Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(75)

“Let’s go look at that hill,” Bob said.



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THEY WALKED BACK TO THE TAHOE, drove out two blocks, took a right up the hill, drove past the hospital, farther up the hill, and another right, and yet farther up the hill to a cemetery that looked to be abandoned, spotted with a few healthy trees, some that were dying, and a rash of saplings among the knee-high weeds. They got out of the car and walked across the cemetery, past the old crooked tombstones, their shoes wet from dew, to the edge of the hill looking down at the school.

“This is where I would have been,” Bob said. Bob was sniper-qualified.

“Where?” Lucas asked.

They looked and Bob pointed farther up the slope. “Closer to those little trees. Good for exfiltration, plus you couldn’t be seen from the street.”

They walked that way, along the edge of the slope and, halfway to the trees, Bob put his hand out, slowing Lucas and Rae.

“Somebody was sitting here—see? Where the weeds are crushed down? There’s no dew on them, so it was this morning.”

“Let’s get the feds up here,” Lucas said. He took his phone from his pocket.

“C’mon, man,” Rae said. “We’re the feds, too. Don’t be a fuckin’ bureaucrat. This is ours. Give it ten minutes anyway.”

Lucas didn’t have to think about it. He stuck the phone back in his pocket and said, “It looks like he went that way, up toward that shed . . .”

“He was crawling,” Bob said. To Rae: “Go run to the equipment bag, bring back some of those flags and some tape.”

“Yes,” she said, and she jogged off toward the truck. She was back in a minute, with a roll of yellow plastic tape and a bunch of playing-card-sized yellow plastic flags stuck on foot-long pieces of stiff wire. With Bob directing traffic, they laid the yellow tape along their own tracks through the weeds and pinned it with the flags. When they got to the shed, Bob pointed at a larger, round crushed spot in the tall grass next to an old cottonwood.

“He set up here.”

He moved to the right, bending over the weeds. “There we go.”

Lucas looked: a single brass .223 shell was nestled down in the grass.

They looked down the hill. The school seemed to be a long way away, maybe five or six football fields, though it was hard to tell exactly because of the change in elevation. The agents on the field looked about the size of ants, when seen by a person standing upright. “What he did was, he was up here more than once, he figured out the exact distance to the back wall of the school,” Bob said. “Then he looked up some ballistics tables and probably fired some test shots out in the woods to confirm bullet drop at that exact distance. With a good steady setup here . . .”

Lucas looked back and could see another, thinner trail going through the screen of trees toward the street.

“He ran out there with the gun on his back?”

“Down his back, maybe,” Bob said. “If you hung it on a loop and down your back, nobody would see the gun if they were looking at you from the front. With a jacket over it, they might not even see it from the back.”

“But he wouldn’t have parked his car right at the curb, too many people would have noticed it. He’d park it up the block, where there are some other cars,” Lucas said. “He walks up there with a rifle banging his butt?”

Bob said, “Could have.”



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LUCAS GOT ON HIS PHONE: “Jane? Where are you?”

“Coming up to the school. It’s like a carnival. Where are you?”

“Can you see the hospital?”

“Yes . . . are you there?”

“No. We’re on the hill behind the hospital. We found the shooter’s nest up here. There’s nobody here but us marshals.”

“God . . . bless me. All right. I’m coming. I’ll get our crime scene people moving that way . . . in a few minutes.”

Lucas got off the phone and Rae said, “You guys look here, behind the shed. Look at the grass. He was messing around doing something here, you can see knee prints.”

They looked, and Lucas made a wide step around the knee prints, squatted, and said, “That brick’s been moved.”

“He dumped the gun,” Rae said. “The gun’s under there.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Bob said.



* * *



—

THEY MOVED AWAY from all the trampled grass, marking their own movements with the tape. Two minutes later, Jane Chase pulled up in a red Mazda MX-5 convertible.

“Who knew?” Rae muttered. “I had her figured for a Prius. A brown one.”

Chase was wearing jeans and a Barnard College sweatshirt; her hair was perfect. “Tell me,” she said.

“Where’s everybody?” Lucas asked.

“They’re a few minutes behind me,” she said. “I sorta wanted to . . . be here first. After you guys, of course.”

“Naturally,” Rae said.

“I mean, I didn’t mean . . .” Chase said, momentarily flustered.

“Don’t worry about it, boss lady,” Rae said.

“Ignore her,” Bob said to Chase. “She likes to stir the shit. Anyway, let me ’splain this to you.”