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He said, ‘It’s probably moot. He’s a thousand miles away by now.’

CHAPTER 20

Antioch March had changed majors four times in three years at two schools. Distraction, boredom and, truth be told, the Get kept him jumping from department to department (and finally drove him out of both Northwestern and Chicago altogether, without any degree, despite his near-perfect academic record).

Still, he’d picked up some insights in various classes. He was thinking of one now, recalling the neo-Gothic classroom overlooking the north shore of Lake Michigan. Psychology. March had been fascinated to learn that there are only five basic fears.

For instance, take the fear of sharks, one that particularly interested him. That’s merely a sub-category of the fear of mutilation: having part of our body damaged or excised. More broadly, fear of injury.

The four other basic fears: of physical death, of ego death (embarrassment and shame), of separation (from Mommy, from the drugs we inhale so desperately, from our lover) and of loss of autonomy (claustrophobia on a physical level to being dominated by an abusive spouse).

March remembered the cold November day when he’d heard about them in a lecture. Truly mesmerizing.

And now he was about to put several to good use. Fear of physical death, of mutilation and loss of autonomy, all rolled into one. A movie theater would be his next target.

He had parked his car in a strip mall about a hundred yards from the Marina Hills Cineplex, just off Highway One in Marina. He was walking toward the theaters now.

Don’t we love the comfort of the lights going down, the trailers coming to an end, the film starting? Waiting to be exhilarated, amused, thrilled – laughing or crying. Why is a theater so much better than Netflix or cable? Because the real world is gone.

Until the real world comes crashing in.

In the form of smoke or gunshots.

And then comfort becomes constriction.

Fear of physical death, fear of mutilation and, most deliciously, fear of loss of autonomy – when the crowd takes over. You become a helpless cell in a creature whose sole goal is to survive, yet in attempting to do so it will sacrifice some of itself: those cells trampled or suffocated or changed for ever, thanks to snapped spines or piercing ribs.

He now examined the Marina Hills Cineplex, regarding the parking lot, the entrance, the service doors. This was one of the older multiplexes in the area, dating to the seventies – it featured only four theaters, ranging from three hundred seats to six hundred. It showed first-run movies, along with an occasional art film, and competed with the big boy up at Del Monte Center by discounting tickets (if you were fifty-nine, you were a senior. How ’bout that?) and offering free cheese powder with the popcorn (which was still overpriced).

March knew this because after meeting with an Indonesian tsunami-relief charity for the Hand to Heart website he’d been to see a film here: When She’s Alone, a slasher flick, which wasn’t bad – like a lot of such films nowadays, in this age of inexpensive technology, the effects were good and the acting passable. Some clever motifs (stained glass, for instance: the colored shards turned out to be the killer’s weapon of choice).

He’d also carefully examined the exits. Each theater had only two ways by which patrons could leave: the entrance, which led to a narrow hallway off the lobby, and the emergency exit in the back. The latter was a double door, wide enough to accommodate a crowd intent on escaping … if they weren’t too unruly.

But tonight the back doors would not be in play.

Six hundred people speeding through the single door to the lobby.

Perfect.

He looked over the parking lot keenly, noting trash cans, lamp-posts and, more important, the feeble landscaping – excellent camouflage.

Okay, time to get to work.

He hiked his gym bag onto his shoulder and started toward the theater. The hour was early and the place was largely deserted at this time. A few employees’ cars, parked, as ordered, in the back of the lot.

Another car happened to turn in and make its way to the back of the theater, not far from March. A tall, balding man got out and started toward the back service door, fishing keys from his pocket. He glanced at March and froze.

His eyes took in the green jacket, the utility logo, the dark slacks, the hat, sunglasses.

And those eyes explained everything.

Someone had seen him at Solitude Creek. He guessed his description had been on the news.

Hell. Antioch March had been positive that he hadn’t been seen last night, circling the parking lot, stealing the truck and maneuvering it in front of the doors. Starting the fire near the club’s HVAC system. He’d changed his clothes just afterward but there had been a twenty-minute window during which somebody could have spotted him in his worker’s garb, which he wore now.

The man was fishing a phone from his pocket.

Leave, March told himself. Instantly.

He turned. And that was when he noticed something else. Parked in the shade on the lawn nearby was an unmarked police car. It was pointed directly at the theater. If March had walked twenty feet further, the officer inside would have seen him. And if the theater employee recognized March, certainly the police would have his description.

Luck. Pure luck had saved him.

As he walked slowly toward the mall where his car was parked, a hundred yards away, he noted that the police officer didn’t look in his direction. There would be some delay, if not miscommunication, in transmitting to the officer the information that the suspect had been spotted there.

If either the employee or the officer followed he’d have to pull his Glock from the gym bag and use it. March walked a block before unzipping the bag, gripping the gun and turning.

No. No one was following.

Now March stripped off the green jacket, stuffed it into the bag and began to sprint. He leaped into the gray Honda Accord, pressing the start button before the door was closed. The gym bag, heavy with his tools of the trade, was on the passenger seat and it set off the warning ding about neglecting to put on the seatbelt. As he headed out the driveway slowly, he eased it to the floor. He had to be very careful of the contents. The dinging stopped.

He felt a wave of anger that the theater had been denied him as a perfect place for the second attack, which had been inspired by the ‘national disaster correspondent’ he’d listened to on TV after sex with Calista: What this man did was akin to the classic situation of yelling ‘Fire’ in a crowded movie theater.

Angry, yes. But as he cruised through traffic he glanced into the rear-view mirror and noticed something. He decided that there might just be a silver lining to the debacle.

He circled around and pulled into a space not far from the theater he’d just left; it was perfect for his purpose. And, it turned out, good for another as well: who doesn’t love a nice, salty Egg McMuffin and some steaming coffee this time of the morning?

CHAPTER 21

Kathryn Dance walked into the Gals’ Wing.

This was an area of the CBI’s West Central Division that, purely coincidentally, housed the four women who worked there: Dance, Connie Ramirez, the most decorated CBI agent in the office, Grace Yuan, the office administrator, and Maryellen Kresbach.

The name of the wing came from a male agent who, trying to impress a date on a tour of his workplace, had 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 that had helped.

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

A warning too.

She accepted the coffee Maryellen offered, 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, bought at less than half price). They matched her long coffee-colored linen skirt. Her sweater today was a ribbed off-white, the sports coat black. Today’s concession to color was a bright elastic tie Maggie had twined at the end of her mother’s French braid. Red.

She acknowledged the compliment – 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, 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 of an adversary as the perps you’re pursuing.

The miss was, of course, frustrating enough. But far more troubling was that he’d apparently been planning another attack. Not, Steve Number One, 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? She sent out a second memo to all local law enforcers to alert managers of venues that she’d confirmed their unsub had 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 sport 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 counterculture 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, where the unsub had apparently been planning a new attack.

The young man nodded. ‘Right up his alley. Crowded multiplex.’

Dance glanced at the folder in the agent’s hand.

TJ said, ‘Something helpful, maybe. I tracked down that girl. Trish.’

Dance had given him the job of finding the teenager 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. ‘You have the father’s address and number? Mr Friendly. She’d be staying with him now, I’d guess.’

‘Sorry, didn’t get it. Want me to check?’

‘I’ll try her mother’s first.’

As it turned out, though, there wouldn’t be any conversations of any kind.

‘Hello?’ A man’s voice. Abrupt. Hell, she knew who it was.

‘I’m calling for Trish Martin.’

‘Who is this?’

Unfortunately, you had to play the game honestly. ‘Agent Kathryn Dance, the California Bureau of Investigation. Is this Mr Martin? I—’

‘Yeah, I met you. I remember. How did you know I was here?’

Odd question.

‘I didn’t. I was calling for Trish. It’s important that I talk to her. I’m hoping—’

‘Why?’

‘There’s been a development in the investigation. The doors at Solitude Creek were blocked intentionally. Your ex-wife’s death, the others, they were homicides, not accidental.’

A pause. ‘I heard. It was on the news. Some guy they’re looking for. A workman or something.’

‘That’s right. And we’re canvassing to see if anybody might’ve seen him. Your daughter seems intelligent, perceptive. I’m hoping—’

‘She’s too upset.’

‘I understand it’s a difficult time for her, for your whole family. But it’s important that we understand exactly what happened there.’

‘Well, you’ll have do that without my daughter.’ A voice from nearby. He said, away from the phone, ‘It’s nobody. Keep at it, honey.’

That would be Trish. She’d be moving in with her father, Dance guessed. She was probably packing.

‘Mr Martin, my specialty is interviewing people. I’ve spoken to hundreds of teenagers, often in traumatic situations. I promise you, I’ll be very sensitive to Trish’s frame of mind. I—’

He growled. ‘And if you call us again, I’ll get a restraining order against you.’

Dance said, ‘Hmm, well, Mr Martin, there really isn’t a mechanism for doing that. Why don’t we just take a step back and—’

He hung up on her.

Dance wondered if one of the grounds for divorce had been mental cruelty against his ex, in addition to cheating on her.

She dropped the phone into the cradle. TJ was looking at her. ‘Scratch her off the list. Probably didn’t see anything anyway. Still—’

‘You hate itches, boss.’

True, she did.

‘Anything helpful on the canvassing?’

TJ had continued to talk to those who’d been at the club, sifting for insights, possible motives and suspects. ‘Nothing more on revenge by disgruntled employees or patrons. I thought I’d check to see if there was a motive to hurt anyone in the band, or destroy careers.’

‘Good.’ She hadn’t thought about that.

‘But I don’t think so. The music world’s fragile nowadays – the margins aren’t big enough to murder anyone to get ahead. Hey, boss, was wondering. Does “gruntled” mean you’re happy?’

She rummaged in her drawer and found an old Timex, battery-powered. She strapped it on and glanced at the time. Then lowered her voice. ‘How’s the Serrano situation?’

He said, ‘About an hour. It’s set up. I just talked to Al Stemple.’

Stemple, big and quiet and rather scary, was the closest thing the CBI had to a cowboy. Well, to a John Wayne. An investigative agent, like any other, he specialized in tactical situations. Given the unstable nature of the Serrano situation, it was thought best to have a CBI strongman involved.