XO (19 page)

Chorus.

3. One night there’s a call, and at first you don’t know

What the troopers are saying from the side of the road,

Then you see in an instant that your whole life has changed.

Everything gone, all the plans rearranged.

Chorus.

4. You can’t keep down smiles; happiness floats.

But trouble can find us in the heart of our homes.

Life never seems to go quite right,

You can’t watch your back from morning to night.

Chorus.

Repeat Chorus.

“I don’t know if he’s going to keep going with that song or find a different one. Or give up on the idea altogether.”

Kayleigh took her glasses off and cleaned them on her sweatshirt. “I’ll bet he’d use ‘Your Shadow.’ He thought it was the best song ever written.”

Miguel Lopez looked over the lyrics. “You read it one way, it’s a love song, looking out for somebody. Could be a lover or even a parent or friend. But from a stalker’s point of view, it’s pretty creepy.”

Dance focused on the second verse. “A river.”

Madigan gave a brief laugh. “We got plenty of those around here.”

Harutyun pointed out, “Some dry beds, some with water. Could be anywhere.”

Dance summarized, “I’ll be talking to the crew at the hall. Detective Harutyun is getting information about Bobby’s past and Detective Lopez is tracking down Edwin’s former girlfriend, Sally.”

Madigan regarded the song lyrics. “And I’ll tell patrol officers to pay special attention to riversides, the public areas primarily, and ones out of view of any roads.”

“Good.”

Alicia gave the first smile Dance could recall seeing on the tough woman’s face. “But I guess the good news is that Kayleigh’s not at risk, if he’s that much in love with her.”

“That’s true. But only for a time. Remember his separation from reality? He’s been in the courting stage for a while.” She turned to Kayleigh. “Probably since he heard the first song that drew him to you, or saw you in concert or on TV. To him that was your first date and you’ve been going out ever since.”

“Date?” Crystal Stanning asked.

“At the moment he’s still under the illusion that you care for him. You’ve been brainwashed, he thinks. At some point, though, he’ll see your behavior as if you’re breaking up with him.

“And when that happens, he’ll become simple obsessional. Like spurned husbands or lovers. They’re the dangerous stalkers. It could happen in an instant. He’ll snap. He’ll want revenge.” Dance debated but decided there was no point in sugarcoating her assessment. “Or he’ll just want to kill you so nobody else can have you.”

THE CONVENTION CENTER
had been sanitized.

Kathryn Dance wasn’t cynical about the world of business—she’d been a consultant and journalist. And music at Kayleigh Towne’s level was a very serious business indeed, so she wasn’t surprised that the crime scene had been cleaned as quickly as possible, all traces of the death removed, to make sure the concert could proceed as planned.

Dance had prepared herself for the smell; nothing lingers like the odor of burned hair and flesh, but whatever commercial forensic cleaning operation Madigan or Charlie Shean used had done a bang-up job. The perfume was of Lysol and, of all things, cinnamon.

Kayleigh was blocking out stage directions for the show—what she’d been doing when the light fell. Tye Slocum, the guitar technician, was temporarily chief roadie, until Alicia could fill the job with a pro; they needed someone who not only knew equipment but could mix sound at the console, as complicated as an airplane’s cockpit. The quiet, heavyset young man was distracted and not particularly confident but trying to rise to the occasion. There were, of course, hundreds of decisions to be made. Sweating, he kept glancing at Kayleigh for direction, which she provided, along with smiles and nods of encouragement, though she was clearly distracted to be near the place where her friend had died.

With Kayleigh’s okay, Dance called Tye over and explained what she needed—to speak to all of the crew. He rounded them up—ranging from their early twenties to forties and physically fit, thanks probably to the demanding nature of their jobs. Dance spoke to them in the scuffed, black-painted wings of the hall.

She noted great camaraderie among them and Kayleigh—the whole operation was like a big family—but no one stood out as approaching Bobby’s level of closeness to Kayleigh, and therefore an obvious threat to
Edwin. Of any of them, Tye was the one who seemed to know Kayleigh best but she felt merely a brotherly kind of affection, she’d deduced from the singer’s body language when speaking to him.

Nor did Dance sense that any of them might have a motive to kill Bobby Prescott—another reason for her mission here, though she hadn’t stressed that to Kayleigh.

The only one Dance didn’t interview was Alicia. She’d been here at the convention center earlier when Dance arrived, standing outside beside a Ford F150 pickup with a trailer hitch on the back and a bumper sticker that announced:
I
♥
MY QUARTER HORSE

A cigarette had dangled from her lips and she’d looked more like a local Teamster than a personal assistant—considering her muscular arms, inkings and attitudinal visage. Of anyone on the staff, Alicia was probably the most at risk; she’d defied Edwin the most at the Cowboy Saloon on Sunday and would present an obstacle to the stalker’s getting close to Kayleigh.

Dance, however, couldn’t impart this warning in person, only via a phone message. The assistant had left the convention center by the time Dance went to find her.

As she looked over her notes, movement at the corner of her eye caught her attention. Dance’s gaze swept to the confusion of shadows throughout the concert hall. She’d counted two dozen doors and emergency exits. Recalled too the casual attitude of locking doors when there was no event in progress.

Was he here now, observing from the shadows? Was there a faint movement from that window? That doorway?

Her eyes were tricking her.

Had to be.

A moment later Dance noticed Kayleigh freeze and pull her mobile from her pocket. The look on the young woman’s face left little doubt. It would be a call she didn’t recognize.

She stared for a moment and then lifted the unit to her ear.

The woman gasped, a wrenching sound clearly audible, thanks to the acoustics of the center.

Her head swiveled toward Dance and she said, “It’s another call, Kathryn. It’s the second verse!”

IN A QUARTER
hour, Dance was at the sheriff’s office, hurrying inside. Harutyun met her at the door.

She asked, “Could the mobile providers triangulate on his phone?”

Harutyun said evenly, “It wasn’t one of Edwin’s prepaids. Or any mobile at all. The call was from a pay phone, on the Fresno College campus. School’s not in session yet. It’s pretty deserted there. Nobody saw the caller.”

“Well, where’s Edwin?”

“That’s the curious thing. Still in the Rialto—the theater. It must be somebody else.”

They stepped into Madigan’s office, where both the chief detective and Stanning, next to her boss, were on their phones.

Madigan looked up. He disconnected his mobile and ignored his desk phone when it rang, after a glance at caller ID. He looked too at a half-empty ice cream cup and pitched it. Rocky Road.

“Where’s Kayleigh?” Harutyun asked.

Dance said, “She and the crew are at the convention center. Darthur Morgan’s with her, and the deputy you sent is outside. Alicia’s the only one not accounted for. I called her on the way here and left a message. I haven’t heard back.”

The detective glanced toward his phone. “That was Fuentes. Edwin’s still watching his movie.”

Harutyun asked, “Any way he could’ve called from the theater, either the landline or another mobile, and routed the call through the phone at the college?”

Good question. But Madigan had a good answer: “No, we checked with the Bell folks, or whoever the hell they are nowadays. The call was made from the phone at the school, direct to Kayleigh’s.”

Dance had to ask, “And there’s no way he could’ve gotten out of the theater?”

“No. Fuentes is in a restaurant on Olive. He’s watching the front entrance. The back doors’re alarmed. He checked.”

Dance supposed that Edwin was just what he seemed to be: a sad lump of a young man without a life, drawn to a woman who existed in an entirely different universe from his.

A common and boring story, once you took the violence out of the equation.

And yet she couldn’t help but recall his icy demeanor, his calm attitude, his laser-like focus on Kayleigh, that phony smile.

And his intelligence.

Which prompted her to ask, “Basements?”

“What?” Madigan asked.

“In that block are there connecting basements?”

“I don’t know.” Madigan said this slowly and hit a button on the landline. A tone filled the room, then the rapid eleven digits of a phone number being dialed.

“Fuentes.”

Without identifying himself, Madigan barked, “We’re thinking he might’ve snuck out through the basement. The hardware store next door? They share a basement?”

A pause. “Let me check. I’ll get right back.”

Three minutes later they got the news that Dance suspected they would. “Yep, Chief. I went down there. There’s a door. It’s unlocked.”

“Evacuate the theater,” Dance said. “We need to be sure.”

“Evacuate?” Fuentes asked.

Madigan was staring at her. Then he said firmly, “You heard Agent Dance, Gabe. Get the lights on and evacuate.”

“The theater isn’t really going to want to …” His voice faded and he realized this wasn’t the time to be worried about business relations in economically challenged Fresno. “I’ll get on it.”

Ten minutes later, Fuentes came back on the line. Dance knew from the first word, “Chief,” what the story was going to be.

Madigan sighed. “You’re sure he’s gone?”

“There weren’t that many people inside, it being early. Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Damn,” Stanning muttered.

But the limp in Fuentes’s voice came from another source as well. “And I have to tell you…. While I was keeping an eye on the theater? I was in the restaurant?”

“I know, you told me. What?” Madigan growled.

“Somebody broke into my cruiser.”

“Go on.”

“I wasn’t thinking, I had a Glock in the backseat. It was in a box and under my jacket. I don’t know how anybody could’ve seen it or thought it was there.”

Dance knew from the way he volunteered the information that the gun hadn’t been hidden at all.

“Goddamn it!” Madigan shouted.

“I’m sorry. It should’ve been in the trunk. But it was completely hid.”

“It shoulda been
home.
That’s your personal weapon. It shoulda been at home.”

“I was going to the range tonight,” the deputy said miserably.

“You know what I gotta do, Gabe. Don’t have any options.”

“I know. You want my service piece and shield?”

“Need ’em. Yeah. I’ll get the paperwork done today. We’ll have the inquiry as fast as we can but it’ll be three or four days. You’re out of commission till then.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Bring your stuff in.” He stabbed the speakerphone button.

Harutyun said in his low, stress-free voice, “It could be one of the gangs.”

“It’s not one of the gangs,” Madigan snapped. “It’s our fucking stalker. At least if we find it on him, he’ll go to jail for a long, long time. Hell, this’s one clever son of a bitch. He got Fuentes suspended and a nice big gun, to boot.”

Dance looked at the lyric sheet they had pinned up on a badly mounted corkboard.

“Where’s he going to strike? A river … a river.”

“And,” Crystal Stanning added, “who’s he got in mind for the next victim?”

“MARY-GORDON, STAY OFF
that. See the sign?”