TWENTY-FIVE
Lucas had become a police detective at a time when he always kept quarters in his pocket, in case he had to make phone calls. From phone booths. After looking up people in a phone book, which hung inside the phone booth on a chain—the book was always missing a few critical Yellow Pages and almost always smelled like somebody had peed on it.
Now, there were no phone books and no booths in which to hang them, or in which you might take an emergency leak. Quarters were worth half as much as they had been.
But, he thought, a cell phone had its advantages. He got out of Hartsfield-Jackson in a Nissan Pathfinder, at five o’clock. Before he left Hertz, he used his phone to check Google for sporting goods stores in Macon and found a Bass Pro Shops store that was open until seven.
He opened his phone’s navigation app, asked, and was told that with current traffic conditions, he could be there a few minutes after six. The app’s voice—a woman’s—sounded impatient. If hewanted to get there before the store closed, he’d have to move. And he could move, at illegal speed, because his phone also had the Waze app, which warned of speed traps and patrolling cops.
The nav app was correct, almost to the minute, as was the Waze. He spent twenty minutes in the store, and emerged with a double-extra-large camo shirt and large-size pants. On an impulse, and because he’d always wanted a pair anyway, he bought a pair of Fujinon image-stabilized marine binoculars.
He could have made it to Tifton by eight, but, after a quick search on his phone, stopped at an outlying Burger King for a no-meat Impossible Whopper, fries, and a Diet Coke. The Whopper was okay, maybe a six on a scale of one to ten, but he was burping salt all the way to Tifton.
—
LUCAS LANDED A SMALL SUITEat the Country Inn in Tifton, where he arrived at 8:30. After inspecting his room, he carried the rifle up the back stairs, took it out of its case and worked it, loading and unloading it: it worked smoothly and had been freshly cleaned. That done, he put it back in its case and hid it behind the bed, in case a motel employee came into his room while he was gone.
He pulled on his bulletproof vest with the yellow “U.S. Marshal” lettering on the back, and pulled the double-extra-large camo shirt over it. It was sloppy, but workable, if he rolled up the sleeves. The pants fit fine. He folded the new clothes and set them aside.
The binoculars came in their own hard case and he tookthem out, inserted the batteries, put on the neck strap, fiddled with them until he understood how they worked.
Next, he set up his iPad, went on the motel Wi-Fi to Google Earth and called up a satellite view of the Coil house, which was in an exurban area northwest of town. From the satellite, the countryside around Tifton looked like a giant yellow-and-green jigsaw, the yellow being irregularly-shaped farm fields, interspersed with forest land.
The Coil house, which appeared to be long and single-storied, was on a small lake or a large pond. In addition to the pond, the Coils had a good-sized swimming pool, glowing aqua-green in the satellite image, screened from the road by the house and what in the north might have been called a woodlot.
Lucas didn’t know what you’d call it in the south, but there were a lot of trees, which was both good and bad. Nobody would see him, but he might not see Dunn, either.
Had to think like Dunn. He peered down at the satellite view, thought that Dunn might be looking at the same thing. Where would he put himself? How would he kill Audrey Coil—or maybe all the Coils?
An ambush at the house seemed simplest; otherwise, how would Dunn know where she’d be? Maybe the Tifton high school? Was there a private school? Lucas didn’t know, but, he thought, neither would Dunn.
Would Dunn risk a straightforward house invasion, going in with a high-capacity gun in an effort to kill everybody? He might... but if he did, there would be no guarantee that Audrey would even be in the house. He’d want to see her, Lucas thought.
—
THOUGH IT WAS DARK, he decided to have a look at the house and headed out again, across Tifton—a bigger town than he’d expected—past an ag college and around a couple of corners and then out Carpenter Road. The road was flat blacktop, with widely spaced houses set well back, usually in stands of pine trees. With a couple of turns off Carpenter, he was cruising past the Coil place, which was lit up like Christmas, with five cars in the circular driveway.
No signs of media, but two of the cars had a cop-like appearance—rode hard and put up wet, bland sedans, older.
There were woods across the road from the Coil house, and from two particular angles, a shooter could see down the opposite ends of the driveway right to the front door. The ends of the driveway were thirty-five or forty yards apart, the wooded shooting positions perhaps sixty to seventy yards apart. He drove on past for a half-mile or so, then turned around, waited a bit, and then drove past the house again. No change. Still a cop vibe from the sedans. Maybe there were cops inside the house, as bodyguards.
The woods across the road from the south end of the driveway seemed to have a piece of higher ground, a hump, that would make a better shooting platform than the lower ground on the north. Lucas made a mental note.
—
WHEN HE GOTback to the Country Inn, he called Weather to tell her where he was; they talked for fifteen minutes and shesaid, “I still don’t understand why you’re there by yourself. What happened to Bob and Rae?”
“I sent them home—at the time, it didn’t seem like we’d need them,” Lucas said. “Now... well, this was a last-minute thing. I’m operating on a hunch.”
“You’re going to talk to the local police tomorrow, right?”
“Sure. If... I can. I need to look at the situation. I could be embarrassing myself.”
“Lucas...”
“I’ll talk to them,” he said. When they were off the phone, he added, “After I look at the situation.”
—
