Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(98)
“He’s a spy kinda guy. He’ll be looking for the surveillance,” Lucas said.
“But with that GPS monitor, we never have to follow him. We never even have to see him. If we can’t see him, he can’t see us,” Chase said. “Besides, he might not think we’d expend those kinds of resources on him, a full team.”
Lucas said, “Hmm, I guess we’ll see.”
“What’s the Marshals Service going to do?”
“Don’t know,” Lucas said. “I’d like to talk to McCoy again, go back to him about the woman who shot up the hotel. I’d like to know more about her.”
“If you find out anything, tell us,” Chase said.
“And if Claxson moves, please let me know.”
“I normally wouldn’t do that with another service,” Chase said, “but your team has been valuable enough that I will. I’ll connect you up with our surveillance crew—the daytime leader is Andrew Moy. I’ll give him your number. He gets off at eleven o’clock, and I don’t know who the overnight team will be yet, but I’ll let you know about that, too.”
“Thanks. My guys here have a lot of surveillance and tracking experience—basically, that’s what they do. If we don’t have anything else going on, we might hook up with your crew. At least until we put Claxson to bed.”
* * *
—
WHEN LUCAS got off the phone, Bob asked, “What are we doing?”
“Mostly waiting,” Lucas said.
He told them what Chase had said, and Rae said, “If I knew we might be pulling surveillance, I’d have gotten a few more magazines last night.”
“We could still do that,” Lucas said. “We could swing by the store, go over to Claxson’s place when they open the safe, then go talk to McCoy.”
“Not gonna be much that the FBI hasn’t gotten,” Rae said. “Claxson wouldn’t give them the combination to the safe if there was something in there that would hang him.”
“I know, but what the hell else have we got to do?”
“Maybe time to go home,” Bob said.
“Could be,” Lucas said.
* * *
—
THEY WERE talking that over when Porter Smalls called on Lucas’s burner phone. “This is just a heads-up,” Smalls told Lucas. “I’m coming through Washington today. I’ve got an event I’ve got to go to tonight, big-money people.”
“You think it’s safe?”
“Oh, yeah. When the party’s over, I’m going out to the airport, getting on a NetJet to Los Angeles. By the time somebody figures that out, I won’t be in L.A. anymore. And I’ve still got those cops with me as security. I’m gonna have to come back to work after the recess, so hurry up and nail Taryn.”
“We’re trying,” Lucas said. “Things have gotten complicated.”
“How complicated? Anything that’s gonna hurt?”
“Not you, no. Is there any way you could be at Kitten’s apartment tonight? I could give you a rundown on everything.”
“Yes, but early. Let’s say six.”
“See you then,” Lucas said.
When he hung up, he said to Bob and Rae, “We’ve got a bunch of errands to run. But let’s pull together our thoughts, what else we might do, and talk about going home.”
“Bummer,” Rae said. “I would prefer a more definite conclusion.”
* * *
—
THEY RAN ERRANDS all day. They found out that Claxson’s will left all of his money to the National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, apparently not having any other heirs deserving enough to leave money to; and that he carried disability insurance but no life policy. He had a small album of nude photos of himself with a dozen different women, with space for more. There were photos taken with groups of men in a variety of military gear; there were photos taken from hotel balconies. And there were two American passports, both in his name.
“Nothing wrong with having two passports,” one of the FBI agents said. “Back in the day, I had to travel to some Arab countries that wouldn’t let you in if you had a visa stamp from Israel, and since I often had to go to Israel, I had two passports. Lot of people did.”
The FBI had an interview scheduled with McCoy, and they drove over to the Hoover Building to sit in. During the morning, a sullen-looking cloud layer moved in, and a soft drizzle began to fall. All they learned from McCoy, that was new, was that he was well traveled and often took loads of guns to small, out-of-the-way countries. His lawyer Bunch wouldn’t let him talk about anything Lucas was really interested in.
Claxson made bail at one o’clock in the afternoon. The FBI wouldn’t let Claxson back in his house until the searches were finished, so he checked into the Ritz-Carlton at Pentagon City. The FBI wouldn’t let him have his car, either, until they’d finished processing it, so his lawyer drove him to a Hertz agency, where he picked up an SUV.
Andrew Moy, running the surveillance crew, told Lucas at four o’clock that Claxson had spent the day in his room “probably with a burner that he got from his attorney” except for two trips to the hotel’s restaurant. On one of those trips, Claxson had a Cobb salad with shrimp, which told Lucas that the feds were in Claxson’s shirt pocket. Moy assured Lucas that Claxson hadn’t seen them. “But, I gotta say, he might assume we’re here even if he can’t see us.”