Solitude Creek: Kathryn Dance Book 4

by Jeffery Deaver

CHAPTER 77

  ‘That didn’t go well,’ Dance muttered.

  She and O’Neil were in her office.

  ‘Better than it could have gone. I don’t think there’ll be any lawsuits for … Well, I don’t know what Nashima would sue for.’

  ‘Wrongful accusation?’ she suggested, only half joking. She looked over the case material spread out on her desk and pinned to the whiteboard nearby. Evidence, reference to statements, details of the crimes. And photos, those terrible photos.

  Dance’s phone rang. But it wasn’t Barrett Stone, Esq., asking where he could serve the papers. TJ sounded sheepish as he said, ‘Well, okay, boss, I guess I will admit that I didn’t exactly look over all those facts and figures. I mean, longitude and latitude of the deeds and the plots or plats, whatever they are, and—’

  ‘Is Nashima innocent, TJ? That’s all I want to know.’

  ‘As the driven snow. Which is an expression I don’t get any more than “When it rains, it pours.” The Nevada company’s construction plans have nothing to do with the roadhouse; it’s all the site of the old relocation camp and an area toward Highway One. And he was telling the truth: all the companies involved are non-profits. Any earnings have to be spent on education and support of the museum and other human-rights organizations.’

  Nail in the coffin, Dance thought. Reflecting that that was one expression leaving little doubt as to meaning.

  Another: back to the drawing board.

  O’Neil’s phone buzzed. He glanced at caller ID. ‘My boss.’ The Monterey County sheriff. ‘Brother. Wonder what’s up.’ He answered. ‘Ted. Did Nashima call to complain? The Congressman? … No. Well, he might. I thought that’s what you were calling about.’

  Then she noticed O’Neil stiffen. Shoulders up, head down. ‘Really? … Are they sure? I’m here with Kathryn now. We can be there in twenty minutes. What’s the internet address?’

  He jotted something down.

  ‘We’ll check it out on the way.’ He disconnected. He looked at her with an expression she rarely saw on his face.

  Dance lifted her eyebrows. ‘We?’

  ‘The case I was working on, about the man who went missing, Otto Grant.’

  She recalled: the farmer who had gone bankrupt after his property was taken by the state. ‘You thought he might be a suicide?’

  ‘That’s what happened, right. Hanged himself. A shack out in Salinas Valley.’ He rose. ‘Let’s go.’

  She asked, ‘Me? It’s your case. You want me along?’

  ‘Actually, turns out, it’s our case now.’

  CHAPTER 78

  Michael O’Neil piloted his unmarked Dodge into the countryside, east of Salinas, a huge swathe of farm country, flat and, thanks to the precious water, green with young plants. Dance skimmed the blog entry Otto Grant had posted just before he’d taken his life, several hours ago. ‘Explains a lot,’ she said. ‘Explains everything.’

  The reason the Otto Grant case was now both of theirs was simple: Grant was the man who’d hired the Solitude Creek unsub to wreak havoc on Monterey County. In revenge for the eminent-domain action that had led to his bankruptcy.

  ‘As much of an oddball as we thought?’

  She scanned more. Didn’t answer.

  ‘Read it to me.’

  ‘Over the past few months readers of this BLOG have followed the chronicle of the Destruction of my life by the state of California. For those of you just “tuning in” I owned a farm off San Juan Grade Road, 239 acres of very fine land which I inherited from my Father, who inherited it from his Father.

  ‘Last year the state decided to steal two thirds of that property – the most valuable – under the totalitarian “law” known as eminent domain. And WHY did they want to take it from me? Because a nearby landfill, filled with garbage and trash, was nearly full to capacity and so they turned their sights on my land to turn it into a dump.

  ‘The Founding Fathers approved laws that let the government take citizens’ land provided they give “JUST COMPENSATION” for it. I’m an American and a patriot and this is the best country on earth but do you think Thomas Jefferson would allow taking all this property and then arguing about the value? Of course he wouldn’t. Because HE was a gentleman and a scholar.

  ‘I was given compensation equal to land used for grazing not farming. Even though it was a working vegetable farm and there are no livestock for miles around. I had to sell the remaining land because there wasn’t enough to cover expenses.

  ‘After paying off the mortgages I was left with $150,000. Which may seem like a princely sum except I then got a tax bill for $70,000!! It was only a matter of time until I ended up homeless.

  ‘Well, by now you know what I did. I did NOT pay the taxes. I took every last penny and gave it to a man I had met a few years ago. A soldier of fortune, you could say. If you wonder who’s at fault for what happened at Solitude Creek and Bay View Center and the hospital, look into a mirror. YOU! Maybe next time you’ll think twice about stealing a man’s soul, his heart, his livelihood, his immortality and discover within you a conscience.’

  Dance said, ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Phew. That’s enough.’

  ‘One hundred fifty thousand for the job. No wonder our unsub can afford Vuitton shoes.’

  They drove in silence for a few moments.

  ‘You can’t sympathize but you almost want to,’ O’Neil said.

  This was true, Dance reflected. Bizarre though it was, the letter revealed how the man had been so sadly derailed.

  In fifteen minutes, O’Neil pulled onto a dirt road, where an MCSO cruiser was parked. The officer gestured them on. About a hundred yards farther on they came to an abandoned house. Two more cruisers were there, along with the medical examiner’s bus. The officers waved to O’Neil and Dance as they climbed out of the car and made their way to the front door of the shack.

  ‘Door was unlocked when we got here, Detective, but he had quite a fortress inside. He was ready for battle if we came for him before his hired gun finished with the revenge.’

  Dance noted the thick wooden boards bolted over the windows of the one-story structure. The back door, the officer explained, was sealed too, similarly, and the front was reinforced with metal panels and multiple locks. It would have taken a battering ram to get inside.

  She spotted a rifle, some scatterguns. Plenty of ammo.

  Crime Scene had arrived too, dolled up in their Tyvek jumpsuits, booties and hoods.

  ‘You can look around,’ one officer said, ‘just mind the routine. Nothing’s bagged or logged yet.’

  Meaning: keep your hands to yourselves and wear booties.

  They donned the light blue footwear and stepped inside. It was largely what she’d expected: the filthy cabin, latticed with beams overhead, was dingy and sad. Minimal furniture, second-hand. Jugs of water, cans of Chef Boyardee entrees and vegetables and peaches. Thousands of legal papers and several books of California statutes, well thumbed, with portions highlighted in yellow marker. The air was fetid. He’d used a bucket for his toilet. The mattress was covered with a gray sheet. The blanket was an incongruous pink.

  ‘Where’s the body?’ O’Neil asked one of the officers.

  ‘In there, sir.’

  They walked into the back bedroom, which was barren of furniture. Otto Grant, disheveled and dusty, lay on his back in front of an open window. He’d hanged himself from a ceiling beam. The medical team had untied the nylon rope and lowered him to the floor, presumably to try to save him, though the lividity of the face and the extended neck told her that Grant had died well before they had arrived.

  The window, wide open. She supposed he’d chosen this as the site of his death so he could look out over the pleasant hills in the distance, some magnolia and oak nearby, a field of budding vegetables. Better to gaze at as your vision went to black and your heart shut down than a wall of scuffed, stained sheetrock.

  ‘Michael? Kathryn?’

  With a last look at
the man who’d caused so much pain to so many, O’Neil and Dance stepped back into the living room to meet the head of the CSU examination team, dressed in overalls and a hood.

  ‘Hey, Carlos,’ Dance said.

  The lean Latino CSU officer, Carlos Batillo, nodded a greeting. He walked to the card table that Grant had been using for his desk. The man’s computer and a portable router sat on it. It was open to his blog, the entry that Dance had read to O’Neil on the drive there.

  ‘Find anything else on it?’ O’Neil asked.

  ‘Bare bones. News stories about the stampedes. Some articles on eminent domain.’

  Dance nodded at a Nokia mobile. ‘We know he hired somebody to handle the attacks. He’s the one we want now – the “soldier of fortune” he referred to. Our unsub. Any text or call-log data that could be helpful? Or is it pass coded?’

  ‘No code.’ Batillo picked it up with a gloved hand. ‘It’s a California exchange, prepaid.’

  When he told her the number Dance nodded. ‘The unsub called it from his burner, the one he dropped in Orange County. Can I see the log?’

  She and O’Neil moved closer together and looked down, as the CSU officer scrolled.

  ‘Hold it,’ Dance said. ‘Okay, that’s the number of the phone the unsub dropped. And the others are the ones he bought at the same time, in Chicago.’

  Batillo gave a brief laugh. Perhaps that she’d memorized the numbers. He continued, ‘No voice mail. Fair number of texts back and forth.’ He scrolled through them. ‘Here’s one. Grant says he has, quote, “the last of your” money. “I know you wanted more and I wish I could have paid you more.”’ The officer read on. ‘“I know the risks you took. I’m For Ever in your debt.” “For Ever” capitalized. He does that a lot. Then, going back … Grant tells him the targets were perfect: the roadhouse, the Bay View Center, the Monterey Bay Hospital, “probably better the church didn’t work out”.’

  ‘He was going to attack a church?’ Dance asked, shaking her head.

  Batillo read one more. ‘“Thanks for the ammo.”’

  Soldier of fortune …

  The officer slipped the phone into a bag with a chain-of-custody card attached. He signed it and put the sealed bag into a large plastic container resembling a laundry basket.

  She glanced down at a treatise on the law of eminent domain.

  ‘How’d he meet the doer?’ Dance wondered aloud. ‘He said a few years ago.’

  Batillo said, ‘I saw some texts about “the gun show”. “Enjoyed talking weapons with you.”’

  ‘And I found the ammo I think he was talking about. Brick of twelve gauge and two twenty-three. “Arlington Heights Guns and Sporting Goods” on the label.’

  ‘Chicago,’ Dance said.

  O’Neil said wryly, ‘Tough manhunt. Six million people.’

  ‘We’ve got the gun-show reference. The ammo. The phones.’ She shrugged and offered a smile. ‘Needle in a haystack, I know. Right up there with “When it rains it pours.” But that doesn’t mean the needle isn’t there.’

  Forty minutes later she was back in her office, scrolling through the crime-scene pictures of the Otto Grant suicide – the rest of the report wouldn’t be ready for a day or two – and considering how to narrow down the task of finding their unsub in the Windy City, or wherever he might be. Page after page … Dance found herself staring at the pictures of Prescott and the woman he’d killed, positioned under the lights to get pictures for proof of death. If only she could let her eyes be theirs for a brief moment before they had glazed over, and darkness embraced them.

  To catch a fleeting glimpse of the man who’d done this.

  Who are you? Are you headed back to your home in Chicago, or somewhere else?

  And are you working for someone else now, a new job? Nearby? Or in a different part of the world?

  Questions she would answer, whether it took a week, a month, a year.

  CHAPTER 79

  Maggie’s eyes were wide and even Dance’s adolescent, seen-it-all son was impressed.

  They were backstage at the Monterey Performing Arts Center with Neil Hartman himself. The lanky man in his early thirties, dark curly hair and a lean face, looked every inch the country-western star, though that genre was only part of his repertoire. His songs and performance style were very similar to Kayleigh Towne’s – she was Dance’s performer friend, based in Fresno.

  When Dance and the kids had been ushered into the green room, the musician had smiled and introduced everyone to the band members present. ‘Kayleigh sends her best,’ he told her.

  ‘Where’s her show tonight?’

  ‘Denver. Big house, five thousand plus.’

  Dance said, ‘She’s doing well.’

  ‘I’ll head out there after tomorrow’s show. Maybe we’ll get to Aspen.’ He was grinning shyly.

  That answered one of Dance’s questions. The beautiful singer-songwriter hadn’t been dating anyone seriously for a time. There were worse romantic options than a Portland troubadour with dreamy eyes and a lifestyle that seemed more mom-and-pop than Rolling Stones.

  ‘Uhm …’ Maggie began.

  ‘Yes, young lady?’ Hartman asked, smiling.

  ‘Ask him, Mags.’

  ‘Can I have your autograph?’

  He laughed. ‘Do you one better.’ He walked to a box, found a T-shirt in Maggie’s size. It featured a photo from one of his recent CDs – Hartman and his golden retriever sitting on a front porch. He signed it to her with a glittery marker.

  ‘Oh, wow.’

  ‘Mags?’

  ‘Thank you!’

  For Wes, the gift was age-appropriate: a black T-shirt with ‘NHB’.

  ‘Cool. Thanks.’

  ‘Hey, you guys want to noodle around on a git-fiddle or keyboard?’

  ‘Yeah? Can we?’ Wes asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Wooee!’ Maggie sat down at the keyboard – Dance cranked the volume down – and Hartman handed Wes an old Martin. You couldn’t live in the Dance household without knowing something about musical instruments, and though Maggie was the real talent, Wes could chord and play a few flat-pick licks.

  When he started ‘Stairway To Heaven’, Hartman and Dance glanced at each other and laughed. The song that will never die.

  They talked about the show tonight. Hartman was growing in popularity but not at the Kayleigh Towne level yet, though his Grammy win had guaranteed a sold-out house at the performing arts center – nearly a thousand people were coming to see him.

  With the children occupied in the corner, the adults spoke in low voices.

  ‘I heard you got him. The guy behind the attacks.’

  ‘Well, the one who hired him.’

  ‘Grant, right? He lost his farm.’

  ‘That’s him. But we still don’t have the hit man he hired. But we will. We’ll get him.’

  ‘Kayleigh said something about you being … persistent.’

  Dance laughed. ‘That’s what she said, hm?’ Her kinesic skills told her that Hartman was translating. Maybe ‘obstinate’ or ‘pig-headed’ had been the young woman’s choice. She and Kayleigh were a lot alike in that regard.

  ‘I thought we were going to have to cancel the show.’

  Dance had been fully prepared to do just that – if they hadn’t closed the case before the concert.

  ‘You hear about Sam Cohen?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘He’s going to rebuild the roadhouse. A dozen or so of us are doing some benefit concerts, donating the money to him. He’s going to tear down the old building and put up a new one. He didn’t want to at first but we were …’ he laughed ‘… persistent.’

  ‘Great news. I’m really happy.’

  Maybe you can recover from some things, Sam. Maybe you can.

  Hartman’s drummer appeared in the doorway, smiled at the kids, then said, ‘Let’s play.’

  Hartman gave the children a thumbs-up. ‘You got your chops down, both of you. Next t
ime I’m in town, we’ll work up some tunes, I’ll get you out on stage with me.’

  ‘No way!’ Wes said.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Excellent!’

  Maggie frowned, considering something. ‘Can I cover a Patsy Cline song?’

  Dance said, ‘Mags, why don’t you sing a Neil Hartman?’

  Hartman laughed. ‘I think Ms Cline would be honored. We’ll make it happen.’

  ‘Hey, gang, let’s head to our seats.’

  ‘Bye, Mr Hartman. Thanks.’

  Wes handed over the guitar and, looking at his phone, headed toward the door.

  ‘Young man.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Say hi to Kayleigh for us.’ Dance gave him a smile.

  They left the green room and walked into the theater, which was filling up. There were about eight hundred people, Dance estimated.

  Year ago, she had dreamed of being a musician, appearing in halls like this. She had tried and tried, but however hard she worked, there came the point when her skill just didn’t make the final bump into the professional world. There came advanced degrees, a stint as a jury consultant, offering her kinesic skills commercially, then law enforcement. A wonderful job, a challenging job … And yet, what she wouldn’t have given to have the talent to make places like this her home.

  But then the nostalgia faded as the cop within her resurfaced. Dance was, of course, aware that she was in a crowded venue that would be a perfect target for their unsub at-large. He was surely a hundred miles away by now. But just because Otto Grant had said he’d gotten sufficient revenge didn’t mean he hadn’t had his man set up a whopper of a finale. On the way back from Grant’s shack, she’d arranged for a full sweep of the concert hall and for police to be stationed at each exit door.

  Even now she remained vigilant. She noted the location of the exits, fire hoses and extinguishers. She could see no potential sniper nests. And checked that the red lights on the security cameras glowed healthily and, because those models didn’t sport lights, unlike the one in the hospital elevator, she checked for emergency lighting: there were a dozen halogens that would turn the place to bright noon in the event of trouble.