Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(101)
“I knew that,” Lucas said.
“Well, you had all those hockey pucks hitting you in the head since childhood, so I’m always uncertain of where you stand, brains-wise,” Smalls said.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Stay in touch. I would like to hear something before your friend Henderson does.”
* * *
—
AT DUNN’S HOUSE, Lucas pounded on the door, got no response. The older couple in the nearest home were no longer there, so he moved to the other side of Dunn’s house and a woman came to the door, peered through the tiny door window, then shouted through it, “Who are you?” and Lucas held up his ID and badge and she opened the inner door.
“Federal marshal?” She had dirt on her face, as though she’d been cleaning behind the refrigerator.
“Yes. Have you seen Mr. Dunn today?”
“What’d he do?”
“We don’t know if he did anything,” Lucas said. “Have you seen him?”
“Yes, I have,” she said. “He was loading things into his truck early this morning and then he took off. To where, I don’t know. Somebody told me once that he has a cabin in West Virginia, but I don’t know that for sure. We don’t talk much. I think he went over to the Bixbys’ place before he left. The Bixbys are across the street in the red house.”
Lucas thanked her and headed across to the Bixbys. Again, the only person home was a woman, older, with carefully set silver hair and a pale British complexion and long British nose. She also looked through the door window before opening the door, although she didn’t shout through it. Lucas showed her his ID and asked about Dunn.
“My husband . . . they’re not exactly friends, but they talk from time to time.” Her accent was from farther south, like South Carolina. “Elias is a civil engineer and my husband is a building contractor, so they have things in common. I didn’t see Elias this morning, but I heard him talking to Frank. My husband, Frank. Elias was going on a short trip but won’t be here for the trash pickup, so he asked if he could leave a bag of trash with us, if we’d take it out for him.”
“That was this morning? And you still have the trash bag?”
“Yes, we do. We have a little trash and recycling corral out back. The bag is there. Do you need it?”
“Yes, I believe so. I’ll know in a few minutes when some FBI people show up. Why would Mr. Dunn leave his garbage?”
“Because we have crows,” the woman said. “They know all about the bags, and they’ll peck right through them to get at the contents and then they spread the stuff all over the street.”
“Okay. Could you show me that corral?”
* * *
—
THE CORRAL WAS A TEN-FOOT-WIDE square of red bricks surrounded by a five-foot-high woven fence, with a trash bag sitting by itself, in the middle of the square. Two rakes and a shovel were leaning against the fence, with an upended wheelbarrow.
“And that’s Mr. Dunn’s trash?”
“Yes, we haven’t put ours out yet.”
Lucas thanked the woman and walked into her backyard and called Chase. “Where are you?”
“We’re on the way.”
“Do you have a warrant?”
“Not yet. It’s a Sunday, that presents certain logistical difficulties. But we’ll get one.”
“I have a bag of trash that Dunn took to a neighbor’s house this morning. He said he was going on a trip and asked them to put it out for him.”
“Excellent. We don’t need a warrant for that. We’ll transport that as soon as we get there. We’ll be there in twelve minutes, according to my app.”
* * *
—
THE FBI ARRIVED IN THREE FORD SUVS. Chase hopped out, looked at Dunn’s house, and said, “We’ve got his truck make, model, and tag number. We’re looking for it. The judge who handles Sunday warrants may be playing golf, but I just got a text that says somebody knows where he is, and have gone to look for him. Where’s the garbage?”
Lucas showed her the garbage bag, and two minutes after that, the bag was on its way back to Washington.
The feds had the Rapid DNA technology that could provide a fast DNA result within two hours, although its findings couldn’t be used in court. What it could do was confirm that a suspect was almost certainly the producer of a particular sample of DNA. Whatever was in the garbage bag could be used to match DNA from the rifle used to shoot James Wagner and from the blood at the Stokeses’ house. A more scientifically advanced and court-acceptable DNA sample would be obtained from biological samples taken from the house and from Dunn personally, when they caught him.
Lucas sat with Chase in the back of one of the Fords, with two more feds in the front seats, and filled them in on the connection between Dunn and the Stokeses, and provided them with the names of the people at the job site who could confirm the connection.
“Do you think he’s running?” one of the front-seat feds asked.
“I don’t know why he would think we were closing in, unless he’s on a DNA register somewhere,” Lucas said, evading the question.
Chase said, “He isn’t. We don’t know his name at all, not from before today.”