John Sandford - Mortal Prey

"We should be able to get the phone records of every person in the house, and all the house phones. See where they went," Sally said. "That's good. We could have all of that in a couple of hours."

"What we'll have is a few names, and most of them we should be able to eliminate immediately. So by tomorrow morning we should have the name of somebody who can get in touch with Rinker. Or who Rinker gets in touch with. And they won't know that we know. If Rinker calls whoever tipped her off, she won't be running, she'll talk for a while."

"We can move on her in five minutes," Sally said. "Have the choppers scattered around."

"We can do all that," Derik said.

"So we've got to talk to Jesse Dallaglio. Tonight," Lucas said. As an afterthought: "Does Ross know what happened at the airport?"

"Yes. I called the team leader out at Ross's and had him go in and tell him. They know."

"Maybe…" Lucas rubbed his nose, thinking. "You know what I'd do? I'd check to see if the Dallaglios used a travel agent or somebody outside the family to set up the trip. They almost had to-you can't just call up one of these jet services and drive out and go. They want to see the money, or they want a guarantee."

"You think a travel agent?"

"Well, when we first got onto Rinker, up in Minnesota, we were never able to track Rinker when she was traveling-it was like she was invisible. I wouldn't be surprised if all these Mafia guys like to keep their travel private. Maybe it's somebody Rinker knew from when she was traveling to kill people. Maybe there's a connection."

"If it is something like a travel agent, and we can figure it out, we could maybe get Ross to book a trip," Sally said. "You know, have him be sneaky about it, tell the agent to book him out of someplace like Springfield, and then just saturate the airport before he comes in. She'd have no way to know that we were onto her."

"That could work," Lucas said.

Derik said, "At least we're being… whatever that word is."

Lucas said, "What word?"

"You know…"

"Proactive," Sally said.

"So let's proact our asses over to Dallaglio's place and talk to Jesse Dallaglio," Lucas said.

A doctor was leaving the Dallaglios' when they arrived, a tall slender woman in what would have been a tweedy dress if it hadn't been ninety-eight degrees outside; and it still looked like tweed, even if it was some kind of light knotted cotton. Sally identified herself and said, "Did you put them asleep?"

"The children were exhausted. I gave them sleep aids, they're with their mother," the doctor said. "I left some sleep aids for Mrs. Dallaglio, but I don't know if she'll use them. She was resistant."

Inside the house, one of the bodyguards, still wearing bloody pants, said, "Mrs. Dallaglio's back with the kids in the bedroom."

"We'll wait," Lucas said. And, "There are ten guns around the house now. You've probably got time to get cleaned up if you want."

The bodyguard looked down at his pants. "Gonna burn these sons of bitches," he said. He looked around. "I'm gonna do that, get cleaned up. I'll be back in ten minutes." As he was going out the door, he added, "What a night."

A second bodyguard came padding down a hall as they stood around the living room, saw them, and said, "The kids are asleep. Jesse'll be with you in a minute."

More like five minutes, but when Jesse Dallaglio came out of the back, she'd managed to pull herself together. Her eyes were still puffy and red from crying, but the first wave of the shock had passed.

Lucas had seen it before: Women recovered faster than men from the death of a spouse. Lucas believed that both men and women expected the wife to live longer, so that women were somewhat braced for the departure of a husband, while a husband, in most police cases, was absolutely unprepared-unless, of course, he'd done the killing himself.

When that was a possibility, most homicide cops liked to take a quick, hard look at the husband, to see if he was either too pulled together or too demonstrative. Most innocent husbands simply dropped into dumb shock and stayed there for a while. It was an attitude not easily faked.

"I'm better," Dallaglio was telling Sally. "The girls are sick, and they're terrified. But they'll be okay. The doctor gave them some sleeping pills. What did you…?"

"Chief Davenport had an idea that we felt we had to look into," Sally said. "Could you tell us when you decided, for sure, to go with Executive Air? And when you decided what time you'd be leaving?"

She looked from Sally to Lucas to Derik, then back to Lucas as her hand came up to her mouth. "Oh my God. How did she know we'd be there?"

Lucas nodded. "That's what we were wondering."

Dallaglio turned away from them all and stared at a wall for a moment, thinking, then back to Lucas. "Exec Air had a problem. We have a deal with them, we get a rate, but they only manage three jets and all three of them were out. Two were coming back, but they didn't know until two o'clock when they'd be in, and when they could have one of them turned around. They told Paul to call at two-and that's what he did. They told us to be there at nine o'clock, or a little after."

"So you didn't know when you'd be leaving until two o'clock."

"That's right."

"Who did you tell outside the house? Paul's friends, your friends, your daughters' friends?"

Again, Dallaglio turned away, thought, and turned back. "Paul told at least two people, the Karens. We call them the Karens-it's Karen Slade and Karen English, they're the two assistant vice presidents at work, they're Paul's assistants. But I don't think either of them was around when Clara was here. Maybe Karen Slade, but she's a dear friend of both of us, her and her husband. It can't be Karen."

Sally was making notes. "Did you talk to anyone?"

"I called my sister, Janice, she lives down in Little Rock, but it wouldn't be her. The kids… we'd have to wait until tomorrow, but I don't think they called anyone. They're not really old enough to have telephone friends yet. I mean, Justy does, in a way, but it's the girl down the block and we hardly know her parents. I would be amazed if Clara Rinker knew them."

The bodyguard who'd been wearing the bloody pants came back, his hair damp, wearing a fresh shirt and pants. Jesse looked at him and said, "Sy, could you get James and check out back? We just heard a noise… We were about to go look."

"We'll check," Sy said, and he walked through the room into the family room, where they heard him talking with the bodyguard named James, and a minute later, they heard a door sliding open.

Jesse Dallaglio dropped her voice. "The people we really don't know in the house are the security people. There are eight of them-four of them came out to the airport with us, for all the good it did us-and they were here all the time. Every one of them has a cell phone, and Paul told them this afternoon that we'd be making a run for the airport. Two of them were coming to Newark with us. They were going to stay with us until we got on the plane tomorrow morning."

Lucas looked at Sally, who said, "We can talk to their boss and get the cell-phone numbers without them knowing about it."

"You'll have to use some pretty harsh language with the boss, so they won't be tipped."

"We can do that," Derik said.

"Okay," Lucas said. Back to Dellaglio: "Now, who else? The Karens, your sister, the security guys. How did you make the travel arrangements? A travel agent?"

"American Express," Dallaglio said. "We have a Platinum Card, and they have one of those call-up bureaus somewhere. They knew, but how would Clara get into that? I mean, it's not like we even talk to the same person every time. It's always somebody different."

Lucas said to Sally, "Okay, here's something dumb. Check the phones here, see if they're bugged. Rinker did that thing with the cell phone, with Levy-maybe she's got a high-powered phone tech working for her."