Xo (Kathryn Dance 3)

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?