Solitude Creek (7 page)

A group of a dozen people – mostly men – were walking fast up the incline from the direction of the club. Another flung a second rock. Dance and Billy dodged. The throw was wide but if it had hit it would have cracked a skull. She was surprised to note that these were people who were well dressed. They seemed middle class. Not bikers or thugs. But their expressions were chilling: they were out for blood.

‘Get him!’

‘Fucker!’

‘You’re the fucking driver, aren’t you?’

‘Look! Over there! It’s the driver!’

‘Police,’ Dance said, holding up her ID, not bothering with specific authentication. ‘Stop right there.’

Nobody paid the least attention to her.

‘You asshole! Killer.’

‘No,’ Billy said, his voice choking. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

Suddenly the group was joined by others striding fast from the impromptu memorial site near the roadhouse. Some started running. Pointing. They numbered about twenty now. Faces red with anger, shouting. Dance had her mobile out and was dialing 911. Dispatch would have taken too long.

She heard: ‘Police and fire emergen—’

Dance gasped as a tire iron spiraled straight for her face.

Billy tackled Dance as the metal rod zipped past.

They both collapsed onto the ground. Then he yanked her to her feet and together they hurried toward the company’s office door. She completed her call, officer needs assistance, and twisted back, shouting to the approaching mob, ‘This is a police investigation! Disperse now. You will be arrested!’

And was greeted with another missile – a rock again. This one connected, though obliquely, with her left forearm, not far from the watch, which had shattered in the CBI parking lot. She cried out in pain.

‘Arrest him!’ called the burly blonde woman, whose fiancé had been so badly injured.

‘Arrest him? Fuck him up!’

Now the crowd caught up with them. Several of the men pushed Dance aside and shoved Billy backward, their palms slamming into his chest.

‘You are committing a felony! There are police on their way.’

One man sprinted up and got right in their faces. Livid, he stuck a finger in Billy’s chest and raged, ‘You parked there to take a crap or something! Ran off. Fuck you, Officer! Why isn’t he under arrest?’

‘No, no, I didn’t do anything. Please!’ Billy was shaking his head and she saw tears in his eyes. He rubbed his chest from one of the blows a moment ago.

Others were swarming around them now. Dance held her shield up and this resulted in a momentary stay of the madness.

Dance whispered, ‘This’s going to blow up. We’ve got to get out of here now. Back to the office.’

She and Billy pushed around those immediately in front of them and kept walking toward the door. The crowd followed behind them, a hostile escort. She told herself: Don’t run. She knew if they did the crowd would attack once again.

And though it was impossibly hard, she kept a slow, steady pace.

Somebody else growled, ‘Give me five minutes with him. I’ll get a confession.’

‘Fuck him up, I keep saying!’

‘You killed my daughter!’

They were now thirty feet from the office door. The crowd had grown and were shouting insults. At least no more projectiles.

Then one short, stocky man in jeans and a plaid shirt ran up to his prey and slugged Billy in the side of the head. He cried out.

Dance displayed her shield. ‘You. Give me your name. Now!’

He laughed cruelly, grabbed the badge and flung it away. ‘Fuck you, bitch.’

She doubted that even a weapon brandished would have slowed them down. In any event she had no Glock to draw.

‘Fuck him up! Get him!’

‘Kill him.’

‘Her too, bitch!’

These people were insane. Animals. Mad dogs.

‘Listen to me,’ Dance shouted. ‘You’re committing a felony! You will be arrested if you—’

It was then that their control broke. ‘Get him. Now!’

She glanced back to see several picking up rocks. One gripped another tire iron.

Jesus.

She ducked as a large stone zipped past her ear. She didn’t see who’d thrown it. She stumbled and ended up on her knees. The crowd surged forward.

Billy yanked her to her feet and, hands over their heads, they sprinted for the office door. It was now closed. If Henderson had locked it, hell, they could very well be dead in a few minutes.

Dance felt the full-on panic, an antelope hearing the rhythm of the lion’s paws moving closer and closer.

The door …

Please …

Just as they arrived it swung open. Billy turned and this time a rock hit its target square. It slammed into the man’s jaw and he gave a sharp cry. Blood poured and it was obvious he’d lost a tooth or two and possibly a bone had broken.

He stumbled inside and collapsed on the floor, gripping his mouth. Dance leapt in too. The door slammed shut and Henderson locked it.

‘I called nine one one,’ the office manager said.

‘I did too,’ Dance muttered, looking at Billy’s gash. ‘They should be here soon.’

She peered out of the window, her hands shaking, heart pounding audibly.

Panic …

The crowd had ganged at the door. Their faces were possessed. She thought of the time when a crazed Doberman, off its leash, had charged her and her German shepherd, Dylan, on a walk. Only pepper spray had stopped it.

No reasoning, no escaping.

Dance grimaced, noting that Henderson was holding a revolver, a Smith & Wesson, short-barrel .38 Special. Gripped uneasily in his hand.

‘Put that away.’

‘But—’

‘Now,’ she snapped.

He set the weapon back in its drawer.

A rock smashed into the side of the office, a huge sound, thanks to the metal walls. Others. Two windows broke, though no one tried to climb in. More shouts.

Dance looked at Billy, whose eyes were closed from the pain. He held a towel, filled with ice, against his swollen face. Henderson’s relative had brought it. It appeared that the jawbone was shattered.

Looking out through a broken window Dance could see flashing blue-and-white lights.

And, just like in the Solitude Creek video of last night, the madness vanished. The mob who’d been ready to lynch Billy and break Dance’s skull turned and were walking away, making for their own cars, as if nothing had happened.

Fast, so fast. As quickly as they’d become enraged they’d calmed. The possession was over with. She noted several of them drop the rocks they held; it seemed some of them hadn’t even realized they were holding the weapons.

Squad cars from the MCSO eased to a stop in front of Henderson Jobbing. Two sheriff’s deputies from the vehicle closest to the office surveyed the scene around them and walked inside.

‘Kathryn,’ said the woman deputy, a tall, striking Latina. The other, a squat African American, nodded to her. She knew both of them well.

‘Kit, John.’

‘The hell happened?’ Kit asked.

Dance explained about the mob. She added, ‘You could probably get a few collars for assault and battery.’ A nod toward Billy and she showed her own rock-bruised arm. ‘I’ll leave that up to you. I’m not processing criminal cases.’

Kit Sanchez lifted an eyebrow.

‘Long story. I’ll witness, you need it.’

John Lanners, the other deputy, looked over Billy Culp’s shattered face and asked if he wanted to press charges against anyone in the mob. Billy’s mumbled words: ‘I didn’t see anyone.’

He was lying, Dance could see. She understood, of course, that it was simply that he didn’t want any more publicity as the man responsible for the Solitude Creek disaster. And his wife and children … They, too, would be targeted.

Dance shook her head. ‘You decide.’

‘Who’s running this? CBI or us?’ Lanners asked, nodding back to the roadhouse.

Sanchez said, ‘We don’t care. Just, you know …’

‘Bob Holly’s here, for the county, so I guess you are.’ Dance added, ‘I came to check some licenses.’ She shrugged. ‘But I decided to stay. Ask some questions.’

Lanners wiped sweat – he was quite heavy – and said to Billy, ‘We’ll call in some medical help.’

The driver didn’t seem to care, though he was in significant pain. He wiped tears.

Lanners pulled his radio off his belt and made a call for the EMS bus. The dispatcher reported they’d have one there in ten minutes. Dance asked Lanners, ‘Can you go with him?’ She added, in a whisper, ‘It’s like there’s a price on his head.’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘And we’ll give his family a call.’ The deputy, too, had spotted the wedding band.

Dance swiped at her own injury.

Kit asked, ‘You all right, Kathryn?’

‘It’s …’

Then Dance’s eyes focused past the deputy to another sign on the wall. She pointed. ‘Is that true?’

Henderson squinted and followed her gaze. ‘That? Yeah. Saved us a lot of money over the years.’

‘All the trucks?’

‘Every single one.’

Kathryn Dance smiled.

The man Ray Henderson was going to sell out, the man the crowd ten minutes ago was ready to lynch, was innocent.

It took only five minutes to learn that Billy Culp was not responsible for the tragedy at Solitude Creek.

The sign Dance’d seen on the wall of Henderson Jobbing, not far from where the driver sat, miserable in his heart and hurting in his jaw, read:

WE know you Drive safely.

Remember: Our GPS does too!

Obey the posted speed limits.

All the Henderson Jobbing trucks, it seems, were equipped with sat nav, not only to give the drivers directions but to tell the boss exactly where they were and how fast they’d been going. (Henderson explained that this was to protect them in the case of hijacking or theft; Dance suspected he was also tired of paying speeding tickets or shelling out more than he needed to for diesel fuel.)

Dance got permission from Bob Holly and the county deputies to extract the GPS device from Billy’s truck and take it into the Henderson office. Once it was hooked up via a USB cord, she and the deputies looked over the data.

At 8:10 last night the GPS unit came to life. It registered movement northward – toward the roadhouse – of about one hundred feet, then it stopped and shut off.

‘So,’ Kit Sanchez said, ‘somebody drove it into position intentionally.’

Yep,’ Dance said. ‘Somebody broke into the drop-box. Got the key. Drove the truck into position to block the club doors, shut the engine off and returned the key.’

‘I was home then!’ Billy said. ‘When it happened, eight o’clock, I was home. I’ve got witnesses!’

Henderson and his perhaps-nephew diligently avoided looking at either Dance or Billy, now knowing that the man they had wanted to throw under the … well, truck was innocent.

‘Security cameras?’ Dance asked.

‘In the warehouse. Nothing outside.’

Too bad, that.

‘And the key to the truck?’ she asked.

‘I’ve got it.’ He reached for a drawer.

‘No, don’t touch it,’ Dance said.

Fingerprints. Forensics didn’t much interest Kathryn Dance but you had to treat physical evidence with consummate reverence.

‘Shit. I’ve already picked it up.’

John Lanners, the MCSO deputy: ‘There’ll be plenty of prints on it, I’d imagine, but we’ll sort it out. Take yours for samples. Find the ones that don’t match Billy’s or the other drivers’.’

In gloved hands, Kit Sanchez collected the key fob from the offending truck and put it in an evidence bag. Dance knew in her heart, however, that there was no way there would be any prints from the man who’d intentionally blocked the club’s doors. She knew instinctively he would be meticulous.

Ironically, just after Dance had been shifted from criminal mode to civil, the administrative matter she’d come here about, taxation and insurance certificates, had just turned into a crime. A felony. Murder. Perhaps even a terrorist attack.

She said to Sanchez and Lanners, ‘Can you declare this a homicide? I can’t.’ A wry smile. ‘That’s the long-story part. And secure the scene. The drop-box, the truck, the oil drum, the club. Better go for the parking lot too.’

‘Sure,’ Lanners said. ‘I’ll call Crime Scene. Secure everything.’

With a dribble of a siren, a county ambulance pulled up and parked in front of the office. Two techs, large white men, appeared in the doorway and nodded. They spotted Billy and walked over to him to assess damage and mobility.

‘Is it broke, my jaw?’ Billy asked.

One tech lifted off the icy and bloody towel. ‘Got to take X-rays first and then only a doctor can tell you after he looks over the film. But, yah, it’s broke. Totally fucking broke. You can walk?’

‘I’ll walk. Is anybody out there?’

‘How do you mean?’

Dance glanced out of the window. ‘It’s clear.’

The four of them stepped outside and helped the scrawny driver into the ambulance. He reached out and took Dance’s hand in both of his. His eyes were moist and not, Dance believed, from the pain. ‘You saved my life, Agent Dance. More ways than just one. God bless you.’ Then he frowned. ‘But you be careful. Those people, those animals, they wanted to kill you just as much as me. And you didn’t do a lick wrong.’

‘Feel better, Billy.’

Dance found her shield, dusted it off and slipped it into her pocket. She then returned to the roadhouse. She’d tell Bob Holly what she’d discovered but keep the news from Charles Overby until she’d done some more canvassing.

She needed as much ammunition as she could garner.

As she approached the gathered press and spectators, she glanced toward a pretty woman TV reporter, in a precise suit, interviewing a Monterey County firefighter, a solid, sunburned man with a tight crew-cut and massive arms. She’d seen him at several other fire and mass-disaster scenes over the past year or so.

The reporter said to the camera, ‘I’m talking here with Brad C. Dannon, a Monterey County fireman. Brad, you were the first on the scene last night at Solitude Creek?’

‘Just happened I wasn’t too far away when we got the call, that’s right.’