Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(9)

Henderson: “They chum the water with these photos and when and if an attack occurs, it’s hard, if not impossible, to pin down the original responsibility. You might get the body, the shooter, but you don’t get the brain.”

“Have you checked the ISPs?” Lucas asked.

Chase was already shaking her head. “Of course. Nothing there. The internet service provider is in Sweden, one of the confidential sites. A month or so after the website was set up, the photos were all posted at once and came in from a Starbucks. There were some video cameras in the neighborhood, but not right at Starbucks. Our analysts have spent hours looking at the local videos, trying to spot somebody who might be our guy. No luck so far.”

“License tags?”

“Yes, there was one camera that did a good job on tags, but we came up dry on that, too. We did all the routine. We continue to think about it and do more work. Explore new possibilities. Some senators decided . . . perhaps we needed something a little more off the wall. Like you. Whoever did this is apparently internet savvy and security aware, so the regular routine, however intense it is, may not turn them up.”

“What happened to the website? Is it still up?”

“Yes, it is. As I said, the site doesn’t come up as 1919-dot-com, or anything like it. You could never find it just by looking. It doesn’t have much traffic and we’re hoping that the people running it will post more photos—give us an idea of who’s running it, where the photos are coming from. The parents wanted it taken down, of course, but reluctantly agreed to let us leave it up, at least for now. If we don’t leave it up, it could be redone under another password-like URL and we might never find it again. We contacted the ISP, and after some back-and-forth, the Swedish government whispered into the owner’s ear and we were informed unofficially that the site was paid for, in advance for two years, with a Western Union check. The check was bought here in Washington at a bodega that caters to immigrant Hispanics. No cameras. No ID possible.”

Lucas said, “Maybe there’ll be no attack. Maybe the whole idea is to intimidate. Have there been any demands for any particular kind of action?”

Smalls: “No. Maybe I should say, ‘Not yet.’ Or ‘We don’t know.’ With the Senate divided so closely, shifting one or two votes could change the way the world works. You might never know that a vote was the result of extortion. Most senators would never admit to caving in.”

“Are the kids protected?”

“They are now. Not 24/7, but the Secret Service has assigned agents to watch them in and out of school, and to run checks on the environments around them, the places they come and go,” Chase said. “They’re not covered like the President, but closely enough that a shooter would probably be detected unless he was very sophisticated. We’re looking at license plates coming and going around the schools, to see if anything pops.”

“What do you want from me?” Lucas asked.

Chase said, “You’ve developed a reputation in both the House and Senate as somebody who can take care of business quietly and effectively. I already know too much about that, from last year, and I really don’t want to know any more. If your, mmm, investigation is successful, the Bureau would be ready to listen to what you have to say. If, hopefully, what you say points to an actionable crime. There’s no crime in shooting photos of people in public: anyone can do it.”

Henderson: “As background, one of the kids in the photos is the son of Burton Cherry from Colorado. He knew about you and that you were tight with Porter and myself. He got with the other people whose kids were on the website and they asked Porter and me to call you.”

Smalls: “They don’t like the FBI’s basic attitude: no crime, nothing to see here.”

Chase turned to Smalls: “That’s not our attitude, Senator. We understand the situation, but we’re handcuffed by the law and also by the fact that, realistically, we know there are leaks, even in the Bureau. We’ve worked with Lucas before, to our mutual advantage, and appreciate his discretion.”

Lucas said, “I’ll look at it. I need to see what the FBI has done.”

Chase took a thumb drive from her jacket pocket and tossed it to him. “There’s a program on there, encrypted, called Sesame. Easy to use. Open it, and you’ll see all the photos and docs we’ve got, all of our reports. About as thick as three Bibles. Please don’t export the stuff to anywhere else. When I get back to the Bureau, I’ll send the key to your cell phone. Do you have a password vault on your phone?”

“Yes.”

“Copy the key to your vault, then erase the message,” Chase said. “You’ll need the key every time you open the files unless you export them. Don’t do that.”

“I’ll have to interview this girl . . . and her boyfriend, the photographer,” Lucas said.

“Not a problem. They know you’re coming,” Chase said. “They don’t know much, though. We did replicate their facial-recognition search, with better software, and turned up the same result.”

“How many people, kids . . .”

“There are six children on the website, ranging in age from elementary school to college. Nobody older, although a lot of senators have older children. We think that’s basically because all of these kids are going to school in the Washington area, so the photographer is probably from the area. The Starbucks, where the website was loaded, is right across the river, in a shopping center across I-395 from the Pentagon,” Chase said. “All the kids, but one, are children of senators, all the senators but one are Democrats. One kid is the son of a New Jersey member of the House, also a Democrat. A very senior member of the House. I could give you more details, but you’ll get them all when you read the file. Names, ages, addresses, along with a commentary from our analysts.”