Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(36)

“Tell you what. I’ll line up a couple of agents, have them nearby when you go in,” Chase said. “Then, if there’s trouble, you hide behind the couch and we come crashing through the back door with guns blazing.”

“The thing most people don’t know about couches, is that they’re really good cover,” Lucas said. “In movie shootouts, you see people hide behind them all the time. Got those big bulletproof steel plates inside them.”

“Call me when you’re close,” Chase said. “Try not to get any davenports shot.”

“Wait. Was that a pun?”

But she was gone.



* * *



—

LUCAS TOOK A BAD off-ramp, got tangled up in some side streets that his phone nav didn’t seem to recognize, finally got reorganized and back on I-71 heading northeast into the suburbs. He got off I-71 and onto a back highway called Wilmington Road.

He called Chase, said he was about there; she said two agents had already spotted Oxford’s house and were parked a few hundred yards away. “Turn your phone on, call them, then stick your phone in your shirt pocket and leave it on. I’m texting you the number.”

“Okay.”

There were a variety of houses and businesses along the road, some older, some newer, some close together, some with expansive lawns and fields around them, mailboxes sitting on posts along the roadway. When the numbers on the mailboxes started getting close to Oxford’s, he pulled off the highway, called the feds, said he was going into Oxford’s house, and they said they’d be listening.

John Oxford lived on a low hill, in a broad two-story white house with an open front porch and a well-kept, sweeping lawn that ran down to the highway. A middle-aged woman wearing jeans, a long-sleeved blue shirt, and a straw hat was driving an orange riding lawnmower across the lawn, and when Lucas turned up the gravel driveway, she lifted a gloved hand in greeting and kept cutting.

Lucas went to the top of the hill and found a parking pad to the left side of the house, with a three-car garage in back. He parked and walked around to the front door. A screen door was closed, but the interior door stood open, and he could hear a television playing inside. Lucas pushed the doorbell. A dog started barking and a hulking old man with a gray beard, using an aluminum cane, came trudging toward the door, followed by a sleek gray dog the size of a German shepherd.

The old man stepped up to the door, peered through the screen, and said, “Well, goddamnit anyway. You’re that marshal. Davenport. I’ve seen the pictures of you.”

Lucas nodded, and asked, “How are you, John?”

“Not as good as I was one minute ago, in there watching the TV.” The screen door was held shut with a simple hook and he unhooked it and pushed it open and said, “You better come in.”

Lucas followed him into what, in an old farm house, would have been called the parlor, a small side room with a couch and two overstuffed chairs; Oxford pointed at one of the chairs with his cane and dropped onto the couch. The dog lay down by his feet and closed its eyes. The screen-covered window was open. The lawnmower continued to drone up and down the yard, and Lucas could smell the fresh-cut grass.

“You have a hip problem?” Lucas asked.

“I have an age problem, as you’ll find out in twenty-five years or so. Hip joints are okay, but there are a couple pieces going bad in my lower spine. Not much to be done about it.”

“Sorry about that,” Lucas said.

“I’m not going to tell you a hell of a lot about the militia except there’s nothing illegal about it,” John said. “Bunch of friends out politicking.”

“From what I’ve seen, there’s more to it than that,” Lucas said.

John frowned and said, “Let me see. You were down at Milton’s place, but you wouldn’t have gone there if you already knew about me. Milton didn’t tell you anything, so you must have tracked his phone call to my phone. Some of the boys said we should all have those cheap phones—burners?—but I thought they were an unnecessary expense. Guess I was wrong about that.”

“Well, you know . . . technology. It’s hard to keep track of,” Lucas said. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to arrest you. Not yet anyway.”

Oxford grunted and said, “Not yet.”

“The government doesn’t have much information about your group. You’ve covered it up pretty well. But there are rumors about you and the rumors somewhat fit what we know about that website that I asked your Washington guy about.”

“What do the rumors say?”

“That you might not be afraid to use guns.”

“That’s horseshit,” Oxford said. “We might shoot in self-defense, we might train for that, but we’re not cold-blooded assassins. That’s all we were training for out at Milton’s place, self-defense. We were making a point about self-reliance.”

“I heard there was some sniper training going on.”

“I didn’t go out there, so I don’t know,” Oxford said. “Even sniping can be self-defense.”

“Depending on how you define self-defense,” Lucas said.

“Probably about the same as you do,” Oxford said.

“Or maybe a bit broader? People who hurt other people, maybe deserve to get hit?”