—
WHEN DUNN FINISHED DINNER, he watched his backyard for a while—sometimes deer appeared from the neighboring woods, to graze on a bed of hostas that he’d laid out at the back of his yard. Hostas were the hot fudge sundaes of the deer world, and Dunn liked to watch them ghosting through the trees, and then delicately stepping out on the yard to browse. The deer were worth any number of hostas.
No deer appeared this night and he washed and dried the omelet pan, the spatula, his fork and plate, cleaned up around the sink, put the beer bottle in the garbage and got another one from the refrigerator.
Up in his office, he composed a letter on his computer using Microsoft Word. He labored over it, getting everything just right, about 1919 and his beliefs concerning the website. He printed three copies on Boise Cascade computer paper—the most common decent paper he could find. He would never touch this particular sheet of paper with his bare hands, because he knew all about DNA. He put the letters in three self-sealing envelopes addressed to three other men he considered serious possibilities for acting in the cause.
With gloved hands, he applied self-sticking “Forever” stamps on the envelopes, put them in an unused brown business envelope and carried the package down to the front door and placed it on the floor. No DNA from mucus or skin or hair contact; no fingerprints; no return address. He would mail them the next day from Gainesville.
The men who got them would have to make up their own minds about what to do.
They’d have to decide whether they really wanted to go in.
If they finally wanted to act.
* * *
—
DUNN HAD THREE GUNS. The first was a Ruger SR9C, a compact 9mm semi-automatic pistol, his “house” gun. While small, the Ruger had an extended magazine that gave him the full seventeen rounds. The second was a Ruger 10/22, a .22-caliber carbine-style semi-automatic rifle with open sights, useful for killing small game, like rabbits and squirrels. The third was a scoped bolt-action Winchester Model 70 in .308, good for deer and other large game.
He wasn’t highly skilled with any of them. He’d go to a local shooting range a couple of times a year to practice with the pistol, and occasionally to a three-hundred-twenty-acre tract of wooded land he owned in West Virginia, to shoot the rifles. He’d bought the land as a possible refuge when Barack Obama was elected president.
He’d also bought a thousand rounds of ammunition for the .308 and another two thousand rounds for the .22. Things hadn’t collapsed, as he’d feared they would, under Obama. Since he hadn’t needed to shift to a survival status, he’d considered selling the land, but hadn’t gotten around to it. The tract had a small cabin on it and two ten-acre ponds with panfish. In the back of his mind, he retained the idea that he still might need it someday.
He’d bought all three of his guns under the loose Virginia laws, which allowed unregistered transfers at gun shows. Again, in the back of his mind, he thought it wise to keep his weapons purchases as private as possible, given the growing power of the deep state.
* * *
—
HE THOUGHT ABOUT SHOOTING Randy Stokes and that sister of his who’d given him the website password. Imagined it, almost as a video, and re-ran it through his mind, over and over. At times, it seemed too crazy. Shooting, killing two people that you didn’t even care about? One that you didn’t even know?
He considered other possibilities, including doing nothing about the Stokeses. If he took out one of the targets on the 1919 site, and if the FBI came around, he might admit talking to Randy Stokes but denying everything else. If he were careful enough . . .
There were lots of reasons that wouldn’t work: there was simply too much surveillance to claim that he wasn’t somewhere a camera said he was. If Randy had told his sister about Dunn, which was perfectly possible, and if the Stokeses got suspicious and gave him up, and then if the FBI started searching videos for his