Solitude Creek

Chapter 36

The alarm went off at seven thirty.

A classical tune — Dance, a musician, never did well with dissonance. It was the ‘Toccata and Fugue’, Phantom of the Opera — no, not that one. An earlier version.

She opened her eyes and fumbled for the stop button.

Yes, it was Saturday. But the unsub was still out there. Time to get up.

She turned to see Jon Boling brush back his thinning hair. He wasn’t self-conscious: it was only that strands were sticking out sideways. He wore only a T-shirt, gray, which she vaguely remembered him pulling on somewhere north of midnight. She was in a Victoria’s Secret thing, silk and pink and just a little outrageous. Because, how often?

He kissed her forehead.

She kissed his mouth.

No regrets about his staying. None at all.

She’d wondered what her reaction would be. Even now, hearing the creak of a door downstairs, a latch, muted voices, the tink-tink of cereal bowls, she knew it was the right decision. Time to step forward. They’d been dating a year, a little more. She now marshaled arguments and prepared a public-relations campaign for the children, thought about what they would and wouldn’t think, say, do when they saw a man come down the stairs. They’d have a clue about what had been going on: Dance had had The Talk with them, several years ago. (The reactions: Maggie had nodded matter-of-factly, as if confirming what she’d known for years; Wes had blushed furiously and finally, encouraged to ask a question, any question, about the process, wondered, ‘Aren’t there, like, any other ways?’ Dance, struggling to keep a straight face.)

So. They were about to confront the fact that Mom had had a man stay over, albeit a man they knew well, liked and who was more relative to them than her own sister was an aunt (flighty, charming and occasionally exasperating, New Age Betsey lived in the hills of Santa Barbara).

Let’s see what the next half-hour holds.

Dance considered just throwing on a robe but opted for a shower. She slipped into the bathroom and, when out, dressed in jeans and a pink work shirt while Boling, looking a bit uneasy, brushed his teeth. He, too, dressed.

‘Okay,’ he said slowly.

‘No.’

‘No?’ he asked.

‘You were looking at the window. You can’t jump out of it. You’re going to come downstairs with me and we’ll have my famous French toast. I only make it on special occasions.’

‘Is this special?’

She didn’t answer. She kissed him fast.

He said, ‘All right. Let’s go see the kids.’

As it turned out, however, it wasn’t just the kids that Dance and Boling saw.

As they stepped to the bottom of the stairs and into the kitchen, Dance nearly ran into Michael O’Neil, who was holding a glass of orange juice and walking to the table.

‘Oh,’ she whispered.

‘Morning. Hi, Jon.’

‘Michael.’

O’Neil, his face completely neutral, said, ‘Wes let me in. I tried to call but your phone was off.’

She’d shut it off intentionally before easing into bed, not wanting to risk a call — that is, risk hearing O’Neil’s ringtone, an Irish ballad, courtesy of the kids — at a moment like that. She’d fallen asleep before turning it back on. Careless. Unprofessional.

‘I...’ she began, but could think of not a single syllable to utter past that. She glanced toward the busy bees hard at work on breakfast.

‘Hi, Mom!’ Maggie said. ‘There was this show on TV about badgers and there’s this one kind, a honey badger, and this bird called a honeyguide leads it to a beehive and a badger rips it open and eats honey and its coat is so thick it doesn’t get stung. Hi, Jon.’

As if he’d lived there for years.

Wes, on his phone, nodded a cheerful greeting with a smile to both mother and boyfriend.

Mother and daughter went to work, wrangling breakfast — including honey for the French toast, of course. Dance glanced toward Wes. ‘Who?’ she whispered, nodding at his phone.

‘Donnie.’

‘Say hi for me and then hang up.’

Wes said hi, kept talking and, under her gaze, clicked off.

O’Neil, who might very well have spent the night with Ms Ex-O’Neil, kept his eyes on the juice. From his solid frame, a dozen kinesic messages were firing, like cylinders in a sports car. Or a white SUV, made by the Lexus division of Toyota Motors.

Enough, she told herself.

Let it go...

Boling made coffee. ‘Michael?’ Lifting a cup.

‘Sure.’ Then O’Neil added to Dance, ‘Something’s come up. That’s what I was trying to get in touch with you about.’

‘Solitude Creek?’

‘Right.’

Dance didn’t need to glance at the children, from whom she kept most aspects of her job. It was O’Neil who nodded toward the front hall. She told Maggie to set the table. Boling grilled the toast and made bacon. Wes had taken to texting again but Dance said nothing about it.

As she followed O’Neil, she realized that her top button was undone; she’d been distracted earlier. She fixed it with a gesture she tried to make casual but that she was sure drew attention to the V of flesh, dotted with faint freckles. And silently gave a word of thanks to whatever impulse had told her not to go with the robe and lacy Victoria’s Secret gown before heading downstairs.

‘There’s a lead we ought to follow up on. Out of town.’

‘The unsub’s Honda?’

‘No. The alert we’ve got for online activity.’

She and O’Neil had spoken to Amy Grabe, San Francisco, and she’d had the FBI’s powerful online monitoring network search for any references to either of the two attacks. It was not unheard of for witnesses to unintentionally post helpful information about crimes; there had even been instances when the perp had bragged about his cleverness. ‘Last night somebody posted a clip on Vidster.’

Dance knew it. A YouTube competitor.

‘What was it?’

‘Some of the press footage — shot of a TV screen — of the roadhouse. And stills of other incidents.’

‘Others?’

‘Not related to what happened here. It was a rant by somebody named Ahmed. He said this is what Islam will do to the West, that sort of thing. Didn’t take credit for it exactly but we should check it out.’

‘What other incidents?’

‘Some foreign. A beheading of Christians in Iraq, a car bomb outside of Paris. A train wreck in New York, derailment. And then another stampede — a few years ago in Fort Worth. A nightclub.’

‘I read about that. But the perp died in the incident. A homeless guy.’

‘Well, Ahmed claims he was jihadist.’

O’Neil scrolled through his phone. He displayed some clips. Bodies close up, lying in their desperate still poses, asleep for ever.

‘And that was supposedly the work of some terror cell?’

‘More or less.’

‘Have we got his address?’

‘Not yet. Soon, the tech people said.’

‘Mom!’ Maggie called.

‘Be right there.’

He slipped the phone away and they walked into the kitchen. O’Neil said, ‘I should go.’

‘Aw, no, stay!’ Wes said.

Dance said nothing.

‘Yeah, Michael. Pleeeease.’ Maggie was in her persuasive mode.

Boling said, ‘Come on, have something. It’s Kathryn’s secret recipe.’

She said, ‘Eggs, milk. But don’t tell anybody.’

‘Sure, I guess.’

They all sat at the table and Dance dished up.

Wes said, ‘Wow, I saw on the news that guy did another one.’

Dance said, ‘It looks that way.’

‘Did another what?’ Maggie asked.

‘Hurt some people at the Bay View Center.’

Her daughter asked quietly, ‘Did anybody die?’

Dance never over-explained but she always answered their questions truthfully and directly. ‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’

They ate in silence for a while. Dance had little appetite. Boling and O’Neil did. So did Wes.

She sipped coffee and noted that Maggie was troubled again and was now picking at her French toast. ‘Honey?’ she whispered, lowering her head. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’m just not hungry any more.’

‘Drink your juice.’

She had a minuscule sip. Her face was now very clouded. After a moment she said, ‘Mom? I was thinking.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Dance glanced at the others, then said to her daughter, ‘Let’s go on the Deck.’

Maggie rose and, with a glance toward Boling, then O’Neil, Dance followed her outside. She knew that the serious conversation, postponed the other night, was now going to happen.

‘Come on, hon. Tell me. You’ve been sad for a long time now.’

Maggie looked at a hummingbird, hovering over the feeder.

‘I don’t think I want to sing that song tomorrow.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Clara’s not performing.’

‘Clara just had her appendix out. Your whole class is doing something.’

The name of the show was Mrs Bendix’s Sixth Grade Class’s Got Talent!, which told it all. There were to be skits, dance performances, piano recitals, violin solos. Her teacher had persuaded Maggie to sing after she’d performed a perfect solo of ‘America The Beautiful’ at an assembly.

‘I keep forgetting the words.’

‘Really?’ Dance’s tone called her on the lie.

‘Well, like, sometimes I forget them.’

‘We’ll work on it together. I’ll get the Martin out. Okay? It’ll be fun.’

For a moment Maggie’s face was so dismayed that Dance felt alarm. What was this all about?

‘Honey?’

A dark look.

‘If you don’t want to sing, you don’t have to.’

‘I... Really?’ Her face blossomed.

‘Really. I’ll call Mrs Bendix.’

‘Tell her I have a sore throat.’

‘Mags. We don’t lie.’

‘It gets sore sometimes.’

‘I’ll tell her you’re not comfortable singing. You can do the Bach invention on your violin. That’s beautiful.’

‘Really? It’s okay?’

‘Of course.’

‘Even if...’ Her voice faded and her eyes fled to the tiny band-throated hummer, sipping sugar water.

‘Even if what?’

‘Nothing.’ Maggie beamed. ‘Thanks, Mommy! Love you, love you!’ She ran off, back to breakfast, happier than Dance had seen her in weeks.

Whatever was motivating her not to sing, Dance knew she’d made the right decision. As a mother, you had to prioritize. And forcing her daughter to sing in a sixth-grade talent show was not an important issue. She called the teacher and left a message, relaying the news. If there was any problem, Mrs Bendix could call her back. Otherwise, they’d be at the school at six thirty tomorrow, violin in hand.

Dance returned to the kitchen table, and as she ate a mouthful of toast O’Neil’s phone beeped. He took a look at the screen. ‘Got it.’

‘The address of the guy who posted?’

‘His service area.’ He scooted back in the chair. ‘They’re still working on his name and exact address.’

‘Jon...’ Dance began.

‘I’ll get the gang to practices,’ he said, smiling. ‘No worries.’

Wes for tennis. Maggie’d taken up gymnastics — something she hadn’t been interested in until her friend Bethany, the cheerleader, had suggested she try it.

‘And Quinzos after,’ Boling told the kids. ‘Only be sure you don’t tell your mother. Oh, oops!’

Maggie laughed. Wes gave a thumbs-up.

‘Thanks.’ Dance kissed him.

O’Neil was on the phone now. ‘Really, okay. Good. Can you get a state plane?’

Plane?

He disconnected. ‘Got it.’

‘Where’re we headed?’ Dance wiped some honey from her finger.

‘LA. Well, south. Orange County.’

‘I’ll go pack.’

Chapter 37

Antioch March opened his eyes and tried to recall where he was.

Oh. Right.

A motel off the 101.

After getting the Google alert on his phone, he’d tried to make it all the way to his destination last night. But there’d been delays. He’d needed to steal a car — an old black Chevy, it turned out — from the long-term lot at Monterey Regional Airport. He’d thought there was a possibility he’d have to abandon his wheels when he arrived at the destination and he wasn’t prepared to lose the Honda just yet.

There were better ways to get an untraceable car than theft, much better, but this matter was urgent and he’d had no choice but to steal the vehicle. Hotwiring, it turned out, was really quite simple: pull the ignition harness bundle out, gang together everything but the — in this case — blue wire. Rig a toggle, then touch the blue wire to the bound leads (let go right away or you’ll ruin the starter). Then pop the cover off the lock assembly and knock out the steering-wheel pin. Easy.

Still, he hadn’t hit the road until about two a.m.

Several hours later, fatigue had caught up with him there, near Oxnard, and he’d had to stop for some rest. He imagined what would have happened if he’d dipped to snoozing and run off the road. The Highway Patrol, suspecting drinking, would have possibly found the Glock 9mm and a car registration that had someone else’s name on it. And the evening would not have gone well.

So he’d made a stop there, at a dive of a motel, along with truck drivers, Disney-bound tourists and college students, whose energy for copulation was quite astonishing, as well as noisy.

Now, close to eight a.m., March rose slowly to waking, thinking about the dream he’d just had.

Often Serena. Sometimes Jessica.

This one had been about Todd.

Todd at Harrison Gorge. It was in upstate New York, on a busy river, one that led ultimately to the Hudson.

The park and nearby town, Colonial era, was a romantic getaway, four hours from Manhattan. The day he was thinking of, the Day of Todd, was nestled in the midst of leaf season. Officially out of school then, working in sales, he’d been in Ithaca, New York, a call. He’d kept some sentimental ties to academia by working for a company that sold audio-visual equipment to colleges. After a lackluster pitch at Cornell, he’d recognized the symptoms: edgy, depressed. The Get was prodding. He’d cancelled a second meeting and left, driving back to his motel.

He’d seen the park on the way and decided, on a whim, to check it out. March spent an hour hiking along the trails, surrounded by leaves spectacular even in light mellowed by low-hanging clouds. March had his camera and shot some pictures as he walked. The rocks, brown and gray like ancient bone, and stark tree trunks impressed him more than the colors.

Click, click, click...

March had spotted a sign, Harrison Gorge, and followed the arrow.

Although the weather had thinned the visitors, he came upon a cluster of people — mostly young, rugged outdoor people, rock-climbing people. Helmets and ropes and well-used backpacks. One young man had stood off to the side, looking down at the water. Someone had called his name.

Todd...

Blonde, cut and muscled, about March’s age. Lean, handsome face. Eyes that would probably be confident at any other time. But not today. Then his companions were gone. Todd was now alone.

And March had approached.

Listen, Todd, I know it’s a big leap. I know you’re scared. But come on, don’t worry. Everything’ll be fine. If you never try something, you never know, do you?

I see you have a Get of your own to scratch.

Come on... A little closer, closer.

Go for it, Todd. Go for it.

Yes, yes, yes...

Antioch March smiled at the memory. It seemed both from another life and as real as yesterday.

He stretched. Okay. Time to get to work. He showered and dressed. He looked in the mirror and his face grew wry. The blond hair was just plain odd.

He made coffee in the cheap unit on the desk and used the powdered creamer. Breakfast was included but he certainly wouldn’t go to the common room, where others might see him. The description of the man who had ‘allegedly’ caused the Solitude Creek tragedy did not include his face. But he thought it best to be cautious. He sipped the pungent brew and turned on the TV.

March finished packing. He dumped the coffee out, wiped away fingerprints throughout the place using a sanitizer wipe (plain cloth doesn’t work). He stepped outside into the clear, cool air. Gazing around, at the oak and brush, the brown hills, the parking lot for anyone watching him, any threats.

None.

Then he slipped into the car, which was parked in the back. Toggle the power. Blue wire to the bundle.

The car started.

Then he was on the road again, piloting the cigarette-smoke-scented Chevy Malibu, heading south.

Two hours later he was in Orange County, closing in on the apartment of the man who’d posted the bizarre Vidster rant by someone named or nicknamed Ahmed, linking the Solitude Creek incident and several other mass tragedies to fundamentalist Islamist terror.

And putting Antioch March in a spotlight he could not afford to be in.

Chapter 38

After the autobot had alerted March last night to the video, he’d called in some favors to find the address of the poster. It was in Tustin, a pleasant, nondescript suburb in the heart of Orange County. He now passed a lot of stores, restaurants, strip malls, modest homes.

March found Ahmed’s apartment in a quiet residential area, and parked the Chevy Malibu four blocks away, in front of an empty storefront. No security cameras to record the tag number, or him, though he was at the moment largely unrecognizable. The workman’s beige jacket was a thick one for this hot Southern California weather and he was sweating under it and the baseball cap. But nothing to do about that. He was used to being physically uncomfortable on the job. The Get always put you through your paces.

Especially irritating were the flesh-colored cotton gloves.

He supposed, too, he was upset that he’d had to make the trip in the first place. He longed to be back in Monterey. He didn’t want Kathryn Dance’s reprieve to last much longer.

But when your profession is death you need to be willing to do what’s necessary to protect yourself. Be patient, he told the Get. We’ll return to our lovely Kathryn in due time.

March clicked the toggle off, climbed out and pulled on black-framed glasses with fake lenses. Looked at his reflection in the window.

Porn star meets Mad Men...

Then he snagged his gym bag from the back seat. No key, so he had to leave the car unlocked. This didn’t, however, seem like a place where car theft was a big risk. Again, no choice.

Then, head down, he walked an indirect route to the one-story, ranch-style apartment complex.

In the courtyard, he paused. Another glance around. No security videos. No one visible. He stepped up to ground-floor apartment 236, listened. Faint music came from inside. Pop music.

He reached into his pocket with his right hand, gripping the gun, and with his left rapped on the door. ‘Excuse me?’

The music went down. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Your neighbor.’ He stood directly in front of the peephole to prove he was white. And therefore no threat. It seemed like that sort of neighborhood.

The chain, then the latch.

The man inside could be big. Dangerous. And armed.

The door opened. Hm. Ahmed was indeed big, yes, but mostly fat. Pear-shaped. He was also probably not an Ahmed since he was as Anglo as they came. About forty, curly hair. A goatee, shaved head. And a dozen tats, the biggest of which were the American flag and an eagle.

No gun, though one would have looked right at home in his belt.

‘Which unit you from?’ he asked.

March shoved his Glock into the man’s thick chest. Pushed him back into the room.

‘Fuck. No. What is this?’

‘Sssh.’ March frisked him. Then collected the gym bag, closed and latched the door.

Five minutes later the heavyset man, crying, was lying on his back, hands and feet bound with duct tape.

‘Please, don’t hurt me. I don’t— What do you want? Please, no!’

March got down to the fun and soon had his answers. Stan Prescott was not, of course, a terrorist. He was a Christian. A well-thumbed Bible sat beside a well-sat-in armchair. By profession, a bartender. But his avocation was — he might have said — patriot.

After being caressed by the muzzle of March’s Glock, he’d admitted he’d posted the images and claimed credit in the name of Allah, or whatever the fine print read, to arouse anti-Islam sentiment in the country. Was he crazy? March reflected. Everyone with half a brain would see through the plan. And those who believed the claims? Well, that was one group that nobody needed to convert.

Stupid on all fronts. Not the least because he’d picked the wrong person to draw attention to.

But, of course, Prescott had his own Get: the need to keep his country safe and free... from anyone who wasn’t American. That is, Christian American. That is, white Christian American. What he hadn’t learned was that you need to treat the Get like an animal that’s only partly domesticated. You can’t be stupid: it’ll kill its owner as fast as anyone else.

‘Give me your passcode. Your computer.’

The man did, instantly.

March was surveying Prescott’s files. Looking at all the man’s pseudonymous diatribes against America. He looked over the dozens of grim photos of beheadings, bombs and other supposedly terrorist attacks that no self-respecting jihadist would have been behind. He had quite the collection of gruesome pictures.

He got the passcodes to Prescott’s Vidster account and blog, and took everything down.

‘What’s this about, man? Come on! Are you working for them? You seem like one of us!’

Them...

It occurred to March that there might be a benefit here: if the authorities had seen the post, the terror angle would lodge in their minds as a motive for what had happened. That would obscure just a bit more the real reason for the attacks in Monterey, which had, of course, to be kept completely secret.

‘I’m sorry. I’ll do whatever you want. Jesus, man. Come on. We’re both... alike, you know.’

White.

March shut down the laptop. He looked around the room, then dragged a pole lamp over, positioned it above the man’s sweating face.

‘What’re you doing?’

March walked to the front door and fetched his gym bag.

‘What’re you doing?’ Prescott repeated, more desperate.

March crouched down and examined the man’s face closely. He patted him on the shoulder, said, ‘Don’t you worry.’

And unzipped the bag.

Chapter 39

‘This’s it,’ Michael O’Neil said, pulling the rental car into the parking lot of Stan Prescott’s apartment complex in Tustin, California.

They parked several units down from Prescott’s to wait for an Orange County deputy to join them.

In the time it had taken the state jet to whisk Dance and O’Neil from Monterey Regional Airport to John Wayne, Orange County, O’Neil’s computer people had the identity of the man who’d posted that clip of the Solitude Creek deaths.

Stanley Prescott, aka Ahmed, was a forty-one-year-old bartender. Single. The information gathered also revealed that he had been working in his club’s Long Beach location at the time of the Solitude Creek and Bay View disasters, so he wasn’t the unsub.

His Facebook and blog profile revealed he was essentially a rabid bigot. It was obvious that he was claiming Solitude Creek and the other incidents were the work of Muslims to incite anti-Islamic sentiment.

People could be such idiots.

This news was discouraging, since he’d probably had no connection whatsoever to either of the attacks and had simply pulled violent pictures and videos randomly from the web to repost. Still, as they were there, they would talk to him. Maybe the unsub had emailed or posted something on this man’s blog.

As they waited for the Orange County deputy to arrive, O’Neil took a call. He nodded and Dance noted he lifted an eyebrow. He had a brief conversation, then hung up.

‘Otto Grant. Remember?’

Of course she did. The farmer whose land had been confiscated under eminent domain. The possible suicide.

‘Santa Cruz police found a body in the water by the pier. Male. Same age and build. They’ll run the scene and get me the report.’

How sad, she reflected. ‘Did he have family?’

‘He was a widower. Grown children. Farming must’ve been his whole life, maybe all he had left.’

‘A hard way to go. Drowning.’

‘I don’t know,’ O’Neil mused. ‘In that water? You’d be numb after three, four minutes. Then... nothing. Worse ways to die than going to sleep in the Bay.’

Dance and O’Neil had to wait only a few minutes for the Orange County deputy to arrive. They waved him over. The stocky uniformed man’s name was Rick Martinez.

‘We’ve been following the wire about your perp. The Solitude Creek thing. The other one too. The author signing. Last night. Man, that’s terrible. I’ve never heard anything like this. This terror thing?’ A nod toward the apartment. ‘Is Prescott your doer?’

Dance said, ‘We know he’s not. But we’re hoping there’s a chance of some connection between him and our unsub.’

‘Sure. How do you want to handle it?’ He was speaking to O’Neil.

‘Agent Dance’ll wait here. I’ll go to the front door, you go around back, if you would. If everything’s clear, Agent Dance’ll do the interrogation.’

Wait here. Her lips tightened.

‘No warrants. He had a drunk and disorderly a few years ago, assault too, and he owns weapons, so we’ll handle it cautiously.’

The two men headed up the sidewalk, past a row of dying bushes and healthy succulents, another testament to the water problems suffered by the Golden State.

O’Neil waited near Prescott’s door, out of sight of the peephole and side window, which was curtained. Martinez, bulky and imposing, continued around the side of the complex to the rear.

O’Neil gave it three or four minutes, then knocked. ‘Stanley Prescott? Sheriff’s deputy. Please open the door.’

Once more.

He tried the door. It was unlocked. He glanced back at Dance. Held her eye for a moment. Then pushed inside.

No more than a minute later she heard two stunning gunshots, followed by one more.

Chapter 40

Antioch March was running.

Full out, a sprint. He realized he was still holding his Glock and slipped it into his pocket. He pulled his gym bag higher on his shoulder and kept going.

Ski mask? he wondered. No, that would definitely draw attention. Glancing back, he noticed that no one was in pursuit. Wouldn’t last long. People would be calling in the incident all over the neighborhood. Tustin wasn’t the sort of place where gunshots would be ignored.

And he knew one person who definitely was calling for backup at this moment: the woman he’d spotted outside the apartment, Kathryn Dance. She was here! She hadn’t seen him, as she sprinted fast to the front door of Prescott’s apartment, cell phone in hand. He might’ve gotten closer to her, tried for a shot. But she was, of course, armed and, he imagined, good with a gun.

Huntress...

And there were probably other deputies nearby. Maybe dozens. And, now, more on the way.

Running faster. Gasping.

For a moment he’d been mystified as to how they’d learned about pathetic Stanley Prescott. Then, of course: just like him, they had an autobot scanning the Internet for any references to the Solitude Creek or Bay View incidents, blog posts or clips on YouTube or Vidster or the other services. She’d received the same sort of alert he had and had sped there too. He wondered if she’d driven. Maybe they’d driven in tandem down from Monterey.

Sucking air into his lungs. March was in good shape, yes, but he’d never run this fast in his life.

The Chevy was a block away.

Go, go. Move!

He was upset that he hadn’t had time to grab Prescott’s computer. But his only thoughts were escape. It had been chaos in the apartment.

Two shots to forestall any pursuit. As the large man went down, clutching the wound, March began his sprint.

Now he saw the car. The Chevy.

Another look back. No one yet.

His feet slapping, the heavy gym bag bouncing on his back. There’d be bruises tomorrow.

If he lived till tomorrow.

His heart labored and the pain crept into his chest and jaw. I’m too young for a fucking heart attack. His mouth filled with saliva and he spat.

Finally he slowed and, chest heaving, walked casually to the stolen car. He gripped the door handle and pulled it open, looking around again. He fell into the driver’s seat and pressed back against the headrest, catching his breath. A few people were nearby but no one apparently had seen the sprint. They didn’t look his way. The strollers and dog walkers and joggers continued what they were doing.

Then he was tricking the ignition wires to start the vehicle. It chugged to life.

March signaled and looked over his shoulder. He pulled carefully into the street, no hurry, and started west, then turned south along surface streets.

He’d be back in Monterey in five hours. On the whole—

A flash caught his eye. He glanced up into the rearview mirror and saw two police cars, blue lights flaring, beginning to speed his way.

Maybe a coincidence.

No... They were after him. One of the goddamn stroller pushers or dog walkers had reported him.

March made a skidding turn, pressed the accelerator to the floor and pulled his Glock from his jacket pocket.

Chapter 41

Dance ran into the shaded area behind Stan Prescott’s apartment and dropped to her knees beside the two men.

Michael O’Neil knelt over Deputy Martinez, who lay on his back, conscious but bewildered, fearful.

Martinez gasped, ‘I didn’t see him. Where’d he come from?’

O’Neil said, ‘Climbed out through the bathroom window.’

‘It doesn’t hurt. Why doesn’t it hurt? Am I dying? I heard that if you don’t hurt you might be dying. Am I?’

‘You’ll be fine,’ O’Neil said, though he clearly wasn’t sure.

One round had slammed into Martinez’s chest, stopped by his body armor. The second had caught him high in the arm. The wound was a bleeder, brachial artery. O’Neil was applying direct pressure. Dance pulled a locking-blade knife from a holster on the deputy’s belt, flicked it open and cut Martinez’s sleeve off. This she tied around his shoulder. Using a small branch she’d found in the yard nearby, she tightened the cloth ring until the bleeding slowed.

The wounded deputy gasped, ‘Got off one round. I missed. Shit.’

‘I called it in,’ O’Neil said, nodding toward Martinez’s Motorola.

Backup would arrive soon enough. Dance supposed everybody on the block had told 911 about the gunfire, too. She could hear sirens, coming from several directions.

‘Where is he?’ O’Neil said.

‘Didn’t see him,’ Dance replied. ‘Prescott?’

‘Dead. Hang in there, Martinez. You’re doing fine. You a lefty?’

‘No.’

‘Good. You’ll be pitching a softball with the kids in a few weeks.’

‘I can lose the arm.’

Dance blinked.

‘All we play is soccer.’ He smiled.

‘You’ll be fine,’ O’Neil repeated.

Sirens now in front of the apartment complex. Dance rose — O’Neil manned the tourniquet — and jogged to the front. She returned a moment later, with two officers and two medical techs with a gurney.

The latter two took over the treatment, and Dance and O’Neil stepped aside to let them work. They explained to the Orange County deputies what had happened.

One took a call on his mobile. He said a few words and disconnected. ‘We have a lead. Man lives about three blocks from here saw a white male, tall, blond. He was running fast down the street. Got into a car and took off. The guy said it was suspicious. Got the tag. Black Chevy. Monterey, registered to a man his wife tells us is out of town for a week. Left it at Monterey Airport two days ago.’

‘That’s our unsub.’

‘Cars in pursuit now. Headed north on Cumberland.’

‘We’ll want to go,’ Dance said, glancing at O’Neil who had already called up a map on his phone.

Whatever the protocols of lending vehicles to out-of-county law, the deputy didn’t hesitate. ‘Take Martinez’s cruiser. You’ll need the sound and lights.’

Chapter 42

Antioch March was sure he couldn’t beat the officers at the freeway game.

He knew this not from any research but from COPS, the TV show, and other programs about high-speed pursuits in the LA area. Nail strips, the PIT maneuver and a thousand troopers with nothing better to do than catch you. Escaping by car was the fantasy of bad movies and contrived thrillers.

The Chevy was fast, the suspension okay. And this time of mid-morning, the traffic was light. But he wasn’t going to get much farther. And bailing out and running wasn’t an option either.

Stay calm. Think.

What were his options?

The part of suburban Orange County he sped through now was residential. He could ’jack another car, he supposed, but that would buy time only.

He needed population. People, and a lot of them.

And then he saw it.

Ahead of him, less than a mile, March estimated. Perfect!

A glance in the mirror. The cars were in pursuit, sirens and lights. But they were holding back. As long as they could see him, there was no need to try anything dramatic and endanger lives.

March sped up and covered the distance in less than a minute. Then he executed a fast turn to the right, through a wooden gate and began easing through a crowd of people.

Glorious... Lots and lots of people.

He began to honk and flash his lights. The crowd moved out of the way, most of them frowning, though some probably suspecting a medical emergency or another legitimate reason for the car’s frantic approach.

Then, the way clear, he aimed the Chevy toward a gate in a six-foot-high metal fence. He floored the accelerator.

With smoking tires the vehicle slammed into the mesh, airbag deploying and then shrinking fast. The impact swung the gate wide open. It also sent two people sprawling to the pavement. One was a man on stilts, dressed like a cowboy, and the other, gender indeterminate, wore a purple cat costume and held a matching parasol that read, ‘Welcome, Guests!’

Chapter 43

Dance had brought the children there a few years ago.

Global Adventure World was a theme park in Orange County, a smaller-size version of nearby Universal and Disney. Filled with typical rides, animatronics, holographic wonders, theaters featuring live and filmed shows, costumed characters from the parent company’s films and TV programs. Also concession stands galore, ready to help you gain back in one day those three pounds you struggled to lose before your vacation.

As they sped to the front gate, where a dozen police cars were parked, Dance said, ‘Odd choice for a getaway.’

O’Neil nodded. Security in these parks was the best in the nation. Tall fences. High-quality CCTV cameras were disguised as rocks or branches or hidden in light poles and rides, and undercover guards, unarmed but equipped with high-tech com equipment, roamed the grounds, resembling typical tourists. And it wasn’t as if the unsub had tried to slip inside subtly to get lost in the crowd. No, he’d made as explosive an entrance as possible, crashing into a front gate, injuring two costumed employees then leaping through the breach and sprinting inside.

A hundred park visitors were standing in a loose crowd, some distance from the car. Looking over the crumpled vehicle, faint smoke wafting above. Easily half were taking pictures and videos.

Dance and O’Neil met with the incident supervisor from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, Sergeant George Ralston, a tall, round African American.

O’Neil asked, ‘Any sightings?’

Ralston replied, ‘None. Hey, Herb. Whatta you know?’

Another man joined them. He was tall and solid and, Dance thought, a former cop. Introductions were made. He was the head of security for the park, Herbert Southern.

‘No sign yet.’

Dance asked, ‘Are you following him on security cameras?’

Southern said, ‘We were — sent our people after him. But he disappeared. Got lost in a crowd waiting for the Tornado Alley ride. Named after the cartoon? One of the most popular here. Hundred people were queued up. Security went through the crowd but they couldn’t find him.’

Dance supposed they weren’t particularly aggressive. Didn’t want to spook the patrons. She imagined the key word had been subtle. Make sure the customers feel safe.

‘Description?’ Dance asked.

Ralston offered, ‘White male, over six feet. Longish blond hair, green baseball cap, unknown logo. Sunglasses. Dark pants, light shirt, beige jacket. Wool or cotton. Gym bag. White.’

Blond hair. Of course he’d dyed it after Foster’s leak to the press.

‘Your security get a close-up of his face?’ O’Neil asked.

‘No. Kept his head down.’

Dance said, ‘Well, he’s not wearing any of those clothes any more. If he didn’t have a change of clothes with him in the bag, and I’ll bet he did, he’s bought a souvenir jacket and shorts and running shoes. And the gym bag is in a Global shopping bag right now. He can’t change his hair color so he’ll have a different sort of hat. Cowboy maybe.’

One of the big hits from the studio last year, a Wild West animation had won Oscars for something.

‘And some people thought he was wearing gloves. Light-colored ones.’

‘He was,’ O’Neil said. ‘For the fingerprints.’

‘What’s this about?’ Southern asked.

‘He’s wanted in connection with a homicide in Monterey,’ Dance explained.

‘The roadhouse thing?’ Ralston asked. ‘And the other one, right? On the wire. Last night.’

‘That’s right,’ O’Neil confirmed.

Dance added, ‘We came down here to look for a possible witness. The unsub beat us to it. He was at the apartment in Tustin — he killed the wit just before we got there.’

O’Neil’s face grew still. ‘Your deputy was wounded. Martinez. He’ll be okay, I heard, but he took a round in the arm.’

‘Ricky.’ Ralston nodded. ‘Sure. I know him.’

The security man took a call, listened. ‘Thanks.’ He disconnected and said, ‘Nothing. Well, we’ve got all the exits covered. This is the only park exit but there are service entrances with gates.’

Ralston said, ‘I’ve got officers headed there now. He’s armed. I don’t want your boys and girls approaching,’ he said to the security head.

‘No. We’ll work with your folks. Call ’em if they see anything. I’ve told ’em.’

Ralston added to Dance and O’Neil: ‘I’ve got teams circling the outer perimeter. There’s no way he’ll get out unseen.’

Southern shook his head, looking over the growing crowd of park-goers. These were his people, those he was in charge of protecting. Dismayed, he said, ‘Hostages?’

But, to Dance, a taking seemed unlikely. The strategy was that you negotiated only to buy time to talk reason into the hostage-taker or to get a sniper into position for a kill shot. You never gave him his freedom. This unsub was smart — no, brilliant. He’d guess that grabbing a hostage was a futile proposition.

She explained this, glancing at O’Neil, who agreed.

Then she said, ‘Here’s a thought. We don’t have a solid facial ID but he doesn’t know that. Can we—’ Dance looked around and saw a business office nearby. ‘Can we get a hundred printouts?’

‘Of what?’

O’Neil was nodding. He got it. ‘Of anything with a man’s face. Distribute them to officers and security people. Walk through the park, just looking at them from time to time and scanning the crowd.’

‘And keeping an eye out for anybody tall and blond, whatever he’s wearing. Anybody who turns away or avoids eye contact, that’ll be him.’

Southern walked to the office and a few minutes later came back with a stack of paper. He held one up. ‘Message from our new manager. Just saying hi to all the employees, happy to be working with you, that sort of thing.’

‘Excellent,’ Dance said. It had a face shot of the man, which from more than three feet away could very well be a security camera image of their unsub.

Southern and Ralston divided the sheets to distribute to the officers and guards and sent them on their way.

Dance took one and handed another to O’Neil.

The sergeant said, ‘You want radios?’

‘Phone’s fine for me.’

O’Neil nodded too and they both typed Ralston’s number into theirs.

Then: ‘And Agent Dance needs a weapon.’

‘What?’ she asked. ‘No.’

‘Kathryn,’ O’Neil said firmly.

The Orange County sergeant looked at her curiously.

‘I’m assigned to the Civil Division of the CBI, not authorized to carry,’ she explained.

‘Oh,’ Ralston said. That settled it. It would be illegal to hand over a weapon.

O’Neil sighed and said, ‘Then why don’t you stay near the entrance and—’

Wait here...

But Dance was already walking through an open turnstile, right under the nose of a large and disturbingly realistic grizzly bear in a Viking helmet, glaring down at her angrily.

Chapter 44

Antioch March was, more or less, in the center of the theme park, near one of the rides — a roundy-round thing for younger kids, where they sat strapped into fiberglass leaves, like lettuce wraps from a Chinese restaurant. The ride would have made him puke.

Nearby was a jungle tour — where the guests were startled by the fierce appearances of oversized carnivores. They were the characters from a huge hit film, a blockbuster. March had seen it. The movie was gruesome and simple. But effective at shocking the audience. As gruesome and simple usually were.

The fake canyon he was now walking through reminded him of the Harrison Gorge. It was strikingly similar. He could smell the moist stone, the leaves, the loam, the dirt, the water. He could see, vividly, Todd. More than the colored leaves. Far more clearly than the leaves.

Focus here, he told himself. You need to get out, and soon. In an hour there’d be a thousand officers poking under every polyvinyl triceratops and singing bush in the place.

And then he saw them.

Two young men, dressed like tourists but clearly security guards, were glancing at printouts and scanning the crowd.

Hell. Had they gotten an image of him as he sprinted through the gate? He’d seen the dozens of security cameras hidden in trees and in the fake rocks of the exhibits.

March was different in appearance now — he’d done the quick change right in the middle of a crowd waiting for some insane roller-coaster, Tornado Alley, not in a restroom, whose front doors he was sure would be monitored by cameras. But had they gotten a picture after he changed?

Out. You need to get out—

Then he turned and, to his shock, another officer was walking in March’s direction, glancing at his sheet and then at people nearby — men, tall men. He was more than thirty feet away.

The pathway here was fairly narrow and his only option was to keep on walking, nonchalantly, with the crowd he found himself in. Or to turn and walk away, which would seem suspicious.

His pistol was in the shopping bag he carried. He didn’t want to use it but he might have to. He maintained his stroll in the direction he’d started, glancing at a map he’d picked up of the park. He paused and asked a couple for directions. The husband glanced at the map, then pointed to a pathway nearby.

The officer continued in their direction, casually, too casually, looking around.

March chatted to the couple — a pleasant duo with southern accents — and felt the cop’s eyes scan them, then look elsewhere. March glanced over his shoulder and saw the officer walking away, not reaching for radio or phone.

Ah, yes, trying to trick him. They didn’t have a clue what he looked like. The sheet of paper was either blank or an advertising flier. They expected he’d see it, then turn and flee, give himself away.

Nice try.

He wondered if the ploy had been Kathryn Dance’s. Betcha, he told the Get.

March turned to the husband, who had been so helpful, and said, ‘That’s odd.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Over there. Uniformed policeman in the park. With the printout?’

The couple both squinted. The husband said, ‘Oh, yeah. And there’re some men over there too with fliers. See them?’

‘Undercover security,’ March said.

‘What’s that about?’ the wife asked.

‘Probably nothing. I just... I hope it’s not terrorists or anything.’

‘Terrorists,’ the wife whispered.

‘Yeah, did you hear that story on Fox? Or CNN? There were reports of a possible terrorist attack in LA.’

‘No!’

‘Rumors, that’s all. You know how the police always say that and then nothing happens. Most of the time.’ March shrugged. ‘Anyway, have fun.’

A quarter-mile down the winding paths, Antioch March found another couple who looked promising. He walked up to them, brandishing the map and nodded.

‘Hi, sorry to bother you.’

‘Sure,’ said the husband. He and his wife were with their three children, about eight through twelve.

March asked this man, too, for directions. Where a particular restaurant was. He was supposed to meet his family there. The couple consulted the map.

The husband said, ‘There you be. Bit of a hike but you’re going the right way.’

March knew where the restaurant was and that proceeding toward it would give him an excuse to stroll along with the couple.

‘Thanks.’ They all started to move in that direction.

‘Come here every year,’ the husband said, as they walked along. ‘You?’

March said, ‘No, first time. Josh was too young. He’s five now.’ They meandered past two uniformed officers consulting their advertising fliers. The men didn’t even glance toward him.

‘I hear you. Beth and Richard,’ the wife said, nodding toward her brood, ‘took them to Disney when they were three and four. Scared to death of Goofy. They weren’t too sure about Tinker Bell either.’

March laughed.

The husband: ‘Wait till they can appreciate it. Even the kids’ tickets’re ridiculous. Break the bank.’

As March walked with them, chatting about the rides, he looked around him. Into the trees, the rocks — well, fake rocks — the lampposts, the grounds. Studying carefully. He was learning some things about theme parks. In truth, he’d never been to one. That had been as far removed from his parents’ idea of entertainment as one could imagine. Go downstairs, play video games, Andy. Go play.

Interesting, what he was noticing.

Then March said to the couple, ‘There’s another one.’ A frown.

‘What’s that?’

‘Another cop. Or whoever it is. With that sheet of paper. I’ve seen about ten of them.’

The wife: ‘Yeah, I saw some too. What’s that about?’

March: ‘It’s like they’re looking for somebody.’

‘Maybe somebody broke in without paying.’

‘I don’t think,’ March said slowly, ‘they’d go to that much trouble for somebody like that.’

‘Probably not,’ the wife said. ‘Hm. Look, two more.’

‘Odd,’ the husband said.

‘I hope it’s nothing too serious,’ March said. ‘Maybe... Excuse me... A text.’ He frowned as he looked at his phone, holding the screen so they couldn’t see it. He pretended to read. ‘Oh. Well.’ He’d nearly said, ‘Jesus.’ But he’d noted the wife wore a cross and he needed his new friends to be with him. Completely with him.

‘What?’

‘That was from my wife. She’s up at the restaurant. She just got a text from her mother. It was on the news. They’re talking about some kind of a terrorist thing in the park.’

‘Terrorists?’ the wife blurted. ‘Here?’ Six or seven people turned toward them.

March didn’t answer. He looked around, frowning. He began texting. The message was not, however, to the imaginary wife. It was going out to various blog sites, as well as legitimate news organizations, Twitter.

March looked up. ‘I’ve got to get to my wife and son.’ But he looked at his phone again. ‘No, no!’

‘What is it, Mister?’

‘My brother. In Seattle. He’s watching CNN and, it looks like somebody rammed the front gate. Some guy with a backpack. He’s here in the park!’

‘Oh, Bill. Kids! Come here! Kids, stop, come over here.’

‘What ride are Sandy and Dwight on?’ the husband asked. Voice breathless.

‘One of the roller-coasters, I don’t know. Call them and let them know.’

A voice behind him. Another couple. ‘Did you mention a terrorist or something? I saw all the police. With those handouts.’

March said, ‘I just heard, somebody crashed into the front gate and got into the park with a bomb and a machine-gun.’

‘Gun too?’ the husband of the first couple asked.

March brandished his phone. ‘My brother. That’s the story. Suicide bomber, they’re saying. He’s armed. And there may be others.’

‘Fuck no.’

The good Christian wife didn’t correct her husband’s language.

‘Well, that’s what he heard. CNN and Fox.’

Now all the adults were making calls or texting. Some seeking confirmation. But others would be spreading the lie.

One woman said desperately into her iPhone: ‘Honey, where are you and the kids? Well, get out. Just leave now. There’re terrorists in the park!.. Yeah, we saw them too! If there are that many police something bad is happening. Get out!.. I will. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

March turned.

Ah, fantastic! A tour guide was passing, holding aloft a folded umbrella so his group could see him. Sixty or so kids, from a private high school in Ohio, according to their matching T-shirts.

March began to speak to the leader but he didn’t have to say anything. The wife of the first couple said, ‘Did you hear anything about terrorists in the park? Do you know where it’s safe?’

The guide blinked, lowered the umbrella. ‘No, what do you mean?’

The word spread among the students like flames through dry California brush. ‘Terrorists.’ Some of the girls in the group started to cry. A few boys too. Phones emerged. Texts and voice calls.

Breathlessly March added, ‘In the park. He rammed the gate. Suicide bomber. But he’s got guns too. There may be more than one.’ He held up his phone for proof.

Wonderful adolescent cries and screams.

The Get was pleased.

Now there was a good-size crowd in this area of the park. People uncertain about where to go. All talking, checking phones, making calls or texting. Gathering children.

And looking for someone with a backpack bomb, a suicide vest, a machine-gun, an RPG.

One man stormed up to a deputy holding one of the ID sheets and confronted him. Others joined in.

‘The hell are you doing about it?’

‘Why aren’t there any announcements?’

‘Do you even know?’

The officer was flustered. Looking around. Another patron, then two more accosted the cop, demanding why they were covering up an attack and not evacuating. Was it so the amusement park wouldn’t lose face — or tax money the park would pay the county? The officer denied terrorists. But nobody was listening.

March stepped aside, watching the growing agitation of the crowd. Now about two hundred people were milling about, shouting at concession-stand employees, groundskeepers, costumed characters.

Time to ratchet things up, March decided. He called 911.

‘Police and fire, what’s your emergency?’

‘My family’s in Global Adventure. Somebody crashed into the gate and he’s loose. It’s a terrorist. They’ve seen him. He’s got a bomb!’

The dispatcher: ‘We have a report of an accident but there’s no report of any terror—’

‘Jesus, there he is! He’s got a bomb! And a gun too.’

‘Sir, what’s your name and location? Please—’

He disconnected and walked farther around the perimeter of the park, making a circle back toward the entrance. Looking in the trees, looking behind the buildings.

He made another voice call, to a local news affiliate. ‘Please, you have to help! We’re in Global Adventure World, the park, you know. Orange County. We’re hiding. My family’s hiding but he’s nearby. It’s a terrorist. A man with a machine-gun. And another one with a bomb! Please... There’s a terror attack going on! A suicide bomber. He crashed through the gate and he’s in the park. I’m looking at him now.’

‘Sir, please, what’s your name?’

‘Jesus, he’s coming this way.’

He disconnected and continued to walk through the park, noting the increasing number of people on their phones, standing in protective clusters. Some were walking off the paths and into the bushes, peering out — as if in a scene from one of the amusement-park parent company’s movies: the innocent about to be devoured by aliens.

March hurried along the pathway. He was about to play the scenario all over again, walking up to another family and stabbing them with panic, when the husband gripped March’s arm.

‘Hey!’

Wide-eyed, the man said, ‘Mister, you have family here?’

‘Yeah, they’re over at Tornado Alley. Why?’

‘There’re terrorists in the park. A half-dozen. They’re going to blow up some of the rides.’

The wife was sobbing.

‘No!’ March said. He looked at his phone. ‘Hell, you’re right. It’s my wife. Texting. CNN has the story. Terror alert. Suicide bomber in the park.’

‘That’s why the police. They’re all over the place.’

‘And they’re not saying anything!’ March snapped.

He’d thought he’d have to spread the rumor a half-dozen more times but, nope, it wasn’t necessary. The stories buzzed like locusts. One bomber, a dozen. Machine-guns. Al Qaeda. ISIS. Pakistan. Syria.

‘What’re we going to do? How do we get out?’

March shouted, ‘There’s only one way I know about. The front entrance. They don’t have emergency exits, I heard.’

‘No exits? Didn’t they think something like this could happen?’

‘We’re going to be trapped here!’

March waved his arm. ‘No, we’re not. Let’s go!’

The crowd was now moving in the general direction of the park entrance. What had started as a cluster of a hundred was swelling to three, four, five times that number. March walked with them for a ways, then stepped off the path into the bushes and let skittish cattle continue their quickening drive to what they hoped was safety.

Chapter 45

What’s going on? Dance wondered.

She and O’Neil were back at the Global Adventure entrance, having heard reports that for some reason hundreds — no, thousands of park guests were moving in this direction. The agent and detective were outside the entrance turnstiles and fence.

The patrons clustering on the other side, waiting to exit, were edgy, anxious. Some exchanged harsh words. A shoving match or two broke out when people cut into the line ahead of the others to leave. The crush could have been relieved if the wide gate was functioning but the unsub’s steamy Chevy still blocked it.

Dance thought of the Liverpool fans clustering outside Hillsborough Stadium, the disaster her father had told her about.

Twenty-five years ago. I still have nightmares...

O’Neil and Dance walked up to the head of park security and Sergeant Ralston.

Dance asked, ‘What is all this?’

Both Herb Southern and Ralston were on their phones. Ralston said, ‘Jesus.’ Whatever he’d learned was very troubling.

Southern disconnected.

‘There’s panicking inside. A couple guests beat up one of my security guards. I don’t know why.’

Ralston hung up too. ‘Okay, this is a problem. We’re getting calls from everybody — the Sheriff’s Office, media, FBI, Homeland. Reports terrorists’re in the park. Machine-guns. Suicide vests. Fucking rumors but nine one one’s flooded, circuits’re almost overloaded.’

Dance muttered, ‘He’s doing it.’

‘Your perp?’

She nodded.

O’Neil said, ‘All it took was him telling a few people the rumor, one news report, a few blog posts, and it’s spread like fire.’

‘It’s what he does. He starts panics. And he’s real good at it.’

O’Neil said, ‘He’s going to try to get out this way, thinking we can’t check everybody.’

‘That’s pretty damn close to true,’ Sergeant Ralston muttered.

Herb Southern walked to the turnstiles, on the other side of which a crowd thirty or forty deep jostled to get out. ‘There’s no emergency!’ he shouted to the crowd. ‘You’re safe. You can stay in the park. Don’t push. Don’t push!’

Everyone ignored him.

Dance asked, ‘What’s the procedure if it were a terror attack?’

‘Lockdown. Get everybody off the rides and have them wait where security tells them. We have designated places of cover from gunmen and bad weather, fire.’

‘Evacuation?’

‘Not a mass evacuation,’ Southern said, staring at the growing sea of patrons. ‘Ma’am, today’s a slow day but we’ve still got thirteen thousand souls in the park at this moment. If they all head out together — well, you can imagine.’

The crowd was swelling as people from inside the park joined the other exiting patrons in bottlenecks between two gift shops, which jutted into the entrance walkway. Every face seemed terrified.

At the turnstiles serious fights were starting to break out and there were more and more instances of people shoving others aside and jumping the barriers, which led to more panic. The crowd was now fifty or sixty deep. And growing. One woman screamed as she was jammed against a fence. Her wrist had broken. Two guards got to her and managed to calm that cluster of patrons. But as soon as they did another fight broke out, more pushing, more screams. Dance watched two other patrons fall. They were trampled before guards got them to their feet. The workers’ faces were as alarmed as their guests’.

Dance said, ‘It’s on the borderline of manageable. We’ll be okay as long as nothing more sets them—’

From the distance came a half-dozen gunshots.

‘Hell,’ she muttered.

Then, over the loudspeaker: ‘Emergency evacuation. All guests. There are terrorists in the park. Suicide bomber in the park. This is not a drill. Everyone evacuate immediately!’

‘That’s not procedure!’ Southern snapped, his face in shock.

‘All guests, this is an emergency. Evacuate at once. There is a suicide bomber in the park.’

‘It’s him. He got into the security command post somehow.’

O’Neil snapped: ‘Get a team there now!’

Ralston lifted his radio, made a call.

The security man was on his phone. ‘Derek, what’s going on?... Is he in the CP?... Okay, find out. Cut the power to the PA system.’

‘Evacuate! Evacuate immediately. We have shooting victims! If you’ve been wounded, seek cover immediately. Medical teams are on the way!’

Southern explained to Dance and O’Neil, ‘We’ve got a network of underground tunnels — where our security office is. We take sick guests out that way, pickpockets, people’re drunk. It’s the command post too. He’s in there. He’s going to try to get out through the tunnels. There’s an exit to a parking lot on the far edge of the property... Oh, Jesus... Look!’

A wave of a thousand, two thousand people was now charging the exit.

‘Get back, it’s all right!’ the security head yelled to them. Pointless, as before.

Parents had abandoned strollers and were carrying their screaming children. The people waiting at the turnstiles turned back and saw the tide approaching.

The screams rose and those behind the patrons in front began scrabbling over the others to get to the turnstiles. Some began running through the broken gate, climbing over the unsub’s Chevy. One man fell on his back and lay still.

Dance, O’Neil and Southern ran forward, holding their palms up to stanch the flow of human bodies, shouting that there was no attack.

But the crowd had no rational mind. Safety, escape — those were the only things that mattered.

A creature... not human...

‘They’re going to be crushed,’ Dance said.

O’Neil: ‘The gate. We have to get it open. Now!’

He, Ralston and a half-dozen park workers ran to the unsub’s car and, by using pure muscle, pulled it back — five feet, ten, twenty. They then grabbed the gate and swung it open. It screeched on the concrete.

O’Neil leaped aside as the tide, twenty bodies wide, swarmed through the open space. Others continued to push through or leap over the turnstiles.

A mother, holding a young child of about four, staggered through the gate, then turned toward an empty part of the parking lot and stumbled in that direction. Dance noticed that her arm was badly broken. She got about ten steps toward a bench, then eased her daughter to the asphalt and collapsed. Dance ran to help.

She had just gotten to the woman when there was a shattering of glass and dozens of people leaped onto the sidewalk. They’d broken a large window of one of the gift shops and were fleeing out of the park through the gap. This herd soon swelled to several hundred.

They were bearing down on Dance, the woman and her child. Even though they were out of the park, panic had seized them and they were sprinting madly.

‘Get up!’ Dance cried to the groggy mother, scooping up the child by the waist. The crowd was forty feet away, thirty.

The woman suddenly gripped Dance’s collar. Unbalanced by her awkward crouch, the agent fell backward. She landed hard, still clasping the child. Stunned, she looked up to see a wall of a hundred patrons stampeding directly for them. To judge from their feral eyes, not a single one even saw them, let alone had any intention of turning aside.

Chapter 46

As a matter of pride, Antioch March would have preferred to start the panic without firing any shots.

What a lovely idea. Words alone causing so much destruction and chaos. In fact, he would have preferred to start the madness by merely asking questions, not using fake texts from a fake wife.

‘Who do you think those guards are looking for?’

‘Have you heard anything in the news about any terrorist threats here?’

Subtlety, finesse. Let the victims use their own imagination.

Stampedes, he’d learned, can begin with nothing more than a hint, as insubstantial as a moth’s wing, that you won’t get what you desire. Or that what you fear will destroy you. Thanks, Dad... Desire and fear were the keys to success in sales, his father had told him.

March was presently hiding in the trunk of a Nissan Altima, which was still parked in one of the garages at Global Adventure World. He was quite hot in the ski mask and cloth gloves.

Getting out of the park itself had been relatively easy, thanks to the massive herd of gazelle fleeing the terrorist lion. He’d even caught a fast glimpse of his beloved Kathryn, staring with wide eyes at the surging crowd, not seeing him. But the rest of his getaway — escaping from the area — was more of a problem. As the crowd surged out, March had diverted into the garage, where he began looking for a certain type of car. Finally he found what he sought: a rental (with a big trunk) that had a hotel valet ticket, good for three more days, on the dash. That meant the family had already checked in and wasn’t leaving Orange County for a while; therefore, no luggage in the trunk in the immediate future. Sure, maybe Billy or Suzy had bought some souvenirs but, if so, they’d probably lost them in the crush.

He’d jimmied the door, popped the trunk — found it empty, good. Then climbed in, along with the shopping bag containing his gym bag and gun, and closed it. True, he might have to shoot his way out of this, if the driver and family did decide to toss something back here. But he didn’t have a lot of options.

Would there be roadblocks, would they open the trunk?

Again, no choice.

He assessed the situation. He’d lost one of the burner phones on the sprint to the Chevy in Tustin, which’d have some information on it he would rather they didn’t have but nothing critical. No prints. He’d worn gloves whenever he used the unit. He wished he’d gotten Prescott’s computer. But a fast look had revealed nothing obviously incriminating on the laptop. No, no direct leads to him. Even brilliant Kathryn Dance would be hard pressed to connect those dots.

Now, an hour after the panic, he heard the grit of footsteps approach and the click of the locks. He gripped the gun. But the trunk didn’t pop. Then doors opening and closing. Somber voices. Adults. A third door closed. A teenage boy, he deduced from the kid’s tone.

The engine started and they were driving, but very stop-and-go; the lines to exit would be long, of course. The car radio was on but he couldn’t hear much. Man, it was hot. He hoped he didn’t faint before the family got to their destination.

More conversation. He could discern the woman’s, though not the man’s, voice. A matter of pitch, maybe.

‘Police there. A roadblock.’

The man muttered something angrily. Probably about the delay, the congestion.

March wiped sweat from his eyes and gripped his pistol.

The car squealed to a stop.

He could hear an indistinct voice from outside, asking questions. A female voice. Was it Kathryn Dance’s?

No, these were line officers. Not the Great Strategist, the woman so intent on capturing him... and the Get.

Wiping sweat.

Silence.

Trunk inspection? Shoot the cop, commandeer the car and drive like hell.

No option.

Footsteps.

But then the car started forward again. The radio grew louder. The boy said he was hungry. The man — father, surely — muttered something unintelligible. The mother said, ‘At the hotel.’

After forty minutes they made several turns and stopped. The radio went silent and the car was put in park. Doors opened and closed.

The valet took charge of the car and drove for five minutes, up a series of ramps. Then he parked. Closed the door, locked it and left.

March gave it five minutes and, when he heard nothing outside, pulled the emergency release cord, climbed out as quickly as he could and looked around the garage.

Empty. And no CCTV.

He walked back and forth, stumbling like a drunk, to revive the circulation in his legs. Once, he had to sit down and lower his head to his shaking knees.

Then on his feet again and into the hotel itself. A Hyatt. He went into the restroom in the lobby and examined himself in the mirror. He didn’t look too bad. The glistening head, which he’d shaved the minute he’d heard his description on the radio several days ago, showed a bit of stubble. Like Walter White on Breaking Bad. He opened the Global Adventure shopping bag and pulled out his gym satchel. From this he retrieved the blond wig, which he’d been wearing since the shaving, at least when he was out in public.

Porn star meets Mad Men...

March pitched into the trash the wig, baseball cap and the worker’s jacket he’d worn at Stan Prescott’s apartment and when he’d first broken into the theme park. (He’d stripped them off as he’d stood in the interminable queue near the Tornado Alley roller-coaster, and donned a souvenir jacket that he’d bought. Nobody noticed the quick change: everyone was watching the flamboyant ride, racing overhead.)

He now dumped the Global jacket and shopping bag, too.

Then outside into the lobby. He got a look at the TV in the bar, reporting on the event at the theme park. No pictures of him, no artist’s rendering, no reference to Solitude Creek.

In the gift shop he bought a windbreaker, sunglasses and a tote — into which went his gym bag.

He took a cab to a downtown Hertz office to rent a car. There he told the clerk he’d be dropping off the rental in San Diego in three days — the police could be looking for rentals to the Monterey area. He’d call later to extend the rental and ultimately switch the drop-off to somewhere in Central California. A flight might be safer but he had only the one pistol: he couldn’t afford to leave it here — there was no way of getting a new weapon in California.

And he knew he’d need it before the week was out.

With his mind racing — Kathryn Dance figured prominently — March took surface streets and local roads on a mazelike route for miles, meandering north, until he figured it was safe to hop on the Ventura Freeway, the 101.

North. He’d be back on the Peninsula in five hours.

Chapter 47

Simple.

But effective.

Dance and O’Neil were at the front entrance to Global Adventure World, near the shattered gate. The unsub’s stolen Chevy sat nearby; under it, oil and coolant pooled. The panic had stopped and several thousand people meandered about in the front area of the park, not sure what to do.

Three dozen had been injured, none critically. Opening the two gates — the main and the disabled entrances — had largely relieved the pressure of the masses.

Dance had nearly been trampled but the security chief, Herb Southern, had saved her, the woman who’d fallen and her daughter. He’d driven a golf cart directly between them and the surging mass.

‘Go on,’ Dance now said to Southern and Sergeant Ralston. They continued explaining to the Monterey law enforcers what had happened.

Simple, effective.

No, the unsub hadn’t escaped through the security tunnels lacing the theme park. He hadn’t even given the fake terrorist announcement. Apparently he’d noticed entrances to the tunnels, as well as an extensive PA system, speakers hidden in trees and landscaping. He’d pulled on a ski mask and waylaid one of the security guards — easily spotted because he was carrying one of the fake ID fliers.

The guard — his name was Bob — was present there too. He continued, ‘Then he asked about the tunnels. I didn’t want to tell him but he had the gun. He was right beside me. It was... terrible.’

Dance said, ‘I’m sure it was. Of course.’

Bob, miserable, continued in a choked voice: ‘He took my wallet and called somebody. Gave my address. Told his friend to go there and keep an eye on my family. I had to do exactly what he told me.’

Ralston added to Dance and O’Neil, ‘We’ve got somebody on the house already.’

O’Neil said, ‘There’s no evidence anybody’s working with him. I think that was a sham.’

‘I didn’t want to help,’ the shaken employee said.

‘It’s all right, Bob,’ Southern said, ‘There was a panic and some injuries ’cause of it but nobody badly hurt. You did what you had to. I would’ve done the same thing.’

‘I was supposed to go down in the tunnel and give it five minutes, then he’d fire the gun. He promised me he wasn’t going to shoot anybody. He was just doing it to escape. If I thought he was going to shoot anybody, really was, I wouldn’t’ve done it. I—’

‘It’s okay, Bob.’

The man swallowed. ‘And I did what he wanted. I grabbed the microphone and said what I was supposed to.’

Dance shook her head, looking over the milling crowd, now easily three thousand people. As at Solitude Creek, in the snap of a finger they’d calmed, once they were out of the park and police on loudspeakers had reassured them there were no terrorists.

Their unsub had walked right out in the midst of escaping attendees. He didn’t even need a disguise. He could’ve had a black hood on and been carrying a machine-gun and nobody would’ve spotted him.

O’Neil took a call. ‘That’s right... Yes... They’re set up?’ He thanked the caller and disconnected. He looked at the others. ‘Highway Patrol. All the roadblocks’re up. They worked fast. Not every exit route, but the main ones. And random stops, traffic headed away from the park.’

Officers were checking out the bus lines too. And taxis.

No sign of a six-foot-plus man, solid build, blond hair, holding a white gym bag (or Global Adventure World shopping bag holding a gym bag).

Finally the staff who’d been manning the security video reported that there was nothing on any of the many minutes of tape that might help them. The crowds had been too thick.

Dance looked over the masses and didn’t even bother canvassing.

O’Neil said, ‘Back to Prescott’s?’

‘Sure.’

In a half-hour they were there — the traffic was, of course, thick as honey; even the lights and siren in Deputy Martinez’s cruiser couldn’t speed them along very much. They arrived just as the crime-scene crew was finishing up.

A tech said, ‘Your man knew what he was doing. Cloth gloves.’

‘I know.’

‘Didn’t find much.’

Looking down at Prescott, on his back, suffocated with duct tape. The image was stark and clear: he was under a bright floor lamp.

O’Neil asked, ‘Why was he killed?’

Dance speculated, ‘Something in that picture of Solitude Creek he included in the post? Clues?’

The rant had been taken down but O’Neil had made a copy earlier. They looked it over again, carefully. The Vidster post was a video but the image from Solitude Creek was a still. It was a news photo, taken of the aftermath of the tragedy, when the bodies had been removed from the floor, which was covered with litter, purses, scraps of clothing, overturned furniture.

Neither of the officers could see anything revealing.

O’Neil offered, ‘Maybe our unsub just didn’t want any attention drawn to Solitude Creek.’

Dance nodded. ‘It got him noted by the feds.’

Both the CBI and MCSO had received calls from Homeland Security, since the incident was linked to potential terrorism, though agents reviewed the matter and decided it wasn’t terrorist-related — wasn’t even a federal crime.

‘That could be.’ She examined the body again, seeing the face, clear under the bright lamp. The look of horror, eyes wide. She supposed it would have taken him four or five minutes to die. The unsub’d used this means of death for the quiet, she guessed.

An officer appeared in the doorway. He nodded to those inside and said, ‘Detective O’Neil?’

‘Yes?’

‘We did a canvass of the neighborhood, following the route your unsub escaped down. And found this.’ He held up a plastic evidence bag containing a Nokia phone. ‘Guy walking a dog said he saw it fall out of the perp’s pocket when he was running to the Chevy, the getaway vehicle.’

Dance and O’Neil shared a look. Guardedly optimistic. The phone was clearly a prepaid burner — they were invariably cheap, like this model. So it was unlikely they could trace it back to the man. But it might have helpful information inside.

‘Can we get the prints from the man who found it?’

The uniform smiled. ‘He never touched it. He used a plastic bag. He watches all the crime-scene shows, he said.’

Dance took the phone and, through the plastic, tried the keys. ‘Passcode protected. Well, one way or the other, we’ll get inside.’ She said to the Orange County detective, ‘I’ll want to take his computer and the unsub’s phone into custody. You all right with that?’

‘Sure.’

O’Neil couldn’t have done this, not without Orange County’s okay, since the crime had occurred there and Monterey had no jurisdiction. The CBI, however, trumped county public-safety departments and she could take the evidence. Her intention, however, was not to deliver the phone and victim’s computer to the CBI’s small forensic department — they actually farmed out physical-evidence work to the Monterey lab most of the time — but to have Jon Boling analyze them. The former wonder boy in Silicon Valley, occasionally consulted for the CBI, FBI and other law-enforcement groups that needed IT or computer assistance. Computer forensic science is an art and he was good at it.

A woman officer with Crime Scene handed the computer over to Dance, who signed a chain-of-custody card for it and the phone. She stepped outside and slipped the plastic bags into her suitcase.

They arranged with the lead detective for the reports from there and the theme park to be sent to Monterey. In silence they walked to the rental car and headed for the airport. After a day like that, the idea of flying commercial, with the many hassles, had no appeal whatsoever; Dance reminded herself to do something nice for Charles Overby, thanking him for the pricey state jet.

Maybe she’d bake him a cake.

Chapter 48

Dance and O’Neil’s flight from John Wayne Airport in Orange County to Monterey landed at six. A young uniformed officer with the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office greeted them.

Dance knew him well. Gabriel Rivera was a young deputy who worked frequently with O’Neil. The round, cheerful man, with a well-tended mustache that rivaled Steve Foster’s, wanted to be a detective, like his mentor, and was known for putting in long hours.

‘Detective, Agent Dance.’

She shook his hand.

‘I’ve got the preliminary from the scene in Santa Cruz. Otto Grant.’

Dance recalled O’Neil had received the phone call about the discovery of a body in the Bay.

Worse ways to die than going to sleep in the Bay...

He handed O’Neil a manila envelope and the detective extracted the contents, copies of handwritten notes and some photos.

Dance glanced at the crime-scene photos. Hard to make an ID from them alone: he’d been in the water for some time and, though the chill would otherwise preserve flesh, critters had been dining. Much of the remains had been reduced to bone.

‘I haven’t contacted the family yet,’ Rivera said. ‘We’ve got a DNA sample from them and the lab’s running it now. Should be about twenty-four hours.’ A nod at a close-up of the corpse’s hands. ‘No fingerprints, of course.’

O’Neil squinted at one image. ‘Not Grant.’

‘It’s—’

‘Not him. Grant had had a knee replacement. Two of ’em. That man’s got both knees intact. Maybe homeless, maybe a drifter, fell asleep on the beach and got washed out to sea. Anyway, it’s not him.’

‘Okay, Detective. I’ll let everybody know.’

‘Oh, Gabriel?’

‘Yessir?’

‘Saves time to learn everything you can about whoever you’re searching for.’

‘I’ll remember that, sir.’ The deputy took the envelope back and returned to his squad car.

Dance and O’Neil walked to short-term parking and collected his vehicle. The fog was back, and the evening promised chill.

‘Solitude Creek... Bay View... What on earth is he up to?’ Dance mused.

O’Neil remained silent. A mood seemed to be on him. Understandable, of course: a deputy had been shot, a witness killed and their suspect had escaped. Yet she sensed there was something else on O’Neil’s mind.

His window was down and cold air streamed into the car. She thought about asking him to roll it up but chose not to, for some reason. She turned the heater up higher.

Well, if he wanted to talk, fine; it wasn’t her role to pry anything out of him, unlike with her daughter. She pulled out her phone to call Boling but somehow the idea of having a cheerful conversation with him didn’t appeal; it also seemed a bit passiveaggressive — payback for O’Neil’s mood. She texted, instead, saying she’d be home soon.

Almost immediately her phone dinged with a reply. Miss you. WDYWFD?

She answered back that leftovers were good, and asked about the kids.

He sent another, saying Maggie was Skyping with Bethany and Carrie (Secrets Club teleconference), Wes was out with Donnie, biking (back @ 7, promised).

She typed: C U soon. XO

Dance did make a voice call — to Charles Overby. ‘You’re on speaker with me and Michael,’ she told him.

Her boss called, ‘Michael, hello.’

‘Charles.’

She had, of course, called in from time to time to let him know how the incident in Orange County was proceeding. She now said, ‘No indication that Prescott was anything more than an oddball — a redneck, if they have rednecks in Orange County — stirring up anti-Islamic sentiment. Our office down there’ll canvass his friends and family, coworkers but I’m sure that the profile’ll be just that. We’ve got custody of his computer and a phone the unsub dropped. I’d like to have Jon Boling crack the passcodes and take a peek.’

‘That’s good. Sure. And, if I recall, he’s not very expensive.’

Dance let that go.

Overby added, ‘Any thoughts about why our boy would travel all that way to kill him?’

O’Neil explained the theory that Prescott had brought unwanted federal scrutiny to the incident with the ‘terrorist’ comments. ‘That’s all we can think of.’

They arranged a meeting tomorrow in Overby’s office, to review the crime-scene reports from the sheriff’s office in Orange County.

Dance clicked the phone off. Then made another call.

‘Hey, boss. You back from La-La Land?’

‘Just landed,’ she told TJ Scanlon. ‘Eleven tomorrow in Overby’s office. On Solitude Creek and Bay View.’

‘Be there with bells on.’

She asked, ‘And Serrano? The second lead? What’s the name again?’

‘Ah, Señorita Alonzo. Serrano’s former squeeze. Moss Landing tomorrow at nine? Good for you?’

‘Yep. I’ll coordinate with Al.’

‘Foster’ll be out. Steve Two and Jimmy’ll be there.’

‘Thanks. See you tomorrow.’

They disconnected.

Silence for some moments.

‘Look out,’ she said sharply, pointing ahead.

Two flashes of yellow, close-set eyes.

‘I got it,’ he said, braking.

They cruised past the deer as it debated who would win the collision.

O’Neil hadn’t, however, seen the creature at first. He’d been distracted. Mind elsewhere.

More silence. His body language revealed tension.

Another five minutes. Finally she’d had enough. She was going to pry a confession out of him, but just at that moment his phone rang. He unholstered it and hit accept. He listened, grim. ‘Where?’

Her heart sank. Had the unsub returned so quickly and committed yet another mass attack?

‘I’m headed in that direction now. I can be there in fifteen.’

He disconnected.

‘Another one?’

‘Not our unsub. A hate crime again.’ He sighed, shaking his head.

‘Anybody in custody?’

‘No, a homeowner found his wall graffitied. I’m going to swing by and poke around the neighborhood. It’s in Pacific Grove, not far from you. I’ll take you home first.’

‘No, I’ll go with you.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’

He hit the flasher lights and sped up, though minding the slippery road.

She asked, ‘You think there’s a chance you’ll find the perp there?’

‘He can’t be too far away. The graffiti? The paint’s still wet.’

Chapter 49

‘Well, there you have it. Welcome to Berlin, nineteen thirty-eight.’

Dance and O’Neil were standing next to David Goldschmidt, who ran one of the nicer furniture stores downtown. The slim, balding man was bundled into a navy watch coat and wore jeans. His sockless feet were in Topsiders. They were in his side yard.

Goldschmidt was a bit of a celebrity in the area: the Monterey Herald had run an article on him last week. When Hamas had begun firing missiles from Gaza into Israel not long ago he’d volunteered to help. At forty, he was too old to serve in the Israeli army — the age limit was twenty-three — but he had spent several months helping with medical and provisions support. However, she recalled that, according to the article, while on a kibbutz outside Tel Aviv years before, Goldschmidt had served in combat.

The publicity was probably why he’d been targeted.

And what a cruel attack it was.

On the side of his beautiful Victorian house there was a swastika in bright red paint and below it: ‘Die Jew.’

The paint dripped from the symbol and words like blood from deep wounds.

The three stood in his side yard surrounded by a foggy dusk, the air fragrant with mulch from the Goldschmidts’ beautiful garden.

‘In all my years,’ he muttered.

‘Did you catch a glimpse of anyone?’

‘No, I didn’t know about it until I heard the shout from across the street — ah, here.’

A woman, mid-fifties, in jeans and a leather jacket, approached. ‘Dave, I’m so sorry. Hello.’

O’Neil and Dance introduced themselves.

‘I’m Sara Peabody. I saw them. I’m the one who called the police. I shouted. I guess I shouldn’t have. I should’ve just called you first. Maybe they’d be in jail now. But I just, you know, lost it.’

‘Them?’ O’Neil asked.

‘Two, that’s right. I was looking through the trees there, see? I didn’t have a good view. So, young, old? Male, female? I couldn’t say. I’d guess men, wouldn’t you think?’

O’Neil said, ‘Generally that’s the case in hate crimes. But not always.’

‘One stood guard, it looked like, and the other jumped over the fence and sprayed those terrible things. The other one, the guard, he took pictures or a video of the first. Like a souvenir. Disgusting.’

Goldschmidt sighed.

Dance asked, ‘Have you been threatened recently by anyone?’

‘No, no. I don’t think it’s personal. This’s got to be part of what’s going on, don’t you think? The black churches, that gay center?’

O’Neil: ‘I’d say so, yes. The handwriting looks similar to the other attacks, spray paint in red. Looks like the same color.’

‘Well, I want it gone. Can you take pictures and samples of the paint or whatever you want to do? I’m painting over it tonight. My wife’s back from Seattle tomorrow morning. I will not let her see this.’

‘Sure,’ O’Neil told him. ‘We’ll get our crime-scene people here in the next hour. They’ll be fast.’ He looked around. ‘I’ll canvass the neighbors now.’

‘Brother. After all these years,’ Goldschmidt muttered angrily. ‘Sometimes I think we’re not making any progress at all.’ Dance looked him over, his body language of defiance, determination, his still eyes as he took in the obscene symbol and words.

O’Neil asked Dance if she’d take his and the neighbor’s statements.

‘Sure.’

He wandered up the street to interview other neighbors who might have seen the vandalism.

Dance looked over the yard. No footsteps in the grass, of course. Maybe the CS team could pull a print from the fence the perp had vaulted but that would be a long shot. Ah, but a moment of hope. Nestled under the eaves was a video security camera.

But Goldschmidt shook his head. ‘It’s on but it doesn’t record. The monitor’s in the bedroom and I was in the den when they were here. We only use it after we’re in bed. In case there’s a noise.’

Dance texted Boling that she’d be a bit later than she’d planned. He replied that Maggie was still Skyping and Wes had not returned yet — but he had ten minutes until the promised deadline. Leftovers were heating.

Michael O’Neil was up the street and Dance had nothing more to do there. She started her own canvass, going the other way. The houses had no view of Goldschmidt’s but the vandals might have parked in front of one. Those who were home, however, had seen nothing and Dance spotted no deception. As horrific as vandalism is, there’s not much risk of physical assault and witnesses are more eager to come forward than if they’ve seen a murder, rape or assault.

Two more houses, dark and unoccupied.

She was about to return to the crime scene when she noticed one more house — it was on the other side of a city park, which was a known migration stop for monarch butterflies. The tree-filled park was about two acres in size.

The house bordered Asilomar, the conference area, and beyond that was the coastal park at Spanish Bay. It also overlooked a sandy shoulder, a perfect place for the perps to leave their car and hike through the park to get to Goldschmidt’s. Maybe these homeowners had seen them.

She waded into the park now, moving slowly: the place hadn’t been trimmed recently — budget issues, she supposed — and underbrush might trip her.

Any risk? she wondered, pausing. No. The perps would have headed off as soon as they’d finished. If not, surely they’d done so when they’d seen the blue-and-white flashing lights on O’Neil’s car.

She started through the dark preserve once more.

Chapter 50

‘Dude, somebody’s coming. I’m like sure.’

Wolverine was saying this.

‘Sssh.’ Darth waved him quiet.

‘Let’s just go. Yo.’

Darth ignored him and scanned the dusk-lit scene. The two boys remained motionless, still as snipers, in the large backyard of the house that the owners, weird, had named Junipero Manor or something, nestled in mossy trees like something out of The Hobbit, all bent and gnarly. A house with a name. Weird.

The ocean was not far away and Darth could hear the water smashing on the rocks, the seals, gulls. Good. It covered up the noise of their movement.

‘I’m saying, we should book.’ Wolverine was in a navy jacket. Baseball cap, black, backward. Darth was wearing jeans, a black shirt and hoodie. Darth liked to think of him and his friend by their code names when they were out fucking up somebody’s house or a church. Felt like soldiers, felt like superheroes.

They were both slim, young. Darth was bigger, older by a year and change, though they were in the same grade. The two hid behind a bush that smelled of pee, and his knees felt moisture from the fog-damp sand.

‘Dude?’ Wolverine whispered more desperately. ‘Now! Let’s history, man. We gotta get out of here.’

Darth shifted. And: clink, clink.

‘Jesus, quiet!’

Darth set the backpack down carefully and rearranged the cans of red spray paint, put a T-shirt between them. Hoisted the canvas satchel once more.

‘Really, man.’ Wolverine wasn’t exactly living up to his nickname. But Darth was patient with his friend. The bitch got freaked a lot. And, church, Darth was a little tweaked at the moment too, with some asshole prowling around, getting closer.

But he was leader of the crew and he now commanded, ‘Chill.’

Wolverine nodded.

Okay, he was a pussy but he also was the one who’d spotted somebody coming through the park. Sure, they ought to leave. Darth didn’t have any hassle with that idea. But they fucking couldn’t because the fucking Jew had found the bikes and rolled them into his garage. Just after they’d tagged the wall, and got over the fence out of the yard, some bitch from across the street had come out and started screaming, stop, what’re you doing, how hateful and who did they think they were...

Blah, blah...

They didn’t want to get seen so they’d run in this direction and hidden in some bushes, watching Goldshit come out, spot the bikes, cart them away and — fucker — throw them into the garage.

Then the flashing lights.

And now the footsteps.

Who? Goldshit? The woman who’d snitched?

But why would they be here? No, it probably was a cop. And if so they’d be armed with a Taser and a Glock and one of those big fucking flashlights that could cave your head in. When Darth had been in juvie, he’d celled with a kid whose head’d been caved in by one of those.

Footsteps getting closer but still half a basketball court away.

‘Why’re we waiting?’

The why was something Darth didn’t have the time — or the inclination — to explain: that if Darth’s dad found out his bike was gone, out would come the branch and Darth’d get bloody.

Closer. The probably cop was moving slow but headed in their exact direction.

Darth nodded toward a garden shack at the back of Junipero Manor.

They slipped closer to the lopsided structure and crouched between it and a tangled bush. The cop didn’t have a flashlight out. Just was walking slowly, stopping, listening. Playing it cautious, as if the dudes he was after were stone cold. Anybody who’d sneak up to a house and write, Die Jew with a fat-ass swastika on it, probably was.

And, yeah, Darth thought, guess what? We are.

Totally stone cold...

Darth whispered, ‘Got an idea. I’m going to lead ’em off.’

‘But you’ll... What’re you gonna do?’

‘I’ll head that way into the park, make some noise or something and then you can run.’

‘Yeah? What’ll happen to you?’

‘Nobody can touch me,’ Darth whispered, mouth close to ear. ‘Track and field, remember? I’ll be fine.’ Darth’s father had made sure he’d gotten trophies in every event he could in T and F (it’d be the branch if he didn’t).

‘You cool?’

‘Yeah.’ His friend’s green eyes looked uncertain.

‘Okay, just stay here and... give me sixty seconds to get into position. When you count sixty, run — that way. Asilomar. And just keep going. They’ll start after you but I’ll make a shitload of noise and lead ’em off.’

‘Okay. Sixty.’

Then Darth gave a smile. ‘Yo. We did good tonight.’

A nod. A fist bump.

‘Start counting.’ Darth moved as quietly as he could into the woods away from the shed. As he did so he looked around. Ah, there, excellent. He found a perfect weapon. A rock about ten inches long, sharp at one end. He picked it up and hefted it. Good, good.

Darth had no intention of running. He was pissed off that they’d been pushed into a corner and pissed that the Jew had taken his bike. What he was going to do as soon as Wolverine took off was come up behind the cop, distracted by the noise of his friend’s footsteps.

Then Darth’d slam the rock into the cop’s head, knock him out.

And get the asshole’s gun, which would be a slick and smooth Glock or Beretta or something.

He felt a chill of pleasure and enjoyed a brief fantasy of his father coming into his bedroom, pushing him down on the bed, facedown, lifting the branch... and Darth twisting away, grabbing the automatic from under the pillow and watching his father’s terrified face stare into the muzzle of a fucking nine-mil.

Would he pull the trigger?

No. Yes. Maybe.

He silently made his way around the cop, looking carefully where he put his feet.

Okay, Wolverine. Up to you now.

About fifteen seconds left in the count. He gripped the rock and moved a bit closer to him.

Only, wait, weird. It wasn’t a him. It was a woman. Was it the bitch across from Goldshit’s? No, no, that didn’t make sense. It’d have to be a cop, just a woman cop.

Could Darth drop a girl?

Then decided: What the fuck difference does it make? Of course he could.

Then he had a weird thought: Wolverine — his real name was Wes — his mother, Mrs Dance, was a cop. What if this was her? It was too dark to see anything but long hair. But then Darth, well, Donnie Verso, remembered that Wes had said his mother was out of town. Some big case she was working on.

So, whoever she was, it wasn’t Mrs Dance.

Okay. He moved a bit closer, then paused, kneading the rock. He crouched and got ready to sprint up behind her and take the bitch out. In less than a minute he’d have his gun.

Chapter 51

Kathryn Dance continued toward the large Victorian house on the far edge of the park.

She was disappointed to see that while the porch lights were on the rest of the house seemed dark. Too bad. Despite O’Neil’s assessment she was still inclined to lay the crime at the feet of a biker gang. The family here might have heard the throaty clatter of a ’cycle engine, maybe peeked out of the front window and gotten a good view. Make and model of the bike possibly, descriptions.

Still, someone might be home. That a lead was unlikely was no reason to ignore it.

Unleashed...

As she approached the large, rustic yard surrounding the house, she paused once more. Now she heard footsteps. Two sets, in fact. One in front of her some distance away; others, closer, to her right, moving behind. She squinted into the darkness but could see nothing. Deer, most likely. The population of the critters around here was huge.

Of course, she wondered, too, if she’d been too hasty in dismissing the possibility that the perps were still here. True, an ordinary perp would be long gone. Hey, let’s get the hell out of here. We’ve done the deed. Enough. But this wasn’t a burglary or mugging or ‘Let’s torch the Porta Potti for the hell of it’ kind of vandalism. This was different. And it wasn’t unreasonable to think that the perps in this case would remain to watch the reaction, the dismay of the victims.

Deer?

She heard a branch snap not far away, but couldn’t tell exactly where it had come from.

Okay. Time to leave, she told herself. Now.

A crackle of underbrush.

And then—

A mobile phone started to ring — from about thirty feet in front of her.

‘Shit!’ a voice called from behind — close. Jesus, somebody’d been flanking her. One of the perps.

‘Run, run!’ A male voice, from the direction of the ringtone.

And she heard two sets of sprinting footsteps, heading away from her. She saw no one. She thought about ordering them to stop but, unarmed, she didn’t want to give her position away.

Dance lifted her phone and hit a speed-dial button.

‘Kathryn.’

‘Michael. They’re here, east at the end of the road. Junipero Drive.’

‘The perps? From Goldschmidt’s?’

‘Right. What I’m saying.’

‘What were you doing?’

What the hell was he asking this for? She snapped, ‘Call it in. They split up. One headed toward town. The other to Asilomar.’

‘Where are you?’

Why was he asking? ‘Where I just said. East, end of the road. A three-story Victorian.’

‘I’ll make the call.’ Then he grumbled, ‘Now get back here.’

A half-hour later Dance and O’Neil were with the crime-scene unit at Goldschmidt’s house.

A Pacific Grove Police Department car pulled up and two officers got out.

O’Neil nodded. ‘Anything?’

‘Nope. We locked down Sunset, Asilomar, Ocean View and Lighthouse. But they must’ve gotten to their car before we set up the roadblocks.’

‘Footprints?’

The wry smile on the face of one of the officers attested to the fact that they all knew: the ground here was mostly sand, and if you expected footprints for the electrostatic impression machine, you were going to be disappointed.

David Goldschmidt approached, carrying a roller and a can of paint. He set them down. He was interested to learn that Dance had had an encounter with the perps near the house up the street, Junipero Manor.

He said, ‘You were close to them, sounds like.’

‘Fairly. They’d split up. One was probably twenty feet away, the other fifty.’

‘What did they look like?’ His gray eyes narrowed. He focused intently, as if he wanted to learn all he could about those who had defiled his home.

She explained, ‘Too dark to see much.’ Pacific Grove was not known for abundant street lighting.

‘Twenty feet, you said? And you saw nothing?’

A nod toward the park. ‘Dark, I was saying.’

‘Ah.’ His eyes returned to the defiled side of his house.

‘I’m sorry for this, Mr Goldschmidt.’

‘Well, thank you for your prompt response.’ His mind was elsewhere.

Dance nodded and handed him one of her cards. ‘If you can think of anything else, please let me know.’

‘Oh, I will.’ He looked over the streets, eyes keen.

She watched him put the card into his back pocket, then walked to O’Neil’s car. The detective started the engine.

Dance started to get in. Then paused, said, ‘Give me a minute.’ And returned to the house. ‘Mr Goldschmidt?’

‘Agent Dance. Yes?’

‘A word?’

‘Sure.’

‘The law on self-defense in California is very clear.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yes. And there are very few circumstances that will justify killing someone.’

‘I watch Nancy Grace. I know that. Why do you bring it up?’

‘You seemed interested in getting a clear description of the perps who committed this crime. Clearer than what you might’ve seen on a security video.’ She glanced at the camera under his eaves.

‘Like I told you, I didn’t see them on the monitor. No, no, I was just thinking: what if I see them in town, or in the neighborhood? I could call the police. If I had a good description.’

‘I’m simply telling you that it is a crime to harm an individual unless you truly believe yourself or another to be in danger. And damage to property is not a justifiable reason to use force.’

‘I imagine these people are willing to do a lot more than paint messages. But why are we even having this conversation? There’s no reason for them to come back, now, is there? They’ve already done the damage.’

‘Do you own a gun?’

‘I do, yes. Here’s where you ask me if it’s registered. Surely you know, in California you don’t have to register guns you owned before January first. You may have to jump through hoops to get a conceal/carry permit. Which I don’t have. But the shotgun that I own does not have to be registered.’

‘I’m just telling you that the self-defense right is much more limited than most people think.’

‘Most people maybe. But I’m quite versed in the law of the land. Nancy Grace, as I was saying.’ His smile was assured, his light eyes narrow. ‘Goodnight, Agent Dance. And thank you again.’

Chapter 52

Michael O’Neil pulled up to Dance’s house and braked to a stop.

She read texts. ‘From our office in LA. Orange County’ll upload the crime-scene and canvassing reports to you early tomorrow.’

He grunted. ‘Good.’

She flipped the lever and pushed open the door, then stepped outside, as O’Neil popped the trunk. He didn’t get out. Dance walked back to get her suitcase and her laptop bag.

A wedge of light filled the front yard and Jon Boling was stepping out.

As if O’Neil suddenly felt he was being rude, or inconsiderate, he glanced at Boling, then Dance. He climbed out of the car.

To Boling, O’Neil said, ‘Jon. Sorry it’s late. I kidnapped her for an operation on the way home.’

‘Nothing serious, I hope.’

‘Another hate crime. Not too far from here.’

‘Oh, no. Anyone hurt?’

‘No. The perps got away, though.’

‘Sorry.’

Dance carried her wheelie to the porch and Boling took it from her.

‘Just to let you know,’ he said, ‘Wes came in about forty minutes late.’

She sighed. ‘I’ll talk to him.’

‘I think a girl said no to his invite to the graduation dance or something. He was in a mood. I tried to get him to help me hack some code. But he wasn’t interested — how ’bout that? So has to be love sickness.’

‘Well, we have something official I’m hoping you can help us with,’ she said.

‘Sure. What can I do?’

She reminded him of the clip that had been posted last night — of the Solitude Creek tragedy.

‘Right.’ To Michael: ‘What you were telling us this morning, breakfast.’

O’Neil nodded. Dance explained what Stan Prescott had done and that he’d been killed in Orange County — by the Solitude Creek unsub — without going into the part when she and O’Neil had both been in the line of fire.

‘Killed? Why?’

‘We aren’t sure yet. Now, there may be a connection between the unsub and this Prescott. Not likely, but possible. I’ve got his computer and the unsub’s phone. Can you crack the passcodes and run a forensic analysis?’

‘What kind of box is it?’

‘Asus laptop. Nothing fancy. Windows password protected. And a Nokia.’

‘Be happy to. I like playing deputy. I want a badge some day. Or, like on Castle, one of those windbreakers. Mine could say, Geek.’

O’Neil laughed.

She handed the items over. Without prompting from her, Boling signed the chain-of-custody card.

‘It’s been dusted for prints but—’

‘I’ll wear my Playtex Living gloves. I’ll take a peek now but I’ll probably need the big guns to crack it. I’ll start first thing in the morning.’

‘Thanks,’ she said.

O’Neil added, ‘Oh, and it’s been swept for explosives.’

‘Always a plus.’

‘Thanks, Jon.’

‘The kids’ve eaten. We’ve got plenty of leftover leftovers. Why don’t you stay for dinner?’

‘No, thanks,’ O’Neil said. ‘We’ve got plans at home.’

‘Sure.’

Boling gave a friendly nod. ‘See you later, Michael.’

‘Night.’

O’Neil said to Dance, ‘Overby’s at eleven. See you then.’ He walked back to the car.

Dance put her hand on the door knob. Released it. Turned and strode to the car before he’d gotten in. She looked up into his dark eyes; she was not a short woman but O’Neil was six inches taller.

‘Anything else?’ O’Neil asked.

Which was exactly the wrong thing to say.

‘Actually, Michael, there is.’

They rarely used each other’s first names. This was a shot across the bow. ‘I want to know what’s on your mind. And if you say, “Nothing,” I’m probably going to scream.’

‘Been a long day.’

‘That’s as much of a screamer as a man saying, “Nothing.”’

‘Didn’t know that’s a gender issue.’

‘You’re right. But you’re the one acting out here.’

‘Acting out.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, if I’m pissed off, it’s because this hasn’t been the most successful operation on record. Losing the perp is one thing. But we also got an officer wounded down there.’

‘And that was unfortunate. But we didn’t get him shot. He got himself shot by not being aware of his surroundings. Basic street procedures, and I’m not even a street cop. But come on. No bullshit. Tell me.’

The jaw and tongue form an obvious configuration to make the nasal occlusive sound — that is, a word beginning with the consonant n. O’Neil’s face was clearly forming it, a preface to the word nothing. Instead he said, ‘You’re making a mistake.’

‘Mistake?’

‘Okay. The truth?’

As opposed to what? she thought, and lifted an ironic eyebrow.

‘The Guzman Connection, Serrano.’

This surprised her. She was sure he’d been upset to find Jon Boling had spent the night.

‘How do you mean? What about Serrano?’

‘I don’t like you involved, not the way you’re handling it.’

This was news to her. O’Neil wasn’t involved in either Operation Pipeline or the subset, the Guzman Connection and the Serrano matter.

‘Why?’

‘I just don’t.’

As if that told her anything. She sighed.

‘Let somebody else run it.’

‘Who? I’m the only one.’

This wasn’t completely accurate, and his silence called her on the matter. She was angry that she felt defensive. ‘I want to run it.’

‘I heard you with TJ. The Serrano thing tomorrow. You’re going along.’

‘That’s the whole point, Michael.’

‘Al’s going to be there.’

‘Why not a whole team?’

‘Because that’ll set off alarms.’

‘And what if some banger finds out you’re in Motel Six with one of his boys and he sends in a team of shooters?’

‘I’ve thought about that. It’s an acceptable risk.’

‘Oh, define that.’

‘Michael.’

‘Just take a weapon. That’s all I’m saying.’

Oh, so that’s what this was about. ‘I’m Civ Div, and I—’

‘You are not. You’re full investigative. That’s the way you’re acting, at least.’

‘Well, I can’t have a gun. Procedures. There’s no alternative.’

‘Take one anyway. A Bodyguard, a Nano. I’ll give you one of mine.’

‘It’s a breach of—’

‘It’s only a breach if you get caught.’

‘And getting caught could ruin everything.’

‘Okay, Serrano’s your priority. You want to play that out, fine.’

Like he was giving her permission.

‘Then give up Solitude Creek. I’ll run it with my people. Coordinate with TJ and Rey. Even bring Connie Ramirez in.’ His voice was raw, like a purple line of storm cloud moving in. He added, ‘CBI’ll get full credit.’

She scoffed, ‘You think I care about that?’

His eyes looked away, answering: No, of course not. His comment had been a reflexive jab.

‘Michael, I can’t give the case up. Simple as that.’

‘Why not?’

Because she couldn’t.

He persisted, ‘Tonight, at the Goldschmidt house, you weren’t even supposed to be canvassing. You were supposed to stay at the scene.’

‘“Supposed to”?’ Her voice was raw.

‘And I find out you’re down near Junipero Manor, with the perps? You should’ve called me first. If they’d stayed around, they might have had something else in mind — nailing the law that’s after them, for instance. Some neo-Nazi assholes, who cart around Glock forties?’

O’Neil continued, ‘Or in Tustin today, if the unsub had turned right coming out of Prescott’s apartment, after shooting the deputy, not left, he would’ve run right up on you.’

‘We didn’t know he was there. We were going to talk to a witness.’

‘We never know what direction a case’ll take.’

‘You want me to sit in a room and talk my suspects into confessing on Skype? It doesn’t work that way, Michael.’

‘Remember your kids.’

‘Don’t bring my children into this,’ she snapped.

‘Somebody has to,’ he muttered, in his infuriatingly calm, though ominous, tone. ‘Nailing the Solitude Creek unsub, Kathryn? It doesn’t have to be you.’ He dropped into the front seat of the car, fired it up.

O’Neil didn’t skid angrily out of the driveway — he wasn’t that way. On the other hand, neither did he stop, reverse and return to apologize.

She watched the taillights until they disappeared in the fog.

It doesn’t have to be you...

Except, Michael, yes, it does.

Chapter 53

Wes was in bed, texting, when she went in to say good night.

‘Hey.’

‘Hi,’ he replied.

‘Got home late, I heard.’

‘Yeah. Flat tire. Had to leave my bike at Donnie’s.’

‘You didn’t call for a ride? Jon could’ve picked you up.’

‘Yeah, well. I was bummed about Karen. The dance. She’s going with Randy.’

True, not true? It seemed deceptive. But after this impossible day, her kinesic skills weren’t firing on all cylinders. Besides, it would exhaust and alarm you to analyze everything children said.

She didn’t push. ‘When you say you’ll be home in fifteen, you’ll be home in fifteen. There’ll be consequences if this happens again.’

‘Yeah. Okay.’

‘Helmets?’

‘Yeah, Mom. Helmets.’

‘Night.’ She kissed him.

Into the next bedroom.

‘Mags?’

Maggie was asleep. Dance tucked the blankets around her and latched her window. Kissed her head.

At close to midnight she and Boling walked upstairs to her bedroom. He had here a set of clothes in a gym bag, which represented a tentative escalation in their relationship. This was fine with her: some clothes, not wardrobes’ worth.

No rush...

She showered and dressed in PJs and crawled into bed next to him. They lay thigh to thigh, and she sensed he was ready to talk about her day if she wished but wasn’t going to push it. Thank you, she thought silently, and squeezed his hand as a gesture of the thought, which she knew he understood. She wondered if he’d heard the argument between her and Michael O’Neil.

She asked, ‘How’s Mags doing?’

‘I kept an eye on the Skype session with the Secrets Club gang. Bethany’s quite the young lady. I expect to see her as the head of the State Department in a few years. The White House is an option too. I think they were using codes. I couldn’t figure them out. Like they’ve created their own language.’

Dance laughed. ‘If they put half that energy into schoolwork.’

‘When I was a kid and supposed to take a shower, I spent more time running the water, getting a towel wet and rubbing dirt from the floor on the washcloth than if I’d just jumped in. Something about getting away with it.’

‘Did it work?’

‘Not once. But I kept trying. Oh, not to worry, I’m over shower-cheating now.’

Her mind returned to the argument she’d had with O’Neil. Her gut clenched and she felt a flash of anger. She realized that Boling was saying something else.

‘Hmm?’

‘Just goodnight.’ He kissed her cheek.

‘Night.’

Boling rolled over on his side and in a few minutes he was in enviable sleep.

Dance realized she was staring intently at the ceiling. Then she told herself to relax. But how ridiculous an order was that?

She continued to wrestle with the greater implication of O’Neil’s words, which he had not spoken to her. That if she had taken a weapon, yes, maybe they would have stopped the Solitude Creek killer today. Maybe she would have been closer to the door and seen him trying to escape.

And if anyone else died in another attack, that would be on her shoulders.

But if she had, and word had gotten back to CBI headquarters that she’d broken protocol with a pistol, it would have been the end of her involvement in the case and, more important, her secret role in the Serrano matter. She wasn’t willing to do that. Michael had to understand.

Except, obviously, he didn’t.

She, too, rolled over, back to the man beside her, hoping for prompt sleep.

It was nearly dawn before her addled mind stumbled into nonsensical thought and, finally, dreamless dark.