“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.”
“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 photo
s 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.”
* * *
—
AT SIX O’CLOCK, Lucas walked through the drizzling rain to meet with Smalls at Kitten Carter’s apartment. After shaking hands, and offering Lucas a beer, Smalls said to him, “Tell me every goddamn thing.”
Lucas did. They talked for an hour, and, as they finished, Smalls was pulling a tuxedo out of a garment bag. “Hate these fucking conventions. But it’s either conventions or spending my own money to get reelected.”
“Well, Jesus, you wouldn’t want to do that,” Lucas said.
When he left Smalls, Lucas walked back to the hotel, picked up Bob and Rae, and called Moy, who said that Claxson was still at the Ritz.
“Now what?” Bob asked.
“Gonna watch the ball game,” Lucas said.
“Mind if I hang out?” Bob asked. “I mean, unless you’re going to be laying around naked or something.”
“Absolutely,” Lucas said. “Rae?”
“I’m gonna go read,” she said. “Call me if anything happens. I’m so fuckin’ bored that if I knew where the local muggers hang out, I’d go over there for a stroll.”
Rae read, Lucas and Bob settled in for a Nationals game, and, at nine o’clock, Moy called. “Claxson’s moving. He’s moving fast.”
* * *
—
TEN MINUTES LATER, Lucas, Bob, and Rae were in the Evoque and running hot, Moy calling every couple of minutes to give them updates. At first, Moy thought Claxson was headed back to his house. “Wonder if he thinks he can get in? The place is sealed . . . He can’t be dumb enough to go in anyway, can he?”
“Maybe he’s going to throw a Molotov cocktail through the window,” Bob suggested.
“You don’t really think that . . .”
* * *
—
CLAXSON WASN’T GOING to his house. He drove past McLean, where he lived, and continued west to the town of Great Falls, still on the Virginia side of the river. “One of my people passed him,” Moy said. “He appears to be alone.”
“He must know he’s being monitored, even if he doesn’t know you’re following him,” Lucas said. “He can’t be going somewhere he shouldn’t.”
“You wouldn’t think he would,” Moy said. “By the way, we’ve notified Agent Chase. She’s on her way.”
“Is that normal?”
“No, but this is getting some attention at the Bureau. She wants to be on top of everything because, well, that’s just the way she is.”
“You’re saying she’s a bureaucratic climber?”
“No. She’s very . . . conscientious,” Moy said cautiously.
“Okay,” Lucas said.
Five minutes later, Moy called back. “He’s getting off the highway.” And five minutes after that, “He’s pulled into a house off Chesapeake Drive. We’re running the address.” And five minutes after that, “The house belongs to Charles Douglas. He’s Heracles’s main company attorney.”
“Okay,” Lucas said. “Shoot. I was kinda hoping he was running for it.”
* * *
—
“MAKES SENSE HE’D TALK to the company attorney after what’s happening at the company,” Bob said, as they drove toward Great Falls. “Claxson must know it’s too late to bug Douglas’s house. Nice safe place to talk.”
“I’d kill to know what they’re saying,” Lucas said.
“We could sneak up to the house and put our ears to the window,” Rae said. “Done that a few times.”
“Can’t do it in this neighborhood,” Bob said. “I’ve been looking it up on my phone, and it’s one of those richie rich places. Sneaking through backyards could be bad for your health.”
“The other thing is,” Lucas said, “if we got caught listening in to a private conversation with his attorney, we could go to jail ourselves.”
* * *
—
MOY HAD SET UP an observation post a block from Douglas’s house, in the driveway of a neighbor, where they were hidden from the road by a screen of oaks. They’d gotten the spot easily enough: Moy pulled into the drive, leaned on the doorbell until the owner came to the door, showed him his ID, and asked if they could park there “on a matter of national security.”
The neighbor had many questions, none of which were answered, but agreed to let Moy’s team wait in the driveway. Before Lucas, Bob, and Rae arrived, one of Moy’s minions, dressed in camo and wearing night vision goggles, snuck off through the trees, set up across the road from Douglas’s house with a radio and a chicken salad sandwich. They couldn’t bug Claxson’s attorney, but there was no law against watching him.
* * *
—
LUCAS, BOB, AND RAE arrived fifteen minutes after Moy. Moy, an Asian American, had a West Coast beachboy accent and hard angles in his face. “Nothing happening,” he said. “We got a guy a hundred feet out with a direct view of the house.”
“How far away are we right here?” Lucas asked.
“According to my Google Earth, about two hundred and ten feet, if you run out the driveway and down the street,” Moy said. “In a straight line, a hundred and ninety-one feet, but of course there are a lot of trees between here and there. And it’s dark.”
They sat and waited in four different cars. A while later, a fifth car pulled up, and Moy walked over to it, a door popped open, and he got in. He was in there for two or three minutes, then all the doors opened, and Jane Chase got out of one of them and walked over to Lucas’s Evoque. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt and running shoes, the first time Lucas had seen her when she wasn’t wearing a dress. “Nothing happening,” she said.
“I know,” Lucas said, as he got out and eased the car door closed. Bob and Rae got out to join the huddle, and Chase gave them a couple of paragraphs on Douglas’s background. “One of those lawyers who got rich writing bills for Midwestern congressmen,” she said. “Sent lots of government defense money out that way.”
Moy jogged over to them. “Larry says there’s a car coming down the street, moving slow.”
He was carrying a radio but listening through earphones. He listened for a few more seconds, and said, “It turned into the driveway . . . Okay, two people are getting out . . . Looks like a man and a woman . . .”
Lucas felt sudden apprehension. “What�
�s the woman look like?”
Moy repeated the question, said, “Can’t tell, it’s too dark. And Larry’s not positive it’s a woman but thinks it is. She’s wearing a hooded black rain jacket . . .”
“Aw, Jesus,” Lucas said.
He looked at Bob, who said, “Suzie?”
“I think so.”
“We gotta get down closer,” he said. To Chase: “I think it might be the woman who shot us up at the hotel. I don’t like the idea that she’s here with Claxson because—”
“Larry says they’re inside,” Moy said.
Seconds later—three or four, no more, Lucas thought—they heard a series of whumps, like you might hear if somebody fell down the stairs in your house.
Lucas pulled his gun, and Chase said, “What?” and Bob said, “That was gunfire,” and Rae yanked open the back hatch of the Evoque, and as Lucas and Bob ran toward the opening of the driveway, she pulled out an M4 and a thirty-round mag and slammed the mag into place as she ran after them.
28
Taryn Grant stood in the bay window at the back of her Georgetown mansion, watching the drizzle deflect off the multicolored foliage and the red-brick walkways of the sprawling garden she never thought to sit in. In the middle of a densely built world capital, she felt alone: not only was she alone in the house, and would be for the rest of the day, she couldn’t even see the city. She could see a few windows in the gabled roof of her next-door neighbor, but that was it. Other than that, she might be out in the Minnesota countryside.
The temperatures were in the low seventies, low enough that she shivered in the cool air, after the long string of stultifying hot and humid days. But the rain—she liked the idea of the rain. The rain was like a sign.
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