Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(57)

More shouting and a car’s engine howled in the parking structure and brakes squealed and more men were shouting, and looking down toward the open walls of the structure, Dunn saw five or six men in suits pointing guns at somebody that he couldn’t see, on the far side of the ramp.

And he thought: It’s somebody else. My God, somebody else was there to take a shot and the police had staked out the parking ramp. And he, Dunn, was right there, above them, with a rifle, and nobody was looking at him, nobody was coming.

He pulled the rifle off the camera bag and low-crawled over to the tool shed, hurriedly pushed the gun back in its case and shoved it as far as he could beneath the shed. Then he crawled back to the camera bag, put the binoculars in the bottom of the bag with the lenses on top of them, crawled toward the street, and when he was eight or ten yards out, peeked from behind the screen of trees.

Nobody.

The screaming from the parking ramp had stopped. He slung the bag over his shoulder, walked out of the cemetery and over through the neighborhood to his truck. He sat in the truck, shaking, and not from the cool weather.

So close.

He wondered if the other man was one of the two people he’d sent the letter to—or if he was the man who’d sent a letter to Dunn. No way to know, unless there was media coverage. He caught his breath, started the truck, and drove away from the cemetery into the brightening day.

So close.



* * *



—

HALFWAY BACK TO THE JOB SITE, he stopped at a convenience store where he’d once seen two wall-mounted pay phones. They were still there and he called WUSA in Washington, a CBS affiliate, and told the woman who answered the phone that there’d been a gunman arrested at the hospital above the playing field where the son of Senator Ross McGovern went to school.

He was curious about the failed shooter. Was it somebody he knew? The media should tell him. He went to work. By the time he got home at the end of the day, the story was everywhere.



* * *



—

THE MAN WAS IDENTIFIED at a press conference at Arlington police headquarters that included representatives of the FBI and Secret Service, who spent several minutes patting one another on the back for the great cooperation between their agencies, as if anybody really gave a shit.

Dunn had never heard of the guy, but everything about him seemed familiar. He was a lone wolf. He had, in the past, some contact with extremist groups, but apparently found them lacking in discipline and focus.

The press conference had been recorded before the news program, and a reporter, cued by the anchorwoman, said, “A source in the Arlington Police Department has told us exclusively that William Christopher Walton was found to be carrying a letter that suggested he might wish to take action based on the 1919 website which originally published photos of the children of prominent national politicians . . .”

He went on for a while, but Dunn thought: my letter.

His letter had been turned into a chain letter, completely out of his control. If the feds managed to trace that letter back to a sender, if somebody hadn’t been as careful as Dunn had been, then it was possible that Dunn’s name might come up.

He stood up, holding an empty beer bottle, and watched as the anchorwoman repeated what everybody had already said three times. He was in danger, no question of it.

But.

It hadn’t really occurred to him earlier: the cemetery was a perfect perch from which to shoot a kid at the Stillwater School. And nobody had come to look, because he was too far away, and the hospital seemed to be a perfect shooting platform, and much closer.

He could, he thought, go back.

The cops might or might not continue staking out the place, but given the media uproar, any other potential shooters would be scared away.

That’s what the cops would think. And Thomas McGovern’s parents.





CHAPTER

TWELVE



Jane Chase got Lucas up at 8:30 and said, in a preternaturally calm voice, “There’s been an arrest outside a school where Senator McGovern’s kid goes. No shooting, but the guy who was arrested had a high-end scoped .223 and was apparently planning to use it. He set up a spotting scope inside his car and had it focused on the school’s playground.”

“Who’s got him?” Lucas asked, as he got out of bed.

“He was arrested by a joint Secret Service, FBI, and Arlington police team, and we’re holding him at the federal building in Arlington.”

“Is there anything for me to do?” Lucas asked.

“You could find the people who set up the fuckin’ site.” She sounded angry.

“Working on it, without a lot of help,” Lucas snapped back. “So far, nothing’s panned out but one crappy drug bust. We’re talking to Patriotus today, if we can run down the leader, this Roland Carr guy. That could be something.”

“Make something happen, Lucas, goddamnit,” she said. “That’s what you’re here for.”

“I’d be happy to hear a specific suggestion,” Lucas said, still in a prickly voice. “Why don’t you get one of your HVE people to tell me exactly where Carr might be found. That would help.”

“I’m going over to the federal building. Maybe there’ll be something. I’ll check on the Patriotus guy,” she said. Then: “I’m actually running down a hallway. Sorry about the attitude . . . there’s a lot of stress right now. I’ll call you back.”