“They detained Claxson. Claxson didn’t say anything, asked to speak privately to his lawyer. They said he could, from his SCIF. He did that, and he called me, all of it on our burners, but we ran his burner through a shredder, so we should be clear there,” Parrish said. “He could talk only for a couple of minutes, but what I get is, the feds found Ritter’s safe-deposit box and took out a bunch of documents about some . . . irregular weapons deliveries. Nothing to do with us, not directly. Since it was Ritter, I expect your friend Davenport is out there stirring up trouble.”
Grant pointed a finger at Parrish. “But . . . But what if it’s Davenport trying to turn Claxson on the Smalls thing?”
“That was the second thing that occurred to me.”
“The first thing was worse?”
“Well . . . I’ve been involved in some of Claxson’s sales. It was a while back, but I was either already working for you or about to start working for you.”
“Ahhh . . .”
“Wait, wait—I don’t know that any of the documents involve those transactions. They might, but that would be purely unlucky. Still, I thought you should know about it. And that Claxson’s been arrested. If Davenport’s trying to turn him . . .”
“Would McCoy or Moore be willing to solve that problem? The Claxson problem?”
Parrish was shaking his head. “I can’t find either of them. I asked Claxson, and he said Moore dropped out of sight yesterday or the day before. He may be on the run. McCoy is still around, or was yesterday afternoon, but nobody’s been in touch with him since then. I cruised by his town house, didn’t see anything unusual, but I didn’t see his car, either. He may have been picked up, or, like I said, he may be running.”
“Coming apart,” Grant said. “The whole deal’s coming apart. How much do Moore and McCoy know about me?”
“Nothing more than your name,” Parrish said. “Basically, they know I work for you, and that I’m friends with Claxson. And I don’t care what Davenport suspects. As long as Claxson keeps his mouth shut, they can’t get me. And if they can’t get me, you’re fine, too.”
“I’m not fine,” she said. “I’m in trouble here. I mean, if the FBI has Claxson on illegal weapons deals, it’s possible that they could even get him on murder charges, depending on where those guns went. If they went to Boko Haram, God help us. Especially if they can get some of his operators to testify against him. Claxson might desperately need someone to deal. That would be you and me. Actually, it’d be me. I’m the big fish.”
They stared at each other, and Parrish said, “So . . . ?”
“Your sources may decide you’re toxic. Before that happens, you have to find out what’s happening with Claxson. Specifically, what the feds have got on him, if he’s in jail or going to jail—all of that.”
Parrish said, “I already made some calls. I’m friendly with Claxson’s PA. I’ll catch her somewhere this afternoon and find out what she knows. And she usually knows everything that goes on in that company.”
“Careful,” Grant said. “She’s an obvious source for the FBI as well. You might be talking to her and find out she’s wearing a wire or something . . . maybe under surveillance.”
“I can handle it,” Parrish said.
Another ten seconds of silence, then Grant asked, “If Claxson has to go away, could you handle it?”
“I was afraid you’d ask that,” Parrish said. “I’ll do some research. I’ve been over to his place—it’s over in McLean—any number of times. There’s woods behind his house, and he likes to barbecue on his back porch. And he likes to sit out there and drink. If the worst happens . . .”
“Are you good enough for that?”
“The shooting wouldn’t be a problem, the getaway might be. Like I said, I’d have to do some research.”
“You’d better do the research,” Grant said. “Don’t move without signaling me. But do the research.”
* * *
—
WHEN PARRISH WAS GONE, Grant worked through it and realized that if Claxson was going down, Parrish probably would as well. Parrish had worked with Claxson on several deals involving Army procurement and major weapons deliveries. Like Claxson, Parrish would be looking for somebody to deal, and he only had one choice likely to clear him out of a prison term: Senator Taryn Grant.
She walked back through the Capitol to her official office, brooding about it. She had twenty staffers in Washington, twenty more in Minnesota, and one of her Minnesota people was in town to brief her about a series of polls taken in the past two weeks on rural issues. She wanted to think, but she didn’t want to break her schedule, either, didn’t want to appear in any way disturbed.
She took the meeting: numbers and more numbers, and all the numbers said that she was still strong in Minnesota despite Smalls’s efforts to screw her. They’d come to the question-and-answer segment when her chief of staff stepped into the room, leaned over her, and whispered, “Jack needs just a moment. He’s in your office.”
“Let’s take a break,” she told the polling group. “Five minutes.”
In Grant’s office, Parrish handed her a piece of notebook paper on which he’d written “Claxson will be held overnight but will ask for bail tomorrow, and he’s expected to get it.”
She nodded, and wrote a note back: “We need a way to get face-to-face at a secure site and work this out. Not my SCIF, I don’t want him near my house. Someplace the cops won’t have bugged.” When he’d read the note, she took both pieces of paper and pushed them into her shredder.
26
Claxson’s phones held only one gift.
The iPhone, basically, was a long list of phone contacts, but with nothing recorded from recent calls—the phone was apparently wiped clean after each call, other than the list. Chase pointed out the one-button app for that.
“Lots of politicians have that app,” she said.
The phone wasn’t in Claxson’s name; it was registered to a Gerald D. Wilson.
The second phone, an off-brand burner, didn’t have that app. On the day after Claxson admitted flying to Omaha, he made two calls, and received two calls, all on the same anonymous T-Mobile burner phone.
With the phone numbers in hand, Chase jacked up the FBI phone experts. A half hour after they’d opened the phones, she told Lucas that one of the calls was to Clear Lake, Iowa, two more were from and to St. Paul, and the final one went through a tower west of Des Moines.
“That’s when they hit Weather and Last,” Lucas said. “Clear Lake is on the Iowa border, right off I-35, on the fastest route to the Twin Cities from Omaha. The last one was on I-80, on the way back to Omaha. That ties him directly to a murder.”
“But doesn’t prove it, unfortunately,” Chase said.
“Oakes made four lunch boxes for the flight out,” Bob said. “That’s Claxson, Ritter, McCoy, and Moore.”
“Unless one of them was Suzie or Carol Ruiz,” Lucas said. He turned to Chase. “We need to ask McCoy who Suzie is. Or Carol Ruiz. And if they’re the same person.”
“We don’t have a deal yet, but he’s been giving up that kind of information—filling in the employee list.”
“She might not be an employee,” Rae said.
“We’ll ask,” Chase said. “I’ll make a call.”
“Let me in to talk with him,” Lucas said.
* * *
—
MCCOY WAS DELIVERED to an interview room in the Hoover Building from an Arlington lockup at the insistence of both Chase and Bunch, McCoy’s lawyer, a happy confluence of requirements. He was escorted by two marshals. One of them recognized Rae from a training program, and asked, “You guys are running an investigation? How’d that happen?”
She nodded at Lucas, and said, “Political pull. It’s corrupt, but we fly Business Class.”
“Are you shittin’ me?”
* * *
—
BUNCH AND MCCOY were locked up to talk privately for a few minutes, and, when they were done, Lucas, Chase, and a Department of Justice prosecutor named Steve Lapham went in, along with the two marshals. Lapham told Bunch, “We have a number of questions for both you and Mr. McCoy regarding arrangements for testimony. But before that, Marshal Davenport has a question for Mr. McCoy that has no potential legal liability for Mr. McCoy, as far as we know.”