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‘Get back, it’s all right!’ the security head yelled to them. Pointless, as before.

Parents had abandoned strollers and were carrying their screaming children. The people waiting at the turnstiles turned back and saw the tide approaching.

The screams rose and those behind the patrons in front began scrabbling over the others to get to the turnstiles. Some began running through the broken gate, climbing over the unsub’s Chevy. One man fell on his back and lay still.

Dance, O’Neil and Southern ran forward, holding their palms up to stanch the flow of human bodies, shouting that there was no attack.

But the crowd had no rational mind. Safety, escape – those were the only things that mattered.

A creature … not human …

‘They’re going to be crushed,’ Dance said.

O’Neil: ‘The gate. We have to get it open. Now!’

He, Ralston and a half-dozen park workers ran to the unsub’s car and, by using pure muscle, pulled it back – five feet, ten, twenty. They then grabbed the gate and swung it open. It screeched on the concrete.

O’Neil leaped aside as the tide, twenty bodies wide, swarmed through the open space. Others continued to push through or leap over the turnstiles.

A mother, holding a young child of about four, staggered through the gate, then turned toward an empty part of the parking lot and stumbled in that direction. Dance noticed that her arm was badly broken. She got about ten steps toward a bench, then eased her daughter to the asphalt and collapsed. Dance ran to help.

She had just gotten to the woman when there was a shattering of glass and dozens of people leaped onto the sidewalk. They’d broken a large window of one of the gift shops and were fleeing out of the park through the gap. This herd soon swelled to several hundred.

They were bearing down on Dance, the woman and her child. Even though they were out of the park, panic had seized them and they were sprinting madly.

‘Get up!’ Dance cried to the groggy mother, scooping up the child by the waist. The crowd was forty feet away, thirty.

The woman suddenly gripped Dance’s collar. Unbalanced by her awkward crouch, the agent fell backward. She landed hard, still clasping the child. Stunned, she looked up to see a wall of a hundred patrons stampeding directly for them. To judge from their feral eyes, not a single one even saw them, let alone had any intention of turning aside.

CHAPTER 46

As a matter of pride, Antioch March would have preferred to start the panic without firing any shots.

What a lovely idea. Words alone causing so much destruction and chaos. In fact, he would have preferred to start the madness by merely asking questions, not using fake texts from a fake wife.

‘Who do you think those guards are looking for?’

‘Have you heard anything in the news about any terrorist threats here?’

Subtlety, finesse. Let the victims use their own imagination.

Stampedes, he’d learned, can begin with nothing more than a hint, as insubstantial as a moth’s wing, that you won’t get what you desire. Or that what you fear will destroy you. Thanks, Dad … Desire and fear were the keys to success in sales, his father had told him.

March was presently hiding in the trunk of a Nissan Altima, which was still parked in one of the garages at Global Adventure World. He was quite hot in the ski mask and cloth gloves.

Getting out of the park itself had been relatively easy, thanks to the massive herd of gazelle fleeing the terrorist lion. He’d even caught a fast glimpse of his beloved Kathryn, staring with wide eyes at the surging crowd, not seeing him. But the rest of his getaway – escaping from the area – was more of a problem. As the crowd surged out, March had diverted into the garage, where he began looking for a certain type of car. Finally he found what he sought: a rental (with a big trunk) that had a hotel valet ticket, good for three more days, on the dash. That meant the family had already checked in and wasn’t leaving Orange County for a while; therefore, no luggage in the trunk in the immediate future. Sure, maybe Billy or Suzy had bought some souvenirs but, if so, they’d probably lost them in the crush.

He’d jimmied the door, popped the trunk – found it empty, good. Then climbed in, along with the shopping bag containing his gym bag and gun, and closed it. True, he might have to shoot his way out of this, if the driver and family did decide to toss something back here. But he didn’t have a lot of options.

Would there be roadblocks, would they open the trunk?

Again, no choice.

He assessed the situation. He’d lost one of the burner phones on the sprint to the Chevy in Tustin, which’d have some information on it he would rather they didn’t have but nothing critical. No prints. He’d worn gloves whenever he used the unit. He wished he’d gotten Prescott’s computer. But a fast look had revealed nothing obviously incriminating on the laptop. No, no direct leads to him. Even brilliant Kathryn Dance would be hard pressed to connect those dots.

Now, an hour after the panic, he heard the grit of footsteps approach and the click of the locks. He gripped the gun. But the trunk didn’t pop. Then doors opening and closing. Somber voices. Adults. A third door closed. A teenage boy, he deduced from the kid’s tone.

The engine started and they were driving, but very stop-and-go; the lines to exit would be long, of course. The car radio was on but he couldn’t hear much. Man, it was hot. He hoped he didn’t faint before the family got to their destination.

More conversation. He could discern the woman’s, though not the man’s, voice. A matter of pitch, maybe.

‘Police there. A roadblock.’

The man muttered something angrily. Probably about the delay, the congestion.

March wiped sweat from his eyes and gripped his pistol.

The car squealed to a stop.

He could hear an indistinct voice from outside, asking questions. A female voice. Was it Kathryn Dance’s?

No, these were line officers. Not the Great Strategist, the woman so intent on capturing him … and the Get.

Wiping sweat.

Silence.

Trunk inspection? Shoot the cop, commandeer the car and drive like hell.

No option.

Footsteps.

But then the car started forward again. The radio grew louder. The boy said he was hungry. The man – father, surely – muttered something unintelligible. The mother said, ‘At the hotel.’

After forty minutes they made several turns and stopped. The radio went silent and the car was put in park. Doors opened and closed.

The valet took charge of the car and drove for five minutes, up a series of ramps. Then he parked. Closed the door, locked it and left.

March gave it five minutes and, when he heard nothing outside, pulled the emergency release cord, climbed out as quickly as he could and looked around the garage.

Empty. And no CCTV.

He walked back and forth, stumbling like a drunk, to revive the circulation in his legs. Once, he had to sit down and lower his head to his shaking knees.

Then on his feet again and into the hotel itself. A Hyatt. He went into the restroom in the lobby and examined himself in the mirror. He didn’t look too bad. The glistening head, which he’d shaved the minute he’d heard his description on the radio several days ago, showed a bit of stubble. Like Walter White on Breaking Bad. He opened the Global Adventure shopping bag and pulled out his gym satchel. From this he retrieved the blond wig, which he’d been wearing since the shaving, at least when he was out in public.

Porn star meets Mad Men …

March pitched into the trash the wig, baseball cap and the worker’s jacket he’d worn at Stan Prescott’s apartment and when he’d first broken into the theme park. (He’d stripped them off as he’d stood in the interminable queue near the Tornado Alley roller-coaster, and donned a souvenir jacket that he’d bought. Nobody noticed the quick change: everyone was watching the flamboyant ride, racing overhead.)

He now dumped the Global jacket and shopping bag, too.

Then outside into the lobby. He got a look at the TV in the bar, reporting on the event at the theme park. No pictures of him, no artist’s rendering, no reference to Solitude Creek.

In the gift shop he bought a windbreaker, sunglasses and a tote – into which went his gym bag.

He took a cab to a downtown Hertz office to rent a car. There he told the clerk he’d be dropping off the rental in San Diego in three days – the police could be looking for rentals to the Monterey area. He’d call later to extend the rental and ultimately switch the drop-off to somewhere in Central California. A flight might be safer but he had only the one pistol: he couldn’t afford to leave it here – there was no way of getting a new weapon in California.

And he knew he’d need it before the week was out.

With his mind racing – Kathryn Dance figured prominently – March took surface streets and local roads on a mazelike route for miles, meandering north, until he figured it was safe to hop on the Ventura Freeway, the 101.

North. He’d be back on the Peninsula in five hours.

CHAPTER 47

Simple.

But effective.

Dance and O’Neil were at the front entrance to Global Adventure World, near the shattered gate. The unsub’s stolen Chevy sat nearby; under it, oil and coolant pooled. The panic had stopped and several thousand people meandered about in the front area of the park, not sure what to do.

Three dozen had been injured, none critically. Opening the two gates – the main and the disabled entrances – had largely relieved the pressure of the masses.

Dance had nearly been trampled but the security chief, Herb Southern, had saved her, the woman who’d fallen and her daughter. He’d driven a golf cart directly between them and the surging mass.

‘Go on,’ Dance now said to Southern and Sergeant Ralston. They continued explaining to the Monterey law enforcers what had happened.

Simple, effective.

No, the unsub hadn’t escaped through the security tunnels lacing the theme park. He hadn’t even given the fake terrorist announcement. Apparently he’d noticed entrances to the tunnels, as well as an extensive PA system, speakers hidden in trees and landscaping. He’d pulled on a ski mask and waylaid one of the security guards – easily spotted because he was carrying one of the fake ID fliers.

The guard – his name was Bob – was present there too. He continued, ‘Then he asked about the tunnels. I didn’t want to tell him but he had the gun. He was right beside me. It was … terrible.’

Dance said, ‘I’m sure it was. Of course.’

Bob, miserable, continued in a choked voice: ‘He took my wallet and called somebody. Gave my address. Told his friend to go there and keep an eye on my family. I had to do exactly what he told me.’

Ralston added to Dance and O’Neil, ‘We’ve got somebody on the house already.’

O’Neil said, ‘There’s no evidence anybody’s working with him. I think that was a sham.’

‘I didn’t want to help,’ the shaken employee said.

‘It’s all right, Bob,’ Southern said, ‘There was a panic and some injuries ’cause of it but nobody badly hurt. You did what you had to. I would’ve done the same thing.’

‘I was supposed to go down in the tunnel and give it five minutes, then he’d fire the gun. He promised me he wasn’t going to shoot anybody. He was just doing it to escape. If I thought he was going to shoot anybody, really was, I wouldn’t’ve done it. I—’

‘It’s okay, Bob.’

The man swallowed. ‘And I did what he wanted. I grabbed the microphone and said what I was supposed to.’

Dance shook her head, looking over the milling crowd, now easily three thousand people. As at Solitude Creek, in the snap of a finger they’d calmed, once they were out of the park and police on loudspeakers had reassured them there were no terrorists.

Their unsub had walked right out in the midst of escaping attendees. He didn’t even need a disguise. He could’ve had a black hood on and been carrying a machine-gun and nobody would’ve spotted him.

O’Neil took a call. ‘That’s right … Yes … They’re set up?’ He thanked the caller and disconnected. He looked at the others. ‘Highway Patrol. All the roadblocks’re up. They worked fast. Not every exit route, but the main ones. And random stops, traffic headed away from the park.’

Officers were checking out the bus lines too. And taxis.

No sign of a six-foot-plus man, solid build, blond hair, holding a white gym bag (or Global Adventure World shopping bag holding a gym bag).

Finally the staff who’d been manning the security video reported that there was nothing on any of the many minutes of tape that might help them. The crowds had been too thick.

Dance looked over the masses and didn’t even bother canvassing.

O’Neil said, ‘Back to Prescott’s?’

‘Sure.’

In a half-hour they were there – the traffic was, of course, thick as honey; even the lights and siren in Deputy Martinez’s cruiser couldn’t speed them along very much. They arrived just as the crime-scene crew was finishing up.

A tech said, ‘Your man knew what he was doing. Cloth gloves.’

‘I know.’

‘Didn’t find much.’

Looking down at Prescott, on his back, suffocated with duct tape. The image was stark and clear: he was under a bright floor lamp.

O’Neil asked, ‘Why was he killed?’

Dance speculated, ‘Something in that picture of Solitude Creek he included in the post? Clues?’

The rant had been taken down but O’Neil had made a copy earlier. They looked it over again, carefully. The Vidster post was a video but the image from Solitude Creek was a still. It was a news photo, taken of the aftermath of the tragedy, when the bodies had been removed from the floor, which was covered with litter, purses, scraps of clothing, overturned furniture.

Neither of the officers could see anything revealing.

O’Neil offered, ‘Maybe our unsub just didn’t want any attention drawn to Solitude Creek.’

Dance nodded. ‘It got him noted by the feds.’

Both the CBI and MCSO had received calls from Homeland Security, since the incident was linked to potential terrorism, though agents reviewed the matter and decided it wasn’t terrorist-related – wasn’t even a federal crime.

‘That could be.’ She examined the body again, seeing the face, clear under the bright lamp. The look of horror, eyes wide. She supposed it would have taken him four or five minutes to die. The unsub’d used this means of death for the quiet, she guessed.

An officer appeared in the doorway. He nodded to those inside and said, ‘Detective O’Neil?’

‘Yes?’

‘We did a canvass of the neighborhood, following the route your unsub escaped down. And found this.’ He held up a plastic evidence bag containing a Nokia phone. ‘Guy walking a dog said he saw it fall out of the perp’s pocket when he was running to the Chevy, the getaway vehicle.’

Dance and O’Neil shared a look. Guardedly optimistic. The phone was clearly a prepaid burner – they were invariably cheap, like this model. So it was unlikely they could trace it back to the man. But it might have helpful information inside.