Solitude Creek: Kathryn Dance Book 4

by Jeffery Deaver

  ‘Like what? Time travel?’ The inspector looked perplexed.

  ‘No, no, just think about where you want to be in the future. Picture it, plan it, think it. So you’ll reach your goals. The title is Tomorrow Is the New Today.’

  Dunn frowned and nodded. ‘I’ll check those detectors now. You’d better measure for that chain.’

  CHAPTER 30

  Well, okay. Interesting.

  Dance braked her SUV to a stop in one of the driveways that led to the Bureau of Investigation parking lot. She was between an unruly boxwood and a portion of a building occupied by a computer start-up.

  Near the front door of CBI headquarters, Michael O’Neil stood in the lot talking to his ex-wife, Anne. Their two children – Amanda and Tyler, nine and ten – were in the back seat of her own SUV, visible through an open door. Anne’s was a pearl-white Lexus, California tags.

  The woman was dressed in clothes that were very, very different from what Dance recalled when Anne had lived on the Peninsula with Michael. Then, it was gossamer, close-fitting gypsy outfits. Lace and tulle, New Age jewelry. Boots with heels to propel her to a bit more height. Today, though: running shoes, jeans and a gray jacket of bulky wool. And, my God, a baseball cap. Exotic had become, well, cute and perky.

  Who could have imagined?

  It had been her decision to end the marriage and move to San Francisco. Rumors of a lover up there. Dance knew Anne was a talented photographer and the opportunities in the Bay City were far greater than here. She’d been a functional but unenthusiastic mother, a distant wife. The split hadn’t been a surprise. Though it had certainly been inconveniently timed. Dance and O’Neil had always had an undeniable chemistry, which they let roam only professionally. He was married, and after Bill died, her interest in romance had vanished like fog in sunshine. Then, over time, Dance had decided for her sake and for the sake of the kids to wade into the dating pool. Slowly, feeling her way along, she’d met Jon Boling.

  And, bang, O’Neil announced his divorce. Not long after, he’d asked her out. By then she and Boling were tight, however, and she’d declined.

  It was a classic ‘Send In The Clowns’ moment, the Sondheim song about two potential lovers for whom the timing just wasn’t cooperating.

  O’Neil, gentleman that he was, accepted the situation. And they fell into ‘another time, another place’ mode. As for Boling – well, he’d said nothing about Dance’s connection to the detective but his body language left no doubt that he sensed the dynamic. She did her best to reassure him, without offering too much (she knew very well that the intensity of denial is often in direct proportion to the truth being refuted).

  She now noted: O’Neil had his hands comfortably at his sides, not in his pockets, or clutching crossed arms, either of which would have been a defensive gesture that meant: ‘I just don’t want you here, Anne.’ Nor was he glancing involuntarily to his right or left, which was a manifestation of tension, discomfort and of a subconscious desire to flee from the person creating the stress.

  No, they were, in fact, smiling. Something she said made him laugh.

  Then Anne backed away, fishing keys from her purse, and O’Neil stepped closer and hugged her. No kiss, no fingers cupping her hair. Just a hug. Chaste as soccer players after scoring a goal.

  Then he waved to the children and returned to the office. Anne fired up the SUV. She drove toward the exit.

  And Dance suddenly recalled something else. The other night when she’d asked about O’Neil’s new babysitter, his body language had changed.

  New sitter?

  Sort of.

  So that’s who it was. And the ‘friend’ at Maggie’s recital? Anne, of course.

  Dance watched Anne pull out of the lot.

  Then a brief honk from behind the Pathfinder. Dance started. She glanced into the rear-view mirror and waved at the driver she’d been blocking, whispering a ‘Sorry’ that he couldn’t hear. She headed to the CBI building, parked and climbed out.

  Thinking of Anne and Michael, she found herself humming the song.

  Let it go …

  Inside Headquarters she found O’Neil in her office with TJ, poring over what turned out to be DMV records.

  ‘Five thousand, give or take, Honda sedans in the three-county area. Gray, white, beige, anything light-colored.’

  ‘Five thousand?’ Ouch. As she sat down beside O’Neil, she smelled his aftershave, as last night … but it was slightly different.

  Mixed with perfume?

  O’Neil added, ‘No reports of theft.’

  TJ added, ‘And none of the other people at the club, the ones I’ve talked to, remember it. The wheelbase and the track, they’ll give us the model. Civic and Accord’re different. Might help.’

  Narrow the number down to 2500, she thought wryly. If – big if – it was even the unsub’s vehicle.

  ‘Want to take a look?’ O’Neil asked. ‘At where it was parked?’

  Dance checked the time. It was three twenty. ‘The kids are at Mom and Dad’s.’

  ‘Mine’re covered too.’

  I know.

  She said, ‘Let’s take a drive.’

  ‘For this, it’s not Serrano. You going to take a weapon?’

  He knew the rules. Wondered why he’d asked. ‘I’m still Civ Div.’

  A nod.

  Dance told TJ to start canvassing the owners of light-colored Hondas.

  In a half-hour she and O’Neil were at the roadhouse. The club was still closed and the trucking company, where she’d nearly received a concussion, was also dark. But there was some activity. A couple was laying flowers at the front entrance. Dance and O’Neil approached and she asked them if they’d been patrons the other night. They hadn’t: the husband’s cousin had died, and they were paying respects.

  There also were some workers about two hundred feet from the club, in the direction of the path she’d taken the other day to the witness’s house. It was a team of surveyors, with their tripod and instruments set up. They were engrossed in the obscure art of reckoning longitudes and latitudes, or whatever it was surveyors did.

  ‘Maybe?’ O’Neil asked. His voice sounded optimistic.

  ‘Sure, let’s give it a try.’

  They approached and identified themselves.

  The crew leader, a slim man, long hair under a cap, nodded. ‘Oh. Hey. Terrible, what happened.’

  Dance asked, ‘Were you working here the day of the incident?’

  ‘No, ma’am, we weren’t. Had another job.’

  O’Neil: ‘Anytime before that?’

  ‘No, sir. We just got the contract the other day.’

  ‘Who’re you working for?’ Dance asked.

  ‘Anderson Construction.’

  A big commercial real-estate operation, based in Monterey.

  ‘Know what the job is?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  They thanked the crew and wandered back toward the driveway. She said, ‘We should talk to the company. They might’ve had other workers out on Tuesday. We’ll see if they saw the Honda or anybody checking out the trucks or the club.’ She called TJ Scanlon and put him on the assignment to find out who’d hired Anderson and see if either the developer or the construction company had had workers there the day of the incident or before.

  ‘Will do, boss.’

  She slipped the phone away.

  O’Neil nodded. They continued past the roadhouse and headed down the driveway to the field where Michelle and Trish had seen the Honda.

  Dance had wondered if she’d have to risk a call to Trish and find out exactly where the Honda had been parked but there was no need. It was clear from the trampled grass where it had turned off the driveway and bounded over the field of short grass and flowers to a stand of trees. Drought-stricken in most of the region, the ground was soggy from the creek, and the Honda’s tires had left distinctive prints in the sandy mud. When the driver had reversed out, one had spun reaching for traction.

  They sto
pped before they reached the tracks, however, and examined the ground carefully, then surveyed the surrounding area. Dance dug into her purse and pulled out elastic hair ties, four of them. She and O’Neil put them around their shoes – a trick she’d learned from her friends in New York, Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs. It would differentiate their shoeprints from those of the suspect when the forensics officers ran the scene.

  ‘There,’ O’Neil said, pointing into the trees. ‘He got out of the car and walked back and forth to find a good route to circle around to the trucking company.’

  Several cars drove past on the highway. One turned in at the next driveway. O’Neil was distracted and followed it until the lights vanished.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just keeping an eye out.’

  Guard dog. Because I don’t have a weapon. Though the odds on their unsub charging out of the woods with blazing guns seemed rather narrow.

  He turned back to the scene. They moved closer and Dance looked down, circling the area where the car had been, carefully so as not to disturb any evidence.

  ‘Michael. Look. He wasn’t alone.’

  The solid detective crouched down and pulled out a small flashlight. He aimed it at what she’d seen. There were two sets of shoeprints, very different. One appeared to be running shoes, or boots, with complex treads. The other, longer, was smooth-soled.

  O’Neil rose and, picking his steps carefully, walked around to the other side of where the car had been parked. Examined that area.

  ‘No. Just one. Nobody got out on the passenger side.’

  ‘Ah. Got it. He changed shoes. No, changed clothes altogether.’

  ‘Had to be. Just in case somebody saw him.’

  ‘We should get your CSU team here, search for trace, run the prints.’

  The MCSO and the FBI had tread-mark databases for both tires and shoes. They might find the brand of shoe and narrow down the type of car, with some luck.

  Though luck was not a commodity much in evidence in the Solitude Creek investigation.

  CHAPTER 31

  ‘Tomorrow Is the New Today … You have to think not about the present but about the future. You see, you blink and what was the future a moment ago is the present now. Are we good with that? Does that speak to you?’

  The author looked like an author. No, not in a tweedy sport jacket with patches, a pipe, wrinkled pants. Which was, maybe, the way authors used to look, Ardel believed. This writer was in a black shirt, black pants and wore stylish glasses. Boots. Hm.

  ‘So while you’re focusing on the moment, you’ll miss the most important part of your life: the rest of it.’

  Fifty-nine-year-old Ardel Hopkins and her friend Sally Gelbert, sitting beside her, had come to the Bay View Center, off Cannery Row, right on the shoreline, because they were on diets.

  The other option, as they’d debated what to do on this girls’ night out, was to hit Carambas full-on, two hours. But that would mean six-hundred-calorie margaritas and those chips, then the enchiladas. Danger. So when Sally had seen that a famous author was appearing up the street, at the Bay View, they’d decided: perfect. One drink, a few chips, salsa, then culture.

  Didn’t preclude an ice-cream cone on the drive home.

  Also, good news: like everyone else, Ardel had been worried about a crowded venue – after that terrible incident at Solitude Creek, intentionally caused by some madman. But she and Sally had checked out the Bay View hall and noted that the exit doors had been fixed so they couldn’t be locked – the latches were taped down. And a thick chain prevented anyone from parking in front of the doors and blocking them.

  All good. Mostly good – problem was, this guy Richard Stanton Keller, supposedly a self-help genius, was a bit boring.

  Ardel whispered, ‘Three names. That’s a tip-off. Lot of words in his name. Lots of words in his book.’

  Lots of words coming out of his mouth.

  Sally nodded.

  Keller was leaning forward to the microphone, before the audience of a good four hundred or so fans. He read and read and read.

  Tomorrow Is the New Today.

  Catchy. But it didn’t make a lot of sense. Because when you hit tomorrow, it becomes today but then it’s the old today and you have to look at tomorrow, which is the new today.

  Like time-travel movies, which she also didn’t enjoy.

  She’d’ve preferred somebody who wrote fun and talked fun, like Janet Evanovich or John Gilstrap, but there were worse ways to spend an hour after digesting a very small – too small – portion of chips and one marg. Still, it was a pleasant venue for a book reading. The building was up on stilts and you could peer down and see, thirty or forty feet below, craggy rocks on which energetic waves were presently committing explosive suicide.

  She tried to concentrate.

  ‘I’ll tell you a story. About my oldest son going away to college.’

  Don’t believe a word of it, Ardel thought.

  ‘This is true, it really happened.’

  Not a single word.

  He started telling the story of his son doing something bad or the author doing something bad or the author’s wife, the boy’s mother, doing something bad because they’d been living for today and not tomorrow, which really was today. Hm. Did that mean—

  Suddenly a loud bang, from somewhere outside the hall. Nearby.

  Everyone looked toward the lobby. The author fell silent.

  Now screams from outside too. Then another bang louder, closer.

  That wasn’t a backfire. Cars didn’t backfire any more. Definitely a shot. Ardel knew it was a gunshot. She’d been to a range a couple of times when her husband was alive. She hadn’t wanted to fire a gun, so she’d just sat back and watched the fanatics shiver with excitement over the weapons and talk shop.

  Another shot – closer yet.

  The manager hurried to a fire door, which he pushed open. A fast look out. He stepped back in fast.

  ‘Listen! There’s a guy with a gun. Outside. Coming this way!’ He pulled the door shut but it swung open, thanks to the taped-down locks.

  People were rising to their feet.

  Another shot, two more. More screams from outside.

  ‘Jesus Lord,’ Ardel whispered.

  ‘Ardie, what’s going on?’

  One man was on his feet, a big guy. Former military, it seemed. He, too, looked out. ‘There he is! He’s coming this way. He’s got an automatic!’

  Cries of ‘No!’, ‘Jesus!’, ‘Call nine one one!’

  Several people ran for the emergency exit. ‘No, not that way!’ someone called. ‘He’s out there. I think he’s shooting people outside.’

  ‘Get back!’

  A brilliant security light came on. No! Ardel thought. All the easier to see his target.

  The author didn’t say, ‘Stay calm,’ or anything else. He leaped up and pushed some attendees out of the way, running for the lobby. A dozen people raced after him. They jammed the doorway. One woman screamed and fell back, clutching a horribly twisted arm.

  Another shot from the direction of the lobby. Most of those who’d run that way returned to the main hall.

  Ardel, crying, grabbed Sally’s hand and they tried to move away from the exit doors. But it was impossible. They were trapped in a sweating knot of people, muscle to muscle.

  ‘Calm down! Get back!’ Ardel cried, her voice choking. Sally was sobbing too, as were dozens of others.

  ‘Where’re the police?’

  ‘Get back, get off me …’

  ‘Help me. My arm – I can’t feel my arm!’

  Deafening screams, screams so loud they threatened to break eardrums. As the mass pressed back from the exit doors, several people stumbled – one elderly man went down under a column of feet. He screamed as his leg bone snapped. Only through sheer strength, superhuman strength, it seemed, did two young men, maybe grandsons, manage to pry apart the crowd and get the man to his feet. He was pale and soon unconscious.

 
Two more shots, very close to the exit doors now.

  The crowd surged away from the doors and toward the windows. Everyone was insane now, possessed with fury and panic. Slugging each other, trying to move back, thinking maybe, if anybody was thinking at all, that if they were not in the front line the bodies in front of them would take the bullets and the gunman would run out of ammunition or be shot by the police before he could kill more.

  And moving relentlessly toward the only escape: windows.

  Ardel heard a loud snap in her shoulder and her vision filled with yellow light, and pain, horrific pain, shot from her jaw to the base of her spine. A scream, lost amid the other screams. She couldn’t even turn to look. Her head was sandwiched between one man’s shoulder and another’s chest.

  ‘Ardie!’ Sally called.

  But Ardel had no idea where her friend was.

  The voice on the PA – it wasn’t the author’s: he was long gone – cried, ‘Get away from the door. He’s almost here!’

  A series of crashes, breaking glass, behind her and the mob surged in that direction, Ardel with them. Not that she had any choice: her feet were off the ground. Finally Ardel could turn her head and she saw attendees throwing chairs through the windows. Then silhouettes of desperate people climbing to the window frames, some cutting hands and arms on jutting shards of glass. They hesitated, then jumped.

  She recalled looking out of the window earlier. It was three stories above the shoreline – you’d have to leap far out to hit the water, and even then it seemed there were rocks and concrete abutments just below the surface, some bristling with rebar steel rods.

  People were looking down and screaming, perhaps seeing their friends and family hit the rocks.

  ‘No! I’m not jumping!’ Ardel shouted to no one in particular. And tried to use her good arm to scrabble in the other direction. She’d take her chance with the gunman.

  But she had no say in the matter, no say at all. The writhing mass pressed closer and closer to the windows, where some people were hesitating and others pushing the reluctant ones down and climbing on their backs or chests or bellies to launch themselves into the questionable safety of the stony shoreline below.