He turned the television off, sat down, stared at the blank screen. The feds had the gun. They had apparently found the Stokeses. If they looked at all the people who worked with Randy Stokes, they’d come to him. If they got DNA off the rifle, if they found his DNA from the accidental gunshot wound at the Stokeses’ place... they’d get to him.
He wouldn’t just be a fool to some psychological twitch called Rachel Stokes, he’d be a nationwide fool. He’d be renowned as a fool.
—
NOW RACHEL STOKESclimbed back inside his head: “You’re a fool. A fool. A foooool...”
He shook her off, went back to the computer, theNew York Times, theWashington Post. Long stories there, Senator Coil out of touch, but they had printed versions of Audrey Coil’s television interviews before she’d been apparently turned off by a family lawyer. Exterior shots of the house.
He kicked back from the computer, then leaned into it again. A Google search turned up an address, and a street view showed the same house as he’d seen on television. The satellite pinpointed it, a sprawling, single-story bricks-and-boards place with a barn in back that was larger than the house; and a bright blue swimming pool tucked out of sight in the heavily landscaped lawn.
Audrey Coil had done this to him: made him into a fool. He paced through the house, hating on it. The girl’s image was a tick in his brain, with Rachel Stokes there as well, taunting him.
He put both hands over his ears, staggered back up the stairs to the bedroom, fell on the bed.
He never passed out. He couldn’t. He hoped for it, some sort of darkness, oblivion. He got Rachel Stokes, with a bullet hole, sneering...
—
AT SEVEN O’CLOCKSunday morning, back at the computer, on Google Maps, eleven hours, twenty minutes from door to door, Warrenton, Virginia, to Tifton, Georgia. He paced some more, thinking about it, but he was never in doubt.
He loaded his cabin gear into his truck—never could tell what you might need on the road—along with the new rifle and the carry pistol, ammo, three days’ clothes, his dopp kit. He got gas, donuts, and coffee at a Sunoco station, and headed out of town, down the highway to I-95, the right turn onto the freeway and nothing ahead but Tifton, Georgia, a little less than twelve hours away.
This was the only road to redemption, the only way to erase the insult.
—
RACHEL STOKES RODE WITH HIM, in the passenger seat, now silent, but always looming. He was afraid to look at her, the mutilated head, the sunken eyes with their blackening flesh around the sockets, the smell of blood suffusing the truck.
Dunn put his head down and pushed south.
Sunday morning, coming down.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Sunday morning.
Rae called first: “We’re at National. I wanted to give you a chance to tell us to turn around and come back.”
“It’s a snake-hunt now,” Lucas said. He yawned, kicked off the bedsheet, scratched his chest, and put his feet on the floor. “The FBI has DNA, they’ve got a million leads to work. They got analysts crawling out their ass. That’s not really what we do. You go on home and do some research. Find something for us.”
“So last night when I was going to bed, I started thinking about Audrey Coil, and I was thinking, Wow! I wonder how that could possibly have happened, with Jane plugging leaks in the FBI like the little Dutch boy and the dike.”
“Despite Jane, the FBI leaks like a sieve. That’s how it happened,” Lucas said.
After a deliberate silence, Rae said, “Maybe. Maybe the FBI. But you’re up to something, you sneaky shit. I can tell. You’re getting rid of witnesses, that being Bob and me.”
“You have no faith in my integrity; you should be ashamed,” Lucas said.
“I got plenty of time to be ashamed when it turns out that I’m wrong. Until then, I say you’re a sneaky shit and you’re up to something.”
When he got off the phone, Lucas considered shaving and getting a shower, but he figured Jane 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?”
