Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30) - John Sandford Page 0,116
Chase would be calling about the time he got in the shower, so he lay back on the bed and waited.
She called ten minutes later; twelve minutes after eight o’clock.
“You up?”
“Almost. You have something for me?”
“I’ve got something to do, if you guys aren’t doing anything else.”
“I sent Bob and Rae home,” Lucas said. “They’re getting on the plane now. I gotta get some tickets myself. Maybe get out of here tomorrow morning.”
“One more day. Two at the most,” she said. “You’re my good-luck charm.”
“I saw you on TV,” Lucas said. “Great move there, taking off the jacket, showing the gun. You looked hot, in that eastern-establishment, women’s-college way. There’s gonna be a made-for-TV movie about you. Somebody’s already writing it.”
“Lucas?” she said, sweetly. “Fuck you.”
He laughed and asked, “What do you want to do?”
“We’re talking to everybody who got letters and especially a guy who got what we think is a first-generation letter. We got a list of names from him. Unfortunately, it’s a long list. I’d like you to come in and chat with him. He’ll be here, with his lawyer, at nine, which gives you about forty-seven minutes to get here. Wait. Forty-six.”
“I can almost do that,” Lucas said. “I might be a few minutes late. I need a bagel or two.”
* * *
—
WHEN PRESSED, Lucas could clean up and get out the door in seventeen minutes, in jeans, casual shirt, and sports jacket; a suit and tie took him twenty. Twenty minutes after Chase called, he was in the Watergate restaurant, collecting two bagels with cream cheese.
The hotel had called a cab and as he was heading for the front door, bagel bag in hand, he ran into Jeff Toomes, the hotel security man and ex-cop who’d tipped him off about being followed by Stephen Gibson. “I saw Bob and Rae on their way out of here,” Toomes said. “They said they were going home . . . You must be getting close on the 1919 shooter.”
“Maybe close,” Lucas said, edging toward the door.
Toomes shook his head. “Goddamned country is going to hell in a handbasket. When did we get to the place where we shoot children because of politics?”
“Hate to say this, but I saw it coming,” Lucas said. “Maybe not this exact thing, shooting kids, but this level of craziness. The rats have finally gotten out of the woodwork.”
“When some crazy guy shoots up a church, you think, okay, he was nuts, he cracked, went psycho,” Toomes said. “With all these guns floating around, what do you expect? Background checks are bullshit. That guy who shot up the concert in Nevada, killed all those people? He bought all his guns legally. So that happens. But this guy, shooting a kid . . . he’s not exactly your basic psycho, is he? He’s a psycho, but he thought he was working for a political program.”
Lucas said, “You’re exactly right, Jeffrey. We might not be able to stop the undetected psychos, but if a guy’s got a program and if we can figure it out, we got a chance.”
“Okay. You’re gonna find him, aren’t you? I mean you, personally.”
“Yeah.”
“Listen, when you find him, kill the motherfucker.”
Lucas didn’t answer, but reached out and tapped Toomes once on the chest.
* * *
—
THE WEATHER HAD CHANGED OVERNIGHT, an overcast setting in from the west, with only a sliver of blue on the eastern horizon. The clouds had a meanness about them, as well: the arrival of autumn in Washington, a hint that summer was on the wane?
A wind kicked some scrap paper down the street and there was a coolness to it, a briskness, that Lucas felt through his summer jacket as he waited for the cab. A chill.
Sunday morning, coming down.
* * *
—
FRANCIS BACON was being treated well in a conference room at FBI headquarters. Chase’s assistant met Lucas at the entrance and escorted him through a maze of hallways and elevators to the room where Bacon was sitting, a lawyer at one elbow, a dish of nuts and a can of ginger ale at the other, talking with three agents, including Chase.
Chase pointed at a chair and said to everyone, as Lucas sat down, “We’re being joined by the Marshals Service. Lucas Davenport.”
To Lucas, she said, “We’re getting a list of everyone Mr. Bacon can think of who might conceivably have sent him the letter. Somebody well spoken, educated, uses some tech, has a computer and a laser printer . . . what else?”