Her heartbeat slowed, a smile on her face, she was out of the suite.
—
SHE WALKED BACKinto the party, heart pounding a bit more. She got a drink, swirled it around her mouth simply to saturate her breath with the odor of alcohol. She talked briefly to more hospital people—three women and two men—a couple of Minnesota congressmen, and finally, hunting around, spotted Porter Smalls, hooked into some conversations, and let herself be pushed in Smalls’s direction. She got close, blundered into him when she suddenly turned, spilling a little of her drink.
Smalls: “Whoa. Almost knocked me off the bluff. Excuse me—I meant, off my feet.”
Grant threw back her head and fake laughed, reached out and grabbed Smalls by one of his blue-green tourmaline shirt studs—chosen, she thought, to precisely match his eyes, the vain motherfucker—pulled him close, and muttered into his ear, “I knew what you meant, you piece of shit. You keep telling people I was involved in your drunken fuckfest, I’ll hand you your ass.”
Smalls tipped his head back, laughed, leaned close, muttered, “Get your hands off me, you murderous cunt.”
Grant was laughing with him, and they broke apart, both satisfied. Smalls got to call her a cunt to her face, and Grant had him as a witness to her being present at the tail end of the party, in a conversation neither one of them would forget.
Smalls was exactly what she’d wanted: the most credible witness imaginable.
29
Lucas and the others ran down the driveway and along the dark street and saw a man come out of a house across the street from what must’ve been Douglas’s house. The man saw them coming, shouted, “FBI,” and Lucas shouted back, “FBI, Moy team,” and the man turned away and ran up Douglas’s driveway, stopped, and shouted back, “I think I heard gunshots.”
“You did,” Lucas shouted, as he ran up the drive to the front door, with Rae now right behind him, with her M4, and Bob a few steps behind her. How long had they been running? Less than a hundred yards, but in the night and rain? Fifteen seconds? Longer?
Lucas snapped at Rae, “Cover me.”
She already had the rifle up, and Lucas went straight to the front door and began pounding on it. Nothing inside moved that they could hear, and the door, a heavy slab of walnut, didn’t even tremble in its frame. Lucas stepped back and kicked it as hard as he could. It shuddered but didn’t give.
Bob said, “Get out of the way. Get out of the way,” and the big man kicked the door, the door buckling with the impact. He kicked it again, and something splintered. A third kick knocked the door open enough that Lucas could follow the muzzle of his gun through. As he did it, the surveillance team’s SUVs beganroaring into the driveway, their headlights flashing across the front of the house.
The first body was on the floor right in front of Lucas, and he shouted, “Man down.”
He kept his pistol up, felt Bob moving to his left, covering the hallway that led to the right wing of the house. Rae was moving to cover the hall to the left wing, and Lucas squatted by the body. “Parrish,” he said. Parrish was clearly dead, one eye open, one closed, two bullet wounds right in the middle of his forehead, another hand-sized blotch of blood on his back. In a half crouch, Lucas went on, glanced back, saw an FBI agent with a helmet and night vision goggles coming up behind him, a pistol in his hand.
“Don’t shoot me,” Lucas said, and the fed grunted once.
Up ahead, two more bodies were sprawled on the floor. Lucas called, “Two more down.” He quickly checked them: Claxson and an older man, who must be Charles Douglas, both shot at least three times, both dead.
Lucas said, “Goddamnit.”
Rae stepped beside him, and said, “Suzie? Carol? Wendy?”
“I dunno. Probably.”
Chase came up, staring, openmouthed, at the bodies. “My God...”
Lucas said to Rae, “Listen, let’s clear the house. You and Bob take the wings, I’ll go that way.” He gestured toward the back of the house. “But I think she’s running.”
And to Chase Lucas said, “Jane, I think she’s running, I think she’s in the woods. We need a lot of cops out here.”
“Got it,” she said.
Moy had just come through the door, and she turned to him, and said, “Andy...”
—
THE WINDOWat the side of the house blew out, and Lucas batted Chase to the floor, as he went down himself, Chase screaming, “I’m hurt! I’m hurt!”
Lucas crawled over to her, and asked, “Where?”
She said, “Leg,” and grabbed her left leg below her butt. And when she took her hand away, it was red with blood.
