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The others in the Guzman Connection task force ran to Dance.

‘I’ve called an ambulance and Sheriff’s Office,’ TJ Scanlon said, and raced to where the redhead was lying in the parking space.

Foster raised his Glock, aiming toward the vanishing Altima.

‘No!’ Dance said, and put a hand on his arm.

‘The fuck’re you doing, Agent?’

It was Overby who said, ‘Across the highway? There? On the other side of those trees. It’s a daycare center.’

Foster lowered the weapon reluctantly, as if insulted they’d questioned his shooting skill. He reholstered his Glock as the stolen car vanished from sight. Foster glanced toward Dance and, though he didn’t fling her words of the young man’s innocence back in her face, his body language clearly did.

CHAPTER 6

What would the next few hours, next few days bring?

Kathryn Dance sat in Charles Overby’s office, alone. Her eyes slipped from pictures of the man with his family to those of him in tennis whites and in an outlandish plaid golf outfit to those with local officials and business executives. Overby, rumor was, had his eye on political office. The Peninsula or possibly, at a stretch, San Francisco. Not Sacramento: he’d never set his sights very high. There was also the issue that you could get to fairway or tennis court all year round here on the coast.

Two hours had passed since the incident in the parking lot.

She wondered again: And a few hours from now?

And days and weeks?

Noise outside the doorway. Overby and Steve Foster, the senior CBI agents here, continued their conversation as they walked inside.

‘… got surveillance on the feeders to Fresno, then the One-o-one and the Five, if he’s moving fast. CHP’s got Ninety-nine covered. And we’ve got One roadblocked.’

Foster said, ‘I’d go to Salinas, the One-oh-one, I was him. Then north. He’ll get, you know, safe passage in a lettuce truck. All the way to San Jose. The G-Forty-sevens’d pick him up there and he disappears into Oakland.’

Overby seemed to be considering this. ‘More chance to get lost in LA. But harder to get to, roadblocks and all. Think you’re right, Steve. I’ll tell Alameda and San Jose. Oh, Kathryn. Didn’t see you.’

Even though he’d asked her – no, told her – to come to his office ten minutes ago.

She nodded to them both but didn’t rise. A woman in law enforcement is constantly aware of the gossamer thread she negotiates in the job with her bosses and fellow officers. Excessive deference can derail respect, as can too little. ‘Charles, Steve.’

Foster sat beside her and the chair groaned.

‘What’s the latest?’

‘Not good, looks like.’

Overby said, ‘MSCO found the Altima in a residential part of Carmel, near the Barnyard.’

An old outdoor shopping center, with a number of lots for parking cars.

And for hijacking or stealing them too.

Overby said, ‘But if he’s got new wheels, nobody’s reported anything missing.’

‘Which may mean the person who could do the reporting’s dead and in the trunk,’ Foster offered. Implicitly blaming Dance for a potential death-to-be.

‘We’re just debating, would he go north or south? What do you think, Kathryn?’

‘What we know now, he’s associated with the Jacinto crew. They’ve got stronger ties south.’

‘Like I was saying,’ Foster reminded, speaking exclusively to Overby, ‘south is three hundred miles of relatively few roads and highways, versus north, with a lot more feeders. We can’t watch ’em all. And he can be in Oakland in two hours.’

Dance said, ‘Steve, airplanes. He flies to a private strip in LA, out in the county, and he’s in South Central in no time.’

‘Airplane? He’s not cartel level, Kathryn,’ Foster fired back. ‘He’s I’m-hiding-in-a-lettuce-truck level.’

Overby put on his consideration face. Then: ‘We can’t look everywhere and I think Steve’s is the more, you know, logical assessment.’

‘All right. North, then. I’ll talk to Amy Grabe. She’ll get eyes going in Oakland, the docks, the East Bay. And—’

‘Whoa, whoa, Kathryn.’ Overby’s face registered surprise, as if she’d just said, ‘I think I’ll swim to Santa Cruz.’

She looked at him with a critical furrow of brow. There had been a lacing of condescension in his tone.

She glanced at Foster, who had lost interest in her and was studying a golden golf ball on Overby’s desk, some award. He didn’t want to be seen gloating when she heard what she knew was coming. Better to look at small-time awards made of plastic masquerading as precious metal.

Overby said, ‘I’ve just been on the phone with Sacramento. With Peter.’

The director of the CBI. The boss of bosses.

‘We talked, I explained …’

‘What’s the bottom line, Charles?’

‘I did everything I could, Kathryn. I went to bat for you.’

‘I’m suspended.’

‘Not suspended, no, no, not at all.’ He beamed, as if she’d won a Caribbean cruise in a state fair draw. ‘Not completely. You lost your weapon, Kathryn. He’s got it now. That’s … Well, you know. It is leave-of-absence-without-pay suspendable. They’re not going to go there. But they want you in Civil Division for the time being.’

Civ Div would correspond to a traffic division in the city police department. No weapon and with all the power of anybody else to make a citizen’s arrest. It was the entry level into the Bureau of Investigation and involved such tasks as compiling information on non-criminal violations by citizens and corporations, like failure to follow building or revenue-collection regulations, improper signage in the workplace and even failure to remit soda-bottle deposits promptly. Agents tended to endure the overwhelming paperwork and crushing boredom for only so long. If they weren’t promoted out into Crim Div, they usually quit cold.

‘I’m sorry, Kathryn. I didn’t have a choice. I tried. I really did.’

Going to bat for her …

Foster now regarded Overby with a neutral gaze that Dance, however, read as contempt for her boss’s backpedaling.

‘I told him body language isn’t an exact science. You did

the best you could with Serrano. I saw you. We all did. It looked to me like he was telling the truth. Right, Steve? Who could

tell?’

Dance could see that Foster was thinking, But it’s not our area of expertise to sit across from a perp and pick apart the entrails of his words, poses and gestures to get to the truth.

Overby continued, ‘But no one was hurt. Not badly. No weapons were discharged.’

The redhead in the parking lot had not been run over after all. She’d rolled out of the way, under an SUV, as the Altima had sped out of the parking space. Her Dell computer and her lunch had not survived; their loss was what the horrific-sounding crunch had signaled.

‘Charles, Serrano is High Mach. I missed it, I admit. But you see those one in every hundred cases.’

‘What’s that? High what?’ Foster asked.

‘A category of liars’ personalities. The most ruthless and, yeah, slick –’ she threw the word back at Foster ‘– are the “High Machiavellians”. High Machs love to lie. They lie with impunity. They see nothing wrong with it. They use deceit like a smartphone or search engine, a tool to get what they want. Whether it’s in love, business, politics – or crime.’ She added that there were other types, which included social liars, who lied to entertain, and adaptors, who were insecure people lying to make a positive impression. Another common type was the ‘actor’, someone for whom control was an important issue. ‘They don’t lie regularly, only when necessary. But Serrano, he just didn’t present like any of them. Sure not a High Mach. All I picked up was what I said, some small evasions. Social lies.’

‘Social?’

‘Everybody lies.’ The statistics were that every human being lied at least once or twice a day. Dance shot a glance to Foster. ‘When did you lie last?’

He rolled his eyes. She thought, Maybe when he said, ‘Good to see you,’ this morning.

She continued, ‘But I was getting to know him. I’m the only one here, or in any other agency, who’s spent time with him. And now we know he could be a key to the whole operation. I don’t need to lead it. Just don’t take me off the case.’

Overby ran a hand through his thinning hair. ‘Kathryn, you want to make it right. I understand. Sure you do. But I don’t know what to tell you. It’s been decided. Peter’s already signed off on the reassignment.’

‘Already.’

Foster: ‘More efficient, when you think about it. We didn’t really need two agents from this office. Jimmy Gomez is good. Don’t you agree, Kathryn?’

A junior agent at the CBI, one of the two others on the Guzman Connection task force. Yes, he was good. That wasn’t the point. She ignored Foster. She stood and, to Overby, said, ‘So?’

He looked at her with one raised eyebrow.

Her shoulders rose and fell impatiently. ‘I’m not suspended. I’m Civ Div. So, what’s on my roster?’

He looked blank for a moment. Then scoured his desk. He noted a Post-it, bright yellow, glaring as a rectangle of sun fell on it. ‘Here’s something. Got a memo on the wire from MCFD a little while ago. About that Solitude Creek incident?’

‘The fire at the roadhouse.’

‘That’s right. The county’s investigating but somebody from the state is supposed to make sure the club’s tax and insurance certificates’re up to date.’

‘Tax? Insurance?’

‘CHP didn’t want to handle it.’

Who would? Dance thought.

Foster’s absence of gloat was the biggest gloat she had ever seen.

‘Take care of that. Then I’ll see what else needs doing.’

With Dance ‘tasked’ to take on the fine print of California insurance regulations and tacitly dismissed, Overby turned to Steve Foster to discuss the manhunt for Joaquin Serrano.

CHAPTER 7

‘First, this is interesting – there was no fire.’

‘No fire?’ Dance asked. She was standing in front of the Solitude Creek club, which was encircled with yellow police tape. The man in front of her was stocky, forties, with an odd patch on his face; it looked like a birthmark but, she knew, was a scar from a blaze years ago that had attacked the newly commissioned firefighter before he snuffed it dead.

She’d worked with Monterey County fire marshal Robert Holly several times and found him low-key, smart, reasonable.

He continued, ‘Well, there was, technically. Only it was outside. The club itself was never on fire. There, that oil drum.’

Dance noted the rusty fifty-five-gallon vessel, the sort used to collect trash in parking lots and behind stores and restaurants. It rested near the club’s air-conditioning unit.

‘We ran a prelim. Discarded cigarette in the drum, along with some rags soaked in motor oil and gasoline. That was all it took.’

‘Accelerant, then,’ Dance said. ‘The oil and gas.’

‘That was the effect, though there’s no evidence it was intentional.’

‘So people thought there was a fire. Smelled smoke.’

‘And headed to the fire exits. And that was the problem. They were blocked.’

‘Locked? The doors were locked?’

‘No, blocked. The truck?’

He pointed to a large tractor-trailer parked against the west side of the club. It, too, was encircled with yellow tape. ‘It’s owned by that company there. Henderson Jobbing and Warehouse.’ Dance regarded the one-story sprawling structure. There were a half-dozen similar tractor-trailers sitting at the loading dock and nearby. Several men and women, in work clothes, a few in suits, stood on the dock or in front of the office and looked over at the club, as if staring at a beached whale.

‘The driver parked it there?’

‘Claims he didn’t. But what’s he going to say? There’ve been other incidents of trucks blocking the roadhouse parking lot. Never a fire exit.’

‘Is he here today?’

‘He’ll be in soon. I called him at home. He’s pretty upset. But he agreed to come in.’

‘Why would he park there, though? Anybody can see the signs: “No Parking, Fire Exit”. Tell me the scenario. What happened exactly?’

‘Come on inside.’

Dance followed the burly man into the club. The place had apparently not been straightened up after the tragedy. Chairs and tables – lowand high-tops – were scattered everywhere, broken glasses, bottles, scraps of cloth, snapped bracelets, shoes. Musical instruments lay on the stage. One acoustic guitar was in pieces. A Martin D-28, Dance observed. An old one. Two thousand dollars’ worth of former resonance.

There were many smears of old blood on the floor, brown footsteps too.

Dance had been there dozens of times. Everybody on the Peninsula knew Solitude Creek. The club was owned by a balding, earringed restaurateur and former hippie from (where else?) Haight-Ashbury named Sam Cohen, who had been to the Monterey Pop Festival in ’67 and reportedly not slept for three days. So moved by the show had the young man been that he had devoted his early life to promoting rock concerts, not so successfully, then given up and opened a steakhouse near the Presidio. He’d sold it for a profit and pocketed enough to buy an abandoned seafood restaurant on the small tributary that had become the club’s name.

Solitude Creek was a vein of gray-brown water running to the nearby Salinas River. It was navigable by any vessel with a draft no deeper than two or three feet, which left it mostly for small boats, though there wasn’t much reason to sail that way. The club squatted in a large parking lot between the creek and the trucking company, north of Monterey, off Highway One, the same route that wound through majestic Big Sur; the views were very different, there and here.

‘How many deaths?’

‘Three. Two female, one male. Compressive asphyxia in two cases – crushed to death. One had her throat closed up. Somebody stepped on it. Dozens of badly injured. Bone breaks, ribs piercing lungs. Like people were stuck in a huge vise.’

Dance couldn’t imagine the pain and panic and horror.

Holly said, ‘The club was pretty full but it was under the limit. We checked, first thing. Occupancy is two hundred, most owners pretend that means two-twenty. But Sam’s always been buttoned up about that. Doesn’t fool around. Everything looked in order, all the county documentation – that’s the safety issues. I saw the tax- and insurance-compliance certs on file in the office. They’re current too. That’s what Charles said you were here about.’

‘That’s right. I’ll need copies.’

‘Sure.’ Holly continued, ‘Fire inspector gave him a clean bill of health last month and Sam’s own insurance company inspected the place a couple of days ago and gave it an A-plus. Extinguishers, sprinklers, lights, alarms and exits.’

Except the exits hadn’t opened.

‘So, crowded but up to code.’

‘Right,’ Holly said. ‘Just after the show started – eight, little after – the fire broke out in the oil drum. The smoke got sucked into the HVAC system and spread throughout the club. Wasn’t real thick but you could smell it. Wood and oil smoke, you know, that’s particularly scary. People went for the closest doors – most, of course, for the exits along the east wall. They opened a little – you can see the truck’s about a foot away so nobody could fit through. Worse, some people reached out through the opening. Their arms or hands got stuck and … well, the crowd kept moving. Three or four arms and shoulders were shattered. Two arms had to be amputated.’ His voice grew distant. ‘Then there was this young woman, nineteen or so. It more or less got torn off. Her arm.’ He was looking down. ‘I heard later she was studying classical piano. Really talented. God.’