At the mail booth, he checked for movement inside and out, grabbed the doorknob and put all of his weight against the door, pushing it sideways toward the door hinges, and with an additional punch from the shoulder, the door popped open. He looked around again, stepped into the booth. The backs of the mailboxes were all identified by name and apartment number. Lucas scanned them, found Ritter’s. A half dozen pieces of mail sat inside it, and he quickly thumbed through them while listening for footsteps. Three ads, an electric bill, and a bank statement.
He stuck the bank statement in his jacket pocket, replaced the rest of the mail. The lock on the door had a turn bolt on the inside, and he unlocked it, stepped outside, and pushed the door shut behind him. Maybe the mail carrier would think he’d forgotten to lock it.
He walked outside, let the stress fall away in the sunshine. Mail theft: a federal felony, if anybody found out about it, but nobody would.
He hoped.
* * *
—
HE WALKED BACK around the building. The heat was stifling, and though he’d only been out of the Evoque for a few minutes, the interior was already intolerably hot. He started the truck, stood outside briefly, peeling off his jacket while the air conditioner took hold, got back in, and opened Ritter’s bank statement.
The statement listed routine payments to fifteen or twenty different places—gas, electric, water, cable, Visa, Amex. The incoming money was more interesting. He found what appeared to be weekly paychecks from a company called Flamma Consultants.
He stuck the letter in his hip pocket: he’d shred it and flush it down the toilet back at the hotel.
* * *
—
AS HE WAS HEADED BACK across the Potomac, he took a call from Rae Givens. “We talked to your man Forte, and we’re on our way down to New Orleans right now. We’ll be flying back straight into D.C. He got us rooms at the Watergate Hotel. I said, ‘Are you kiddin’?’ and he said, ‘No, why would I be?’ I said, ‘Okay’ . . . So we’ll see you there tonight.”
A second call came from Forte himself, with information about Ritter. “There’s not much on him in the files; we’re not allowed to see his income tax returns, but we did take a look at his Army records and his passport. He did three tours in Iraq, got good evaluations, landed a job with Delta and looked like he was in there for life. Instead of reenlisting a third time, he dropped out. His passport would suggest he’s been out of the country, in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, for most of the time since then.”
“A guy who knows his way around. A hard guy.”
“Yes . . . Did you get anything?”
“I did. I’ll tell you, Russell, I’m going back to the hotel to write this up, but, basically, Smalls’s accident was no accident. It was an assassination attempt and a murder, and Ritter was in it up to his neck. His truck was used to run Smalls and Whitehead off the road.”
“Lucas, you gotta be sure,” Forte said. “It’s too hot to be wrong.”
“I am sure now, but I can’t prove it yet. Between us, we have to figure out where to go with this. Think about it.”
“Write it all up, in detail, don’t leave a single fuckin’ thing out of it. If they smell you coming for them, they might not try to beat you up again. And next time they might come with guns.”
“Bob and Rae . . .”
“Are a good idea, but might not be enough. I need to know everything you get, in case you have a problem.”
Like getting shot, Lucas thought, smiling to himself. “I’ll send you an email, Russell. Later this afternoon.”
* * *
—
AT THE HOTEL, Lucas made a few notes, then shredded Ritter’s bank statement and flushed it. That done, he kicked off his shoes, dropped onto the bed, and used his burner phone to call a St. Paul friend named Kidd, a painter and an expert in computer databases. Kidd’s wife, Lucas believed, was a jewel thief, but that was another story.
Kidd came up, and Lucas identified himself—“Oh-oh. Using a burner?”—and asked Kidd what his favorite charity was.
“Other than myself? The Minneapolis Institute of Art. Weather’s a big deal over there, I understand,” Kidd said.
“I will give a thousand dollars to the institute if you can dig up some stuff on the Internet and tell me how I could have done it myself,” Lucas said.
“What’s it all about? That you have to use a burner to even ask me the question?”
“It’s about a murder and an assassination attempt . . .”
Kidd had helped Lucas with the original investigation of Taryn Grant. Like Lucas, he believed that Grant was a murderer and that she had gotten to the Senate through a murderous political trick. Lucas explained about the accident, and what he’d found about Ritter, and told him about Jack Parrish and Heracles.
“I, uh, would have a hard time explaining how I came up with the connection between Ritter and Flamma,” Lucas said. “I need to be able to make the connection on the ’Net. You know, like I did some research, and there it was. I need it quick.”
Kidd said he’d start looking. “I’d like to see you get Grant. She’s your basic fascist thug, but with great tits,” he said.
From the background, Lucas heard Kidd’s wife, Lauren, shout, “Hey! I’m standing right here.”
“Call me at this number,” Lucas said. “Don’t use my regular one. I worry about being tracked.”
“As you should,” Kidd said. “Give me an hour or two.”
* * *
—
LUCAS SPENT AN HOUR putting together an email to Forte, explaining how he’d tracked Ritter, leaving out the part about stealing the bank statement. He saved the email to his laptop but didn’t send it. He went back to the bed, closed his eyes, and thought about the case.
So far, he had nothing on Grant or Parrish. They were the ones he needed to get to. If he could nail Ritter for the murder of Whitehead, he could talk to the West Virginia cops about a prosecution. Looking at life in a West Virginia prison would be a powerful incentive to talk about Grant and Parrish.
Of course, Ritter might be one of those hard-nosed stoics who’d take pride in not talking, who’d go to prison first.
* * *
—
KIDD CALLED BACK.
“You said you already knew about Heracles. If you look at the company’s incorporation papers—I’ll send you a link—you’ll find the list of officers. If you run the officers, you’ll see that they’re also the officers of two other companies, Flamma Consultants and Inter-Core Ballistic Products.”
“Wait—there’s a direct connection among Heracles, Flamma, and Inter-Core?”
“Not technically direct, but, yeah, they’re all run by all the same people.”
“Kidd . . . this is serious shit. I’m throwing an extra ten dollars at the museum.”
“Thanks, ol’ buddy. Anyway, if you run Flamma Consultants, you’ll find an online article published in last September’s Combat Tech Review magazine called ‘CanCan Dancers.’ In the gun world, suppressors—silencers—are called cans. In that article, you find a picture of Ritter and a couple of other guys all geared up, testing some big-bore silencers at a rifle range in Virginia . . . and Ritter is ID’d as an employee of Flamma. That’s how you tied them together.”
“Excellent,” Lucas said. “I owe you.”
“Actually, you owe the museum. A thousand and ten dollars. The original Flamma, by the way, was a famous Roman gladiator, which fits with the whole Heracles We read the classics thing. Oh, and let me encourage you to look at that magazine article. Ritter was testing that silencer on an M2010 sniper rifle, which is like a .300 Winchester Magnum and has an effective range of twelve hundred meters. In other words, they can shoot you in the back from more than half a mile away.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Lucas said, “I’ll go hide under the bed. Listen, this Inter-Core Ballistics . . . I met this lawyer out here who told me an interesting story about a Pentagon bid . . .”
He told Kidd what Gladys Ingram told him about a company that had outbid her client on a contract for lightweight side-panel armor for military vehicles. Lucas was checking his notes as he described his meeting with Ingram: “Her client was Malone Materials. If you could check around and see what happened with that particular lawsuit . . .”