Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(99)



“At lectures. You know, you get these retired generals and admirals and so on, they set up blogs and start commenting on world affairs—and they write books and give talks. A lot of them are really, really conservative. You see a lot of the same faces at these things. People ask questions, go back and forth, you get to know who some of the smart ones are. Dunn and Sandberg are smart. Sandberg’s hard-core and he lets you know it. Say if a general seems weak, he’ll tell him to his face. And he gets really, really angry. Dunn doesn’t talk much, but . . . you get a feeling about him. He could do something. He doesn’t seem angry, but he always asks the toughest questions. Sometimes, even the hard-right guys don’t want to answer.”

“Like what?” Lucas asked.

“Like, ‘What’s your program? You say all this stuff, but what’s your program? What do you want to do?’ Stuff like that. He wants specifics on how somebody will get things done. How they’ll change the world. If the guy starts talking about raising money for candidates or lobbying or linking up websites, Dunn will shake his head and walk away.”

Lucas turned to Chase. “I like that. And I like Sandberg, the angry thing.”

Chase went to Bacon: “If you had to choose one, which would you pick?”

Bacon had to think it over, finally shook his head. “I don’t know. Like I said, there’s something about Dunn that’s spooky. But Sandberg . . .”

Lucas asked Chase, “Can you get access to their IRS records?”

“Yes. I’ll have to put together some paper, but I could have it this afternoon.”

“Do that, then. Have your analysts look at it.”

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

“We’ve got their addresses. I’ll cruise them, take a look. Call me as soon as you get the IRS stuff. I want to know where they work, where their money comes from. I’d like to talk to their employers.”



* * *





LUCAS CAUGHT A CAB BACK to the hotel, checked the addresses for Dunn and Sandberg. They both lived in Virginia, Sandberg close-in, Dunn farther south. He got in the Cadillac and headed out.

Sandberg lived in a semi-crappy apartment complex in Manassas, two-story red-brick buildings, not new, shaggy lawns, no particular amenities. He wasn’t home: a young couple, apparently coming back from a central laundry room, toting two plastic baskets full of folded clothing, said they hadn’t seen him for a couple of days. Lucas asked about his car, and the woman said that he drove a Toyota FJ Cruiser that he’d had repainted a military green. “Blue one day, green a week later. An ugly Army green,” she said.

“And he hasn’t been around?”

She pointed to the next door down the hall: “I live right there. The walls are about an inch thick. I’m standing in the kitchen, I can hear every word from his TV.”

“Worse than that,” the man said. “We heard him fart one time.”

The woman: “That’s true. Anyway, we think we did.”

“We did,” the guy said. “He also boils cabbage. You can smell it right through the walls. Which explains the farts.”

They didn’t know about his political affiliations: “We don’t talk.” They had the idea that he might have had something to do with a commercial sign manufacturer, from T-shirts they’d seen him wearing.



* * *





LUCAS WALKED AWAY, a thrill crawling up between his shoulder blades. Whoever the killer was, he hadn’t expected him to be home. And he thought he knew where he might be going. Sandberg was now at the top of his personal list. He called Chase, told her to pound on the Sandberg material from the IRS. “He looks real to me,” Lucas said. “I think he’s a candidate.”



* * *





DUNN’S HOUSE WAS IN WARRENTON, half an hour west of Manassas, Lucas tracking his way in with his nav app. The place was impeccable, the lawn perfectly green, perfectly cut, the house a perfectly efficient pale yellow cuboid with white trim. No sign of a car, but then, it was midday and Dunn might be shopping or at a park or whatever. An engineer, Bacon thought.

He rang the doorbell, got no answer, peeked through the door window and saw an interior as impeccably neat as the lawn.

The nearest house was thirty yards away, with a red minivan parked in the driveway. Lucas went that way. When he knocked, an elderly man came to the door, peered out, opened the door and asked, “Can I help you?”

An elderly woman was doing something at a dining room table at the back of the house, and called, “Who is it, Tommy?”

Lucas identified himself and the woman came to listen. They’d lived next to Dunn for seven years, said that he was quiet, standoffish but friendly enough, divorced, a civil engineer. “I guess he works all over the place,” the man said. “I don’t think he has a regular employer, he’s freelance.”

“Right now he’s working on a job down in Gainesville, that new development. I saw his truck down there and I thought I saw him, too,” the woman said.

“Have you see him around today?” Lucas asked.

“Not today, but we haven’t been around much today, we’re helping our daughter move,” the man said.

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