The man was fishing a phone from his pocket.
Leave, March told himself. Instantly.
He turned. And that's when he made a stunning observation. Parked in the shade on the lawn nearby was an unmarked police car. It was pointed directly at the theater. If March had walked twenty feet farther, the officer inside would have seen him. And if the theater employee recognized March, certainly the police would have his description.
Luck. Pure luck had saved him.
As he walked slowly toward the mall where his car was parked, a hundred yards away, he noted that the police officer didn't look his way. There would be some delay, if not miscommunication, in transmitting to the officer the information that the suspect had been spotted here.
If either the employee or the officer followed he'd have to pull his Glock from the gym bag and use it. March walked a block away before unzipping the bag, gripping the gun and turning.
No. No one was following.
Now March stripped off the green jacket, stuffed it in the bag and began to sprint. He leapt into the gray Honda Accord, pressing the Start button before the door was closed. The gym bag, heavy with his tools of the trade inside, was on the passenger seat and it set off the forgot-your-seat-belt chime. As he headed out of the parking lot slowly, he eased the bag to the floor. He had to be very careful of the contents. The dinging stopped.
He sensed a wave of anger that the theater had been denied him as a perfect place for the second attack, which had been inspired by the "national disaster correspondent" he'd listened to on TV after sex with Calista.
"What this man did was akin to the classic situation of yelling 'fire' in a crowded movie theater."
Angry, yes. But as he cruised through traffic he glanced into the rearview mirror. He spotted something. And decided that, improbably, there might be a silver lining to the debacle.
He circled around and pulled into a space near the movie theater; it was perfect for his purpose. And, it turned out, good for another, as well: Who doesn't love a nice, salty Egg McMuffin and some steaming coffee this time of the morning?
Chapter 21
Kathryn Dance walked into the Gals' Wing.
This was a portion of the CBI's West-Central Division that, purely coincidentally, housed the four women who worked here: Dance, Connie Ramirez, the most decorated CBI agent in the office, and Grace Yuan, the office administrator, along with Maryellen Kresbach.
The name of the wing came from a male agent who, trying to impress a date on a tour of his workplace, referred to the area as such. It probably wasn't the recurring vandalism of his office, including feminine hygiene products, that had driven him out of the CBI but Dance liked to think that it had helped.
Though, ironically, the women here decided unanimously to keep the designation. A badge of pride.
A warning too.
She now accepted the coffee from Maryellen, thanked her and, palming one of the woman's incredible cookies, headed into her office.
"Nice shoes. Okay. Excellent." Maryellen was eyeing Dance's Stuart Weitzman Filigree sandals, brown leather (and, Dance was proud to say, purchased at less than half list price). They matched her long linen skirt, coffee colored. Her sweater today was a ribbed off-white, the sports coat black. Today's concession to color was another bright elastic tie Maggie had twined at the end of Dance's French braid. Red.
She acknowledged the compliment from her assistant--Maryellen was a woman who knew wicked shoes when she saw them.
In her office she dropped into her desk chair, thinking she'd have to tame the squeak but then, as always, forgetting about it.
She had just returned from the Marina Hills Cineplex, where there'd been a sighting of a man suspected of being the Solitude Creek unsub. The manager of the theater had spotted someone wearing the same clothes as the witness had described, about the same build. The suspect noted that he'd been recognized and fled, pretty much confirming that he was their perp.
Dance and the others had conducted a canvass but had found no other witnesses who'd seen the man. No vehicles and no further description. She'd been troubled to learn that one of the police cars on the lookout for the unsub had been stationed in front of the theater; she wondered if because of Steve Foster's "accidental" release of the perp's description, the manager had spooked him away before he got into view of the cop.
Sometimes, she reflected, your colleagues' mistakes and carelessness--as well as your own--can be as much an adversary as the perps you're pursuing.
The miss was, of course, frustrating enough. But far more troubling was that he'd possibly been planning another attack. A theater would be a perfect venue in which to instigate a stampede. No, Steve Number One, he's not a thousand miles away at all. Perhaps, since he knew he'd been spotted, he'd now flee the area. Certainly he was going to change his appearance or at least ditch the clothes. But was he still determined to strike again? They'd have to assume so. She sent out a second memo to all local law enforcers to alert managers of venues that she believed their unsub had likely attempted a second attack.
Reaching for the phone to call Michael O'Neil, she was interrupted by TJ Scanlon. He was in a T-shirt that bore the name BECK (not, like you'd think, the Grateful Dead). He was in jeans too. And a sports coat, striped. It was of the Summer of Love era and might actually have come from the 1960s; TJ stocked his hippie house in Carmel Valley with countercultural artifacts from an era and way of life that had ended long before he was born.
He dropped into the chair across from her.
"Oh-oh, boss. Oh-oh and a half. Something wrong?"
"You didn't hear? Our friend from Sacramento leaked the description of the unsub."
"Oh, man. Foster?"
"Yep." She added, "And somebody spotted the perp."
"Good news but then, given your expression, I guess it isn't."
"He spotted the spotter and vanished."
"Hell. So he's left town."
"Or become a quick-change artist--who knows? Platform shoes. Dyed his hair. New clothes. And," she added grimly, "maybe he's still going forward, targeting someplace else. Right now. Before we can regroup."
She told him about the movie theater.
The young man nodded. "Right up his alley. Crowded multiplex."
Dance glanced at the folder in the young agent's hand.
TJ said, "Something helpful maybe. I tracked down the girl. Trish."
Dance had given him the job of finding the teen she'd met at the Solitude Creek crime scene.
"Michelle Cooper--the mother who died. Her daughter's Trish Martin. Her father's name."
Like Maggie and Wes were Swenson.
"The girl's seventeen. Don't have her mobile but here's the mother's home number." He added, "It's on Seventeen Mile Drive."
Dance could see the scenario. Husband cheats on wife, she catches him, he pays through the nose and foots the bill for a house in the poshest neighborhood of Pebble Beach.
"You have the father's address and number? Mr. Friendly. She'd be staying with him now, I'd guess."
"Sorry, didn't get it. Want me to check?"
"I'll try her mother's first."
As it turned out, though, there wouldn't be any conversations of any kind.
"Hello?" A man's voice. Abrupt. Hell, she knew who it was.
"I'm calling for Trish Martin."
"Who is this?"
Unfortunately, you had to play the game honestly. "Agent Kathryn Dance, the California Bureau of Investigation. Is this Mr. Martin? I--"
"Yeah, I met you. I remember. How did you know I was here?"
Odd question.
"I didn't. I was calling for Trish. It's important that I talk to her. I'm hoping--"
"Why?"
"There's been a development in the investigation. The doors at Solitude Creek were blocked intentionally. Your ex-wife's death, the others, they were homicides, not accidental."
A pause. "I heard. It was on the news. Some guy they're looking for. A workman
or something."
"That's right. And we're canvassing to see if anybody might've seen him. Your daughter seems intelligent, perceptive. I'm hoping--"
"She's too upset."
"I understand it's a difficult time for her, for your whole family. But it's important that we understand exactly what happened there."
"Well, you'll have to do that without my daughter." A voice from nearby. He said, away from the phone, "It's nobody. Keep at it, honey."
That would be Trish. She'd be moving in with her father, Dance guessed. She was probably packing.
"Mr. Martin, my specialty is interviewing people. I've spoken to hundreds of teenagers, often in traumatic situations. I promise you, I'll be very sensitive to Trish's frame of mind. I--"
He growled, "And if you call us again, I'll get a restraining order against you."
Dance said, "Hmm, well, Mr. Martin, there really isn't a mechanism for doing that. Why don't we just take a step back and--"
He hung up on her.
Dance wondered if one of the grounds for divorce had been mental cruelty against his ex, in addition to cheating on her.
She dropped the phone into the cradle. TJ was looking at her.
"Scratch her off the list." Dance explained about Trish's father. A shrug. "Probably didn't see anything anyway. Still--"
"You hate itches, boss."
True, she did.
"Anything helpful on the canvassing?"
TJ had continued to talk to those who'd been at the club, sifting for insights and possible motives and suspects. "Nothing more on revenge by disgruntled employees, or patrons. I thought I'd check to see if there was a motive to hurt anyone in the band, or destroy careers."
"Good." She hadn't thought about that.
"But I don't think so. The music world's fragile nowadays; the margins weren't big enough to murder anyone to get ahead. Hey, boss, was wondering. Does gruntled mean you're happy?"
She rummaged in her drawer and found an old Timex, battery powered. She strapped it on and glanced at the time. Then lowered her voice. "How's the Serrano situation?"
He said, "About an hour. It's set up. I just talked to Al Stemple."
Stemple, big and quiet and rather scary, was the closest thing the CBI had to a cowboy. Well, to a John Wayne. An investigative agent like any other, he specialized in tactical situations. Given the unstable nature of the Serrano situation, it was thought best to have a CBI strongman involved.
He rose and left and in his wake she was sure she detected a waft of patchouli aftershave or cologne.
Far-out...
A few minutes later Dance happened to be looking at her office doorway when Michael O'Neil appeared. He was in a dark plaid sports coat, navy blue shirt and jeans. Dance believed his clothes were better pressed now that he was divorced than when he'd been married to Anne, who was not known as the queen of domesticity. Though this could be her imagination, she allowed.
"Saw TJ," the big detective said. "Nothing turned up on the canvass, he was saying?"
"No. We've talked to probably seven-eighths of the people who were at the club. No one spotted any potential perps." She told him TJ had looked into potentially resentful musicians too.
"Targeting the band. Good call."
"But nothing." She asked him, "Anything more on the theater?"
"Nope. Full canvass, security video review. No vehicle. Nothing further. What was that about? Releasing the descrip of our boy? Overby?"
She puffed air from her lips. "Came from Steve Foster. He's claiming it was an accident. Blaming, quote, 'somebody' in his office. But he let it leak. Power play, I'm sure."
"Brother."
"It's not his case. He doesn't care."
"You think our boy's rabbited?"
"I'd be gone," she said. "But then I didn't set up a stampede and kill three people. I don't know what makes him tick. He might be in Missouri or Washington State by now. He might be planning to attack the aquarium."
Nodding, O'Neil extracted from his briefcase a thin manila folder with a metal fixture on top. Inside were a dozen sheets of paper. "Crime Scene. Had them working nonstop. No surprise--our unsub's good. He wore cloth gloves."
Latex gloves prevent a transfer of the perp's fingerprints to what he touches at a scene but nothing prevents a transfer of prints to the inside of those latex gloves. Careless perps often discard them, without considering that. Cloth gloves, however, neither transfer nor retain prints.
He continued, "Prints on the Peterbilt truck key fob but none identifiable except the manager's and the driver's. The drop-box was negative too. No footprints. Nothing in the oil drum, with the fire, that's any use forensically."
Dance said, "I was thinking. It's got to be hard to drive a truck that big. Can we use that to narrow the field? Find anybody who's taken courses lately?"
"I thought the same thing. But checked it out online. Would take about a half hour to learn to drive one, even if you had no experience. Probably couldn't back up or drive with a full load without practice but he basically just had to drive straight down the hill to the roadhouse."
The Internet... Where you could learn everything from making a fertilizer bomb to baking a cherry pie to celebrate after you blew up your designated target.
O'Neil consulted his file. "No video cameras in the area. Solitude Creek's too shallow for serious boating but in any case I didn't get any hits in canvassing for fishermen. And no stolen kayaks or canoes." He'd had the same idea as she.
Her phone dinged, a text from TJ. The Serrano case. She typed, "KK." That was the new text message acknowledging "understood and agreed." A single K wasn't enough. She'd learned it from her son, Wes. She mentioned this to O'Neil. He nodded. "My kids are saying, 'Amen,' a lot too. You notice?"
"I get 'church.' As in: 'It's true.' And also 'It's a thing.'"
"'Thing'?"
Dance was going to tell him that she'd first heard the expression when Maggie was talking to her friend Bethany on the phone and she said, "Yeah, Mom and Jon, it's like a thing." She instead told the detective: "Means, I think, it's a phenomenon. More than what it seems. Significant."
She wondered if he sensed the stumble and the overexplanation.
O'Neil said, "'Thing.' Better than 'phenomenon.' I'd worry that crept into my kids' vocabulary."
Dance laughed. Michael O'Neil wasn't a chatterer. This was, for him, rambling.
Dance glanced down to the crime scene file. After a moment her eyes swayed his way. "Oh. Sorry we had to cancel the fishing."
O'Neil lived for his boat, which he'd pilot out into Monterey Bay once a week at least. He often took his own children and Dance's. She herself had been a few times but her inner ear and waves were bad coconspirators. If the Dramamine and patch didn't kick in she'd end up hanging over the side, unpleasant for all involved. And the trip would be cut short. They'd talked about a day trip on the water last weekend but before plans had been firmed up she and Boling had decided to take the children to San Francisco. Dance had not told O'Neil the reason they'd canceled. She suspected he'd guessed. But he didn't ask.
They talked for a few minutes about their children, plans for spring break. Dance mentioned Maggie's forthcoming talent show at school.
"She playing violin?"
The girl's instrument. Maggie was far more musical than her mother, who was comfortable with a guitar but didn't have the ear for a fretless fingerboard. Dance told him, "No, she's singing."
O'Neil said, "She's got a great voice. Remember, I took them to The Lego Movie. That song? 'Everything Is Awesome'? She sang it all the way home. I know it by heart, by the way. Want to hear?"
A chuckle. "She's doing that song from Frozen."
"'Let It Go.' I know that one too." Being a single parent with custody could take the edge off the hardest image of a tough major crimes detective. Then O'Neil studying her. "What's wrong?"
Dance realized she'd been frowning. "She's uneasy about the talent show. Usually you can't keep her offs
tage but, for this, she's reluctant."
"She ever sung before in public?"
"Yep. A dozen times. And her voice's never been better. I was going to start her in lessons but all of a sudden she decided she didn't want to. It's funny. They whipsaw, you know. Happy, sad. For a while Wes was in all sorts of moods and Maggie was flitting around like Belle. Happy as could be. Now it's the other way round."
She explained that it might be a posttraumatic reaction to her husband's death.
He said softly, "I know Bill died around this time of year."
O'Neil had known Bill Swenson well; they'd worked together occasionally.
"I've thought of that. But when they want to stonewall..."
O'Neil, whose children were close in age to Maggie, said, "Don't I know. But: persistence."
Dance nodded. "So, Sunday, at seven? You and the kids want to come to the show?"
"Can I let you know? We might have plans. Bring a friend?"
"Of course."
Had he been dating? she wondered. It had been a while since they'd talked about serious personal matters. Well, why shouldn't he be going out with somebody? He'd been divorced for a while now. He was good-looking, in great shape, with a good job. He was funny, kind...and had two adorable children whom his ex--in San Francisco--had little interest in.
Dance's mother called him "the Catch," both because he liked to fish...and because he was.
She opened her purse, frowned. "I have about a hundred flyers for her show in the car. Thought I had one with me."
"I'll remember it."
Dance glanced at the Timex.
"I've got to get into the field."
"Our case?"
"No. The other thing."
He sighed, glanced at her hip, where her weapon would otherwise have resided. "I'll go with you."
"Not for this. It's all right. I'll have backup. I have to handle it a particular way. This one's tricky." She almost said "It's a thing," but from O'Neil's concerned expression she knew he wouldn't have appreciated the levity.
Chapter 22
Charles Overby tapped a roll of fat above his belt. He wasn't alarmed but he knew he'd have to rein in the snacks that went down a little too easy at the Nineteenth Hole. Maybe go to red wine. He believed that had fewer calories than white.
No, a spritzer. After the martini, of course. And no artichoke dip. It was the devil.
On his desk were ordered stacks of documents--the sign of a sane mind and a productive body, he often said. The one that troubled him most was the pile that was topped with a sheet: "Incident Report: Joaquin Serrano." The other words that jumped out from the grayish boxes were "Kathryn Dance." He noted too: "Disciplinary recommendations."
Solitude Creek Page 11