Romance novels!
My God.
He shut off the audiobook and stared at the house. He wondered how long he’d have to wait.
March relaxed, sat back.
What interested him about gladiators, of course, wasn’t the erotic side – hetero or homo – which was a product of Hollywood and, apparently, popular publishing. No, it was the institutionalization of death that was so captivating to him.
History taught, history explained. A man can’t be judged by one day: you have to examine his whole life to see trends, to see who he really is. The great leveling of time.
Mankind in general, the same.
And the world of gladiatorial contests had informed Antioch March’s being. Now, the combat itself was interesting and complicated. It had begun in a very modest form as a tribute to a deceased relative, called the munus, a fight between two or three professionals, sometimes to the death, sometimes not. Eventually Roman officials combined the munera and non-combative entertainments, like sporting events, popular with the citizenry, into gladiatorial (the word referred to ‘swordsmen’) shows.
A fan of video games forever – he still played them regularly to relax – March had decided to create one himself. It would be about gladiatorial contests, a first-person game, where you see the action as if you were participating in it. The enemy comes at you and you must fight for your survival (or, as in some of the games, you sneak up behind your foe and slit his or her throat). Thanks to books like the one he was listening to and other research, he’d learned all he needed to about the contests themselves. The next step would be learning how to craft video games. He’d played them, many to the end, for nearly twenty years and had a good idea of how they worked but he would have to learn the mechanics of putting one together and find a computer person to help.
He spent hours fantasizing about the game and imagining what it would be like to play. He even had a title: The Blood of All. It was from a poem, perhaps by Catullus, a paean to a particular gladiator, Verus, in first-century Rome. He knew the last stanza by heart.
O Verus, you have fought forty contests and have
Been offered the wooden Rudis of freedom
Three times and yet declined the chance to retire.
Soon we will gather to see the sword
In your hand pierce the heart of your foes.
Praise to you, who has chosen not to walk through
The Gates of Life but to give us
What we desire most, what we live for:
The blood of all.
He’d worked on the game off and on for years. If it became a hit, of course, he’d have to be careful to remain anonymous. A game designer would get some publicity and he supposed it wasn’t good for someone who spent his days doing, well, what he did, to be too much in the public eye. But then he figured that the project wouldn’t draw attention to him – not like a famous author. He’d never have four hundred people at a book signing, like I’m-a-Coward Richard Stanton Keller had had tonight.
Tomorrow Is the New Today. He smiled, thinking: Well, it sure wasn’t for some of the people in attendance at the Bay View.
Another glance at the house. A light was on. But—
Just then his phone hummed with a text.
He squinted and picked up the unit.
What the hell’s this? he thought. No. Oh, no …
The plans for the evening had changed.
CHAPTER 35
‘How bad?’ Jon Boling asked.
‘I don’t want to talk about my day. Let’s talk about yours.’
Boling smiled. ‘I’m not sure how captivating an article on flaws in Boolean search logic will be. How about we play roast beef sandwich?’
She smiled, too, and kissed him. ‘I’m starved. Thanks.’
He whipped up plates and brought them onto the Deck, set out a glowing candle. Dance couldn’t help but think: lighting it for the dead at Bay View Center.
He opened a bottle of Jack London Cabernet. The wine wasn’t bad but she really liked the wolf on the label.
‘What’ve the munchkins been up to?’ she asked, as they sipped wine and ate the sandwiches and potato salad.
‘Mags was still moody.’
Dance shook her head. ‘I’ll sit down with her again. See if I can pry it out of her.’
‘But she seems to like her club. She was Skyping with them for an hour or so.’
‘Oh, what’s it called? The Secrets Club.’
‘That’s it. Bethany and Cara. Lucie too, I think. Pretty exclusive, it sounds like.’
‘You kept an eye on it?’
‘I did.’
Dance’s rule was that the children could Skype or go online only if an adult was nearby and checking in occasionally.
‘An official club?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure Pacific Heights Grade School requires much in the way of charter for a club to be official.’
‘Good point … Secrets Club,’ she mused. ‘And what do they do? Gossip about their American Girl dolls?’
‘I asked her and she said it was a secret.’
They both laughed.
Boling waved off another pour of wine. Since the children were here, he was present only until bedtime, then would drive back home. Just like he never drank when he was chauffeuring them anywhere.
‘And Wes?’
‘Donnie came over for a while. I like him. Really smart. I was teaching them how to code. He picked it up fast.’
‘What do you think about that game they’re playing now – Defend and Respond Expedition? What is it again?’
‘Service.’
‘Right.’
‘I have no idea what it’s about but what I’m fascinated with is that they’re rejecting the computer model. Writing out their battle plans, or whatever they do, sort of like football plays. Or like the old Battleships game. Remember?’
‘Sure.’
‘It’s a return to traditional game practices. I think there’s even an aspect where they do a scavenger hunt or something outside, find clues in the park or down by the shore. They’re out in the real world, ride their bikes, get some exercise.’
‘Like I used to play when I was a girl.’
‘Have to say I was pretty box-oriented, even that age.’
Boxes. Computers.
She said, ‘I heard people’re going back to paper books, away from e-books.’
‘True,’ he said. ‘I prefer the paper ones. And, besides, given my typical reading material, you’re probably not going to find Vector Modeling and Cosine Similarity as Applied to Search Engine Algorithms on Kindle.’
Dance nodded. ‘They’re making a movie of that, aren’t they?’
‘Pixar.’
Patsy and Dylan wandered out onto the Deck. Molecules of roast beef aroma carry far on nights like that. They plopped down and Boling furtively, but not too, slipped them bits. He asked Dance, ‘Okay, how bad was it?’
She lowered her head, sipped wine again.
He said, ‘You didn’t want to talk about it. But maybe you do.’
‘It’s bad, Jon. This guy, we don’t have a clue what he’s up to. Tonight— Did you hear the news?’
‘Gunman, but he wasn’t actually shooting people. Just making them panic. They jumped into the water. Four or five dead.’
Dance fell silent, looked out over the tiny amber lights in the backyard. As she leaned back, a bone somewhere in her shoulder popped. Didn’t used to happen. She stared up through the pines at the stars. This was the Peninsula of Fog but there were moments where the temperature and moisture partnered to turn the air into glass and, with little ambient illumination here, you sometimes could peer up through a tunnel between the pines and see the start of the universe.
‘Stay,’ she said.
Boling looked down at the dogs. They were asleep.
He glanced at her.
A smile. ‘You. Not them.’
‘Stay?’
‘The night.’
And he didn’t need to hesitate. He leaned over and kissed her hard. Her hand went around his neck and she pulled him to her.
Neither asked about finishing dinner. They picked up their half-empty plates and carried them inside to the sink. Then Dance ushered the dogs in, and locked the doors.
Boling took her hand and led her up the stairs.
FLASH MOB
SATURDAY, APRIL 8
CHAPTER 36
The alarm went off at seven thirty.
A classical tune – Dance, a musician, never did well with dissonance. It was the ‘Toccata and Fugue’, Phantom of the Opera – no, not that one. An earlier version.
She opened her eyes and fumbled for the stop button.
Yes, it was Saturday. But the unsub was still out there. Time to get up.
She turned to see Jon Boling brush back his thinning hair. He wasn’t self-conscious: it was only that strands were sticking out sideways. He wore only a T-shirt, gray, which she vaguely remembered him pulling on somewhere north of midnight. She was in a Victoria’s Secret thing, silk and pink and just a little outrageous. Because, how often?
He kissed her forehead.
She kissed his mouth.
No regrets about his staying. None at all.
She’d wondered what her reaction would be. Even now, hearing the creak of a door downstairs, a latch, muted voices, the tink-tink of cereal bowls, she knew it was the right decision. Time to step forward. They’d been dating a year, a little more. She now marshaled arguments and prepared a public-relations campaign for the children, thought about what they would and wouldn’t think, say, do when they saw a man come down the stairs. They’d have a clue about what had been going on: Dance had had The Talk with them, several years ago. (The reactions: Maggie had nodded matter-of-factly, as if confirming what she’d known for years; Wes had blushed furiously and finally, encouraged to ask a question, any question, about the process, wondered, ‘Aren’t there, like, any other ways?’ Dance, struggling to keep a straight face.)
So. They were about to confront the fact that Mom had had a man stay over, albeit a man they knew well, liked and who was more relative to them than her own sister was an aunt (flighty, charming and occasionally exasperating, New Age Betsey lived in the hills of Santa Barbara).
Let’s see what the next half-hour holds.
Dance considered just throwing on a robe but opted for a shower. She slipped into the bathroom and, when out, dressed in jeans and a pink work shirt while Boling, looking a bit uneasy, brushed his teeth. He, too, dressed.
‘Okay,’ he said slowly.
‘No.’
‘No?’ he asked.
‘You were looking at the window. You can’t jump out of it. You’re going to come downstairs with me and we’ll have my famous French toast. I only make it on special occasions.’
‘Is this special?’
She didn’t answer. She kissed him fast.
He said, ‘All right. Let’s go see the kids.’
As it turned out, however, it wasn’t just the kids that Dance and Boling saw.
As they stepped to the bottom of the stairs and into the kitchen, Dance nearly ran into Michael O’Neil, who was holding a glass of orange juice and walking to the table.
‘Oh,’ she whispered.
‘Morning. Hi, Jon.’
‘Michael.’
O’Neil, his face completely neutral, said, ‘Wes let me in. I tried to call but your phone was off.’
She’d shut it off intentionally before easing into bed, not wanting to risk a call – that is, risk hearing O’Neil’s ringtone, an Irish ballad, courtesy of the kids – at a moment like that. She’d fallen asleep before turning it back on. Careless. Unprofessional.
‘I …’ she began, but could think of not a single syllable to utter past that. She glanced toward the busy bees hard at work on breakfast.
‘Hi, Mom!’ Maggie said. ‘There was this show on TV about badgers and there’s this one kind, a honey badger, and this bird called a honeyguide leads it to a beehive and a badger rips it open and eats honey and its coat is so thick it doesn’t get stung. Hi, Jon.’
As if he’d lived there for years.
Wes, on his phone, nodded a cheerful greeting with a smile to both mother and boyfriend.
Mother and daughter went to work, wrangling breakfast – including honey for the French toast, of course. Dance glanced toward Wes. ‘Who?’ she whispered, nodding at his phone.
‘Donnie.’
‘Say hi for me and then hang up.’
Wes said hi, kept talking and, under her gaze, clicked off.
O’Neil, who might very well have spent the night with Ms Ex-O’Neil, kept his eyes on the juice. From his solid frame, a dozen kinesic messages were firing, like cylinders in a sports car. Or a white SUV, made by the Lexus division of Toyota Motors.
Enough, she told herself.
Let it go …
Boling made coffee. ‘Michael?’ Lifting a cup.
‘Sure.’ Then O’Neil added to Dance, ‘Something’s come up. That’s what I was trying to get in touch with you about.’
‘Solitude Creek?’
‘Right.’
Dance didn’t need to glance at the children, from whom she kept most aspects of her job. It was O’Neil who nodded toward the front hall. She told Maggie to set the table. Boling grilled the toast and made bacon. Wes had taken to texting again but Dance said nothing about it.
As she followed O’Neil, she realized that her top button was undone; she’d been distracted earlier. She fixed it with a gesture she tried to make casual but that she was sure drew attention to the V of flesh, dotted with faint freckles. And silently gave a word of thanks to whatever impulse had told her not to go with the robe and lacy Victoria’s Secret gown before heading downstairs.
‘There’s a lead we ought to follow up on. Out of town.’
‘The unsub’s Honda?’
‘No. The alert we’ve got for online activity.’
She and O’Neil had spoken to Amy Grabe, San Francisco, and she’d had the FBI’s powerful online monitoring network search for any references to either of the two attacks. It was not unheard of for witnesses to unintentionally post helpful information about crimes; there had even been instances when the perp had bragged about his cleverness. ‘Last night somebody posted a clip on Vidster.’
Dance knew it. A YouTube competitor.
‘What was it?’
‘Some of the press footage – shot of a TV screen – of the roadhouse. And stills of other incidents.’
‘Others?’
‘Not related to what happened here. It was a rant by somebody named Ahmed. He said this is what Islam will do to the West, that sort of thing. Didn’t take credit for it exactly but we should check it out.’
‘What other incidents?’
‘Some foreign. A beheading of Christians in Iraq, a car bomb outside of Paris. A train wreck in New York, derailment. And then another stampede – a few years ago in Fort Worth. A nightclub.’
‘I read about that. But the perp died in the incident. A homeless guy.’
‘Well, Ahmed claims he was jihadist.’
O’Neil scrolled through his phone. He displayed some clips. Bodies close up, lying in their desperate still poses, asleep for ever.
‘And that was supposedly the work of some terror cell?’
‘More or less.’
‘Have we got his address?’
‘Not yet. Soon, the tech people said.’
‘Mom!’ Maggie called.
‘Be right there.’
He slipped the phone away and they walked into the kitchen. O’Neil said, ‘I should go.’
‘Aw, no, stay!’ Wes said.
Dance said nothing.
‘Yeah, Michael. Pleeeease.’ Maggie was in her persuasive mode.
Boling said, ‘Co
me on, have something. It’s Kathryn’s secret recipe.’
She said, ‘Eggs, milk. But don’t tell anybody.’
‘Sure, I guess.’
They all sat at the table and Dance dished up.
Wes said, ‘Wow, I saw on the news that guy did another one.’
Dance said, ‘It looks that way.’
‘Did another what?’ Maggie asked.
‘Hurt some people at the Bay View Center.’
Her daughter asked quietly, ‘Did anybody die?’
Dance never over-explained but she always answered their questions truthfully and directly. ‘Yes.’
‘Oh.’
They ate in silence for a while. Dance had little appetite. Boling and O’Neil did. So did Wes.
She sipped coffee and noted that Maggie was troubled again and was now picking at her French toast. ‘Honey?’ she whispered, lowering her head. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. I’m just not hungry any more.’
‘Drink your juice.’
She had a minuscule sip. Her face was now very clouded. After a moment she said, ‘Mom? I was thinking.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
Dance glanced at the others, then said to her daughter, ‘Let’s go on the Deck.’
Maggie rose and, with a glance toward Boling, then O’Neil, Dance followed her outside. She knew that the serious conversation, postponed the other night, was now going to happen.
‘Come on, hon. Tell me. You’ve been sad for a long time now.’
Maggie looked at a hummingbird, hovering over the feeder.
‘I don’t think I want to sing that song tomorrow.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Clara’s not performing.’
‘Clara just had her appendix out. Your whole class is doing something.’
Solitude Creek: Kathryn Dance Book 4 Page 18