John Sandford - Wicked Prey

"He has a southern accent," Lois said.

"He has a southern accent and he took you to a hotel room at the Radisson, on the twelfth floor, but he wouldn't let you look at the number, and then he took you back out and wouldn't let you look at the number when you were leaving," Frank said.

"Randy doesn't care about that," Briar said.

"But it's a good detail, and it makes it sound more real," Letty said.

"He only gave you seventy-five dollars," Lois said. "But he went in the bathroom and you stole the rest."

"You don't understand," Briar said. "Randy might make me tell the truth."

"You don't understand," Letty said. "You fib."

She was insistent, and Briar looked away and bobbed her head and said, "Okay."

Frank looked back from the driver's seat and said to Letty, "We need to get out and have a secret talk where Lois and Juliet can't hear us."

Letty frowned. "What?" He repeated himself and she asked, "Why?"

"Because." He pulled over to the curb, said to Lois, "I'll leave everything running, be back in a minute."

He got out and Letty followed, and they walked a way down the street, where they could see a bunch of cops in riot gear, apparently waiting for something to happen that was out of sight. Two more cops, on horses, were riding slowly toward the riot cops.

"Listen, you know about the problem I had," Frank said. "Everybody in town does."

"I heard something about it," Letty admitted.

"I've known a few of these girls ' sometimes, a lot of times, with the younger ones ' they don't think for themselves. They're so ' screwed up ' that they think what they're told to think. When Juliet says that Randy will make her tell-she knows that if Randy pushes her, she'll tell the truth. Then, maybe, she gets beat up. I don't know. I don't know what kind of deal you got going…"

"But she's got the money," Letty protested. "All she has to do is tell a little lie…"

"She can't," Frank said. He looked desperately embarrassed. "She does exactly what people tell her, because when she doesn't, she's learned that she'll get beat up. So, back there in the car, you got a little sharp with her, and she agreed. Because you made her agree."

"I didn't'"

"Yes, you did," Frank said. "These people, sometimes, they can't resist a push. When she gets alone with Randy, if he smells a rat and pushes her, she'll tell the truth."

Letty scuffed along, then looked back at the truck. "Poop." She turned, and started back, and then said, "Frank, thank you. You're a great guy for telling me this. You know, after, your problem."

Frank blushed and when they got back to the van, Letty popped the back door and said, "Juliet, let's walk."

They got out of the van and started walking up the hill and generally back toward the Radisson hotel. Juliet asked, "Do you want the money back?"

Letty, surprised, said, "No, of course not. That's your money. You got it from a fat guy named Stan with a southern accent who was wearing a blue-striped suit and a red bow tie."

Briar's head bobbed and Letty continued: "Frank told me that you might have a little trouble lying to Randy."

Juliet looked away. "I can't do it. Or maybe, I can, if he doesn't find out. But if he guesses, he can make me tell."

Letty said, "How much trouble have you had with the cops?"

Briar shook her head. "I've never had any trouble."

"You've never been arrested?"

She shook her head and then smiled, proud to show off her expertise. "Randy told me how to do this. Taught me. It's not hard. You gotta watch out for the undercover, but the undercover usually operates up where all the whores hang out. I ask' guys on the street. I pick them. If somebody picks me, I'm supposed to get pissed ' Keeps off the undercover. Randy, if Randy gets arrested for two more years, they'll put him back in prison."

"Okay. Well. I asked you because I've been in trouble with the cops," Letty said. "I even shot one. Twice. I mean, I shot him two different times, a couple days apart. I used to get busted by the highway patrol because I'd drive around when I was too young…"

Briar was looking at her openmouthed. "You shot a cop?"

"Yup. You can look it up on the Internet. My name is Letty West and you can look it up," she said.

"Okay," Briar said. "But we don't have an Internet."

Letty hooked her arm with Briar's. "Now. When I was in all that trouble, all the time, I had to tell a few fibs. Well, lots of fibs. The way I did this is, I made a little box in my mind, and I put the truth in that, and then I made the box small. So I knew what the truth was. But then, I imagined, you know, another truth. What might have happened. What people would rather have had happen. So, if the highway patrolman saw me downtown, and asked me if I was driving, and I was, I'd just say, "No, my mom brought me." That was a better truth for everybody, see? Then I didn't get in trouble, and he didn't have to give me a hard time ' Way back in my head, I knew what the truth was, but the fib was at the head of the line. That's what everybody wants to hear, anyway. Randy doesn't want to hear that I'm talking to you-he wants to hear that you, you know…"

"Gave a guy a blow job," Briar said.

"Yeah. Okay?"

"Okay." Another helpless head bob.

"So let's go sit on that bench, across the street," Letty said, pointing at a bench in a riverfront park. "We can practice. I'll teach you how to lie to Randy. Like I lied to the cops. You can tell me about blow jobs."

She really did sort of want to know.

Lucas, talking with the women at the hospitality committee, felt the ice going out: the break.

Lucy, the third woman, had said, "Raphael is dead."

Lucas and Dickens, the Secret Service agent, looked at each other, and another look passed between the three nervous women, and then Lucas said, "Who's Raphael?"

Cheryl Ann, the second woman, said, "Raphael Sabartes, this Latino guy'"

"Spanish," Fumaro said. "From Spain."

Lucy said, "He was part-time tech support back in the Washington office and he died. In June. June twenty-first, midsummer's day. They said alcohol and pills. The cops did. The police."

Lucas's eyebrows went up: "You think different?"

"Well, it was a lot of pills," Lucy said. "A lot of pills. Couldn't hardly have been an accident."

"Police said it could have been an accident," Fumaro said. "You're drinking, you can't get to sleep, so you take a pill. The pill makes you confused, and you don't think you've taken the pill, so you take another one. And so on."

"Thirty pills?" Lucy said. "He took thirty pills by mistake?"

Cheryl Ann said, "Then there was his girlfriend."

Dickens: "What about the girlfriend?"

"Very pretty Latina, Mexican, I think, but older than Raphael," Cheryl Ann said. "Raphael was about twenty-five; this woman, I think, might have been in her thirties."

Lucy snorted. "She'd never see forty again, if you ask me. She took care of herself, but she was no spring chicken."

"Raphael liked her," Fumaro said.

"Raphael loved her," Lucy said. To Lucas: "I don't think Raphael was very sexually experienced."

"He was sort of odd-looking," Cheryl Ann confirmed.

"Like a Picasso," Fumaro said.

"So this good-looking older woman who shares his heritage ' well, some of it, anyway, she can speak Spanish ' she eats him up," Lucy said. She leaned toward Lucas: "Then he died, and she never even came to the memorial service."

Lucas said, "He could have put together these rooms and names and organizations?"

Cheryl Ann snapped her fingers: "Like that. You know what? He was moody, that's what we told the police, he was moody, but we never saw him happier than after he hooked up with this woman. Why would he commit suicide?"