Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(73)
At five, he woke, found a thin layer of dew covering the blanket. He began watching again, alert now: his time was coming. At 5:30, he saw a suspicious-looking car pull into the hospital parking structure—there appeared to be two men in it. Tracking its taillights, he watched though his binoculars as the car drove to the top floor of the parking ramp, although there were empty spots on the two floors below.
He was too far away to tell if the men got out of the car; he heard no car doors slam, but they might have closed them quietly.
Over the next hour, when the car didn’t reappear, he decided that it was very possible that the occupants were FBI or Secret Service agents. He was not sure if they’d hear the shot from his .223—if they were inside a car, or if they were behind a hospital door, he thought they probably would not.
Just in case, he decided that he needed to be closer to the spot where he’d hidden the gun, so he could conceal it again after taking the shot. He crawled the fifty yards to the shed and lay down beside it. From that position, he didn’t have as clear a view of the playground as he did from his tombstone lair, and the rifle’s bipod wasn’t high enough to give him a clear view over the grass and weeds. He tied his coat, blanket, and camera bag into a bundle, thick enough that he could get a steady gun rest that was high enough to see over the weeds and the edge of the slope. He couldn’t see the parking ramp’s top floor, but that wouldn’t make any difference one way or the other. Once he took the shot, he had to re-hide the gun, and then move, fast, without looking like he was moving fast.
He was a full minute from his car, but unless he was unlucky, the feds, if they were there, wouldn’t be aware of the shot for at least that long; and if they were aware of it, they wouldn’t be aware of where it came from.
He settled into the new spot and checked his watch. Ten minutes to seven—forty minutes or an hour to wait. Now, if the kid only showed. After the previous attempt, maybe he wouldn’t.
* * *
—
A FEW KIDS began straggling onto the playing field at 7:30. More came behind them, waiting for the first bell. He picked out a boy who seemed to be about McGovern’s likely height and counted bricks on the wall behind them—three courses of bricks with concrete joints were about eight inches high. He counted eight three-brick courses up the school’s brick wall above the boy’s head and marked the height in his mind.
Then McGovern showed up.
At ten minutes to eight, the boy ambled around the corner of the school building with two other kids. He was wearing a ball cap, but his lower face looked right. Had to be right. Quick white smile, that square jaw. He was wearing a black Patagonia jacket and a blue shirt over dark slacks.
Dunn was breathing harder now, struggled to control it, but the adrenaline was on him. He pulled on plastic kitchen gloves, got the gun from under the shed, unzipped the case, took the rifle out, fumbled the magazine but then got it seated, jacked a shell into the chamber, put the gun on top of his jacket. He used the binoculars to spot the kid again. He was still standing with two others and they were looking toward the hospital and the kid jerked a finger at it and laughed.
He was standing still.
Dunn went to the scope, found him. Thought about windage—but there was little or no wind at all, not even enough to stir the leaves on the trees. Without moving his eye from the scope’s eyepiece, he fumbled the binoculars back into the camera case. He clicked the safety off, steadied the gun, holding five feet over the kid’s head.
Said to himself, Ready, set . . .
He breathed out, and the gun seemingly fired of its own volition, a sharp crack and a light punch to his shoulder. Less than a half second later the kid folded up like a broken kite.
And Dunn was moving: gun and the case shoved under the shed, ten seconds gone, ten more seconds gone getting the concrete block perfectly back in place. He rolled up the rest of his gear, duckwalked into the scrubby trees, then got to his feet and jogged through the saplings toward the street. He stopped a few yards before he got there, then strolled casually out of the cemetery, up the hill and around the corner to his car.
He opened the driver’s-side door, threw the camera case onto the passenger seat, started the car, and was gone.
He’d never looked back at the school, never looked to see if the kid was really down. He’d find out soon enough, he thought: now the problem was moving quickly and safely away, turning corners out toward the freeway, then getting back down south. If he hurried, he’d be at work in half an hour, building an alibi . . .
Calm, he thought. Needed to be still, calm, isolated during the day, to ask no questions about news.
But now he pounded the steering wheel with the palms of his hands. In his heart, he was thrilled.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
The phone rang at the wrong time and Lucas snapped awake, already feeling the dark vibration: “What?”
“Somebody shot a kid at the same goddamn place the guy got caught yesterday,” Jane Chase shouted at him.
“What senator?”
“No senator—the senator’s kid is hiding out. This was another kid, nothing to do with politics.”
“He gonna die?”
Long pause. “He’s dead.”
* * *
—
LUCAS, BOB, AND RAE got to the school thirty minutes later. Bob and Rae had already been up, Lucas pulled on jeans and yesterday’s shirt and ran out the hotel room door and down the stairs to the garage, where the other two were waiting for him.