Jeffery Deaver - XO

“Okay, so he’s the DJ and they do requests. What happens about five minutes ago is some listener requests a song. I mean, part of a song. One of Kayleigh’s.”

Dance froze. She sat down. Madigan barked, “And?”

“The request was in an email. Signed, ‘A Kayleigh fan.’ It was for ‘Your Shadow.’ The last verse only. The DJ thought it was kind of funny, just the one verse, and played the whole song. But I got to thinking-”

“Oh, Christ,” Dance whispered. “Nobody ever played the fourth verse-to announce Congressman Davis’s killing!” She thought of Lincoln Rhyme’s comment: And he’s smart, right? He started with phones to keep you busy, then switched to other ways to play the song, like radio call-in requests?…

“Shit.” Madigan was nodding. He asked Lopez if the email had said anything else.

“No. Just that.”

Madigan disconnected without saying good-bye. He immediately called the station and got put through to the studio, told Bevo it was police business and asked that the email be forwarded to him. As they waited, he muttered, “And, hell, you know, we’re still looking for the connection between Simesky and Myra Babbage and the other killings-Bobby and Blanton, that file sharer, the attack on Sheri Towne. But nobody’s found anything yet.”

A moment later a flag popped up on his computer screen. The email request to the studio from a cryptic account, of random letters and numbers, was nothing more than what Lopez had already told them. Madigan called the Computer Crimes Division and forwarded it. A few minutes later they learned that it was an anonymous free email account and had been sent from a hotel in the Tower District.

“Let’s get the list of guests staying there,” Madigan said.

But Dance frowned. “Won’t do us any good. He won’t be a guest. He would’ve just picked up the wireless signal in the lobby, or even from the parking lot. Probably he’s got some connection with the area. But not the hotel.”

“You think that the assassination plot was just a coincidence? And there really is a stalker?”

“Well, we know it can’t be Edwin. He has an alibi. And it doesn’t need to be a stalker. It could be anybody, trying to frame Edwin to cover up the attacks-of Bobby, the file sharer or Sheri Towne…” She shook her head. “Or maybe those were just to establish a pattern… and the real intended victim’s next on his list.”

“Shit. How’d we miss this?… But who’s the new vic? What’s the fourth verse?”

Dance recited,

You can’t keep down smiles; happiness floats.

But trouble can find us in the heart of our homes.

Life never seems to go quite right,

You can’t watch your back from morning to night.

Madigan sighed. “Kill somebody in their home. That’s like the other verse, about the road-not very fucking helpful.”

“There’s the reference to ‘floating.’ Another river, pool, some other body of water?”

“I don’t have a clue. We’ve got a dozen lakes around here, nothing big close to town, though. Hundreds of miles of riverbanks. And must be a thousand pools. More.”

“Okay, maybe there’s some connection with the Tower District. But we’ve got to narrow it down more.” Dance thought for a moment. “You know, there was some physical evidence that Charlie’s people found that we never really looked at, because we had enough to figure out what Simesky and Myra were up to.”

Madigan called Charlie Shean, at CSU, had a conversation with him and jotted notes. After hanging up he said, “What wasn’t accounted for was gangue… industrial by-product stuff, or whatever it is. Never heard of that before. Human bone dust too. And Marlboros. Did Simesky or Myra smoke?”

“I never saw them.”

The chief glanced at his notes. “Also the boot print, with the really sharp toe. And some neatsfoot oil-leather treatment for baseball gloves. Maybe the dearly departed Peter Simesky played on a fascist softball league.”

A to B to Z…

Dance cocked her head. “That’s not all it’s used for.”

FINALLY, KAYLEIGH TOWNE was back in her own house, her sanctuary.

If only for a few hours. Alicia had texted that she wanted to see her about some matters having to do with the concert but she didn’t want to meet her at Bishop’s house.

I hear you there, sister. And when Alicia suggested they meet at Kayleigh’s she readily agreed. Darthur Morgan had driven her back here and then he’d collected his own car and said good-bye.

“Tell you, ma’am: been real good working with you.”

“Still ‘ma’am,’ after all we’ve been through?”

“That’s right, Kayleigh ma’am.” And he’d cracked what she believed was his first smile.

She laughed and hugged him, which he responded to stiffly but with good humor.

Then he’d driven away and Kayleigh was alone. But the relief she felt because Edwin wasn’t really a dangerous stalker was fading and ill ease seeped in to replace it-which had nothing to do with the events of the past few days and those horrible people using her as an excuse to kill the congressman.

No, it was a discomfort that struck closer to home.

Hey, lookit the good news, KT. The bad guys’re dead and Edwin’s out of the picture. So, no more talk about canceling any concerts…

Why hadn’t she said no to her father? Just insisted that they cancel? Didn’t he get that danger wasn’t the reason she didn’t want to go ahead with the concert? It wasn’t even that Bobby was dead, that Sheri’d nearly died… She just plain and simple didn’t want to get up onstage.

I’m not Superwoman, Daddy.

Your goals aren’t my goals.

Why was he so oblivious to that? The whole Industry was a huge bulldozer, pushing forward, forward, and if somebody got crushed-Bobby’s life, Kayleigh’s joy-so what? It was unstoppable.

No, of course Bishop Towne didn’t get that. All he got was that Kayleigh had to make money, had to feed her staff and family, had to feed the voracious fans, had to keep the record label and promoters happy.

And, she suspected, keep the memory of Bishop Towne alive-even among younger people who’d never heard him sing, hell, never heard of him at all.

And screw his daughter’s own peace of mind.

Screw what mattered most to her, just having a simple life.

Hm, she reflected. “A Simple Life.” Not a bad song title. She wrote it down, a few other phrases. Then she glanced at her watch. Alicia wasn’t due for another half hour. Kayleigh walked upstairs to her bedroom.

Through her mind went a verse from the now infamous “Your Shadow.”

You sit by the river, wondering what you got wrong,

How many chances you’ve missed all along.

Like your troubles had somehow turned you to stone

And the water was whispering, why don’t you come home?

Oh, what a time that had been, just sixteen, missing her mother so terribly, missing her baby, her father, just out of jail for the car accident, pressuring her to appear at some of his shows and launch her own career, which she wasn’t even sure she wanted. Overwhelmed, depressed. She’d driven to Yosemite by herself, gone hiking. And suddenly everything was too much for her. She’d looked down at the clear river and walked into it, on impulse. No plans, not really intending to hurt herself-or maybe she had been. Kayleigh didn’t know then and she didn’t know now. A minute later another hiker had plucked her out and sped her to the hospital. She was in danger more of hypothermia than drowning but not even much threat of that.