Jeffery Deaver - Solitude Creek

No gun, though one would have looked right at home in his belt.

‘Which unit you from?’ he asked.

March shoved his Glock into the man’s thick chest. Pushed him back into the room.

‘Fuck. No. What is this?’

‘Sssh.’ March frisked him. Then collected the gym bag, closed and latched the door.

Five minutes later the heavyset man, crying, was lying on his back, hands and feet bound with duct tape.

‘Please, don’t hurt me. I don’t— What do you want? Please, no!’

March got down to the fun and soon had his answers. Stan Prescott was not, of course, a terrorist. He was a Christian. A well-thumbed Bible sat beside a well-sat-in armchair. By profession, a bartender. But his avocation was — he might have said — patriot.

After being caressed by the muzzle of March’s Glock, he’d admitted he’d posted the images and claimed credit in the name of Allah, or whatever the fine print read, to arouse anti-Islam sentiment in the country. Was he crazy? March reflected. Everyone with half a brain would see through the plan. And those who believed the claims? Well, that was one group that nobody needed to convert.

Stupid on all fronts. Not the least because he’d picked the wrong person to draw attention to.

But, of course, Prescott had his own Get: the need to keep his country safe and free... from anyone who wasn’t American. That is, Christian American. That is, white Christian American. What he hadn’t learned was that you need to treat the Get like an animal that’s only partly domesticated. You can’t be stupid: it’ll kill its owner as fast as anyone else.

‘Give me your passcode. Your computer.’

The man did, instantly.

March was surveying Prescott’s files. Looking at all the man’s pseudonymous diatribes against America. He looked over the dozens of grim photos of beheadings, bombs and other supposedly terrorist attacks that no self-respecting jihadist would have been behind. He had quite the collection of gruesome pictures.

He got the passcodes to Prescott’s Vidster account and blog, and took everything down.

‘What’s this about, man? Come on! Are you working for them? You seem like one of us!’

Them...

It occurred to March that there might be a benefit here: if the authorities had seen the post, the terror angle would lodge in their minds as a motive for what had happened. That would obscure just a bit more the real reason for the attacks in Monterey, which had, of course, to be kept completely secret.

‘I’m sorry. I’ll do whatever you want. Jesus, man. Come on. We’re both... alike, you know.’

White.

March shut down the laptop. He looked around the room, then dragged a pole lamp over, positioned it above the man’s sweating face.

‘What’re you doing?’

March walked to the front door and fetched his gym bag.

‘What’re you doing?’ Prescott repeated, more desperate.

March crouched down and examined the man’s face closely. He patted him on the shoulder, said, ‘Don’t you worry.’

And unzipped the bag.

‘This’s it,’ Michael O’Neil said, pulling the rental car into the parking lot of Stan Prescott’s apartment complex in Tustin, California.

They parked several units down from Prescott’s to wait for an Orange County deputy to join them.

In the time it had taken the state jet to whisk Dance and O’Neil from Monterey Regional Airport to John Wayne, Orange County, O’Neil’s computer people had the identity of the man who’d posted that clip of the Solitude Creek deaths.

Stanley Prescott, aka Ahmed, was a forty-one-year-old bartender. Single. The information gathered also revealed that he had been working in his club’s Long Beach location at the time of the Solitude Creek and Bay View disasters, so he wasn’t the unsub.

His Facebook and blog profile revealed he was essentially a rabid bigot. It was obvious that he was claiming Solitude Creek and the other incidents were the work of Muslims to incite anti-Islamic sentiment.

People could be such idiots.

This news was discouraging, since he’d probably had no connection whatsoever to either of the attacks and had simply pulled violent pictures and videos randomly from the web to repost. Still, as they were there, they would talk to him. Maybe the unsub had emailed or posted something on this man’s blog.

As they waited for the Orange County deputy to arrive, O’Neil took a call. He nodded and Dance noted he lifted an eyebrow. He had a brief conversation, then hung up.

‘Otto Grant. Remember?’

Of course she did. The farmer whose land had been confiscated under eminent domain. The possible suicide.

‘Santa Cruz police found a body in the water by the pier. Male. Same age and build. They’ll run the scene and get me the report.’

How sad, she reflected. ‘Did he have family?’

‘He was a widower. Grown children. Farming must’ve been his whole life, maybe all he had left.’

‘A hard way to go. Drowning.’

‘I don’t know,’ O’Neil mused. ‘In that water? You’d be numb after three, four minutes. Then... nothing. Worse ways to die than going to sleep in the Bay.’

Dance and O’Neil had to wait only a few minutes for the Orange County deputy to arrive. They waved him over. The stocky uniformed man’s name was Rick Martinez.

‘We’ve been following the wire about your perp. The Solitude Creek thing. The other one too. The author signing. Last night. Man, that’s terrible. I’ve never heard anything like this. This terror thing?’ A nod toward the apartment. ‘Is Prescott your doer?’

Dance said, ‘We know he’s not. But we’re hoping there’s a chance of some connection between him and our unsub.’

‘Sure. How do you want to handle it?’ He was speaking to O’Neil.

‘Agent Dance’ll wait here. I’ll go to the front door, you go around back, if you would. If everything’s clear, Agent Dance’ll do the interrogation.’

Wait here. Her lips tightened.

‘No warrants. He had a drunk and disorderly a few years ago, assault too, and he owns weapons, so we’ll handle it cautiously.’

The two men headed up the sidewalk, past a row of dying bushes and healthy succulents, another testament to the water problems suffered by the Golden State.

O’Neil waited near Prescott’s door, out of sight of the peephole and side window, which was curtained. Martinez, bulky and imposing, continued around the side of the complex to the rear.

O’Neil gave it three or four minutes, then knocked. ‘Stanley Prescott? Sheriff’s deputy. Please open the door.’

Once more.

He tried the door. It was unlocked. He glanced back at Dance. Held her eye for a moment. Then pushed inside.

No more than a minute later she heard two stunning gunshots, followed by one more.

Antioch March was running.

Full out, a sprint. He realized he was still holding his Glock and slipped it into his pocket. He pulled his gym bag higher on his shoulder and kept going.

Ski mask? he wondered. No, that would definitely draw attention. Glancing back, he noticed that no one was in pursuit. Wouldn’t last long. People would be calling in the incident all over the neighborhood. Tustin wasn’t the sort of place where gunshots would be ignored.

And he knew one person who definitely was calling for backup at this moment: the woman he’d spotted outside the apartment, Kathryn Dance. She was here! She hadn’t seen him, as she sprinted fast to the front door of Prescott’s apartment, cell phone in hand. He might’ve gotten closer to her, tried for a shot. But she was, of course, armed and, he imagined, good with a gun.