Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(82)

Lang sighed and said, “I’ve been fumbling my way through Stephen’s database.” He patted a laptop sitting on his desk. “I don’t know my way around, but I could do a search. I don’t know that name myself. If it’s L-i-n-k, it could be a nickname . . .”

“Well, let’s look,” Rae said.



* * *



—

LANG WAS RIGHT ABOUT FUMBLING: he poked tentatively at the laptop’s keys, but after a couple of minutes, he threw up his hands and said, “There’s no Linc, Link, or Lincoln in this computer, and this is everything we have. I mean, not in the computer, but up in a cloud somewhere, but it looks at the cloud, too, and there’s no sequence of those letters. Anywhere.”

Lucas said, “Damnit.”

“Ask the ANM,” Lang said. “They organize politically, so they’ve got lists. Probably the best lists that exist. A lot of their members would be considered alt-right.”

“There’s a problem with that,” Lucas said. He told Lang that John Oxford had cut himself off from ANM.

Lang said, “Look. He may have taken himself out, but he knows names. A lot of ANM, from what little I know about it, involves face-to-face relationships, and Old John will still know those names. He hasn’t erased his memory. He could find a way to get to one of them, and put out the word, and have somebody call you.”

“Worth a try, I guess,” Lucas said. He wasn’t sure that it was, but he didn’t have much else.

Bob said, “Why don’t we go jack up Toby Boone’s brother? Collect a few names there, jack up some more people.”

“Threaten them,” Rae said. “Make them sweat.”

Lucas was staring at Bob, who asked, “What?”

Lucas scratched his nose, said, “You were almost onto something there, Bob—you just got it exactly backwards.”

“Way to go,” Rae said to Bob.



* * *



—

OUT IN THE DRIVEWAY, away from Lang, Lucas called Jane Chase. “I need you to send me the names and addresses of the White Fist members you found, but we only want the names of the married ones, or the ones living with a woman. And preferably those with kids.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Investigate,” Lucas said.

He explained, and Bob, standing behind him, listening in, said, “Holy cow—a ray of hope. That could work.”

Chase said, “I’ll get on it. And we’ve got something here. There might have been a shootout or something, because we’ve got a smudge of blood on the front door that couldn’t have come from the victims. We’re going to get DNA on a third person. Everybody here thinks he’s probably the killer. And if he was here to get the rifle . . .”

“Excellent,” Lucas said. “You push the DNA. We’ll talk to the women.”



* * *



—

WHILE THEY WAITED for Chase to come through, Lucas called John Oxford and told him what they wanted, and Lucas added the part about Oxford still knowing names, without mentioning that Lang had suggested it. He also tried a little flattery, about the strength of Oxford’s organizing. The flattery didn’t work. Oxford was notably cranky, but finally said, “I’ll make some calls, but I can’t tell you that anything will happen. I am fuckin’ well out of it now, thanks to you, fuckhead.”

“Yeah, well, if you save a little kid’s life, I’ll send you a fuckin’ sticky gold star for your fuckin’ diary,” Lucas said.

“That went well,” Rae said, when Lucas rang off.

“Not gonna get us anywhere,” Lucas said. “We need that list from Jane.”



* * *



—

CHASE CAME BACK in half an hour, downloading a list of names and addresses to Lucas’s iPad. “Not as many as I’d hoped—most of the members are singles.”

She’d gotten seven names. Two of them were in Frederick, where Toby Boone’s shop was located, and not far apart. Three more were in the general Frederick neighborhood, so they decided to start there.

Frederick was a forty-minute drive, traffic beginning to build in the late afternoon. The two targets, Mark Sutton and Jack Byrd, lived three blocks apart in an older neighborhood of painted brick and red-brick apartment and retail buildings, some of them shuttered, some looking over cracked sidewalks to vacant lots.

They took Sutton first. As they pulled up outside Sutton’s apartment, Lucas said, “You guys know what to do . . .”

“Isolate, isolate, isolate . . .” Rae muttered.



* * *



—

TWO FBI AGENTS HAD SPOKEN to Sutton the day before: he’d been reluctant, but not aggressive. He lived on the second floor of the building, up narrow wooden stairs that knocked and groaned as they climbed, the building smelling of damp rotted plaster and flaking wallpaper.

They found Sutton’s apartment door, with a bell. Bob rang, and Lucas stood well back. They heard footfalls inside, and a moment later the door popped open, and a short stocky man in jeans, a Levi’s snap-button shirt, and white socks opened the door and looked out and asked, “Police?”

“U.S. Marshals,” Rae said, holding up her ID. “Mr. Sutton, we need to talk to you. Can we come in?” And, she added, “This is not what you think. We’ll only need to talk. We’re not here to arrest anyone.”