XO (12 page)

“Neither. But I’ve got a friend who’d live on his boat in Monterey Bay if he could.”

Michael O’Neil was always out in the choppy water. Often with Dance’s son, Wes, and his own children. Sometimes Dance’s father, a retired marine biologist, went along.

“Monterey Bay. Hm. Salmon.” Madigan looked around. “I like to fish.”

“You catch and release?”

“No. Seems crueler to me. I catch and eat.”

“Michael does that too.”

“Michael?”

“My friend.”

More silence, dense as the growing heat, as they watched Harutyun and Stanning string the yellow tape.

“I told her, Tabatha, that we’d have somebody keep an eye on her.”

“We can do that.”

“It’s important.”

“We can do that,” he repeated, with a bit of edge. To Harutyun: “Get a car over here. Some rookie. Keep an eye on the place. That trailer across the street too.”

“Thanks,” Dance said.

He didn’t respond.

She sensed Old Spice or something clove-oriented rising from his large body. He actually wore a gun belt with single spare cartridges stuck into loops, pointing downward, like a cowboy’s. No speed loaders, those accessories that contained a disk of six or eight rounds to be dropped quickly into an open cylinder of a revolver. Detectives in Fresno probably didn’t have much cause to shoot people, much less reload quickly.

Madigan stepped closer to the door, examined the lock. “Could’ve been jimmied.”

They waited in more silence for the Crime Scene Unit to arrive and when they did, Dance was again impressed at the efficiency of the operation. The team dressed fast, in full jumpsuits, masks and booties, and—she was surprised—two of them with weapons drawn cleared the interior of the trailer, making sure there were no threats. Most police outfits have SWAT or regular officers—unswathed in evidence-protective clothing—handle this job, resulting in contamination of the scene.

CSU proceeded to process the trailer, dusting and using alternative light source wands for prints, taking trace evidence samples, electrostatic footprints on the front stoop and inside, looking for tire treads and anything else the perp might have discarded or shed.

Dance’s friend, Lincoln Rhyme, was perhaps the country’s leading expert in forensic evidence and crime scene work. She herself was a bit skeptical of the extreme reliance on the art; one case she knew of had nearly resulted in the execution of an innocent man because certain clues had been planted by the real perp. On the other hand, Rhyme and his partner, Amelia Sachs, had worked miracles in identifying and convicting suspects on the basis of nearly nonexistent evidence.

She noted that Madigan’s eyes grew animated for the first time since she’d arrived as he watched the team scour the grounds and move in and out of the trailer. He likes his forensics, she thought; he’s a
thing
cop, not a
people
cop.

An hour later they’d finished and carted out some boxes and bags, both paper and plastic, and announced that they were releasing the scene.

Dance had a feeling she wasn’t going to be welcome much longer, despite the angling conversation she and Madigan had had. She made quickly for the trailer. Stepping inside the place, which smelled of hot, plastic furnishings, she froze. It was a museum. She’d never seen anything like this, not in a residence. Posters, record jackets, guitars, statuettes of musicians, a Hammond B-3 organ, parts of wind and string instruments, ancient amplifiers and hundreds of vinyl records—33
¹
/
₃
LPs, 45 singles and ancient 78s, reels of tape. She found a collection of turntables and an old Nagra reel-to-reel, made by the Kudelski Group, the best portable tape recorder ever manufactured. Looking at all of these items, it was like seeing beautiful but antiquated cars. These analog devices had long ago lost the battle to digital.

Still, they were to Dance, as apparently they had been to Bobby, works of art.

She found hundreds of concert souvenirs, mostly from the sixties through the eighties. Mugs, T-shirts, caps, even pens—an item, not surprisingly, commemorating that most intellectual of singer-songwriters, Paul Simon, whose “American Tune” had inspired the name of her music website.

The majority of these artifacts, though, involved the country world. Photos covering nearly every square foot of wall space revealed the history of the genre, which, Dance believed, had reimagined itself more than any other musical form in America over the years. She spotted photos of musicians from the traditional era—the Grand Ole Opry and rockabilly styles—in the 1950s. And from the era of country rock a decade later, followed by outlaw with the likes of Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, Jr., and Willie Nelson. Here were photos and autographs of Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers and Eddie Rabbit, who were part of the country pop trend in the late seventies and eighties. The neotraditionalist movement in the eighties was a move back to the early era and brought superstar status to Randy Travis, George Strait, the Judds, Travis Tritt and dozens of others—all of whom were represented here.

In the nineties country became international, with artists like Clint Black, Vince Gill, Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Mindy McCready and Faith Hill, on the one hand, and a strong alternative movement that rejected slick Nashville production values on the other. Pictures of Lyle Lovett and Steve Earl, who were part of the latter, stared down from one wall.

The present day was on display too. Here was a picture of Carrie Underwood (yes, of
American Idol
fame) and an autographed copy of the sheet music for Taylor Swift’s “Fifteen,” which spoke not about truck driving or God or patriotism or other traditional country themes but about high school angst.

Kayleigh Towne’s career was, of course, well documented.

Dance knew there were many historians of the music scene in the past fifty years but she doubted they had as many artifacts as Bobby did. No death is worse than any other but Dance felt a deep pang that Bobby Prescott’s devotion to archiving all aspects of country music in the twentieth century had died with him. It was the entire world’s loss.

Dance pulled herself away from the archives and walked carefully through the place. What she was looking for, she didn’t know.

Then she noted something out of the ordinary.

She stepped to a bookshelf, containing a number of binders and manila folders of legal and other official documents like tax bills and boxes of cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes, including some labeled “Master Tapes.”

Dance was studying this portion of the trailer carefully when she happened to pass the window where Tabatha had said she’d seen the intruder that morning. Dance blinked in surprise as she found herself staring eye-to-eye at a very unhappy P. K. Madigan, a foot away on the other side of the glass.

His expression was: Come on out here to the woodshed.

But she summoned him first, calling loudly, “I’ve found something.”

He grimaced and hesitated, then reluctantly joined her.

“Actually I’ve found something
missing.
”

He looked around. “Body language of the trailer tell you that?”

Madigan was being snide. But Dance said, “You could put it that way. People have patterns in their gestures and speech and expressions. They also have patterns in their living spaces. Bobby’s a highly organized person. People who are organized don’t happen to be that way accidentally. It’s a psychological drive. Look at those shelves.” She pointed.

“They’re messy but so? I got a teenage boy.”

“None of the others are. And your Crime Scene Unit marked where they’d taken things. Somebody else went through those boxes. Probably the intruder. It’s near the window where Tabatha saw somebody.”

“Why do you say something’s missing?”

“I’m not sure it’s missing. I’m making the deduction that if only those shelves were disturbed, the intruder was looking for something and he found it so he stopped.”

Madigan reluctantly walked over to the shelves and, pulling on latex gloves, poked through the tapes, the papers, the pictures, the tchotchkes. He said, “Some of these snaps of Kayleigh, they’re not souvenirs. They’re personal.”

That was one thing Dance hadn’t noticed.

Madigan continued, “The sort of thing a son-of-a-bitch stalker’d want for a souvenir.”

“That could be it, yes.”

Madigan ran a finger over the shelf and examined it. The coat of dust was thick. Bobby was organized but not particularly concerned about
cleaning. “Cement plant right up the road here. Looks like dust from there. I know it. We got a conviction in this trailer park ’cause of it, placing the perp here. That could be helpful.” A cool glance her way. “You find anything else?”

“No.”

Without a word he left the trailer, Dance after him. He called to Harutyun, “You guys find anything? Witnesses?”

“Nothing.”

Stanning shook her head too.

“Where’s Lopez?”

“Just finishing up at the convention center.”

Madigan pulled a phone off his thick shiny belt and placed a call. He stepped away from the others and had a brief conversation. Dance couldn’t hear what was said. His eyes swiveled around the yard as he spoke, absently examining the deceased’s residence. Dance was included in his gaze.

As he disconnected, Madigan said to Harutyun, “I want you to find Edwin. Bring him in. I don’t care where he is or what he’s doing. I need to talk to him. Now.”

“Arrest him?”

“No. Make it seem like it’d be good for him to come in. In his interest, you know.”

Dance heard a harsh exhalation as Madigan regarded her expression. “What? You don’t think that’s a good idea?”

She said, “No, I don’t. I’d vote for surveillance.”

Madigan squinted toward Harutyun. “Do it.”

“Sure, Chief.” Harutyun climbed into his cruiser and left, without a word to Dance.

No, she decided; the deputy
hadn’t
looked at the verses to Kayleigh’s song.

Madigan strode back to his car, his round belly swaying, as he looked over the scene. He grunted, “Crystal. Listen, I need you to come with me. Have a talk about something in my cruiser. We’ll pick yours up later.”

The woman dutifully climbed into the passenger seat of Madigan’s cruiser. A moment later they were headed out onto the highway, without a word of farewell to Dance.

No matter.

She fished for her keys and turned toward her SUV. She stopped, closed her eyes briefly in frustration and gave a sharp, bitter laugh. Crystal Stanning’s squad car was tight on the rear bumper of Dance’s Pathfinder. In front was a carport full of junk. A V-8 engine block, weighing in at half a ton, she guessed, sat six inches in front of her SUV.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

AT THE FRESNO-MADERA
Consolidated Sheriff’s Office complex, P. K. Madigan stopped by the Crime Scene Unit, a block away, after returning from Bobby Prescott’s trailer.

He wanted to urge the unit to make this case a priority, which of course they’d do. Anything for Kayleigh Towne, the girl who’d helped put Fresno on the map.

And anything for Chief Madigan too.

But he was only half thinking about pep rallies. He also pictured Kathryn Dance.

Thinking about her beached car. Some people you needed to hit over the head to deliver a message. He’d send Crystal back in an hour or two, spring the gal from her automotive jail. Oh, sorry Kathryn; I didn’t know you’d be stuck between a rock and hard place—ha!

But he’d simply had it with people using Kayleigh like Dance was.

If Kayleigh hadn’t been involved, the likes of Kathryn Dance would never have come to Fresno, never have taken the time to even say howdy-do to a soul here. Where was Ms. Agent Dance and the CBI when some MS-13 wannabes took an Uzi and sprayed it into the pizza place on Herndon, killing two children and missing the rival drug dealer altogether?

Sorry,
they
weren’t celebrities.

He expected better from the CBI, thought they’d be above that publicity-grabbing shit. But Madigan had done his homework. He’d checked out Dance’s boss, Charlie Overby, on YouTube and the archives. Man was faster with a press conference than Wild Bill Hickok with a six-gun.

Dance worked for him, which meant she’d surely be just the same.

Just happened to be in the area and a friend of Kayleigh’s? My ass.

You don’t mind if I take over your investigation, do you, P.K.?

Yeah, she’d come up with a few helpful things. But she was in the
case for the wrong reasons and that just wasn’t acceptable to P. K. Madigan. Besides, he didn’t believe much in that fishy mumbo jumbo of hers. Kinesics? Crap. That’d be like learning about a trout from books and the Discovery Channel—as opposed to catching, cleaning and cooking one up in Crisco.

No, his approach was different. Cases were made nowadays on forensics, not voodoo. They’d have evidence from the convention center, they’d have forensics from Bobby’s trailer—that cement dust, about as unique as trace could be—was a godsend.