Solitude Creek: Kathryn Dance Book 4

by Jeffery Deaver

  ‘He even set it up with Rashiv to meet “accidentally” and Wes’d pretend to steal a comic or something from him, threaten to hurt him. Donnie bought it all.’

  ‘And today? At Goldschmidt’s?’

  ‘Wes’d noticed Donnie acting strange lately. More erratic. The night Donnie tagged Goldschmidt’s house? Wes saw him pick up a rock. He was going to attack somebody who was approaching where they were hiding. Near Junipero Manor.’

  Dance whispered, ‘Me. That was me.’

  O’Neil said only, ‘I know.’ He continued, ‘Wes couldn’t give himself away to Donnie that night but he turned his phone volume up and scrolled to ringtones. It played a sample, like he was getting a call. Donnie got spooked and took off.’

  Dance closed her eyes and her head dipped. ‘He saved me. Maybe saved my life.’

  ‘Then tonight he caught a glimpse of something in Donnie’s pocket and thought it might be a gun. So he decided, whatever evidence he had, enough was enough. It was time to call in the cavalry.’

  ‘Why didn’t he just report it in the first place? A month ago? Why play undercover?’

  O’Neil’s eyes swept her desk. ‘I don’t know. Maybe to make you proud of him.’

  ‘I am.’

  But even as Kathryn Dance said those words she wondered, Does he know it? Really know it?

  Or, Dance suddenly thought of O’Neil, to make you proud of him.

  Silence filled the room. Dance was thinking of the conversation she would have to have with the boy. Whatever the good motives, there were some minefields here. Dance had amassed capital in Monterey County with the prosecutor’s office; she’d have to see how much, and how negotiable it was. And, she thought too, Donnie’ll need help. Not just jail time. At that age, nobody was irredeemable. Kathryn Dance believed this. She’d do what she could to get him into treatment, whatever facility he was sent to.

  Then she looked at O’Neil, to see that his expression and posture had changed dramatically. No kinesic subtlety here.

  And everything she saw set off alarms within Kathryn Dance. She thought: As if what Michael just told me about Wes weren’t enough. What was coming next?

  He said, ‘Look, as if what I just told you wasn’t enough …’

  Any other time she might have smiled; now her heart was racing.

  ‘There’s something else.’ He glanced back to her door. Still shut.

  ‘I can see that. What’s it about?’

  ‘Okay, it’s about … I guess you could say, us.’

  Dance’s head rose and dipped slightly, a nod being one of the most ambiguous of gestures. It was often a defensive move, meaning: I need to buy some time and toughen up the heart.

  Because she knew what was coming next. Michael and Anne were getting back together. It happened more than one might think, reconciliation. Once the divorce papers had been signed, a little cooling off, the ex-wife’s lover turned into a creep or was duller than dull. Old hubby doesn’t seem so bad after all. They’d decided to clean house, roll up their sleeves and try again.

  Why else would Anne have been there the other day, at CBI, with the kids? Dressed like the perfect mom from Central Casting. O’Neil’s comments: the sort-of babysitter, the plural pronoun about having plans the night of Maggie’s show.

  ‘So, here’s the thing.’

  Michael O’Neil’s eyes were fixed on a thoroughly ugly yellow ceramic cat that Maggie had squeezed together in first grade.

  Dance’s eyes were unwaveringly on his.

  CHAPTER 92

  Her house beckoned.

  The Victorian structure glowed, thanks to subdued sconces near the door and, from inside, light paled to old bone by the curtains. Dots of white Christmas lights around an occasional window or clustering on a plant added to the ambience of magic. The illumination was lopsided but no matter: Dance had never felt the need to be symmetrical.

  Kathryn Dance shut off the SUV’s engine but remained where she was, fingers enwrapping the wheel tightly. They trembled.

  Wes …

  Playing cop, Wes.

  Lord, Lord … He might’ve been killed by Goldschmidt. A Beretta shotgun, O’Neil had reported. Those weapons are works of art, yes, but their purpose is to kill. And they do such a very fine job of it.

  Releasing the wheel finally. Her palms cooled from the departing sweat.

  Rehearsing what she’d say to her son. It was going to be a lengthy discussion.

  Then, of course, her thoughts returned to what Michael O’Neil had said.

  ‘Look, as if what I just told you wasn’t enough …’

  Well, isn’t that always the case? The conversations you don’t want to have, can’t have, refuse to have … they happen on their own, and usually at the worst possible moments. She was still nearly paralyzed with dismay. A dozen slow breaths.

  Dance finally now climbed out of the Pathfinder and walked onto the porch, key out.

  She didn’t need to do any unlatching, however. The door opened and Jon Boling stood before her, in jeans and a black polo shirt. She realized his hair was a little longer. It would have been that way for the past few days, of course, and she thought: Something else I missed. Missed completely.

  Well, it had been one hell of a week.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  They kissed and she walked inside.

  A skitter of multiple feet behind her, claws that needed clipping. Some enthusiastic couch-jumping and a few good-to-see-you rolls on the back. Dance did the obligatory, but forever comforting to all involved, canine head rubs.

  ‘Wine?’

  Good diagnosis.

  A smile, a nod. She sloughed off her jacket and hooked it. Too tired even to search for a hanger.

  He returned with the glasses. White for both of them. It’d be an unoaked Chardonnay that they’d discovered recently. Michael liked red. It was all he drank.

  ‘The kids?’

  ‘In their rooms. Wes came home about an hour ago. Didn’t want to look at a program I’d hacked together. And that’s a little weird. He’s in his bedroom now. Seemed kind of moody.’

  Wonder why.

  ‘Mags is in her room too. Been singing up a storm. Violin may be a thing of the past.’

  ‘Not bad outside, the temperature. Shall we?’

  They wandered out to the Deck, brushed curly yellow leaves off the cushions of a couple of uneven wooden chairs. The Monterey Peninsula wasn’t like the Midwest, no seasons really. Leaves fell at their leisure.

  Dance eased down and sat back. Fog wafted past, bringing with it the smell of damp mulch, like tobacco, and the spice of eucalyptus. She remembered the time Maggie had made a pitch for getting a koala-bear cub, citing the fact that there were plenty of leaves for it to eat in the neighborhood. ‘Won’t cost us a thing!’

  Dance hadn’t bothered to marshal arguments. ‘No,’ she’d said.

  Boling zipped up his sweater. ‘News did a story on March.’

  Dance had heard about it; she’d declined to comment.

  ‘Antioch March,’ Boling mused. ‘That’s his real name?’

  ‘Yep. Went by Andy mostly.’

  ‘Are March’s clients guilty of crimes?’

  ‘I’m not sure where it falls. Conspiracy probably, if they actually ordered a killing. That’s a wide net. According to March, though, a lot of the clients are overseas. Japan, Korea, South East Asia. We can’t reach them and this isn’t an extradition situation. TJ’s going through the website’s records now. I think we’ll have some US citizens the Bureau’ll talk to. March is cooperating. It was part of the deal.’

  Another shiver.

  I’m glad we’re in each other’s lives now …

  Boling was saying, ‘I’ve always worried about video games, the desensitizing. Kids, at least. They lose all filtering.’

  In 2006 a young man arrested on suspicion of stealing a car wrested a gun away from an officer and shot his way out of the police station, killing three cops. He was a huge fan of the
very game that March had mentioned, Grand Theft Auto.

  Other youthful shooters – the Sandy Hook killer and the two Columbine students – were avid players of violent shooting games, she believed.

  One side of the debate said there was no causal effect between games and the act of violence, asserting that youngsters naturally prone to bully, injure or kill were drawn to video games of that sort and would go on to commit crimes even without gaming. Others held that, given the developmental process of children, exposure to games did tend to shape behavior, far more than TV or movies, since they were immersive and took you into a different world, operating by different rules, far more than passive entertainment. She sipped her wine and let these thoughts slip away, replaced by the memory of Michael O’Neil’s words an hour ago.

  So, here’s the thing …

  A tight knot in her belly.

  ‘Kathryn?’

  She blinked and realized Boling had asked her something. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Antioch. He was Greek?’

  ‘Probably second or third generation. He didn’t look Mediterranean. He looked like some hunky actor.’

  ‘Antioch. That’s a town, right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  They watched a wraith of fog skim the house, urged on by a modest breeze. The temperature was cool but Dance needed that. Cleansing. So, too, was the noise of seals barking and of waves colliding with rock, the sounds comical and comforting respectively.

  It was then, with a thud in her belly, that she noticed something sitting on the Deck floor, near Jon Boling’s feet. A small bag. From By the Sea Jewelry in Carmel. She knew the place. Since Carmel was such a romantic getaway, the jewelry stores tended to specialize in engagement and wedding rings.

  My God, she thought. Oh, my God.

  The silence between them rolled up, thicker than the fog. And she realized that he’d been mulling something over. Of course, a rehearsed speech. Now he got to it.

  ‘There’s something I want to say.’ He smiled. ‘How’s that for verbal uselessness? Obviously if I wanted to say something I’d just say it. So. I will.’

  Dance administered a sip of wine. No, a gulp. Then she told herself: Keep your wits, girl. Something big’s happening here. She set the glass down.

  Boling inhaled, like a free diver about to test himself. ‘We were talking about getting up to Napa, with the kids.’

  The coming weekend. A little vineyard touring, a little shopping. On-demand TV in the inn. Pizza.

  ‘But I’m thinking we shouldn’t go.’

  ‘No?’

  So he had in mind a romantic getaway, just the two of

  them.

  Then he was smiling. A different smile, though. A look in his eyes she hadn’t seen before.

  ‘Kathryn—’

  Okay. He never used her name. Or rarely.

  ‘I’m going to be leaving.’

  ‘Now? It’s not that late.’

  ‘No, I mean moving.’

  ‘You’re …’

  ‘There’s a start-up in Seattle wants me. May be the new Microsoft. Oh, and how’s this? It’s a new tech company that’s actually making money.’

  ‘Wait, Jon. Wait. I—’

  ‘Please?’ He was so even, so gentle, so reasonable.

  ‘Sure. Sorry.’ A smile and she fell silent.

  ‘I’m not going to use the clichés people throw around at times like this. Even though— Didn’t you say clichés are clichés because they’re true?’

  A friend of hers, not she, but she didn’t respond.

  ‘What we’ve had is wonderful. Your kids are the best. Okay, maybe those are clichés. But they are the best. You’re the best.’

  She gave him infinite credit for not talking about the physical between them. That was wonderful and comfortable and fine, sometimes breathtaking. But it wasn’t a spoke of this discussion’s wheel.

  ‘But you know what? I’m not the guy for you.’ He laughed his soothing laugh. ‘You do know what I’m talking about, right?’

  Kathryn Dance did, yes.

  ‘I’ve seen you and Michael together. That argument you had on the porch after you came back from Orange County. It wasn’t petty, it wasn’t sniping. It was real. It was the kind of clash that people who’re totally connected have. A bit of flying fur but a lot of love. And I saw the way you worked together to figure out that the killer, the unsub, had done this for hire. Your minds jumping back and forth. Two minds but, you know, really one.’

  He might have gone on, she sensed, but there was really no need for additional citation: it was a self-proving argument.

  Tears prickled. Her breath was wobbly. She took his hand, which as always was warmer than hers. She remembered once, under the blanket, she’d slipped her fingers along his spine and felt him tense slightly from the chill. They’d both laughed.

  ‘Now, I’m not matchmaking. All I can do is bow out gracefully and you take it from there.’

  Her eyes strayed to the bag. He noticed.

  ‘Oh, here.’ He reached to the floor and retrieved it.

  He handed it to her. And she reached inside. As she did, the tissue rustled and Patsy, the flat-coated retriever, thirty feet away, swung a silky head their way. Leftovers might loom. When she saw the humans’ attention was not on food, she dozed once more.

  The box, she noted, was larger than ring size.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not really a present. Considering it was yours to start with.’

  She opened the box and gave a laugh. ‘Oh, Jon!’

  It was her watch, the present from Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, shattered in her enthusiasm to flop to the ground, adding credibility to the Serrano ‘escape’. Clutching the Rolex, she flung her arms around him, inhaled his complex scents. Skin, shampoo, detergents, aftershave. Then she eased back.

  In his face, sadness, yes, but not a degree of doubt, not a hint that he hoped for her to protest. He’d analyzed the situation and drawn conclusions that were as true as the speed of light and the binary numerical system. And as immutable.

  ‘So, what I’m going to do now, so I can hold it together – because I really want to hold it together and I can’t for very long – is to head home.’

  He rose. ‘Here’s my plan and I think it’s a good one. Come back every couple of weeks, keep an eye on my house, visit friends. Hack some code with Wes, come to some of Maggie’s recitals. And – if you make the decision you ought to make – you and Michael can have me over to dinner. And – if I make the decisions I ought to make – I imagine I’ll meet somebody and bring her along with me. And you can hire me to perform my cogent forensic analysis, though I have to say that the CBI’s outside-vendor pay rate is pitiful.’

  ‘Oh, Jon …’

  She laughed through the tears.

  They walked to the door and embraced.

  ‘I do love you,’ he said. And touched her lips with his finger, saving her from a stick-figure response. With a rub of Dylan’s sleek muzzle, Jon Boling stepped through the front doorway and, to all intents and purposes, out of her life.

  Dance returned to the Deck, sat back in the chair, enwrapped by the damp chill she hadn’t been aware of earlier. Embraced too, far more strongly, by Jon Boling’s absence. She slipped on the repaired watch and stared at the face while the second hand made full circuit, just visible in the amber light from a maritime sconce mounted on the wall above and behind her.

  Then she closed her eyes and sat back, as Michael O’Neil’s words, from forty minutes earlier, came back to her now.

  ‘So, here’s the thing. I’ve thought about this for months, and tried to figure out some other way to say it.’

  Kathryn Dance had readied herself for ex-wife Anne’s name to rear itself in the next sentence.

  ‘I know you’re with Jon now. He’s a good guy and I’ve seen you both together. It clicks. The kids like him. That’s important. Real important. He’ll never hurt you.’

  She’d wondered: Where is
this going? These words, amounting to rambling from Michael O’Neil, were disorienting. Why was he justifying to her getting back together with his ex?

  His eyes fixed on the ugly yellow ceramic cat, he’d continued, ‘I was saying, months and months. But there’s no way except meeting it head on. I don’t think you’re going to want to hear it but I’ve—’

  ‘Michael.’

  ‘I want to get married.’

  Remarried to Anne? she’d thought. Why the hell ask my permission?

  Then he added, ‘You can say no. I’ll understand. You can say Jon’s in your life for ever. But I had to ask.’

  Oh, my God. Me. He’s proposing to me.

  ‘I thought Anne was back,’ she’d said. Well, stammered.

  He’d blinked. ‘Anne? Sort of, I guess. She and her boyfriend are getting a small place in the Valley. She knows she hasn’t been the best mother. She’s resolved to change that and’s going to spend a lot more time with the kids. I was proud of her.’ He’d given a shallow laugh. ‘Anne has nothing to do with us. You and me.’

  ‘Oh, my,’ Dance had whispered. Her eyes, too, fell on the jaundiced feline sculpture squatting on her desk. It had never been examined as much as it had in the past three minutes.

  Now, sitting on the chill Deck, she recalled perfectly O’Neil’s next words: ‘So there, I’ve said it. Will you marry me?’ He looked her over closely. ‘You know, I’m thinking, after all these years knowing you, working with you, I don’t believe I’ve picked up a lick of kinesics. I have no idea what you’re thinking.’

  And Dance had risen from her office chair and walked around the desk to O’Neil. He, too, had stood up.

  She said, ‘Sometimes it’s better to leave kinesics out of it. And stick with words. Well, one word.’ She’d put her arms around him and, her mouth close to his ear, gripped him as tightly as she could. And answered his question. ‘Yes,’ Kathryn Dance said. ‘Yes.’

  Acknowledgments

  With undying gratitude to: Will and Tina Anderson, Sophie Baker, Giovanna Canton, Sonya Cheuse, Jane Davis, Julie Deaver, Jenna Dolan, Kimberly Escobar, Jamie Hodder-Williams, Kerry Hood, Mitch Hoffman, Cathy Gleason, Emma Knight, Carolyn Mays, Claire Nozieres, Hazel Orme, Abby Parsons, Seba Pezzani, Michael Pietch, Jamie Raab, Betsy Robbins, Katy Rouse, Lindsey Rose, Marissa Sangiacomo, Roberto Santachiara, Deborah Schneider, Vivienne Schuster, Madelyn Warcholik. You’re the best!