Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

TJ had continued to talk to those who'd been at the club, sifting for insights and possible motives and suspects. "Nothing more on revenge by disgruntled employees, or patrons. I thought I'd check to see if there was a motive to hurt anyone in the band, or destroy careers."

"Good." She hadn't thought about that.

"But I don't think so. The music world's fragile nowadays; the margins weren't big enough to murder anyone to get ahead. Hey, boss, was wondering. Does gruntled mean you're happy?"

She rummaged in her drawer and found an old Timex, battery powered. She strapped it on and glanced at the time. Then lowered her voice. "How's the Serrano situation?"

He said, "About an hour. It's set up. I just talked to Al Stemple."

Stemple, big and quiet and rather scary, was the closest thing the CBI had to a cowboy. Well, to a John Wayne. An investigative agent like any other, he specialized in tactical situations. Given the unstable nature of the Serrano situation, it was thought best to have a CBI strongman involved.

He rose and left and in his wake she was sure she detected a waft of patchouli aftershave or cologne.

Far-out...

A few minutes later Dance happened to be looking at her office doorway when Michael O'Neil appeared. He was in a dark plaid sports coat, navy blue shirt and jeans. Dance believed his clothes were better pressed now that he was divorced than when he'd been married to Anne, who was not known as the queen of domesticity. Though this could be her imagination, she allowed.

"Saw TJ," the big detective said. "Nothing turned up on the canvass, he was saying?"

"No. We've talked to probably seven-eighths of the people who were at the club. No one spotted any potential perps." She told him TJ had looked into potentially resentful musicians too.

"Targeting the band. Good call."

"But nothing." She asked him, "Anything more on the theater?"

"Nope. Full canvass, security video review. No vehicle. Nothing further. What was that about? Releasing the descrip of our boy? Overby?"

She puffed air from her lips. "Came from Steve Foster. He's claiming it was an accident. Blaming, quote, 'somebody' in his office. But he let it leak. Power play, I'm sure."

"Brother."

"It's not his case. He doesn't care."

"You think our boy's rabbited?"

"I'd be gone," she said. "But then I didn't set up a stampede and kill three people. I don't know what makes him tick. He might be in Missouri or Washington State by now. He might be planning to attack the aquarium."

Nodding, O'Neil extracted from his briefcase a thin manila folder with a metal fixture on top. Inside were a dozen sheets of paper. "Crime Scene. Had them working nonstop. No surprise--our unsub's good. He wore cloth gloves."

Latex gloves prevent a transfer of the perp's fingerprints to what he touches at a scene but nothing prevents a transfer of prints to the inside of those latex gloves. Careless perps often discard them, without considering that. Cloth gloves, however, neither transfer nor retain prints.

He continued, "Prints on the Peterbilt truck key fob but none identifiable except the manager's and the driver's. The drop-box was negative too. No footprints. Nothing in the oil drum, with the fire, that's any use forensically."

Dance said, "I was thinking. It's got to be hard to drive a truck that big. Can we use that to narrow the field? Find anybody who's taken courses lately?"

"I thought the same thing. But checked it out online. Would take about a half hour to learn to drive one, even if you had no experience. Probably couldn't back up or drive with a full load without practice but he basically just had to drive straight down the hill to the roadhouse."

The Internet... Where you could learn everything from making a fertilizer bomb to baking a cherry pie to celebrate after you blew up your designated target.

O'Neil consulted his file. "No video cameras in the area. Solitude Creek's too shallow for serious boating but in any case I didn't get any hits in canvassing for fishermen. And no stolen kayaks or canoes." He'd had the same idea as she.

Her phone dinged, a text from TJ. The Serrano case. She typed, "KK." That was the new text message acknowledging "understood and agreed." A single K wasn't enough. She'd learned it from her son, Wes. She mentioned this to O'Neil. He nodded. "My kids are saying, 'Amen,' a lot too. You notice?"

"I get 'church.' As in: 'It's true.' And also 'It's a thing.'"

"'Thing'?"

Dance was going to tell him that she'd first heard the expression when Maggie was talking to her friend Bethany on the phone and she said, "Yeah, Mom and Jon, it's like a thing." She instead told the detective: "Means, I think, it's a phenomenon. More than what it seems. Significant."