like Grant, with her personality, could pull the trigger?”

“I don’t want to get involved in hypotheticals,” Lucas said. “I do know that a lot of people have died around her, people who might have obstructed her ambitions.”

“Huh. Then you think she could. Okay. From what I’ve read about the Minneapolis situation, you obviously think she was the one giving the orders in those killings.” Again, Lucas didn’t reply, and she asked, “Are you going to get her?”

“I’m beginning to doubt it,” Lucas admitted. “To do that, we’d have to jump through a lot of evidentiary hoops, and she’s got an ocean of money for lawyers. Our only hope is to get Claxson or Parrish to talk to us. But if they do talk to us, they’d be implicating themselves in multiple murders.”

“So you won’t get her.”

“I’ll be as honest as I can be: I’m not sure we’ll get any of them. Not for murder. Not for killing Jim, or the others. We had hard evidence that Jim was involved in one murder, when Senator Smalls was run off the road, but Jim’s dead now. We don’t know exactly who was with him, although we have some evidence that Claxson was directing the murder in St. Paul and the attack on my wife. McCoy and Moore may have been involved in that, but we have no hard evidence against them, and they won’t admit it . . . And we can’t find Moore. He may be dead, too. We’re still trying, though. We should know in a week.”

“All right,” she said. “You got anything else?”

Lucas hesitated, then asked, “Have you seen the actual autopsy report on Jim?”

“No. Tom told me about it. He was shot twice.”

“Listen, Wendy . . . I want you to know, this wasn’t just a shooting. It was a cold-blooded murder done by somebody who Jim thought was a friend. The crime scene analysis suggests that when he was shot, he was holding a carton of milk. His face and shirt were soaked with it, like a bullet went through the carton. He didn’t even have a chance to throw the carton, or even drop it. Then they cut off his fingers . . .”

“What!”

“They were apparently trying to keep him from being identified. They actually identified him from a Special Forces tattoo. Then, you know, they threw him in that dumpster . . .”

Wendy broke: Lucas could hear her sobbing. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew all this.”

She sobbed for several more seconds, then said, “Tom said he was shot, he didn’t say any more, only that he was shot . . .”

“I’m sorry,” Lucas said again.

“Oh, God,” she said. “I gotta go, I gotta . . .”

“Was that you in the hotel?”

“The hotel . . . the hotel . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wendy said, and she hung up.

She definitely was at the hotel, Lucas thought. All in all, it had been a worthwhile conversation, though it would be a while before he knew that for sure.





27


Lucas was a night owl and exercised at night. Bob and Rae got up early, and because they knew Lucas liked to sleep in, they worked out in the morning. That got the workday nicely coordinated, as Lucas woke up, and Bob and Rae got back from the gym, at the same time, and, a half hour later, they were all at breakfast together.

Chase called while they were looking at menus, though they never ordered anything other than pancakes or waffles.

Claxson, Chase said, would be released on bail that morning, probably before noon. “Bail will be set at four million, all cash, plus his house. His lawyer says he can produce the cash from an investment fund; they agreed on the house. There are some restrictions: he’s not allowed back in his office or house until we finish processing the searches, which are still going on; he’s got to give us the combination for his home safe before release; and he’s got to wear an ankle monitor.”

“If he decides to run, he’ll cut the monitor off, and we’ll never see him again,” Lucas said.

“That’s a possibility,” Chase said. “But we’re willing to take that risk because we know where his resources are and where he’d be likely to run to, and we told him that and we think he believes us. We’ve also done an analysis of his income, and we suspect he may be hiding assets offshore. Still, giving up four million and his house, which is worth another one and a half or two, would take a big piece out of him. We think he’d be reluctant to forfeit all of that . . . at least, not yet. And the ankle monitor has a built-in GPS, which means we’ll be able to track him, step-by-step, wherever he goes. We didn’t mention that to him—”

“He certainly knows.”

“Maybe, but this is an FBI special made to look like it’s obsolete, which it isn’t. We’re quite interested to see where he goes and who he talks to. We’ll have a surveillance crew nearby when he makes his move. Not on top of him, but close enough to surveil him without him knowing, see who he might meet with. Close enough that if he cuts that monitor, they can take him.”