Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30) - John Sandford Page 0,108
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