Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30) - John Sandford Page 0,121
that’s Mr. Dunn’s trash?”
“Yes, we haven’t put ours out yet.”
Lucas thanked the woman and walked into her backyard and called Chase. “Where are you?”
“We’re on the way.”
“Do you have a warrant?”
“Not yet. It’s a Sunday, that presents certain logistical difficulties. But we’ll get one.”
“I have a bag of trash that Dunn took to a neighbor’s house this morning. He said he was going on a trip and asked them to put it out for him.”
“Excellent. We don’t need a warrant for that. We’ll transport that as soon as we get there. We’ll be there in twelve minutes, according to my app.”
* * *
—
THE FBI ARRIVED IN THREE FORD SUVS. Chase hopped out, looked at Dunn’s house, and said, “We’ve got his truck make, model, and tag number. We’re looking for it. The judge who handles Sunday warrants may be playing golf, but I just got a text that says somebody knows where he is, and have gone to look for him. Where’s the garbage?”
Lucas showed her the garbage bag, and two minutes after that, the bag was on its way back to Washington.
The feds had the Rapid DNA technology that could provide a fast DNA result within two hours, although its findings couldn’t be used in court. What it could do was confirm that a suspect was almost certainly the producer of a particular sample of DNA. Whatever was in the garbage bag could be used to match DNA from the rifle used to shoot James Wagner and from the blood at the Stokeses’ house. A more scientifically advanced and court-acceptable DNA sample would be obtained from biological samples taken from the house and from Dunn personally, when they caught him.
Lucas sat with Chase in the back of one of the Fords, with two more feds in the front seats, and filled them in on the connection between Dunn and the Stokeses, and provided them with the names of the people at the job site who could confirm the connection.
“Do you think he’s running?” one of the front-seat feds asked.
“I don’t know why he would think we were closing in, unless he’s on a DNA register somewhere,” Lucas said, evading the question.
Chase said, “He isn’t. We don’t know his name at all, not from before today.”
“But he was known to at least some of these alt-right guys,” Lucas said.
“Yes.”
* * *
—
THEY TALKED ABOUT the case in general for twenty minutes or so, everything that everybody already knew, speculated on the possibility that more shooters would come out of the woods, or that an actual 1919-type extortion would occur, inspired by Audrey Coil’s website.
Chase was working her phone as they talked, trying to get the warrant moving, and then Lucas, bored, and another bored agent got out of the truck and walked around Dunn’s yard and peered through his windows. The blinds were firmly down on most of them, but where they could see in, the house was almost preternaturally neat. “Too neat,” the other agent said. “The guy’s an obsessive-compulsive at some level.”
* * *
—
WHEN THEY WALKED back to the truck, they found that Chase had gone across the street to interview Mrs. Bixby, and had apparently been invited inside. She reappeared in ten minutes and told Lucas, “Dunn lives by himself. Had a wife, they divorced a few years ago, her whereabouts are unknown, current name is unknown. No known personal friends, no visitors. Mrs. Bixby says he’s smart and not bad-looking, but there’s something that’s always been off-putting about him. I’m going to go talk to the lady in that house . . .”
She pointed to the first house Lucas had gone to—they’d seen the woman at the door, watching them—but before Chase could go that way, her phone dinged and since she carried it in her hand like a permanent appendix, she glanced at it and said, “We got the warrant.”
They headed for the house, and as they did, two more FBI trucks arrived, one with a crime scene crew. One of the agents who had arrived with Chase had a battery-powered lock rake, and they went through the front door without having to break anything.
As soon as they did, an alarm went off. Chase said, “Damnit, turn that thing off.”
The agent with the lock rake said, “I can turn it off, but I don’t think . . .” He found the alarm box in the kitchen, pulled out his cell phone, made a call and identified himself. “You know who I am and this is