Masked Prey

by John Sandford

CHASE CALLED AT FOUR O’CLOCK, excited and exasperated: “We’ve got big trouble.”

  “Who was shot?”

  “Nobody. But all the local TV stations, plus the Post, the Times, and the Wall Street Journal are calling, asking if it’s true that Audrey Coil set up 1919 as a gag.”

  “Ah, shit.”

  “It gets worse: they’ve got that other kid’s name, Blake Winston. I called the Winston house and talked to Mrs. Winston, and as I was talking, she said a TV truck was pulling into their driveway.”

  “Ah, shit.”

  “We’re not going to be able to contain it,” Chase said. “You might want to hide out, because I suspect Senator Smalls will be coming your way.”

  “Ah, shit.”

  “Stop saying that. Say something intelligent.”

  “I’m going home,” Lucas said.

  “You can’t!” Chase said. “We collected those letters, interviewed the recipients, and we might be starting to unravel things.”

  “You got an original?”

  “No, but we got enough copies now that we’ve started asking people to name possible sources. There can’t be too many of them for what we think is the second generation of copies. When we cross-index the names, there’s a good chance we’ll get to the first generation, and that guy—or guys—should give us a lead to the original writer.”

  “Good luck with that,” Lucas said. “I’m going to get in bed and pull the covers over my head. Smalls is gonna pee on my shoes.”

  * * *

  —

  SMALLS DID THAT.

  “One question,” he said when he called, two minutes after the beginning of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, “Did you know about Audrey Coil?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you tell Elmer?” Smalls asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “You motherfuckers, you covered this up to protect Roberta Coil.”

  “Actually, I did it to protect Audrey Coil. She could be in serious legal trouble, if somebody wants to give it to her—and she’s a kid. She’s seventeen.”

  “She oughta be in jail, along with her mother for the cover-up,” Smalls said.

  “Jesus, Porter, this whole thing was about a cover-up. You were there at the creation.”

  “Things could be interpreted differently,” Smalls said. “But there’s no point in getting into all of that. What’s happening with the shooter?”

  Lucas told him about the FBI analysts and the letters.

  Smalls said, “Listen, Lucas, I’m pissed about the Coil thing, but that’s politics. I’m pissed but not surprised. I’m still counting on you to close this thing out.”

  “I’m working on it,” Lucas said. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “In fact, there is. Could you get me a reservation at Steaks and Spirits? Seven o’clock tonight?”

  “I meant something easy,” Smalls grumbled. Then, “I’ll make a call.”

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS WENT TO DINNER with Bob and Rae, who marveled at the restaurant, at the lack of bad music that made it possible to actually talk, and further, that Lucas was paying for it out of his own pocket. Like Henderson and Smalls, they ordered a dozen oysters each, followed by steaks and spirits.

  “Now that I’m sitting here in my shabby-chic dress because I can’t afford anything actually chic, tell me what the occasion is,” Rae said.

  “Goodbye dinner, see you next time,” Lucas said. “The fact is, the FBI is taking over. There’s nothing more for us to do.”

  “Yeah, I sort of figured that out,” Bob said, and Rae nodded.

  Lucas said, “I called Russell, he’s fixed your travel back to New Orleans at nine o’clock tomorrow. Got to be out at National by seven, what with all the guns and stuff.”

  “Probably won’t see you tomorrow, then,” Bob said.

  “Probably not.”

  Rae: “You got anything good coming up?”

  “No, not really. I’d like something simple: a straight-up cannibal on the run, maybe a child rapist. Somebody we could corner and feel good about shooting,” Lucas said. “This political shit is giving me a rash.”

  Rae ran a hand over her close-cropped hair, then said, “I have to tell you, I get all excited when you call. So does Bob. We know it’s going to be something good. Don’t hesitate to call us again.”

  Bob said to Rae, “You know what? Let’s get back home and hit the computers. Dig around. Find something we can do, all three of us. Let’s not forget, there’s a whole world of scum out there. Wastes of good skin. Douchebags.”

  “Asswipes,” Lucas added.

  “Miscreants,” Rae said. The two men looked at each other, grinned and shook their heads. “What? So I got a vocabulary, unlike some people?”

  “If you find somebody to chase, try to find him in an interesting place,” Lucas said. “New York, Miami, New Orleans. The scuzzier the better. I don’t want any Denvers or Seattles or Portlands. No place where you might wound a hipster by accident.”

  “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?”

  “I can’t talk directly to that, to specific items of evidence we may or may not have uncovered, but, I’ll repeat that we’ve made significant progress today.”

  The reporter came back: “Does it have anything to do with a double murder in Virginia?”

  An almost mischievous look flickered across Chase’s face. “Again, if you didn’t get it, we’ve made . . .”

  In other words, Yes.

  Made Lucas laugh. She was a star. And he thought, The lights are no longer hot, babe, because LEDs don’t burn, but really, who’d know that, out in the unwashed viewing audience?

  * * *

  —

  LUCAS WENT TO BED, but lay awake and thought about the 1919 shooter.

  The key to the man’s psychology—the DNA had proven the shooter was male, which Lucas had never doubted—was anger mixed with calculation. Anger about the people who ran the country and a calculation of how that might be fixed, by influencing the U.S. Senate.

  Since the 1919 site was nothing more than a teenage fraud, and that was now public, the calculation had been completely overturned, but the anger would remain. Not only would it remain, but it would almost certainly intensify.

  The shooter, the calculator, had been careful in his selection of targets, in his selection of his sniper’s nest (being so far away from the target that the Secret Service and the FBI hadn’t even considered it) and unlike the man arrested in the parking garage, had not even taken a look at the garage—all the cars coming and going were on a thirty-day video loop and had been checked and cleared.

  His brain would be working overtime, both constraining and inflaming the anger.

  There was, Lucas thought, the possibility that he’d crack, would load up a black rifle and a sack full of mags and shoot up a school or a synagogue or a government building.

  It seemed, though, from the care with which the young boy was shot, that he didn’t want to get caught. He wasn’t a suicide-by-cop. He’d want his revenge, but he’d make a point with it.

  Satisfied with his analysis, Lucas went to sleep, to wake up only once, long enough to wonder, What if I’m wrong?

  Then, Nah, and he went back to sleep.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  Saturday morning.

  Dunn needed another gun, because he needed to shoot at least one more kid. The first kid was a wrong one, but that was okay; with all the publicity, the U.S. Senate knew what might be coming and all he had to do was prove it.

  One more shot, but he needed that gun.

  The day was warm with hazy blue skies, a good day for a road trip, cross-country to Merkin, West Virginia, and the Merkin National Gun and Knife Show. There were gun shows all over the place, but Dunn decided to move away from the Virginia-Maryland-DC area, where federal agents were apparently raiding everything in sight.

  They had hit a group called White Fist, according to the Washington Post, and more significantly, apparently had found his rifle and his sniper’s nest at the cemetery. They might, he thought, be able to get DNA from the rifle, but since he’d never been DNA-tested, they’d have nothing to compare it to. He’d have to be careful in the future. If he got caught in a spot that would require a DNA test, he’d have to shoot his way out.

  Or something—the “something” not defined. He’d have to wait for the moment, if it ever took place, but he was now looking for a carry pistol, in addition to a new rifle. The good thing about West Virginia gun shows was that no background check was required on person-to-person sales of anything.

  All the gun stuff was giving him a definite tingle: he should have explored guns earlier in life.

  * * *

  —

  THE MERKIN GUN show was staged in the auditorium of the local National Guard Armory, a beige concrete building that looked like an oversized Quonset hut with its hemispherical roof. The show pulled in a few hundred people, mostly big happy people, both men and women, driving pickups, on top of the fifty or so exhibitors. A friendly woman sat at a card table inside the door, selling tickets. Dunn paid his five dollars and accepted a pink plastic wristband that “will let you get in and out the whole weekend, honey, so don’t go taking it off the minute you get outside, in case you need to come back for another look.”

  Inside the auditorium, he drifted past the tables displaying dozens of different kinds of rifles and pistols, and scopes, ammo magazines, knives, hatchets, camo shirts and pants, targets of all kinds, books about guns, self-defense, and the Second Amendment. The distinct odor of Hoppe’s No. 9 bore cleaner, mixed with the scent of carnival hot dogs, hung over the auditorium.

  Not an unpleasant smell, Dunn thought; like a whiff of WD-40 or the tang of road-trip gasoline.

  At the first table, a group of beefy men were gathered around a Barrett .50-caliber rifle mounted on a heavy tripod, available for the bargain price of $9,999.99; on a stand behind the gun, a rack of .50-cal cartridges were mounted in a plexiglass rack, each cartridge bigger than Dunn’s middle finger. He’d seen similar-looking guns in movies—The Hurt Locker, maybe?—but never one in real life. Not something he needed, really. He kept moving.

  Looking around, two-thirds of the men at the show had beards and were overweight and out of shape, going for the Papa Hemingway vibe; most of them seemed to be wearing khaki photographer’s vests. The other third were snaky-looking lightweights like himself, jeans an
d long-sleeved shirts, a bit of camo here and there, distant looks in their eyes. American flags on their rolled-bill hats.

  At his first stop, a cafeteria-sized table covered with black rifles, with a few wooden-stocked rifles thrown in, the dealer, one of the Hemingway look-alikes, asked, “See anything you like?”

  “I don’t want to burn ammo for the noise of it,” Dunn said. “I’m looking for precision. Out to a thousand yards or so. Starting to do that.”

  “Huh. What’s your budget?”

  Dunn shrugged: “Cash, up to a grand, maybe a little more.”

  “You do look like the precision type,” the man said. He turned toward the back of the room and pointed: “See that POW/MIA flag? Will Gentry had a nice-looking Remington 700 Long Range last night. His table’s right under the flag. Don’t know if he’s still got it, but that’d get you out to a thousand yards for a dollar a yard. Depending on the barrel, of course.”

  Dunn nodded: “Thanks.”

  “Tell him Bunny sent you,” the man said.

  * * *

  —

  GENTRY WAS ONE OF THE SKINNY KIND, blue suspicious eyes under a black ball cap, which coordinated with a black T-shirt and black jeans. The cap showed gray stars and stripes on the black background, in an American flag design, overprinted with the words, “GUN SAFETY—Rule #1: Carry One.”

  He nodded at Dunn: “What can I do you for, my friend?” West Virginia accent, not quite Southern, but not midwestern, either.

  “I’m a beginner thousand-yard shooter. Got a piece of property where I can just about reach out that far,” Dunn said. “Bunny told me you had a Remington 700 Long Range that I might like.”

  “I do,” Gentry said. “In a seven-millimeter Remington Mag. It’ll poke holes at a thousand yards all day long. Let me get it for you.”

  * * *

  —

  HE WALKED DOWN THE TABLE to a stack of gun cases that was sitting against the back wall, pulled out a solid black case, popped it open. Dunn liked fine machinery, but had never been part of the gun world. Gentry was: he lifted the rifle out of the case—snaky-looking, like the dealer, a skinny weapon with an over-long barrel. Gentry turned it in his hands, stroking it, fondling it.