A logical deduction on his part? If Alicia was going to plant something of his it made sense for her to have taken his trash.
Surely possible.
But another explanation was that Edwin had put the two bags of his trash in Alicia's apartment, along with the notes supposedly forged by the assistant, but that he himself had produced. He'd then planted the evidence outside his own house, like the neatsfoot oil trace and the boot print, to implicate Alicia, suggesting she'd been spying on him last Saturday.
No, no, this was absurd. The shooting incident at Kayleigh's house? That surely had been Alicia.
Or had it?
Rethink the scenario, Dance told herself. What had Kayleigh told her, Madigan and Harutyun about the attack last night?
Was there any possible way Edwin had orchestrated it?
Think.
A to B to Z ...
Come on, you get into the minds of killers plenty. Do it now. How would you have set it up?
And the ideas began to form.
Edwin goes to Alicia's, ties her up. He plants his own trash, Gabriel Fuentes's gun case and the forgeries of Kayleigh's note there. Uses her phone to send texts to Kayleigh and to his own phone about meeting at Kayleigh's house, and he goes to the hotel near Alicia's and uses her computer to send the request for the fourth verse to the radio station.
But there were two cars at Kayleigh's. His own and Alicia's. Well, maybe he pays a teenager or field picker to drive his car to the shoulder in front of Kayleigh's house and leave it there, then vanish. Then he drives to Kayleigh's in Alicia's pickup, with her tied up in the back. Or maybe she was already dead at that point--the time of death, with a badly burned body, would be close enough.
But Kayleigh heard Alicia calling her name in the house.
A tape recorder!
Edwin could have threatened her back at the apartment to say Kayleigh's name into a high-def digital recorder--the same one used to play "Your Shadow" to announce the impending murder.
With your eyes closed, you couldn't tell the difference between someone really singing or the digital replay. Only a pro would have a recorder like that.
Dance recalled her reply to Kayleigh:
Or a fanatical fan.
He'd probably planned out several scenarios for the "rescue" of Kayleigh Towne--depending on where the singer was in the house when he arrived. If she was downstairs or on the porch, maybe the fight with Alicia would have occurred in the driveway or out by the road. But when he'd gotten to the house he would have seen her in the bedroom. That gave him the chance to get inside and masquerade as Alicia--all thanks to Dance herself, of course, who'd called Kayleigh and told her to barricade herself upstairs.
And Edwin's wound? Well, if he was mobile now, the gunshot may have been dramatic but obviously it wasn't that serious.
The bullet missed the carotid and his spine....
Dance pulled a portion of her own skin away from her neck. Yes, he could easily have shot himself and missed anything vital.
She tried to consider any other items of evidence that were unaccounted for.
The bone dust was the first thing that came to mind.
Human bone dust.
The guitar picks! Made not from a deer antler but from the hand of Frederick Blanton, the file sharer--the body part hadn't been burned away; Edwin had cut it off before he set the fire. He'd lied about sending the picks to her earlier; how would Kayleigh know? Her assistant returned everything he'd sent, probably unopened.
Grim justice for a singer; using picks made out of the bone of a man who'd stolen her music.
It's a wild theory. But ...
Close enough for me, Dance decided and called Kayleigh. No answer. She left a message, telling her what she suspected, then called Bishop Towne and told him the same.
"Oh, fuck," the man growled. "She's having lunch with him right now! Sheri was at the convention center for the rehearsal. She left an hour ago to meet him."
"Where?"
"Well, I'm not sure. Hold on."
After an excruciatingly long time, he came back on. "The San Joaquin Diner, on Third. Do you--"
"If she calls you have her get in touch with me right away." Dance hung up and debated calling 911 or the sheriff's office. Which would be the shorter explanation?
She dialed.
"Madigan," came the voice.
"Chief, it's Kathryn. No time now but I think Edwin's our perp after all."
"What?" She heard a tap, an ice cream cup being set down. "But ... Alicia?"
"Later. Listen. He and Kayleigh're at the San Joaquin Diner. On Third. We need a car there now."
"Know it, sure. He armed?"
"All the firearms we know about're accounted for but it's pretty easy to buy a piece in this state."
"Gotcha. I'll get back to you."
Dance paced along the carpet, then hurried to the room's desk, where her notes from the case sat. There were dozens and dozens of pages. If she'd been working one of her own cases, especially a task-forced operation, she would have organized and indexed them by now. But since it seemed that the case had been resolved and others would be handling the prosecution, she hadn't yet bothered. Now, she spread the pages out on the bed--her conversation with the witnesses, the evidence Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs had analyzed, the notes from the interview with Edwin.
But as it turned out, Kathryn Dance didn't need to parse her handiwork to determine if Edwin was or was not the perp.
P. K. Madigan called back and, in a voice uncharacteristically rattled, blurted, "She and Edwin left the diner a half hour ago. But her SUV's still in the lot. And her keys were on the ground nearby."
"She dropped them, to let us know he'd snatched her. Her phone?"
"Battery's out or it's been crushed. No signal to trace. I sent Lopez to Edwin's house and the Buick's there. But the place is empty, looks like he's moved out."
"He's got new wheels."
"Yep. But I checked. Either stolen or bought private. Nothing at DMV in his name, no rentals at any of the companies in our database. He could be driving anything. And going anywhere."
Chapter 71
ALIBI WOMAN HAD lied.
When Dance had spoken with her on the phone, twenty minutes before, seventy-two-year-old Mrs. Rachel Webber had once again--and very quickly--verified Edwin's story about the time he'd been at her house on Tuesday.
But it took the agent only three minutes of trim questioning to learn what really happened: Edwin had found her in the garden early that morning. He'd forced her inside with a gun and gotten the names of her children and grandchildren and said that when the police came to ask her, she was to say he was there at twelve-thirty.
Now Dance and Dennis Harutyun were listening to Madigan having a conversation with the Crime Scene Unit boss. Finally he grunted and slammed the receiver down. "Backyard of Edwin's, Charlie's folks found some human bones and some tools. Buried deep, so CSU wouldn't find them when they searched the other day. You were right, Kathryn; he made those guitar picks himself, outa that file sharer's hand."
Dance rocked back and forth in a cheap swivel chair in Madigan's office. A cup of ice cream soup sat coagulating beside his phone. And she thought again, How did I miss? What'd gone wrong? She hadn't been able to read his deception but she'd known that body language analysis of someone like Edwin Sharp would be difficult if not impossible.
So she'd looked at the facts he'd mentioned, tried to analyze not his kinesics but his verbal content. Well, think about it. Was there anything that might help them find where Edwin would go with his love?
And what would happen when they got there?
Dance believed she knew the answer to that question and she did not want to consider it.
Harutyun asked, "Why didn't he just snatch her a few days ago?"
Dance gave her thoughts. "Oh, he didn't want to snatch her at all. It's why he set up Alicia as the killer. So he could rescue Kayleigh and win her over with his heroism. Like
some arsonists--they set fires and then rescue people, to be heroes. Which is exactly what he did.
"He probably pitched his case to her at lunch, reminding her that he'd saved her life, why didn't they go out on a date, or something like that. She said no. That was his last chance to be close to her in private so he did what he had to, kidnapped her. But it's not impulsive. Believe me, he's known this was a possibility and he'd had it all planned out as a last resort."
Something was eating away at her. Something elusive. Facts again ... verbal content. Facts were not meshing.
What is it?
She sighed. The thought vanished before it solidified. Then: Wait ... Yes! That's it!
She grabbed the phone and placed a call to her friend and colleague, Amy Grabe, FBI Special Agent in Charge, San Francisco.
The woman's low, sultry voice said, "Kathryn, saw the wire--kidnapping and possible interstate flight."
"That's why I'm calling."
"It's really the singer Kayleigh Towne?"
"I'm afraid so. A stalker."
"Well, what can we do? You think he's headed this way?"
"That's not why I'm calling. What I need are a couple of field agents in the Seattle area. I have to conduct an interview with a witness and I don't have time to get up there. It's got to happen now."
"Can't you do it over the phone?" the SAC asked.
"I tried that. It didn't work."
Chapter 72
WELL, THOUGHT KATHRYN Dance, staring at the computer screen. Look at this.
The woman she was gazing at, presently in Seattle and connected via Skype, could have been Kayleigh Towne's sister.
Not an identical twin but real close. Straight, blond hair, a petite frame, a long, pretty face.
Edwin's former girlfriend, Sally Docking, stared nervously at the computer screen. Her voice broke as she said, "These people, I don't understand. I didn't do anything wrong." There were two FBI agents behind her in the living room of her Seattle apartment.
Dance smiled. "I just needed them to bring one of their computers so you and I could have another chat."
Actually they were there because she didn't think Sally would voluntarily go onto Skype for a second conversation.
Dance's voice was casual, despite the urgency she felt. "You'll be all right. Provided you tell me the truth."
Not "tell me the truth this time." That was too confrontational.
"Sure."
A discrepancy had occurred to Kathryn Dance--certain facts were not lining up. Now that Edwin Sharp had been revealed to be the perp, his behavior with Sally Docking didn't ring true. Her earlier account of life with Edwin had been more or less credible over the phone but a kinesic expert needs to see her subject, not just hear, to spot deception.
And so Amy Grabe had called the Seattle field office of the Bureau and sent two agents to Sally Docking's apartment in a working-class section of the city. They brought with them a very expensive laptop, which incorporated a high-definition webcam.
Dance was in a conference room in the sheriff's office, the overhead lights off but a desk lamp not far from her face. She'd adjusted the illumination carefully; she needed Sally to see her very clearly--and under ominous lighting. Sally was lit by ambient rays but the lens and software rendered the image perfectly.
"It looks like a nice apartment, Sally." Dance wore her pink-rimmed glasses, the nonthreatening ones, unlike the steel-or black-rimmed predator specs she put on when she wanted to present an aggressive image.
"It's okay, I guess. I like it. Rent's cheap."
Dance asked a number of other questions about the girl, her family, her job, as she drew a baseline of the woman's behavior. She caught only one microburst of stress, when Sally said she didn't mind the commute to her job at a mall fifteen miles from where she lived.
Good, she was getting a feel for the woman, who tended to appear nervous and uncertain even when she was being asked simple questions and answering truthfully.
After ten minutes of this, Dance said, "Now, I'd like to talk to you about Edwin some more."
"Everything I told you was true!" Her eyes bored into the camera.
This was awkward: a blunt denial quickly delivered. Dance couldn't over-or underreact; it might tip her hand. "It's just routine. We often follow up to get more information when there's been a change in developments."
"Oh."
"We need your help, Sally. See, the situation down in Fresno's ... difficult. Edwin may have been more involved in a crime than it originally seemed. I'm worried that he might be going through a bad phase and could hurt somebody. Or hurt himself."
"No!"
"That's right." Dance had made certain that not a single soul leaked to the public the news that Edwin had snatched Kayleigh. Sally Docking wouldn't know. "And we need to find him. We need to know where he might go, places that are important to him, other residences he might have."
"Oh, I don't know anywhere like that." Her eyes whipped to the computer screen.
A baseline variation. It confirmed that she did have some ideas. But dislodging this nugget would take some work.
"Well, you might know more than you think, Sally."
"But I haven't heard from him for a long time."
Nonresponsive. And the vague adjective didn't mask the fact that this was probably a lie but Dance let it go for now. "Well, not necessarily someplace he wanted to move to. Just someplace he mentioned when you were together."
"No."
"No?"
Sally was thinking quickly. "I mean, he was pretty much into Seattle. He didn't travel much. He was, like, a homebody kind of guy."
"Never mentioned anything, really?" A glance at the sheet in front of her.
Sally caught the glance.
As long as you tell the truth ...
"I mean, he talked about going on vacations some. You know. But I didn't think that's what you meant."
"Where did he want to go?"
"Nashville was one place. The Grand Ole Opry. And then maybe New York, so he could go to some concerts."
Edwin Sharp probably did say that but he was not going to run off to Nashville or Manhattan with Kayleigh Towne and set up housekeeping, however skewed his sense of reality.
But Dance said, "Good, Sally. That's just the sort of thing we're looking for. Can you think of any other places? Maybe you were watching a TV show and he said, 'Hey, that looks neat.' Something like that?"
"No, really." Eyes on the web camera.
Lie.
Dance grimaced. "Well, I appreciate you trying. I don't know what I'm going to do. You were really the only person we can turn to."
"Me? I broke up with him a while ago. Uhm, nine months. About that."
"I just mean you had a very different relationship with Edwin than some people. You won't believe it but he can be very abusive and obsessive."
"No, really?"
Dance's heart tapped faster. She was on the trail of her prey and closing in. Still, easy as could be, she continued, "That's right. When people reject him, that pushes a button. Edwin has issues about abandonment and rejection. He clings to people. Since he broke up with you, you're not a negative in his life. In fact, he told me he still feels bad about the breakup."
"You were talking about me with Edwin? Like, recently?" Delivered fast, like spilled water.
"That's right. Funny, you could get the impression, from what he said, that he kind of misses you." Dance crafted her sentences very carefully. She never intentionally deceived her subjects but sometimes let them do it for her. "I wouldn't be surprised if he was curious what you're up to."
Sally swallowed and, with tentative fingers tipped in blue polish, she brushed at her long hair--an echo of Kayleigh's, though not as long, not as fine. When she tilted her head Dance noticed the roots; she was not a natural blonde. The young woman asked in a slightly higher pitch--a stress tone: "What did he want to know?"
"Just general things." Intentionally evasive.
; She swallowed again.
Dance glanced down at a blank sheet of paper then up once more. She noted a faint glistening of sweat on Sally's forehead as she strained to see it.
The FBI has some really good equipment.
Dance again glanced down at the sheet and Sally's eyes dropped toward the desk in front of her as if the paper were two feet from her. Dance asked, "Your brother in Spokane? And your mother in Tacoma?"
"I just ... my brother, my mother?"
"Edwin was close to them?"
The stalker had not said more than one or two sentences about Sally Docking and nothing at all about her family. Dance had looked up the details through Washington state and federal records, after she suspected the true relationship between the two.
"Did he say anything about them?" Sally asked.
"They were friendly, weren't they? Close?"
"I ..."
"What, Sally? Would you be concerned if Edwin showed some interest in your family?"
Ah, the power of the hypothetical.
Some interest in ...
"What did he say?" she blurted. "Please tell me!"
"What's the matter, Sally?" Dance tried to appear perplexed.
"I ..." The tears began. "What did he say?" Behind her, one FBI agent shifted, perhaps sensing the edge of hysteria, as was Dance. "Edwin? What did he say about my family?"
Dance said evenly, "Why are you troubled? Tell me." Her brow furrowed.
"He's going to hurt them! He won't understand that I did what he wanted. If he mentioned them to you it means he's going to hurt them to get back at me. Please, you have to do something!"
"Wait." Dance looked troubled. "I hope you're not telling me that you're the one who wanted to break up."
"I--"
"Oh, no. That changes everything.... I mean, what I told Edwin ..." She stopped speaking and peered at Sally uneasily.
"Please! No! What did you tell him? Where is he? Is Edwin going to Tacoma, Spokane?"
"We don't know where he is, Sally, I told you that.... Let me think. Okay, this is a problem."
"Don't let him hurt my mama!" She was sobbing now. "Please! And my brother's got two babies!"
The scenario was playing out just as Kathryn Dance had planned. The agent had needed to plant the seeds of fear within the woman to get her to open up and had formed her questions to give the impression that Edwin was practically en route to kill her family ... and possibly then her.