Jeffery Deaver - Solitude Creek

When March looked up, the couple and their children were gone.

It would be a busy day tomorrow. Time to get back to the inn.

His phone hummed with an email.

At last.

It was from a commercial service that ran DMV checks. The answer he’d been waiting for.

That morning as he’d enjoyed the Egg McMuffin and coffee, parked near the multiplex that would have been his next target, March had noted an assortment of police cars and — this was curious — a gray Nissan Pathfinder.

He couldn’t learn anything from the other vehicles or the uniformed or sport-coated men who climbed out of them. But the occupant of the Pathfinder, that was a different story. It wasn’t an official car. Not a government plate. And no bumper stickers bragging about children, no Jesus fish. A private car.

But the driver was official. He could tell that from the way she strode up to the officers. The way they answered her questions, sometimes looking away. March was at a distance but he supposed she had a fierce gaze. Intense, at least.

Her posture, upright. March had sensed instinctively that this woman was one of the main investigators against him.

The search had revealed that the Pathfinder belonged to one Kathryn Dance.

A lovely name. Compelling.

He pictured her again and felt a stirring low in his belly. The Get was unspooling. It, too, was growing interested in Ms Dance. They both wanted to know more about her. They wanted to know all about her.

‘Never rains but it pours,’ Michael O’Neil offered, walking into Dance’s office.

TJ Scanlon glanced at the solid detective, who was sitting down across from her desk. ‘I never quite got that. Does it mean, “We’re in a desert area, so it doesn’t rain but sometimes there’s a downpour and we get flooded because, you know, there’s no ground cover?”’

‘I don’t know. All I mean is, my plate’s filling up.’

‘With rain?’ TJ asked.

‘A homicide.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’ TJ often walked a fine line between jovial and flippant.

Dance asked, ‘The missing farmer? Otto Grant?’ She was thinking of the possible suicide, the man distraught about losing his land to the eminent domain action by the state. She couldn’t imagine what he had gone through, losing the farm that had been in his family for so many years. She and the children had been at Safeway recently and she’d noticed yet more 8.5-by-11 sheets of paper, attention-getting yellow, with Grant’s picture on them.

Have you seen this man?...

O’Neil shook his head. ‘No, no, I mean another case altogether.’ He handed Dance a half-dozen crime-scene photos. ‘Jane Doe. Found this morning at the Cabrillo Beach Inn.’

A dive of a place, Dance knew. North of Monterey.

‘Prints come back negative.’

The photo was of a young woman who’d been dead seven or eight hours, to guess from the lividity. She was pretty. She had been pretty.

‘COD?’

‘Asphyx. Plastic bag, rubber band.’

‘Rape?’

‘No. But maybe erotic asphyxia.’

Dance shook her head. Really? Risking death? How much better could an orgasm be?

‘I’ll get it on our internal wire,’ TJ said. This would send the picture to every one of the CBI offices, where a facial-recognition scan would be run and compared with faces in the database.

‘Thanks.’

TJ took the pictures off to scan them.

O’Neil continued, to Dance: ‘The boyfriend’s probably married. Panicked and took off with her purse. We’re checking video nearby for tags and makes. Might find something.’

‘Why wasn’t she on the bed? I don’t care how kinky I was, sex on the floor of that motel is just plain ick.’

O’Neil said, ‘That’s why I said maybe about the erotic asphyx. There were marks on her wrists. Somebody might’ve held her down while she died. Or it could have been part of their game. I’m keeping an open mind.’

‘So,’ she said slowly, ‘you still with us on the Solitude Creek unsub?’ She was afraid that the death — accidental or intentional — would derail him.

‘No. Just complaining about the rain.’

‘You still on the hate-crime case too?’

‘Yeah.’ A grimace. ‘We had another.’

‘No! What happened?’

‘Another gay couple. Two men from Pacific Grove. Not far from you, down on Lighthouse. A rock through their window.’

‘Any suspects?’

‘Nope.’ He shrugged. ‘But, rain or not, I can work Solitude Creek.’

He was then looking down at the newspaper on Dance’s chair. The front page contained a big picture of Brad Dannon. The fireman, in a suit and sporting a bright flag lapel pin, sat on the couch next to an Asian American reporter. Hero Fireman Tells the Horror Story of Solitude Creek.

‘You interview him?’ O’Neil asked.

She nodded and gave a sour laugh. ‘Yep. And his ego.’

‘Either of them helpful?’

‘Uh-uh. In fairness, he was busy helping the injured. And we didn’t know it was a crime scene at that point.’

‘You ran the Serrano thing, in Seaside?’

‘Yep.’

‘How’s that working out?’ The question seemed brittle.

‘It’s moving along.’ Then she didn’t want to talk about it any more.

Her phone rang. ‘Kathryn Dance.’

‘Uhm, Mrs Dance. This’s Trish Martin.’

The daughter of Michelle Cooper, the woman killed in Solitude Creek.

‘Yes, Trish. Hi.’ She glanced toward O’Neil. ‘How’re you doing?’

‘Not so great. You know.’

‘I’m sure it’s difficult.’ Thinking back to the days after Bill had died.

Not so great... Never so great.

‘I heard, I mean, I was watching the news and they said he tried to do it again.’

‘It’s looking that way, yes.’

There was a long silence. ‘You wanted to talk to me?’

‘Just to ask what you saw that night.’

‘Okay. I want to help. I want to help you get him. Fucker.’

‘I’d appreciate that.’

‘I can’t talk here. My father’ll be back soon. I’m at my mother’s house. He’ll be back and he doesn’t want me to talk to you. Well, to anybody.’

‘You’re in Pebble Beach, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You drive?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Meet me at the Bagel Bakery on Forest. You know it?’

‘Sure — I have to go he’s coming back bye.’ Spoken in one breath.

Click.

She’d been crying.

Dance gave her credit for not trying to hide it. No makeup, no averted eyes. Tears and streaks present.

Trish Martin was sitting in the corner of the Bagel Bakery, toward the back, under a primitive but affecting acrylic painting of a dog carefully regarding a turtle. It was one of a dozen for sale on the walls, this batch by students, a card reported. Dance and the children came here regularly and she’d bought a few of the works from time to time. She really liked the dog and turtle.

‘Hi.’

‘Hey,’ the girl said.

‘How you doing?’

‘Okay.’

‘What do you want? I’ll get it.’ Dance was tempted to suggest cocoa but that smacked of youthening the girl, marginalizing her. She picked a compromise. ‘I’m doing cappuccino.’

‘Sure.’

‘Cinnamon?’

‘Sure.’

‘Anything to eat?’

‘No. Not hungry.’ As if she’d never be again.

Dance placed the order and returned. Sat down. Automatically reaching for the plastic holster that held her Glock, which usually needed adjusting upon sitting. Her hand went to nothing and she remembered.

Then she was concentrating on the girl. Trish wore jeans and scuffed but expensive brown boots. Dance, a lover of footwear, spotted Italian. A black, scoop-neck sweater. A stocking cap, beige, pulled down over her hair. The sleeves of the sweater met her knuckles.