Solitude Creek (23 page)

‘What do you think about that game they’re playing now – Defend and Respond Expedition? What is it again?’

‘Service.’

‘Right.’

‘I have no idea what it’s about but what I’m fascinated with is that they’re rejecting the computer model. Writing out their battle plans, or whatever they do, sort of like football plays. Or like the old Battleships game. Remember?’

‘Sure.’

‘It’s a return to traditional game practices. I think there’s even an aspect where they do a scavenger hunt or something outside, find clues in the park or down by the shore. They’re out in the real world, ride their bikes, get some exercise.’

‘Like I used to play when I was a girl.’

‘Have to say I was pretty box-oriented, even that age.’

Boxes
. Computers.

She said, ‘I heard people’re going back to paper books, away from e-books.’

‘True,’ he said. ‘I prefer the paper ones. And, besides, given my typical reading material, you’re probably not going to find
Vector Modeling and Cosine Similarity as Applied to Search Engine Algorithms
on Kindle.’

Dance nodded. ‘They’re making a movie of that, aren’t they?’

‘Pixar.’

Patsy and Dylan wandered out onto the Deck. Molecules of roast beef aroma carry far on nights like that. They plopped down and Boling furtively, but not too, slipped them bits. He asked Dance, ‘Okay, how bad was it?’

She lowered her head, sipped wine again.

He said, ‘You didn’t want to talk about it. But maybe you do.’

‘It’s bad, Jon. This guy, we don’t have a clue what he’s up to. Tonight— Did you hear the news?’

‘Gunman, but he wasn’t actually shooting people. Just making them panic. They jumped into the water. Four or five dead.’

Dance fell silent, looked out over the tiny amber lights in the backyard. As she leaned back, a bone somewhere in her shoulder popped. Didn’t used to happen. She stared up through the pines at the stars. This was the Peninsula of Fog but there were moments where the temperature and moisture partnered to turn the air into glass and, with little ambient illumination here, you sometimes could peer up through a tunnel between the pines and see the start of the universe.

‘Stay,’ she said.

Boling looked down at the dogs. They were asleep.

He glanced at her.

A smile. ‘You. Not them.’

‘Stay?’

‘The night.’

He didn’t need to say, ‘But the children.’ Kathryn Dance was not somebody you needed to remind when it came to the obvious.

And he didn’t need to hesitate. He leaned over and kissed her hard. Her hand went around his neck and she pulled him to her.

Neither asked about finishing dinner. They picked up their half-empty plates and carried them inside to the sink. Then Dance ushered the dogs in, and locked the doors.

Boling took her hand and led her up the stairs.

The alarm went off at seven thirty.

A classical tune – Dance, a musician, never did well with dissonance. It was the ‘Toccata and Fugue’,
Phantom of the Opera
– no, not
that
one. An earlier version.

She opened her eyes and fumbled for the stop button.

Yes, it was Saturday. But the unsub was still out there. Time to get up.

She turned to see Jon Boling brush back his thinning hair. He wasn’t self-conscious: it was only that strands were sticking out sideways. He wore only a T-shirt, gray, which she vaguely remembered him pulling on somewhere north of midnight. She was in a Victoria’s Secret thing, silk and pink and just a little outrageous. Because, how often?

He kissed her forehead.

She kissed his mouth.

No regrets about his staying. None at all.

She’d wondered what her reaction would be. Even now, hearing the creak of a door downstairs, a latch, muted voices, the tink-tink of cereal bowls, she knew it was the right decision. Time to step forward. They’d been dating a year, a little more. She now marshaled arguments and prepared a public-relations campaign for the children, thought about what they would and wouldn’t think, say, do when they saw a man come down the stairs. They’d have a clue about what had been going on: Dance had had The Talk with them, several years ago. (The reactions: Maggie had nodded matter-of-factly, as if confirming what she’d known for years; Wes had blushed furiously and finally, encouraged to ask a question, any question, about the process, wondered, ‘Aren’t there, like, any other ways?’ Dance, struggling to keep a straight face.)

So. They were about to confront the fact that Mom had had a man stay over, albeit a man they knew well, liked and who was more relative to them than her own sister was an aunt (flighty, charming and occasionally exasperating, New Age Betsey lived in the hills of Santa Barbara).

Let’s see what the next half-hour holds.

Dance considered just throwing on a robe but opted for a shower. She slipped into the bathroom and, when out, dressed in jeans and a pink work shirt while Boling, looking a bit uneasy, brushed his teeth. He, too, dressed.

‘Okay,’ he said slowly.

‘No.’

‘No?’ he asked.

‘You were looking at the window. You can’t jump out of it. You’re going to come downstairs with me and we’ll have my famous French toast. I only make it on special occasions.’

‘Is this special?’

She didn’t answer. She kissed him fast.

He said, ‘All right. Let’s go see the kids.’

As it turned out, however, it wasn’t just the kids that Dance and Boling saw.

As they stepped to the bottom of the stairs and into the kitchen, Dance nearly ran into Michael O’Neil, who was holding a glass of orange juice and walking to the table.

‘Oh,’ she whispered.

‘Morning. Hi, Jon.’

‘Michael.’

O’Neil, his face completely neutral, said, ‘Wes let me in. I tried to call but your phone was off.’

She’d shut it off intentionally before easing into bed, not wanting to risk a call – that is, risk hearing O’Neil’s ringtone, an Irish ballad, courtesy of the kids – at a moment like that. She’d fallen asleep before turning it back on. Careless. Unprofessional.

‘I …’ she began, but could think of not a single syllable to utter past that. She glanced toward the busy bees hard at work on breakfast.

‘Hi, Mom!’ Maggie said. ‘There was this show on TV about badgers and there’s this one kind, a honey badger, and this bird called a honeyguide leads it to a beehive and a badger rips it open and eats honey and its coat is so thick it doesn’t get stung. Hi, Jon.’

As if he’d lived there for years.

Wes, on his phone, nodded a cheerful greeting with a smile to both mother and boyfriend.

Mother and daughter went to work, wrangling breakfast – including honey for the French toast, of course. Dance glanced toward Wes. ‘Who?’ she whispered, nodding at his phone.

‘Donnie.’

‘Say hi for me and then hang up.’

Wes said hi, kept talking and, under her gaze, clicked off.

O’Neil, who might very well have spent the night with Ms Ex-O’Neil, kept his eyes on the juice. From his solid frame, a dozen kinesic messages were firing, like cylinders in a sports car. Or a white SUV, made by the Lexus division of Toyota Motors.

Enough, she told herself.

Let it go …

Boling made coffee. ‘Michael?’ Lifting a cup.

‘Sure.’ Then O’Neil added to Dance, ‘Something’s come up. That’s what I was trying to get in touch with you about.’

‘Solitude Creek?’

‘Right.’

Dance didn’t need to glance at the children, from whom she kept most aspects of her job. It was O’Neil who nodded toward the front hall. She told Maggie to set the table. Boling grilled the toast and made bacon. Wes had taken to texting again but Dance said nothing about it.

As she followed O’Neil, she realized that her top button was undone; she’d been distracted earlier. She fixed it with a gesture she tried to make casual but that she was sure drew attention to the V of flesh, dotted with faint freckles. And silently gave a word of thanks to whatever impulse had told her not to go with the robe and lacy Victoria’s Secret gown before heading downstairs.

‘There’s a lead we ought to follow up on. Out of town.’

‘The unsub’s Honda?’

‘No. The alert we’ve got for online activity.’

She and O’Neil had spoken to Amy Grabe, San Francisco, and she’d had the FBI’s powerful online monitoring network search for any references to either of the two attacks. It was not unheard of for witnesses to unintentionally post helpful information about crimes; there had even been instances when the perp had bragged about his cleverness. ‘Last night somebody posted a clip on Vidster.’

Dance knew it. A YouTube competitor.

‘What was it?’

‘Some of the press footage – shot of a TV screen – of the roadhouse. And stills of other incidents.’

‘Others?’

‘Not related to what happened here. It was a rant by somebody named Ahmed. He said this is what Islam will do to the West, that sort of thing. Didn’t take credit for it exactly but we should check it out.’

‘What other incidents?’

‘Some foreign. A beheading of Christians in Iraq, a car bomb outside of Paris. A train wreck in New York, derailment. And then another stampede – a few years ago in Fort Worth. A nightclub.’

‘I read about that. But the perp died in the incident. A homeless guy.’

‘Well, Ahmed claims he was jihadist.’

O’Neil scrolled through his phone. He displayed some clips. Bodies close up, lying in their desperate still poses, asleep for ever.

‘And that was supposedly the work of some terror cell?’

‘More or less.’

‘Have we got his address?’

‘Not yet. Soon, the tech people said.’

‘Mom!’ Maggie called.

‘Be right there.’

He slipped the phone away and they walked into the kitchen. O’Neil said, ‘I should go.’

‘Aw, no, stay!’ Wes said.

Dance said nothing.

‘Yeah, Michael. Pleeeease.’ Maggie was in her persuasive mode.

Boling said, ‘Come on, have something. It’s Kathryn’s secret recipe.’

She said, ‘Eggs, milk. But don’t tell anybody.’

‘Sure, I guess.’

They all sat at the table and Dance dished up.

Wes said, ‘Wow, I saw on the news that guy did another one.’

Dance said, ‘It looks that way.’

‘Did another what?’ Maggie asked.

‘Hurt some people at the Bay View Center.’

Her daughter asked quietly, ‘Did anybody die?’

Dance never over-explained but she always answered their questions truthfully and directly. ‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’

They ate in silence for a while. Dance had little appetite. Boling and O’Neil did. So did Wes.

She sipped coffee and noted that Maggie was troubled again and was now picking at her French toast. ‘Honey?’ she whispered, lowering her head. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’m just not hungry any more.’

‘Drink your juice.’

She had a minuscule sip. Her face was now very clouded. After a moment she said, ‘Mom? I was thinking.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

Dance glanced at the others, then said to her daughter, ‘Let’s go on the Deck.’

Maggie rose and, with a glance toward Boling, then O’Neil, Dance followed her outside. She knew that the serious conversation, postponed the other night, was now going to happen.

‘Come on, hon. Tell me. You’ve been sad for a long time now.’

Maggie looked at a hummingbird, hovering over the feeder.

‘I don’t think I want to sing that song tomorrow.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Clara’s not performing.’

‘Clara just had her appendix out. Your whole class is doing something.’

The name of the show was
Mrs Bendix’s Sixth Grade Class’s Got Talent!
, which told it all. There were to be skits, dance performances, piano recitals, violin solos. Her teacher had persuaded Maggie to sing after she’d performed a perfect solo of ‘America The Beautiful’ at an assembly.

‘I keep forgetting the words.’

‘Really?’ Dance’s tone called her on the lie.

‘Well, like, sometimes I forget them.’

‘We’ll work on it together. I’ll get the Martin out. Okay? It’ll be fun.’

For a moment Maggie’s face was so dismayed that Dance felt alarm. What was this all about?

‘Honey?’

A dark look.

‘If you don’t want to sing, you don’t have to.’

‘I … Really?’ Her face blossomed.

‘Really. I’ll call Mrs Bendix.’

‘Tell her I have a sore throat.’

‘Mags. We don’t lie.’

‘It gets sore sometimes.’

‘I’ll tell her you’re not comfortable singing. You can do the Bach invention on your violin. That’s beautiful.’

‘Really? It’s okay?’

‘Of course.’

‘Even if …’ Her voice faded and her eyes fled to the tiny band-throated hummer, sipping sugar water.

‘Even if what?’

‘Nothing.’ Maggie beamed. ‘Thanks, Mommy! Love you, love you!’ She ran off, back to breakfast, happier than Dance had seen her in weeks.

Whatever was motivating her not to sing, Dance knew she’d made the right decision. As a mother, you had to prioritize. And forcing her daughter to sing in a sixth-grade talent show was not an important issue. She called the teacher and left a message, relaying the news. If there was any problem, Mrs Bendix could call her back. Otherwise, they’d be at the school at six thirty tomorrow, violin in hand.

Dance returned to the kitchen table, and as she ate a mouthful of toast O’Neil’s phone beeped. He took a look at the screen. ‘Got it.’

‘The address of the guy who posted?’

‘His service area.’ He scooted back in the chair. ‘They’re still working on his name and exact address.’

‘Jon …’ Dance began.

‘I’ll get the gang to practices,’ he said, smiling. ‘No worries.’

Wes for tennis. Maggie’d taken up gymnastics – something she hadn’t been interested in until her friend Bethany, the cheerleader, had suggested she try it.

‘And Quinzos after,’ Boling told the kids. ‘Only be sure you don’t tell your mother. Oh, oops!’