"I'll do the best I can with the pronunciation." Eyes shifting between the road and her notebook. "Carboxylic acid, ethanol and malic acid, amino acid and glucose."
"Give me a minute."
She heard his conversation with Amelia Sachs, who apparently went online into one of Rhyme's own databases. She could hear the words clearly; unlike most callers, the criminalist was unable to hold his hand over the phone when speaking to someone else in the room.
"Okay, hold on, I'm scrolling through some things now. . . ."
"You can call me back," Dance said. She hadn't expected an answer immediately.
"No . . . just hold on. . . . Where was the substance found?"
"On the floor of Pell's car."
"Hm. Car." Silence for a moment, then Rhyme was muttering to himself. Finally he asked, "Any chance that Pell had just eaten in a restaurant? A seafood restaurant or a British pub?"
She laughed out loud. "Seafood, yes. How on earth did you know?"
"The acid's vinegar--malt vinegar specifically, because the amino acids and glucose indicate caramel coloring. My database tells me it's common in British cooking, pub food and seafood. Thom? You remember him? He helped me with that entry."
Rhyme's caregiver was also quite a cook. Last December he'd served her a boeuf bourguignon that was the best she'd ever had.
"Sorry it doesn't lead to his front door," the criminalist said.
"No, no, that's fine, Lincoln. I can pull the troops off the areas we had them searching. Send them to where they'll be better used."
"Call anytime. That's one perp I wouldn't mind a piece of."
They said good-bye.
Dance disconnected, called O'Neil, and told him it was likely that the acid had come from Jack's restaurant and wouldn't lead them to Pell or his mission here. It was probably better for the officers to search for the killer according to their original plan.
She hung up and continued her drive north on the familiar highway, which would take her to San Francisco, where the eight-lane Highway 101 eventually funneled into just another city street, Van Ness. Now, eighty miles north of Monterey. Dance turned west and made her way into the sprawl of San Jose, a city that stood as the antithesis of Los Angeles narcissism in the old Burt Bacharach/Hal David tune "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" Nowadays, of course, thanks to Silicon Valley, San Jose flexed an ego of its own.
Mapquest led her through a maze of large developments until she came to one filled with nearly identical houses; if the symmetrically planted trees had been saplings when they'd gone in, Dance estimated the neighborhood was about twenty-five years old. Modest, nondescript, small--still, each house would sell for well over a million dollars.
She found the house she sought and passed it by, parking across the street a block away. She walked back to the address, where a red Jeep and a dark blue Acura sat in the driveway and a big plastic tricycle rested on the lawn. Dance could see lights inside the house. She walked to the front porch. Rang the bell. Her cover story was prepared in case Samantha McCoy's husband or children answered the door. It seemed unlikely that the woman had kept her past a secret from her spouse, but it would be better to start out on the assumption that she had. Dance needed the woman's cooperation and didn't want to alienate her.
The door opened and she found herself looking at a slim woman with a narrow, pretty face, resembling the actress Cate Blanchett. She wore chic, blue-framed glasses and had curly brown hair. She stood in the doorway, head thrust forward, bony hand gripping the doorjamb.
"Yes?"
"Mrs. Starkey?"
"That's right." The face was very different from that in the pictures of Samantha McCoy eight years ago; she'd had extensive cosmetic surgery. But her eyes told Dance instantly that there was no doubt of her identity. Not their appearance, but the flash of horror, then dismay.
The agent said quietly, "I'm Kathryn Dance. California Bureau of Investigation." The woman's glance at the ID, discreetly held low, was so fast that she couldn't possibly have read a word on it.
From inside, a man's voice called, "Who is it, honey?"
Samantha's eyes firmly fixed on Dance's, she replied, "That woman from up the street. The one I met at Safeway I told you about."
Which answered the question about how secret her past was.
She also thought: Smooth. Good liars are always prepared with credible answers, and they know the person they're lying to. Samantha's response told Dance that her husband had a bad memory of casual conversation and that Samantha had thought out every likely situation in which she'd need to lie.
The woman stepped outside, closed the door behind her and they walked halfway to the street. Without the softening filter of the screen door, Dance could see how haggard the woman looked. Her eyes were red and the crescents beneath them were dark, her facial skin dry, lips cracked. A fingernail was torn. It seemed she'd gotten no sleep. Dance understood why she was "working at home" today.
A glance back at the house. Then she turned to Dance and, with imploring eyes, whispered, "I had nothing to do with it, I swear. I heard he had somebody helping him, a woman. I saw that on the news, but--"