Deadfall

“Prescott’s not on the phone, Alex. He’s right here.”

“I heard that,” I said, snapping at her, remembering that my landline didn’t make outgoing calls. “I’d like to use your phone.”

She was next to my bed, holding out my robe. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.”

I slipped it on and tied the belt, fumbling with it because my hands were shaking. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“I have no idea,” Tinsley said.

I walked into the living room. James Prescott was flanked by two men—the agents Bart Fisher and Tom Frist, whom I had met in his office the first day. They were each dressed in jeans and outdoor jackets—country gentlemen ready for a hike in the woods.

“I’m sorry to wake you, Alex, but it’s all good.”

I cocked my head and looked at him. Good for whom? I wondered.

“It’s the middle of the night,” I said. “You should have called.”

“I texted Kate. I told her to let you sleep until we arrived,” Prescott said. “You gave us a good lead, whether you realized it or not.”

Kate Tinsley was standing in the doorway to my bedroom, and Jimmy North in the doorway to the second bedroom. Prescott and crew were between me and the cottage door. I felt as though the room was closing in on me.

I didn’t remember giving Prescott any lead.

“I’ll bite.”

“It was your suggestion to get Amy Battaglia’s phone, to look for texts,” Prescott said. “Mike passed along the word that the DA often used her phone when he was at home, picked it up if it was close by.”

I felt queasy. I had put them into the private space of the DA’s wife, giving her even more reason to hate me.

“What’s good about that?” I asked.

“Battaglia’s text to Lily—your school friend—was there, like you thought.”

“Any mention of me?” I asked, swallowing hard.

“Yes. Lily replied to Battaglia,” Prescott said. “She told him that you advised her not to meet with him.”

It was no wonder, then, that Battaglia’s first two phone messages to me had an urgency to them. They were probably motivated by Lily’s mention of me in her text. That urgency had turned to anger by the last call, when the news clip placed me at the Met—not only with Lily, but with George Kwan. The combination of players must have caused the DA to go ballistic.

“The more important thing is that we’ve found Diana,” Prescott said. “The guys at TARU going over the phone records with Mrs. B’s luds and muds identified Diana.”

“That’s amazing.” I said, trying to shake off the effects of the sleeping pill. “Who is she?”

“Goddess of the hunt,” he said.

“I guessed that much myself,” I said, picking up the collar of my robe and holding it tightly against my chest. “I hope you can do better.”

“That’s the ‘who’ part of it,” Prescott said. “Diana’s also the name of a private club—like Saint Hubertus. A billionaire boys’ club for big-game hunters.”

“Paul Battaglia?” I asked.

“Amy called him two weekends ago, while he was holed up with his buddies at a game preserve. The number of the place shows up on her outgoing calls four times in three days. All she knows about it is that he went out there to meet with someone about a case.”

James Prescott had my complete attention.

“Battaglia and four others, as well as their host, were on the ranch together,” Prescott said. “It didn’t make the national news because the dead man wasn’t a Supreme Court justice, so the local paper just notes that one of them perished in a hunting accident.”

“Six people on a weekend trip, and one died?” I said.

“Yes, he was shot in the chest—friendly fire—by one of his companions,” Prescott said.

“The local sheriff must have deemed it an accident,” I said, noting the irony of that fact, like the Scalia death. “Private preserve of the rich and famous, right? Kind of a Dick Cheney moment, planting birdshot in the aorta of a crony.”

“No autopsy. No official inquiry,” Prescott said. “You’re right. Only this time it was an arrow straight to the heart, and not birdshot.”

“That takes real skill,” I said, shaking my head. “Shooting someone with a bow and arrow, I mean. Texas again?”

“No. This time, Montana.”

“So of those six worshippers of the goddess Diana who started the weekend together, one didn’t even make it off the preserve, and Paul Battaglia raises the death toll to two. Slim odds—two bull’s-eyes out of six,” I said. “I hope the other four have invested in bulletproof vests.”





THIRTY-FOUR


“Put some clothes on, Alexandra,” Prescott said. “I’d like you to come with us.”

“Let me call Mike,” I said, standing my ground.

“There’ll be time for that later. Just get dressed.”

“Where are we going? It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s okay, Alex,” Jimmy North said. “I’ll come with you.”

“Where?”

I had done a complete three-sixty in my bare feet, trying to figure out who knew what, and why I was the last to be told.

“Livingston, Montana,” Prescott said.

“When do the covered wagons pull out?” I said. “You must be kidding me.”

“That’s where the game preserve is. Big Sky country.”

“Take Jaxon Stern. He’s got more wild cowboy in him than I do.”

“I’m taking you, Alexandra. There’s a Challenger waiting for us at Westchester County Airport. Wheels up as soon as we get there,” he said. “We should be at Mission Field in Livingston in five hours. You’re the one I need.”

“A Challenger?” I said. “Really? You feds live the life. I have to go through hoops to get office permission to take Amtrak to DC.”

“I’ll explain, but you have to get a move on.”

“And now you need me, James? That’s rich,” I said. “There’s something about this that doesn’t smell right.”

I crossed my arms and waited for more of an explanation.

“The people we have to talk to are in Montana, Alexandra,” Prescott said. “I can’t cherry-pick among them from long distance. I can’t try to figure out in the next hour who might have something to tell us and then realize I had the wrong witness. We have a unique opportunity to get to the site before anyone finds out what we’re up to. By the beginning of the week, word will be on the street. Someone will leak it.”

“You’re right about that. You ought to go. Especially since Amy Battaglia told you the DA was out there working on a case.”

“Hear me out,” Prescott said. “TARU moved as fast as they could on Mrs. Battaglia’s phone. The calls and texts on her device from the night of the murder were what made that assignment so urgent. Then they put her device aside until yesterday afternoon—which is when they went back to see what else was in her messages and hit this news.”

“Run with it, James.”

“We’ve got the member who brought Battaglia there as a guest,” Prescott said, “willing to take us to Livingston on the private plane, get the hunting guide to talk to us, dig down and find names of all the members—as well as any connections to the Order of Saint Hubertus.”

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