Jeffery Deaver - XO

KATHRYN DANCE SMILED a greeting to the woman she’d been introduced to-Suellyn Sanchez, Kayleigh’s sister-and walked to the door. She noted the big red Buick speeding away.

“It was him,” Kayleigh whispered, also looking out the window and struggling to put on a calm facade so as not to worry the little girl.

Suellyn embraced her father-a seemingly pro forma gesture. She greeted Sheri too, more affectionately than Kayleigh had. “What’s with the police? Is this about Bobby?”

Kayleigh, however, glanced icily toward her father and turned her attention to Mary-Gordon. “Honey, let me show you some new games I got for the next time you visited. Just for you.”

“Yay!… Where’s Freddie?”

“He’s in the stable at Grandpa’s house. You and your mommy are going to be staying there.”

“I like Freddie but I want to stay with you,” the girl announced.

“Oh, I’m not going to be here much. I’ll come see you at Grandpa’s.”

“Okay.”

“Come on.”

Her arm around the girl, Kayleigh steered the girl to the bodyguard. “And this is Mr. Morgan. He’s a friend of mine. He hangs out with us.”

He delicately shook the girl’s hand. “My name’s Darthur. You can call me that.”

The girl looked at the security man with curiosity. “That’s a funny name.”

“You bet it is,” the man said, looking uncertainly at Kayleigh, but following gamely.

“My name’s Mary-Gordon but it’s not two names, it’s one. Mary and Gordon, with a line in between. They call the line a hyphen.”

“It’s a very pretty name.”

“Thank you. I like you.”

Dance called Harutyun and told him that the sister and niece were safe. He reported they still had no ID on the victim but the fire was out and the CSU and medical examiners were about to go inside, process the body and run the scene.

Kaleigh and the girl vanished into the den and Kayleigh returned a moment later, steamed up to her sister and said, “What were you thinking?”

“What?”

“Do you know who gave you that ride?”

“That friend of yours. Said his name was Stan.”

Dance pointed out, “Stanton. Middle name.”

“Jesus Christ.” Kayleigh’s voice dropped. “It’s my goddamn stalker. Did you think to call? He’s the one who murdered Bobby.”

“What? Oh, my God. But you said he was fat, disgusting…”

“Well, he made himself unfat,” Kayleigh snapped, looking angrily into her sister’s brown eyes. She shook her head and relented. “Sorry. It’s not your fault. You just… you shouldn’t be here.” A cold glance toward Bishop.

Dance said, “We aren’t sure who’s behind it. Edwin Sharp is a possible suspect. But you should avoid any more contact with him.”

“Where did you go?” Kayleigh asked.

“He asked if we wanted to see something Mary-Gordon might like. He said it was on the way. We went to the tree museum near Forty-One and the Bluffs. He said he knew you liked to spend time hiking in the forest.”

Kayleigh closed her eyes. “He knew that too?” Her hands were shaking. “I was so scared! Why didn’t you pick up when I called?”

“The phone was in my computer bag. He put that in the trunk. I was going to keep it with me but he took it. I mean, I’m sorry, K, but he knew everything about you. He said you’d written a song about trees but it got co-opted by Greenpeace or some eco movement and you stopped performing it. I didn’t even know that. He knew about everybody in the band, he knew about Sheri. I thought he was a good friend.”

Morgan said, “So the other killing, just now? By the river? That couldn’t have been him?”

Dance considered the timing again. She decided that Edwin could have abducted and shot the victim, set fire to the body and made it to the airport in time to pick up Suellyn and her daughter.

“Oh, Jesus. We were in the car with somebody who’d just killed a man?” Suellyn whispered.

Bishop said, “Well, you’re safe now. That’s all that matters. But that fucker. He’s going down.”

Kayleigh wiped more tears.

Suellyn said, “This is just so strange. I almost got the idea he was your boyfriend. He said he was worried about you; you looked so tired. There was a lot of pressure on you. He wasn’t even sure it was a good idea to give the concert. He thought you should reschedule.”

Kayleigh’s eyes swiveled to her father once more but that topic remained buried.

“He said…” Suellyn struggled to get it just right. “He said sometimes Kayleigh needed to think more about what’s good for her. Too many people wanted a piece of her soul.”

Your shadow…

Bishop turned to his older daughter, asking casually, “How was the flight?”

“Jesus, Dad. Really.” Suellyn looked exasperated.

Kayleigh said she didn’t want Mary-Gordon here any longer. She was afraid Edwin would come back again to spy and might try to approach the girl. They should go with Bishop and Sheri to their house, outside town. And they should leave now.

Kayleigh blinked and then looked down, realizing she was still holding the goofy stuffed redwood tree. She started to throw it out angrily but changed her mind and set it aside, on a shelf.

Suellyn went into the den to get her daughter and the toys Kayleigh had bought her.

At that moment Dance’s phone rang; Dennis Harutyun was calling. She asked, “So you’ve identified the vic?”

“That’s right.”

“Is there any connection with Kayleigh?” she asked.

“Yes and no. You better come see.”

THE STENCH WAS bad, but so much rubber and plastic and oil had burned that at least the smell of human flesh and hair was largely obscured. The wind helped too.

Not that Dance didn’t need all her willpower to keep from gagging, if not worse.

Love is fire, Love is flame…

The scene was a broad dusty field, a cracked and crumbling parking lot, a long-closed gas station collapsed in on itself and the burned shed, of which there wasn’t much left. The smoke was still rising in furious plumes. The heat you could feel from the shoulder of the road. Not far away was the gray-brown strip of low river that had inspired this location for the killing.

The CSU team was still at work, though the firefighters outnumbered the police. Fire was a much greater risk to the population of Fresno than a single crazed stalker.

Harutyun, the senior detective on the scene, explained what they’d found, which wasn’t much. The shell casings, the CDs, the money-the altar to Kayleigh. But even the twenty-dollar bill seemed to have been washed-literally laundered. And the fire had been such a serious threat that the men and women had charged onto the grounds with hoses to contain the flames, surely contaminating the scene worse.

Besides, Dance guessed, if Edwin was behind the killing he wouldn’t have left much evidence. He was too clever for that.

Harutyun continued the explanation he’d begun over the phone.

The victim had indeed known Kayleigh-and about a thousand other performers.

His name was Frederick Blanton. “He’s a crook,” Harutyun summarized. “ Was a crook.”

Dance thought of the CDs, the altar… and what she knew of the music business. “Into illegal file sharing?”

“That’s very good, Kathryn. Yes.”

“What’s the story?”

“There were close to ten thousand computers on the network. People would download songs, music videos too. Kayleigh’s were among the most popular.”

“How’d you ID him?” Dance glanced inside. “Obviously, no prints.”

“Weren’t hardly even any hands or feet. One hand must’ve burned down to ash, gone completely. We’ll have to confirm with DNA but we found his wallet in a part of the shed that didn’t burn so bad. We checked his address-he lived in the Tower District, about seven, eight miles from here. A team’s going through his house now. They found his door kicked and it was a mess-all his computers were wrecked. We figured the perp probably forced him to destroy the file-sharing servers then made him get into the trunk of his car. If it’s Edwin he’s got plenty of room in that Buick of his. Drove him here, shot him and set the fire.”