Xo (Kathryn Dance 3)

Michael O'Neil was always out in the choppy water. Often with Dance's son, Wes, and his own children. Sometimes Dance's father, a retired marine biologist, went along.

"Monterey Bay. Hm. Salmon." Madigan looked around. "I like to fish."

"You catch and release?"

"No. Seems crueler to me. I catch and eat."

"Michael does that too."

"Michael?"

"My friend."

More silence, dense as the growing heat, as they watched Harutyun and Stanning string the yellow tape.

"I told her, Tabatha, that we'd have somebody keep an eye on her."

"We can do that."

"It's important."

"We can do that," he repeated, with a bit of edge. To Harutyun: "Get a car over here. Some rookie. Keep an eye on the place. That trailer across the street too."

"Thanks," Dance said.

He didn't respond.

She sensed Old Spice or something clove-oriented rising from his large body. He actually wore a gun belt with single spare cartridges stuck into loops, pointing downward, like a cowboy's. No speed loaders, those accessories that contained a disk of six or eight rounds to be dropped quickly into an open cylinder of a revolver. Detectives in Fresno probably didn't have much cause to shoot people, much less reload quickly.

Madigan stepped closer to the door, examined the lock. "Could've been jimmied."

They waited in more silence for the Crime Scene Unit to arrive and when they did, Dance was again impressed at the efficiency of the operation. The team dressed fast, in full jumpsuits, masks and booties, and--she was surprised--two of them with weapons drawn cleared the interior of the trailer, making sure there were no threats. Most police outfits have SWAT or regular officers--unswathed in evidence-protective clothing--handle this job, resulting in contamination of the scene.

CSU proceeded to process the trailer, dusting and using alternative light source wands for prints, taking trace evidence samples, electrostatic footprints on the front stoop and inside, looking for tire treads and anything else the perp might have discarded or shed.

Dance's friend, Lincoln Rhyme, was perhaps the country's leading expert in forensic evidence and crime scene work. She herself was a bit skeptical of the extreme reliance on the art; one case she knew of had nearly resulted in the execution of an innocent man because certain clues had been planted by the real perp. On the other hand, Rhyme and his partner, Amelia Sachs, had worked miracles in identifying and convicting suspects on the basis of nearly nonexistent evidence.

She noted that Madigan's eyes grew animated for the first time since she'd arrived as he watched the team scour the grounds and move in and out of the trailer. He likes his forensics, she thought; he's a thing cop, not a people cop.

An hour later they'd finished and carted out some boxes and bags, both paper and plastic, and announced that they were releasing the scene.

Dance had a feeling she wasn't going to be welcome much longer, despite the angling conversation she and Madigan had had. She made quickly for the trailer. Stepping inside the place, which smelled of hot, plastic furnishings, she froze. It was a museum. She'd never seen anything like this, not in a residence. Posters, record jackets, guitars, statuettes of musicians, a Hammond B-3 organ, parts of wind and string instruments, ancient amplifiers and hundreds of vinyl records--331/3 LPs, 45 singles and ancient 78s, reels of tape. She found a collection of turntables and an old Nagra reel-to-reel, made by the Kudelski Group, the best portable tape recorder ever manufactured. Looking at all of these items, it was like seeing beautiful but antiquated cars. These analog devices had long ago lost the battle to digital.

Still, they were to Dance, as apparently they had been to Bobby, works of art.

She found hundreds of concert souvenirs, mostly from the sixties through the eighties. Mugs, T-shirts, caps, even pens--an item, not surprisingly, commemorating that most intellectual of singer-songwriters, Paul Simon, whose "American Tune" had inspired the name of her music website.

The majority of these artifacts, though, involved the country world. Photos covering nearly every square foot of wall space revealed the history of the genre, which, Dance believed, had reimagined itself more than any other musical form in America over the years. She spotted photos of musicians from the traditional era--the Grand

Ole Opry and rockabilly styles--in the 1950s. And from the era of country rock a decade later, followed by outlaw with the likes of Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, Jr., and Willie Nelson. Here were photos and autographs of Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers and Eddie Rabbit, who were part of the country pop trend in the late seventies and eighties. The neotraditionalist movement in the eighties was a move back to the early era and brought superstar status to Randy Travis, George Strait, the Judds, Travis Tritt and dozens of others--all of whom were represented here.

In the nineties country became international, with artists like Clint Black, Vince Gill, Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Mindy McCready and Faith Hill, on the one hand, and a strong alternative movement that rejected slick Nashville production values on the other. Pictures of Lyle Lovett and Steve Earl, who were part of the latter, stared down from one wall.

The present day was on display too. Here was a picture of Carrie Underwood (yes, of American Idol fame) and an autographed copy of the sheet music for Taylor Swift's "Fifteen," which spoke not about truck driving or God or patriotism or other traditional country themes but about high school angst.

Kayleigh Towne's career was, of course, well documented.

Dance knew there were many historians of the music scene in the past fifty years but she doubted they had as many artifacts as Bobby did. No death is worse than any other but Dance felt a deep pang that Bobby Prescott's devotion to archiving all aspects of country music in the twentieth century had died with him. It was the entire world's loss.