From the woods, he could shoot Audrey as she came out of the house, then spray the place with the rest of a magazine, then run. A long run, probably a minute and a half, but it was doable.
Of course, Dunn might still be in Virginia, or at that property in West Virginia . . .
* * *
—
EVEN WITH ALL THAT TO THINK ABOUT, Lucas got some sleep that night. His cell phone alarm kicked him out of bed at 4:30, and he showered, shaved, carried the rifle, his vest, and the camo down to the car at five o’clock, on a cool damp morning. He’d found a Walmart Supercenter in Tifton, checked the parking lot for Dunn’s truck—didn’t find it—went inside and bought some bakery and two Diet Cokes.
He was back on the road at 5:15, with more than an hour before first light, and two hours before sunrise. He found the turnoff to the place he’d leave the car, parked, got out into a heavy dew. Thought about snakes: he always thought about snakes when he was in unfamiliar territory. He’d planned to change his jeans for the camo pants, but the camo pants were commodious, so he pulled them on over his jeans. If a snake could bite through two layers, well . . . okay, he’d die. Probably of a heart attack.
When he was dressed, he took the rifle out of the case, slapped in a full mag, jacked a shell into the chamber, checked the safety, touched the butt of the Walther on his belt, and started off in the dark. There were clouds, and only occasionally a strip of moonlight, but the woods loomed to his left, dark, an impenetrable mass. To his right, he could see across an open field, with farmhouse lights a few hundred yards away. The difference in feel allowed him to keep moving, though he stumbled from time to time, catching himself, cursing under his breath. His shoes were soaked within a hundred yards.
His iPhone was tracking him, through the GPS app, and thirty-five minutes after he started away from the car, he thought he was about opposite the Coil house and turned into the woods to his left, walking into a nightmare.
He began by tangling with a barbed-wire fence at the edge of the field. He managed to clamber over it, though he ripped the shirt and probably the pants; he thought he was clear, but the binocular strap caught on the fence, twisted and yanked at his Adam’s apple.
More cursing, ineffectual because it had to be so quiet. Once in the woods, the tree branches slapped him in the face, until he was forced to walk with his arms up in front of him, fending off the low-hanging branches. Inching forward, he took another half hour to travel what he thought was perhaps two hundred yards, falling twice, stumbling all the time, like an over-the-edge drunk, barely managing to keep the rifle’s muzzle out of the dirt.
The GPS hadn’t let him down. When he got to the edge of the woods, he found he’d overshot the Coil house, but not by much. Staying back in the trees, but with some light now, from the house, he worked back to the high point where he could see down the driveway to the front door.
Three cars were parked in the driveway—one of the cop cars was gone, as well as a Lexus SUV, probably a friend. A couple of lights still burned in the house, but it felt as though it were asleep.
He backed away, got as deep into the woods as he could, while keeping the front door in sight. He found a tree trunk, down in a swale, and sat down and leaned into it; the tree smelled of sap, of turpentine. As he settled, he could feel the night quiet settling on him, the stillness that comes just before first light.
He put the binoculars in his lap, and waited.
Very slowly, the morning’s light began to seep through the trees.
* * *
—
DUNN FOUND HIS WAY through Tifton. He got turned around once, but as he was unable to use his cell phone’s navigation apps, he was driving a route he’d sketched on a piece of paper. He was a surveyor, though, so the map was a good one, if the streets turned out to be confusing.
The truck was a rattletrap: he’d need to get another one soon. Half a tank of gas, that’d get him a couple of hundred miles. The thing smelled of ten years of bad food and frequent farting, plus a bit of wet dog. He’d never let a truck go like this one had . . .
He found the Coil house after that minute’s confusion, cruised it, not slow, but right at the speed limit. He didn’t need to get stopped. There were lights on, three cars in the driveway. He continued on down the road to the intersection, took the left turn, waited a few minutes, then drove back past the house. Maybe slowed a bit, to look. Took the next right.
First light had come and gone, giving way to the dawn. Still an hour or so to sunrise, but landscape and building details were beginning to crystallize across the countryside.
* * *
—
LUCAS SPOTTED THE RATTLETRAP pickup rolling down the road past the Coils’ house. There hadn’t been much traffic, and what there was, he’d scanned with the binoculars. Light was bad, and he hadn’t been able to see much, but when the rattletrap went by, with weak yellow headlights that seemed to jiggle in their brackets, he caught a glimpse of an angular white face turned toward the Coils’ place.
And he thought, “Wait!”
Could have been him. Could have been Dunn. He watched the truck as it continued on down the road, then took the first left—the same turn Lucas had taken when he’d cruised the house the night before. Five minutes later, he saw headlights turn from that intersection back toward the Coil house, weak yellow lights that seemed to jiggle as they came on.
If that was Dunn, and if he was intent on a house invasion, he’d pull into the driveway and hit the door.
Lucas crouched, moved closer to the road, settled into a spot where the door was right there, where he could cover any approach to it. The truck came on, and Lucas put the binoculars on it again. Angular white face turned toward the Coil house . . .
And he thought, “That’s him.”
* * *
—
THE ROAD WENT ALL THE WAY back to Carpenter, a half mile away, but the truck didn’t. The truck turned left at the first intersection and Lucas loped back through the woods, now well lit by the growing daylight. He stopped just inside the tree line, and watched as the truck took another left, on the road that ran parallel to the woods and to the Coils’ road. The fields were flat and unobstructed, and he watched as the truck slowed and then pulled onto the shoulder, perhaps a hundred yards farther down from the Coil house.
Dunn.
There was no longer a question in Lucas’s mind.
If Dunn came straight across the field, to the trees, he’d be a hundred and twenty yards away from Lucas’s spot. Lucas stepped carefully farther back into the woods, then turned and jogged through the trees to the point where he thought Dunn would enter them. After a moment, he slowed, and turned back toward the fence line that marked the edge of the field and looked toward the truck.
A man had gotten out and was crossing the roadside ditch into the field. Lucas put the binoculars on him, now in good light. Dunn’s face was crisp: pale, harsh, alert. He was carrying a rifle.
Lucas pulled back into the woods, began moving toward Dunn’s probable entry point. The other man was still three hundred yards away, Lucas only fifty or so from his ambush spot. He took it more slowly. If Dunn spotted him, there’d be a gunfight, which he really didn’t need, having been on the losing end of one of those only six months earlier.
In three minutes, he was set up behind an old, gnarled pine tree, looking out at the fence line. He could see Dunn coming—the other man was jogging now, the rifle carried in both hands, out in front of him. He was dressed all in gray. Work clothes, Lucas thought. He looked again with the binoculars: a clear image, chest to head.
* * *
—
THE TREE LINE was farther away than Dunn had expected and he was out in the open longer than he’d hoped to be, feeling conspicuous, endangered. He’d found a reasonable spot for the truck, a pulloff over a culvert, that didn’t appear to be much used. He broke into a jog as
he came to the fence, and thought, “Remember the fence.” It’d slow him on the way out. He crossed the fence with no trouble, moved a couple feet into the trees, and looked at his watch.
Ten after seven. Sun was about to come over the horizon and the fair-weather clouds glowed pink overhead.
He took another step and a man’s voice, clear, baritone, said, “Dunn! Stop there!”
Dunn thought, “Shit!” and brought up the muzzle of his rifle, pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He paused, then flipped the safety and tried again.
He never felt the impact from the incoming bullets. He simply dropped.
* * *
—
LUCAS WAITED UNTIL DUNN crossed the fence. This could play out a couple of ways, but would work best if Dunn fired a shot or two. Dunn looked up, as though admiring the pink clouds and Lucas put his rifle’s sights on Dunn’s chest, thirty yards away, and said, “Dunn! Stop there!”
Dunn brought up the muzzle of his rifle, pointing off to Lucas’s left, appeared to squeeze the trigger, but nothing happened. Lucas, in a tiny corner of his mind, thought, “Safety,” and Dunn apparently picked up the thought, flipped the safety and fired three rapid shots into the brush, well to Lucas’s left.
Lucas fired two quick shots into Dunn’s chest and Dunn sank to his knees and then fell over backwards, the rifle dropping to his side.
Lucas’s rifle had thrown two expended shells off to his right. He could see them, little pieces of gold on the forest floor. He picked them up, moved them to a different tree closer to Dunn’s line of fire. Then he pulled off his camo shirt, exposing the bulletproof marshal’s vest, quickly checked Dunn. He was dead, two coin-sized blood spots in the center of his chest.
That done, he moved quickly but carefully through the trees until he could see down the driveway to the Coil house. Two men were standing behind the cars in the driveway, both with rifles, scanning the trees.
Lucas shouted, “U.S. Marshal! U.S. Marshal! Got a man down. Coming out with my hands up. U.S. Marshal!”
One of the men shouted, “Come ahead. Hands in air.”
Lucas put the rifle down, walked out of the woods with his hands up, his badge case in one hand.
He was halfway up the driveway when Roberta Coil stuck her head out the door and blurted, “Davenport. What are you doing here?”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
The ramifications of the Tifton shooting trailed out over months.
Most immediately, Roberta Coil vacillated between gratitude and condemnation. She was pleased that a threat to her daughter and possibly herself had been eliminated, but angry that Lucas hadn’t called in a battalion of FBI agents once he’d detected the problem. Audrey Coil didn’t have much to say about that, and her mother kept her firmly, if only temporarily, away from anything that looked like a camera or a reporter.
* * *
—
THEN THERE WAS the usual bureaucratic chaos—a clusterfuck, in the unofficial nomenclature—involving the Tift County Sheriff’s Department, the FBI, and two separate investigators from the Marshals Service’s Office of Professional Responsibility (one each from Internal Affairs and Discipline Management) concerned by the fact that Lucas had been involved in three shootings in the space of six months—one of them being Lucas’s own wounding in a Los Angeles firefight.
Lucas was interviewed by the Marshals Service investigators the day after the shooting, although their conclusions weren’t released for more than a month. One of the men called Lucas to say that the investigation had concluded that the two fatal criminal shootings had been righteous. As for Lucas’s wounding, they recommended that he undergo retraining in “cover and concealment,” which wasn’t going to happen if Lucas could avoid it.
“Yeah, probably wouldn’t help,” one of the investigators told him. “What you did was stupid and there ain’t no fixing that.”
“Thank you,” Lucas said.
* * *
—
SENATOR ELMER HENDERSON called three times, the first time the day after the shooting. “I’ve got Porter here in the office with me. Well done, my boy.”
“I hope the Office of Professional Responsibility agrees with you.”
“They will. We’ve had a number of colleagues calling over there, emphasizing the need for fair treatment of hardworking, risk-taking marshals. They’ve effectively signaled back that they get the point. You might even get a medal.”
“I’d like a medal,” Lucas said. “I could wear it to parties.”
* * *
—
TWO DAYS AFTER DUNN was killed, when Lucas was nearly finished with the bureaucracy, Rae called and asked, “I was right, wasn’t I?”
Lucas: “I’m sorry?”
“Don’t play dumb, Lucas. You wanted us out of the way. You didn’t want witnesses.”
“You’ve got an overactive imagination, is what I think,” Lucas said. “How’s Bob?”
“Bob’s just fine.”
“You find a case we can work?” Lucas asked.
“Jesus, Lucas. The Dunn thing? That was damned cold. Damned cold.”
“Okay . . . I don’t know what to tell you. Except . . . yeah, you were right.”
“Good. I wanted to hear you say it. And yeah, we’ve got a case. Did you hear about the Coast Guardsmen getting murdered down in Fort Lauderdale?”
“Something about it. Like a couple of months ago?”
“That’s the case. I’m going to email you the file. The FBI is stuck in a ditch, as usual, the locals all deny that it was in their jurisdiction . . .”
“Send me the file,” Lucas said. “Lauderdale in the winter. I can see that.”
* * *
—
AUDREY COIL WAS NEVER charged with any crime, as two separate U.S. Attorney’s Offices concluded that nothing she’d done had constituted a crime. She hadn’t recommended the shooting of anyone, all she’d done was post some photos and neo-Nazi articles on the same page. The articles were protected by the constitutional provisions guarding freedom of speech and of the press, and there was nothing illegal about taking photos of people in public places and posting them.
There were mutterings in the press about fixing what appeared to be a hole in federal laws, but that quickly went away, when the press realized they’d be shooting themselves in the foot.
* * *
—
A LAWYER FOR THE PARENTS of James Wagner, the boy killed by Dunn, announced plans to sue Audrey Coil, but nothing happened with that, because Audrey had no assets of her own. They did sue Dunn’s estate and eventually got most of it, amounting to over a million dollars even after the attorney’s fees. Part of the money was used to create a bronze statue of their son, which was erected in the schoolyard, showing him about to shoot a basketball. The rest of it was donated to a local animal shelter, as both mother and son had volunteered at the shelter and were committed to animal rescue.
* * *
—
HENDERSON CALLED A SECOND time and asked, “Can you believe it?”
“Can I believe what?”
“Audrey Coil. You don’t know?”
“Oh, Jesus, she didn’t—”
“No, no. She didn’t get shot. Listen, I won’t tell you about it, you got to see it to believe it. I’m sending you an email with a YouTube link. I’m sending it . . . now. Watch it.”
Mystified, Lucas opened his email and clicked on a link. A video came up, with a freeze-frame on Audrey Coil’s face, which was carefully made up to look like a Leonardo da Vinci Madonna. Her hair was covered by a white shawl, like the Virgin Mary might have worn, and a voice-over said, “Audrey Coil, by Blake Winston.”
The freeze frame began to move, and then pulled back, and Audrey Coil was shown walking barefoot along a dirt path with a half dozen other women, all wearing whit
e shawls over their hair and long white gowns that might have been sewn from bedsheets. Music: a woman and choir began singing “Down to the River to Pray” as the women walked slowly down a bank to the edge of a narrow, slow-moving river. A black preacher waited by the water’s edge, and as the chorus of music swelled, the women were taken one at a time and dipped in the river, newly baptized.
When the baptisms were over, the camera tracked back to Audrey Coil, who began, “I know there’s no way that I can make full recompense . . .”
Lucas was struck dumb and stayed that way for a while, walking around in his living room, running his hands through his hair.
* * *
—
JANE CHASE CALLED LUCAS a couple of weeks after he got home.
“It took me a while, but I put it all together,” she said.
“Put what together?” Lucas asked.
“What you did,” she said. “I wondered right from the beginning why you wanted to interview William Christopher Walton, or Bill-Boy as we now call him, at the federal lockup. I had a quiet off-the-record chat with Brett Abelman, Bill-Boy’s attorney, and he told me what you did during the interview. You poked at Bill-Boy to see what would happen. He blew up and that’s what you wanted to see.”
“Why do you call him Bill-Boy?”
“Apparently, many years ago there was a TV series called The Waltons and one of the main characters was called John-Boy—but you’re trying to move me away from the question of why you got Bill-Boy to blow up.”
“Jane . . .”
“I thought, now why did he do that? The answer is, because you thought Dunn would react the same way. He’d be enraged and he’d go after Audrey Coil. You used a teenaged girl as a tethered goat to attract Dunn to the place where you could kill him. But how could you set up Audrey Coil? Well, you didn’t know who Dunn was, so she’d have to be exposed as the creator of the website—Dunn would have to be told that the whole site was a fake. You could only reach him through the media. I talked to the media outlets that got the original tips on Audrey, and guess what? Gasp! The phone that the calls came from was a burner.”
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