John Sandford - Mortal Prey

"It's gonna be hard taking her alive," Lucas said. "I think she'll fight."

"I'll take that," Malone said. And after a moment of silence: "I think I've got a pound of yellow cheese goop stuck to my teeth."

Lucas lay in bed that night, listening to the trains going by along the waterfront. There was no good reason for it, but the sound of distant trains and distant truck traffic, trucks downshifting to climb a hill, left him feeling moody. People going places, doing things, while he was here in bed, alone, staring at the ceiling. He'd talked to Weather, and she was feeling fine, although beginning to wonder how much longer he'd be in St. Louis.

"I'd just like to see you," she said. "I'm getting a little lonesome."

"I'd like to see you, too. I'll give this a couple more days, and then if there's nothing definite happening, I'll run up for a day or two."

"Fly?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Brave of you."

"How's the kid?"

"Strong little thing. I think he or she is gonna be a soccer player."

"Not if I have anything to do with it," Lucas said. "I've already cut down a hockey stick."

"Still thinking about an ultrasound…"

"C'mon… that's the easy way out."

"You've already got a daughter."

"Two daughters would be wonderful. A son would be excellent. I really don't care. I just pray that the kid's healthy."

"Maybe come up for a day or two… at the end of the week?"

"Over the weekend, if nothing's happening. A guy down here told me about a weird way to induce labor. I'll show it to you when I come up."

"It's too early, Lucas."

"It doesn't always induce labor. It has other uses…"

After he rang off, he wondered what Rinker was doing. She was almost certainly holed up somewhere, alone, or with a scared friend like Hill, who probably didn't want her around, and might even betray her, given the chance. That must be really lonely. The thought gave him no comfort, and the night went slowly, patches of sleep mixed with weary semiconsciousness.

He hoped, as he looked at the bedside clock at five in the morning, that they took Rinker clean. Either grabbed her or killed her, but ended it. That the FBI ended it. That he didn't have to…

When Lucas arrived at the FBI offices in the morning, still sleepy, Mallard gave him a cup of good coffee and said, "Hill gave up Rinker's car and license tag. California plates. We're running them now, and every cop in St. Louis is looking for them."

"Are you going to Memphis? To talk to Hill?"

"I thought about it, but I decided to stick here… You ever hear of a lawyer named Ann Diaz? In Memphis?"

"No. Should I?"

"She's representing Hill. I got a call from the Memphis guy this morning-he talked to Hill last night, with Diaz present. Hill said that Rinker showed up on her doorstep, threatened to kill her if she thought about going to the police, and threatened to turn her in if she didn't stay straight… Hill says she was so scared that she froze for a couple of days, and then ran for it."

"Did your guy ask her how she managed to pack up everything in the place?"

"Yeah. She said that Rinker went out every day-and that she pretended that she was going to work, watched until Rinker left, then ran back, threw everything in her car, and took off. She said she packed it out of the car and mailed it to her folks, and then headed down to Memphis. She says if we don't get Rinker, Rinker will kill her."

"It's bullshit, Louis."

"I think so… but the problem is Diaz. She's pretty well known, she's got some clout in D.C., connections with all kinds of feminist groups. She could make Hill a cause. And she's tough. She won't let Hill give us anything that's not scripted."

"What're you saying?"

"Hill's gonna be a dry hole."

Lucas shrugged. "That's the way things work now. Fifty years ago, you could have taken her down the basement with a couple of steel fishing poles, and beaten the shit out of her, and after she confessed, you could've hanged her on Wednesday. Now it's just a bunch of sissies whining about civil rights."

"Thanks," Mallard said. "I enjoy being mocked before lunch."

Lucas raised his coffee cup in a semiserious toast. "Rinker was a step ahead of us, Louis. But Malone's right. It's only a half-step now. We would have found her yesterday. If she hadn't decided to book, we would have had her."

"You think she spotted us?"

"Yeah. Maybe when we were going around to the houses, or maybe she spotted the guys running in after the phone calls. But we were close."

"All right. So let's go talk to these assholes."

"I want to talk to you about that. About the approach. About tactics."

The meetings between Mallard and Malone for the FBI on one side, and the four hoods on the other side, were like the Israelis and the Palestinians working on a deal, Lucas thought-everybody smiling and lying like motherfuckers, but still, messages were sent and received, both ways. Mallard told all four of them flatly that the FBI had tried to protect Richter and Levy, and had failed, and that they believed Rinker would be back.

"She's had a lot of time to think about her approach. I'm not sure we can stop her without your help. Or even with your help," he told them.

Giancati and Ferignetti denied having anything to do with Rinker-Ferignetti said he'd never met her, didn't know Ross except to nod to him, and said he planned to carry on with business as usual. He didn't have bodyguards because he didn't need them.

Giancati, on the other hand, was leaving for England.

"You seem to think that there's some reason she'd be after me, but I don't think so," he said. He was a round, bald man, but his fat was tough fat, the kind of fat that you'd wear yourself out hitting on. He looked like he should smell of stubby cigars, but instead smelled of vanilla. "All my business is on the up-and-up, and always has been. I mean, over the years, I suppose, I'm gonna bump into some of these supposed hoodlums in my business…"

Blah blah blah, Lucas thought, listening to him. A wall of bland unresponsiveness. But the kicker was, Giancati was getting out of town with his wife, and nobody else knew, he said, and nobody would know unless the FBI called up Rinker and told her.

"If she wants me, and can find me over there, then God bless her, because half the time, I can't even find myself when I'm there."

"You go there often?" Malone asked.

"All the time. My wife's parents came from Newcastle, and my mother came from Dover and went to school in Calais. The east country is my favorite place in the world…"

Blah blah blah…

Dallaglio looked like a book editor or an accountant-tall, thin, harried, quizzical, with a caterpillarlike mustache on his upper lip. He did not look like a man who may have contracted a dozen hits. His wife, on the other hand, was short, rounded, and loud, and looked capable of doing any amount of killing. They had three armed bodyguards in the house: One of them, a former FBI agent, had known of Mallard, and said so. Mallard asked him, "You think you can cover him?"

"Nobody will get inside of twenty feet, but if Rinker has rifles… what can we do? We've told Mr. Dallaglio that."

Dallaglio 's house was a neo-Baroque prairie-style gothic, Charles Addams out of Frank Lloyd Wright, with decoration chosen equally from the Renaissance and Miami Beach. He led them through the carved walnut double front doors, through a highly rugged interior to an indoor patio around a lap pool, offered them Cokes from a pool-side refrigerator, and sat everybody down on plastic gliders. "I have no idea why she killed Nanny. He was a good man-looked after his family," Dallaglio said. "If he was involved in any wrongdoing, I wouldn't know about it-our relationship was strictly business."

But under the blah-blah-blah he was panicked, and so was his wife. His wife, Jesse, said, "We only met her because Nanny was involved in a couple of business relationships with John Ross, and she worked for John. And she was a friend of John's wife, going back a while, when they both worked at his liquor warehouse. She was like a bookkeeper, but she was really outgoing, and that's how we knew her. We were in Wichita once, after she quit working for John, and we went to her bar. It really wasn't our style, but she seemed nice. That's all we knew about her."