Solitude Creek

by Jeffery Deaver

  "It's too early to speculate," the firefighter replied.

  It's never wise to speculate, March corrected Brad, early or late. The bodybuilding firefighter, not quite as buff as March, looked smug. Wouldn't trust him to rescue me from a smoke-filled building.

  Much less a stampede in a roadhouse. Brad did, however, go on to offer graphic descriptions of the "horror" of last night. They were quite accurate. Helped by Brad and images he was describing, March turned his attention back to the task at hand, lowered his head back to the pillow and thrust away energetically.

  Calista gripped his earlobe between two perfectly shaped teeth. March felt the pressure of the incisors. Felt her studded nose against his smooth cheek. Felt himself deep inside her.

  She grunted rhythmically. Maybe he did too.

  Calista whispered, "You're so fucking handsome..."

  He wished she wouldn't talk. Besides, he didn't know what to do with that sentence. Maybe she was hoping for this to be more than a couple-day thing. But he also knew that people said all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons at moments like this and he didn't sweat it.

  Just wished she wouldn't talk. He wanted to hear. Wanted to see. Wanted to imagine.

  Her heels banged against his tailbone, her bright crimson fingernails--the color of arterial blood--assaulted his back.

  And he replayed what people often replayed at moments like now: earlier times. The Solitude Creek incident. But then, going way back: Serena, of course. He often returned to Serena, the way a top eventually spins to stillness.

  Serena. She helped move him along.

  Jessica he thought of too.

  And, of course, Todd. Never Serena and Jessica without Todd.

  He was moving more quickly now.

  Again she gasped, "Yes, yes, yes..."

  As she lay under him Calista's hands now eased up his spine and gripped his shoulders hard. Those GMC-finish nails pressed into his skin. He reciprocated, digging into her pale flesh. Her moaning was partly pain; the rest of the damp gusts from her lungs were from his two hundred plus pounds, little fat. Pounding.

  Compressing.

  Sort of like the people last night.

  "Oh..." She stiffened.

  He backed off at that. There was a balance between his pleasure and her pain. Tricky. He didn't really need her to cry at the moment. He had all he needed.

  "Again, if you're just joining us..."

  "Oh, yeah," Calista whispered and it wasn't an act, he could tell. She was gone, lost in the moment.

  His left hand slid out from under the bony spine and then was twining the strawberry mane of hair in his blunt fingers, pulling her head back. Her throat--smooth for cutting. Though that wasn't on the agenda. Still, the image socketed itself into his thoughts. That helped him too.

  March gauged rhythm and sped up slightly. Then a rich inhale and those luminous pearls of teeth went against his neck--many women were into the vampire thing, Calista too, apparently. A shudder and she hissed, "Yesssss"--not as an act or a prod for him to finish. It was involuntary. Genuine. He was moderately pleased.

  Now, his turn. He gripped her more tightly yet. Chest and breasts, thigh and thigh, sliding unsteadily; the room was hot, the sweat abundant.

  "I'm speaking to Brad Dannon, Monterey County firefighter and first on the scene at the Solitude Creek tragedy last night. Brad is credited with saving at least two victims, who were bleeding severely. Have you talked to them today, Brad?"

  "Yes, ma'am. They'd lost a lot of blood but I was able to keep them going till our wonderful EMS got there. They're the true heroes. Not me."

  "You're very modest, Brad. Now--"

  Click.

  He realized that the impressive nails of one hand had vanished from his back. She'd found the remote and shut off the TV.

  No matter. With a flash of Serena's beautiful face, combined with Brad's comment, a lot of blood, he was done.

  He gasped and let his full weight sag down upon her. He was thinking: It had been good. Good enough.

  It would distract for a while.

  Then he was aware of her squirming slightly. Her breath labored.

  He thought again: compressive asphyxia.

  And stayed where he was. Ten seconds passed.

  Twenty. Then thirty. He could kill her by simply not moving.

  "Uhm," she gasped. "Could you..."

  He felt her chest heaving.

  March rolled off. "Sorry. You totally tuckered me out."

  Calista caught her breath. She sat up slightly and tugged the sheets across her body. Why, afterward, did women grow modest? He pulled a pillowcase off and used it as a towel, then glanced casually at his nails. No blood. He was disappointed.

  She turned back to him, faintly smiling, and put her head on the pillow.

  March stretched. As always, moments like this, just after, he remained silent, since you could never trust yourself, even someone as controlled as he was. He'd learned this.

  She, however, spoke. "Andy?"

  He preferred this nickname. "Antioch" drew attention.

  "Yes?"

  "That was terrible, what happened."

  "What's that?"

  "The stampede or crush. It was on the news. Just a minute ago."

  "Oh, I wasn't listening."

  Was this a test? He didn't know. He'd provided the good answer, though. She put a hand, nails red, on his arm. He supposed he shouldn't even have had the set on--not wise to be too interested in Solitude Creek. But when she'd arrived forty minutes ago, the first thing he'd done was pour some Chardonnay for her and start talking away, so she wouldn't think to shut the unfolding news reports off.

  March stretched again. The luxurious inn's mattress not rocking a quarter inch. He thought of the endlessly moving Pacific Ocean, which you could hear, if not see, from the cranked-open window to his left.

  "You work out a lot," she said.

  "I do." He had to. His line of work. Well, one of his lines of work. March got in at least an hour every day. Exercise was easy for him--he was twenty-nine and naturally strong and well built. And he enjoyed the effort. It was comforting. It was distracting.

  With unslit throat and her noncompressed lungs, Calista eased from between the sheets and, like an A-list actress, kept her back to the camera as she rose.

  "Don't look."

  He didn't look. March tugged off the condom, which he dropped on the floor, the opposite side of the bed. Out of her view.

  Looked, however, at the remote. Decided not to.

  He thought she was going to the bathroom but she diverted to the closet, flung it open, looking through his hanging clothes. "You have a robe I can borrow? You're not looking?"

  "No. The bathroom, the hook on the door."

  She got it and returned, enwrapped.

  "Nice." Stroking the fine cotton.

  The inn was one of the best on the Monterey Peninsula, and this area, he'd learned in the past few days, was a place with many fine inns. The establishment was happy for guests to take its robes as lovely souvenirs of their stay with them--for the oddly random price of $232.

  This, he reflected, defined Cedar Hills. Not an even $250, which would have been outrageous but logical. Not $100, which would be the actual retail price and made more sense.

  Two hundred thirty-two pretentious dollars.

  Something to do with human nature, he guessed.

  Calista Sommers fetched her purse and rummaged, collected from it some purse contents.

  He smelled wine, from the glasses nearby. But that had been for her. He sipped his pineapple juice, with ice cubes whose edges had melted to dull.

  She tugged aside a curtain. "View's amazing."

  True. Pebble Beach golf course not far away, contortionist pine trees, crimson bird-of-paradise flowers, voluptuous clouds. Deer wandered past, ears twitchy and legs both comical and elegant.

  Her mind seemed to wander. Maybe she was thinking of her meeting. Maybe of her ill mother. Calista, a
twenty-five-year-old bookkeeper, wasn't from here. She'd taken two weeks off from work and driven to California from her small town in northern Washington State to look for areas where her mother, in assisted living because of Alzheimer's, might relocate, a place where the weather was better. She'd tried Marin, Napa, San Francisco and was now checking out the Monterey Bay area. This seemed to be the front-runner.

  She walked into the bathroom and the shower began to pulse. March lay back, listening to the water. He believed she was humming.

  He thought again about the remote. No. Too eager.

  Eyes closed, he replayed the incident at Solitude Creek once more.

  Ten minutes later she emerged. "You bad boy!" she said, with a devilish smile, but chiding too. "You scratched me."

  Hiking the robe up. A very, very nice ass. Red scratch marks. The image of them hit him low in the torso.

  "Sorry."

  Not a Fifty Shades of Grey girl, it seemed.

  She forgot her complaint. "You look like somebody, an actor."

  Channing Tatum was the default. March was slimmer, about the same height, over six feet.

  "I don't know."

  Didn't matter, of course. Her point was to apologize for the jab about the scratches.

  Accepted.

  She dug into her purse for a brush and makeup, began reassembling. "The other night you didn't really tell me much about your job. Some nonprofit. A website? You do good things. I like that."

  "Right. We raise awareness--and money--to benefit people in crises. Wars, natural disasters, famine, that sort of thing."

  "You must be busy. There's so much terrible stuff going on."

  "I'm on the road six days a week."

  "What's the site?"

  "It's called Hand to Heart." He rolled from the bed. Though not feeling particularly modest, he didn't want to walk around naked. He pulled on jeans and a polo shirt. Flipped open his computer and went to the home page.

  Hand to Heart

  Devoted to raising awareness of

  humanitarian tragedies

  around the world

  How you can help...

  "We don't take money ourselves. We just make people aware of needs for humanitarian aid and then they can click on a link to, say, tsunami relief or the nuclear disaster in Japan or gas victims in Syria. Make donations. My job is I travel around and meet with nonprofit groups, get press material and pictures of the disasters to put on our site. I vet the groups too. Some are scams."

  "No!"

  "Happens, yep."

  "People can be such shits."

  She closed the laptop.

  "Not a bad job. You do good things for a living. And you get to stay in places like this."

  "Sometimes." In fact, he wasn't comfortable in "places like this." Hyatt was good enough for him or even more modest motels. But his boss liked it here; Chris liked all the best places and so this was where March was put. Just like the clothes and accessories scattered about the room, the Canali suit, the Louis Vuitton shoes, the Coach briefcase, the Tiffany cuff links weren't his choice. His boss didn't get that some people did this job for reasons other than money.

  Calista vanished into the bathroom to dress--the modesty bump was growing--and she emerged. Her hair was still damp but she'd rented a convertible from Hertz, and he supposed that, with the top down, the strands would be blow-dried by the time she got to whatever retirement home she was headed for. March's own manicured brown hair, thick as a pelt, irritatingly took ten minutes to bring to attention.

  Calista kissed him, brief but not too brief; they both knew the rules. Lunchtime delight.

  "You'll still be around for a couple of days, Mr. Humanitarian?"

  "I will," March said.

  "Good." This was delivered perky. Then she asked, genuinely curious, "So you having a successful trip?"

  "Real successful, yeah."

  Then, moving breezily, Calista was out the door.

  The moment it shut March reached over and snagged the remote. Clicked the TV back on, thinking maybe national news had picked up Solitude Creek, and wondered what the big boys and girls were saying about the tragedy.

  But on the screen was a commercial for fabric softener.

  He put on his workout clothes, shorts and a sleeveless T, rolled to the floor and began the second batch of the five hundred push-ups for today. After, crunches. Then squats. Later he'd go for a run along Seventeen Mile Drive.

  On TV: acid reflux remedies and insurance ads.

  Please...

  "And now an update on the Solitude Creek tragedy in Central California. With me is James Harcourt, our national disaster correspondent."

  Seriously? That was a job title?

  "It didn't take much at all for the panic to set in."

  No, March reflected. A little smoke. Then a phone call to whoever was on duty in the club's lobby: "I'm outside. Your kitchen's on fire! Backstage too! I've called the fire department, but evacuate. Get everybody out now."

  He'd wondered if he would have to do more to get the horror started. But, nope, that was all it took. People could erase a million years of evolution in seconds.

  Back to the workout, enjoying the occasional images of the interior of the club.

  After thirty minutes, sweating, Antioch March rose, opened his locked briefcase and pulled out a map of the area. He was inspired by something the national disaster correspondent had said. He went online and did some more research. He scrawled some notes. Good. Yes, thank you, he thought to the newscaster. Then he paused, replaying Calista's breathy voice.

  "So you having a successful trip?"

  "Real successful, yeah."

  Soon to be even more so.

  Chapter 12

  The politicos had started to arrive at Solitude Creek.

  Always happened at incidents like this. The bigwigs appearing, those in office or those aspiring, or those, like her boss, Charles Overby, who simply wanted a few minutes in the limelight because they enjoyed a few minutes in the limelight. They'd show up and talk to the press and be seen by the mourners or the spectators.

  That is, by the voters and the public.

  And yes, occasionally they really would step up and help out. Occasionally. Sometimes. Possibly. (A state government employee, Kathryn Dance struggled constantly against cynicism.) There were more news crews than grandstanders here at the moment; so the biggest networks were targeting the most newsworthy subjects, like sportsmen on a party boat in Monterey Bay going for the fattest salmon.

  Networks. Nets. Fish. Dance liked the metaphor.

  The U.S. congressman representing the district Solitude Creek fell within was Daniel Nashima, a third-or fourth-generation Japanese American who'd held office for several terms. The congressman, in his mid-forties, was accompanied by an aide, a tall, vigilant young man, resembling the actor Josh Brolin, in an unimpeachable if anachronistic three-piece suit.

  Nashima was wealthy, family business, but he himself usually dressed down. Today, typical: chino slacks and a blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled up--a Kiwanis pancake breakfast outfit. Nashima, a handsome man with tempered Asian features--his mother was white--looked over the exterior of the Solitude Creek club with dismay. Dance wasn't surprised. He had a reputation for being responsive to natural disasters, like the earthquake that struck Santa Cruz not long ago. He arrived at that one at 3:00 a.m. and helped lift rubble off survivors and search for the dead.

  The anchor from CNN, a striking blonde, was on Nashima in a San Francisco instant. The congressman said, "My heart goes out to the victims of this terrible tragedy." He promised that he would work with his colleague to make sure a full investigation got to the root of it. If there was any negligence at all on the part of the club and its owner he would make sure that criminal charges were brought.

  The mayor of Monterey happened to arrive a few moments later. No limo. The tall Latino stepped from his personal vehicle--though a nice one, a Range Rover--and made it ten paces toward the spectat
ors/mourners/victims before he too was approached by the media. Only a few local reporters, though. He glanced toward Nashima and managed, just, to keep a don't-care visage, downplaying that he'd been upstaged by the congressman; the folks from Atlanta--and a woman with such perfect hair--knew their priorities.

  Dance heard that the California state representative for this area--and a rumored contender for the U.S. Senate seat Nashima was considering next year--was out of town and not making the trip back from Vegas for a sympathy call here. This would be an oops for his career.

  Nashima politely but firmly ended the interview he was giving and walked away, refusing other media requests. He was studying the scene and walking up to people who were leaving flowers or praying or simply standing in mournful poses. He spoke to them with head down, embraced them. Dance believed once or twice he too wiped tears from his cheek. This wasn't for the camera. He was pointedly turned away from the media.

  About thirty such grievers and spectators were present. With Bob Holly's blessing, Dance made the rounds of them now, flashed her badge, as shiny and official in its Civ-Div mode as when she was a criminal investigator, and asked questions about the truck, about the fire in the oil drum, about anyone skulking about outside the club last night.

  Negatives, all around.

  Nor did she see anyone whose cautious posture suggested he or she was the perp, returning to the scene of the crime; yes, it happened.

  She tried to identify anyone who'd been in the mob that morning but couldn't. True, most had probably vanished. Still, she knew from her work that at harrowing times our powers of observation and retention fail us completely.

  She noticed a car pulling into the lot and easing slowly to the police line, near the impromptu memorial of flowers and stuffed animals. The car was a fancy one, a new-model two-door Lexus, sleek, black.

  There were two occupants, and, though Dance couldn't see them clearly, they were having a serious discussion. Even in silhouette, the body radiates intent and mood. The driver, a man in his forties, climbed out, bent down, said a few more words through the car's open door, and then flipped the seat forward and extracted a bouquet from the back. He said something else to the other occupant, in the front passenger seat, whose response must have been negative because the man shrugged and continued on his own to the memorial.

  Dance walked up to him, showed her ID. "I'm Kathryn Dance. CBI."