Too little sleep last night. And too little progress on either investigation.
Raising his big ceramic mug to his lips, he found it empty. He stretched, rose from his desk, and headed out of the office to the apartment’s kitchen. Luna was there, hunched over her water dish, her tongue darting up and down like a little pink jackhammer. While he filled the coffeemaker’s filter, he tried to tamp down his frustration over his lack of progress on either story.
After hours with the cops and the M.E. yesterday, he was more puzzled than ever about the Wasserman case. They had discovered no evidence of foul play; it looked like a freak accident. Meanwhile, he confirmed that the attacks on Helm were orchestrated by media manipulator Lucas Carver, through the “progressive” public relations outfit he ran, Vox Populi Communications. Hunter was intrigued that Vox Populi received a lot of money from the Currents Foundation, and that Avery Trammel sat on its board. But he’d still uncovered no criminal flows of money into the election campaign.
While the coffee brewed, he decided to check his messages. He used his latest burner to call through the spoofing site to his voicemail, where he found a call-back request from Morgan Jackson. He thumbed in the number and waited. The man answered in his resonant baritone.
“You’ve heard the news,” Jackson began after they’d exchanged greetings.
“I assume you mean about Dixon’s death. How are you and Lila feeling?”
“We cried together for about an hour, going through a photo album of our sweet Loretta. After that—well, a sense of relief, I suppose. A feeling of closure, just knowing we never have to concern ourselves with that monster, ever again.”
Hunter watched the cat move to her food bowl. “That’s good, Morgan. I hope you’ll be able to get past this, now.”
“That’s why I called, Dylan. I wanted to thank you for that.”
There was something in the man’s tone.
“But I didn’t do anything, Morgan. I wanted to write about—”
“Not that . . . I think you know what I mean.”
He kept his own tone noncommittal. “I’m confused. What do you mean?”
For a few seconds, there was only the sound of Luna crunching her food pellets.
“Dylan, we had our monthly Vigilance for Victims meeting last night. I got talking afterward with George Banacek, Kate Higgins, and Susie Copeland. We’re especially close, because the killers of our loved ones were all set free. Last fall, we were beside ourselves. We didn’t know where to turn. Then you showed up at our meeting. And you said, ‘Perhaps I can help.’ Do you remember that?”
“I remember.”
“I can see it like it was yesterday. We all turned and looked at you. You promised you’d write about our cases—and you did. And it made a huge difference. At a really dark time, you were like a sudden ray of light from heaven. An answer to our prayers. You know how grateful we are. The award ceremony didn’t begin to express how much.”
“And I can’t tell you how much that honor means to me.”
“But then, something else started happening, too.” Jackson gathered a breath, then plunged ahead. “Those killers all started to die.”
Hunter stood motionless in the middle of the kitchen, phone to his ear.
“Somebody started to kill them all, one by one, and left your news stories on their bodies. Everybody started talking about some mysterious group of ‘vigilantes’ bringing justice when the legal system failed. Pretty soon, a lot of killers were being executed—that’s what we called it: ‘executions’—and some of them didn’t have anything to do with our little group. But it all started with people who were at that meeting: George and Kate and Susie.” He paused. “And now, us. Dixon’s been executed, too—only two days after Lila and I came to you for help.”
“Morgan, I don’t know what—”
“Hear me out, Dylan. You need to know the five of us talked about this—but just among ourselves. Months back, a few of us speculated that maybe you were secretly communicating with the vigilantes. But until Dixon was executed, none of us connected all the dots. Just one guy managed to do that. Then Susie reminded us how you were able to track down and kill Adrian Wulfe. So—”
“You’ve got this all wrong,” Hunter interrupted. “I’m just a reporter. What you’re suggesting—”
“Dylan, Dylan,” Jackson said, chuckling, “take it easy. We’re not looking for you to admit anything. In fact, please don’t! We don’t ever want to have to put our hands on the Bible in some court and swear to repeat whatever you told us.”
“Morgan,” he said, feeling helpless, “do you have any idea how dangerous your idle speculations could be to me?” And to Annie, he thought to himself.
“About that—son, you don’t have a thing to worry about. Like I said, we’ve only talked among ourselves. We prayed about it, after the meeting, and pledged we’ll never say a thing to anyone else. In fact, we’ll never even say another word to you about this. But we agreed I should call and thank you, privately, for what you’ve done for us—and the risks you’ve taken to do it. We can never, ever repay you, Dylan . . . No, don’t you dare say another word. Just please—be careful, okay?”
Then he was gone.
Hunter slowly lowered the phone to his side. As he gripped it tightly, he felt the gathering weight of blood in his hand. The pulse in his fingertips.
The cat straightened from her food dish, stretched languidly, and turned to face him.
“Mraaaowwwh?”
2
“I’m glad you could come, Grant.” Hunter took Grant Garrett’s overcoat and hung it on a nearby rack. “Annie’s in the kitchen. She just put her mystery dish in the oven.”
“Thanks for inviting me,” his old boss replied in his distinctive gravelly voice. He closed the front door on a man from his security detail, posted outside. “After the lamb she cooked up for us six weeks ago, I wasn’t about to refuse.” He moved away from the door and lowered his voice. “Besides, we can meet here privately without raising eyebrows.”
“Hi, Grant,” Annie said, poking her head into the doorway. She wore a short green cocktail dress and an apron imprinted with wine bottle images. “Why don’t we all go into the living room while dinner cooks?”
Once settled in with cocktails, Garrett reached into his briefcase and retrieved a file folder.
“All right, I had the FBI run the prints from the beer mug, and here’s what came back.”
He opened the folder and tossed a photograph on the coffee table between them.
“Ronald Patrick Larsen, age thirty-seven. Current whereabouts unknown.”
“That’s him, all right,” Hunter said, nodding toward the photo. Annie picked it up and studied it while Garrett went on, consulting notes in the folder.
“From his military records and criminal history, there’s an unusual amount of personal background info on him. Parents of Norwegian descent, from Rochester, Minnesota. His mother was a strict Lutheran, his father a hotel manager. Juvenile records indicate Larsen showed early signs of sociopathy—tormenting animals, setting fires, hurting other kids—the usual. He was sent for counseling. The shrinks said he envied and hated his older brother, who was an outstanding student, and often did nasty things to undermine him. Larsen was smart, too, but intellectually lazy and a thrill-seeker. He played hockey, took up martial arts, chased girls, and did attention-seeking daredevil stunts. By his mid-teens he was hanging out with troublemakers, stealing cars, picking fights, and generally raising hell.”
“That does sound like your classic sociopath,” Annie said, tossing the photo back on the table.
“His mother sermonized and spoiled him, while his father tried to keep him out of juvenile detention. Larsen managed to squeak through high school, but was kicked out of college during his freshman year for peeping in the girls dorm windows. Fed up, his father and a judge gave him an ultimatum: join the Army, or go to jail.
“Larsen never forgave his father for that. Still, for a w
hile, he seemed to find his niche in the military. Through sheer physical talent and determination, he got some promotions, then was accepted into the Army Rangers. Early evaluations were positive: They said he had superior skills, was ‘driven to succeed,’ and was ‘relentless’ in pursuit of objectives. But on deployments, he was disliked by his fellow soldiers, who said he was manipulative and sadistic. He was also suspected of being involved in a smuggling ring. Near the end of his second tour, members of his platoon caught him sexually assaulting a girl outside a Baghdad bar, and they turned him in. But rather than court-martial him, Uncle Sam avoided an international scandal by paying off the girl’s family and dishonorably discharging him.”
“So they just washed their hands of him,” Hunter said.
Garrett put the papers aside and looked up.
“Which only brought out the worst in him. Larsen told a girlfriend he felt betrayed by his Ranger team and the American government—that they had wrecked his life and deserved payback. When she later tried to end the relationship, he beat her to a pulp, screaming at her about her disloyalty. She was too terrified to press charges.”
“Loyalty seems to be a sore spot,” Hunter said. “Lasher told me killing Muller wasn’t only about the money. He said, ‘I hate traitors.’”
Garrett nodded, then shuffled through the papers again. “After that, he was a drifter for a year or so. There were arrests in several cities for disorderly conduct, public intoxication, and fights. Then, through an Army contact and apparently using a fake ID, he got hired as a security contractor in the Middle East, under the alias ‘Ray Lasher.’ Which didn’t last long, either. He was reckless and trigger-happy and within four months, he shot some civilians during an operation. He disappeared in the wind. That’s when he started doing murders for hire. He’s been at it for over a decade.”
“He boasted to me he was one of the top contract killers in the world.”
Garrett shrugged. “Actually, Interpol wouldn’t argue. Larsen, Lasher—whatever name you care to call him—is a skilled sniper. Being a sadist, he also enjoys up-close work—knives, bare-handed, it doesn’t really matter. Though he’s undisciplined in his personal life, he’s a meticulous professional about his hits. He plans his ops and getaways carefully. The only reason we know about his hitman career is from some snitches and ex-employers who were caught. So far, at least fourteen assassinations have been attributed to him and a half-dozen more are suspected. The targets have included some minor political figures in Europe and Asia, and at least one corporate tycoon in Chicago.”
Garrett stopped and looked at Hunter, hard and steady.
“This is one dangerous dude. You were lucky to confront him and walk away.”
“I could say the same for him.”
“Maybe. But what worries me is somebody with money has hired him to go after you.”
“But not to assassinate me.”
Hunter explained what Lasher told him about that.
“So maybe he’s not working for Russia,” Garrett said. “Still, whoever hired him has their own motives. Maybe to expose or discredit you, or to blackmail you into silence. And you have no idea who they might be?”
“Here’s what I know for sure. Whatever client hired Lasher knew I’d be headed to the EPA that day. That person must be among the network of environmentalists and political people I was investigating. That person also knew how to hire a contract killer on extremely short notice—just a few hours.”
“Or possibly had Lasher on retainer,” Garrett suggested.
Annie said, “I just thought of another possibility. Maybe whoever hired him was, or is, working for the Russians—but Lasher doesn’t know it.”
It hit him. Hunter stood.
“What is it?” she asked.
“And what if . . .” he began slowly, as the idea took shape. “What if Moscow’s cutout is an agent inside that environmentalist network I investigated?”
Garrett frowned. “What would he or she be doing there?”
“Here’s a guess. Russia is a major oil and natural gas supplier to much of Europe. For a long time they’ve had a virtual stranglehold on the EU’s energy. Competition from U.S. fracking now threatens that. They have strategic and economic reasons to want to stop our fracking. So, it makes sense they’d place an agent of influence inside that anti-fracking network, right?”
“It makes sense,” Garrett agreed.
Hunter began to pace in front of the fireplace. “Well, what if they also used that same cutout or agent to hire Lasher last year, to silence Muller? And to hire him again now, to find out about me?”
“Now you’re unspooling a long string of mere assumptions.”
“Think about it, Grant. For big, sensitive jobs, the Russians would stick with just a few proven, reliable contractors. From what Lasher told me, his boss—my hypothetical cutout—and his Russian handlers still think Lasher did nail Muller. He would have to be their golden boy. So, wouldn’t they pick him again if they want to go after me?”
“That means your cover is blown and the Russians are on to you!” Annie said. She huddled forward, clutching her hands in her lap.
He shook his head. “If they knew or suspected I was Matt Malone—the CIA officer who caused them so much grief—they’d have sent Lasher to kill me, not just follow me. No, Annie, I think the Russians were simply provoked by my articles exposing the anti-fracking campaign. They’d want to discredit me. But killing a high-profile reporter outright would raise too many questions and be too risky.”
“I still think you’re leaning way out over your skis,” Garrett said. “However, just for sake of argument: If someone in that network is an agent for Russia, could it have been Senator Conn? We know he was a ruthless bastard, not afraid to get blood on his hands, at least through Boggs.”
“Possibly,” Hunter said. “But I’m sure Conn went through many security clearance investigations for his positions on various Senate committees. Has anyone ever discovered any links between him and the Russians?”
“Not that I heard,” Garrett said. “I’ll ask the FBI to share whatever they might have.”
“Speaking of Boggs,” Annie said, her voice tight. “Tell him, Dylan.”
She was getting more upset by the minute. It would be a long night.
3
“The cops just found and ID’d Boggs’s body up in the Allegheny Forest,” he began, reclaiming his chair. “I’m sure they know now that somebody killed him, and how.”
“Oh, great,” Garrett said, raising his hand to rub his eyes.
“Detective Cronin—you remember him—already suspects me for the vigilante killings. But I had pretty much convinced him and everyone else that it was Boggs who murdered Conn and did those acts of sabotage. They theorized Boggs had a falling-out with his partner, Rusty Nash, and killed him, too. Now, though, with both of them murdered, they’ll be looking for other suspects. And Cronin knows Boggs sent a bomb to the Inquirer, targeting me. So, he’ll figure I had a motive to go after him.”
Garrett set his drink down carefully on the coffee table.
“All right. This changes everything. Dylan, you’ve got at least three adversaries hunting you. Cronin wants to nail you for a bunch of murders. Whoever hired Lasher, probably the Russians, want to expose your real identity and discredit you. And a professional hit man wants to kill you. The odds are high that one of those parties will succeed. It’s only a question of which one gets to you first.”
“I’m not worried about the Russians, because I’m sure they don’t know who I am. And Cronin has no solid evidence against me. But Lasher is another matter. As long as he’s out there, Annie and I won’t be safe.”
He got up again. Walked to the picture window. Felt their eyes on his back.
“Not as long as he’s out there,” he repeated, staring into the darkness.
“What exactly are you saying?” she demanded.
He turned to her. “You know exactly what I’m saying.”
&n
bsp; “I told you this killing would never end!” She gave a sharp nod toward Garrett. “Grant was right. Killing is in your DNA.”
“Easy, now,” Garrett said quietly, also rising. He approached her. “Let’s settle down, shall we? Talk this through. Dylan, do you mind sitting down?”
He took his chair again. Garrett settled into his own seat, looked at him, and sighed.
“Well, son, your timing couldn’t be any better.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s April Fool’s Day.”
“You’re a riot, Grant.”
“Seriously,” Garrett continued. “You’re being foolish. You don’t know where this character is. And you’re no cop. If they can’t find him, how can you?”
“They can’t find him if they’re not even looking. Has he been formally charged with anything? Is there anything in that file indicating any active investigations or open warrants?”
Garrett shrugged.
“There we are, then. A professional killer is gunning for me, and nobody is doing a damned thing about him. I can’t show up at my office anymore, because he knows where that is. Eventually, he could manipulate the staff there or at the newspaper and track me down. Or he’ll spot me at some news conference or public event. Unless I do what you suggest: run away and try to hide. Tell me, Grant: Do I spend the rest of my life running and hiding and looking over my shoulder?” His eyes caught Annie’s. “Do we spend the rest of our lives hiding, love? Or living apart?”
She looked down.
Garrett coughed, then cleared his throat.
“I’ll leave it to you two to work things out about that. I only wish I could help. But I’m under close scrutiny myself right now.”
“Annie told me you’re at war with Burroughs and Houk. That they’re trying to neuter Operations.”
“They already have. We had it out on Monday. They tried to goad me into quitting, but I didn’t take their bait. Now they’re looking to take my scalp if I make the slightest mistake. Sorry, Annie, I wanted to mention something sooner, but I didn’t dare try to communicate at H.Q.”
WINNER TAKES ALL: A Dylan Hunter Justice Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers Book 3) Page 16
