Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

The name of the wing came from a male agent who, trying to impress a date on a tour of his workplace, referred to the area as such. It probably wasn't the recurring vandalism of his office, including feminine hygiene products, that had driven him out of the CBI but Dance liked to think that it had helped.

Though, ironically, the women here decided unanimously to keep the designation. A badge of pride.

A warning too.

She now accepted the coffee from Maryellen, thanked her and, palming one of the woman's incredible cookies, headed into her office.

"Nice shoes. Okay. Excellent." Maryellen was eyeing Dance's Stuart Weitzman Filigree sandals, brown leather (and, Dance was proud to say, purchased at less than half list price). They matched her long linen skirt, coffee colored. Her sweater today was a ribbed off-white, the sports coat black. Today's concession to color was another bright elastic tie Maggie had twined at the end of Dance's French braid. Red.

She acknowledged the compliment from her assistant--Maryellen was a woman who knew wicked shoes when she saw them.

In her office she dropped into her desk chair, thinking she'd have to tame the squeak but then, as always, forgetting about it.

She had just returned from the Marina Hills Cineplex, where there'd been a sighting of a man suspected of being the Solitude Creek unsub. The manager of the theater had spotted someone wearing the same clothes as the witness had described, about the same build. The suspect noted that he'd been recognized and fled, pretty much confirming that he was their perp.

Dance and the others had conducted a canvass but had found no other witnesses who'd seen the man. No vehicles and no further description. She'd been troubled to learn that one of the police cars on the lookout for the unsub had been stationed in front of the theater; she wondered if because of Steve Foster's "accidental" release of the perp's description, the manager had spooked him away before he got into view of the cop.

Sometimes, she reflected, your colleagues' mistakes and carelessness--as well as your own--can be as much an adversary as the perps you're pursuing.

The miss was, of course, frustrating enough. But far more troubling was that he'd possibly been planning another attack. A theater would be a perfect venue in which to instigate a stampede. No, Steve Number One, he's not a thousand miles away at all. Perhaps, since he knew he'd been spotted, he'd now flee the area. Certainly he was going to change his appearance or at least ditch the clothes. But was he still determined to strike again? They'd have to assume so. She sent out a second memo to all local law enforcers to alert managers of venues that she believed their unsub had likely attempted a second attack.

Reaching for the phone to call Michael O'Neil, she was interrupted by TJ Scanlon. He was in a T-shirt that bore the name BECK (not, like you'd think, the Grateful Dead). He was in jeans too. And a sports coat, striped. It was of the Summer of Love era and might actually have come from the 1960s; TJ stocked his hippie house in Carmel Valley with countercultural artifacts from an era and way of life that had ended long before he was born.

He dropped into the chair across from her.

"Oh-oh, boss. Oh-oh and a half. Something wrong?"

"You didn't hear? Our friend from Sacramento leaked the description of the unsub."

"Oh, man. Foster?"

"Yep." She added, "And somebody spotted the perp."

"Good news but then, given your expression, I guess it isn't."

"He spotted the spotter and vanished."

"Hell. So he's left town."

"Or become a quick-change artist--who knows? Platform shoes. Dyed his hair. New clothes. And," she added grimly, "maybe he's still going forward, targeting someplace else. Right now. Before we can regroup."

She told him about the movie theater.

The young man nodded. "Right up his alley. Crowded multiplex."

Dance glanced at the folder in the young agent's hand.

TJ said, "Something helpful maybe. I tracked down the girl. Trish."

Dance had given him the job of finding the teen she'd met at the Solitude Creek crime scene.

"Michelle Cooper--the mother who died. Her daughter's Trish Martin. Her father's name."

Like Maggie and Wes were Swenson.

"The girl's seventeen. Don't have her mobile but here's the mother's home number." He added, "It's on Seventeen Mile Drive."

Dance could see the scenario. Husband cheats on wife, she catches him, he pays through the nose and foots the bill for a house in the poshest neighborhood of Pebble Beach.