Twisted Prey

by John Sandford

“I’ve got a fitting with my tailor,” Lucas said.

  Bob and Rae both stopped walking to peer at him, and Rae said, “You’re joking, right?”

  “No, I’m not. We’ve got some downtime, so it seems like a reasonable thing to do,” Lucas said.

  Bob: “If one of these assholes kills you, you’ll have a new suit to get buried in.”

  “There’s that,” Lucas said.

  * * *

  —

  THEY WENT BACK to the hotel, where Rae took the rented Tahoe and headed for the National Gallery. Bob got his camera but asked Lucas if he could tag along to the tailor shop, and that was fine with Lucas. Parking was rare around the shop, so they took a cab.

  At Figueroa & Prince, Lucas was met by Ted, who smiled, reached out to shake hands, and said, “Lucas, happy to see you back. We have a preliminary cut . . . There were some interesting discussions here about how to accommodate the pistol . . .”

  Lucas introduced Bob, who took a chair to watch the fitting and, after a few minutes, got up to wander around the shop, checking out the suits on display, the accessory racks, and finally the fabrics themselves. Lucas was trying on the first cut of a wool winter suit when he noticed Bob talking to another one of the salesmen.

  When Lucas was finished with his fitting, he found Bob draped in a pale blue crepelike material and looking squint-eyed into a mirror. Ted walked over, and said, “Mmm, I think we can do better.”

  “What does that mean?” Bob asked Lucas.

  “It means that color makes you look like a fuckin’ boxcar,” Lucas said. “You ought to have them embroider Burlington Northern on your back.”

  “I might not have put it quite that way,” Ted said. To Bob: “We should spend a while talking about your goals.”

  “My goal is to have a good-fitting suit that I can wear in southern Louisiana, because I’ve never had one of those in my life.”

  Ted considered that, and said to the other salesman, “Not one suit—I think two . . .”

  They wound up spending three hours in the store, and when they left, Lucas, looking both ways before letting the door close behind him, said, “Well, that was a quick way to blow six grand. I’m proud of you.”

  Bob shrugged. “I’ve got a good job, I don’t care about cars, don’t gamble, don’t chase too many women or use drugs . . . I’ve got a few extra bucks, and I’ve never had a suit that fit right, so why not?”

  Lucas clapped him on the back. “Like I said, I’m proud of you—I’m serious. You, my friend, are gonna look terrific. You’ll be able to hold your head up, even in New Orleans.”

  “I like that part about working around the gun . . . I never knew any of that shit. I’ll tell you, though, I ain’t spending four grand for a pair of wingtips.”

  Lucas said, “You’re standing on a slippery slope, Bob. I predict there are wingtips in your future, but not for . . . three years. Once you go over, you’ll never go back.”

  “I heard somebody say that about gay sex,” Bob said.

  “Almost the same thing,” Lucas said. “They’re very close.”

  17

  Parrish arrived at Grant’s house, and when Grant came to the door—the housekeeper had been sent home—he asked, “Who’s here?”

  “George,” Grant said. “We’re in the SCIF.”

  Parrish followed her through the house, past the heavy door to the basement, which silently slid closed behind them, and down the stairs. Claxson was spread across the sofa. He was wearing aviator sunglasses and an unwrinkled blue-striped seersucker suit; a fashionably battered leather briefcase sat at his feet.

  Parrish took a seat, and asked, “What’s up?”

  Grant looked at Claxson, and said, “The electronics say he’s carrying a big chunk of metal but no electronics, other than a cell phone.”

  “He’s got a gun,” Claxson said.

  “Jesus,” Parrish said. Then, “So what?”

  Grant slid open her desk drawer, took out the 9mm, and laid it on the desktop. “Just good to know.”

  Parrish shook his head. “I’m not going to shoot anyone . . . I assume you’re doing video or sound; I hope it spools to something you can erase.”

  “It does,” Grant said. “Of course it does.”

  Parrish: “Okay. So what’s up?”

  * * *

  —

  “RITTER, IS WHAT’S UP,” Claxson said. “It looks like the Marshals Service might have enough on him to put him in the truck that hit Smalls.”

  “And killed Whitehead,” Grant added, “It’s like I’m trapped in a circus. It all sounds good, then the clowns show up.”

  “How do you know this?” Parrish asked. “That the Marshals Service has—”

  “I have a friend at the DOJ,” Claxson said.

  “So what do we do? Move Ritter out of here?” Parrish asked.

  Both Grant and Claxson looked at him without saying a word, and Parrish finally said, “You’re thinking of something more . . . permanent?”

  “Not only that,” Claxson said, “we’re thinking that one of the three of us has to do it. Senator Grant and I took a vote, and you won.”

  “Wait!” Parrish croaked. “I’ve never done that.”

  “Yeah, but you can. Maybe you never had the opportunity,” Claxson said. “I’ve seen you at the range. What’s the problem?”

  “It’s . . . I’ve never done that.”

  “We’re all in serious trouble here,” Claxson said, standing up, leaning over Parrish. “Jim is a good guy but he’s looking at life without parole if the marshals get to him. And they’re close. They want him, but they want us more. If they break him, if they make a deal with him, all of us are done. He has to go. Senator Grant needs to be in a public place when he goes away, and so do I. That leaves you.”

  “I can’t fuckin’ believe this,” Parrish said. “There’s gotta be some other way.”

  Grant said, “There is no better way, not for George or me. If you get caught, well, too bad. Claxson and I’ll say you’d gone rogue and we had no idea what you were up to. If you don’t get caught, we’ve sealed off an existential problem. A problem that could kill all three of us.”

  “But . . .”

  “No buts. It’s decided,” Claxson said. “Gotta be right away. Try not to step on your dick. Do that, and we’ll throw you, and your dick, under the bus.”

  * * *

  —

  PARRISH ARGUED, but Grant and Claxson stonewalled him: it had to be done. Parrish left in a heavy sweat.

  He’d never been an “operator,” in the military sense of the word; he’d worked in supply, in logistics, even when he was with the CIA. If you needed to get a thousand M4s to Iraq by Monday, he could do it, though a few crates might fall off the back of the truck.

  He’d known lots of real operators, though, and had provided expedited supplies for special operations forces. A dozen former operators hung around Heracles, coming and going without saying much. He liked to think he could hang with them.

  And Claxson had seen him at the range: Parrish liked to shoot and was good at it. He liked the whole ritual of handling the weapon, cleaning it, the signature smell of the Hoppe’s gun cleaner, the acrid odor of the brass brushes.

  He left Grant’s SCIF frightened—and exhilarated. Had to be done; and now he’d find out what he was all about.

  He had some thinking to do as well: if they really and truly wanted to wall off the problem, he might go next. Something to worry about.

  He called Ritter. “We may have a problem in St. Paul. We need to talk.”

  “Where?”

  “My place.”

  * * *

  —

  WHEN PARRISH bought his Georgetown home, he’d bought the best address he could afford, which turned out to be a late-nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century
town house that was structurally sound but internally a mess. He’d taken home-improvement classes at a community college and, over three years, had cautiously upgraded the place.

  The project of which he was most proud of involved a closet. It had been in a bedroom, and he’d converted it into an office. He’d stripped off the molding surrounding the original door and replaced the door itself with a heavy metal-core blank that he’d fitted flush with the wall. He’d painted the blank to match the wall and attached a bookcase as a front.

  This new door had a lock, six feet up from the floor, with a heavy bolt, which ensured that the bookcase wouldn’t move no matter how hard somebody pushed or pulled on it. Because the lock was set right above one of the bookcase’s shelves, it couldn’t be seen except by somebody standing on a chair or an NBA center. Unlock the door, the bookcase swung out to reveal the closet.

  Which was full of goodies. Parrish thought of himself as prepared, as an operator, as a survivor,. He loved the idea of a hidden room in his house.

  He had two combat-style pump shotguns and two black rifles inside the closet, along with a dozen pistols, including two with suppressors; he also had an entire drawerful of knives, another drawerful of ammo, two compound bows with a hundred carbon fiber arrows, body armor, Delta-style helmets, a pair of night vision goggles, two tactical backpacks, three different kinds of camo uniforms, a variety of equipment bags, a gas mask, and even a straw cowboy hat. Much of it—not the cowboy hat—had been stolen during his Army tours in the Middle East. Since he was involved in logistics, he had no problem getting it back to the States.

  None of the firearms were registered in Washington, so possession of them was a crime; he wasn’t too worried, because the District was awash in guns. Still, if the cops wanted him for something else and tore the house apart, possession of the guns could land him in prison.

  He selected one of the silenced pistols, a Kimber .45, his favorite. He was ready.

  But nervous.

  * * *

  —

  ONCE UPON A TIME IN IRAQ, Parrish had been on a convoy out of Baghdad headed north toward Balad Air Base. They were passing through a hamlet, an hour into the trip, when an improvised explosive device—an artillery shell—took out a truck three trucks ahead of his. There was one good lookout nearby—a two-story mudbrick building that stood in the shade of a copse of palm trees—and two real operators ran toward it while two more hosed down the exposed windows.

  A moment later, there was a brief burst of gunfire from behind the building as the operators cut down a running man. Parrish, exiting the truck, could see there wasn’t much more going on. Everybody was out of the trucks, and a medic was working on the injured up ahead. He saw the two operators moving around behind the building. He went that direction, where he found them standing over a downed man.

  Parrish skidded to a stop, walked over, and looked at the man, who was bleeding heavily from multiple leg and stomach wounds. He asked, “He going to make it?”

  One of the operators said, “Don’t think so.”

  The second one asked, “You ever killed anybody, Jack?”

  Parrish said, “No.”

  The man handed Parrish his M4. “Here. Go ahead.”

  Parrish took the gun, looked at the wounded man on the ground, who was looking up at him and rocking back and forth, his legs tight to his chest.

  Parrish asked, “He’s the guy who touched off the IED?”

  “Probably,” the operator said. “He tried to get rid of his cell phone, threw it over there.” He nodded toward a clump of waist-high, trashy-looking palms. “We found it.”

  The first man held up the cheap cell. “No reason to do that unless he used it to trigger the bomb.”

  Parrish said, “Okay.” He stepped back, turned the rifle on the wounded man. The man said, “No,” and as Parrish focused on his heart area, the operator snatched the gun back.

  “Jesus Christ, Jack, it was a joke.” The operator was freaked. “Jesus.”

  The medics took care of all the wounded in the convoy, but by the time they got to the man he was dead. Just as well he was out of his misery, Parrish thought, as the medivac Black Hawks dusted off the bombing scene and headed for the hospital at Balad.

  The fact was, there’d been nothing sexual about the situation, but Parrish got a hard-on when he thought about it. If only he’d had a chance to pull the trigger.

  * * *

  —

  PARRISH TOLD RITTER to park two blocks away and to walk in, and to check for surveillance on the way. “There’re always parking spaces behind the café, and you can get in and out of the lot without being seen.”

  “Why your place?”

  “Because I stripped the whole house down myself and it’s clean. We need to talk where nobody can hear us. With all the shit you guys have over at Heracles, I’d be surprised if there aren’t microphones hidden in the office chairs.”

  “See you at nine,” Ritter said.

  Ritter was an athletic guy of average height, with black eyes, tight-cut black hair, and a dark Mediterranean complexion. In Somalia, at a short distance and wearing a khamiis, he could pass for a native, and had. Parrish had been told that Ritter and his twin brother had finished first and second in a Nebraska statewide high school cross-country championship.

  Ritter left his car in the lot behind the Jitterbug Coffee & Café; Parrish was right, it was dark back there. If he ever needed to mug somebody for money, Ritter thought, he’d stake out the Jitterbug. The café wasn’t cheap; it was full of prosperous-looking people with Macintosh Pros, and they all had pencil-necks.

  Easy pickin’s.

  Ritter took fifteen minutes to walk to Parrish’s house, circling the block twice. Been better, he thought, if only he had a dog; he wondered briefly if Washington had a pit bull rental agency.

  He saw nothing moving. The fact was, if the marshals were watching Parrish, they’d probably be on a roof somewhere, or in an apartment across the street. They wouldn’t be parked in a car where the cops might roust them.

  Fifteen minutes after he left the Jitterbug, he rang the bell at Parrish’s.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN PARRISH bought his house, the floors were either wooden or covered with carpet. The carpet would soak up blood like a sponge, but the wood, always well waxed, would repel it. The wooden floor in the kitchen had been refinished for the sale; it was worn smooth but shone with the golden glow of old chestnut, and that was where Parrish decided he would kill Ritter.

  Parrish didn’t cook but had three cookbooks on a shelf under a kitchen cabinet. He put the gun between two of the books, cocked, safety off, a round of G2 RIP .45 ACP in the chamber.

  There’d be no point in waiting, he thought.

  When Ritter rang the doorbell, Parrish popped a chicken potpie in the microwave, turned the microwave on, and went to answer the door. The cooking pie would fill the kitchen with a homely aroma that might ease any suspicions in Ritter’s mind. Parrish was more tense than he’d expected. He’d realized, as he got the gun ready, that if he screwed it up, Ritter would kill him.

  * * *

  —

  RITTER SLIPPED INSIDE, and Parrish shut the door behind him, and asked, “See anybody?”

  “No, but if you’ve got professionals watching you, I wouldn’t. You think there might be somebody?”

  “Not really, but since last week . . . we’ve got a problem. I’m cooking dinner. Come on back to the kitchen, and I’ll tell you about it.”

  Ritter followed him down the hall to the kitchen. Walking with his back to Ritter made Parrish itch between the shoulder blades, but he focused on the job. In the kitchen, the potpie was beginning to heat up. Ritter said, “Smells good.”

  Parrish opened the microwave, and, as he did, he said, “There’s milk, water, beer, and Pepsi in the refrigerator
. Get me a Pepsi, and whatever you want.”

  “’Kay . . . What’s the problem?” Ritter asked. As he answered, Ritter opened the refrigerator, the door swinging wide between himself and Parrish. Parrish pulled the gun out from between the books, and when Ritter shut the refrigerator, holding a two-quart carton of milk and a bottle of Pepsi, Parrish shot him twice in the chest, one of the slugs going through the milk carton, spraying milk over Ritter’s face and chest.

  Ritter staggered, looking blankly at Parrish, then he dropped the Pepsi and the milk and twisted and fell face-first to the floor, where he spasmed for several seconds and finally went quiet.

  Though silenced, the shots had been loud in the small kitchen. Not loud enough for his neighbors to hear, but loud enough that Parrish’s ears rang for a few seconds.

  Parrish looked down at the body and felt some chemical flushing through his body. Not adrenaline, something else, something even more primitive, a kind of breath-robbing hormone, maybe a testosterone variant, whatever it is that makes warriors exult in a kill.

  It produced a kind of . . . joy. Parrish stood still, closed his eyes, let himself feel it.

  * * *

  —

  BEFORE HE’D LEFT Grant’s house, and the SCIF, Parrish, Grant, and Claxson had talked about what to do with Ritter’s body. Claxson had suggested taking it out into the woods somewhere and burying it. Grant said she’d let the professionals work that out but mentioned that she’d known of a situation where that had worked.

  Parrish said he’d think some of something, but, in truth, he’d already thought of it: given the number of cops around D.C. and the surrounding countryside, he wasn’t going to move a body any farther than he had to, and sure as shit wasn’t going to stumble around in the woods, in the dark, with a shovel and a gunnysack.

  He knew where the body would be going before he ever left Grant’s SCIF.