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 with him, and checks the site, he’ll see us.”
“Why don’t you take down the cameras?”
“We’ve done that, Lucas. But we can’t even find where it’s going out to, the video that’s already been shot. Even if we find the security server, I doubt they’d take the site down, even if we yelled at them. I mean, they’ll have hundreds of surveillance videos coming in all the time, we can’t simply order them to shut down.”
“Figure something out,” Lucas said.
“We’re trying,” Chase said. “The big brains are scratching their heads. I don’t know what will come of it.”
“I thoughtyouwere a big brain.”
“Well, yes, but I’m on the strategy side. This problem is tactical,” she said.
“More left to the second lieutenants.”
“Exactly.”
—
LUCAS PICKED UP A CARBINEin Arlington, from a marshal who wanted to make sure he knew how to operate it and that he’d eventually get it back—Lucas had to tell him that he’d already been shot by one, which did make an impression. The case was big and awkward, but about as secure as a case could get, with an actual padlock holding it closed.
“That’ll put a bullet where it’s aimed, if you know how to shoot,” the marshal said. “Try not to whack it around too much.”
