No, Dance thought. You'll never break through a windshield! The side windows!
Dance brought the Pathfinder to a skidding stop on the shoulder and leapt out, opening the back door and reaching behind the seat to snag the small fire extinguisher. She pulled it out and turned toward the Merc but dropped the heavy canister. She bent to pick it up.
Which is what saved her from a bullet.
No, as it turned out, two or three of them.
"Jesus," she gasped, dropping to the ground, earning a scraped elbow.
The bullets slammed, loud, into the sheet steel of the Pathfinder a foot or so from her head and shoulders. Where was the shooter?
She couldn't tell. He was somewhere in the pine forest.
In shadows, of course.
Reaching for her phone, which sat on the passenger seat, to call 911, she rose. The shooter fired again and a slug snapped over her head, then another. Dance flattened herself on the ground as another bullet loudly punctured the side of the driver's seat.
A cry echoed from the Mercedes.
Move, move, move!
Crawling fast, cradling the extinguisher, Dance made it to a fallen tree, about forty feet from the Mercedes.
She risked a look. The flames were rising faster now.
And from the gap in the dense pine forest she saw a ragged flash of gunshot. A bullet snapped over her head before she could duck.
The attacker would have gotten a look at her and if it was Edwin, he would recognize her as a CBI agent, which meant he might assume she was armed. If it wasn't Edwin, or if he decided she didn't have a weapon, the assailant could casually stroll a hundred feet in her direction and shoot her.
Dance then heard another wailing scream from the Mercedes.
A flash bloomed from the woods, and six inches from her face a bullet blew a handful of dry rotting wood into the air.
Chapter 35
"I SHOULD CHECK in with my people," P. K. Madigan said angrily, nodding toward his office. "We've got an operation going here. Possible homicide. It's urgent." The bewildered chief was feeling panic--which was not a sensation he was used to.
Two California Department of Justice officers stood in front of him in the lobby of the detective division, back a bit, out of deference. Maybe. One was redheaded and one had black hair. They otherwise looked similar, trim, in suits. Polite. Very polite. Madigan was so shaken he'd forgotten their names. The redhead said, "Yessir, I'm afraid calls'll have to wait. Same procedure you have in an arrest, I'm sure."
FMCSO sheriff Anita Gonzalez stood nearby, her face too a mask of dismay more than anger. "This is nonsense, gentlemen. Utter nonsense. I've got a call in to the Sacramento office."
Which had not, Madigan noted, returned that call.
The two officers obviously didn't consider their present assignment as nonsense, utter or otherwise.
Their two suspects didn't either: Detectives Madigan and Miguel Lopez, who were being arrested for breaking and entering, false imprisonment, misuse of legal authority, criminal trespass.
Madigan said, "Look, this is part of a plan by a perp we're investigating. He's trying to get some of us out of commission." He explained to them what Kathryn Dance had said about how stalkers target people who are protecting the object they're obsessed with.
The state officers weren't much interested in that either.
The reason for the arrest was, Madigan knew before they'd even mentioned the charges, his decision to keep Edwin Sharp in the interrogation room longer than he should have. And to have Miguel Lopez go to Edwin's house and gather evidence.
The dark-haired agent was saying, "Here's how it'll work, Detective. We'll take you in and I'm sure the magistrate'll expedite arraignment. Probably recognizance. Can't imagine he'll go for bail. You'll be out in a few hours."
"I don't care when I'll be out. The problem is I'll be suspended until it's resolved. That's procedure." Like Gabriel Fuentes, the detective so careless with his gun.
Gonzalez said to the officers, "We can't afford to have the chief down now--not with the perp on the streets."
The redhead said, "We know how you feel about this singer of yours. But ..."
He didn't add, That's not enough to bend the law over.
Madigan wanted to hit him.
The panic swelled. Hell, this could be the end of his career--the only career he'd ever cared about. What would he tell his family?
And he'd bent the rules just a bit, done it for Kayleigh.
This singer of yours ...
Goddamn Edwin Sharp!
The officers were debating but it was only the cuff issue.
"Oh, please," Madigan said, sounding as desperate as he felt. "You can't--"
"Look, gentlemen," Sheriff Gonzalez said. "This is a critical operation. We think a murder could be occurring at any moment."
Madigan looked back into his office again.
The redhead offered to Gonzalez, "You understand a warrant has been issued for his arrest? I'm sorry. We don't have any choice."
They took his Colt and ID and badge.
Madigan repeated, "At least let me check in with some of my people." He was growing more agitated.
They debated a moment but settled for, "You'll be out in an hour."
"Two, tops."
And they also decided yes on the cuffs.
Chapter 36
DANCE HUDDLED BEHIND the fallen pine tree.
There'd been no more shots; was the assailant still there? Waiting for her to show? It would make more sense for him to leave. He'd have to assume that Dance had called in reinforcements and would have fled. He couldn't risk staying any longer.
Or could he?
Clutching the fire extinguisher, she debated. If I don't do something now, Sheri'll die. She'll burn to death.
Dance looked up cautiously, then ducked down again. No gunshots.
She thought of her children, how she couldn't stand the idea of their being orphans. Thought too that she'd specifically gone into kinesic analysis and investigations to avoid tactical situations that might put her life in danger.
And here, I'm not even on duty, she thought.
Another cry from the car, but muted. Sheri Towne was losing the battle.
Now. It has to be now.
She leapt to her feet and began to sprint to the Mercedes, just as the flames were reaching into the passenger compartment.
Waiting for the bullets.
None came her way but still she dove into the ditch, out of the line of fire of the shooter in the woods, and crawled fast to the car. Inside, Sheri was pounding on the windshield with bloody hands. She was retching and coughing as the smoke roiled into the interior. Dance's skin prickled in the heat from a grass fire surrounding the car.
The woman inside turned desperate eyes to her and mouthed something.
Dance gestured for her to move back and she slammed the extinguisher base into the passenger-side window. It shattered easily. Dance tossed the extinguisher away--it wasn't going to do any good on a fire like this--and reached inside to yank the woman out. Sheri was convulsing in spasms and coughing hard, spittle flying from her mouth. Tears streamed down her sooty face.
The agent dragged her thirty feet from the car, crouching, in case the attacker was still there with his gun. They sprawled on the ground in a depression by the roadside.
The woman dropped to her knees and vomited hard and tried to stand.
"No, stay down," Dance said, starting for her SUV and her phone to see if Madigan had gotten her message and, if not, to call 911.
Which was when she heard a loud bang behind her and felt something slam into her lower back. She pitched forward onto the hard, sunbaked earth.
Chapter 37
DENNIS HARUTYUN WAS standing over the gurney Kathryn Dance lay on, face down.
The medic was on the opposite side from the deputy, laboring away on her back.
"No leads yet," the detective said.
With her perpendicular
view of the scene, Dance could see the ever-efficient CSU team scouring the grounds where the attacker had nearly killed Sheri Towne ... and Dance herself. But there wasn't much left; the fire had spread and taken out some of the trees and brush where he'd been standing.
"That hurt?" the med tech asked.
"A bit."
"Hm." He continued working on her, without otherwise acknowledging her answer.
After a few minutes: "You almost through there?" Dance asked, irritated that the doctor was taking so long and that he hadn't responded to her comment about the pain. She should have said, "Yeah, hurts like hell, butcher."
"I think that'll do it."
She pulled her shirt down.
"Just a scratch. Wasn't deep at all."
Dance was sure she'd been shot in the back--her immediate thought was of her friend, the crime scene expert, Lincoln Rhyme, who was a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down. How can I be a good mother if I can't walk? she'd thought, tumbling over Sheri Towne from the impact. In fact, what had happened was that the fire extinguisher she'd tossed aside had landed in the burning grass and exploded, sending either a rock or a piece of its own casing flying into her back. She'd lain stunned for a moment then had turned to see on the ground a big disk of white foam or powder from the detonated extinguisher. And she'd understood, then crawled on to the SUV and retrieved her phone and--giving up on Madigan--called 911. A quarter hour later the police and fire and medical teams arrived.
The medic took his bad bedside manner and wandered off to tend to his other patient--Sheri Towne, who was sitting next to her husband. She was breathing oxygen and staring at her bandaged hand. Her long nails were, coincidentally, the color of fresh blood.
"It's a real mess," Harutyun said. He explained that Edwin had complained to the state DOJ about his detention and the illegal search. Madigan and Miguel Lopez had just been arrested, though released right away, no bail required, but they were no longer active-duty law enforcers.
"Oh, no," Dance said in a harsh whisper. "He's out of commission?"
"Sure is." Harutyun added bitterly, "The perp took out Gabriel Fuentes, stealing his gun. Now it's the Chief and Miguel. The whole team now's Crystal, me and you."
"Any sightings of Edwin?" Dance asked.
"No sign of him or that bull's-eye-red car of his. The luncheon went on as scheduled. Kayleigh didn't look too good, to hear the stories. She sang a few songs, had lunch with the fan and then left. People were saying she wasn't really there. Not mentally."
Dance nodded toward the smoldering Mercedes. "Pretty dangerous to be on Kayleigh's bad side."
"Still have trouble seeing that for a motive for murder."
"It's a stalker's reality, not our reality," she reminded.
Harutyun looked toward Sheri and Bishop. "She nearly burned to death but what she took hardest was that Kayleigh didn't really ask her to the lunch."
"What's the story on the email he used to invite Sheri to the party?" Dance asked.
"Set up an anonymous account this morning. Something like 'KTowne' and some numbers. Sent from an Internet cafe in the Tower District. One of the deputies checked but nobody recognized Edwin's picture. 'Course, the baristas said they'd had about two hundred people in over the course of the morning."
"And sent it to Sheri's address that was what? On Bishop's website?"
"Kayleigh's own."
"Sure."
There was silence for a time.
"Hey, Charlie." Harutyun nodded to a round, pinkish man, approaching in a jumpsuit. "You know Kathryn Dance, CBI? This's Charlie Shean, head of our crime scene unit."
He nodded to her, then, frowning: "That true about P.K.? He's suspended? And Miguel too?"
"Afraid so."
"And this stalker fellow's the one orchestrated it?"
"We don't know."
"Bullshit and a half," Shean muttered. And Dance got the impression that he wasn't a man who cursed much.
"What'd your folks find, Charlie? Business cards? Phone bills with Edwin's name on it?" Dennis Harutyun, of the thick mustache and unflappable face, seemed to be loosening up a bit.
"He's good, whoever he--or she--is. No footprints, tire treads or trace other than the five million bits of trace you're going to find in a forest. Though we did get a little cigarette ash that's recent, just past the perimeter of the burn. Analysis'll take time."
Dance explained about seeing the person smoking outside her motel room window. "I didn't catch anything specific, though." She added, "Edwin did smoke. Still may, but I don't know for sure."
The crime scene chief said, "The gun was a nine--like Gabriel's Glock--but we don't have any casings or slugs from his so we don't know if there's a match. No immediate prints on the casings we found."
"And I didn't get any description here either," Dance muttered. "He was in the shade of the trees." Stalkers were not only good at disguises; they were good at camouflage too. Anything that helped them observe their target undisturbed and unobtrusively, for as long as possible. "Did Sheri see anything?"
"Haven't been able to interview her. Smoke inhalation was pretty bad."
It was then that a vehicle sped up to the scene. Dance instinctively reached for her absent Glock once again. But then saw it was Kayleigh Towne's dark green SUV, driven expertly by Darthur Morgan. They hadn't stopped completely before the singer was out of the Suburban and running toward Bishop and Sheri. She bypassed her father completely and bent down and threw her arms around her stepmother. Morgan didn't seem happy his charge had come to the site of a shootout but Dance supposed that, aside from relations with her father, Kayleigh could be pretty single-minded.
Dance was too far away to hear the conversation but there was no doubt about the messages in the body language: apology, regret and humor.
A heartfelt reconciliation was under way.
Bishop Towne stood and embraced them both.
Family is about love and affection but about friction and separation, too. Yet, with work and luck, the distances--geographic and emotional--can be shrunk, even made to vanish. What struck Dance at the moment was not what she was witnessing in this reunion, but a very different thought: about her and Jon Boling and the children ... and what her mother had learned about Boling's move to San Diego.
Once again, Kayleigh's lyrics echoed, from the very verse that had inspired the attempt on Sheri Towne's life.
One night there's a call, and at first you don't know
What the troopers are saying from the side of the road,
Then you see in an instant that your whole life has changed.
Everything gone, all the plans rearranged.
Is that what would happen to her? Was everything changed, the life she'd tacitly hoped for, for herself and her children, with Boling?
And where, she thought with some bitterness, is my shadow, someone looking out for me, someone to give me the answers?
Chapter 38
A PLEASANT, IF hot, September evening in Fresno.
It was a quiet time in the Tower District--featuring the famous Art Deco theater, at Olive and Wishon, which boasted an actual, if modest, tower (though the neighborhood had probably been named for another tower some distance away).
Tonight, locals were returning from early suppers at Mexican taquerias or boutiquey cafes or were visiting art galleries, tattoo parlors, discount stores, ethnic bakeries. Maybe headed for the movies or an improv comedy club or community theater. It wasn't San Francisco but you weren't in Fresno for art, music or literature. You were here to raise a family and work and you took what culture was offered.
Tonight, teenage boys had come to the District to cruise the streets in their pimped-out Subarus and Saturns, enjoying the last few evenings free from homework.
Tonight, girls had come here to gossip and sneak cigarettes and to look toward, but not at, boys and sit over sodas for hours and talk about clothes and looming classes.
And tonight Kayleigh Towne had come to the District
to kill a man.
She'd formulated this plan because of one person: Mary-Gordon Sanchez, the little girl Edwin Sharp had--whatever the police said--kidnapped.
Oh, God, she was furious.
Kayleigh had always looked forward to being a mother but those plans had been delayed by her own father, who felt that a career wasn't compatible with a home life.
"Hell, KT, you're a child yourself. Wait a few years. What's the hurry?"
Kayleigh had gone along but the maternal urge within her only grew.
And to think that Mary-Gordon had been in danger--and might be in the future--well, no, that wasn't acceptable.
Edwin Sharp was going down.
The sheriff's office wasn't going to do it. So Kayleigh would, all by herself.
I'd prefer together, I'd hoped for two not one.
You and me forever, with a daughter and a son.
It was tough that didn't work out, but now it's plain to see
When it comes to things that matter, all I really need is me.
With these lyrics, which she'd written years ago, rolling through her mind, Kayleigh Towne climbed out of the Suburban, which Darthur Morgan had parked on Olive Avenue. They were in front of a Victorian-style auditorium. It was Parker Hall, a small theater and lecture venue from the nineteenth century. She noted the brass plaque that read:
KAYLEIGH, OUR HOME "TOWNE" GIRL, GAVE HER FIRST CONCERT HERE.
She'd been thirteen. The "first concert" part was not exactly true--she'd done churches and sporting events since she was nine or ten. But this was, yes, the first performance in a concert hall, though she'd shared the stage with a few other kids from the children's choir of George Washington Middle School.
"About a half hour," she told Morgan.
"I'll be here," he said. And began immediately to study the street for signs of Edwin Sharp or any other threat.
Kayleigh found the key to the hall and slipped inside the musty place. That afternoon she'd contacted the foundation that owned it and explained that she was thinking about giving a concert there. Could she borrow the key to check the place out? They'd been delighted and she'd had politely to decline the several invitations by the staff to give her a tour of the venue. Her time was so limited, she'd said, that she wasn't sure when she could get there.
Inside, the murky hall resonated with its own brand of creaks and snaps but this time, unlike at the convention center, she wasn't made the least uneasy by the atmosphere. She knew where the danger was.