Chapter 54

‘Did you hear from TJ? The lead came through, got a location and we’d better move on it.’

Those words, uttered by Al Stemple, were virtually one sentence, one breath. And not a single grunt. He knew he wasn’t known for speedy anything and the fact that he was taking a let’s-go attitude with the Guzman Connection task force was meant to convey: Time’s a-wasting, boys and girls.

Carol Allerton, Jimmy Gomez and Stephen Lu were in the war room. Lu asked, ‘Lead?’

Stemple grumbled, looking at his watch, ‘Yeah, yeah. Lead to Tia Alonzo, Serrano’s skirt.’

Drawing a glance from Allerton.

Oh, please...

Lu said, ‘Where?’

Stemple wondered where Lu got his clothes. He had to have a size-thirteen neck. Tiny. His white shirt and black slacks bagged. ‘Houseboat off Moss Landing.’

‘Houseboat?’

What I said, Stemple thought.

‘She with anybody?’ Gomez asked.

‘No, just her. Was with some guy but he left, TJ said.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Kathryn’s outside. She’ll go with us. So, draw straws. Jimmy?’

‘Sure, I’ll go.’

Lu said, ‘Why don’t we all go?’

Allerton: ‘I need somebody here. I’ve got to finish these transcripts from Oakland. The prosecutor needs them in a couple of hours and I don’t think I’m going to make it. ’

Lu said, ‘Sure. I can do that. Happy to help out.’ That defined Steve Two. Somebody else might’ve said, ‘Oh, I just looooove paperwork. Can’t get enough.’ But sincerity was baked into his core. He returned to the tasks on his desk.

Gomez pulled on his tan sports jacket, checked his Glock. As if the bullets had fallen out between the last time he’d checked and now. ‘After you, Al.’

Together the men walked out into the parking lot.

Kathryn Dance was waiting.

‘Hey,’ Gomez said.

‘Jimmy.’ She nodded. And they walked toward Stemple’s cruiser.

Looking around, Dance asked, ‘Charles doesn’t know I’m here, does he? You’re sure?’

‘Not from us,’ Gomez confirmed. ‘We Fab Four took a vow of silence. Even Steve Foster’s agreed. He can be a... you know.’

‘I do.’

It was transparent, Stemple thought.

They climbed into the car. Stemple started the engine and sped west on 68, heading for Highway One, which would get them to Moss Landing in twenty minutes.

‘Who’s this Tia we’re going to see?’ Gomez asked. Then: ‘Whoa.’

Stemple never paid much attention to speed limits.

Dance said, ‘Tia Alonzo. Use to be an exotic dancer.’

‘Love that. “Exotic”.’

‘And model. Wannabe, of course. Serrano met her at a party and they, well, kept up partying for a month or two. It ended but they hook up occasionally. TJ found Tia’s gotten a couple of texts from Serrano lately. He’s checking her sheet now, seeing if there’s any paper we can use to leverage her into helping us. Or maybe she’ll just cooperate. Out of the goodness of her heart.’

Now, yeah, Stemple grunted.

A real houseboat.

Rundown but Al Stemple liked it.

About forty feet long, fifteen wide, a squat whitewashed structure on top of pontoons.

Wouldn’t mind something like that.

Moss Landing was a stretch of marinas, shops and restaurants scattered along a sandy road that paralleled Highway One. The houseboat was anchored in a secluded area of docks. In its heyday, the years of plentiful fish, the Steinbeck years, this spot had been home to hundreds of fiftyand sixty-foot fishing boats. No longer. Some pleasure craft, a few small fishing operations — party boats and commercial — and then, like here, a houseboat or two.

Stemple parked about a hundred feet from the place. The three CBI agents climbed from the car and slowly made their way toward the boat. A beat-up Toyota was parked in the weed-filled lot in front of the vessel. Or house. Or whatever.

‘One car only. But doesn’t mean she’s alone.’ Stemple made a fast security sweep. And returned. ‘Looks good to me.’

Dance regarded her phone. She said to Gomez, ‘TJ. He’s telling me no paper on Alonzo. Yellow sheet — lewd and lascivious, prostitution, public drunkenness. Years ago. She’s been a good girl since.’

‘Nothing violent, then.’

‘Nup. But we have to assume she’s armed.’

Gomez said, ‘And you’re not, right?’

‘Nope. Stay close, Jimmy.’

‘Oh, I will.’

‘And, Al, don’t watch the perimeter.’

‘Gotcha.’

They approached the boat, which was called the Lazy Mary. Stemple didn’t like the name. Wasn’t elegant. If he had a houseboat, he’d call it something like Diamond Stud. No, too tacky. Home of the Brave. Good. He liked it.

Near shore was a breakwater, so the occasionally ornery Monterey Bay waters didn’t intrude here. Today the Lazy Mary rose and fell, Stemple decided, lazily.

Gomez glanced at Dance, who nodded and said, ‘Let’s do it.’

They walked over a short gangplank and onto the deck, painted gray, scabby. Gomez knocked on the door.

It opened and they stepped inside.

Stemple looked out over the marina, adjusted his Beretta on his wide hip and crossed his arms.

Chapter 55

Fifteen minutes later Gomez, Stemple and Dance were driving back to headquarters.

She called the task force and got Carol Allerton.

‘It’s Kathryn. You’re on speaker here with Jimmy and Al.’

‘You’re speakered as well. Steve Foster’s back. And Steve Two, too.’ Uncharacteristic humor from a DEA agent.

‘Steve and Steve,’ Dance said.

‘Hi, Kathryn.’ Lu, of course, since the greeting sounded warm.

‘Yeah?’ A gruff voice. Did Foster ever utter a cheerful syllable?

‘We just left Moss Landing,’ Dance said.

‘And?’ Foster grumbled.

‘Tia Alonzo hasn’t seen Serrano for a month. I believed her.’

Silence from Foster now. He didn’t say what he wanted to.

Dance continued, ‘But she gave up another name. Pete or Pedro Escalanza. TJ’s going to track it down. Ninety percent the guy’s got Serrano’s present whereabouts.’

‘Lead to a lead to a lead,’ Foster said, with buoyant cynicism.

Allerton asked, ‘So, at the houseboat. It was productive.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you’re okay. Jimmy’s okay?’

‘I’m good,’ Gomez said.

‘Tia was saying this Escalanza, he’s got access to some of Serrano’s accounts. If we play it right, we might be able to pick up his credit-card numbers, track him in real time.’

‘Or maybe we’ll find another lead,’ Foster chimed in. ‘Let’s be transparent here. I’m not overly reassured.’

Stemple coughed.

Dance said, ‘The best we could do, Steve.’

Allerton said, ‘I’ll tell Charles.’

‘Thanks.’

‘We’re coming back in.’ Dance disconnected.

Stemple said, ‘Life’s a fucking checkers game. No, chess. You play chess, Jimmy?’

‘No. You?’

‘Yeah, I play chess.’

‘Really?’ Gomez asked.

‘Why really? Because I bench-press three hundred and group my rounds touching at fifty feet — if I’m using the long barrel?’

‘I don’t know. You just don’t seem like a chess player.’

‘Mostly people think I tap dance for a hobby.’

In a half-hour, eleven a.m., she was back in CBI headquarters, making for Overby’s office, in the company of TJ Scanlon.

As they walked along, she checked her phone again. Texts from her mother, Boling. Maggie, silly and happy — because, of course, she’d been pardoned from the cruel and unusual punishment of singing in her class’s talent show.

Nothing from O’Neil.

Did she expect an apology? The hard words had been motivated by his concern for her but she’d found them patronizing. That was difficult for her to get past.

She supposed the frisson between them would dissipate, like smoke from a brief fire. This happened from time to time, head butting. Still, they had had such a complicated history, personal and professional, that she never knew if the flare would spread like a wind-fueled brushfire racing over the dry, bristly coat of the landscape in this state. Destructive, even fatal. She’d never prepared for a final rift with Michael O’Neil because, well, it was unimaginable.

A glance at her phone once more. Nothing.

Let it go...

They arrived at Overby’s office and the CBI head waved them inside. ‘Just found something interesting. Got a call from Oakland PD. The arson?’

Dance nodded and explained to TJ about the Operation Pipeline warehouse that some crew had burned down.

‘But — it wasn’t a gang that did it.’

Dance cocked her head.

Her boss continued, ‘Mercenaries.’

TJ said, ‘Working for a crew, then. Didn’t want to get their dainty little fingers dirty.’

‘No. Not working for a crew. They got out of the country but left some tracks behind. Guess where they were based? Baja.’

‘But not working for one of the Mexican cartels?’

‘No. Working for someone else.’

Dance understood. ‘Well, well: Santos hired them. He was behind it.’

‘Bingo,’ Overby said.

Chihuahua Police Commissioner Ramón Santos, who’d called the other day to excoriate the US contingent of Operation Pipeline for not doing enough to stanch the flow of guns into his country.

‘He took matters into his own hands.’

‘Oakland DEA contacted some of their people in Mexico and confirmed it.’

Dance grimaced. ‘Thought he was taking down a source for the guns? Well, he shot himself in the foot. That warehouse was a great source for intel. Does he know he’s set us back a month with his little fireworks display?’

‘He will,’ Overby said, ‘after I call him this afternoon.’

Whatever else about his personal style, Overby combined righteousness and indignation very, very well.

‘So Santos,’ TJ said, ‘has got an interesting approach to enforcing the law. He breaks the law.’

Then a sound behind her, paper shuffling, footsteps. Michael O’Neil came into the office.

‘Ah, Michael.’

‘Charles.’

She looked his way. He nodded to everyone. ‘Morning.’

Overby said, ‘Okay, the Solitude Creek unsub. Where are we?’

O’Neil glanced toward Dance. She said, ‘Well, all we have are dead ends with the unsub’s Honda. But Jon Boling’s hacking into the unsub’s phone now. It might be the burner he used to call Sam Cohen or the one at the Bay View Center, where he called nine one one, the media and the restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf after the Bay View incident. Or maybe another one. Jon’s also cracking Stan Prescott’s computer — the man killed in Orange County. We hope it gives us some clue why the unsub went to all that trouble to murder him. And TJ? Update on Anderson Construction?’

The young agent reminded Overby that he was trying to track down officials from the Nevada corporation hiring Anderson to do some construction work in the Solitude Creek area. In hopes of finding some witnesses. ‘They’re taking their sweet time getting back to me. Weekend-itis maybe. I’ll definitely squeeze them tomorrow. And I’m keeping up canvassing people who were at the roadhouse that day. But same old. No leads.’

Overby nodded and looked at O’Neil, who was opening his briefcase and extracting a folder. ‘Crime-scene report from Orange County?’ Overby asked.

‘That’s it. Not much. Some trace elements. Footprints that probably are the Louis Vuitton. They have good security video at the Global Adventure theme park but all it shows is the crash, then our man jumping over the car through the gate. The teams down there canvassed a hundred people but nobody saw anybody who could’ve been him.’

He added, ‘And some OC detectives looked over Prescott, fine-tooth comb. Talked to most of his friends, bosses, co-workers. All his redneck buddies. No connection to our unsub. He just randomly pulled the picture of Solitude Creek off the web and posted it in his rant.’

Dance said, ‘So, he just had the bad luck to pick our boy’s attack to use in his post.’

O’Neil continued, ‘There were nearly four thousand texts and voice calls out of the park, once the rumors started to spread. Some of those would be his prepaid mobiles. But Orange County can’t devote manpower to go through every one and try to narrow it down.’

Overby said, ‘He caused all that chaos by a few phone calls?’

‘Pretty much that’s it. But he was smart. He spread the rumors verbally in the park too. And the patrons helped him out, of course, when they texted and tweeted. Online media and TV picked up the story in seconds, and then those who weren’t at the park would text their family members and friends who were inside.’

Overby nodded. ‘Chain reaction.’

‘Flash mob,’ Dance said. ‘No prints on anything, not even shell casings — at either scene, Prescott’s apartment or the theme park. And the car he stole from the airport here?’ O’Neil explained it had been a sloppy theft, suggesting he wasn’t a pro at the art.

But, she reflected, it had worked.

Overby’s cheek twitched up. ‘So, nothing other than the phone.’

O’Neil said, ‘I’ve found something else, though. Not really a lead. But it’s something to throw into the mix about our unsub.’

‘What’s that?’ TJ asked.

‘Remember that Jane Doe?’ He spread out the photos that Dance had seen. ‘The asphyx?’ O’Neil explained about the homicide he was working, the attractive young woman found in a seedy motel, the bag rubber-banded over her head.

Never rains but it pours...

‘Could have been consensual sex gone wrong, could have been intentional. We don’t know for sure. Except for this.’ He opened the folder and extracted a photograph. It was a still from a security video. The picture was black-and-white but it clearly showed a light-colored Honda Accord.

‘No tag number,’ Dance noted, shaking her head.

Sometimes it was that easy. Not often. Not now.

‘Where was it?’

‘A block from the motel where our Jane Doe died. I had some MCSO officers canvassing all the businesses around the area and one came back with this.’ Tapping the picture.

‘The connection, though?’ Overby asked.

O’Neil pulled another crime-scene picture out of the back of the folder and set it beside the Jane Doe. It was of Stan Prescott’s body.

Looking from one to the other, Dance said, ‘It’s the same pose as Prescott, same cause of death. Asphyxiation. Both lying on their backs. Both images are stark: the victims are lying in pools of bright light from nearby lamps.’

‘Why would he kill her?’ Overby wondered aloud.

Dance offered, ‘The TOD on the Jane Doe was just after Foster leaked the info about what the unsub was wearing. Maybe she’d seen his outfit — the worker’s jacket with the logo he’d worn to Solitude Creek. And he realized she could ID him.’

O’Neil: ‘Could be why she didn’t have a phone or computer or notebook. That could lead to him. The scenario: she wasn’t from here. They met in a bar, had a oneor two-night thing. They were going their separate ways but he had to take her out.’

Dance asked, ‘But why the parallel means of death?’

‘Sadism,’ Overby suggested.

Maybe. That wasn’t, however, a question that interested Dance at this point. She had only one query in mind: was their unsub back in town, with another venue in his sights?

Chapter 56

Antioch March was thinking of Calista Sommers.

The police still didn’t have her name. In the media, she was referred to as Jane Doe. A picture had been released. Her death was either murder or some kind of weird sado-sexual thing.

He just happened to be driving near the bar where he’d picked her up earlier in the week.

A martini for her, a pineapple juice for him.

She’d still be alive if she hadn’t been brash enough to fling open his closet in search of a robe. Modesty. That was what’d killed her. She’d have seen the outfit that he’d worn at Solitude Creek, when he’d moved the truck to block the exit doors. At that point, the announcement had not been made that a witness had seen him — so he hadn’t thought anything of it. Shortly thereafter, at the movie theater, he’d learned that the public had gotten the word. Why on earth they’d released his description he still couldn’t fathom.

The police’s disclosure not only saved him at the theater incident it had got Calista dead. As soon as he’d left the McDonald’s near the theater, after learning of Ms Agent Dance, he’d taken a drive to Calista’s motel in Carmel. Hoping she hadn’t heard the description broadcast. But no. She’d been pleasantly surprised to see him. He asked if she wanted to take a drive. And once they were under way, how ’bout an adventure? Some little no-tell motel?

‘You naughty boy...’

You’re so fucking handsome...

And then...

Sorry, Calista.

‘No, no...’

He pictured her on the floor of the cheap place, shivering as she died. The plastic bag over her head. Five, six minutes was all it had taken.

He now tucked away the happy memory and continued to one of the places he’d found a few days ago, perfect for another attack: a church reception hall.

It was astonishing to him, the number of people killed in stampedes related to religion.

Mecca. Never do Mecca.

How anybody could manage to hang on to faith after hearing about those deaths was beyond him. Thousands had died.

India was pretty bad too, crowds of hundreds of thousands. Oh, what he could do with a herd like that...

Ahead he could see the venue he’d checked out earlier. There was a church supper planned there tonight. The site was particularly good. Two exit doors that could be bound shut with flower-arranging wire. Perfect.

This also happened to be an African-American church. And someone in the area, conveniently, had been targeting ethnic facilities just like this. That meant the people would be particularly paranoid, fast to escape if there was any sign of threat.

Fast to crush their fellow congregants to save themselves.

He’d start a small fire outside, just like he’d done in Solitude Creek. That would be enough, smoke wafting in. They’d be thinking the neo-Nazis had returned and, tired of simple-minded graffiti, were now intent on doing the real thing. Burn them to the ground. March thought it would be—

But, no, what was this?

As he approached he noted a sign on the billboard out front.

Dine with Jesus Supper Postponed. Join us for Services next week. Pray for the victims of Solitude Creek and the Bay View Center.

March sighed. He guessed he should have anticipated that. The bigger venues were probably robo-calling ticket holders and cancelling shows.

He wondered if Kathryn Dance was behind this.

Maybe not behind. But involved.

Well, he certainly couldn’t leave the area just yet. So, what to do? Out-think them, out-think dear Kathryn. Well, performance venues were out, reception halls too. Maybe weddings were going on but they would probably have been moved outside — the weather was temperate enough for that.

What venue wouldn’t be closed down?

Movie theaters, but they wouldn’t work. After the abortive attempt the other day, sure, cineplexes with substantial crowds would have guards, if not police.

What else would remain open?

Ah, wait. Here’s a thought: management of hotels would resist closing, certainly on a nice Sunday afternoon, everybody in for brunch or an early supper.

Hotel or inn... Yes.

Some ideas began to form. Good, a solid plan.

But he’d pursue it only after he had completed his immediate task — the errand that had been interrupted by his trip to Orange County after the Bay View incident.

The task of slowing down, if not stopping completely, his pursuers.

Well, one pursuer. Singular.

He smiled. Yes, truly singular.

What better word to describe Kathryn Dance, of whom he’d dreamed at glorious length last night?

Chapter 57

The Kathryn Dance Situation.

That’s how Jon Boling had come to think of it. The phrase could have a negative connotation but he didn’t mean it like that. Boling, a product of academia who made his living in the world of computers, was analytical by nature.

This drab, gray Sunday he was bicycling down Ocean Avenue in Carmel, the main shopping drag, while his partner at the college, Lily, chipped away at Stanley Prescott’s and his killer’s passcode. There was nothing more for him to do until she finished, so he’d taken a ride. Besides, he had an errand that needed attending to.

He was not paying much attention to the pretty scenery but was, instead, reflecting on the nature of the KD Situation.

Yes, he loved her. No question about that. The tug in his gut whenever he saw her. He could, always, call up the smell of her hair as they lay together. He could see the sparkle in her green eyes, hear her breezy laugh. They gave to each other, didn’t hesitate to speak about their vulnerabilities. He remembered feeling her pain when the worst — to her — happened: she’d fail to catch a perp. He’d wrap his arms around her at moments like that and she’d yield to the comfort. Not completely. But to a degree. This was love.

He continued downhill. Don’t fail me here, he thought to the brakes. It was a long, fast stretch straight down to the rocks and traffic at the beach. He eased to a stop at an intersection, then continued.

And the children, he loved them too. Wes and Maggie... He’d always wanted to be a father, but that hadn’t worked out. No dark angst there but it was a gap he was determined to fill and fill soon. Boling admitted he wasn’t a natural parent but he worked hard. And he could see that the effort had paid off. When he’d first met Kathryn, the children were moody, depressed from time to time, Wes more but Maggie too. After all, they hadn’t been without their father for all that long. They still grew morose or attitudinal at times.

But wasn’t that just life? Adolescents and adults.

So, a lyrical comfort with Kathryn, a rapport with the children... and even the formidable Edie Dance liked him — enough. Stuart, of course, and Boling had become solid friends.

But something wasn’t quite right. Hence, the ‘situation’.

Suggesting issues requiring consideration. Formulation. Adjustment. Solution.

Jon Boling hardly knew kinesics but he’d learned enough from Kathryn to be aware of tension. And when was it most in evidence? Not when she was entangled in a case. Not when one of the kids was sick. But when she and Boling and Michael O’Neil were in the same room together.

Computer code, the language Jon Boling spoke most fluently, is written according to the laws of logic. The parameters are clear and allow for not a single mis-spaced character. He wished he could write out a program on the Kathryn Dance Situation, compile it and have his answer pulsing on a monitor in front of him.

The Kathryn Dance Situation

Love her.

Love the children.

It works, many, many ways.

Jon Boling liked Michael O’Neil a great deal. He was a solid, decent man. A good father, who’d kept his path during a divorce from a faithless and frivolous wife. And to hear Kathryn tell it, he was one hell of a law enforcer. But there was another factor in the code Boling was now writing.

Michael O’Neil loves Kathryn.

A stretch of flat surface, and Boling pulled off to the sidewalk. He texted the college’s computer-science department, where Lily was hard at work on cracking Stan Prescott’s computer and the unsub’s phone.

Lily, quite a beauty she was. Smart as could be.

There was no progress. But Boling had confidence she’d find the passwords.

Back to the Situation. And the big question: did Kathryn love Michael?

He’d lain awake a number of nights wondering, tagging her words and looks and gestures with meaning, wondering, wondering... and replaying certain images and words over the past year. The radiance of her eyes, the lift of her lips when she smiled, characterized by faint, charming wrinkles.

What are Kathryn’s true feelings?

Boling recalled overhearing the fight she and O’Neil had had last night. Raw. Sharp words, back and forth. Then he pictured her returning to the house and her face changing, melting, relaxing, growing comfortable once more. Boling and Dance had laughed, had some turkey reinvented into something innovative, salad, wine. And the hard day in Orange County, the hard words fired by Michael O’Neil fell away.

Do Kathryn and Jon have a future?

He now eased to a stop outside the store he’d bicycled ten miles to come to. It was, like most stores and houses in Carmel, on the borderline between quaint and precious. The décor was Bavarian ski resort, not uncommon here, though Boling suspected the downtown saw snow once a decade at most.

He unstrapped his almond-shaped helmet and slung it over the handlebars. He leaned the bike up against a nearby fence. Didn’t bother with the lock. Nobody was going to steal a bike in daylight in downtown Carmel. That would be like trying to run a gun show in Berkeley.

Jon Boling had done some research on By the Sea Jewelry, the store he was walking toward now. It was just what he needed. Glancing at the beautiful antique engagement and wedding rings in the window, he pushed inside. The door opened with a jingle from a cowbell, both incongruous and perfectly apt.

Five minutes later he was outside once again.

Do Kathryn and Jon have a future?

Boling opened the By the Sea Jewelry bag and peered into the box inside. Good. He slipped it into his jacket pocket. He found himself smiling.

Helmet on. Time to head back to her house.

There were several ways to get there. The shorter was to go back up Ocean Avenue. But that was a steep hill, made for the thighs of a twenty-year-old. The other option, longer, was to bike downhill toward the beach, then meander along Seventeen Mile Drive back to Pacific Grove.

Pretty and, yes, far easier.

A glance at his watch. He’d be back to Dance’s in thirty minutes this way. He turned the bike down the steep hill and caught a glimpse of the ocean, beach, rocks, shrouded in mist.

What a view.

He pushed off, keeping tension on the rear brake mostly — the incline was so severe that hitting the front one alone would catapult him head over heels if he had to stop fast. It seemed to him that the rear responded slowly, wobbling with some vibration. It felt different from when he’d biked there, just minutes ago. But the sensation was simply a rough patch of asphalt, he guessed. Or maybe even his imagination. Now, no traffic in front, he let up on the brake handles. The speed increased and Boling enjoyed the wind streaming against his face, enjoyed the hum it made in his helmet. Thinking of the bag inside his pocket.

The Kathryn Dance Situation has been resolved.

Chapter 58

Dance and her father were on the Deck that warm Sunday afternoon, pleasant, though under gray skies — overcast for a change, no fog. Natives knew the difference. As often on the Peninsula, the sky promised rain but deceived. The drought grew worse every year. Solitude Creek, for instance, had at one point been eight, nine feet deep, she’d learned. Now it was a quarter that. Less in some places.

She thought again about the reeds and grass, the decaying buildings behind the parking lot on the shores of the creek.

Annette, the sobbing witness.

Trish, the motherless child.

The bodies in the roadhouse, the blood. The stain in the shape of a heart.

She was talented...

Picturing Solitude Creek itself, the gray expanse of water, bordered by reeds and grasses.

It was then that she had a thought. ‘Excuse me a sec,’ she said to Stuart.

‘Sure, honey.’

She pulled out her phone and texted Rey Carreneo with yet another assignment.

He responded as crisply as his shirts were starched.

K, Kathryn. On it right now.

She put her phone away.

‘When’s brunch?’ Maggie asked, poking her head out of the door.

‘Jon’ll be home anytime.’ She looked at her Timex. He was ten minutes late. It wasn’t like him not to call.

‘K.’ The girl vanished.

Her phone hummed.

Maybe that’s him. But no.

‘TJ.’

He and several MCSO deputies had been systematically contacting venues with public performances or large social events and asking them to cancel.

‘I think we’ve got most of the big ones. Concerts, church services, plays, sports events — praise the Lord it’s not March Madness or we’d have riots on our hands. By the way, boss, I am not the most popular man on the Peninsula — in the eyes of the Chamber of Commerce and assorted wedding parties, persona non grata. The Robertsons are not inviting me to the rescheduled reception.’

Dance thanked him and they disconnected.

Stuart asked, ‘How’s it going?’

She shrugged. ‘Ruining people’s Sunday.’

‘So, Maggie’s not singing in the talent show?’

‘No, she didn’t want to. I was going to push it but...’ A shrug.

Stuart smiled. ‘Sometimes you let it go.’ He knew he’d made a pun on the song his granddaughter was going to have sung. Dance laughed, reflecting that the song title had become a theme of hers over the past few days.

‘When’s brunch?’ Wes called from the doorway, echoing his sister.

Dance glanced at her phone. Still no word from Boling. ‘We’ll get things started.’

She and Stuart walked into the kitchen. She Keuriged some coffee for them both and prowled through the fridge.

She glanced toward her son.

‘No texting at the table.’

‘We’re not eating yet.’

A look from Mom. The mobile disappeared into his back pocket.

‘So, what’s on the wish list for brunch?’

Maggie: ‘Waf—’

‘—cakes,’ her brother chimed in.

‘Wafcakes. Good.’

Maggie poured an orange juice and sipped. ‘When are you going to get married?’ she asked, like a father to a pregnant daughter.

Stuart chuckled.

Dance froze. Then: ‘I’m too busy to be thinking about getting married.’

‘Excuses, excuses, excuses... Are you marrying Jon or Michael?’

‘What? Maggie!’

Then the phone was ringing. Wes was closest and he answered. ‘Hello?’

They weren’t supposed to answer with their name or ‘Dance residence’. Security starts early in a law-enforcement household.

‘Sure.’ He looked at his sister. ‘For you. Bethany.’

Maggie took the cordless phone and wandered off. Dance checked her own cell for updates. Nothing from Jon. She called him and the line went right to voice mail.

‘Hey, it’s me. You on your way? Just checking.’

Dance disconnected and happened to glance toward her daughter on the phone. Bethany Meyer, the future secretary of state, was a precocious eleven-year-old, polite enough, though Dance thought of her as over-assembled. She believed kids that age should wear jeans or shorts and T-shirts most of the time, not dress up as if they were going for movie auditions every day. Her parents were well off, true, but they sank way too much money into the girl’s clothes. And such fastidious makeup? On a girl her age? In a word, no.

Suddenly she noticed Maggie’s body language change abruptly. Her shoulders rose and her head drooped. One knee went forward — a sign of a subconscious, if not physical, desire to flee or fight. She was getting troubling news. Her daughter continued to talk a bit more, then disconnected. She returned to the kitchen.

‘Mags, everything all right?’

‘Yeah, it’s fine. Why not?’ Jittery.

Dance looked at her sternly.

‘Everything’s, like, fine.’

‘Watch the “like”. What did Bethany have to say?’

‘Nothing. Just stuff.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Uh-uh.’

Dance gave her a probing look, which was conspicuously ignored, and began to assemble the ingredients for the meal. ‘Blueberries?’

Maggie didn’t answer.

Dance repeated the question.

‘Yeah, sure.’

Dance tried the proven tactic of diversion. ‘Hey, you all looking forward to the concert? Neil Hartman?’

The new Dylan...

‘I guess,’ Maggie said, less than enthusiastic.

A glance at Wes, who was, in turn, sneaking a look at his phone. He put it away fast. ‘Yeah, yeah... can’t wait.’ More enthusiastic but more distracted, as well. Dance at least was looking forward to seeing Hartman. She reminded herself to check the tickets to see where the seats were. She’d left Kayleigh’s envelope in the glove compartment of the Pathfinder.

A moment later, Wes: ‘Hey, Mom,’ Wes said. ‘Can I go meet Donnie?’

‘What about brunch?’

‘Can I do Starbucks instead? Please, please?’ He was cheerful, almost silly. She debated, extracted a five from her purse and handed it over.

‘Thanks.’

‘Can I go too?’ Maggie asked.

‘No,’ Wes said.

‘Mom!’

‘Come on, honey,’ Stuart said. ‘I want to have brunch with you.’

Maggie glanced at her brother darkly, then said, ‘Okay, Grandpa.’

‘Bye, Mom,’ Wes said.

‘Wait!’

He stopped and looked at her with small alarm in his face.

‘Helmet.’ She pointed.

‘Oh.’ He stared at it. ‘Well, we’re walking. I’ve still got that flat.’

‘All the way downtown?’

‘Yeah.’

‘All right.’

‘Yeah. Bye, Grandpa.’

Stuart said, ‘Don’t get a double shot of espresso. Remember what happened last time.’

Dance hadn’t heard about that incident. And didn’t want to know.

The door closed. Dance started to call Boling again when she noted that Maggie’s face was still troubled. ‘You wouldn’t’ve had any fun with them.’

‘I know.’

Dance began to say something to her, make a joke, when her cell rang again. She answered. ‘Michael.’

‘Listen. May have our Solitude Creek unsub. A PG patrolman spotted a silver Honda Accord at the Del Monte View Inn.’

Dance knew it, a big luxury non-chain hotel not far from where she lived.

‘It’s parked right behind the building. The driver was tall. Sunglasses. Hat but maybe he has a shaved head. Worker’s jacket. He’s inside now.’

‘Tag?’

‘Delaware. But how’s this? It’s registered to layers of shell corporations, including an offshore.’

‘Really? Interesting.’

‘I’ve got teams on the way there. Rolling up silent.’

‘You know the place? There’re two lots. Have the teams stage in the bottom one.’

‘Already ordered it,’ he said.

‘I’m ten minutes, Michael. I’m moving.’

She turned to her father and daughter, to see Stuart already on his feet, reading the recipe on the back of the Bisquick box.

She laughed. He looked as serious as an engineer about to power up a nuclear reactor. ‘Thanks, Dad. Love you both.’

Chapter 59

As he walked to Starbucks to meet Wes, Donnie Verso was thinking about their friendship.

The kid wasn’t like Nathan or Lann or Vince or Peter. Not that stand-up. And wasn’t quite thinking right, the way he ought to if he wanted to hang with the Defend and Respond crew. Not muting his phone and alerting the bitch cop just as Donnie was about to crack her skull open and get her gun. Your phone, dude? Seriously? (Though, afterward, he thought maybe that had worked out for the best.)

Yeah, yeah, he was good backup, a good lookout — he’d saved Donnie’s ass a couple of times, warning him that somebody was about to see him tagging a church or stealing a watch from Rite Aid.

But Donnie just couldn’t get Wes to go the extra step.

Oh, he wanted to. That was obvious. Because Wes was mad. Oh, yeah. Totally mad. Wes was as pissed off at his father for being dead as Donnie was at his for being alive. That kind of anger usually pushed you dark really fast. But the dude was hanging back.

He was sure the kid could do it, if he wanted to, even though they’d known each other only a month. Donnie had seen the twelve-year-old Wes around middle school from time to time, and hadn’t thought anything of him. A church humper? Probably. Science club? Probably. Another time, Donnie might’ve wailed on him. (Or Donnie and Nathan together, since Wes wasn’t small.) But there were other, easier, targets at school.

He was thinking of the first time they’d really spoken. One day after school Donnie and Nathan had gotten this pussy grade-schooler down by Asilomar and fucked him up a little, nothing bad. While they were doing it Donnie had looked up and seen Wes standing there. Like he was curious was all.

Wes had watched then pedalled off, not fast, not scared, like no worries.

The next day at school, Donnie’d cornered him and said, ‘The fuck you were looking at yesterday?’

And Wes said, ‘Nobody special.’

‘Fuck you,’ Donnie’d said. Not being able to think of anything better. ‘You tell anybody what you saw and you’re fucked.’

Wes said, ‘I coulda told somebody but I didn’t. ’Cause, duh, you’re here and not behind bars.’

‘Fuck off.’

Wes just walked away slow, like he’d biked away the day before.

No cares...

Then a couple days later Wes came up to Donnie in the hall and gave him a copy of Hitman, the video game where you could go around fucking people up, killing them for assignments and even strangling girls. He said, ‘My mom won’t let me play. But it’s a good game. You want it?’

Then a week later Wes was sitting outside and Donnie came by and said, ‘I couldn’t play it, I don’t have Xbox, but I got Call of Duty. I traded it at Games Plus. You want to play sometime?’

‘My mom won’t let me play that either. At your house, yeah.’

It took a couple weeks of games and pizza and just hanging out before Wes said, ‘My father’s dead.’

Donnie, who’d heard, said, ‘Yeah, I heard. Sucks.’

Nothing more for another week. Then Donnie sat down at the lunch table and they talked about shit for a while and asked, ‘I heard your dad was FBI. Somebody killed him?’

‘Accident.’

‘Like a car?’

‘A truck.’

Wes sounded as calm as Donnie’s mother after she took her little white pills.

‘You want to fuck up the driver?’

‘Yeah, but he’s gone. Didn’t even live here.’

‘Wish somebody’d run into my father. Don’t you want to fuck things up sometimes?’

‘Explode, yeah,’ Wes had said. ‘And my mom’s going out with this guy. A computer guy. He’s okay. He hacks code real good. But it’s like my dad never even existed, you know. And I can’t say anything.’

‘’Cause you’ll get the crap beat out of you.’

Wes had just repeated, ‘Explode.’

They hung out some more and finally Donnie let him into the Defend and Respond Expedition Service game. He needed a partner because Lann, fuck him, had moved.

Donnie, who spent hours a day at video games, had made up the game himself. Defend and Respond Expedition Service. But they thought of it as what it really was: DARES. Well, dares.

Donnie and now Wes were on one side, Vincent and Nathan on the second. One team dared the other to do something totally fucked up: steal something, shoot pictures up a girl’s skirt, piss on a teacher’s lesson plan. You got a point if you met the challenge — and came back with proof. At the end of the month, whoever had the most points won. They wrote it up like a board game with fake countries and codes and names — Darth and Wolverine — so that any parents looking the game over would just think it was like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or whatever.

Wes hadn’t been sure about joining at first. Donnie’s crew wasn’t Wes’s flavor. But Donnie could see he was interested and, after the first couple dares, even though he only watched Donnie’s back, it was way clear that he got a high out of it. Like he’d almost smiled in Asilomar that time, watching Donnie and Nathan beat the crap out of the whiny little Lat.

But would he really come around? Donnie Verso wondered again.

He walked into Starbucks, got a coffee and sat down next to Wes, who was texting. He glanced up, nodded and put his phone away.

‘Hey.’

They bumped fists.

For the next ten minutes they talked, in whispers, about how best to get into Goldshit’s garage and steal their bikes back. Wes thought it was smart not to do it just the two of them but get Nathan and Vincent too.

Donnie thought that wasn’t a bad idea.

After a few minutes, Wes said, ‘I heard Kerry and Gayle’ll be at Foster’s. Want to go up there?’

‘Is Tiff with them?’

‘I don’t know. I just heard Kerry and Gayle.’

‘K. Let’s go.’

They headed out and turned north, making for the old department store, now a restaurant — at least on the first floor.

They got about one block and Donnie laughed and slapped Wes’s arm. ‘Look who it is.’

It was that prick Rashiv. Mrs Dance had mentioned him the other night. Donnie and his DARES crew had wailed on him about six weeks or so ago. Donnie didn’t quite know why, maybe because Rashiv wasn’t even a democratic US citizen and he should go back to where he came from, Syria or India or wherever. But mostly they’d pounded on him and pulled his pants down and launched his book bag into the water off Lovers’ Point because it was something to do.

And here he was now.

Rashiv glanced up and, terror in his eyes, saw Donnie and Wes walking right toward him. They were on Lighthouse, the main commercial street in Pacific Grove, and plenty of people were around so the kid didn’t think he was going to get lashed but he still looked plenty scared.

‘Yo, bitch,’ Donnie said.

Rashiv nodded. He was a way skinny little guy.

‘Whatchu up to, bitch?’

A shrug. ‘Nothing.’ Looking for a place to run, just in case Donnie decided to lash on him even with people around.

Wes just looking at him with this blank expression.

‘Hey, Wes.’

No response from Wolverine.

Rashiv said, ‘Haven’t seen you for a while. I called.’

‘Busy.’

Donnie said, ‘You been busy too, Rashit?’ It was funny how a question could be both friendly and threatening.

‘Sorta. Yeah. You know, school.’

Wes said, ‘What’s that?’ Squinting at a book the boy was carrying.

‘Just some manga.’

‘Let me see.’

‘I don’t—’

Wes lifted it away. He laughed in shock. ‘Japanese edition of Death Note — it’s signed by Ohba.’

Shit, Donnie thought. Holy shit. One of the best, kick-ass manga comics of all time. And signed by the author? Donnie said, ‘I figured you’d beat off to Sailor Moon.’

Death Note was about a high-school student who has a secret notebook that gives him the power to kill anyone just by knowing their name and face. Fuck, this was pure solid, the most righteous of any manga or anime in the world.

Wes flipped through it. ‘I’m going to borrow it.’

‘Wait!’ Rashiv said, eyes wide.

‘I’m just going to read it.’

‘No, you’re not! You’re never going to give it back. My parents brought it to me from Japan!’ Rashiv reached forward and gripped Wes’s arm. ‘No! Please!’

Wes turned to him with a look that sent some ice even down Donnie’s back. ‘Get your hand off me. Or you know what?’ He nodded toward Donnie. ‘We’ll totally fuck you up.’

The boy dropped his hand and stared in pure misery as Donnie and Wes walked leisurely away, sipping their coffee.

And with that — totally fuck you up — Donnie knew that, at last, Wes was one of them.

Chapter 60

Dance’s Pathfinder careened along the hilly stretch of Highway 68.

Not a good vehicle to be executing these maneuvers.

And not a good driver to be attempting them. Kathryn Dance had her talents but motoring wasn’t one of them.

‘Where are you, Michael?’

‘Twenty minutes. There’s a cruiser there now. CHP happened to be nearby.’

‘I’ll be there in three.’

Whoa, a faint skid and a blare of horn. You’re allowed to honk angrily at a large Nissan SUV straying over the centerline toward you, even if there is a flashing blue light on the dashboard.

She tossed the phone onto the seat next to her. Get serious here.

Bounding into the lower lot at the inn, the Pathfinder sped up to the Highway Patrol trooper, dressed crisp, as they always looked, standing next to the Pacific Grove cop, whom she knew.

‘Charlie.’

‘Kathryn.’

‘Agent Dance,’ the CHP trooper said. ‘I got the call. This is the Solitude Creek suspect?’

‘We think so. Where is he?’

Charlie offered, ‘Headed inside just after he parked. He didn’t spot me, I’m sure.’

‘Where’s the car?’

‘Follow me.’

They eased along the path, through gardens of pine and succulents. They paused behind a large bush.

The silver Honda was parked near the loading dock of the large hotel, a stone-and-glass structure that featured about two hundred rooms. The dining room was top notch and on Sunday it did a huge brunch business. Dance and her late husband, Bill, had come here several times for romantic busman-holiday weekends, while Stuart and Edie kept the kids.

Two more patrol cars pulled up quietly, filled with three MCSO deputies. Dance waved them over. Another car arrived. O’Neil. He climbed out and hurried along the path, joining his fellow officers.

‘There’s the car.’ Dance pointed.

O’Neil glanced at her, then said to the others: ‘What he’s going to rig, incendiaries, flash bangs, whatever it is, probably isn’t life-threatening in itself. That’s not what turns him on. He wants to kill with the panic, people trampling each other — because they can’t get out. You have to tell people that there’s no real danger. They might not listen. They won’t want to. But you have to try.

‘But, remember, at Bay View he was armed. Nine mil. Plenty of ammo.’

They started to leave and go inside.

Which was when, with a whump, rather quiet actually, the Honda began to burn. In seconds the fire was raging. The device, whatever it might be, was in the trunk. Just above the gas tank. Dance imagined the unsub had drilled or punched a hole into it, to accelerate the blaze.

She then noticed smoke being drawn into the HVAC system, just like at Solitude Creek.

‘The exit doors — he’s probably wired them shut. Get ’em open, now! All of them.’

Chapter 61

Always happened, the orderly reflected.

The two elevators in this part of Monterey Bay Hospital were pretty dependable. But what happens, a woman comes in, contractions counting down, and car number one is out of commission.

‘You’ll be fine,’ the thirty-five-year-old career medical worker told her. He turned his kindly face, under a fringe of curly hair, toward her.

‘Ah, ah, ah. Thanks. My husband’s on his way.’ Gasp. ‘Oh, my.’

The orderly had been on duty since five a.m. He was beat. Sundays were the days of rest for almost everybody — but not hospital workers. He eased the wheelchair a bit closer to the door, through the group of eight or nine visitors and medicos waiting for the car. He didn’t think there’d be any problem with getting on the next ride. They weren’t about to deliver.

The blonde, in her late twenties, was sweating fiercely. The orderly was happy to see a wedding ring on her finger. He was old-fashioned.

She grimaced in pain.

Come on, he thought to the car. A glance at the indicator. Second floor.

Come on.

‘Where is he? Your husband?’ Making conversation, putting her at ease.

‘Fishing.’

‘What’s he fish for?’

‘Ah, ah, ah... Salmon.’

So he was on a party boat. Four hours minimum. Was he out of his mind? She looked like she was ready to pop at any minute.

She glanced up. ‘I’m two weeks early.’

The orderly smiled. ‘My son was two weeks late. Still’s never on time.’

‘Daughter.’ A nod toward the impressive belly. She gave another assortment of gasps.

Then, the car. The doors opened and people streamed out.

‘Like one of those funny cars at a circus, all the clowns.’

The woman in labor didn’t laugh. Okay. But he got a smile from a nurse and an elderly couple, carrying a balloon reading, ‘IT’S A BOY!!!’

After the car had emptied one person pushed on first — a doctor, natch. Then the orderly wheeled his passenger — well, technically, two passengers — on and turned her, facing out. The others walked in as well, jockeying for space. As in all hospitals, the elevators were large — to accommodate gurneys — but with the other car out, this one filled up fast. Several said they’d wait. A dozen, fourteen people climbed on. The orderly looked at the maximum weight. How the hell helpful was that? He supposed the buzzer would sound if it was too heavy; it had a safety system like that, of course.

He hoped.

It was really packed, stifling. Hot too.

‘Ah, ah, ah...’

‘You’ll be fine. We’re three minutes away and the staff’s all ready for you.’

‘Thank y-aaaah.’

The door closed. She was in the far right-hand corner of the car, the orderly behind her, his back to the wall. He was extremely claustrophobic but, for some reason, being in this position, having no one behind him, kept the discomfort at bay.

A businessman looked around. Frowned. ‘Shit, it’s hot in here. Oh, sorry.’

Maybe directed to the pregnant woman, as if the fetus might be shocked. But, the orderly thought, shit, it is hot. Prodding the claustrophobia to squirm.

The elderly couple was discussing their granddaughter’s choice of a name for the boy who’d just been born. The orderly heard the beep of phone keys. The doctor, natch again, had pulled out his mobile.

‘I’m confirming a reservation...’

Blah, blah, blah.

The restaurant apparently didn’t have a particular table he’d requested earlier. And he wasn’t happy.

The car stopped at the second floor.

Three people got off. Five got on. Net gain. Ugh. And one was a biker. The Harley-Davidson variety. Black leather jacket, boots, stocking cap. And chains. Why did anybody need to wear chains? There was protest in the form of sighs and a glare or two (he could’ve waited) and the doors closed and the car rose slowly, bobbing under the weight. Not because he looked dangerous, which he did, but at his size. They were completely packed in now, belly to back. Man could’ve waited for the next trip.

This is hell.

Shit.

‘Ah, ah, ah...’ the woman gasped.

‘Almost there,’ the orderly said, reassuring himself as much as the pregnant woman.

Not that it worked.

As the car climbed toward floor three, conversation slowed, except for the complaining doctor, who was abrasively asking to talk to somebody in charge. ‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe the restaurant manager? Is that so very hard to figure out?’

Almost there...

Seconds unreeled like hours.

Jesus Christ. Get to the floor. Open the fucking door!

But the door didn’t open. In fact, the elevator didn’t even make it to the third floor. It bounced to a stop somewhere between two and three.

No, no, please. He believed he thought this. But the prayer or plea might have been uttered aloud. Several people looked his way. That might, however, have been from the look of encroaching panic on his sweaty face.

‘It’s all right. I’m sure it’ll get moving soon.’ It was the doctor, slipping his phone away, who’d offered this reassurance to the orderly.

And the pregnant woman in the wheelchair wiped abundant sweat from her forehead, tucked stringy hair behind her ears and tried to steady her breathing.

‘Ah, ah, ah. I think it’s coming. I think the baby’s coming...’

Chapter 62

In surgical scrubs, cap and booties, Antioch March left the engineering room on the top floor of Monterey Bay Hospital, where he’d just cut the power to east wing elevator car number two. Twenty minutes earlier he’d done the same to car one, when it was empty. That drove the passengers to the second car, which guaranteed it would be packed when disaster struck.

Which it was. He was watching the video image of the interior from the camera inside. Of particular interest was the pregnant woman, whose head was tilted back and who was gasping. Her face wincing in pain. Even better was the expression of the orderly accompanying her. Panic starting to form. Exquisite.

March imagined what it was like in there. A dozen — no, more — belly to back, side to side, the air becoming denser and more useless. Hotter too. The power loss had taken out the air-conditioning unit as well.

He closed up his computer, tossed his tools into the tote bag. He left the top floor, the fifth, then headed to the basement. He didn’t have much time, he knew. The repair crews had already been summoned to fix car one and, given their location in Salinas, could be there in twenty minutes. Car two, the occupied one, would be their priority once they arrived. The hospital maintenance staff, too, would head up to the infrastructure room on the top floor and look over the system. They’d see the vandalism immediately and might rig a solution, though given the dangerous nature of a two-thousand-pound piece of machinery, they’d probably wait for the pros.

Not much time, no, but he’d choreographed this attack as skillfully as the others. After deciding, at the aborted-church-supper hall, that a hotel would make a good target he’d come up with a plan that he believed even the brilliant Kathryn Dance could not anticipate.

He had appeared to attack the nearby inn, setting fire to the Honda — he needed to dump it anyway. The police would concentrate on that, and assume the hotel was the target, while he hurried on foot to the hospital a half-mile away.

They wouldn’t consider the hospital a likely venue for an attack and wouldn’t have added extra guards, he speculated, because there wasn’t any one particular area of concentration: patients, visitors and doctors were spread out over several large buildings, which had numerous exits.

No, the charming and not unattractive Ms Kathryn Dance was clever but she’d surely miss that those oversize elevator cars in a hospital would be a perfect site for the panic game.

He now doubled-stepped down to the basement and peered out. He was in scrubs, yes, but had no ID pinned to the breast so he had to be careful. The corridor was empty. He stopped in the storeroom and collected a gallon container of a substance he’d found there earlier, on recon.

Diethyl ether.

Ether was a clear liquid, nowadays used as a solvent and cleanser mostly but years ago it was the anesthetic of choice. Famed dentist William T. G. Morton, of Boston, was the first to use inhaled ether to put patients under for medical procedures. The substance was soon praised as better than chloroform because there was a large gap between the recommended dosage and how much ether it would take to kill you; with chloroform that window of safety was much smaller.

However, ether did have one disadvantage: patients who were administered the drug occasionally caught fire. Sometimes they even exploded (he’d seen the remarkable pictures). Ether and oxygen or, even better, ether and nitrous oxide — laughing gas — could be as dangerous as dynamite.

Hence the chemical had been relegated to other uses, like here — a solvent. But March had been delighted to find some during his reconnaissance.

March now made his way to the elevator-room door. He opened it and dumped some of the liquid on the floor of the elevator shaft pit, holding his breath (ether may occasionally have blown up patients but it was a very efficient anesthetic).

He tossed a match into the puddle and it ignited explosively. The liquid was perfect since it burned hot but without any smoke; this would delay the fire department’s arrival, since no automatic alarm would be activated. Meanwhile, though, the passengers would feel the heat rising from beneath them and smell the smoke from the Honda burning at the inn. They would be convinced the hospital was on fire and that they were about to be roasted alive.

Now Dr March walked casually along the corridor, head down, and took the exit to the hospital’s parking garage.

He pictured the people in the elevator car and reflected that they were in absolutely no physical danger from what he’d done. The smoke was faint, the fire would burn itself out in ten minutes, the car’s emergency brakes would not give out and send it plummeting to the ground.

They would be completely fine.

As long as they didn’t panic.

Chapter 63

Got to get out, got to get out...

Please, please, please, please, please.

The orderly was paralyzed with terror. Emergency lights had come on — the car was brightly lit — and it didn’t seem to be in danger of falling. But the sense of confinement had its slimy tentacles around him, choking, choking...

‘Help us!’ an older woman was crying.

Three or four people were pounding on the doors. Like ritual drums, sacrificial drums.

‘You smell that?’ somebody called. ‘Smoke.’

‘Christ. There’s a fire.’

The orderly gasped. We’re going to burn to death. But he considered this possibility in a curiously detached way. A searing, painful death was horrific but not as bad as the clutching, the confinement.

Tears filled his eyes. He hadn’t known you could cry from fear.

‘Is anybody there?’ a woman nurse, in limp green scrubs, was shouting into the intercom. There’d been no message from security through the speaker.

‘It’s hot, it’s hot!’ A woman’s voice. ‘The flames’re right under us. Help!’

‘I can’t breathe.’

‘I’ve got to get out.’

The pregnant woman was crying. ‘My baby, my baby.’

The orderly ripped his shirt open, lifted his head and tried to find some better air. But he could only fill his lungs with stinking, moist, used breath.

In the corner, a woman vomited.

‘Oh, Jesus, lady, all over me.’ The man beside her, forties, in shorts and a T-shirt, tried to leap back, getting away from the mess. But there was no place to go and the man behind him shoved back.

‘Fuck you.’

The smell overwhelmed the orderly and it was all he could do to control his own gut.

Not so lucky with the woman beside him. She, too, was sick.

Phone calls:

‘Yes, nine one one, we’re trapped in an elevator and nobody’s doing anything.’

‘We’re in a car, an elevator in the hospital. East Wing. We can’t breathe.’

Somebody shouted: ‘Don’t both call at once! Are you fucking crazy? You’ll block the circuits!’

‘What — were you born in the fifties? They can handle more than—’

Then an otherworldly scream filled the car: the biker had lost control, lost it completely. Screaming, he grabbed the shoulders of the elderly woman in front of him and boosted himself up onto the crowd.

The orderly heard a snap as the woman’s clavicle broke and she screamed and fainted. The biker didn’t even notice; he scrabbled forward atop the shoulders and necks and heads of the others and slammed into the elevator door, breaking nails as he tried to pull the panels open. He was screaming and sobbing. Tears and sweat flowed like water from a cracked pipe.

A slim African-American woman, an aide, in what used to be called candy stripers, colorful scrubs with teddy bears on them, muscled her way forward and gripped him by the collar. ‘We’ll be okay. It’ll be all right.’

Another scream from the huge man, the sound piercing.

She was unfazed. ‘Are you listening? We’ll be all right. Breathe slowly.’

The biker’s red, bearded face leaned toward hers. Close. He gripped her neck. He was looking past her and for a moment it seemed as if he’d snap bones.

‘Breathe,’ she said. ‘Slow.’

And he started to.

‘You’re all right. Everybody’s all right. Nothing’s happened to us. We’re fine. There’re sprinklers. The fire department’s on its way.’

This calmed the biker and four or five of the passengers, but among the others panic was growing.

‘Where the fuck are they?’

‘Jesus, Jesus. We’re going to die!’

‘No no no!’

‘I feel the heat, the flames. You feel that?’

‘It’s underneath us. It’s getting hotter!’

‘No, please! Somebody.’

‘Hey!’ the biker shouted, in a booming voice. ‘Just, everybody chill!’

Some people did. But others were still in the grip of panic. They began pounding on the walls, screaming, ripping the hair and clothes of their fellows to get to the door. One woman, in her forties, knocked the biker aside, jammed her nails into the seam between the sliding doors and tried to force them open, just as he had attempted. ‘Relax, relax,’ the big man said. And pulled her away.

A man screamed into the intercom, ‘Why aren’t you answering? Why aren’t they answering? Nobody’s answering.’

Sobbing, cries.

Someone defecated.

The orderly realized he’d bitten his tongue. He tasted blood.

‘The walls! They’re hot. And the smoke.’

‘We’re going burn to death!’

The orderly looked at the doctor. He was unconscious. A heart attack? Had he fainted?

‘Can’t you hear us? We’re stuck.’

‘No, no!’

More screams.

‘It’s not that hot!’ the biker called. ‘I don’t think the fire’s that close. We’re going to be okay.’

The nurse said, ‘Listen to him! We’ll be all right.’

And, slowly, the panicked passengers began to calm.

Which had no effect on the orderly. He couldn’t take the confinement for a moment longer. Suddenly he was consumed by a wholly new level of panic. He turned his back to the people in the car and whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’ To his wife and son.

His last words before panic became something else. A snake winding through his mouth and into his gut.

Frenzy...

Sobbing, he tore the pocket from his scrubs, wadded it into a ball and stuffed it down his own throat. Inhaling the cloth into his windpipe.

Die, please let me die... Please let this horror be over.

The suffocation was terrible, but nothing compared to the claustrophobia.

Please let me... let me...

His vision went black.

Chapter 64

‘Listen to me!’ Kathryn Dance shouted. ‘Listen!’

‘I’ve got my orders.’

She was on the east wing third floor of the hospital, speaking to one of the maintenance men.

‘We need that door open now.’

‘Lady, Officer, sorry. We gotta wait for the elevator repair people. These things are dangerous. It’s not gonna fall. There’s no fire. I mean, there was a little one but it’s out now and—’

‘You don’t understand. The people inside, they’re going to hurt themselves. They don’t know there’s no fire.’

She was in front of the doors to elevator number two. From inside she could hear screams and thuds.

‘Well, I’m not authorized.’

‘Oh, Jesus Christ.’ Dance stepped past him and grabbed a screwdriver from his tool kit, a long one.’

‘Hey, you can’t—’

‘Let her, Harry,’ another worker said. ‘It don’t sound too good in there.’

The screams were louder now.

‘Fuck,’ Harry muttered. ‘I’ll do it.’

He took the screwdriver and set it down, then extracted a separate tool from the bag, an elevator door key. He slipped it into the hole and a moment later was muscling aside the doors.

Dance dropped to her belly, hit by the disgusting smell wafting out of the car, vomit, sweat, feces, urine. She squinted. Security lights, mounted on the CCTV camera inside the elevator, were glaring into her face. The ceiling of the car was about eighteen inches above the hospital’s linoleum floor. To Dance’s surprise, the passengers were fairly calm, their attention on two of their fellows: a pregnant woman, the source of the screaming. And a man passed out, though standing; his face an eerie blue. He was dressed in the uniform of a hospital orderly.

‘The fire’s out! You’re safe!’ This was the best way to convince them to calm, she’d decided. Telling them it was a prank, much less an intentional attack, didn’t seem advisable.

Somebody was trying to give the orderly the Heimlich maneuver but could get no leverage.

‘He’s dying!’ somebody called, nodding at the orderly. One of the male passengers suddenly snapped and lunged forward, stepped on a fellow occupant, a petite woman, and boosted himself up. ‘I need out, I need out! Now!’ He grabbed Dance’s collar, trying to pull himself out. Still, he tugged fiercely. Dance screamed as her head was jammed into the gap, the metal ceiling of the car cutting into her cheek.

‘No, listen!’

But he wasn’t listening.

‘Stop!’

She felt the growing strains of panic grip her. She began pounding the man’s hand. Useless. Her head, sideways, was partly inside now, wedged completely still. She was feeling dizzy from the fumes and the dismal air. And that unbearable feeling of being unable to move. She tasted blood, dripping from the gash into her mouth.

Jesus...

No choice.

Sorry.

Dance reared her head back, clamped her teeth around the man’s thumb and, tasting blood and tobacco, bit down hard with her molars.

He screamed and released her.

‘That man!’ she shouted, pointing to the orderly. ‘Get him over here.’

Several of the passengers grabbed the man’s collar and waist and pulled him off the floor. Then, together, they all handed him overhead, mosh-pit style. Dance gestured for two medics from Emergency to help and together they boosted the man up to the gap and got him out.

One ER worker said, ‘We’ll get him downstairs.’ They placed him on a gurney and sprinted away.

Michael O’Neil came running up. ‘Fire’s out in the basement. You all right?’ He frowned, looking at her face.

‘Fine.’

Dance peered back into the car. Brother. She shouted over her shoulder, ‘How long till we can raise the car?’

‘Fifteen, twenty minutes, I’d guess,’ the maintenance man said.

‘Okay, then we need an ob-gyn here. Now.’

‘I’ll get one,’ a male nurse behind her called.

Dance added, ‘And make it the skinniest one you’ve got on staff.’

Chapter 65

Dance said, ‘I should’ve thought more clearly. This unsub... he’s too fucking smart.’

A word that rarely escaped her lips.

They were in the lobby of the hospital, waiting for the Monterey County Crime Scene Unit officers to report what they’d found in the elevator motor room, the car itself and the pit in the basement.

After the Honda had started to burn in earnest and the officers had raced into the inn, Dance had checked two exit doors, found them unencumbered — and paused. She looked over the establishment.

‘No,’ she’d muttered. The inn was one story and, though built into a hill, the incline was minimal. To escape, all you had to do was pitch a chair through a window and step outside, safe as long as you minded the broken glass.

Then she’d noted the smoke wafting into the woods and had seen, behind them, the hospital.

She’d said to O’Neil, ‘I don’t think it’s the inn that’s his target.’

‘What then?’

‘Hospital.’

He’d considered this. ‘A lot of exits.’

She’d suggested that he might hit a closed-off interior area. ‘Surgical suite?’

‘There wouldn’t be enough people for a stampede. Good security. And—’

‘Cafeteria? Waiting room.’ Then: ‘Elevator.’

O’Neil’d said, ‘That’s it.’

And they’d started jogging along the quarter-mile path that led to the hospital.

Now, in the third-floor lobby by the elevator, a nurse wandered up the hall. ‘You’re Special Agent Dance?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You wanted to know. You asked earlier? The baby’s fine. A girl. Mother has a broken arm — somebody stepped on it — but she’ll be okay. She asked for your name. I think she wants to thank you. Can I give it to her?’

Dance handed her a card, wondering if the newborn was about to get a different given name than Mom and Dad had originally planned.

‘And the orderly?’

‘Heimlich didn’t work — not with cloth stuck in the windpipe. But we did a tracheotomy. Looks like he swallowed it himself. Attempted suicide. He’ll be okay. He’s pretty shaken up. Claustrophobia’s his big fear.’

A doctor, a tall African American, approached. He examined her cheek. ‘Not too bad.’ He offered her an antiseptic pad. She thanked him, tore it open and pressed the cloth against the cut, wincing at the brief pain. ‘I’ll bandage it up, you want.’

‘I’ll see. Maybe I’ll come by the ER later. Thanks.’

O’Neil’s phone rang. He took the call. After disconnecting, he said, ‘Downstairs. Crime Scene’s released the basement. There isn’t much. But I’m going to take a look. You want to come?’

Just then her phone hummed. She glanced at it. ‘You go on. I’ll be a minute.’ She answered. ‘Mags.’

‘Mom.’

‘Everything all right?’

‘Yeah, yeah. Fine. I finished the book report. It’s five pages.’

‘Good. We’ll go over it when I’m home.’

‘Mom.’

Of course she’d known there was another agenda. No child calls about book reports. No hurry. Give her time.

‘What, hons?’

‘Mom, I was thinking?’

‘Yes, wonderful child?’

‘I think I’ll sing at the show, the talent show. I think I want to.’

Dance gave it a moment. ‘Do you really want to?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Why’d you change your mind?’

‘I don’t know. I just did.’

‘And this’s something you really want to do?’

‘Cross my heart.’

Those words tend to be an indicator of deception. But the fact that she was going to sing even if she didn’t want to wasn’t necessarily bad. It’s a positive developmental step toward adulthood to take on a challenge even if you’d rather not.

‘That’s great, honey. Everybody’ll love to hear you. All right, good. I’m proud of you.’

‘I’m going to go practice now.’

‘Don’t overdo your voice. You probably know the song backwards by now. Hey, honey, is Jon there?’

‘No, just Grandpa and me.’

‘Okay. I’ll see you soon.’

‘Bye.’

‘Love you.’

Where was Boling? Lost in the world of supercomputers, she guessed, still trying to crack the code of Stan Prescott’s computer and the mobile that the unsub had dropped in Orange County. But his not calling? That was odd.

Dance turned to see her mother walking quickly toward her.

‘Katie! You’re all right?’ she called, when she was still some distance away. Heads turned at the urgent words, as the stocky woman with short salt-and-pepper hair strode forward.

‘Sure. Fine.’ They hugged.

Edie Dance was a cardiac nurse here. She surveyed the elevator car. The blood, vomit, metal battered by fists. Edie shook her head, then hugged her daughter. ‘How horrible,’ she whispered. ‘Somebody did this on purpose?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are— Oh, your face.’

‘Nothing. Got scratched a little, getting into the car.’

‘I can’t imagine what it would be like to be trapped in there. How many people?’

‘About fifteen. Pregnant woman. She’ll be okay. Baby’s fine. One close call.’

‘No!’

‘He tried to kill himself. He couldn’t take the panic.’

Edie Dance looked around. ‘Is Michael here?’

‘He’s meeting with his crime-scene people. They’re running scenes in the basement and next door, at the inn.’

‘Ah.’ Edie’s eyes remained down the hall. ‘How’s he doing? Haven’t seen him for a while.’

‘Michael? Fine.’

Body-language skill is such a blessing... and a curse. Her mother had something to say, and Dance wondered if she was supposed to pry it out of her. That was often the case with Edie Dance.

But she didn’t have to.

Her mother said, ‘I saw Anne O’Neil the other day.’

‘You did?’

‘She was with the kids. At Whole Foods. Or does she go by her maiden name now?’

Dance touched her sore face. ‘No, she kept O’Neil.’

‘Thought she was living in San Francisco.’

‘Last I heard she was.’

‘So Michael hasn’t mentioned anything about it?’

‘No. But we haven’t had much of chance for personal conversation.’ She nodded at the elevator. ‘The case and all.’

‘I suppose not.’

Dance sometimes wondered where her mother’s loyalties lay. Recently Edie had been fast to tell her that Boling appeared to be moving away — without having mentioned anything to Dance. As it turned out, he only had a business trip and was planning to take Dance and the children with him for part of it — a mini-vacation in Southern California. True, Edie had her daughter’s and grandchildren’s interests at heart but Dance thought she’d been a bit too fast to relay what turned out to be a misunderstanding.

Now she was telling Dance that the man who’d once been a potential partner might not be as divorced as he seemed to be. But Edie was not a gossip or a sniper. So, Dance speculated, this would have to do with protecting her daughter’s heart, as any good parent would do. Though the information was irrelevant, of course. She was Jon Boling’s partner now.

Edie expected her to say something more on the topic, she sensed. But Dance chose to deflect: ‘Maggie’s going to sing in the show after all.’

‘Really? Wonderful. What changed her mind?’

‘I don’t know.’

Children were mysteries and you could go nuts trying to figure out patterns.

‘Your dad and I’ll be there. What time is it again?’

‘Seven.’

‘Dinner after?’

‘I think that should work.’

Her mother was looking at her critically. ‘And, Katie, I’d really get that face taken care of.’

‘A lift?’ Dance asked.

Mother and daughter smiled.

Her phone buzzed. Ah, at last.

‘Jon, where’ve you been? We—’

‘Is this Kathryn?’ A man’s voice. Not Boling’s.

Her heart went cold. ‘Yes. Who’s this?’

‘I’m Officer Taylor, Carmel Police. I found you on Mr Boling’s speed-dial list. You’re a friend, a co-worker?’

‘Yes. Friend. I’m Kathryn Dance. Special agent with the CBI.’

A pause. Then: ‘Oh. Agent Dance.’

‘What’s happened?’ Dance whispered. She was deluged with an ice-cold memory — of the trooper calling her after her husband had been killed.

‘I’m afraid I have to tell you that Mr Boling’s been in an accident.’

Chapter 66

Antioch March was back in his suite at the Cedar Hills Inn.

He’d finished the workout at the inn’s luxurious health club and was enjoying a pineapple juice in his room, watching the news reports of the event at the hospital.

Not a single fatality.

Antioch March was mildly disappointed but the Get was satisfied. For the time being. Always for the time being.

Somebody’s not happy...

His phone rang. Both caller and callee were on new burner phones. But he knew who it was: his boss. Christopher Jenkins ran the Hand to Heart website. He gave March his assignments to travel to non-profit humanitarian groups, who would then sign up for the site. Jenkins also arranged for March’s other jobs, which were the real moneymakers for the company.

‘Hi,’ he said.

No names, of course.

‘Just wanted to tell you, the client’s extremely satisfied.’

‘Good.’ What else was there to say? March had done what he’d been contracted to do in the Monterey area. He’d also eliminated evidence and witnesses and cut all ties that could potentially link the incident to the client, who was paying Jenkins a great deal of money for March’s services. The client wasn’t the nicest guy in the world — in fact, he could be quite a prick — but one thing about him: he paid well and on time.

‘He’s sent eighty percent. It’s gone through proper channels.’

Bitcoin and the other weird new payment systems were clever in theory as a mechanism to pay anonymously for the sort of work that March performed but they were coming under increasing scrutiny. So Jenkins — the businessman in the operation — had decided to resort to good old-fashioned cash. ‘Channels’ meant he’d received a FedEx box containing ‘documents’, which in a way it did, though each document would have a picture of Benjamin Franklin on it.

Antioch March had eight safe-deposit boxes around the country, each with about a million inside it.

Jenkins continued, ‘Wanted to tell you. Found a restaurant we have to try. Foie gras is the best. I mean, the best. And they serve the Château d’Yquem in Waterford. Oh, and the red wine? Pétrus.’ A chuckle. ‘We had two bottles.’

March didn’t know the wines but he assumed they were expensive. Maybe Jenkins had even poured some for him in the past. The two men had worked together for about six years, and from day one, Jenkins had treated March to fancy dinners, like the one he was describing now. They were okay. But the elaborate meals didn’t really move March, in the same way the Vuitton and the Coach and the Italian suits didn’t. He accepted the gifts but was forever surprised that Jenkins didn’t notice his indifference. Or maybe he did but didn’t care. Just like March’s lethargy at certain other times, in his connection with Jenkins.

His boss now added, ‘Just had a proposal. I’ll tell you about it when I’m out.’

They were always vague when they were on the phone. Yes, these were prepaid mobiles but listenable to if one were inclined to listen, and traceable if one were inclined to trace.

And people like Kathryn Dance would be more than happy to do both.

‘I’ll be in tomorrow night,’ Jenkins said.

‘Good.’ March tried to be enthusiastic. There was another reason Jenkins was coming to the inn, of course. Which March could have done without. But he could live with it: anything for the Get.

‘Thanks again for all your work. This is a good one. This’s a winner. And it’ll open up a lot of doors for us. Well, think we’ve been talking long enough. Night.’

They hung up.

March checked the news, but there was nothing yet about Jon Boling’s death due to a bicycle malfunction. He supposed that with both brakes out the bike would have been doing fifty or sixty when Dance’s boyfriend had slammed into the traffic or rocks at Carmel Beach. March wasn’t sure exactly how close Dance was to Boling but he knew he was more than a casual date; in her Pathfinder, at the Bay View Center, he’d found a card he’d sent her. A silly thing, funny. Signed, Love, J. March had noted the return address and driven there straight from the scene of the attack.

Motivated by both a need to distract the huntress and a bit of jealousy (he found he desired Kathryn even more than Calista), he’d waited outside Boling’s house, planning to beat him to death, a robbery gone wrong. Or coma him, at the least. But the man still hadn’t returned when March got the text about foolish Stan Prescott down in Orange County and he’d had to leave.

He’d followed Boling later and decided he liked the idea of a bike accident better than an obvious attack.

March looked at his shaved scalp in the mirror. He didn’t like it. He looked a bit like Chris Jenkins, now he thought about it. And reflected that it was ironic that Jenkins — former military, crack shot, familiar with all sorts of weapons, with friends among the security and mercenary crowd — was the businessman who never got out into the field to run the assignments.

And Antioch March, who was essentially a misplaced academic, was the one fulfilling them.

But it worked to everybody’s advantage. Jenkins lacked the finesse to set up the deaths the way March did, the intellect to foresee what the police and witnesses would do.

March, on the other hand, had no talent for dealing with clients. Negotiating, vetting to make sure they were not law, structuring payment terms, maintaining the Hand to Heart website.

March finished his juice.

The client is extremely satisfied...

Which, March thought, was the ultimate goal of his father, the salesman, as well.

He flopped down in the sumptuous bed. He had many plans to make. But at the moment he preferred his thoughts to dwell upon... who else? The captivating Kathryn Dance.

Chapter 67

At CBI headquarters once more.

Dance had hit the restroom to scrub the face wound but she assessed it as minor. A little sting. There’d be a bruise. Nothing more.

She turned the corner to the Gals’ Wing. It being the weekend, the office wasn’t staffed with assistants. She walked past Maryellen Kresbach’s station and into her own office.

‘Hey.’ Jon Boling, sitting in the chair across the desk, smiled.

‘Jon!’ She strode to him fast and started to throw her arms around his shoulders, then saw him wince in anticipation. She stopped. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine. Relatively speaking. But sore. Really sore.’ His face was bruised and he had two bandages, on his cheek and neck. His wrist was wrapped in beige elastic.

‘What happened?’

‘Lost the brakes on Ocean.’

The main street leading down to the beach in Carmel. Very steep.

‘No!’

‘They felt funny, when I started off, so I got about a half-block from the store... the store I was at and I pulled over. That’s when they popped. Both of the brake shoes.’

‘Jon!’

‘I steered into bushes, and that slowed me down. Went through them and hit the curb and a car at the stop sign.’

‘The brakes?’ she asked. ‘You think they were tampered with?

‘Tampered with? Why would... Oh. Your unsub, you’re thinking?’

‘Maybe. To slow me down, distract me.’

‘But how did he put us together?’

‘Nothing about this guy would surprise me. You notice anybody near your bike?’

‘No. I had an errand. Left the bike outside. Only five minutes. I wasn’t paying any attention.’ Then Boling was looking her over. ‘But... what happened to you?’

‘Nothing critical. I got banged up getting into an elevator.’

‘Well, that must have been quite an entrance.’

She told him of the latest attack. ‘Nobody hurt badly.’

Then her eyes strayed to what was on her desk in front of him: Stan Prescott’s Asus computer. Beside it was a portable hard drive. ‘You cracked it?’

‘Well, my partner did.’

‘Partner?’

‘Lily.’

Dance glanced at him with a playful frown. ‘Lily. Is this where I start to be jealous?’

‘Ah, Lily... My main squeeze. She’s a second-generation Blue Gene/P four-way symmetric multiprocessor supercomputer with node-to-node logic communication. But as sexy as that is, you’ve got a better body.’

At that moment O’Neil walked through the door. He blinked. That wasn’t — it seemed — a reaction to Boling’s comment about Dance. He was staring at the bandages and bruises. ‘Jon, Jesus. What happened?’

‘The dangers of going green. Bike accident. Banged up a little. I was lucky.’

Dance said, ‘Maybe intentional.’

‘So he knows who’s out to stop him,’ O’Neil said to Dance. ‘I’ll order a protective detail to keep an eye on your place.’

Not a bad idea. She’d also make sure the children didn’t go anywhere alone. Certainly Wes couldn’t take any more bike rides with Donnie. Not until the unsub was caught.

O’Neil had his mobile out. He said to Boling, ‘I’ll order one for you too, if you want.’

There was a pause. Dance said, ‘Just one. For my house is fine.’

‘Sure.’ And O’Neil phoned the request in. After a brief conversation he hung up. ‘There’ll be an undercover out front in the evenings. Random drive-bys too. During the day.’ He had ordered protection for her parents too.

She thanked him. Then glanced toward Boling. ‘Jon got into Stan Prescott’s computer. And phone.’

‘Great.’

Boling handed her the small USB-powered hard drive. The computer forensic protocol was that you backed up the suspect’s drive onto an external because there were often software booby traps in the computer itself.

She plugged it in and nodded at her keyboard. He took over.

‘I’ve got access to Prescott’s emails and the websites he visited. You should review it yourself but I didn’t see any connection to the Solitude Creek incident or Bay View. No personal connection, I mean. He didn’t correspond with anybody about them — and he didn’t delete anything about them either. I reconstructed the deleted files. All of them. Looks like he downloaded the pictures of Solitude Creek from a pay site.’

‘Pay site? What’s that? I thought they were from a TV newscast.’

‘They were originally. But somebody uploaded them to a commercial site where members can see graphic violence — stills and movies. Do you know about them?’

Neither Dance nor O’Neil did.

‘Oh, well, here, take a look.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘You’d better brace yourself.’

‘Brace?’

He typed and a page loaded.

Dance’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, my. What’s this?’

O’Neil walked around and stood on Dance’s other side. The three of them stared at the website. It was called Cyber-Necro.com and the opening graphic revealed a computer-generated image of a man plunging a knife into the belly of a buxom woman strapped down to a medieval table.

Boling said, ‘It’s a pay site devoted to graphic images of murder and rape victims, disasters, crimes scenes, accidents, medical procedures. The Solitude Creek pictures were in the section on “Theater and Sporting Events Deaths”.’

‘That’s actually a category?’

‘Yep. People pay a lot of money to see those pictures and videos. I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe a shrink could. Voyeurism, sexual, sadistic. Who knows? I’ve gotten quite an education in the past few hours. There’re hundreds of sites like this. I might write a paper on it. Some sites are like this one.’ He nodded at the screen. ‘Real deaths and injuries. But you can also get custom-made videos. Actresses — usually actresses — being shot or stabbed or hit by arrows. Strangulation and asphyxia’re popular too. Sexual assaults. Some hard-core. And the weapons? The special effects’re good. Shockingly good. You’d almost think the women were actually being killed but they keep appearing in other clips. It seems some men have favorite actresses they want to see killed. Over and over.’

O’Neil whispered, ‘I’ve never heard of this.’

‘A whole underground, I found.’ Boling typed. ‘Here’re the pictures of Solitude Creek.’

The page on Cyber-Necro.com showing pictures of the disaster had about fifteen pictures. Most were from the media, shot afterward, depicting blood. Some were bad phone videos, low resolution, taken inside during the crush.

Dance and O’Neil glanced at each other. They’d both be thinking the same thing: was there anything in the videos or pictures that might help the case?

‘How can we watch the videos?’ Dance asked.

‘You join. A hundred a month and you can download whatever you want.’

Dance went to the home page and signed up.

Boling added, ‘If you want, you can get a discount if you join Cyber-Necro’s sister site at the same time.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

Boling smiled. ‘I think it’s called Sluts-On-Demand.’

Dance nodded. ‘Probably just the one. It’s going to be hard enough to get Charles to sign off on my expense account as it is.’

In a half-hour they’d downloaded all of the clips and images of Solitude Creek. She wondered who’d taken the videos. During the canvassing she’d asked if anyone had done so; no one admitted it, perhaps not wishing to seem heartless.

But they found nothing helpful. The images, video and still, were low resolution and murky. No clues.

One picture Dance stared at for a long moment. It was a still image similar to the one Prescott had used for his phony jihad rant on Vidster. It showed the interior of the club, taken several days after the event, according to the time stamp.

‘What?’ O’Neil asked, seeing her face.

‘Oh, I couldn’t place that face.’ She pointed. Although the focus of the pictures was the bloodstains, in the mirror behind the bar you could see several faces. They were indistinct but the one she indicated was fairly visible.

‘It’s the US Congressman.’

‘Congressman?’

‘Nashima. Daniel Nashima. He must’ve come back to examine the club after the police released the scene.’

Boling said, ‘If it’s an election year, he’ll be talking about reforms in fire codes and all that. Not to be cynical.’

Dance said, ‘Really appreciate all this. Thanks, Jon.’

‘Wish I’d been more helpful.’

‘That’s the thing about policing,’ O’Neil said. ‘Even when it doesn’t pan out, you’ve got to do the work anyway.’

So Prescott’s computer was a bust. But then Dance asked, ‘What about the unsub’s phone?’

The burner he’d dropped during the pursuit in Orange County.

‘It’s a prepaid from a Chicago exchange.’

‘Like the one he used at the site of the Bay View Center disaster to lead police into thinking the killer was headed toward Fisherman’s Wharf.’

Boling added, ‘My guess is he goes through a phone every few days. This one has only a few texts on it. To and from a prepaid with a California exchange.’ He consulted his notes. ‘Incoming: “Very pleased so far. Second installment en route.” Outgoing: “Good. Thanks.” Incoming: “What’s next?” Outgoing: “Cleaning up. All will be good. Will be in touch.”’

‘Well,’ Dance whispered.

O’Neil was nodding. ‘There’s our answer.’

She said, ‘Sure is.’

Boling said, ‘Sorry? What do you mean?’

She explained, ‘Our unsub is a pro. He’s working for somebody.’

Dance then placed a call to TJ Scanlon, gave him the number of the California phone and asked him to contact the service provider and see if it was still active.

‘On it, boss.’

Then a thought occurred to her. She considered it. Interesting idea. She said to O’Neil. ‘Do you have the pictures of your Jane Doe, the one we think our unsub killed?’

‘Sure.’

He went onto the MCSO secure server and called them up.

On her computer she accessed the images of Stan Prescott.

O’Neil said, ‘Right. Like we were saying: Same sort of MO. Strangled or asphyxia. On their backs.’

‘And,’ she said, ‘look. They’re both under lights.’

‘Maybe they just fell there.’

‘No. I don’t think so. I think he moved the lamps so he could get pictures on his cell phone. It occurred to me when I was looking at the crime-scene pictures on that website — those bodies were all well-lit too.’

O’Neil nodded, now understanding. ‘Proof of death.’

‘Exactly.’

‘What do you mean?’ Boling asked.

‘He needed clear pictures to prove that the witnesses’d been eliminated. That line in the text about “cleaning up”. He’s making a lot of money on this job and he wants to be sure the man who’s hired him is confident he’s not leaving any traces.’

Five-thousand-dollar shoes...

O’Neil said, ‘Brilliant. He’s targeted a couple of venues to make it look like this’s the work of a psycho. But, no, he’s got a specific venue in mind. He was hired to destroy it.’

‘Or a person,’ Dance said, after a moment. ‘He could’ve been hired to destroy a location, sure. But also to kill somebody specific.’

O’Neil nodded. ‘Sure. Makes sense. But if it’s an individual, then who?’

Dance offered, ‘At the hospital, no one in the elevator could have been the intended victim.’

‘Because how could he know who’d be in that car at that time? And at the Bay View Center — that venue wouldn’t’ve worked either.’

‘No,’ O’Neil said. ‘The people who died all drowned. He couldn’t be sure he’d get a specific target there. How’d he know who’d jump into the bay? No, it was Solitude Creek. His target was there, in the audience.’

O’Neil: ‘The panic starts. The unsub’s changed out of his workman’s clothes. He’s in the audience. He gets close to the victim and kills him or her. Trips them maybe, crushes their throat, breaks a rib that pierces their lung.’

‘He’d be in the mob too. But no—’

‘Right.’ O’Neil carried through on her thought: ‘He’s a big guy. He can survive a bit of jostling.’

‘Besides, remember, there was no fire. It wasn’t like he was going to burn to death. He knew most people would get out okay.’

O’Neil was scrolling through his mobile. ‘There were three deaths at Solitude Creek. Guess we’ll have to look at all the victims.’

It was then that she had one of those moments.

A to B to Z...

‘Let’s go for a drive,’ said Kathryn Dance.

‘Me?’ Boling asked.

She smiled.

‘No. Better if it’s just Michael and me.’

Chapter 68

‘Oh. Hi, Mrs Dance. I mean, Agent Dance.’

‘Hello, Trish. This is Detective O’Neil with the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office.’

Nervous. Naturally.

‘Hi.’

The detective nodded down to her. ‘Hello, Trish. I’m sorry about your mother.’

‘Yeah. Thanks. It’s, you know, tough.’

‘I’m sure it is.’

The three stood on the front porch of one of the nicest houses Dance had ever seen. Easily seven thousand square feet. Stone and glass and chrome. A Beverly Hills house, a Malibu house. A rich producer’s or film star’s house.

A moving company truck was parked by the garage. The workers were carrying boxes and furniture into the house, not out.

She’d known Frederick was moving back in but she appreciated this physical evidence regarding who had hired the Solitude Creek unsub.

Dance asked, ‘Is your father home?’

‘No. He’s taking my aunt and uncle to the airport. But he could be back soon.’

A conspiratorial smile. ‘We won’t be long. I know he’s not a big fan of mine. Do you mind if we ask you a few more questions?’

‘You want to come in?’

‘Thank you.’

They walked into the entryway — bigger than Dance’s living room and kitchen combined — then entered a study. Sumptuous leather and metal furniture. The couch alone could have been traded in for a new Pathfinder. They all sat.

‘Uhm, the thing is, I didn’t tell my father we talked, you and me,’ the girl said.

‘We’ll play along.’ Dance gave a smile. ‘If he comes back.’

Relief flooded Trish’s eyes. ‘Thanks. Like, really.’

‘Sure.’

‘I heard he did the same thing at the Bay View Center.’

O’Neil said, ‘And the hospital, the fire in the elevator.’

‘Why’s he doing it?’

They, of course, demurred on the suspected motive. Dance said, ‘We don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any clear reason. Now, Trish, I’m sorry to ask but I need to know a little more about your mother’s death. Some of the facts. Are you up for that?’

She was still. She took a deep breath, then nodded. ‘If it’ll help you catch this asshole.’

‘I hope it will.’

‘Okay, sure. I guess.’

Dance said, ‘Go back to that night. At the Solitude Creek Club. After you and your mother got separated.’

A nod.

O’Neil, who’d read the account, said, ‘If I understand, you were being swept toward the kitchen and she was in the crowd going for the exit doors.’

‘That’s right.’

Dance asked, ‘But before you got into the kitchen, you could see your mother, right?’

Eyes hollow, she nodded. ‘Yeah. With the emergency lights. I could see good.’

‘Trish, this is a hard question but I have to know. Did it look to you like somebody hurt your mother intentionally? Pushed her out of the way? On to the floor? To save themselves?’ She was hardly going to suggest to the girl that her father had hired someone to kill Michelle Cooper, his ex-wife.

The girl said, ‘Oh, are you thinking of arresting some of the people in the crowd?’

‘Whenever somebody dies, it’s important to get the exact details.’

‘For the reports,’ O’Neil added.

Trish was shaking her head. ‘I don’t know. The last time I saw her—’ She choked, then continued, ‘The last time I saw her, she was waving at me and then she disappeared behind the pillar, near the last exit door.’

‘Did you see anybody beside her, holding her, pushing her?’

‘No. But the next thing I knew I was in the kitchen and then we were falling out onto the gravel and grass, and everybody was screaming and crying.’

Tears streaked her cheeks. Dance dug into her purse and found a pack of Kleenex. ‘Here you go.’

Trish opened the pack and pulled a few out, wiped and blew.

Dance was disappointed she hadn’t provided anything concrete. But Dance and O’Neil had other facts to uncover — slowly and with finesse.

‘Thanks, Trish, this’s been helpful.’

‘Sure.’ She sniffed.

O’Neil delivered his line, according to their script: ‘I don’t think we have anything else.’

Dance looked around the room. ‘Your father’s moving back. Where does he live now?’

‘Yeah. He lives in a place in Carmel Valley now.’

‘Nice.’

‘Not really. Not his place. It’s a total dive. And with me in school — Carmel High’s a mile away — it made sense for him to move here. Like...’ She glanced around her. ‘Not really too shabby, huh?’

O’Neil asked, ‘Was this your house when your folks were married?’

Finesse...

‘That’s right.’

Dance offered another glance to O’Neil. The cheating husband had lost it in the property settlement. Now he was back in. He couldn’t take title — it would be part of the bequest to Trish from her mother. But when she came of age he would work on her to get it transferred back to him. Motive one for Frederick Martin to be the killer. She suspected there was another too.

‘Was it a tough divorce?’ O’Neil asked. Good delivery, Dance thought. They’d rehearsed the line on the drive here.

‘Oh, yeah, really mean. It was awful. They said really bad things about each other.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Dance offered.

‘It totally sucked, yeah.’

Dance added, ‘Hard about the money too, I imagine. The alimony payments?’

‘Oh, yeah. I think they called it something else.’

‘Maintenance,’ O’Neil chimed in. Of the two of them, Dance and O’Neil, he was the only one with first-hand experience of the dissolution of a marriage.

‘Oh, yeah, that’s it. They don’t know that I know. But I heard them talk. Really big checks. Like fifteen thousand a month.’

Dance assumed that, while child support would go on as long as Trish was under eighteen, maintenance payments would terminate upon the death or remarriage of the ex-spouse. So Martin would save nearly two hundred K a year. For a man living in a small house in the valley, presumably with limited income, that could be a huge windfall.

Motive number two.

And Martin would have known Michelle would be at the club. He would have given instructions to the unsub to make sure the girl was safe.

Or would he?

Dance felt her gut flip. If the girl had died too, was her father the beneficiary of her will? Would he have gotten the entire house and estate back?

Then Trish was saying, ‘It’s, like, too bad Dad’ll lose all that.’

‘Too bad... what?’ Dance asked.

‘I mean, he does okay at his job but he could really use that money. Trying to go back to school and everything.’

Silence for a moment. The girl’s words spun like a top through Dance’s thoughts.

‘Your mother was paying your father alimony?’ she asked.

‘Yeah.’

O’Neil asked, ‘Why did your parents get divorced?’

Trish looked down. ‘My mom kind of cheated on him. And he’s such a nice guy. Really cool. But Mom, she just sort of... you know, she ran around a lot. And not just with one guy but a bunch of them. Dad worked part time to raise me and put Mom through school. He didn’t finish his degree. So when he found out she’d been cheating on him and went for the divorce, the judge made her pay alimony. I mean, maintenance. Man, I don’t know what he’s going to do now for money.’

Frederick Martin’s motive for killing his wife vanished.

Dance would have TJ check out the facts but she’d be very surprised to find any variation. It was obvious the girl was telling the truth.

‘Well, thanks for your help, Trish. I’ll let you know if we find anything else.’

‘You really think somebody hurt Mom on purpose, to get out of the club?’

‘It doesn’t seem likely, what we’re learning,’ O’Neil said.

‘If they did,’ the girl said, ‘I don’t really blame them. What happened that night, the panic and everything, it wasn’t human beings doing that. Like you can’t blame a tornado or an earthquake. They don’t think, they don’t plan on doing anything bad. They just happen.’

Chapter 69

At her desk, O’Neil beside her, Dance answered the phone. ‘’Lo?’

‘Boss.’

‘TJ. On speaker with Michael,’ Dance told him.

‘Hey, Michael. I love it when people say they’re on speaker. Think of all the juicy things they were about to say but can’t.’

‘TJ?’

‘I pulled strings and got into the courthouse. Yes, on Sunday. The girl’s story checks out. Trish. It’s confirmed. I read the settlement agreement and court documents, talked to the lawyers. Frederick Martin had zero to gain if his ex was gone. He had negative to gain — except it’s not like you gain anything negative. You know. Anyway, it’s going to cost him a lot now that she’s dead. Michelle didn’t leave much to her daughter either. The house, in trust, is hers but it’s mortgaged to the throat. Trish gets a small stipend. Somebody named Juan got the rest but it’s only fifty K. Not worth killing for. Yep, I said Juan. I’m betting the pool boy.’

Dance sighed.

‘Good theory, though, boss. You’ve got two more fatalities at Solitude Creek. Maybe they were the intended victims.’

O’Neil said, ‘We thought of that and I looked at them, TJ. One was a college student, one was a woman in her twenties — there with a bachelorette party. No motive that we could find.’

‘Back to Square A. You need me in the office, boss?’

‘No. Just track down that company in Nevada, the one doing the surveying at Solitude Creek. Give me an update in the morning.’

‘Will do, boss.’ He disconnected.

O’Neil seemed preoccupied.

Dance looked at the time. She said, ‘Oh, wanted to ask. You do any more thinking about Maggie’s talent show? Tonight at seven?’

We might have plans. I’ll let you know. Bring a friend?

‘Oh, I should’ve mentioned. Can’t make it. Tell her I’m sorry.’

‘Sure. No worries.’

Together they walked out of the office and made their way to the exit. Dance noticed the Guzman Connection task-force conference room was dark, Foster, Steve Two, Allerton and Gomez gone for the night.

In the parking lot O’Neil and Dance walked to their cars, parked beside each other.

‘What a case, hmm?’

‘Yep,’ he replied. They stood together for a moment. Then he said, ‘Night.’

That was all. She nodded. They got into the cruiser and the Pathfinder respectively, and without another look they drove to the highway and turned in different directions.

A half-hour later she was home.

‘Mom!’ Maggie was waiting on the front porch.

Dance had called and told her daughter she was on the way. But Maggie looked agitated. Had she been concerned that Dance was going to be late? Or was she troubled that her mother had shown up on time and there was no excuse to miss the show? Even though Maggie’d changed her mind about singing Dance knew she wasn’t looking forward to it.

‘Give me a few minutes and then we’ll be on our way. Go get dressed.’

Her daughter had a special costume for the event.

Together they walked inside and Maggie disappeared into her room. Dance kissed Boling.

He whispered, ‘How’re you feeling?’ Touching her face gently.

‘Fine. You?’

‘My bandage’s bigger than your bandage.’

She laughed and kissed him again. ‘We’ll compare bruises later.’ She saw Wes and Donnie on the back porch. They weren’t playing their game but intently looking over a Japanese comic. ‘Hi, boys!’

‘Hi, Mrs Dance.’

‘Hey, Mom.’

‘We leave in fifteen. Donnie, you want to come to Maggie’s class’s show? At the grade school. It’s at seven. We can have you home by nine.’

‘No, that’s okay. I’ve gotta get home.’

Wes slipped the comic into his book bag.

Dance had a sip of the wine Boling had ready for her, then headed upstairs for a shower and a change of clothes.

She stripped off her outfit, which she now detected smelled of smoke — oil and rubber smoke. Might be destined for the trash. She ran the shower and stepped under the stream of hot water, feeling a one-two stab of pain: the right side of her torso from the pulled muscle and her cut cheek. She let the water pound her for five full minutes, then stepped out and toweled off.

Examining the facial injury, she noted that the cut would leave a scar and that the bruise was striving to conquer more of her face. Probably should have had it looked at in the ER, after all.

She thought wryly of the curious dynamics of her life. Caught in a stampeding herd of theme-park patrons, squeezing into an elevator car to rescue a pregnant woman and a choking victim... and now off to a ten-year-old’s talent show.

Then she was dressed — black blouse, fancy jeans and navy jacket. Gold Aldos with exotic heels. A look in the mirror. She let her hair hang loose, better to conceal the banged-up jaw and cheek.

Downstairs she called, ‘Donnie. Did you bike over? I didn’t see it.’

The boy stared at her for a moment.

Wes said, ‘No, we left them at his house.’

‘You want a ride home? It’s on the way to Maggie’s school.’

Donnie glanced at Wes, then turned back. ‘No, thanks, Mrs Dance. I’ll walk. I feel like it.’

‘Okay. Come on, Wes, we have to go.’

He and Donnie bumped fists and her son joined her in the front entryway.

‘Maggie!’ Dance called.

Her daughter appeared.

Boling said, ‘Well, look at you.’

She gave a shy smile.

Dance said, ‘Beautiful, Mags.’

‘Thank you.’ In a stilted tone. Formality is a form of deflection.

‘Really.’

Maggie was looking pretty. Her outfit was a white sequined dress that Dance had snagged at Macy’s. It was the perfect outfit for singing a song by an ice queen or princess or whatever Elsa was. Light blue leggings too and white shoes.

They walked to the car, Boling slightly limpier than Dance, climbed in and belted up. Dance was behind the wheel. Into the street. She honked and Donnie Verso turned and waved. Then Dance hit the CD player and they listened to the infectious ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams. Boling tried to sing along. ‘Hopeless,’ he said.

It was.

‘I’ll work on it.’

‘I wouldn’t really worry about it,’ Wes said. Everyone laughed. Dance changed the song to a Broken Bells tune.

In ten minutes they were at Maggie’s grade school. The lot was full. Dance parked near the gym and they got out. She locked the vehicle. ‘Let’s go to the green room.’

‘What’s that?’ Maggie asked.

‘It’s the place backstage where they have the snacks.’

‘Let’s go!’ Wes said.

Dance put her arm around Maggie. ‘Come on, Elsa. Time to wow the audience.’

Her daughter said nothing.

Chapter 70

‘Working late, sir? And on Sunday.’

O’Neil looked up at Gabriel Rivera. The junior deputy, in uniform as always, stood in the doorway of O’Neil’s small workspace in the Sheriff’s Office building in Salinas. He discouraged the ‘sir’ but the young man was unshakeable in his respect. ‘Looks like you are too.’

‘Well, we get triple time, right?’

O’Neil smiled. ‘What’s up?’

‘They got an ID on the body in Santa Cruz. You were right. Homeless guy living off and on in a shelter. Blood work-up, he was way drunk.’ The big man shook his head. ‘As for Grant? Nothing, sir. Just no sign at all. Any other ideas? I’m at a loss.’

With the Solitude Creek unsub on the loose, O’Neil had had to delegate much of the Otto Grant disappearance to others. There’d been no sightings of the farmer who’d lost his property.

‘You’ve expanded to surrounding counties?’

‘All through the Central Valley. Zip.’

‘And nothing online since his last post?’

‘Nothing after five days ago.’

That was when the farmer had written another diatribe against the state.

You STOLE my property thru the travasty called eminent domain!

‘You run his posts by Dr Shepherd?’

‘I did,’ Rivera said. ‘He agrees that the comments could support a suicide but there weren’t any other indications I could find. He didn’t put his affairs in order. Didn’t take out any life insurance. No goodbye calls to neighbors or army buddies or relatives.’

‘And any place he’d run to?’

‘Checked the lakes he likes to fish at, where he’s rented cabins. A casino in Nevada he went to some. Nothing.’

O’Neil didn’t bother to ask about credit-card or mobile-phone tracing. Rivera had checked all that first.

‘Probably not much else to do until some campers find the body. Or fishermen.’

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

‘And on our Jane Doe?’

O’Neil looked at the picture of the woman who’d died of asphyxiation, possibly another victim of the unsub. Lying on her back, face up, under the light in the cheap motel room.

‘I’ve heard back from Nevada, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado. No matches in driver’s-license-photo databases. But facial recognition equipment...’ He shrugged. ‘You know. Can be hit or miss. The pix’re on the missing-persons wires, state and fed. She’s young, has to have family’re worried about her.’

‘Not much more we can do.’

‘You staying?’ Rivera asked.

‘A while.’

‘Night, then.’

‘You too, Gabe.’

O’Neil stretched. He glanced down at a pink phone-message slip, a call he’d returned earlier that day.

Anne called.

He thought about his ex. Then about Maggie’s recital, soon to get under way. He was sorry to be absent. He hoped she wouldn’t be disappointed.

Jon will be there...

Though her boyfriend’s presence wasn’t the reason he couldn’t go. Not at all. He did have plans this evening. Just curious that Dance would mention Boling. O’Neil had assumed that he’d be in attendance.

Jon will be there...

Enough. Let it go.

Back to work.

The preliminary crime-scene report from the hospital was open on his desk and Michael O’Neil was reading through it. Eighty percent of a cop’s job is paper or bytes.

He took notes from the new report, then opened some of the earlier ones to compare data: from the Solitude Creek incident, the Bay View Center and Orange County.

... footprint seventeen inches from driver’s door of suspect’s vehicle revealed one partial three-quarter-inch front tread mark, not identifiable...

Reading, reading, reading.

And thinking: There probably was a time when it might’ve worked between us, Kathryn and me. But that’s over. Circumstances have changed.

Wait. No. That wasn’t right.

There’d been a time when it would have worked out. Not ‘might’.

But he was accurate when he’d said circumstances had changed. So what would have been — and what would have been good, really good — wasn’t going to happen now.

Circumstances. Changed.

That was life. Look at Anne, his ex. She’d definitely changed. He’d been surprised, nearly shocked, to get that phone call from her last week. She’d sounded like the person he remembered from when they’d met, years ago. She’d been reasonable and funny and generous.

He then reminded himself sternly he was not thinking about Kathryn Dance any more.

Get. Back. To. It.

... accelerant was diethyl ether, approximately 600 ml, ignited by a Diamond Strike Anywhere match, recovered from the site of the burn. Not traceable. Generic...

Kathryn was with Jon Boling.

So O’Neil would go in a different direction too.

Best for everybody. For his children, for Dance, for Boling. He was convinced this was the right thing to do.

O’Neil froze. He scooted back in his chair. No! Oh, hell. The unsub had been through Dance’s car. He’d gotten her ID, knew where she lived. Had followed her. And had seen her and Jon Boling together. That was how he’d known to target Boling, tamper with his bike. And—

Another thought hit him. Dance had told him she’d had flyers about the event in her vehicle. The unsub could easily have seen them.

A school auditorium. A perfect venue for an attack.

He grabbed his phone and called Central Dispatch.

‘Hello?’

‘Sharon. Michael O’Neil. There’s a possible two-four-five in progress at Pacific Hills Grade School. PG. Have units roll up silent. I’m going to get more info and I’ll advise through you.’

‘Roger. I’ll get ’em rolling. And await further.’

They disconnected.

How to handle it? If he ordered an evacuation and the unsub had locked the doors already, that might result in the very stampede and crush that O’Neil had to avoid.

Or was it even too late to do anything?

He’d call Dance and warn her. She could see if there was a way to get the parents and children out quietly before the unsub made a move.

O’Neil grabbed his mobile and hit speed-dial button one.

Chapter 71

Wes and Jon Boling were chowing down on green-room goodies.

Not like at Madison Square Garden or MGM Grand where, Dance suspected, Dom Pérignon and caviar were the fare backstage. This was Ritz crackers, Doritos, juice boxes and milk (the school, like Dance’s house, was a soda-free zone).

Then the audience grew silent: the show was about to get under way. Boling whispered they were going to find their seats and he and Wes left.

Dance remained, looking over her daughter as they stood together, near the entrance to the stage. Maggie gazed out at the audience, probably two hundred people.

Her poor face was taut, unhappy.

Dance’s phone grew busy: it was on mute but she felt the vibration. She’d get it in a minute. She was now concentrating on her daughter. ‘Maggie?’

The child looked up. She seemed about to cry.

What on earth was going on? Weeks of angst about the performance. A roller-coaster of emotion.

And then Dance made a sudden shift. She moved from mom to law enforcer. That had been her mistake, looking at her daughter’s plight. Dance had been viewing the discomfort as a question of nerves, of typical pre-adolescent distress. In fact, she should have been looking at the whole matter as a crime. She should have been thinking of plots, motives, modi operandi.

A to B to Z...

She knew instantly what was going on. So clear. All the pieces were there. She just hadn’t thought to put them together. Now she understood the truth: her daughter was being extorted.

By Bethany and the Secrets Club...

Dance guessed that Bethany, so polite on the surface, was an expert at subtle bullying, using secrets as weapons. To join the club, you had to share a secret, something embarrassing: a wet bed, stolen money, a broken vase at home, a lie to a parent or teacher, something sexual. Then Bethany and her crew would have leverage to get the members of the club to do what they wanted.

Maggie’s reluctance to perform was obvious now. She wasn’t going to sing ‘Let It Go’ at all. The girls in the club had probably forced her to learn a very different song, maybe something off-color, embarrassing — maybe ridiculing Mrs Bendix, their teacher, a wonderful woman but heavyset, a careless dresser. An easy target for juvenile cruelty.

Dance recalled that when she’d agreed that Maggie didn’t have to appear at the show, her daughter had been so relieved: Mom would back her up against the club. But comfort hadn’t lasted long. The recent call from Bethany had been an ominous reminder that, whatever her mother had agreed to, Maggie was going to sing.

Or her secret would be revealed.

She was furious. Dance found her palms sweating. Those little bitches...

Her phone buzzed again. She ignored it once more.

She put her arm around Maggie’s shoulders. ‘Honey, let’s talk for a minute.’

‘I—’

‘Let’s talk.’ A smile.

They walked to the back of the green-room area. From there they could see one of Maggie’s classmates, Amy Grantham, performing a dance scene from The Nutcracker. She was good. Dance looked out at the audience. She saw her parents, sitting in the center, with Wes and Boling now near them, a jacket draped over the chair reserved for her.

She turned back to her daughter.

Dance had decided. Maggie was not going perform. No question. Whatever the secret was, she’d have her tell her now. Revealing it would defuse their power over her.

Anyway, how terrible could a ten-year-old’s indiscretion possibly be?

Another tremble of her phone.

Three times. She’d ignored it long it enough. She tugged her phone from its holster. Not a call: it was a text. From Michael O’Neil.

She read it, noting that it was in all caps.

Well. Hmm.

‘What’s wrong, Mom?’

‘Just a second, honey.’

She hit speed-dial button number one.

Click.

‘Kathryn! You saw my text?’

‘I—’

‘The unsub went through your Pathfinder. At the Bay View Center. We’ve got to assume he knows about Maggie’s concert. I have a team on the way. We don’t know what he has planned but you have to evacuate the school. Only keep it quiet. Check all the exits — they’re probably wired shut or something.’ This was more than Michael O’Neil usually said in half an hour. ‘So, you’ve got to see if Maintenance has wire cutters. But it’s got to be subtle. If you can start getting people out—’

‘Michael.’

‘It’s seven twenty, so following his profile, he could attack at any time. He waits for the show to start and—’

‘It’s outside.’

‘I... What?’

‘The show? Maggie’s concert? We’re on the soccer field behind the school. We’re not in the gym or the assembly hall.’

‘Oh. Outside.’

‘No risk of confinement. Stampede.’

‘No.’

‘Even the green room — it’s just a curtained-off area outside.’

‘You’re outside,’ he repeated.

‘Right. But thanks.’

‘Well... Good.’ After a pause he said, ‘And tell Maggie good luck. I wish I could be there.’

‘Night, Michael.’

They disconnected.

Outside...

The relief in his voice had been so dramatic, it was nearly comical.

Then she turned her attention back to her daughter.

‘Honey, Mags... Listen. I need you to tell me something. Whatever it is, it’s fine.’

‘Huh?’

‘I know why you’re upset.’

‘I’m not upset.’ Maggie looked down at her crisp, shiny dress and smoothed it. One of her better kinesic tells.

‘I think you are. You’re not happy about performing.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘There’s something else. Tell me.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Listen to me. We love each other and sometimes it’s not good enough for people who love each other to say that. They have to talk. Tell me the truth. Why don’t you want to sing?’

Maybe, Dance wondered, the Secrets Club and queen bitch Bethany were forcing her daughter to throw a pie at the teacher or a water balloon. Even worse? She thought of Stephen King’s Carrie, drenching the girl in blood onstage.

‘Honey?’ Dance said softly.

Maggie looked at her, then away and gasped, ‘It’s terrible.’

She burst into racking tears.

Chapter 72

Kathryn Dance sat next to Jon Boling and her son in the third row, her parents nearby, watching the procession of performers in Mrs Bendix’s Sixth Grade Class’s Got Talent!.

‘How you doing there?’ Dance whispered to Boling. It was astonishing how many forgotten lines, missed dance steps and off-tone notes could be crammed into one hour.

‘Better than any reality show on TV,’ Boling responded.

True, Dance conceded. He’d managed, yet again, to bring a new perspective.

There’d been several scenes from plays, featuring three or four students together (the class numbered thirty-six), which cut the show’s running time down considerably. And solo performances were hardly full-length Rachmaninoff piano concerti. They tended to be Suzuki pieces or abbreviated Katy Perry hits.

‘The Cup Song’ had been performed six times.

It was close to eight thirty before Maggie’s turn came. Mrs Bendix announced her and, in her shimmering dress, she walked confidently from the wings.

Dance took a deep breath. She found her hand gripping Boling’s, the bandaged one. Hard. He adjusted it.

‘Sorry,’ she whispered.

He kissed her hair.

At the microphone, she looked over the audience. ‘I’m Maggie and I’m going to sing “Let It Go” from Frozen, which is a super movie, in my opinion better than The Lego Movie and most of the Barbie ones. And if anybody here hasn’t seen it I think you should. Like, right away. I mean, right away.’

A glance at Mom, acknowledging the slip of lazy preposition.

Dance smiled and nodded.

Then Maggie grew quiet and lowered her head. She remembered: ‘Oh, and I want to thank Mrs Gallard for accompanying me.’

She nodded to her music teacher.

The piano began, the haunting minor-key intro to the beautiful song. Then the piano went quiet, a pause... and right on the beat, Maggie filled the silence with the first words of the lyrics. She sang slow and soft at first, just as in the movie, then growing in volume, her timbre firm, singing from her chest. Dance snuck a peek. Most of the audience was captivated, heads bobbing in time to the tune. And nearly every child was mouthing, if not singing, along.

When it came to the bridge, bordering on operatic recitative, Maggie nailed it perfectly. Then back to the final verse and the brilliant offhand dismissal about the cold never bothering her anyway.

The applause began, loud and genuine. Dance knew the audience was considering a standing ovation, but since there’d been none earlier, there could be none now. Not that it mattered, Dance could see that Maggie was ecstatic. She beamed and curtseyed, a maneuver she’d practiced almost as much as the song.

Dance blew her daughter a kiss. She set her head against Boling as he hugged her.

Wes said, ‘Wow. Jackie Evancho.’

Not quite. But Dance decided definitely to add voice to the violin lessons this year. She exhaled a laugh.

‘What?’ Edie Dance asked her daughter.

‘Just she did a good job.’

‘She did.’

Dance didn’t tell her mother that the laugh wasn’t prompted by Maggie’s performance but from the discussion in the green room a half-hour earlier.

‘Honey?’

‘It’s terrible.’

When the tears had stopped, Dance had told Maggie, ‘I know what’s going on, Mags. About the club.’

‘Club?’

Dance had explained she knew about the Secrets Club and their extortion.

Maggie had looked at her as if her mother had just said that Monterey Bay was filled with chocolate milk. ‘Mom, like, no. Bethany’s neat, no, she wouldn’t do anything like that. I mean, sometimes she’s all, I’m the leader, blah, blah, and everything. But that’s okay. We voted her president.’

‘What did she say when she called this morning? You were upset.’

She’d hesitated.

‘Tell me, Mags.’

‘I’d told her you said I didn’t have to sing but she said she’d talked to everybody in the club and they really, really wanted me to. I mean, everybody.’

‘Sing “Let It Go”?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, I mean, they were saying I was sort of the star of the club. They thought I was so good. They don’t have a lot of things they can do, most of the girls. I mean, Leigh does batons. But Bethany and Carrie? You saw them try to do that scene from Kung Fu Panda?’

‘It was pretty bad.’

‘Uh-huh. I’m the only musical one. And they said nobody wants to hear a stupid violin thing. And they were like the club would look really bad if one of us didn’t do something awesome at the show.’

‘So they weren’t going to expose your secret or anything?’

‘They wouldn’t do that.’

‘Can you tell me yours?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Please. I won’t tell a soul.’

There’d been a moment’s pause. Maggie’d looked around. ‘I guess. You won’t tell anybody?’

‘Promise.’

Whispering: ‘I don’t like Justin Bieber. He’s not cute and I don’t like what he does onstage.’

Dance had waited. Then: ‘That’s it? That’s your secret?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then why don’t you want to sing, honey?’

Her eyes had clouded with tears again. ‘Because I’m afraid this terrible thing’s going to happen. It’ll be, you know, the worst. I’ll be up there in front of everybody.’

‘What?’

‘You know you were telling me about our bodies and when you get older things happen?’

My God, she was worried she’d get her period onstage. Dance was about to bring up the subject when Maggie said, ‘Billy Truesdale.’

‘Billy. He’s in your class, right?’

A nod. ‘He’s my age.’

Dance recalled their birthdays were about the same time of year. She took out a tissue and dried her daughter’s eyes.

‘What about him?’

‘Okay,’ Maggie had said, sniffling. ‘He was singing last month, in assembly. He was really good and he was singing the national anthem. But then... but then when he sang a high note, something happened, and his voice got all weird and it like cracked. And he couldn’t sing any more. Everybody laughed at him. He ran out of the auditorium, crying. And afterward I heard somebody say it was because of his age. His voice was changing.’ She choked. ‘I’m like the same age. It’s going to happen to me. I know it. I’ll go out onstage — and you know that note in the song, the high note? I know it’ll happen!’

Dance had clamped her teeth together and inhaled hard through her nose to keep the smile from blossoming on her face. And she’d reflected on one of the basic aspects of parenting: you think you’ve figured out every possible permutation and plan accordingly and you still get slammed from out of the blue.

Dance had wiped Maggie’s tears once again, then hugged her daughter. ‘Mags, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.’