Jeffery Deaver - XO

AFTER FIFTEEN MINUTES of silent driving, Crystal Stanning said to Kathryn Dance, “I didn’t block you in on purpose. I just parked there.”

“I know that.”

In Stanning’s personal car, a sun-faded Toyota, they were just pulling into the drive of Bobby’s trailer. The young detective stopped, brakes squealing. A belt needed replacing pretty soon too. The grass here, pale and thin, looked dustier and more spiky than before. Heat ripples undulated like sheets of flowing water above the Pathfinder.

Stanning fished another set of keys from her purse and said, “Yours’ll be hot. You’ll be wanting to mind the wheel. People’ve gotten burns.” They climbed out.

“I’ll take care.”

“And here it is September. I don’t know ’bout glaciers melting but I’ll tell you it’s hotter now than when I was a girl.”

“I hear you.”

“You can buy those windshield shades at Rite Aid. They work pretty good. Though I imagine you won’t be staying around.”

Dance wondered if Madigan had asked his deputy to drop that into the conversation to see where it went.

She said only, “Thanks.”

“Just ’tween us?”

“Sure.”

“Kayleigh Towne’s a big deal here. Fresno’s not the glitziest place on earth. We come in real low on nice-places-to-live surveys and Kayleigh’s made us famous. I don’t know, maybe the Chief thinks you’re here to boost yourself up, you and the CBI, I mean. Take her away from us, you might say, with this investigation. And if that happens, the sheriff’s office’ll lose out on the money. Maybe a lot of it.”

“Money?”

“Yeah, if we can’t handle the case, he’s thinking that’ll go into the hopper when it’s budget time. See, he fights hard for us in the department, the Chief. One time, he was convinced we couldn’t find this girl got herself kidnapped and killed because CSU couldn’t analyze some dirt trace at the scene. He still feels bad about that. So he’s always fighting for more pennies.”

“I see.”

“He got his dirt machine, whatever it is. Don’t know that it gets used much but that’s the way he is.”

Without another word, the deputy drove off.

Dance walked to her vehicle.

So what do I do? Even if she wanted to take on the case, which would mean working with a wholly uncooperative local team, she didn’t think her boss or Sacramento would go for it. Whatever Madigan felt, the CBI was the least political law enforcement organization she’d ever had contact with. Even if the suspect had been after a much more famous star, a stalking case wasn’t the sort the bureau would take on. Yet, Kayleigh was a good friend, other people were in danger, she was convinced, and Madigan was outgunned by Edwin Sharp.

That odd smile, the calculation, the calm demeanor, the research. They were armor and they were weapons.

And what was beneath that smile? What was in his heart and mind? To a degree unlike any other suspect she’d known, Edwin Sharp was a mystery. She simply couldn’t read him.

She got into the Pathfinder.

Got out again immediately. It had to be 130 degrees inside. She leaned in, started the engine and rolled down the windows. Then turned the AC on full blast.

As she waited for the interior to moderate, she walked closer to Bobby Prescott’s trailer, now marked with crime scene tape. She thought again about the astonishing collection of music history inside.

Brush and grass waved in the breeze and dust ghosts rose and vanished. She realized it was completely deserted here now, aside from the squad car in which a young Asian-American deputy sat in front on the shoulder, with a view of both Bobby’s and Tabatha’s trailers.

Despite the absorbing heat, Dance felt another chill of unease. She’d thought of another implication of Madigan’s arresting Edwin Sharp. If someone else was the killer, and he was using “Your Shadow” as a template, then he’d have free rein to carry out the next murder without fear the police were searching for him.

Finally the Pathfinder was cool enough to drive. She put the vehicle in gear and drove away from the scene, the yellow police tape fluttering cheerfully in the breeze behind her.

Debating.

I don’t want to do this. It’ll be a nightmare.

But ten seconds later she made the decision and was on her phone to the CBI office in Monterey, on her boss’s voicemail.

“Charles. It’s Kathryn. I need to take over an investigation in Fresno. Call me for the details.” She debated about explaining what kind of nuclear detonation this would provoke and the political nightmare that would ensue.

But she decided that was a conversation best had in real time.

KAYLEIGH TOWNE’S TWO-STORY Victorian squatted on a twenty-acre plot north of Fresno.

The house wasn’t large-twenty-five hundred square feet or so-but had been constructed by artisan builders, with one instruction: make it comfortable and comforting. She was a nester-tough for a performer who traveled seven months out of the year-and she wanted a home that cried cozy, cried family.

When she was twelve, Bishop Towne had sold the house she and her sister had grown up in, a ramshackle place north of Fresno, in the mountains. He said it was hard to get to in the winter, though the real reasons were that, one, his father had built it and Bishop would do anything he could to separate himself from his old man. And two, the rustic family manse hadn’t fit the image of the lifestyle he’d wanted to lead: that of the high-powered country superstar. He’d built a ten-million-dollar working ranch on fifty acres in the Valley and populated it with cattle and sheep he had no interest in or knowledge about raising.

The move had been horrifying enough to Kayleigh but worse was that he’d sold the beloved family house and land to a mining company that owned the adjacent property and they’d bulldozed the structure, planning to expand, though the company’d gone bankrupt; the unnecessary destruction was all the more traumatic to the girl.

She’d written a song about the place, which became a huge hit.

I’ve lived in LA, I’ve lived in Maine,

New York City and the Midwest Plains,

But there’s only one place I consider home.

When I was a kid-the house we owned.

Life was perfect and all was fine,

In that big old house… near the silver mine.

The silver mine… the silver mine.

I can’t remember a happier time,

In that big old house… near the silver mine.

Now, the man responsible for this displacement walked inside Kayleigh’s spacious living room and bent down and hugged her.

Bishop’s fourth wife, Sheri, accompanied him. She too embraced Kayleigh, then sat, after an awkward moment of debate about which piece of furniture to choose. Ash blond hair sprayed persuasively in place, the petite yet busty woman was a dozen years older than Kayleigh, unlike Wife Number Three, who could have attended the same high school as Bishop’s daughter-in the class behind her, no less.

Kayleigh, like Bishop, couldn’t remember much about Number Two.

Hulking Bishop Towne then maneuvered his massive frame onto a couch, moving slow-slower than a lot of people even older than he was. “The joints’re catching up,” he’d complained recently and at first Kayleigh thought he meant the dives he’d played in his early, drinking, fighting years, but then she realized he meant hips, knees, shoulders.

He was in cheap jeans and his ubiquitous black shirt, the belly rolling over his impressive belt, leaving the more impressive silver buckle only partly visible.