Jeffery Deaver - Solitude Creek

‘Client’s in Lausanne, so he wants it to happen anywhere but Europe. He mentioned Latin America.’

‘Any preferences as to how?’

‘He was thinking a fall, maybe a cable car.’

March laughed. He could hotwire an ignition, he could disable an elevator. That was the extent of his mechanical engineering skills. ‘I don’t think so. A bus?’

‘A bus would work, I’d think.’

‘Send me the details.’

Glasses clinked again. March had sipped the wine once. He’d also eyed the pineapple juice.

Jenkins laughed and handed the juice glass to March, making sure their fingers brushed once more. ‘Just don’t mix it with Saint Estèphe.’

March let his boss’s hand linger on his for a moment.

‘Dinner?’ Jenkins asked.

‘Not hungry.’

March never was, not at times like this. All the work, hoping it would pay off. The way he planned out the jobs, well, it was fragile. There was a lot that could go wrong. Wasting all that time and money, the risk. Anyway, what it came down to: when the Get was hungry, March was not.

‘Oh, here. I brought you something.’ Jenkins dug in his Vuitton backpack. He handed over a small box. March opened it. ‘Well.’

‘Victoria Beckham.’

They were sunglasses, blue lenses.

Jenkins said, ‘Italian. And the lenses change color in the sun. Or get darker. I don’t know. I think there are instructions. You’ll love them.’

‘Thanks. They’re really something.’

Though March’s first thought was: wearing bright blue sunglasses on a job, where you would want to be as inconspicuous as possible?

Maybe I’ll go to the beach sometime. On vacation.

Would you let me do that, Get? Just relax?

He tried them on.

‘They’re you,’ Jenkins whispered, squeezing March’s biceps.

March put the glasses away and picked up the remote.

Click . The hypnotic ballet of sea creatures resumed on the TV. ‘Extraordinary. Four K,’ he said reverently. ‘Who shot this?’

‘Teenager, believe it or not.’

‘Four K. Hmm. Wave of the future.’

Jenkins asked, ‘What’s the plan?’

‘We need to stop her.’

‘That investigator? Dance?’

‘That’s right.’ He explained that the attempt to injure her boyfriend, somebody named Boling, hadn’t worked out. Now they needed to do something more efficient.

‘We’re leaving tomorrow. Why do anything? We’ll be a thousand miles away by noon.’

‘No. We have to stop her. She won’t rest until she gets us.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes,’ March said, staring at the sharks.

‘What do you have in mind?’

Dance, he’d seen when he’d slipped into her Pathfinder at the Bay View crime scene, was presently attending a concert at the Performing Arts Center in Monterey. He’d thought momentarily about staging a final attack there, with the chance that she’d be severely injured or killed. But coming after Grant’s suicide that would be suspicious.

Besides, there was another reason he didn’t want her dead.

He looked over the notes he’d jotted after getting the information on the man’s license plate. ‘There’s a close associate. Named TJ Scanlon. Lives in Carmel Valley. We’ll kill him, make it look gang-related. It’ll deflect her. She’ll drop everything and go after them.’

‘Why not just kill her?’

March could think of no answer. Just: ‘It’s better this way.’

Another reason...

He jabbed a finger at the TV screen. ‘Ah, watch. This is it.’

On the screen a hammerhead shark, awkward yet elegant, swam toward the camera, then veered upward and, as casually as a human swatting a mosquito, opened its mouth and neatly removed the leg of a surfer treading water overhead. The shark and limb vanished as the massive cloud of red streamed like smoke into the scene, eventually obscuring the mutilated young man, writhing as he died.

‘Well,’ Jenkins said. ‘Four K. Excellent.’ He lifted a glass of wine.

March nodded. He stared at the imagery for a moment longer and shut the set off. He picked up the Louis Vuitton bag, checked that the hunting knife and gun were still inside, and gestured his boss toward the door. ‘After you.’

This was an era he knew nothing about, didn’t care for, didn’t appreciate.

The sixties in the US. At least this part of the sixties.

Antioch March believed it was called the counterculture and, for some reason, CBI agent TJ Scanlon loved it.

As they stood in the living room of the three-bedroom ranch-style house in Carmel Valley, March and Jenkins surveyed the place. Orange and brown dominated. Carpet, furniture, tablecloths. On the wall were posters — nice ones, framed — of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, the Mamas and the Papas, Jefferson Airplane. The doors were strings of colorful beads that clicked when you pushed them, gun in hand, to make sure you were alone. And, yes, a lava lamp.

‘Sets you on edge, doesn’t it?’ Jenkins asked.

It did.

In his gloved hand March clicked on a black light. The ultraviolet rays spectacularly lit up what had been a dull poster of a ship improbably sailing through the sky.

He shut the light off again.

A glance at a large peace symbol, reminiscent of the Mercedes Benz emblem on his car back home. The sixties’ icon was made out of shells.

On edge...

He told the Get to relax; it was, he suspected, still angry that the Asian family on the rocks had missed the opportunity to die spectacular deaths in the icy bay.

Somebody’s not happy...

You will be soon.

They had parked two blocks away and made their way to Scanlon’s house through woods, out of sight of any of the neighbors. March, the technician of the two, had examined the man’s place carefully from the distance. Then, convinced it was unoccupied, he’d slipped up and peered through the windows. No alarms, no security cameras. The lock had been easily jimmied. Then, prepared to flee in case they’d missed an alarm, they’d waited before preparing the room for the events tonight.

March now turned from the bizarre décor and looked over the cot they’d set up. TJ Scanlon’s final resting place. The young man would be tied down and tortured. You didn’t need much. March had his knife and he’d found a pair of pliers. Pain was simple. You didn’t need to get elaborate.

He’d staged the scene rather well also, he thought. They’d bought a bottle of rubbing alcohol, to enhance the agent’s agony, from a convenience store in the barrio of Salinas, a place known for gangs, and they’d picked up some trash and discarded rags in the area too. A little research had revealed the colors and signs of the K-101s, which was a crew that the CBI had had some run-ins with, arresting a few lieutenant-level bangers. March had tagged the signs on Scanlon’s wall, right above the spot where he would die. Presumably after giving up all sorts of helpful information about ongoing investigations into the gang.

March wondered what ‘TJ’ stood for. He didn’t bother to prowl through paperwork to find out.

Thomas Jefferson?

Jenkins was asking, ‘What if he’s not coming home tonight. Maybe—’

And just then there came the sound of a car on the long gravel drive, approaching.

‘That’s him?’

March eased up to the window to look out.

Which gave Jenkins a chance to put his hand on March’s spine.

It’s all right.

‘Yep.’

Scanlon was alone in the car. And there were no other vehicles with him.

Suddenly the Get slipped a regret into March’s head that it wasn’t Kathryn Dance whom he was about to work on after all.