Jeffery Deaver - XO

“So,” Dance asked, looking him over, “you just jumped in the car and drove three and a half hours after supper?”

O’Neil was not big on eye contact even with those close to him and he examined the bar and the ruby-colored ellipse of the light refracted through his wineglass. “With that fellow in Salinas, there was a Monterey connection. It made sense I come on over here.”

She wondered if he’d have made the journey because he’d learned Jon Boling wasn’t here.

The detective continued, “And I figured I should bring you a present. The sort I couldn’t send FedEx. TJ said you came here unarmed. I checked out a Glock for you from CBI. Does Overby always insist on filling out so many forms?”

Yes, the head of her office would be worried that protocol involving firearms might end up with bad publicity for the Bureau. Well, for him.

“Charles is a triplicate kind of guy,” she said, smiling and adjusting her position on the seat as some pain from the tumble shot through her side.

He reached into his computer bag and handed her a black plastic gun case. “Fifty rounds. If you need more than that, well, we’re all in trouble.”

She took his arm, squeezed it. Wanted to rest her head against his shoulder again but refrained. “This was a vacation. That’s all it was.”

Just then Dennis Harutyun walked into the bar and Dance introduced them-though the local deputy remembered O’Neil from the Skype conference call. It was midnight but the detective looked as fresh as if it were the start of his daily tour, uniform shirt perfectly pressed. He said to Dance, “Charlie’s folks’ve been through the park. Nothing other than the cigarette and the fishing line used as a trip wire. We’ll send the cigarette in for DNA but there probably isn’t any. If he was smart, which he seems to be, he just lit the end, probably wore gloves. The line is nylon, the sort you’d buy in any one of a hundred sports or big box stores.”

O’Neil reported what he’d seen, which was very little. Dance had heard the weapon’s receiver but neither of them had actually seen a gun, much less the attacker himself.

The Monterey detective said, “Could be the weapon he stole from that deputy of yours, the one who’s out of commission now?”

“Yeah, could be. Oh, and it gets worse. You tell him?” Harutyun asked Dance, who said, “No.”

“The head of the detectives here and another officer were a little casual in a search and seizure. Edwin filed DOJ complaint and they’re suspended too.”

“Hell,” O’Neil muttered. “Pike Madigan?”

“That’s right. You saw him in our Skype conference.”

Dance glanced out the window and noted a few cars slowing as they drove past the now brightly lit park, filled with crime scene officers and uniformed deputies, flashing lights from cruisers. Dance wouldn’t have been surprised to see the big red Buick. But of course she didn’t.

“I think I better get some sleep.” A glance toward O’Neil. “You must be tired too.”

“Haven’t checked in yet either.”

No, he came to rescue me …

As Dance signed the drinks to her room, her mobile dinged with an incoming text. She’d turned it back on after her disastrous mission into the park.

“What is it?” Michael O’Neil asked, noting she was frozen, staring at the screen.

“It’s a text.” She barked a laugh. “From Edwin Sharp.”

“What?”

“He’d like to see me.”

“Why?”

“To talk, he says. He wants to meet me at the sheriff’s office.” Her eyes rose and she glanced at O’Neil and then Harutyun. “He also asked if I had a pleasant night.”

Harutyun exhaled in surprise. “That man is something else.”

She texted back that she’d meet him at nine.

He replied: Good. Look forward to spending some alone time with you, Agent Dance.

AT NINE ON the dot Kathryn Dance met with Edwin Sharp in an apparently little-used office in the FMCSO, not an interrogation room. No intimidating decor, no mirrors.

The location was Dance’s idea; to put Edwin at ease, though it wasn’t exactly comfy. The room was windowless and featured a gray battered desk, propped up by books where a leg was missing, a trio of dusty dead plants and stacks of boxes containing files. On the walls were a half dozen bleached pictures of a family vacation at a lake, circa 1980.

The imposing man entered ahead of her and sat, slumping in the chair and regarding her with amused, curious eyes. She noted again his outsized arms, hands and eyebrows. He was wearing a plaid shirt, tight jeans and a thick belt with a large silver buckle, an accessory that somehow had come to be a stereotypical element of cowboyness, though she wondered if anyone had ever really worn one on the plains of Kansas or West Texas in the 1800s.

His boots, with pointed toes tipped in metal, were scuffed but looked expensive.

“You mind if I take notes?” she asked.

“Not at all. You can even record this.” He looked around the room as if he knew they were doing just that; Dance wasn’t obligated to tell him, since they’d gotten a magistrate’s okay, given that he was a suspect in the murders.

Dance remained placid but was troubled by his perception, or intuition. And his utterly calm demeanor. That false wisp of a smile added to the eeriness.

“Any time you want to take a break for some coffee or a smoke, you just let me know.”

“I stay away from coffee,” he said and gave no reaction to the other offer. Was he being coy? Dance had been fishing to find out about his current smoking habit. But whether he’d outmaneuvered her or just hadn’t thought to refer to the vice didn’t matter; she’d raised the issue once and couldn’t bring it up again without giving something away-as Madigan had done throughout the first interview.

He then surprised her further by asking casually, “How long’ve you been in law enforcement, Agent Dance?”

Just the sort of question she herself would ask early in an interview to establish a baseline for kinesic analysis.

“For some time now. But please call me Kathryn. Now, what can I do for you?”

He smiled knowingly as if he had expected such a deflecting answer. “‘Some time.’ Ah. You seem seasoned. That’s good. Oh, and you can call me Edwin.”

“All right, Edwin.”

“You enjoying Fresno?”

“I am.”

“Little different from Monterey, isn’t it?”

Dance wasn’t surprised that she herself had been the subject of Edwin’s own investigation. Though she wondered how far his knowledge of her life extended.

He continued, “It’s pretty there. I don’t like the fog much. Do you live near the water?”

“So, what can I do for you, Edwin?”

“You’re busy, I know. Let’s get to the nut of it. That was an expression of my mother’s. I thought it was about squirrels, hiding nuts. I never did find out what it meant. She had all sorts of great expressions. She was quite a woman.” His eyes scanned her face, dipped to her chest and belly, though not in a lascivious way, then back to her eyes. “I wanted to talk to you because you’re smart.”

“Smart?”

“I wanted to talk to somebody involved in this situation who’s smart.”

“There’re a lot of good people here, on the sheriff’s office staff.” She waved her arm, wondering if he’d follow the gesture. He didn’t. He continued to study her intently, soaking up images.