Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(97)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-TWO



Sunday morning.

Rae called first: “We’re at National. I wanted to give you a chance to tell us to turn around and come back.”

“It’s a snake-hunt now,” Lucas said. He yawned, kicked off the bedsheet, scratched his chest, and put his feet on the floor. “The FBI has DNA, they’ve got a million leads to work. They got analysts crawling out their ass. That’s not really what we do. You go on home and do some research. Find something for us.”

“So last night when I was going to bed, I started thinking about Audrey Coil, and I was thinking, Wow! I wonder how that could possibly have happened, with Jane plugging leaks in the FBI like the little Dutch boy and the dike.”

“Despite Jane, the FBI leaks like a sieve. That’s how it happened,” Lucas said.

After a deliberate silence, Rae said, “Maybe. Maybe the FBI. But you’re up to something, you sneaky shit. I can tell. You’re getting rid of witnesses, that being Bob and me.”

“You have no faith in my integrity; you should be ashamed,” Lucas said.

“I got plenty of time to be ashamed when it turns out that I’m wrong. Until then, I say you’re a sneaky shit and you’re up to something.”

When he got off the phone, Lucas considered shaving and getting a shower, but he figured Jane Chase would be calling about the time he got in the shower, so he lay back on the bed and waited.

She called ten minutes later; twelve minutes after eight o’clock.

“You up?”

“Almost. You have something for me?”

“I’ve got something to do, if you guys aren’t doing anything else.”

“I sent Bob and Rae home,” Lucas said. “They’re getting on the plane now. I gotta get some tickets myself. Maybe get out of here tomorrow morning.”

“One more day. Two at the most,” she said. “You’re my good-luck charm.”

“I saw you on TV,” Lucas said. “Great move there, taking off the jacket, showing the gun. You looked hot, in that eastern-establishment, women’s-college way. There’s gonna be a made-for-TV movie about you. Somebody’s already writing it.”

“Lucas?” she said, sweetly. “Fuck you.”

He laughed and asked, “What do you want to do?”

“We’re talking to everybody who got letters and especially a guy who got what we think is a first-generation letter. We got a list of names from him. Unfortunately, it’s a long list. I’d like you to come in and chat with him. He’ll be here, with his lawyer, at nine, which gives you about forty-seven minutes to get here. Wait. Forty-six.”

“I can almost do that,” Lucas said. “I might be a few minutes late. I need a bagel or two.”



* * *



—

WHEN PRESSED, Lucas could clean up and get out the door in seventeen minutes, in jeans, casual shirt, and sports jacket; a suit and tie took him twenty. Twenty minutes after Chase called, he was in the Watergate restaurant, collecting two bagels with cream cheese.

The hotel had called a cab and as he was heading for the front door, bagel bag in hand, he ran into Jeff Toomes, the hotel security man and ex-cop who’d tipped him off about being followed by Stephen Gibson. “I saw Bob and Rae on their way out of here,” Toomes said. “They said they were going home . . . You must be getting close on the 1919 shooter.”

“Maybe close,” Lucas said, edging toward the door.

Toomes shook his head. “Goddamned country is going to hell in a handbasket. When did we get to the place where we shoot children because of politics?”

“Hate to say this, but I saw it coming,” Lucas said. “Maybe not this exact thing, shooting kids, but this level of craziness. The rats have finally gotten out of the woodwork.”

“When some crazy guy shoots up a church, you think, okay, he was nuts, he cracked, went psycho,” Toomes said. “With all these guns floating around, what do you expect? Background checks are bullshit. That guy who shot up the concert in Nevada, killed all those people? He bought all his guns legally. So that happens. But this guy, shooting a kid . . . he’s not exactly your basic psycho, is he? He’s a psycho, but he thought he was working for a political program.”

Lucas said, “You’re exactly right, Jeffrey. We might not be able to stop the undetected psychos, but if a guy’s got a program and if we can figure it out, we got a chance.”

“Okay. You’re gonna find him, aren’t you? I mean you, personally.”

“Yeah.”

“Listen, when you find him, kill the motherfucker.”

Lucas didn’t answer, but reached out and tapped Toomes once on the chest.



* * *



—

THE WEATHER HAD CHANGED OVERNIGHT, an overcast setting in from the west, with only a sliver of blue on the eastern horizon. The clouds had a meanness about them, as well: the arrival of autumn in Washington, a hint that summer was on the wane?

A wind kicked some scrap paper down the street and there was a coolness to it, a briskness, that Lucas felt through his summer jacket as he waited for the cab. A chill.

Sunday morning, coming down.