Solitude Creek (37 page)

‘What happened?’

‘Lost the brakes on Ocean.’

The main street leading down to the beach in Carmel. Very steep.

‘No!’

‘They felt funny, when I started off, so I got about a half-block from the store … the store I was at and I pulled over. That’s when they popped. Both of the brake shoes.’

‘Jon!’

‘I steered into bushes, and that slowed me down. Went through them and hit the curb and a car at the stop sign.’

‘The brakes?’ she asked. ‘You think they were tampered with?

‘Tampered with? Why would … Oh. Your unsub, you’re thinking?’

‘Maybe. To slow me down, distract me.’

‘But how did he put us together?’

‘Nothing about this guy would surprise me. You notice anybody near your bike?’

‘No. I had an errand. Left the bike outside. Only five minutes. I wasn’t paying any attention.’ Then Boling was looking her over. ‘But … what happened to you?’

‘Nothing critical. I got banged up getting into an elevator.’

‘Well, that must have been quite an entrance.’

She told him of the latest attack. ‘Nobody hurt badly.’

Then her eyes strayed to what was on her desk in front of him: Stan Prescott’s Asus computer. Beside it was a portable hard drive. ‘You cracked it?’

‘Well, my partner did.’

‘Partner?’

‘Lily.’

Dance glanced at him with a playful frown. ‘Lily. Is this where I start to be jealous?’

‘Ah, Lily … My main squeeze. She’s a second-generation Blue Gene/P four-way symmetric multiprocessor supercomputer with node-to-node logic communication. But as sexy as that is, you’ve got a better body.’

At that moment O’Neil walked through the door. He blinked. That wasn’t – it seemed – a reaction to Boling’s comment about Dance. He was staring at the bandages and bruises. ‘Jon, Jesus. What happened?’

‘The dangers of going green. Bike accident. Banged up a little. I was lucky.’

Dance said, ‘Maybe intentional.’

‘So he knows who’s out to stop him,’ O’Neil said to Dance. ‘I’ll order a protective detail to keep an eye on your place.’

Not a bad idea. She’d also make sure the children didn’t go anywhere alone. Certainly Wes couldn’t take any more bike rides with Donnie. Not until the unsub was caught.

O’Neil had his mobile out. He said to Boling, ‘I’ll order one for you too, if you want.’

There was a pause. Dance said, ‘Just one. For my house is fine.’

‘Sure.’ And O’Neil phoned the request in. After a brief conversation he hung up. ‘There’ll be an undercover out front in the evenings. Random drive-bys too. During the day.’ He had ordered protection for her parents too.

She thanked him. Then glanced toward Boling. ‘Jon got into Stan Prescott’s computer. And phone.’

‘Great.’

Boling handed her the small USB-powered hard drive. The computer forensic protocol was that you backed up the suspect’s drive onto an external because there were often software booby traps in the computer itself.

She plugged it in and nodded at her keyboard. He took over.

‘I’ve got access to Prescott’s emails and the websites he visited. You should review it yourself but I didn’t see any connection to the Solitude Creek incident or Bay View. No personal connection, I mean. He didn’t correspond with anybody about them – and he didn’t delete anything about them either. I reconstructed the deleted files. All of them. Looks like he downloaded the pictures of Solitude Creek from a pay site.’

‘Pay site? What’s that? I thought they were from a TV newscast.’

‘They were originally. But somebody uploaded them to a commercial site where members can see graphic violence – stills and movies. Do you know about them?’

Neither Dance nor O’Neil did.

‘Oh, well, here, take a look.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘You’d better brace yourself.’

‘Brace?’

He typed and a page loaded.

Dance’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, my. What’s this?’

O’Neil walked around and stood on Dance’s other side. The three of them stared at the website. It was called Cyber-Necro.com and the opening graphic revealed a computer-generated image of a man plunging a knife into the belly of a buxom woman strapped down to a medieval table.

Boling said, ‘It’s a pay site devoted to graphic images of murder and rape victims, disasters, crimes scenes, accidents, medical procedures. The Solitude Creek pictures were in the section on “Theater and Sporting Events Deaths”.’

‘That’s actually a category?’

‘Yep. People pay a lot of money to see those pictures and videos. I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe a shrink could. Voyeurism, sexual, sadistic. Who knows? I’ve gotten quite an education in the past few hours. There’re hundreds of sites like this. I might write a paper on it. Some sites are like this one.’ He nodded at the screen. ‘Real deaths and injuries. But you can also get custom-made videos. Actresses – usually actresses – being shot or stabbed or hit by arrows. Strangulation and asphyxia’re popular too. Sexual assaults. Some hard-core. And the weapons? The special effects’re good. Shockingly good. You’d almost think the women were actually being killed but they keep appearing in other clips. It seems some men have favorite actresses they want to see killed. Over and over.’

O’Neil whispered, ‘I’ve never heard of this.’

‘A whole underground, I found.’ Boling typed. ‘Here’re the pictures of Solitude Creek.’

The page on Cyber-Necro.com showing pictures of the disaster had about fifteen pictures. Most were from the media, shot afterward, depicting blood. Some were bad phone videos, low resolution, taken inside during the crush.

Dance and O’Neil glanced at each other. They’d both be thinking the same thing: was there anything in the videos or pictures that might help the case?

‘How can we watch the videos?’ Dance asked.

‘You join. A hundred a month and you can download whatever you want.’

Dance went to the home page and signed up.

Boling added, ‘If you want, you can get a discount if you join Cyber-Necro’s sister site at the same time.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

Boling smiled. ‘I think it’s called Sluts-On-Demand.’

Dance nodded. ‘Probably just the one. It’s going to be hard enough to get Charles to sign off on my expense account as it is.’

In a half-hour they’d downloaded all of the clips and images of Solitude Creek. She wondered who’d taken the videos. During the canvassing she’d asked if anyone had done so; no one admitted it, perhaps not wishing to seem heartless.

But they found nothing helpful. The images, video and still, were low resolution and murky. No clues.

One picture Dance stared at for a long moment. It was a still image similar to the one Prescott had used for his phony jihad rant on Vidster. It showed the interior of the club, taken several days after the event, according to the time stamp.

‘What?’ O’Neil asked, seeing her face.

‘Oh, I couldn’t place that face.’ She pointed. Although the focus of the pictures was the bloodstains, in the mirror behind the bar you could see several faces. They were indistinct but the one she indicated was fairly visible.

‘It’s the US Congressman.’

‘Congressman?’

‘Nashima. Daniel Nashima. He must’ve come back to examine the club after the police released the scene.’

Boling said, ‘If it’s an election year, he’ll be talking about reforms in fire codes and all that. Not to be cynical.’

Dance said, ‘Really appreciate all this. Thanks, Jon.’

‘Wish I’d been more helpful.’

‘That’s the thing about policing,’ O’Neil said. ‘Even when it doesn’t pan out, you’ve got to do the work anyway.’

So Prescott’s computer was a bust. But then Dance asked, ‘What about the unsub’s phone?’

The burner he’d dropped during the pursuit in Orange County.

‘It’s a prepaid from a Chicago exchange.’

‘Like the one he used at the site of the Bay View Center disaster to lead police into thinking the killer was headed toward Fisherman’s Wharf.’

Boling added, ‘My guess is he goes through a phone every few days. This one has only a few texts on it. To and from a prepaid with a California exchange.’ He consulted his notes. ‘Incoming: “Very pleased so far. Second installment en route.” Outgoing: “Good. Thanks.” Incoming: “What’s next?” Outgoing: “Cleaning up. All will be good. Will be in touch.”’

‘Well,’ Dance whispered.

O’Neil was nodding. ‘There’s our answer.’

She said, ‘Sure is.’

Boling said, ‘Sorry? What do you mean?’

She explained, ‘Our unsub is a pro. He’s working for somebody.’

Dance then placed a call to TJ Scanlon, gave him the number of the California phone and asked him to contact the service provider and see if it was still active.

‘On it, boss.’

Then a thought occurred to her. She considered it. Interesting idea. She said to O’Neil. ‘Do you have the pictures of your Jane Doe, the one we think our unsub killed?’

‘Sure.’

He went onto the MCSO secure server and called them up.

On her computer she accessed the images of Stan Prescott.

O’Neil said, ‘Right. Like we were saying: Same sort of MO. Strangled or asphyxia. On their backs.’

‘And,’ she said, ‘look. They’re both under lights.’

‘Maybe they just fell there.’

‘No. I don’t think so. I think he moved the lamps so he could get pictures on his cell phone. It occurred to me when I was looking at the crime-scene pictures on that website – those bodies were all well-lit too.’

O’Neil nodded, now understanding. ‘Proof of death.’

‘Exactly.’

‘What do you mean?’ Boling asked.

‘He needed clear pictures to prove that the witnesses’d been eliminated. That line in the text about “cleaning up”. He’s making a lot of money on this job and he wants to be sure the man who’s hired him is confident he’s not leaving any traces.’

Five-thousand-dollar shoes …

O’Neil said, ‘Brilliant. He’s targeted a couple of venues to make it look like this’s the work of a psycho. But, no, he’s got a specific venue in mind. He was hired to destroy it.’

‘Or a person,’ Dance said, after a moment. ‘He
could’ve
been hired to destroy a location, sure. But also to kill somebody specific.’

O’Neil nodded. ‘Sure. Makes sense. But if it’s an individual, then who?’

Dance offered, ‘At the hospital, no one in the elevator could have been the intended victim.’

‘Because how could he know who’d be in that car at that time? And at the Bay View Center – that venue wouldn’t’ve worked either.’

‘No,’ O’Neil said. ‘The people who died all drowned. He couldn’t be sure he’d get a specific target there. How’d he know who’d jump into the bay? No, it was Solitude Creek. His target was there, in the audience.’

O’Neil: ‘The panic starts. The unsub’s changed out of his workman’s clothes. He’s in the audience. He gets close to the victim and kills him or her. Trips them maybe, crushes their throat, breaks a rib that pierces their lung.’

‘He’d be in the mob too. But no—’

‘Right.’ O’Neil carried through on her thought: ‘He’s a big guy. He can survive a bit of jostling.’

‘Besides, remember, there was no fire. It wasn’t like he was going to burn to death. He knew most people would get out okay.’

O’Neil was scrolling through his mobile. ‘There were three deaths at Solitude Creek. Guess we’ll have to look at all the victims.’

It was then that she had one of those moments.

A to B to Z …

‘Let’s go for a drive,’ said Kathryn Dance.

‘Me?’ Boling asked.

She smiled.

‘No. Better if it’s just Michael and me.’

‘Oh. Hi, Mrs Dance. I mean, Agent Dance.’

‘Hello, Trish. This is Detective O’Neil with the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office.’

Nervous. Naturally.

‘Hi.’

The detective nodded down to her. ‘Hello, Trish. I’m sorry about your mother.’

‘Yeah. Thanks. It’s, you know, tough.’

‘I’m sure it is.’

The three stood on the front porch of one of the nicest houses Dance had ever seen. Easily seven thousand square feet. Stone and glass and chrome. A Beverly Hills house, a Malibu house. A rich producer’s or film star’s house.

A moving company truck was parked by the garage. The workers were carrying boxes and furniture into the house, not out.

She’d known Frederick was moving back in but she appreciated this physical evidence regarding who had hired the Solitude Creek unsub.

Dance asked, ‘Is your father home?’

‘No. He’s taking my aunt and uncle to the airport. But he could be back soon.’

A conspiratorial smile. ‘We won’t be long. I know he’s not a big fan of mine. Do you mind if we ask you a few more questions?’

‘You want to come in?’

‘Thank you.’

They walked into the entryway – bigger than Dance’s living room and kitchen combined – then entered a study. Sumptuous leather and metal furniture. The couch alone could have been traded in for a new Pathfinder. They all sat.

‘Uhm, the thing is, I didn’t tell my father we talked, you and me,’ the girl said.

‘We’ll play along.’ Dance gave a smile. ‘If he comes back.’

Relief flooded Trish’s eyes. ‘Thanks. Like, really.’

‘Sure.’

‘I heard he did the same thing at the Bay View Center.’

O’Neil said, ‘And the hospital, the fire in the elevator.’

‘Why’s he doing it?’

They, of course, demurred on the suspected motive. Dance said, ‘We don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any clear reason. Now, Trish, I’m sorry to ask but I need to know a little more about your mother’s death. Some of the facts. Are you up for that?’

She was still. She took a deep breath, then nodded. ‘If it’ll help you catch this asshole.’

‘I hope it will.’

‘Okay, sure. I guess.’

Dance said, ‘Go back to that night. At the Solitude Creek Club. After you and your mother got separated.’

A nod.

O’Neil, who’d read the account, said, ‘If I understand, you were being swept toward the kitchen and she was in the crowd going for the exit doors.’

‘That’s right.’

Dance asked, ‘But before you got into the kitchen, you could see your mother, right?’