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?