Solitude Creek: Kathryn Dance Book 4 Page 2

  ‘Honey!’

  ‘Mom!’

  Michelle, being dragged toward the doors, used every muscle in her body to turn toward her daughter but she was helpless, crushed between two patrons: a heavy-set man in a T-shirt, which was already savagely torn, his skin red, bearing scratch marks from fingernails, and a woman, whose fake breasts pressed painfully into Michelle’s side.

  ‘Trish, Trish, Trish!’

  She might have been mute. The patrons’ screams and wailing – from fear and from pain – were numbing. All she could see was the head of the man in front of her and the exit sign they surged toward. Michelle pounded her fists on shoulders, on arms, on necks, on faces, just as she, too, was pounded by other patrons.

  ‘I have to get my daughter! Go back, go back, go back!’

  But there was no stopping the tide streaming for the exits. Michelle Cooper could breathe only an ounce or two of air at a time. And the pain – in her chest, her side, her gut. Terrible! Her arms were pinned, feet suspended above the floor.

  The house lights were on, bright. Michelle turned slightly – not her doing – and saw the faces of the patrons near her: eyes coin-wide in panic, crimson streaks from mouths. Had people bitten their tongues out of fear? Or was the crush snapping ribs and piercing lungs? One man, in his forties, was unconscious, skin gray. Had he fainted? Or died of a heart attack? He was still upright, though, wedged into the moving crowd.

  The smell of smoke was stronger now and it was hard to breathe – maybe the fire was sucking the oxygen from the room, though she could still see no flames. Perhaps the patrons, in their panic, were depleting the air. The pressure of bodies against her chest, too.

  ‘Trish! Honey!’ she called, but the words were whispers. No air in, no air out.

  Where was her baby? Was someone helping her escape? Not likely. Nobody, not a single soul, seemed to be helping anyone else. This was an animal frenzy. Every person was out for himself. It was pure survival.

  Please …

  The group of patrons she was welded to stumbled over something.

  Oh, God …

  Glancing down, Michelle could just make out a slim young Latina in a red-and-black dress, lying on her side, her face registering pure terror and agony. Her right arm was broken, bent backward. Her other hand was reaching up, fingers gripping a man’s pants pocket.

  Helpless. She couldn’t rise; no one paid the least attention to her even as she cried out with every shuffled foot that trampled her body.

  Michelle was looking right into the woman’s eyes when a booted foot stepped onto her throat. The man tried to avoid it, crying, ‘No, move back, move back,’ to those around him. But, like everyone else, he had no control of his direction, his motion, his footfalls.

  Under the pressure of the weight on her throat, the woman’s head twisted even farther sideways and she began to shake fiercely. By the time Michelle had moved on, the Latina’s eyes were glazed and her tongue protruded slightly from her bright red lips.

  Michelle Cooper had just seen someone die.

  More PA announcements. Michelle couldn’t hear them. Not that it mattered. She had absolutely no control over anything.

  Trish, she prayed, stay on your feet. Don’t fall. Please …

  As the mass surrounding her stumbled closer to the fire doors, the crowd began to shift to the right and soon Michelle could see the rest of the club.

  There! Yes, there was her daughter! Trish was still on her feet, though she too was pinned in a mass of bodies. ‘Trish, Trish!’

  But no sound at all came from her now.

  Mother and daughter were moving in opposite directions.

  Michelle blinked tears and sweat from her eyes. Her group was only feet away from the exits. She’d be out in a few seconds. Trish was still near the kitchen – where somebody had just said the fire was raging.

  ‘Trish! This way!’

  Pointless.

  And then she saw a man beside her daughter lose control completely – he began pounding the face of the man next to him and started to climb on top of the crowd, as if, in his madness, he believed he could claw his way through the ceiling. He was large and one of the people he used as a launching pad was Trish, who weighed a hundred pounds less than he did. Michelle saw her daughter open her mouth to scream and then, under the man’s massive weight, vanish beneath the sea of madness.

  BASELINE

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5

  CHAPTER 3

  The two people sitting at the long conference table looked her over with varying degrees of curiosity.

  Anything else? she wondered. Suspicion, dislike, jealousy?

  Kathryn Dance, a kinesics (body language) expert, got paid to read people but law enforcers were typically hard to parse so at the moment she wasn’t sure what was flitting through their minds.

  Also present was her boss, Charles Overby, though he wasn’t at the table but hovering in the doorway, engrossed in his Droid. He’d just arrived.

  The four were in an interrogation-observation room on the ground floor of the California Bureau of Investigation’s West Central Division, off Route 68 in Monterey, near the airport. One of those dim, pungent chambers separated from the interrogation room by a see-through mirror that nobody, even the most naïve or stoned perps, believed was for straightening your tie or coiffing.

  A no-nonsense crowd, fashion-wise. The man at the table – he’d commandeered the head spot – was Steve Foster, wearing a draping black suit and white shirt. He was the head of special investigations with the California Bureau of Investigation’s Criminal Division. He was based in Sacramento. Dance, five six and about a hundred twenty pounds, didn’t know exactly when to describe somebody as ‘hulking’ but Foster had to figure close. Broad, an impressive silver mane, and a droopy moustache that could have been waxed into a handlebar, had it been horizontal and not staple-shaped, he looked like an Old West marshal.

  Perpendicular to Foster was Carol Allerton, in a bulky gray pants suit. Short hair frosted silver, black and gray, Carol Allerton was a senior DEA agent operating out of Oakland. The stocky woman had a dozen serious collars to her credit. Not legend, but respectable. She’d had the opportunity to be fast-tracked to Sacramento or even Washington but she’d declined.

  Kathryn Dance was in a black skirt and white blouse of thick cotton, under a dark brown jacket, cut to obscure if not wholly hide her Glock. The only color in her ensemble was a blue band that secured the end of her dark blonde French braid. Her daughter had bound it this morning on the way to school.

  ‘That’s done.’ Hovering around fifty, Charles Overby looked up from his phone, on which he might’ve been arranging a tennis date or reading an email from the governor, though, given their meeting now, it was probably halfway between. The athletic if pear-shaped man said, ‘Okay, all task-forced up? Let’s get this thing done.’ He sat and opened a manila folder.

  His ingratiating words were greeted with the same non-negotiable stares that had surveilled Dance a moment ago. It was pretty well known in law-enforcement circles that Overby’s main skill was, and had always been, administration, while those present were hard-core line investigators. None of whom would use the verb he just had.

  Mumbles and nods of greeting.

  The ‘thing’ he was referring to was an operation that was part of a statewide push to address a recent trend in gang activity. You could find organized crime everywhere in California but the main centers for gang activity were two: north and south. Oakland was the headquarters of the former, LA the latter. But rather than being rivals, the polar crews had decided to start working together, guns moving south from the Bay Area and drugs moving north. At any given moment, there would be dozens of illicit shipments coursing along Interstate-5, the 101 and the dusty, slow-moving 99.

  To make it harder to track and stop these shipments, the senior bangers had hit on an idea: they’d taken to using break-bulk and way stations, where the cargo was transferred from the original tractor-trailers
to dozens of smaller trucks and vans. Two hours south of Oakland and five north of LA, Salinas, with its active gang population, was perfect as a hub. Hundreds of warehouses, thousands of vehicles and produce trucks. Police interdiction nearly ground to a halt and illicit business surged. This year alone the statistics cops reported that revenue in the gun/drug operation had risen nearly a half-billion dollars.

  Six months ago the CBI, FBI, DEA and local law-enforcement agencies had formed Operation Pipeline to try to stop the transportation network but had had paltry success. The bangers were so connected, smart and brazen that they constantly remained one step ahead of the good guys, who managed to bust only low-level dealers or mules with mere ounces taped to their crotches, hardly worth the bytes to process into the system. Worse, informants were ID’d, tortured and killed before any leads could be developed.

  As part of Pipeline, Kathryn Dance was running what she’d dubbed the Guzman Connection and had put together a task force that included Foster, Allerton and two other officers, presently in the field. The eponymous Guzman was a massive, borderline psychotic gang-banger, who reportedly knew at least half of the transfer points in and around Salinas. As near a perfect prize as you could find in the crazy business of law enforcement.

  After a lot of preliminary work, just last night Dance had texted the task force that they had their first lead to Guzman and to assemble here, now, for a briefing.

  ‘So, tell us about this asshole you’re going to be talking to today, the one you think’s going to give up Guzman. What’s his name? Serrano?’ From Steve Foster.

  Dance replied, ‘Okay. Joaquin Serrano. He’s an innocent – what all the intel shows. No record. Thirty-two. We heard about him from a CI we’ve been running—’

  ‘Who’s been running?’ Foster asked bluntly. The man was adept at interruption, Dance had learned. Also, it was true that law enforcers were quite sensitive about their colleague’s attempts to poach confidential informants.

  ‘Our office.’

  Foster grunted. Maybe he was irritated he hadn’t been informed. His flick of a finger said, Go on.

  ‘Serrano can link Guzman to the killing of Sad Eyes.’

  The victim, actually Hector Mendoza (droopy lids had led to the nic), was a banger who knew higher-ups in both the north and south operations. That is, a perfect witness – had he remained alive.

  Even cynical, sour Foster seemed content at the possibility of hanging the Sad Eyes killing on Guzman.

  Overby, often good at stating the obvious, said, ‘Guzman falls, the other Pipeline crews could go like dominos.’ Then he didn’t seem to like his metaphor.

  ‘This witness, Serrano. Tell us more about him.’ Allerton fiddled with a yellow pad of foolscap, then seemed to realize she was doing so. She aligned the edges and set it free.

  ‘He’s a landscaper, works for one of the big companies in Monterey. Documented. Probably trustworthy.’

  ‘Probably,’ Foster said.

  ‘He’s here now?’ Allerton asked.

  ‘Outside,’ Overby replied.

  Foster said, ‘Why’s he going to want to talk to us? I mean, let’s be transparent. He knows what Guzman’ll do, he finds out.’

  Allerton: ‘Maybe he wants money – maybe he’s got somebody in the system he wants us to help.’

  Dance said, ‘Or maybe he wants to do the right thing.’ Drawing a laugh from Foster. She, too, gave a faint grin. ‘I’m told it happens occasionally.’

  ‘He came in voluntarily?’ Allerton wondered aloud.

  ‘He did. I just called him up. He said yes.’

  ‘So,’ Overby inquired, ‘we’re relying on his good graces to help us?’

  ‘More or less.’ The phone against the wall hummed. Dance rose and answered it. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hey, boss.’

  The caller was a thirtyish CBI agent in the West Central Division. He was Dance’s junior associate, though that was not an official job description. TJ Scanlon, a dependable, hardworking agent and, best put, atypical for the conservative CBI.

  TJ said, ‘He’s here. Ready to go.’

  ‘Okay, bring him up.’ Dance dropped the phone into the cradle and said to the room. ‘Serrano’s coming in now.’

  Through the mirror window, they watched the door to the interview room open. In walked TJ, slim, his curly hair more unruly than usual. He was in a plaid sports coat and red pants, which approached bell-bottoms. His T-shirt was tie-dyed, yellow and orange.

  Atypical …

  Following him was a tall Latino with thick, short-cut dark hair. He walked in and looked around. His jeans were slim-cut and dark blue. New. He wore a gray hoodie with ‘UCSC’ on the front.

  ‘Yeah,’ Foster grumbled. ‘He graduated from Santa Cruz. Right.’

  Dance said stiffly, ‘Not graduated. Took courses.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  The Latino’s right hand was inked, though it didn’t seem to be a gang sign, and on his left forearm, near the sweat jacket, you could just make out the start of a tat. His face was untroubled.

  Over the speaker, they heard the young agent say, ‘There you go. There. Take a seat. You want some water?’

  The somber man said, ‘No.’

  ‘Somebody’ll be in in a minute.’

  The man nodded. He sat down in a chair facing the one-way mirror. He glanced at it once, then pulled out his cell phone and read the screen.

  Foster shifted slightly. Dance didn’t need any body-language skills to understand his thoughts. She said, ‘He’s just a witness, remember. We don’t have a warrant to intercept. He hasn’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘Oh, he’s done something wrong,’ Foster said. ‘We just don’t know what yet.’

  She glanced at him.

  ‘I can smell it.’

  Dance rose, slipped her Glock out of its holster and set it on the table. She picked up her pen and a pad of yellow paper.

  Time to go to work and uncover the truth.

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘She works miracles, does she?’ Foster asked. ‘This kinesics stuff?’

  ‘Kathryn’s good, yes.’ Overby had taken a dislike to Foster, who was the sort to snatch credit and press time away from those who’d done much of the legwork. He had to be careful, though. Foster was roughly on Overby’s level, pay-grade wise, but higher up, in the sense that he was based in Sacramento and had an office no more than thirty feet from the head of the CBI. He was also within lobbing distance of the legislature.

  Allerton adjusted her notebook, empty at the moment. She drew ‘1’.

  Overby continued, ‘Funny. When you know what she does – that body-language stuff – then go out to lunch with her, you watch what you’re doing, where you’re looking. Like you’re waiting for her to say, “So, you had a fight with your wife this morning, hmm? Over bills, I’d think.”’

  ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ Allerton said. She added, ‘I like that British one. With the guy with the funny name. Like “cummerbund”.’

  Overby, staring into the interrogation room, said absently, ‘That’s not how kinesics works.’

  ‘No?’ Foster.

  Overby said nothing more. As the others turned to the glass, he in turn examined the two members of the Guzman Connection task force present at the moment. Foster, Allerton. Then Dance walked into the interview room. And Overby’s attention, too, turned that way.

  ‘Mr Serrano. I’m Agent Dance.’ Her voice crackled through the overhead speaker in the observation room.

  ‘“Mister”,’ Foster muttered.

  The Latino’s eyes narrowed as he looked her over carefully. ‘Good to meet you.’ There was nothing nervous about his expression or posture, Overby noted.

  She sat across from him. ‘Appreciate your coming in.’

  A nod. Agreeable.

  ‘Now, please understand, you’re not under investigation. I want to make that clear. We’re talking to dozens of people, maybe hundreds. We’re looking into gang-related crimes here on the Peninsula.
And hope you can help us.’

  ‘So, I no need a lawyer.’

  She smiled. ‘No, no. And you can leave anytime you want. Or choose not to answer.’

  ‘But then I look kind of suspicious, don’t I?’

  ‘I could ask how you liked your wife’s roast last night. You might not want to answer that one.’

  Allerton laughed. Foster looked impatient.

  ‘I couldn’t answer that anyway.’

  ‘You don’t have a wife?’

  ‘No, but even if I did I’d do the cooking. I pretty good in the kitchen.’ Then a frown. ‘But I want to help. Terrible, some of the things that happen, the gangs.’ He closed his eyes momentarily. ‘Disgusting.’

  ‘You’ve lived in the area for a while?’

  ‘Ten years.’

  ‘You’re not married. But you have family here?’

  ‘No, they in Bakersfield.’

  Foster: ‘Shouldn’t she have looked all this up?’

  Overby said, ‘Oh, she knows it. She knows everything about him. Well, what she could learn in the past eight hours since she got his name.’

  He’d observed plenty of Dance’s interrogations and listened to her lecture on the topic; he was able to give the task force a brief overview. ‘Kinesics is all about looking for stress indicators. When people lie they feel stress, can’t help it. Some suspects can cover it up well so it’s really hard to see. But most of us give away indications that we’re stressed. What Kathryn’s doing is talking to Serrano for a while, nothing about gang activity, nothing about crime – the weather, growing up, restaurants, life on the Peninsula. She gets his baseline body language.’

  ‘Baseline.’

  ‘That’s the key. It tells her how he behaves when he’s answering truthfully. When I said earlier that kinesics doesn’t work that way? I meant it doesn’t work in a vacuum. It’s almost impossible to meet somebody and instantly read them. You have to do what Kathryn’s doing – getting that baseline. After that she’ll start asking about gang activities he might’ve heard of, then about Guzman.’