Solitude Creek

by Jeffery Deaver

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

  What a lovely idea. Words alone causing so much destruction and chaos. In fact, he would have preferred to start the madness by merely asking questions, not using fake texts from a fake wife. "Who do you think those guards are looking for?" "Have you heard anything in the news about any terrorist threats here?"

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

  Stampedes, he'd learned, can begin with nothing more than a hint, as insubstantial as a moth's wing, that you won't get what you desire. Or that what you fear will destroy you.

  Thanks, Dad...Desire and fear, the keys to successful selling.

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

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

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

  Would there be roadblocks, would they open the trunk?

  Again, no choice.

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

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

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

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

  "Police there. A roadblock."

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

  March wiped sweat from his eyes and gripped his pistol.

  The car squealed to a stop.

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

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

  Wiping sweat.

  Silence.

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

  No option.

  Footsteps.

  But then the car started forward again. The radio grew louder. The boy said he was hungry. The man--father, surely--muttered something indecipherable. The mother said, "At the hotel."

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

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

  March gave it five minutes and, when he heard nothing outside, pulled the emergency release cord and climbed out of the trunk. And closed the lid. He looked around the garage.

  Empty. And no CCTV eyes in the sky.

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

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

  Porn star meets Mad Men...

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

  He now dumped the Global jacket too and shopping bag.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 47

  Simple.

  But effective.

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

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

  Dance had nearly been trampled herself, by the surge of patrons leaping through the gift shop window, but the security chief, Herb Southern, had saved her, the woman who'd fallen and her daughter. He'd driven a golf cart directly between them and the mass and they'd parted around it.

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

  Simple, effective.

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

  The security guard--his name was B
ob--was present here too. He continued, "Then he asked about the tunnels. I didn't want to tell him but he had the gun. He was right beside me. It was...pretty bad."

  Dance said, "I'm sure it was. Of course."

  Bob, miserable, continued in a resigned voice, "He took my wallet and called somebody. Gave my address. Told his friend to go there and keep an eye on my family. I had to do exactly what he told me." Dance supposed he regretted not trying some karate move and disabling the guy.

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

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

  "I didn't want to help him," the shaken employee said. "It happened so fast. He was just there."

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

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

  "It's okay, Bob."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  O'Neil said, "Back to Prescott's?"

  "Sure."

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

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

  "I know."

  "Didn't find much."

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

  O'Neil asked, "Why was he killed?"

  Dance speculated, "Something in that picture of Solitude Creek he included in the post? Clue to our unsub maybe. He had to kill Prescott and take down the site?"

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

  Neither of the officers could see anything revealing.

  O'Neil offered, "Maybe our unsub had to take Prescott out, to prove there was no terrorist angle. He wouldn't want federal scrutiny."

  And true, that's how it turned out; after Prescott's death, both the CBI and the MCSO had received calls from Homeland Security since the incident was linked to potential terrorism, though agents reviewed the matter and decided it wasn't terrorist related--wasn't even a federal crime.

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

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

  "Yes?"

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

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

  "Can we get the prints from the man who found it?"

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

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

  "Sure."

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

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

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

  Maybe she'd bake him a cake.

  Chapter 48

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

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

  "Detective, Agent Dance."

  She shook his hand.

  "I've got the preliminary from the scene in Santa Cruz. Otto Grant."

  Dance recalled O'Neil had received the phone call about discovering a body in the bay.

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

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

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

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

  O'Neil squinted at one image. "Not Grant."

  "It's--"

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

  "Okay, Detective. I'll let everybody know."

  "Oh, Gabriel?"

  "Yessir?"

  "Saves time to learn everything you can about whoever you're searching for."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  She typed:

  C U soon. XO

  Dance did make a voice call--to Charles Overby. "You're on speaker with me and Michael," she told him.

  Her boss called out, "Michael, hello."

  "Charles."

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