“Everybody’s got one of those. Except me,” Lucas said. He’d thrown the burner in the Potomac.
“And then I asked myself, why would Davenport, who’d just exposed Dunn as the killer, not even hang around to see if we could bag him right there in the Washington area? Why would he race to the Marshals Service headquarters and get a fucking high-powered rifle and fly out to Atlanta and then drive to Tifton before we’d even finished processing the house? Why would he lie to me about being out jogging when he was probably at National getting ready to fly?”
“I wasn’t lying. Actually, I was jogging to the gate. I was a little late,” Lucas said.
“The real answer to that question was,” Jane Chase said, “Davenport didn’t want a bunch of agents converging on Tifton and interfering with his killing of Dunn. Davenport didn’t want Dunn arrested, he wanted him dead.”
“Did you ever see the boy who was killed?” Lucas asked. “Or his mother? Or were they gone by the time you came down the hill, to school?”
After a moment of silence, she said, “They’d already moved the body . . .”
“You didn’t see him. Didn’t see his face, didn’t see his mother weeping over his body. So don’t give me any bullshit lectures about Dunn. Dunn got what he needed to get.”
“It was murder.”
“No, it was a killing,” Lucas said. “But not murder. I called out to him, he fired first, and I shot back. I gave him a chance to quit and he didn’t take it.”
“We’ve only got your word for that,” Jane Chase said.
“And everybody agrees my word is just fine,” Lucas said. “Have you talked with Henderson or Smalls?”
“Yes. They told me to shut up and sit down. That absolutely infuriates me. I’m an attorney and a highly capable FBI agent and they told me to shut up. Big Senate bulls and I’m this cute little girl FBI agent who has to be told not to get her panties in a twist . . .”
“Jane, this is not about a patriarchal problem. Did you talk to Roberta Coil?”
More silence, then, “Yes, I did.”
“What’d she say?”
“She told me to shut up and sit down.”
“Maybe you should do that.”
More silence, and then, click, and she was gone.
* * *
—
IT TOOK A WHILE, but both Cop (Rusty Wannamaker) and Toby Boone were convicted of different murder charges in the killing of Stephen Gibson. Wannamaker agreed to plead guilty to first-degree murder and to roll on Boone to avoid a federal trial that could have resulted in the death penalty. For his cooperation, he got life without the possibility of parole. Boone’s case was more difficult, even though Wannamaker rolled on him, and he wound up pleading to conspiracy to commit murder with a negotiated fifteen-year sentence, to avoid a trial on first-degree murder.
* * *
—
Old John Oxford of the American National Militia called in October.
“I see you killed the killer,” he said.
“And?”
“He got what was coming to him. I wanted to let you know that after you talked to David Aline, we had some members keeping an eye on him—he knew about it in advance, we weren’t spying. And sure enough, they picked up some FBI attention. I don’t know exactly how you identified him and I’m not very interested in finding out. What happened, though, is that it created a change in our whole organization.”
“Do tell.”
“Yes. We’re going to follow the model of the Irish Sinn Féin party. Do you know about them?
Lucas said, “I can Wiki it.”
“They were closely tied to the IRA, but they were a legal aboveground party, while the IRA stayed underground. We’re going to create an aboveground, open party and begin aboveground advocacy, while we also continue with the underground movement. Since you somehow figured out David, he and his cell will be joining me and my cell in the over-ground group.”
“I have to tell you, John, I don’t think you’ll get a warm reception. People may cut up the government, but basically, they like it. They support it. And you essentially want to get rid of it. Try getting rid of Social Security and Medicare and you’ll get your heads handed to you.”
“Watch,” Oxford said. “We’ve got too many idiots in high office, spending money that we don’t have. The new culture is exposing them. Americans can only accept so much cynicism before they rebel.”
“You might be right in the long run, but we live in the short run,” Lucas said. “Right now, it’s all very bleak. Frankly, I don’t think you’re the group to change that.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Oxford said. “When you were here, I thought I detected a bit of sympathy for the ANM. We thought you might be interested in involving yourself.”
“I’m not political, John. I work with politicians, because that’s the way the cards got cut, in my life anyway,” Lucas said. “But I’m not political. I just don’t think that way.”
“Everything’s political . . .”
“No. I don’t believe that.”
“Then what are you going to do, Davenport?” Oxford asked. “Sit on your hands as the country disintegrates?”
“I’m going to hunt,” Lucas said. “That’s what I do, John. I hunt.”
* * *
—
HENDERSON CALLED A THIRD time and said, “God help me, you’re the only guy I can talk to. If Porter heard about this, he’d soil his Depends.” Then he broke into a near-obscene cackle.
“Jesus, Elmer, that sounds really bad, whatever it is you’re gonna say.”
“Roberta Coil comes up for reelection in two years and from the outside, it looks grim.”
“I thought it was worse than that: I thought she was doomed.”
“Over in that direction, for sure. But! But! The Republicans down there line up to take shots at various political offices, and the Ag Commissioner has been guaranteed a shot at her seat. Name of Eric Gabriel. He’s already got some TV spots out there, paid for with dark money, of course, light shining on his head, and they call him the Angel Gabriel.”
Another cackle.
“Go ahead and tell me. I’m pre-disgusted.”
“A good ol’ boy down there snuck out of the Gwinnett County courthouse with a sealed juvenile court record that involves the Angel. Turns out, when Mr. Gabriel was seventeen, he got caught diddling ten-year-old twin sisters.”
“Ah, God,” Lucas said.
“We’re gonna unload that particular document about, mmm, three weeks before the election. Give it some time to settle in with the voters. Bob is going back to the Senate for another six years.”
“Everything about that is disgusting,” Lucas said.
“Hey. That’s where we’re at,” Henderson said.
* * *
—
LUCAS TOLD WEATHER about Henderson’s call and she said, “We really need to keep Coil in the Senate.”
“No liberal disgust?”
“Well, Roberta Coil didn’t do anything.”
“C’mon, Weather.”
“C’mon yourself,” she said.
“How come everybody in politics is a snake?” Lucas asked.
“It’s like your friend Elmer said—that’s where we’re at.” She shook her head and asked, “How’s the Coast Guard file coming?”
“Interesting,” Lucas said. They were in the living room and he picked up a fat manila folder full of computer printouts, that had been sitting on a coffee table.
“You look happy,” she said.
“Well, they’ve got some bad boys running around in Lauderdale. Bad boys.”
About the Author
John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of twenty-nine Prey novels; four Kidd novels; twelve Virgil Flowers novel
s; three YA novels coauthored with his wife, Michele Cook; and three other books.
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