Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(61)

Lucas took a step closer, squatted, as the crime scene guy said, “Not too close,” and looked at the bullet hole in Gibson’s face. No sign of a fight, no abrasions on his hands that Lucas could see. He’d simply been shot.

Lucas said, “There’s no powder penetration in the skin around the bullet hole. The shooter might have used something to muffle the shot, a towel or something.”

The crime scene guy squatted next to Lucas and said, “Look, there on his chest. See that white stuff? Looks like little specks of fabric. I think you’re probably right. We’ll bag it.”

“Huh.”

“And right there, by his hip, by his other hand . . .”

Lucas could see a black cord. He and the crime scene guy both edged around to the other side of the body, and they could see a thin plastic box under Gibson’s hip, like a cell phone, but too thick to be a phone.

“His recorder,” Lucas said. “We gotta pull that out of there. Right now.”

“That could be a problem,” the crime scene guy said. “We could lose some evidence.”



* * *



—

LUCAS CALLED JACKSON OVER, pointed out the plastic box, and after a brief argument with the crime scene guy, Jackson agreed they should pull the recorder, but should give the tech time to process the area right around it.

“Let’s go look at the apartment, then,” Lucas said.

Chase, who’d been watching from the driveway, said, “We’ve got a crime scene team on the way. They’ll help process the apartment. Since the murder happened here, we’ll mostly be talking about looking at his records, at his notebooks and computer and recordings and all that.”

The apartment, connected to the garage area by an interior stairs, was fairly large and an extremely efficient work space. What normally would have been a living room was more like a working library, with a long center table covered with notebooks, papers, and magazines; the walls were lined with overflowing bookcases, one section filled with military thriller fiction, but most of it was packed with nonfiction war and political histories. An odd-shaped musical instrument case sat against a wall, next to a music stand; somebody later told Lucas that the case contained a rare and expensive oud.

A small functional kitchen showed unwashed dishes on a breakfast bar, the remnants of a microwave taco dinner. The bedroom showed a queen-sized bed with a night table holding several more books and magazines, with a reading light hanging over a central stack of pillows.

Lucas stepped around the place, looking without touching, then said to Chase, “There’s nothing really for me, here. This is for your crime scene team. Let’s go see about that recorder.”



* * *



—

THE COUNTY CRIME scene tech had pulled the recorder from under Gibson’s thigh and had bagged it. “There appear to be several recordings,” the tech said. “I assume you want the last folder. The folder appears to have three segments . . .”

“Play it,” Jackson said.

The recording consisted of dictated notes of an interview with the leader of the group called Bellum, a Lawrence Gray, followed by dictated notes of an interview with the White Fist leader Toby Boone.

And at the end, they found a recording of Gibson’s murder.



* * *



—

“COP, PLEASE, C’MON, please, man . . .” Gibson began crying. “I’m not talking to him, I’m not giving him anything, please, man, he came to us, we didn’t go to him. You want to kill somebody, please please, man, kill Davenport, don’t do this. Did Toby send you? I bet Toby doesn’t know you’re here, we’re friends . . .”

A man’s baritone voice:

“Toby knows I’m here. The problem is, you saw Linc, and Linc, well, we can’t have any connections back to Linc, because Linc’s gonna kill himself a senator’s kid. If you’d gotten there two minutes later, we wouldn’t have a problem. But . . .”

“Cop, please. I will not tell a soul. I will not tell Charles. I will not say a word to any . . .”

BAP.



* * *



—

CHASE JUMPED: “Good God!”

Rae: “I don’t think he was present.”

“Man had some balls,” Bob said. “He knew what was coming and managed to record it and leave us some names.”

“Was Cop a name or a profession?” Rae wondered.

“The way he used it, I think it was a name,” Lucas said. “We got three people we’ve got to hit, and right now: Toby, Cop, and Linc.”

Chase said, “I’m aware of Bob and Rae’s skills, because I’ve seen them work, but they’re not enough. I’m calling in one of our SWAT squads, or maybe two of them. I’ll have HVE run Toby Boone, I know we’ve got stuff on him, but we need to run Cop and Linc to see if we can identify them. We need search warrants. This is gonna take a while.”

“We need to have a presence . . .” Jackson said.

“Of course. You’re invited, absolutely,” Chase said.

“We really don’t have a while,” Lucas said. “The school day is already underway, we had one possible shooter this morning. If this Linc’s waiting for school to get out . . . we could have another problem.”