Solitude Creek (14 page)

‘Testy,’ she said.

‘Who can blame him? Over fifteen hundred people were murdered last year in his state alone.’

Then Dance’s anger returned. ‘You heard?’

‘About what?’

‘It was on the radio. The Solitude Creek unsub’s description went out, after all. It’s all over the press. Now he knows we’re on to him.’

Overby was looking at the blank computer screen. ‘Ah, well. Yes. I heard too.’

‘How did it happen? I mean, did you release it?’

Overby loved any chance to chat with the press. But she doubted he’d directly undermine her, especially after he’d agreed to back her position – besides, if he’d done it, the story would have featured his name prominently.

‘Me? Of course not. It was … I’m not sure but I think it was Steve Foster. It came from Sacramento. His turf.’ He did seem genuinely upset, though hardly as livid as she.

But she understood he was troubled for a different reason. She was concerned about spooking the unsub. Overby had been out-politicked. He’d brought Foster in to make sure the CBI got some credit for running the case, since Dance had been sidelined. But Foster had taken it one step further and made sure the kudos would go to Headquarters, Sacramento. Not the West Central Division of CBI.

Why didn’t that surprise her? ‘Whose case is it?’

‘Well, technically, Kathryn, it’s not ours.’

‘Oh, come on. We can play this fiction only so far. Foster’s here on the Guzman Connection thing. He has nothing to do with my case.’

‘O’Neil’s case. MCSO’s case. I—’

‘Charles! Never mind. I’ll go talk to him.’

‘Do you think that’s a good—’

But she was already walking down the hall. And into the Guzman Connection task-force room. Overby appeared a moment later.

‘Hey,’ Jimmy Gomez said.

‘Steve.’ Both men with that name turned but Dance’s eyes were squarely on Foster.

‘It was a misunderstanding,’ the bulky man said, and looked back to his computer. Not even trying to deny it.

‘We agreed we weren’t going to release the description. We weren’t even going to say it was a murder investigation.’

He grumbled, ‘I should’ve been more specific when I was talking to my people in Sacramento. Should’ve told them not to speak to the press.’

‘Who was it?’ Dance asked.

‘Oh, hard to say. I don’t know what happened. It’s a mystery. I’m sorry.’

Though he was no more perplexed by it than he was contrite.

‘What’s this all about?’ asked stolid Carol Allerton, the DEA star. Dance reminded her of the debate about releasing the description of their perp. As she spoke, she kept her eyes on Foster.

‘It made the news?’ Carol Allerton asked. ‘Ouch.’ Indicating which way she would have voted.

‘It made the news,’ Overby said, with a wrinkly mouth.

To Foster, Dance said, ‘Why would you even discuss it? With anybody in Sacramento? It’s a West Central Division investigation. Our investigation.’

He wasn’t used to being cross-examined.

‘You mean a Monterey Sheriff’s investigation.’

‘I mean not Sacramento’s.’ Her lips tautened.

‘Well, sorry about that. I told somebody, they talked to the press. I should’ve told ’em to keep the lid on. It was a fuck-up. But, bright side, I’ll bet somebody’s already spotted some could-bes. And’ll call it in. Anytime now. You may have your boy before sundown, Kathryn.’

‘This morning Michael and I had every mobile unit on the Peninsula to start making sweeps of venues that might make good locations for other attacks. All day long. Shopping mall, churches, movie theaters. I don’t know what they’re going to be looking for now. If our perp heard the same news show I did, there’s not going to be any brown-haired man in a green jacket to spot.’

Foster wouldn’t back down. ‘That presupposes your unsub’s going to try this again. Is there any evidence to that effect?’

‘Not specifically. But my assessment is it’s a strong possibility.’ And she certainly wasn’t going to take the chance that there’d be no other attack.

Foster didn’t need to reiterate his opinion of Dance’s ability to make assessment.

He said, ‘It’s probably moot. He’s a thousand miles away by now.’

Antioch March had changed majors four times in three years at two schools. Distraction, boredom and, truth be told, the Get kept him jumping from department to department (and finally drove him out of both Northwestern and Chicago altogether, without any degree, despite his near-perfect academic record).

Still, he’d picked up some insights in various classes. He was thinking of one now, recalling the neo-Gothic classroom overlooking the north shore of Lake Michigan. Psychology. March had been fascinated to learn that there are only five basic fears.

For instance, take the fear of sharks, one that particularly interested him. That’s merely a sub-category of the fear of mutilation: having part of our body damaged or excised. More broadly, fear of injury.

The four other basic fears: of physical death, of ego death (embarrassment and shame), of separation (from Mommy, from the drugs we inhale so desperately, from our lover) and of loss of autonomy (claustrophobia on a physical level to being dominated by an abusive spouse).

March remembered the cold November day when he’d heard about them in a lecture. Truly mesmerizing.

And now he was about to put several to good use. Fear of physical death, of mutilation and loss of autonomy, all rolled into one. A movie theater would be his next target.

He had parked his car in a strip mall about a hundred yards from the Marina Hills Cineplex, just off Highway One in Marina. He was walking toward the theaters now.

Don’t we love the comfort of the lights going down, the trailers coming to an end, the film starting? Waiting to be exhilarated, amused, thrilled – laughing or crying. Why is a theater so much better than Netflix or cable? Because the real world is gone.

Until the real world comes crashing in.

In the form of smoke or gunshots.

And then comfort becomes constriction.

Fear of physical death, fear of mutilation and, most deliciously, fear of loss of autonomy – when the crowd takes over. You become a helpless cell in a creature whose sole goal is to survive, yet in attempting to do so it will sacrifice some of itself: those cells trampled or suffocated or changed for ever, thanks to snapped spines or piercing ribs.

He now examined the Marina Hills Cineplex, regarding the parking lot, the entrance, the service doors. This was one of the older multiplexes in the area, dating to the seventies – it featured only four theaters, ranging from three hundred seats to six hundred. It showed first-run movies, along with an occasional art film, and competed with the big boy up at Del Monte Center by discounting tickets (if you were fifty-nine, you were a senior. How ’bout that?) and offering free cheese powder with the popcorn (which was still overpriced).

March knew this because after meeting with an Indonesian tsunami-relief charity for the Hand to Heart website he’d been to see a film here:
When She’s Alone
, a slasher flick, which wasn’t bad – like a lot of such films nowadays, in this age of inexpensive technology, the effects were good and the acting passable. Some clever motifs (stained glass, for instance: the colored shards turned out to be the killer’s weapon of choice).

He’d also carefully examined the exits. Each theater had only two ways by which patrons could leave: the entrance, which led to a narrow hallway off the lobby, and the emergency exit in the back. The latter was a double door, wide enough to accommodate a crowd intent on escaping … if they weren’t too unruly.

But tonight the back doors would not be in play.

Six hundred people speeding through the single door to the lobby.

Perfect.

He looked over the parking lot keenly, noting trash cans, lamp-posts and, more important, the feeble landscaping – excellent camouflage.

Okay, time to get to work.

He hiked his gym bag onto his shoulder and started toward the theater. The hour was early and the place was largely deserted at this time. A few employees’ cars, parked, as ordered, in the back of the lot.

Another car happened to turn in and make its way to the back of the theater, not far from March. A tall, balding man got out and started toward the back service door, fishing keys from his pocket. He glanced at March and froze.

His eyes took in the green jacket, the utility logo, the dark slacks, the hat, sunglasses.

And those eyes explained everything.

Someone had seen him at Solitude Creek. He guessed his description had been on the news.

Hell. Antioch March had been positive that he hadn’t been seen last night, circling the parking lot, stealing the truck and maneuvering it in front of the doors. Starting the fire near the club’s HVAC system. He’d changed his clothes just afterward but there had been a twenty-minute window during which somebody could have spotted him in his worker’s garb, which he wore now.

The man was fishing a phone from his pocket.

Leave, March told himself. Instantly.

He turned. And that was when he noticed something else. 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 further, 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 in his direction. There would be some delay, if not miscommunication, in transmitting to the officer the information that the suspect had been spotted there.

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 before unzipping the bag, gripping the gun and turning.

No. No one was following.

Now March stripped off the green jacket, stuffed it into the bag and began to sprint. He leaped into the gray Honda Accord, pressing the start button before the door was closed. The gym bag, heavy with his tools of the trade, was on the passenger seat and it set off the warning ding about neglecting to put on the seatbelt. As he headed out the driveway slowly, he eased it to the floor. He had to be very careful of the contents. The dinging stopped.

He felt 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 rear-view mirror and noticed something. He decided that there might just be a silver lining to the debacle.

He circled around and pulled into a space not far from the theater he’d just left; 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?

Kathryn Dance walked into the Gals’ Wing.

This was an area of the CBI’s West Central Division that, purely coincidentally, housed the four women who worked there: Dance, Connie Ramirez, the most decorated CBI agent in the office, Grace Yuan, the office administrator, and Maryellen Kresbach.

The name of the wing came from a male agent who, trying to impress a date on a tour of his workplace, had 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 that had helped.

Though, ironically, the women had decided unanimously to keep the designation. A badge of pride.

A warning too.

She accepted the coffee Maryellen offered, 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, bought at less than half price). They matched her long coffee-colored linen skirt. Her sweater today was a ribbed off-white, the sports coat black. Today’s concession to color was a bright elastic tie Maggie had twined at the end of her mother’s French braid. Red.

She acknowledged the compliment – 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, 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 of an adversary as the perps you’re pursuing.

The miss was, of course, frustrating enough. But far more troubling was that he’d apparently been planning another attack. Not, Steve Number One, 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? She sent out a second memo to all local law enforcers to alert managers of venues that she’d confirmed their unsub had attempted a second attack.