Jeffery Deaver: Solitude Creek

‘All right. North, then. I’ll talk to Amy Grabe. She’ll get eyes going in Oakland, the docks, the East Bay. And—’

‘Whoa, whoa, Kathryn.’ Overby’s face registered surprise, as if she’d just said, ‘I think I’ll swim to Santa Cruz.’

She looked at him with a critical furrow of brow. There had been a lacing of condescension in his tone.

She glanced at Foster, who had lost interest in her and was studying a golden golf ball on Overby’s desk, some award. He didn’t want to be seen gloating when she heard what she knew was coming. Better to look at small-time awards made of plastic masquerading as precious metal.

Overby said, ‘I’ve just been on the phone with Sacramento. With Peter.’

The director of the CBI. The boss of bosses.

‘We talked, I explained...’

‘What’s the bottom line, Charles?’

‘I did everything I could, Kathryn. I went to bat for you.’

‘I’m suspended.’

‘Not suspended, no, no, not at all.’ He beamed, as if she’d won a Caribbean cruise in a state fair draw. ‘Not completely. You lost your weapon, Kathryn. He’s got it now. That’s... Well, you know. It is leave-of-absence-without-pay suspendable. They’re not going to go there. But they want you in Civil Division for the time being.’

Civ Div would correspond to a traffic division in the city police department. No weapon and with all the power of anybody else to make a citizen’s arrest. It was the entry level into the Bureau of Investigation and involved such tasks as compiling information on non-criminal violations by citizens and corporations, like failure to follow building or revenue-collection regulations, improper signage in the workplace and even failure to remit soda-bottle deposits promptly. Agents tended to endure the overwhelming paperwork and crushing boredom for only so long. If they weren’t promoted out into Crim Div, they usually quit cold.

‘I’m sorry, Kathryn. I didn’t have a choice. I tried. I really did.’

Going to bat for her...

Foster now regarded Overby with a neutral gaze that Dance, however, read as contempt for her boss’s backpedaling.

‘I told him body language isn’t an exact science. You did the best you could with Serrano. I saw you. We all did. It looked to me like he was telling the truth. Right, Steve? Who could tell?’

Dance could see that Foster was thinking, But it’s not our area of expertise to sit across from a perp and pick apart the entrails of his words, poses and gestures to get to the truth.

Overby continued, ‘But no one was hurt. Not badly. No weapons were discharged.’

The redhead in the parking lot had not been run over after all. She’d rolled out of the way, under an SUV, as the Altima had sped out of the parking space. Her Dell computer and her lunch had not survived; their loss was what the horrific-sounding crunch had signaled.

‘Charles, Serrano is High Mach. I missed it, I admit. But you see those one in every hundred cases.’

‘What’s that? High what?’ Foster asked.

‘A category of liars’ personalities. The most ruthless and, yeah, slick —’ she threw the word back at Foster ‘— are the “High Machiavellians”. High Machs love to lie. They lie with impunity. They see nothing wrong with it. They use deceit like a smartphone or search engine, a tool to get what they want. Whether it’s in love, business, politics — or crime.’ She added that there were other types, which included social liars, who lied to entertain, and adaptors, who were insecure people lying to make a positive impression. Another common type was the ‘actor’, someone for whom control was an important issue. ‘They don’t lie regularly, only when necessary. But Serrano, he just didn’t present like any of them. Sure not a High Mach. All I picked up was what I said, some small evasions. Social lies.’

‘Social?’

‘Everybody lies.’ The statistics were that every human being lied at least once or twice a day. Dance shot a glance to Foster. ‘When did you lie last?’

He rolled his eyes. She thought, Maybe when he said, ‘Good to see you,’ this morning.

She continued, ‘But I was getting to know him. I’m the only one here, or in any other agency, who’s spent time with him. And now we know he could be a key to the whole operation. I don’t need to lead it. Just don’t take me off the case.’

Overby ran a hand through his thinning hair. ‘Kathryn, you want to make it right. I understand. Sure you do. But I don’t know what to tell you. It’s been decided. Peter’s already signed off on the reassignment.’

‘Already.’

Foster: ‘More efficient, when you think about it. We didn’t really need two agents from this office. Jimmy Gomez is good. Don’t you agree, Kathryn?’

A junior agent at the CBI, one of the two others on the Guzman Connection task force. Yes, he was good. That wasn’t the point. She ignored Foster. She stood and, to Overby, said, ‘So?’

He looked at her with one raised eyebrow.

Her shoulders rose and fell impatiently. ‘I’m not suspended. I’m Civ Div. So, what’s on my roster?’

He looked blank for a moment. Then scoured his desk. He noted a Post-it, bright yellow, glaring as a rectangle of sun fell on it. ‘Here’s something. Got a memo on the wire from MCFD a little while ago. About that Solitude Creek incident?’

‘The fire at the roadhouse.’

‘That’s right. The county’s investigating but somebody from the state is supposed to make sure the club’s tax and insurance certificates’re up to date.’

‘Tax? Insurance?’

‘CHP didn’t want to handle it.’

Who would? Dance thought.

Foster’s absence of gloat was the biggest gloat she had ever seen.

‘Take care of that. Then I’ll see what else needs doing.’

With Dance ‘tasked’ to take on the fine print of California insurance regulations and tacitly dismissed, Overby turned to Steve Foster to discuss the manhunt for Joaquin Serrano.

‘First, this is interesting — there was no fire.’

‘No fire?’ Dance asked. She was standing in front of the Solitude Creek club, which was encircled with yellow police tape. The man in front of her was stocky, forties, with an odd patch on his face; it looked like a birthmark but, she knew, was a scar from a blaze years ago that had attacked the newly commissioned firefighter before he snuffed it dead.

She’d worked with Monterey County fire marshal Robert Holly several times and found him low-key, smart, reasonable.

He continued, ‘Well, there was , technically. Only it was outside. The club itself was never on fire. There, that oil drum.’

Dance noted the rusty fifty-five-gallon vessel, the sort used to collect trash in parking lots and behind stores and restaurants. It rested near the club’s air-conditioning unit.

‘We ran a prelim. Discarded cigarette in the drum, along with some rags soaked in motor oil and gasoline. That was all it took.’

‘Accelerant, then,’ Dance said. ‘The oil and gas.’

‘That was the effect, though there’s no evidence it was intentional.’

‘So people thought there was a fire. Smelled smoke.’

‘And headed to the fire exits. And that was the problem. They were blocked.’

‘Locked? The doors were locked ?’

‘No, blocked . The truck?’

He pointed to a large tractor-trailer parked against the west side of the club. It, too, was encircled with yellow tape. ‘It’s owned by that company there. Henderson Jobbing and Warehouse.’ Dance regarded the one-story sprawling structure. There were a half-dozen similar tractor-trailers sitting at the loading dock and nearby. Several men and women, in work clothes, a few in suits, stood on the dock or in front of the office and looked over at the club, as if staring at a beached whale.