Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(91)

“What if it’s not a him? What if it’s a her?” Rae asked.

“Even better,” Lucas said. “I haven’t shot a female miscreant in a while.”

“You did punch one out, though,” Rae observed. “Nice punch, too. I was impressed.”



* * *



—

LUCAS GOT BACK to his room at ten o’clock, after a final nightcap with Bob and Rae in the hotel bar. He went to an all-news station on the TV, and when a new program came on at ten, found himself looking at Audrey Coil, sitting teary-eyed and badly lit in a lounge chair with a brown teddy bear in her lap, being interviewed by a woman with a non-DC haircut and consoling expression. Lucas suspected she might be a talking head from E!

Coil was confessing: “It started out as a joke . . .”

Lucas said to the television, “All right, I don’t believe the fuckin’ teddy bear.”

Rae called: “You looking at the television?”

“Audrey Coil. Yeah. I was wondering about the teddy bear.”

“What teddy bear?”

“In her lap.”

“You must be watching a different station. On mine, she’s standing outside by her daddy’s Porsche Cayenne. She must not have a lawyer: a lawyer would never allow her to admit this. Not live, on TV.”

“She’s live? What channel?”

Lucas turned to the channel, where a woman who resembled a sleek white-tipped shark was pressing a microphone into Audrey’s face. Still tearful, no bear.

The shark: “You’re saying that it was the temptation of television that did it.”

“Yes. Yes. It’s like you’re not alive if you can’t be on television. Television is validating. This is something we have to talk about, I’ll be talking about it on my blog, with my girls.”

“What about the young boy who got shot?” the shark asked.

Audrey’s face went cold: “I had nothing to do with that. That was some crazy man.”

“But . . .”

“I don’t know that man. He’s obscure.”

Lucas thought, Jesus.



* * *



—

A THIRD CHANNEL: “Listen to me, please. Everybody makes mistakes, I’m only seventeen. I was simply messing around. Then, when it came out, I got invited to be on television. What was I supposed to do?”



* * *



—

ANOTHER CHANNEL, a man in a dark suit and a two-hundred-dollar haircut and an indoor tan that left white circles around his eye sockets, interviewing another dark-suited man with a red necktie. They were standing in what Lucas recognized as the driveway to the Winston house.

Red necktie said, “The Winstons feel that Blake is far too young to expose himself to this kind of questioning. He had nothing to do with the creation of the 1919 website and has pledged to cooperate with authorities in any way he can.”

“But he does the video for the Coil website,” said fake-tan guy.

“Yes, of course. But he knew nothing about Audrey Coil’s other activities. Alleged activities. Actually, all you have to do is look at the website to know that Blake Winston wasn’t involved—he’s a very effective young filmmaker and a skillful creator of websites for his school friends. The 1919 website is primitive, to say the least. Nothing that Blake Winston would create. Or that any other youngster familiar with the creation of online sites, would create.”

Blah blah blah.



* * *



—

THEN A CUT, to an FBI briefing room, and the words, “Recorded earlier.”

Jane Chase stepped up to a podium looking tired, harassed, hair slightly mussed, but in an attractive way, as if, Lucas suspected, she’d spent some time looking in a mirror, mussing.

Another caption came up, that read, “FBI Agent Jane L. Chase” and then, when that blinked off, a new caption, “Agent in charge of 1919 probe.”

Chase nodded wearily at a group of reporters and said, “I’m sorry for the delay. I can’t promise you anything, of course, and I can’t really provide details at the moment, but I can tell you that we’ve made significant progress today in tracking down the person who shot young Jamie Wagner at the Stillwater School. Significant progress . . .”

And a moment later, “I’m aware of the allegations being made about Senator Coil’s daughter Audrey. Senator Coil is on an airplane on the way back from Jerusalem, where she was part of a U.S. Senate delegation discussing American military support for Israel. We haven’t at this point been able to reach either of the Coils, but we have agents on their way to Tifton, Georgia, to interview Audrey Coil . . .”

Lucas nodded. Chase looked good. She looked even better when she said to the pack of newsies, “I’m sorry, but I’m tired and these lights are hot. If you don’t mind . . .”

She peeled off her jacket to reveal a handgun in a shoulder holster, a hard metallic presence next to her fine-boned face. She paused, then, to let everybody get a good look at the gun, then pointed at a reporter and said, “Yes?”

Lucas recognized the reporter: the same guy from the Washington Post who had been trolling through the Watergate and had seen him with Elmer Henderson. The reporter said, “A good source tells me that you have the rifle used to shoot James Wagner. Is that correct?”