Jeffery Deaver - Solitude Creek

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

‘ 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.