Twisted Prey

by John Sandford

  The senator told Lucas, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about that, Lucas. That boy leases three thousand acres of BLM land to run his cattle on. I believe he’s gonna find his contracts under review. That sonofabitch . . . Oh, hey, send me a couple of your business cards, would you?”

  * * *

  —

  THOSE JOBS left Lucas feeling slightly corrupt—an ordinary citizen wouldn’t get his kind of help. On the other hand, the confluence of crime, money, and political power did hold his interest. In both of the cases, the Marshals Service director had called him at home to hear what he had to say, and at the end of each report had said, “Keep up the good work. If you fuck up, I never heard of you.”

  * * *

  —

  AFTER THE ROUTINE WICHITA JOB, Lucas was sitting at the gate at Dwight Eisenhower National, reading an Outside magazine, when Porter Smalls called.

  “I need you to come talk to me,” Smalls said. “Soon as you can. Sooner.”

  “I saw a story in the Pioneer Press about the accident; sounded awful,” Lucas said. “You okay?”

  “Got a bloody nose from the air bag hitting me in the face, but I’m not dead like CeeCee,” Smalls said. “I called around and was told that you’re not in town. When are you coming back?”

  “I’m sitting in the Wichita airport right now. I’ll be back home around eight o’clock tonight.”

  “Good. I’m getting on a plane at National in five minutes. We’re supposed to get in at eight-twenty. Could you wait for me at the airport? A restaurant, or whatever? I haven’t had time to eat.”

  “You know that Stone Arch place? We could get a beer. And if it’s too crowded to talk, we could find an empty gate.”

  “See you there.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS WAS A TALL, tough-looking man, tanned with summer, a white knife-edge scar cutting across his eyebrow and onto his cheek, the product of a fishing misadventure. He had mild blue eyes, dark hair now touched with gray, and a smile that could turn mean. He liked to fight, not too often, but occasionally. The winter before, when he could no longer hold menus far enough away to see the fine print, he’d gotten his first pair of glasses, narrow gold-rimmed cheaters, that he hated but put up with.

  “I look like Yoda or something,” he grumbled to his wife, Weather.

  “Yoda didn’t wear glasses, as far as I know,” Weather said.

  “I don’t mean the literal Yoda. I mean that guy from Tibet—you know, the religious guy.”

  “The Dalai Lama?”

  “Yeah, that guy.”

  Weather looked at him, then said, “Yeah, you do kinda look like him . . .” Which he didn’t, but Weather refused to encourage whining. “Now, like the Dalai Lama, you can read the menu.”

  Although Lucas wasn’t afraid of the occasional brawl, he feared flying. His rational mind forced his body onto airplanes, but his emotional, French-Canadian side told him that whole metal tubes flying through the air was a vicious scam that would end badly.

  He tried to distract himself with Outside, but one of the cabin attendants was really, really good-looking, which meant that every time she passed he had to take off the reading glasses. The last time he did it, she patted him on the shoulder. She’d noticed, obviously familiar with male insecurities.

  * * *

  —

  THE FLIGHT RAN LATE, as usual. As soon as the plane touched down, Lucas called Smalls, who answered on the first ring, and said, “I saw that you were coming in late. I got here five minutes ago. I’m heading over to the Stone Arch.”

  Lucas had no checked baggage. He grabbed his pack and his overnight bag and was on the Jetway ten minutes after the wheels touched down.

  The bar was a typical airport restaurant, tables too close together, meant for singles or couples on their way to somewhere else rather than settling in for the evening. Smalls managed to find a table that was three down from the next closest drinker, who paid him no attention. Lucas spotted him, went over, dropped his pack and bag, shook hands, said, “Nice to see you, Senator,” and sat down. “What’s up?”

  “Get a sandwich or something,” Smalls said. “I’ve got a burger and beer on the way.”

  * * *

  —

  WHEN THE WAITRESS had come with Smalls’s order and gone with Lucas’s, Smalls leaned across the table and said, “This is going to sound insane, but that automobile accident? That was no accident. It was an assassination attempt. They were trying to kill me and they wound up killing CeeCee. I know who must’ve been behind it. You do, too.”

  Lucas said nothing for a moment, but when he did, it was: “Oh, Jesus Christ, Porter, are you sure?”

  “Let me tell you about it,” Smalls said.

  * * *

  —

  HE DID, pausing only for the arrival of Lucas’s Diet Coke and chicken sandwich, and when he finished his story, he asked, “See what I mean?”

  “No sign of paint or metal from the other truck? None at all?”

  “That’s what the West Virginia accident investigator says, and he seemed competent. So, there’s a mystery. People keep hinting that the mystery might be in my head. They ask if maybe the trauma of the event made me think we were hit when what actually happened was that CeeCee swerved to miss the truck and hit this little ankle-high roadside berm so hard that I thought the truck hit us. But that’s not it. We were hit. Hard.”

  “You think the West Virginia cops are in on it?” Lucas asked.

  “Oh, hell no. Well, not hell no, but it seems unlikely. That would make the whole conspiracy too big and unmanageable. You know, I never believed in hit men outside of the movies until Grant wiped me out two years ago. Sure enough, she had hit men. This is the same goddamn thing. She came after me again because I’ve been giving her a hard time.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Lucas asked.

  * * *

  —

  “I WANT TO KNOW what happened, the best you can give it to me,” Smalls said to him now. “Review the accident investigation. See if you can find the truck that hit us. West Virginia won’t even be looking for it.” Smalls’s voice grew quieter. He glanced around the restaurant. “I want you to be very discreet. If it is Grant behind this, she’ll probably try again. I oughta be dead right now. CeeCee did a hell of a job getting us into the trees that stopped us; I couldn’t have done it.”

  Lucas nodded, and asked, “Is Grant going to run for president?”

  “Yeah, probably. That’s another problem, but I’m not asking you to solve that one. My first priority is staying alive.” They sat and thought in silence for minute, then Smalls asked, “What do you think?”

  “I believe you’re telling the truth, but I’m not sure the truth is going to lead directly to Taryn Grant. I’ll talk to the West Virginia cops, poke around, see what develops. Probably stay away from Grant, at least for the time being,” Lucas said.

  “I can have my staff line up anyone you want to talk to,” Smalls said. “My chief of staff is named Kitten Carter. She’s absolutely reliable and trustworthy. I’ll have Kitten liaise with you, since she already knows about it.”

  “Good. I have to talk to my wife, but I can be in D.C. on Monday,” Lucas said. He sat back and looked at Smalls, leaned forward and said, his voice as soft as Smalls’s, “One more thing, though: if it’s Taryn Grant, how did she get hooked up with another bunch of professional killers? She’s only been in Washington for, what, two years?”

  “I’ve got an answer for that,” Smalls said. “She’s on the Senate Intelligence Committee and she talks to spooks all the time. Then there’s the fact that she could run for the presidency. She’s young, great-looking, richer than God and willing to spend that money. It looks like we’ll have a seriously unpopular president in two more years who might either take a chance and run again and ris
k getting blown out or leave it to some other guy who’ll still be carrying that unpopularity on his back. So, she’s a real possibility. When the people in Washington sniff out a real possibility . . . well, they can’t climb on the bandwagon fast enough. Everybody’s got to have a bandwagon going into a presidential election.”

  “Even killers?”

  “The intelligence community,” Smalls said, sitting back and simultaneously turning to look down the concourse, as though he might spot a spy. “Listen, Lucas, there are literally hundreds of trained killers out of the military and working as contractors with the private intelligence organizations. Most of them are fine people. Patriots who have risked their lives for the country. But some of these guys aren’t so fine, and I’ve had a few of them testifying before committees. They don’t have any real limits, moral or otherwise. They live on risk. They love it. You show them Grant’s kind of money and the possibility that she might wind up in the White House? They’ll be available. That’s my gut feeling.”

  “Why you and why now?”

  “Because I’ve been pissing on Grant ever since the election and some of it is beginning to stick.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t piss for a while,” Lucas suggested.

  Smalls grinned, and said, “I’m hiding out in town for now, and I’ve hired a couple of ex-cops to cover me. If you jump on this, maybe you’ll be able to tell me how much trouble I’m in. Be nice to know, before I get back out in the open.”

  “Let me ask you a couple of uncomfortable questions . . . How’s your marriage?”

  “Well, you know . . .”

  “You’ve got a few bucks yourself . . .” Smalls’s financial disclosure forms, filed at the time of the election and printed in the Twin Cities newspapers, hinted at a fortune in the neighborhood of a hundred million dollars. “And if your wife thought you were about to, uh, move on . . .”

  Smalls shook his head. “She knows I’m not.”

  “Your daughter once mentioned something about a Lithuanian lover. If you were to die, who inherits? Would the Lithuanian lover be in line for a payday? Directly or indirectly?”

  “No. My wife’s not stupid,” Smalls said. “Besides, most of the money would go to the kids, after the government takes its cut. On balance, she’s financially better off with me alive.”

  “Okay.”

  “Again, I would like to stay that way: alive.”

  “What about your friend Whitehead? Anybody want to get rid of her?” Lucas asked.

  In exasperation, Smalls jabbed his index finger into the tabletop a half dozen times, hissing, “Lucas! Lucas! Pay attention! Keep your eye on the goddamn ball here! It was Grant! No, I can’t think of anybody who’d want to kill CeeCee. She’s been divorced for fifteen years, her husband is as rich as she is, and he’s got a whole ’nother family. CeeCee has two adult daughters, nice girls, work in L.A., got all the money they need, they produce movies or some goofy shit like that. Listen: we decided to run up to the cabin at the last minute, nobody even knew we were going, somebody was watching us.”

  “All right, I need to eliminate the obvious possibilities,” Lucas said. “I’ll take a look at it. You might want to call the Marshals Service director and have a chat. Not about Grant, though. Tell him you want me to review the situation.”

  “I’ll do that. First thing tomorrow. As far as Grant goes: if you have to poke a stick into that wasp’s nest, be my guest. But be careful. Nobody seems to believe me, but these guys who tried to kill me, and murdered CeeCee, they’re pros.”

  * * *

  —

  AS LUCAS DROVE HOME, he thought about U.S. senator Taryn Grant. Two and a half years earlier, she’d knocked Porter Smalls out of the Senate, beating him 51 percent to 49 percent, after what Smalls called the ugliest political trick in the history of the Republic.

  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.”

  Grant’s face was purple, but she struggled to calm herself. Parrish was right: even the best-laid plans failed sometimes. But he was wrong about the odds. She was extremely good at figuring odds, and there would have been a better way to do this. Example number one: find out where Smalls was going out for dinner and then shoot him in the back and take his money. That was simple enough, and nobody would be able to prove that it wasn’t a robbery. Parrish’s plan had had too many moving parts, and neither one of them had recognized that.