Jeffery Deaver - XO

As he disconnected, Madigan said to Harutyun, “I want you to find Edwin. Bring him in. I don’t care where he is or what he’s doing. I need to talk to him. Now.”

“Arrest him?”

“No. Make it seem like it’d be good for him to come in. In his interest, you know.”

Dance heard a harsh exhalation as Madigan regarded her expression. “What? You don’t think that’s a good idea?”

She said, “No, I don’t. I’d vote for surveillance.”

Madigan squinted toward Harutyun. “Do it.”

“Sure, Chief.” Harutyun climbed into his cruiser and left, without a word to Dance.

No, she decided; the deputy hadn’t looked at the verses to Kayleigh’s song.

Madigan strode back to his car, his round belly swaying, as he looked over the scene. He grunted, “Crystal. Listen, I need you to come with me. Have a talk about something in my cruiser. We’ll pick yours up later.”

The woman dutifully climbed into the passenger seat of Madigan’s cruiser. A moment later they were headed out onto the highway, without a word of farewell to Dance.

No matter.

She fished for her keys and turned toward her SUV. She stopped, closed her eyes briefly in frustration and gave a sharp, bitter laugh. Crystal Stanning’s squad car was tight on the rear bumper of Dance’s Pathfinder. In front was a carport full of junk. A V-8 engine block, weighing in at half a ton, she guessed, sat six inches in front of her SUV.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

AT THE FRESNO-MADERA Consolidated Sheriff’s Office complex, P. K. Madigan stopped by the Crime Scene Unit, a block away, after returning from Bobby Prescott’s trailer.

He wanted to urge the unit to make this case a priority, which of course they’d do. Anything for Kayleigh Towne, the girl who’d helped put Fresno on the map.

And anything for Chief Madigan too.

But he was only half thinking about pep rallies. He also pictured Kathryn Dance.

Thinking about her beached car. Some people you needed to hit over the head to deliver a message. He’d send Crystal back in an hour or two, spring the gal from her automotive jail. Oh, sorry Kathryn; I didn’t know you’d be stuck between a rock and hard place-ha!

But he’d simply had it with people using Kayleigh like Dance was.

If Kayleigh hadn’t been involved, the likes of Kathryn Dance would never have come to Fresno, never have taken the time to even say howdy-do to a soul here. Where was Ms. Agent Dance and the CBI when some MS-13 wannabes took an Uzi and sprayed it into the pizza place on Herndon, killing two children and missing the rival drug dealer altogether?

Sorry, they weren’t celebrities.

He expected better from the CBI, thought they’d be above that publicity-grabbing shit. But Madigan had done his homework. He’d checked out Dance’s boss, Charlie Overby, on YouTube and the archives. Man was faster with a press conference than Wild Bill Hickok with a six-gun.

Dance worked for him, which meant she’d surely be just the same.

Just happened to be in the area and a friend of Kayleigh’s? My ass.

You don’t mind if I take over your investigation, do you, P.K.?

Yeah, she’d come up with a few helpful things. But she was in the case for the wrong reasons and that just wasn’t acceptable to P. K. Madigan. Besides, he didn’t believe much in that fishy mumbo jumbo of hers. Kinesics? Crap. That’d be like learning about a trout from books and the Discovery Channel-as opposed to catching, cleaning and cooking one up in Crisco.

No, his approach was different. Cases were made nowadays on forensics, not voodoo. They’d have evidence from the convention center, they’d have forensics from Bobby’s trailer-that cement dust, about as unique as trace could be-was a godsend.

Armed with that, Madigan would wear down the son of a bitch and get a confession in an hour or two.

He and Crystal walked into the CSU lab. He enjoyed the smell of the chemicals and the after-effects of the gas chromatograph, which reminded him of the Bunsen burner smell from high school, a good time in his life-football, his brother healthy, a girlfriend who ran the yearbook.

“Charlie,” he called.

The pudgy, rosy-cheeked director of the CSU, Charlie Shean, looked up from a computer in his office-the only four-walled space in the large room. The rest of the place had cubicles and workstations and the up-to-date forensic stuff that Madigan had fought hard to get for his people.

“Hey, Chief.” Shean’s accent grounded him somewhere along the Massachusetts coast, just north or south of Bean Town.

Madigan thought Shean was the best forensic tech his budget could afford and he was one of the few employees on the force the detective was deferential to, though, of course, he’d get in a few good ones about the CSU man’s name from time to time despite the different spelling.

“Need you to push everything through on this Towne case.”

The round man shook his head. “Poor thing. She’s got to be shook up. And that big concert this weekend. I got tickets, the wife and me. You going?”

“I am,” Stanning said.

Madigan wasn’t. He liked music but he liked music you could shut off with a switch when you wanted to. “What’ve we got?”

Shean nodded toward several techs in goggles, gloves and white jackets, working with quiet intensity at several stations not far away.

“Nothing yet. Three scenes. Convention center, Bobby’s trailer and Sharp’s rental. We’re processing about two hundred unknown prints. We have what we think are Sharp’s from his rental but he’s not in AIFIS.”

The FBI’s Automated Integrated Fingerprint Identification System was, in Madigan’s opinion, one of the few things the federal government was good for.

“But we aren’t sure they’re his.”

“I’m going to talk to Sharp. I’ll get ’em with the water bottle trick.”

“Who’s Agent Dance, CBI?”

Madigan snapped, “Why you asking?”

“She called-”

“Called you ? Here? Direct?”

“Yeah. She talked to Kayleigh’s assistant, Alicia Sessions, and found out where she thought somebody was spying on Kayleigh yesterday at the convention center. We dusted the area. Didn’t find anything. CBI’s involved?”

“No. CBI is not involved.”

“Oh.” When Madigan explained no further Shean continued, “You were right, that’s the cement dust at Bobby’s trailer, same stuff with the Baniero convictions. It’s unique to that area.”

“Have you got a match from Edwin’s place? Lopez said there was plenty of dust on the Kayleigh pictures and memorabilia in his house.”

“Lots of trace, yeah, but no results yet. Should know soon. And one more thing? The team found something in the orchestra pit. Some boxes had been moved-the manager said they usually kept stacks of them there to break somebody’s fall in an accident, you know? They’re special cartons. Stunt men use them. Whoever moved them, looked like he was wearing latex gloves. And similar marks on the smoke detectors; they had the batteries taken out.”

Bingo!

Miguel Lopez, who’d searched Edwin’s rental, had found a box of the gloves.

“The same as we got from Edwin’s place?”

“We don’t know that yet either. Wrinkle marks and manufacturer’s trace’ll tell us.”

“Good, Charlie. Interrupt me, there’re any breakthroughs.”

Madigan and Stanning left and walked to the sheriff’s office proper, then inside and down a long corridor. Passersby going in the opposite direction nodded to him, a bit cautious, some downright intimidated.

He thought again about Kathryn Dance. She hadn’t been the least intimidated by him. Thinking of her baking in the heat, he felt just a moment’s bad. She could always put the AC on in that fancy Pathfinder of hers. Besides, soccer moms like her always toted round tons of bottled water. Tap wasn’t good enough for them.