Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30) - John Sandford Page 0,122
an urgent national security . . . then get me to that call center. Right now, fast as you can. Well, try . . .”
He put his hand over the microphone and said, “They’re switching me to the call center that services this alarm. But I can tell you right now, we’re too late. Somebody’s called Dunn and told him that we’re here.”
“Get the number for that phone,” Lucas said. “We can track the phone.”
The agent nodded and a moment later, went back to the call. He identified himself again, gave Dunn’s name and address, listened for a moment, then said, “Do not alert him. He’s a fugitive. If you need a more official order, we can email or fax you a form . . . We’ll do that.”
He hung up and said to Chase, “Dunn’s phone is dead. No response at all. He’s probably pulled the battery, or thrown it in a river. He probably knows it can be tracked.”
“That means he doesn’t know this alarm has gone off.”
The agent nodded. “He doesn’t. The alarm center couldn’t reach him.”
Chase turned to the other agents inside the house. “Move the crime scene van inside the garage. We’ll want to get the rest of the vehicles out of sight, in case he comes back.”
The agents started moving and Chase asked Lucas, “What do you think?”
“I don’t think he’s coming back. He took the garbage out two days ahead of time.”
“Where’s he going?”
Lucas shrugged: “Maybe he’s got a bolt-hole somewhere. Somebody mentioned that he might have a cabin in West Virginia . . .”
* * *
—
CHASE GOT INVOLVED with the crime scene team in taking the house apart. They got biologics from the drain in the shower, which were bagged for the more elaborate DNA tests. Lucas was interested in the procedures, and at one point, Chase came back and said, “He has a whole right-wing library in his office. Lot of theoretical stuff. Political commentaries. He seems more interested in Mussolini than in the Nazis.”
Lucas didn’t know what to make of that, and said so. After an hour of hanging out, he got a call from Henderson’s assistant who said, “You’re out of National at 3:14, arrive at Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta at 4:37. Couldn’t get you to Macon in one flight and it was faster to send you into Atlanta and then put you in a car. You’ve got a car, an SUV, reserved in your name at Hertz. Drive time from Hartsfield-Jackson to Tifton is two and a half hours.”
Lucas looked at his watch: almost one o’clock. It’d be tight. “I’ll take it.”
Lucas told Chase he was leaving. “There’s nothing for me here, that you can’t tell me by telephone.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Poke around. Maybe go home.”
“Give me one more day.”
Lucas shrugged. “To do what?”
She had no answer to that.
* * *
—
AS SOON AS HE WAS IN HIS CAR, Lucas called Russell Forte, his supervisor with the Marshals Service, who worked out of the service headquarters in Arlington. “It’s Sunday,” Forte said.
“Really? I thought it was Tuesday. We think we’ve identified the guy who shot the kid.”
“Can I put out a press release, taking credit?”
“Not yet. I need a gun.”
Silence. Then, “I assumed you had one. Or maybe several.”
“I need a rifle. I need it in the next hour and I need it in a case that I can ship on an airline.”
“Ah, Jesus, I’m in a canoe.”
“You can still canoe,” Lucas said. “Make a phone call, pull some strings, get me a rifle. Couple mags to go with it. Doesn’t need a scope or selective fire. I’ll pick it up at headquarters in one hour. Less than an hour. Forty-five minutes. I won’t have time for a lot of paperwork.”
* * *
—
CHASE CALLED. “We got a little break. Nobody knows this but us chickens, but Senator Coil flew into National, stayed behind security and caught a flight to Atlanta. She’s on her way home.”
“Good. She won’t be on TV, at least, not right away. Listen, in case I run into him while I’m poking around, send me any photos you’ve got of Dunn.”
“We’ve got a couple, now. You’ll have them in five minutes. By the way, he might know we’re looking for him. About ten minutes after you left, the team found a second security system, one of those do-it-yourself things that sends video out to an internet site. They would have taken video of all of us walking around his house. If he has a computer