Jeffery Deaver - Solitude Creek

Allerton was eyeing Dance neutrally as the CBI agent walked up. She looked around, then moved closer yet. ‘Al.’

A nod.

‘Carol, there’s something I want to talk to you about. Both of you, really.’

‘Sure, Kathryn.’

Stemple gave a second nod. Maybe a grunt.

‘I heard you had a lead to Serrano.’

The DEA agent hesitated.

Dance said, ‘Well, I know you do. TJ told me. He’s my inside man. You’re going to talk to this lead now?’

Allerton held her gaze. ‘We are.’

Dance said, ‘I want to interview him.’

‘Well...’

‘I know the turf, Carol. I don’t know this particular subject but I know the crowd he’d hang with. That gives me a huge leg up.’

‘But Charles,’ Allerton said. ‘He suspended you.’

Stemple watched Dance’s lips tighten. ‘All right. The other thing?’ She glanced at Stemple, then decided, it seemed, to plunge ahead. ‘You don’t know Charles as well as I do. If I were a man and what happened with Serrano happened? He wouldn’t’ve busted me. Hate to say it but...’ Dance shook her head. ‘You’ve been through this too, Carol. You know how it is.’

Her expression said: Women in law enforcement. Yes, I do.

Dance added, ‘I’ll give you full credit for everything I find out. And that’ll go all the way to Washington. I’ll disappear.’

‘No, that’s not necessary.’

‘Actually, yeah, it is. Charles can’t know anything, that I’m involved. All I want is to nail Serrano.’

‘Sure,’ Allerton said, nodding. ‘I get it. Completely sub-rosa.’

Whatever that meant. Though Stemple hammered out a definition.

Now another glance his way.

Dance said, ‘I may already be under the bus—’

‘Charles’d do that to you?’ Now Stemple couldn’t control the grunt.

‘—already under the bus, but we get Serrano back, Sacramento won’t be clamoring for my head quite so loud. It’s the only chance I’ve got to pull something out of the fire here.’

Allerton was scanning the parking lot, thoughtful, not looking for acquiring targets, though, as Stemple was doing. ‘The fact is, Kathryn, I could use your help. I’m not the best interviewer in the world.’

‘Deal, then?’

‘Deal.’

Dance’s eyes swiveled to Stemple.

‘You asking me? I’m just backup. Do whatcha want.’

They walked to the car, Stemple easing into the driver’s seat. The big Dodge bobbed under the weight. The women, too, got in. He fired up the growly engine and they squealed out of the lot toward the highway.

A half-hour later Stemple turned onto surface streets in Seaside and eased the cruiser along a crumbling asphalt road, bordered by grasses, dusty brush, rusting wire fences. A hundred yards along they came to a development, probably fifty years old, bungalows and Cape-style houses, tiny, all of them.

‘That’s it,’ Allerton said, pointing to the scabbiest house there, a lopsided one-story structure that had last been painted a long, long time ago. White originally. Now, gray. The yard was half sand, half yellowing grass. Thirsty, Stemple thought. Everything was thirsty. This drought. Worst he could remember.

He shut the engine off. Everyone climbed out.

Stemple scanned the perimeter while the agents, looking around, headed toward the front door. Allerton knocked. No response. Dance pointed to the side, where there was a patio. They disappeared that way.

Stemple walked around the property, looked at the houses nearby, wondered why somebody had taped a massive poster of a daisy in a window. Was it a sunscreen? Wouldn’t a sunflower’ve made more sense?

Mostly, though, he was looking for threats.

This wasn’t a cul-de-sac but it wasn’t highly traveled. He counted four cars pass by, all seeming to contain families or individuals on their way to or from school, work or errands. That didn’t mean there weren’t gang-bangers inside, of course, with MAC-10s, Uzis or M4s. Gone were the days when crews conveniently piled into gang-mobiles, pimped-out low-rider Buicks with jacked-up suspensions. Now they tooled around in Acuras, Nissans and the occasional Beemer or Cayenne, depending on how the drug and arms trade had been lately.

But no one in any vehicle paid him any mind.

He walked back to the cracked sidewalk and was looking down at some vibrant purple plant, when there was from inside the bungalow a crash of something containing glass, a lot of glass.

Followed by a woman’s scream.

An hour later, back at CBI headquarters, Al Stemple was leaning back in a Guzman Connection task-force conference-room chair. It groaned under his weight.

The others were here too, the whole crew. The two Steves — Lu and Foster — along with Jimmy Gomez. Allerton, as well, was back from the Seaside bungalow mission.

‘What happened to you?’ Gomez asked her. She had a bandage on her arm.

‘That lead to Serrano? He had a big-ass Doberman in the back bedroom. Sleeping dog, and all that. He woke up. Didn’t like visitors.’

‘You get bit?’

‘Just scratched getting out of the way. Knocked over a table of crappy glass and china. Serves him right.’

‘Al, you didn’t shoot any dogs, did you?’ Gomez feigned horror.

‘Reasoned with it.’

Foster was on the phone, saying to a CHP trooper, ‘Those’re your procedures, not my procedures, and it’s my procedures you’re going to be following. Are we transparent on that?... I asked you a question... Are we transparent?... Good. No more of this shit.’

He hung up with nothing more.

What a dick, Stemple thought, and wondered if he’d have an excuse to dice the man verbally into little pieces. That’d be a challenge. Foster seemed like a good dicer too. It’d be fun.

Now that Foster had finished transparenting the Highway Patrol trooper, Allerton took the floor. ‘The lead didn’t quite pan out like we hoped. The Serrano Seaside connection.’

Gomez asked, ‘Who was it?’

‘A painter — a contractor, you know, a house painter. Not an artist. Tomas Allende. Serrano used to work with him. Uh-huh, he actually did day labor for a while before he got into turning people into skeletons.’

Foster grumbled, ‘Whatta you mean didn’t pan out?’

‘I said didn’t quite pan out. I’ll tell you what we found.’

We.

Nobody noticed. Probably thinking she meant her and Stemple.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

The stocky woman rose and walked to the door, looked out, then closed it.

Gomez frowned. The two Steves simply watched her.

‘I have to tell you, I didn’t go alone. Kathryn came with me.’

‘Kathryn Dance?’ Gomez asked.

‘How’d she do that?’ Foster seemed both perplexed and put out by this information. Not an easy combo, Stemple thought. ‘She’s suspended. Or did something change that I haven’t heard about?’

‘Nothing’s changed,’ Allerton said.

‘Then what do you mean she was there? I don’t need her to fuck up another operation in this case.’

Stemple stuck his legs out and brought his boot heel down on the linoleum hard. Foster didn’t notice the sound. Or didn’t care if he did.

Gomez said, ‘Steve, come on. We don’t need that.’

‘Need what? I’m saying it’s because of her we’re in this situation.’

Allerton: ‘She asked and I said yes. She knows she made a mistake and she wants to make it right. Look, she was good, though, at the house in Seaside, Steve. She was. You should’ve seen her.’

‘I did. With Serrano. I wasn’t impressed. Who was?’

Stemple scratched a scar on his thigh, not new, but a .40 round leaves a thick streak and humidity could really kick off the itch.