Текст книги "Solitude Creek"

Автор книги: Jeffery Daeaver

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

CHAPTER 78

Michael O’Neil piloted his unmarked Dodge into the countryside, east of Salinas, a huge swathe of farm country, flat and, thanks to the precious water, green with young plants. Dance skimmed the blog entry Otto Grant had posted just before he’d taken his life, several hours ago. ‘Explains a lot,’ she said. ‘Explains everything.’

The reason the Otto Grant case was now both of theirs was simple: Grant was the man who’d hired the Solitude Creek unsub to wreak havoc on Monterey County. In revenge for the eminent-domain action that had led to his bankruptcy.

‘As much of an oddball as we thought?’

She scanned more. Didn’t answer.

‘Read it to me.’

‘Over the past few months readers of this BLOG have followed the chronicle of the Destruction of my life by the state of California. For those of you just “tuning in” I owned a farm off San Juan Grade Road, 239 acres of very fine land which I inherited from my Father, who inherited it from his Father.

‘Last year the state decided to steal two thirds of that property – the most valuable – under the totalitarian “law” known as eminent domain. And WHY did they want to take it from me? Because a nearby landfill, filled with garbage and trash, was nearly full to capacity and so they turned their sights on my land to turn it into a dump.

‘The Founding Fathers approved laws that let the government take citizens’ land provided they give “JUST COMPENSATION” for it. I’m an American and a patriot and this is the best country on earth but do you think Thomas Jefferson would allow taking all this property and then arguing about the value? Of course he wouldn’t. Because HE was a gentleman and a scholar.

‘I was given compensation equal to land used for grazing not farming. Even though it was a working vegetable farm and there are no livestock for miles around. I had to sell the remaining land because there wasn’t enough to cover expenses.

‘After paying off the mortgages I was left with $150,000. Which may seem like a princely sum except I then got a tax bill for $70,000!! It was only a matter of time until I ended up homeless.

‘Well, by now you know what I did. I did NOT pay the taxes. I took every last penny and gave it to a man I had met a few years ago. A soldier of fortune, you could say. If you wonder who’s at fault for what happened at Solitude Creek and Bay View Center and the hospital, look into a mirror. YOU! Maybe next time you’ll think twice about stealing a man’s soul, his heart, his livelihood, his immortality and discover within you a conscience.’

Dance said, ‘That’s it.’

‘Phew. That’s enough.’

‘One hundred fifty thousand for the job. No wonder our unsub can afford Vuitton shoes.’

They drove in silence for a few moments.

‘You can’t sympathize but you almost want to,’ O’Neil said.

This was true, Dance reflected. Bizarre though it was, the letter revealed how the man had been so sadly derailed.

In fifteen minutes, O’Neil pulled onto a dirt road, where an MCSO cruiser was parked. The officer gestured them on. About a hundred yards farther on they came to an abandoned house. Two more cruisers were there, along with the medical examiner’s bus. The officers waved to O’Neil and Dance as they climbed out of the car and made their way to the front door of the shack.

‘Door was unlocked when we got here, Detective, but he had quite a fortress inside. He was ready for battle if we came for him before his hired gun finished with the revenge.’

Dance noted the thick wooden boards bolted over the windows of the one-story structure. The back door, the officer explained, was sealed too, similarly, and the front was reinforced with metal panels and multiple locks. It would have taken a battering ram to get inside.

She spotted a rifle, some scatterguns. Plenty of ammo.

Crime Scene had arrived too, dolled up in their Tyvek jumpsuits, booties and hoods.

‘You can look around,’ one officer said, ‘just mind the routine. Nothing’s bagged or logged yet.’

Meaning: keep your hands to yourselves and wear booties.

They donned the light blue footwear and stepped inside. It was largely what she’d expected: the filthy cabin, latticed with beams overhead, was dingy and sad. Minimal furniture, second-hand. Jugs of water, cans of Chef Boyardee entrees and vegetables and peaches. Thousands of legal papers and several books of California statutes, well thumbed, with portions highlighted in yellow marker. The air was fetid. He’d used a bucket for his toilet. The mattress was covered with a gray sheet. The blanket was an incongruous pink.

‘Where’s the body?’ O’Neil asked one of the officers.

‘In there, sir.’

They walked into the back bedroom, which was barren of furniture. Otto Grant, disheveled and dusty, lay on his back in front of an open window. He’d hanged himself from a ceiling beam. The medical team had untied the nylon rope and lowered him to the floor, presumably to try to save him, though the lividity of the face and the extended neck told her that Grant had died well before they had arrived.

The window, wide open. She supposed he’d chosen this as the site of his death so he could look out over the pleasant hills in the distance, some magnolia and oak nearby, a field of budding vegetables. Better to gaze at as your vision went to black and your heart shut down than a wall of scuffed, stained sheetrock.

‘Michael? Kathryn?’

With a last look at the man who’d caused so much pain to so many, O’Neil and Dance stepped back into the living room to meet the head of the CSU examination team, dressed in overalls and a hood.

‘Hey, Carlos,’ Dance said.

The lean Latino CSU officer, Carlos Batillo, nodded a greeting. He walked to the card table that Grant had been using for his desk. The man’s computer and a portable router sat on it. It was open to his blog, the entry that Dance had read to O’Neil on the drive there.

‘Find anything else on it?’ O’Neil asked.

‘Bare bones. News stories about the stampedes. Some articles on eminent domain.’

Dance nodded at a Nokia mobile. ‘We know he hired somebody to handle the attacks. He’s the one we want now – the “soldier of fortune” he referred to. Our unsub. Any text or call-log data that could be helpful? Or is it pass coded?’

‘No code.’ Batillo picked it up with a gloved hand. ‘It’s a California exchange, prepaid.’

When he told her the number Dance nodded. ‘The unsub called it from his burner, the one he dropped in Orange County. Can I see the log?’

She and O’Neil moved closer together and looked down, as the CSU officer scrolled.

‘Hold it,’ Dance said. ‘Okay, that’s the number of the phone the unsub dropped. And the others are the ones he bought at the same time, in Chicago.’

Batillo gave a brief laugh. Perhaps that she’d memorized the numbers. He continued, ‘No voice mail. Fair number of texts back and forth.’ He scrolled through them. ‘Here’s one. Grant says he has, quote, “the last of your” money. “I know you wanted more and I wish I could have paid you more.”’ The officer read on. ‘“I know the risks you took. I’m For Ever in your debt.” “For Ever” capitalized. He does that a lot. Then, going back … Grant tells him the targets were perfect: the roadhouse, the Bay View Center, the Monterey Bay Hospital, “probably better the church didn’t work out”.’

‘He was going to attack a church?’ Dance asked, shaking her head.

Batillo read one more. ‘“Thanks for the ammo.”’

Soldier of fortune …

The officer slipped the phone into a bag with a chain-of-custody card attached. He signed it and put the sealed bag into a large plastic container resembling a laundry basket.

She glanced down at a treatise on the law of eminent domain.

‘How’d he meet the doer?’ Dance wondered aloud. ‘He said a few years ago.’

Batillo said, ‘I saw some texts about “the gun show”. “Enjoyed talking weapons with you.”’

‘And I found the ammo I think he was talking about. Brick of twelve gauge and two twenty-three. “Arlington Heights Guns and Sporting Goods” on the label.’

‘Chicago,’ Dance said.

O’Neil said wryly, ‘Tough manhunt. Six million people.’

‘We’ve got the gun-show reference. The ammo. The phones.’ She shrugged and offered a smile. ‘Needle in a haystack, I know. Right up there with “When it rains it pours.” But that doesn’t mean the needle isn’t there.’

Forty minutes later she was back in her office, scrolling through the crime-scene pictures of the Otto Grant suicide – the rest of the report wouldn’t be ready for a day or two – and considering how to narrow down the task of finding their unsub in the Windy City, or wherever he might be. Page after page … Dance found herself staring at the pictures of Prescott and the woman he’d killed, positioned under the lights to get pictures for proof of death. If only she could let her eyes be theirs for a brief moment before they had glazed over, and darkness embraced them.

To catch a fleeting glimpse of the man who’d done this.

Who are you? Are you headed back to your home in Chicago, or somewhere else?

And are you working for someone else now, a new job? Nearby? Or in a different part of the world?

Questions she would answer, whether it took a week, a month, a year.

CHAPTER 79

Maggie’s eyes were wide and even Dance’s adolescent, seen-it-all son was impressed.

They were backstage at the Monterey Performing Arts Center with Neil Hartman himself. The lanky man in his early thirties, dark curly hair and a lean face, looked every inch the country-western star, though that genre was only part of his repertoire. His songs and performance style were very similar to Kayleigh Towne’s – she was Dance’s performer friend, based in Fresno.

When Dance and the kids had been ushered into the green room, the musician had smiled and introduced everyone to the band members present. ‘Kayleigh sends her best,’ he told her.

‘Where’s her show tonight?’

‘Denver. Big house, five thousand plus.’

Dance said, ‘She’s doing well.’

‘I’ll head out there after tomorrow’s show. Maybe we’ll get to Aspen.’ He was grinning shyly.

That answered one of Dance’s questions. The beautiful singer-songwriter hadn’t been dating anyone seriously for a time. There were worse romantic options than a Portland troubadour with dreamy eyes and a lifestyle that seemed more mom-and-pop than Rolling Stones.

‘Uhm …’ Maggie began.

‘Yes, young lady?’ Hartman asked, smiling.

‘Ask him, Mags.’

‘Can I have your autograph?’

He laughed. ‘Do you one better.’ He walked to a box, found a T-shirt in Maggie’s size. It featured a photo from one of his recent CDs – Hartman and his golden retriever sitting on a front porch. He signed it to her with a glittery marker.

‘Oh, wow.’

‘Mags?’

‘Thank you!’

For Wes, the gift was age-appropriate: a black T-shirt with ‘NHB’.

‘Cool. Thanks.’

‘Hey, you guys want to noodle around on a git-fiddle or keyboard?’

‘Yeah? Can we?’ Wes asked.

‘Sure.’

‘Wooee!’ Maggie sat down at the keyboard – Dance cranked the volume down – and Hartman handed Wes an old Martin. You couldn’t live in the Dance household without knowing something about musical instruments, and though Maggie was the real talent, Wes could chord and play a few flat-pick licks.

When he started ‘Stairway To Heaven’, Hartman and Dance glanced at each other and laughed. The song that will never die.

They talked about the show tonight. Hartman was growing in popularity but not at the Kayleigh Towne level yet, though his Grammy win had guaranteed a sold-out house at the performing arts center – nearly a thousand people were coming to see him.

With the children occupied in the corner, the adults spoke in low voices.

‘I heard you got him. The guy behind the attacks.’

‘Well, the one who hired him.’

‘Grant, right? He lost his farm.’

‘That’s him. But we still don’t have the hit man he hired. But we will. We’ll get him.’

‘Kayleigh said something about you being … persistent.’

Dance laughed. ‘That’s what she said, hm?’ Her kinesic skills told her that Hartman was translating. Maybe ‘obstinate’ or ‘pig-headed’ had been the young woman’s choice. She and Kayleigh were a lot alike in that regard.

‘I thought we were going to have to cancel the show.’

Dance had been fully prepared to do just that – if they hadn’t closed the case before the concert.

‘You hear about Sam Cohen?’

‘No, what?’

‘He’s going to rebuild the roadhouse. A dozen or so of us are doing some benefit concerts, donating the money to him. He’s going to tear down the old building and put up a new one. He didn’t want to at first but we were …’ he laughed ‘… persistent.’

‘Great news. I’m really happy.’

Maybe you can recover from some things, Sam. Maybe you can.

Hartman’s drummer appeared in the doorway, smiled at the kids, then said, ‘Let’s play.’

Hartman gave the children a thumbs-up. ‘You got your chops down, both of you. Next time I’m in town, we’ll work up some tunes, I’ll get you out on stage with me.’

‘No way!’ Wes said.

‘Sure.’

‘Excellent!’

Maggie frowned, considering something. ‘Can I cover a Patsy Cline song?’

Dance said, ‘Mags, why don’t you sing a Neil Hartman?’

Hartman laughed. ‘I think Ms Cline would be honored. We’ll make it happen.’

‘Hey, gang, let’s head to our seats.’

‘Bye, Mr Hartman. Thanks.’

Wes handed over the guitar and, looking at his phone, headed toward the door.

‘Young man.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Say hi to Kayleigh for us.’ Dance gave him a smile.

They left the green room and walked into the theater, which was filling up. There were about eight hundred people, Dance estimated.

Year ago, she had dreamed of being a musician, appearing in halls like this. She had tried and tried, but however hard she worked, there came the point when her skill just didn’t make the final bump into the professional world. There came advanced degrees, a stint as a jury consultant, offering her kinesic skills commercially, then law enforcement. A wonderful job, a challenging job … And yet, what she wouldn’t have given to have the talent to make places like this her home.

But then the nostalgia faded as the cop within her resurfaced. Dance was, of course, aware that she was in a crowded venue that would be a perfect target for their unsub at-large. He was surely a hundred miles away by now. But just because Otto Grant had said he’d gotten sufficient revenge didn’t mean he hadn’t had his man set up a whopper of a finale. On the way back from Grant’s shack, she’d arranged for a full sweep of the concert hall and for police to be stationed at each exit door.

Even now she remained vigilant. She noted the location of the exits, fire hoses and extinguishers. She could see no potential sniper nests. And checked that the red lights on the security cameras glowed healthily and, because those models didn’t sport lights, unlike the one in the hospital elevator, she checked for emergency lighting: there were a dozen halogens that would turn the place to bright noon in the event of trouble.

Finally, confident of their security, Kathryn Dance sat back, crossed her legs and enjoyed the exhilaration that always accompanies dimming lights in a concert hall.

CHAPTER 80

Antioch March was enjoying another pineapple juice and studying the TV screen in the Cedar Hills Inn.

The hotel was so posh that it featured a very special television – one with 4K resolution. This was known as ultra-high-definition video. It was nearly double the current standard: 1920 wide by 1080 high.

It was ethereal, the depth of the imagery.

He was presently watching an underwater video, shot in 4K, flowing from his computer, via HDMI cable, onto the fifty-four-inch screen.

Astonishing. The kelp was real. The sunfish. The eels. The coral. All real. The sharks especially, with their supple gray skin, their singular eyes, their choreography of motion, like elegant fencers.

So beautiful. So rich. You were there, you were part of the ocean. Part of the chain of nature.

There was not, as yet, much content in 4K – you needed special cameras to shoot it – but it was coming. If only the family on the rocks at Asilomar had lingered but a minute longer he might have given the Get their ultra-high-definition deaths: his Samsung Galaxy featured such a camera.

Somebody’s not happy …

The landline phone rang and he snagged it, eyes still on the waving kelp, so real it might have been floating in the room around him.

The receptionist announced that a Fred Johnson had arrived.

‘Thank you. Send him over.’ Wondering why that pseudonym.

A few minutes later Christopher Jenkins was at the door.

March let his boss into the entryway. A handshake and then into the luxurious suite. Once the door was closed, a hug too.

Mildly reciprocated.

Jenkins, who, yes, resembled March somewhat, was in his fifties, broad-shouldered, compact – a good foot shorter than his employee – and tanned. His hair was blond, close-cropped and flat against his skull. A military bearing because he had been military. He glanced up at March’s shaved head.

‘Hmm.’

‘Had to.’

‘Looks good.’

Jenkins didn’t really think so, March could see, but he’d never say a word against his favorite employee’s appearance. To March, Jenkins seemed no older than when the two men had met six years ago. He was a bit heavier, more solid. Jenkins had his own Get, but it wasn’t March’s. Amassing money was what numbed Jenkins’s demon. Whether buying a Ferrari for himself or taking a boy out for a thousand-dollar dinner or finding a Cartier bauble … that was what kept Jenkins’s Get at bay.

Odd, how their respective compulsions worked. Symbiotic.

‘Carole says hello.’

‘And to her too.’

One of the girls Jenkins had dated on and off. March wasn’t sure why he kept the façade. Who cared nowadays? Besides, you can’t cheat the Get, which knows what you want and when you want it, so why complicate things? Life’s too short.

‘Your drive good?’

‘Fine.’ Jenkins had a faint Bostonian drawl. He’d lived in a suburb of Bean Town before the army.

March had ordered the best – well, the most expensive – wine on the list, a Château Who Knew from France. A 1995. Had to be good: it was six hundred dollars. It was already open. He’d had a taste. It was okay. Not as good as Dole.

‘Well. Excellent!’ Jenkins said, looking over the label – all Greek to him, a private joke, considering March’s heritage.

He allowed Jenkins to pour him some of the sludgy wine and they tapped glasses, toasting their success. Over the past few days they’d made several hundred thousand dollars.

‘Always loved it here, the Cedar Hills.’

Chris Jenkins reminded March of the people in those infomercials: the handsome man, next to the beautiful woman, on a Florida or Hawaiian porch, boats in the background, palms nearby, talking about how they’d made millions with hardly any effort in the real-estate market or by inventing things. In Jenkins’s case, selling something very, very rare and valuable.

The men sat on the couch. They regarded the crystal TV screen, on which fish swam and kelp waved, hypnotic.

‘Good picture. Four K. Man, that’s beautiful. We’ll keep that in mind.’ Jenkins set the glass down. ‘Now where are we?’

‘All good.’

‘What about Otto Grant? I heard the news. They seemed to buy it.’

‘They did.’

March paused the shark video and called up another video file on his computer. The video, a high-definition (only 2K), showed Otto Grant, kicking in the last moments of his life, trying to get leverage to pull himself up and somehow unhook the rope from where March had tied it to stage the suicide. He struggled for a time, then shivered and went limp.

‘Did he come?’

There was a rumor that upon being hanged, men sometimes ejaculated. Neither had been able to confirm this.

‘Just peed.’

‘Ah.’

‘I left evidence in the shack that the man he hired is from Chicago and has already left to go back there, left right after the incident in the hospital. Solid leads. Phone calls, proxies, emails. They’ll sniff up that tree for a while.’

‘Good.’

‘Now, you were mentioning a new job.’ March knew Jenkins had come to Carmel for another reason, but he wouldn’t’ve made up the part about a new job entirely.

‘Client’s in Lausanne, so he wants it to happen anywhere but Europe. He mentioned Latin America.’

‘Any preferences as to how?’

‘He was thinking a fall, maybe a cable car.’

March laughed. He could hotwire an ignition, he could disable an elevator. That was the extent of his mechanical engineering skills. ‘I don’t think so. A bus?’

‘A bus would work, I’d think.’

‘Send me the details.’

Glasses clinked again. March had sipped the wine once. He’d also eyed the pineapple juice.

Jenkins laughed and handed the juice glass to March, making sure their fingers brushed once more. ‘Just don’t mix it with Saint Estèphe.’

March let his boss’s hand linger on his for a moment.

‘Dinner?’ Jenkins asked.

‘Not hungry.’

March never was, not at times like this. All the work, hoping it would pay off. The way he planned out the jobs, well, it was fragile. There was a lot that could go wrong. Wasting all that time and money, the risk. Anyway, what it came down to: when the Get was hungry, March was not.

‘Oh, here. I brought you something.’ Jenkins dug in his Vuitton backpack. He handed over a small box. March opened it. ‘Well.’

‘Victoria Beckham.’

They were sunglasses, blue lenses.

Jenkins said, ‘Italian. And the lenses change color in the sun. Or get darker. I don’t know. I think there are instructions. You’ll love them.’

‘Thanks. They’re really something.’

Though March’s first thought was: wearing bright blue sunglasses on a job, where you would want to be as inconspicuous as possible?

Maybe I’ll go to the beach sometime. On vacation.

Would you let me do that, Get? Just relax?

He tried them on.

‘They’re you,’ Jenkins whispered, squeezing March’s biceps.

March put the glasses away and picked up the remote.

Click. The hypnotic ballet of sea creatures resumed on the TV. ‘Extraordinary. Four K,’ he said reverently. ‘Who shot this?’

‘Teenager, believe it or not.’

‘Four K. Hmm. Wave of the future.’

Jenkins asked, ‘What’s the plan?’

‘We need to stop her.’

‘That investigator? Dance?’

‘That’s right.’ He explained that the attempt to injure her boyfriend, somebody named Boling, hadn’t worked out. Now they needed to do something more efficient.

‘We’re leaving tomorrow. Why do anything? We’ll be a thousand miles away by noon.’

‘No. We have to stop her. She won’t rest until she gets us.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes,’ March said, staring at the sharks.

‘What do you have in mind?’

Dance, he’d seen when he’d slipped into her Pathfinder at the Bay View crime scene, was presently attending a concert at the Performing Arts Center in Monterey. He’d thought momentarily about staging a final attack there, with the chance that she’d be severely injured or killed. But coming after Grant’s suicide that would be suspicious.

Besides, there was another reason he didn’t want her dead.

He looked over the notes he’d jotted after getting the information on the man’s license plate. ‘There’s a close associate. Named TJ Scanlon. Lives in Carmel Valley. We’ll kill him, make it look gang-related. It’ll deflect her. She’ll drop everything and go after them.’

‘Why not just kill her?’

March could think of no answer. Just: ‘It’s better this way.’

Another reason …

He jabbed a finger at the TV screen. ‘Ah, watch. This is it.’

On the screen a hammerhead shark, awkward yet elegant, swam toward the camera, then veered upward and, as casually as a human swatting a mosquito, opened its mouth and neatly removed the leg of a surfer treading water overhead. The shark and limb vanished as the massive cloud of red streamed like smoke into the scene, eventually obscuring the mutilated young man, writhing as he died.

‘Well,’ Jenkins said. ‘Four K. Excellent.’ He lifted a glass of wine.

March nodded. He stared at the imagery for a moment longer and shut the set off. He picked up the Louis Vuitton bag, checked that the hunting knife and gun were still inside, and gestured his boss toward the door. ‘After you.’