Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(19)

Dunn called, “Randy—it’s Elias Dunn. I thought that was you. This where you live?”

Stokes called back, “Hey, El. Yeah. What are you doing out here?”

“Got a client over by that Antioch Church. Anyway, I saw you, thought I’d honk.”

Then, what Dunn had hoped for: “Hey, whyn’t you come in, have a beer? I’ll introduce you to my sister.”

“Well . . . I gotta get over . . . well, maybe one beer. That can’t hurt. It’s been a long day.”



* * *



—

THE EXTERIOR OF THE HOUSE was in bad shape, but the interior was surprisingly habitable, neatly kept, homey, in a latter-day-hippie way. Bead curtains and fabric art. Rachel Stokes was apparently a quilter or a quilt collector, with a variety of quilts on the walls of the living room, all neatly displayed, hanging off one-inch dowel rods.

Rachel was in the back of the house, in the kitchen, when they walked through the front door, and Stokes called out to her, and asked, “You decent? I got a friend here . . .”

Rachel came out to look, wiping her hands on a dish towel, and seemed a little surprised when she saw a neat, well-groomed friend. She was dark-haired and short, early thirties, Dunn thought, a few pounds too heavy but pleasant-looking, with warm brown eyes. “I’m Rachel,” she said.

Dunn nodded and said, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. I saw Randy turning in here, just stopped to say hello. I’m an engineer, we’ve worked on a couple of jobs together.”

“An engineer? What kind?”

“Civil engineer, ma’am. I lay out roads and the curbs and the lots and drainage and so on. Randy and I are working on that new subdivision over by Gainesville.”

Stokes said, “I asked him to come on in for a beer.”

Dunn: “You know, I . . .”

“Oh, have a beer,” Rachel said. “I don’t drink and there are only two cans left, so that’ll be one less for Randy. I think he’s probably already had a couple more than he needed. And stop calling me ma’am. You sound like a cowboy in an old western movie.”

“Come on, Rachel,” Stokes said. “I’m, like, totally sober.”

“Whatever, I doubt one more or less is gonna hurt,” she said.

That’s when he should have shot them, Dunn thought later. Rachel went to the refrigerator to get the beers, and Dunn slipped his hand under the gun stock at his back, and to distract them, he asked, “Did you make those quilts?”

“That’s what I do,” Rachel said, from the kitchen. She came back out with two cans of Miller. “I’m Bear Wallow Quilts. That’s my business. Actually, I ought to talk to you about it. I’ve got this idea for quilts based on landscapes. You know, like you see from the air, all the different sizes of the fields and the way the woods ramble around, and the creeks follow the land . . .”

Dunn blinked and his hand slid off the gun stock. An aerial image of the landscape around Warrenton flicked through his mind, and he was struck by the beauty of it, interpreted as a quilt. “Boy . . .” He looked down at his feet, then back up. “That really would be something else. They are a quilt, aren’t they?”

Rachel picked up on that, and they talked around it at the kitchen table, and it was perhaps the most pleasant half hour Dunn had experienced in the past decade. He finished his beer, still feeling the cold press of the pistol at his back, but said goodbye, especially to Rachel, and left.

Out in the car, he figured he’d screwed up. They needed to go, and he’d been unable to do it. He had to harden his heart, he thought. Had to harden his heart.



* * *



—

HE THOUGHT ABOUT that the entire next day; and he hardened his heart as he worked, laying out the subdivision that was being carved out of the red dirt of a former farm. He sometimes used an independent surveyor, but on this job, did the surveying himself, working with a rodman and two assistants. They were all taciturn men who’d worked together on other projects and moved quickly and efficiently with almost no chatter; they even ate lunch separately.

At the end of the workday, he drove around the subdivision until he spotted Stokes, leaning on his shovel at the end of a new culvert. He got out of his truck and walked over to Stokes and said, “Listen, what time are you getting home?”

“Couple beers, probably about seven. Why?”

“I found some old color aerial photographs at my house. I thought I might drop them off for your sister to look at. There are some interesting quilt ideas in there.”

Stokes shrugged. “Sure. You could drop them off anytime, though.”

Dunn shook his head: “I think it’d be better if you were there. I mean, she doesn’t really know me. Semi-strange man, and all.”

“Okay. Come by at seven-thirty. I’ll be there. I think Rachel kind of liked your looks, if you know what I mean.”

“She seemed like a real nice girl,” Dunn said.

“She is a nice girl,” Stokes said.



* * *



—

BETWEEN THE END OF THE WORKDAY and seven o’clock, Dunn did nothing but shut down all of his softer thoughts about Randy and Rachel Stokes. They had to go. They knew about him—as they were sitting around the kitchen table the night before, Rachel had asked about the weird website he’d sent her brother to, and he’d managed to laugh it off. “Something a guy told me about, and the way Randy talks, I figured it was up his alley.”