Would Thomas McGovern be one of them? He had no idea. He’d prefer to shoot early, a time with heavier traffic to get lost in; and decided that checking the pre-bell time slot would be worthwhile.
* * *
—
HE SPENT A SLEEPLESS NIGHT, getting his guts up and playing and replaying in his mind the shot he might be making the next morning. He was out of bed at six, as the sun was coming up, dressed himself in field pants and a tan barn coat. He got a Canon digital camera and his camera bag out of a cupboard, put a 35mm lens on the camera, tucked two zoom lenses in the bag, along with a pair of Swarovski 8x25 binoculars.
By 7:30, he was ambling down the street at the top of the cemetery, hands in his jacket pockets, camera bag hanging off one shoulder. It occurred to him then that a dog would have been an excellent decoy and possible alibi . . . but he didn’t have a dog.
As he came up to the graveyard, he checked around—there were houses across the street, but no activity. In the two-block walk, he’d been passed by only one car. With one last check, he stepped through the cemetery gate and immediately moved back behind a screen of brushy trees, toward the slope overlooking the hospital and the cemetery.
He walked quickly to his shooting position next to the cottonwood, and sat down in the grass, but without the rifle. Glanced at his iPhone: 7:40. The morning was cool and damp, with dew glittering in the grass; he was wearing a wool sweater under the barn jacket and was warm enough, but he could feel the stress building in his chest. He got the Canon out of his camera bag, perched the bag atop a ground-level limestone grave marker that said, in eroded letters, “George Janson, 1864–1929.”
He put the camera atop the bag, turned it on, framed a few shots, made them, switched lenses to the 70-200 zoom, made a few more shots, went back to the first lens, then used the binoculars to scan the school grounds. There was only one kid on the playing area, and he was too tall to be McGovern.
He put the binoculars on the camera bag, then half stood, and looked back toward the street. He’d heard a couple of more cars pass by, but hadn’t yet seen an actual human being on foot.
Three more kids showed up on the playground, two girls and a boy. A few cars trickled into the hospital parking ramp below him.
The first kid was still shooting baskets, the other three were standing in a huddle, looking at cell phones. With a last look around, Dunn duckwalked thirty yards to the empty tool shed, pulled the concrete block loose, reached through the hole under the shed, caught the end of the gun case, and dragged it out. He removed the rifle and the magazine tucked in next to it, and duckwalked and crawled back to the shooting site. He propped the rifle on the camera bag and scanned the playground. A dozen kids now. The binoculars were excellent, the sharpest available. He couldn’t quite make out faces, though. He could see hair color and complexion and height and dress. Should be good enough: nobody he could see looked like the photo of McGovern.
Below him, a white pickup turned into the parking ramp, disappeared inside.
The kids were now walking into the playing grounds in a steady stream, and four or five were shooting around with the basketball; most of the rest were looking at cell phones or talking, and Dunn thought that one particular huddle of girls might be passing a cigarette.
“ON THE GROUND! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND! LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS. LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS!”
* * *
—
DUNN FLINCHED AND DUCKED behind the camera bag, looked over his shoulder, toward the street, saw nothing. Men were shouting, had to be cops . . . but they weren’t shouting at him. He’d seen no sign of police cars.
More shouting and a car’s engine howled in the parking structure and brakes squealed and more men were shouting, and looking down toward the open walls of the structure, Dunn saw five or six men in suits pointing guns at somebody that he couldn’t see, on the far side of the ramp.
And he thought: It’s somebody else. My God, somebody else was there to take a shot and the police had staked out the parking ramp. And he, Dunn, was right there, above them, with a rifle, and nobody was looking at him, nobody was coming.
He pulled the rifle off the camera bag and low-crawled over to the tool shed, hurriedly pushed the gun back in its case and shoved it as far as he could beneath the shed. Then he crawled back to the camera bag, put the binoculars in the bottom of the bag with the lenses on top of them, crawled toward the street, and when he was eight or ten yards out, peeked from behind the screen of trees.
Nobody.
The screaming from the parking ramp had stopped. He slung the bag over his shoulder, walked out of the cemetery and over through the neighborhood to his truck. He sat in the truck, shaking, and not from the cool weather.
So close.
He wondered if the other man was one of the two people he’d sent the letter to—or if he was the man who’d sent a letter to Dunn. No way to know, unless there was media coverage. He caught his breath, started the truck, and drove away from the cemetery into the brightening day.
So close.
* * *
—
HALFWAY BACK TO THE JOB SITE, he stopped at a convenience store where he’d once seen two wall-mounted pay phones. They were still there and he called WUSA in Washington, a CBS affiliate, and told the woman who answered the phone that there’d been a gunman arrested at the hospital above the playing field where the son of Senator Ross McGovern went to school.
He was curious about the failed shooter. Was it somebody he knew? The media should tell him. He went to work. By the time he got home at the end of the day, the story was everywhere.
* * *
—
THE MAN WAS IDENTIFIED at a press conference at Arlington police headquarters that included representatives of the FBI and Secret Service, who spent several minutes patting one another on the back for the great cooperation between their agencies, as if anybody really gave a shit.
Dunn had never heard of the guy, but everything about him seemed familiar. He was a lone wolf. He had, in the past, some contact with extremist groups, but apparently found them lacking in discipline and focus.
The press conference had been recorded before the news program, and a reporter, cued by the anchorwoman, said, “A source in the Arlington Police Department has told us exclusively that William Christopher Walton was found to be carrying a letter that suggested he might wish to take action based on the 1919 website which originally published photos of the children of prominent national politicians . . .”
He went on for a while, but Dunn thought: my letter.
His letter had been turned into a chain letter, completely out of his control. If the feds managed to trace that letter back to a sender, if somebody hadn’t been as careful as Dunn had been, then it was possible that Dunn’s name might come up.
He stood up, holding an empty beer bottle, and watched as the anchorwoman repeated what everybody had already said three times. He was in danger, no question of it.
But.
It hadn’t really occurred to him earlier: the cemetery was a perfect perch from which to shoot a kid at the Stillwater School. And nobody had come to look, because he was too far away, and the hospital seemed to be a perfect shooting platform, and much closer.
He could, he thought, go back.
The cops might or might not continue staking out the place, but given the media uproar, any other potential shooters would be scared away.
That’s what the cops would think. And Thomas McGovern’s parents.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Jane Chase got Lucas up at 8:30 and said, in a preternaturally calm voice, “There’s been an arrest outside a school where Senator McGovern’s kid goes. No shooting, but the guy who was arrested had a high-end scoped .223 and was apparently planning to use it. He set up a spotting scope inside his car and had it focused on the school’s playground.”
“He was arrested by a joint Secret Service, FBI, and Arlington police team, and we’re holding him at the federal building in Arlington.”
“Is there anything for me to do?” Lucas asked.
“You could find the people who set up the fuckin’ site.” She sounded angry.
“Working on it, without a lot of help,” Lucas snapped back. “So far, nothing’s panned out but one crappy drug bust. We’re talking to Patriotus today, if we can run down the leader, this Roland Carr guy. That could be something.”
“Make something happen, Lucas, goddamnit,” she said. “That’s what you’re here for.”
“I’d be happy to hear a specific suggestion,” Lucas said, still in a prickly voice. “Why don’t you get one of your HVE people to tell me exactly where Carr might be found. That would help.”
“I’m going over to the federal building. Maybe there’ll be something. I’ll check on the Patriotus guy,” she said. Then: “I’m actually running down a hallway. Sorry about the attitude . . . there’s a lot of stress right now. I’ll call you back.”
* * *
—
LUCAS CALLED BOB, who was working out with Rae: “You guys get ready to move,” Lucas said. He told Bob about the arrest, and Bob said, “Waterboard the motherfucker.”
* * *
—
LUCAS WAS IN THE SHOWER when his phone rang again. He’d put it on the bathroom sink and he stepped out, dried his hand, and picked it up. Not Chase.
“Davenport.”
“Davenport! This is Charles Lang! Somebody’s murdered Stephen! He’s dead! Shot in the head! There’s a lot of blood, I just, I just . . .”
“Where are you, Charlie?” Lucas asked.
“I’m at home. When Stephen didn’t come down from his apartment—he lives over the garage—I went looking for him. He’s in the garage, on the floor. He has a bullet hole in his forehead and there’s this red . . . halo . . . around his head, it smells bad, like . . . I dunno.”
“Where are you in the house?”
“In the den, I ran to get my phone . . .”
“Have you called the police?”
“No, I called you . . .”
“Okay. Don’t go back to the garage. Sit down in the den. Don’t do anything. The cops will be there in five minutes. Tell them the FBI and the Marshals Service will be working the case and are on the way. Just sit there, okay? Sit there.”
“I’m afraid there might be somebody here in the house. What if he’s still here, the killer?”
“Do you have a safe room? A room where you would feel secure?”
“I could lock the dressing room. It’s got a solid door.”
“Go there. Right now,” Lucas said. “Stay on the phone talking until the door is shut. I’ll be listening.”
“I’m going now, I’m running.”
* * *
—
TEN SECONDS LATER, Lang said, sounding out of breath, “I’m in the dressing room. The door is locked.”
“Stay there. The cops will be coming . . .”
“I’ve got a pistol in my dresser.”
“No! Leave it there. You don’t want to be handling a gun, especially if a couple of patrolmen show up and a man’s been shot. Sit there, Charlie, do nothing, and we’ll be coming.”
He called Bob: “Where the fuck are you?”
“In my room. About to take a shower. What?”
“One of the men we’re looking at got murdered. We’re on the way. Call Rae, tell her ten minutes in the garage. No. Seven minutes.”
“Got it.”
* * *
—
LUCAS CALLED CHASE: “What? I’m not there yet,” she said.
“Charlie Lang just called me. Somebody murdered Stephen Gibson at Lang’s house. We’re going. We need some FBI backup and I need you to call the cops. He lives in Potomac.”
“Oh, shit! Shit! I’m on my way. I’ll turn around and head that way. Give me his address . . .”
Lucas clicked on his phone’s navigation app and read Lang’s address for Chase. He heard her giving orders to somebody, probably a driver, and he said, “I’ll see you there. I gotta run.”
Jeans, shirt, jacket, gun, cross-trainers. Running.
* * *
—
THEY TOOK THE TAHOE, which had lights and a siren, with Lucas driving, because he more or less knew the way. He briefed Bob and Rae on his interview with Lang and told them about his last conversation with Gibson, in which he ordered him to find the ANM training camp. He didn’t know what kind of research Gibson had done, but now he was dead.
“We’ve got a guy we can go after, a Thomas Aline. Jane might not like it, because they want to use him as a wedge to find out more about ANM, but, he might be a wedge we need to use now.”
The lights and siren on the Tahoe helped, but it still took twenty minutes to get to Potomac. At Lang’s house, two Montgomery County patrol cars were parked outside along with a well-used and unmarked sedan that looked like nothing more than a cop car.
They didn’t need much ID; the Tahoe’s lights were still flashing as they turned the corner a block from Lang’s house. A uniformed cop pointed at the curb, they parked, and a plainclothes cop came out of the house to look at them.
“Marshals Service?” The cop was tall, burly, weathered like an addicted golfer—and he dressed like one, in no-wrinkle slacks and a golf shirt, except for the sport coat that covered his gun.
“We were working with Charles Lang and Stephen Gibson on the 1919 investigation,” Lucas told him. “Lang called me, I called the FBI.” A dark SUV, lights flashing, turned the corner, and they all turned to look. “That’s probably them. Her name is Jane Chase and she has some clout. She called you.”
“Anybody else coming?” the cop asked. “CIA, NSA, NC-double A?”
“Could happen,” Lucas said. “Secret Service, maybe ATF.”
“You’re shittin’ me . . .”
“Not really. The Secret Service and FBI and some local cops busted a guy this morning who was apparently planning to shoot a senator’s son at his grade school.”
“Oh, boy.” The cop glanced back at Lang’s house. “This is tied in?”
“Could be. We don’t know. I got a bad feeling about it.”
The cop’s name was Andy Jackson—“Not the President.” Chase came up, trailed by her assistant, and shook his hand.
“You want to go in?” Jackson asked. “Not much to see except a dead body, shot once in the forehead, apparently after getting out of his car. The car door is still open, but the garage door is down. It looks like he went to meet somebody at the exit door and was shot where he stood. Probably a .38 or .40-something caliber handgun, judging from the hole. The slug went through his head and into the wall and out the back—the wall’s Sheetrock, and didn’t slow it down much. We’re probably not going to find the slug without jumping through our butts. I’d like to finish with the crime scene stuff before we trample all over it . . .”
“Finish with the crime scene,” Chase said. “What does Lang have to say? Can we talk to him?”
“Sure. He’s in the main house, Gibson has an apartment over the garage.” Jackson pointed at the garage and Chase turned to look. “Far enough away that Lang says he never heard a thing. Neighbors didn’t hear anything, either, the ones we’ve been able to find.”
“What do you think about Lang?” Lucas asked.
“Don’t tell him I said so, not yet, but he looks okay to me. Shook up, bad. Of course, you could be shook up if you killed somebody, but I don’t think he did. No complicated alibi. He said Gibson went out last night, after work, said he was going to meet some people on a research project. He was talking to some members of a group called White Fist. Lang’s n
ot sure of the time, but he watched a news program until 10:30 or so, and spent some time in the bathroom, washing his face and brushing his teeth and putting on his pajamas, so he thinks he was in bed around eleven. He saw headlights on his curtains before he went to sleep, and that’s the last thing he knew until he got up this morning.”
“He’s sure it was Gibson? The headlights?”
“He assumed it was, but he didn’t look. Not to say that there might not have been somebody in the car with him. But it looks to me like somebody might have either followed him here, or been waiting for him here, and met Gibson at the door.”
Chase: “Was Gibson involved with anyone?”
“Lang says no. He said Gibson had a girlfriend a couple of years back, for a short time, but he hadn’t seen her for a while. We’ll check to see what she has to say: we’ve got a name. We haven’t had time to talk to Lang much—I’ve been here for . . .” He looked at his watch. “. . . about fifteen minutes.”
* * *
—
“LET’S TALK TO LANG,” Chase said.
On the walk to the main house, Jackson asked, “You think it had to do with Gibson’s research? On these alt-right people?”
“That’s an obvious possibility,” Chase said, “depending on who exactly he was looking at, and how he was going about it.”
“As soon as your crime scene people are done, we need to get up in his apartment and look for a notebook or a laptop or anything else he might have taken notes on,” Lucas said. “We need to check his phone calls, see if there are GPS links that the phone company can help us with.”
“We can do all that,” Jackson said. “There is a laptop up there for sure, and quite a few legal pads.”
“We’d like to be there when you look,” Chase said. “If there’s a link going out to a shooter group—this White Fist sounds interesting—we need to know which one it was.”
Masked Prey Page 18
