XO (40 page)

Lincoln Rhyme asked, “You have any idea who he’s talking about?”

“I know exactly who he means,” Dance replied.

“IT’LL BE ALL
right, Congressman,” Peter Simesky said.

Davis didn’t need reassurance. He needed his family taken care of. He called Suze again and left another message for her to stay in the house with the kids. There was possibly a little security problem. Stay put, lock the door. Call me. Love you.

“Please have Jessie find my wife, Peter.”

“I’ll do that, sir. But there’s no indication that this Sharp wants to hurt anybody but you. Besides, I don’t think there’s any way he could get to L.A. He was at a mall here in Fresno this morning, according to the police. And everybody’s looking for him.”

“He actually thinks I’m exploiting Kayleigh?”

“Using her—well, and that song, ‘Leaving Home’—just to increase your Latino voter base.”

“That’s bullshit! I’ve been a huge supporter of hers all along. I’ve been posting on her site and the blogs for a couple of years. Before she even wrote the song.”

Simesky reminded, “Oh, he’s a psycho, Bill. Agent Dance said he has no sense of reality.”

“She said he could be like Hinckley?”

“Could be.”

“Jesus. They’ve got to find him. If he can’t kill me maybe he’ll just go on a rampage.”

The men were in the Coronado, one of the nicer hotels in Fresno, and to Davis it seemed plenty secure, if you stayed away from the windows. But Davis’s aides, Simesky and Myra Babbage, and the police thought he should move to a more secure location.

If it wasn’t for his family’s safety Davis would have been amused. He was extremely unpopular in certain circles and had been threatened a
number of times for his positions on various issues. Just mention relaxing immigration laws at a cocktail party and see what happens; imagine the consequences when it’s a campaign position of a potential presidential candidate. And yet here he was being threatened not by any rabid right-wingers but by a crazy guy who probably didn’t even know what the word “immigration” meant.

A knock on the door. Davis stepped forward but the aide waved him back and called, “Yes?”

“Kathryn Dance and Deputy Harutyun are here,” the campaign staff security man traveling with them, a massive fellow named Tim Raymond, called from outside.

Simesky opened the door and the two entered. The aide gave Dance a smile.

Davis had been amused at Simesky’s flirting earlier with Dance, at Kayleigh Towne’s house; there was no reason why a single man who was witty and charming shouldn’t turn his attentions toward an attractive single woman about his same age. But at this meeting, they were both pure business.

“Congressman, Peter,” Dance said.

Her green eyes quickly but calmly took in all the rooms, presumably for security threats, lingering briefly on the windows. Davis noted that she was now armed; she hadn’t been before. This made him a bit more uneasy.

Simesky asked, “Where are we with all this? What do we know?”

Dance said, “We’re still trying to find Edwin. Michael O’Neil—a deputy from Monterey—and the others are back at the sheriff’s office working on that. He’s vanished from the mall where he sent the website post. His car’s still there but he could have other wheels. Until we have a better idea where he is, we want to get you to that safe house as soon as possible. Are you ready to leave now?”

“Sure. Where is it?”

Harutyun said, “A place we use about a half hour north of here, in the woods.”

“Yes, all right.” He grimaced. “I just don’t want to be seen as running from this guy.”

Simesky said, “We go through this a lot, Bill. People aren’t going to care. They’d rather have a live candidate than a dead martyr.”

“I suppose.” Davis thought of something. Kathryn Dance was with a statewide agency so he said to her, “Could you get police to my house in L.A.? I’m worried about my family.”

“Of course. I’ll call our office and have a CBI team there, with tactical LAPD. We work with them a lot.”

“Thank you,” he said, feeling some relief, tepid though it was. He gave her the address and Susan’s phone number.

Dance made the call and then disconnected. Officers, she said, were en route. Davis was all the more impressed with her for her cool efficiency and decided that, as Peter had suggested, she’d be perfect in his administration.

Then, thank you, Lord, his wife called. “Honey?” the woman blurted. “Jess came to the school. What’s going on? Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes …” Davis explained the situation, adding that there would be some police or troopers at the house in just a minute or two. “There’s a little security thing. Probably nothing. Don’t open the door for anybody but the police. They’ll be from the LAPD and the California Bureau of Investigation.”

“What is it? Another threat from those isolationist idiots?”

“No, this is just a crazy guy, looks like. We’re ninety-nine percent sure he’s not down there but I just want to make sure you and the kids are all right.”

“You’re sounding too calm, Bill,” Susan said. “I hate it when you sound that way. It means you’re not calm at all.”

He laughed. But she was right. He was too calm.

Dance tapped her wristwatch.

“I’m fine. I’ve got police here too. I have to go. I’ll call you in a bit. Love you.”

“Oh, honey.”

He reluctantly disconnected.

Simesky called Davis’s other aide, Myra Babbage, who was at the local campaign headquarters, and told her to join them at the safe house.

Then, with Dance and Harutyun leading and Tim Raymond in the rear, Davis and Simesky moved quickly through the hotel corridor and down into the garage, where they climbed into a sheriff’s office Tahoe SUV.

Dance said to Harutyun, who was driving, “I’d say lights, no sirens for
two or three miles. Bust it, really move … and use side streets and alleys. Then flashers off and normal stream of traffic to the safe house.”

“Sure thing.”

“You think he’s nearby?” Simesky asked, looking out the windows uneasily.

“He’s invisible,” Dance said cryptically. “We just don’t know.”

As the big vehicle accelerated fast, the CBI agent gripped the hand rest and looked queasy. Davis reflected that if she did join his administration she would not do well on one of his speedboat outings.

On the other hand, he sensed she and Susan could become good friends.

Ten minutes later, when it seemed clear that Edwin was not following, they slowed and entered a highway. After a half hour of driving, the deputy turned down a deserted road, drove for another mile or so and, passing no houses along the way, finally approached a fancy log cabin. The one-story rambling brown structure was in the middle of a large cleared area—good visibility of the grounds, should anyone try to assault the house.

And there were also, Davis could see, only a few windows and all of them shuttered or shaded. Although he was perhaps more of a target than some politicians anyone who’s run for office instinctively considers security, particularly lines of fire and sniper’s vantage points. Everywhere. All the time.

Thank you, Second Amendment.

KATHRYN DANCE GRATEFULLY
climbed out of the SUV and inhaled the pleasant, astringent smell of pine.

The nausea from the rocky drive persisted but was fading.

She watched Harutyun approach the house and punch keys on a number pad and a green light came on. He stepped inside and deactivated another security system. Then he turned some switches and lights clicked on, revealing a functional interior, with no personality whatsoever: brown shag carpet that smelled of old automobile interiors, stained photographs in cheap plastic frames, Mediterranean-style lamps and furniture with excessive scrolls. A ski resort rental. The ancient Dodge smell was supplemented by that of musty upholstery, mold and cooking fuel.

All that was needed to complete the kitsch was a mounted bear or elk head.

The place was big. It appeared to have four or five bedrooms and several offices behind the living room and kitchen.

Dance exchanged mobile numbers with Tim Raymond, the security man, who remained outside. Harutyun shut the door and locked it. Then the mustachioed detective walked through the house to make sure it was secure. Simesky accompanied him.

A few minutes later Raymond called Dance and told her that everything seemed fine along the perimeter.

Dance looked around the austere facility and then at Davis, who now that his wife was protected seemed simply irritated that a security issue was taking time from his campaign and his congressional duties. He confirmed this a moment later when he muttered that he was due to meet workers at another farm soon but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. He’d have Peter or Myra cancel for him. “Pisses me off, I have to say.”
He sat and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, then scrolled through his iPhone.

Simesky and Harutyun returned. “All clear, windows and doors secure and armed,” the deputy told them and passed out bottled water.

“Thanks.” Davis drank one down.

Dance’s phone hummed with an incoming email. Rather than read it on the small screen, she opened her computer and went online. She smiled at the header:
Bird Shit.

The message was from Lincoln Rhyme and had to do with some additional analysis of the trace outside Edwin’s house.

Finally managed to isolate the other trace in the ammonium oxalate. They were phosphates and residue of animal matter. It’s bird shit. Exactly what kind it is, I can’t say. I didn’t bring my bird shit recognition kit with me. Nor have I been able to gin up support for a bird shit genome project. But I can say the excreting birds were most likely resident in a coastal region. Fish had been the mainstay of their diet. For what it’s worth. Here’s the whole list. Don’t understand why nobody drinks in this department.

He included the entire evidence chart and Dance read through it again, amused to note that when someone—Amelia Sachs, presumably—had added the recent discovery, she’d been a bit more delicate in her description.

• Wednesday. Edwin Sharp’s house

—outside:

—boot print probably cowboy-style, unable to determine size, male or female

—no vehicle tread marks

—unique trace materials

—triglyceride fat (lard)

—2700K color temperature (yellowish)

—melting point: 40–55 degrees F

—specific gravity: 0.91 at 40.0C

—
Determined likely to be neatsfoot oil, treatment for leather sports equipment, tack and gunslings

—
chemicals:
limonite, goethite and calcite

—
Determined likely to be gangue, ore collection and processing by
-
product

—fungus

—
Determined likely to be used in place of chemical-based fertilizers

—mineral oil, with lime sulfur

—
Determined likely to be organic pesticide

—calcium powder

—
Determined likely to be human bone dust

—ammonium oxalate

—
Determined likely to be bird excrement, probably from coastal area

She read through the list several times more.

And then:

A to B to Z …

Dance closed her eyes and let her mind wander where it would. Then she went to the website they’d looked at earlier, containing the threat to Davis. She scrolled through the posts.

Harutyun asked, “Anything helpful about where Edwin might be?”

“Maybe,” she answered absently, lost in thought.

Simesky sighed. “Doesn’t this guy know that if he killed the congressman, he’d get arrested and, in this state, probably end up on death row?”

Eyes still on her computer screen, Dance explained, “That doesn’t matter to him. Not at all.” A glance at Davis. “By killing you, he’s honoring her.”

The congressman laughed sourly. “So basically, I’m a sacrificial goat he’s offering up to his goddess.”

Which described the situation pretty well, Dance reflected and returned to the browser.

PLAN YOUR ACTS
and act your plan.

Peter Simesky’s analytical mind continued to measure the actual milestones of his plan against the projected ones, and he found it proceeding apace. In general, the events were in harmony with what he and Myra Babbage had been working on for the past ten months.