Solitude Creek: Kathryn Dance Book 4 Read online

  Good point. If and when Dance ever remarried, Maggie had announced she was going to be ‘best woman’ – whatever her age. She had also learned of feminism in school and, returning home after social studies, had declared, to Dance’s delight, that she wasn’t a feminist. She was an equalist.

  ‘Hi, Dad,’ Dance said.

  Stuart rose and hugged his daughter. He was seventy, and though his time outdoors as a marine biologist had taken a toll on the flesh, he looked younger than his years. He was tall, six two, wide-shouldered, with unruly, thick white hair. Dermatologists’ scalpels and lasers had left their mark too and he now rarely went outside without a floppy hat. He was retired, yes, but when not babysitting the grandkids or puttering around the house in Carmel, he worked at the famed Monterey Bay Aquarium several days a week.

  ‘Where’s Mom?’

  Staunch Edie Dance was a cardiac nurse at the Monterey Bay Hospital.

  ‘Took the late shift, filling in. Just me tonight.’

  Dance headed into the bedroom, washed and changed into black jeans, a silk T-shirt and burgundy wool sweater. The central coast, after sunset, could get downright cold and dinner tonight would be on the Deck.

  As she walked down the stairs and into the hallway a man stepped through the front door. Jon Boling, forties, wasn’t tall. A few inches above Dance but lean – thanks mostly to biking and occasional free weights (twenty-five-pounders at his place and a pair of twelves at hers). His straight hair, thinning, was a shade similar to Dance’s, though a little darker than chestnut, and with none of her occasional gray strands (which coincidentally disappeared after a trip to Rite-Aid or Save Mart).

  ‘Look, I’m bearing Greek gifts.’ He held up two large bags from a Mediterranean restaurant in Pacific Grove.

  They kissed and he followed her into the kitchen.

  Boling was a professor at a college nearby, teaching the Literature of Science Fiction, as well as a class called Computers and Society. In the graduate school, Boling taught what he described as some boring technical courses. ‘Sort of math, sort of engineering.’ He also consulted for Silicon Valley firms. He was apparently a minor genius in the world of boxes – computers. She’d had to learn about this from the press and Wes’s assessment of his skill in programming: modesty was hardwired into Boling’s genes. He wrote code the way Richard Wilbur or Jim Tilley wrote poetry. Fluid, brilliant and captivating.

  They’d been going out for a while now, ever since she’d hired him to assist on a case involving computers.

  As he offloaded containers of moussaka, octopus, taramasalata and the rest, he noted her arm. ‘What happened there?’

  She frowned and followed his gaze. ‘Oh.’ Her watch, crystal shattered. ‘The Serrano thing.’ She explained about the run-in at CBI, when the young man had fled after the interview.

  ‘You all right?’ His gentle eyes narrowed.

  ‘No danger. I just didn’t fall as elegantly as I should have.’

  She grimaced as she examined the broken glass. The watch had been a Christmas present from friends in New York, the famed criminalist Lincoln Rhyme and his partner, Amelia Sachs. She’d helped them out on a case a few years ago, involving a brilliant for-hire criminal known as the Watchmaker. She undid the dark-green leather strap and set the damaged watch on the mantel. She’d look into getting it repaired soon.

  Boling called, ‘Mags?’

  Dance saw her daughter leap up and run to the doorway. The child wrinkled her brow. Then called, ‘Geia!’

  Boling nodded. ‘Kalos!’

  Dance laughed.

  He said, ‘Thought we should learn a little Greek in honor of dinner. Where’s Wes?’

  ‘Outside with Donnie.’

  Boling did a fair amount of baby-sitting too; his teaching load was light, and as a consultant he could work here, there, anywhere. He knew as much about the children’s schedule and friends as Dance did. ‘Seems like a nice boy, Donnie. Year older, right?’

  ‘Thirteen, yes.’

  ‘His parents picked him up once. Mother’s sweet. Dad doesn’t say much.’ Boling frowned. ‘Was wondering. Whatever happened to Rashiv? He and Wes seemed pretty tight for a while. He was brilliant. Math, phew.’

  ‘Don’t know. Kids move on.’ Wes, whom Dance had always thought mature for his age, had recently gravitated to Donnie and an older crowd. Rashiv, she recalled, was a year younger than her son. Maggie, who’d always been a bit of a loner, had started hanging out with a group of four girls in her grade school (to Dance’s further surprise, the popular ones, two contestants in National American Miss pageants, one a would-be cheerleader).

  Boling opened some wine and passed out glasses to the adults.

  The doorbell.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ Maggie charged forward.

  ‘Hold on, Mags.’ Boling knew that Dance was involved in several potentially dangerous cases and quickly walked there with the child. He peeked out, then let Maggie unlock the door.

  The guests were dear family friends. Steven Cahill, about Boling’s age, was wearing a poncho. His salt-and-pepper ponytail dangled and he’d recently grown a David Crosby droopy moustache. Beside him was Martine Christensen. Despite the name she had no Scandinavian blood. She was dark-complexioned and voluptuous, descended in part from the original inhabitants of the area: Ohlone Indian, the loose affiliation of tribelets hunting and gathering from Big Sur to San Francisco Bay.

  Steve and Martine’s children, twin boys a year younger than Maggie, followed them up the front steps, one toting his mother’s guitar case, the other a batch of brownies. Maggie shepherded the twins and the two dogs down to the backyard, below the Deck. Dance smiled, noting she had shot a fast aside to her brother, undoubtedly about how wrong male-exclusive games were. The older boys ignored her.

  The younger children and the canines struck up an impromptu and chaotic game of Frisbee football.

  The adults congregated around the large picnic table on the Deck.

  This was the social center of the house – indeed, of the lives of many people Dance knew, family and friends. The twenty-by-thirty-foot expanse, extending from the kitchen into the backyard, was populated by mismatched lawn chairs, loungers and tables. Christmas lights, some amber globes, up-lights, a sink and a large refrigerator were the main decorations. Some planters, too, though the flowers struggled. Beneath, in the backyard, you could find scrub oak and maple trees, grasses, monkey flowers, asters, lupins, potato vines and clover. Some veggies tried to survive but the slugs were merciless.

  The Deck had been the site of hundreds of parties, big ones and small ones, and quiet family meals or cocoa nights, just the four of them. Then, more recently, the three. Her husband had proposed to her there, and Dance had eulogized him in virtually the same spot.

  The evening was dank so Dance cranked up the propane heater, which exhaled cozy air. The adults sat around the table and had wine, juice or water and talked about … well, everything. That was one enduring quality of the Deck. Any topic was fair game. And it was here that all of the town’s, state’s, country’s and world’s problems were solved, over and over.

  Martine asked, lowering her voice, ‘You heard about Solitude Creek?’

  ‘I’m working it,’ Dance said.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Katie,’ her father said, ‘be careful.’ As parents would do.

  Steve said, ‘The company’ll be out of business, the trucking company. And the driver, he should get jail time, don’t you think?’

  Dance said, ‘It’s not for public consumption yet. Please don’t say anything.’ She didn’t bother to wait for nods of agreement. ‘It wasn’t the truck driver. And it wasn’t an accident.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Martine asked.

  ‘We’re still looking into it, but somebody got into the truck and drove it against the doors to block them, then started a fire nearby to send everybody into a panic.’ A glance to make sure the children were out of hearing. ‘And everybody sure did. The injured
and dead were trampled and crushed or suffocated. There was blood everywhere.’

  ‘What’s the motive?’ Boling asked.

  ‘That’s a mystery. We find that out and we can track suspects. But so far, nothing.’

  ‘Revenge?’ Steven speculated.

  ‘Always a good one. But no patrons, employees or competitors stand out.’

  Martine said, ‘I’m claustrophobic. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be trapped in a crowd like that.’

  Stuart Dance brushed a hand through his tempestuous hair. ‘I don’t think I ever told you, Katie, but I saw a stampede once. Human, I mean. It was terrible.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You may have heard about it. Hillsborough, in Sheffield, England? Twenty-five years ago. I still have nightmares. Do you want to hear about it?’

  Dance noted the children were out of earshot. ‘Go ahead, Dad.’

  CHAPTER 16

  He was sure they’d die.

  Some of them, at least.

  Antioch March was on the turbulent shoreline in Pacific Grove, near Asilomar, the conference center. Off Sunset Drive.

  He had been doing reconnaissance for tomorrow’s ‘event’ and was driving back to his room at the Cedar Hills Inn when he’d spotted them.

  Ah, yes …

  He’d pulled over.

  And then wandered to an outcropping of rock, from which he would have a good view of the unfolding tragedy.

  Now he was eyeing the cluster of people nearby, surrounded by spray flying over the rocks from the impact of the roiling water. The sun was low. That ‘special time’, he’d heard it called by photographers. When light became your friend, something to help out with the pictures, not fight against. March had studied photography, in addition to more esoteric intellectual topics, and he was good. Many of the pictures on the Hand to Heart website were his.

  They’re dead, he reflected again.

  The family he was watching was Asian. Chinese or Korean, probably. He knew the difference in facial structure – he’d been to both of those countries (Korea had been far more productive for his work). But here he was too far away to tell. And he certainly wasn’t going to get much closer.

  A wife and husband, two pre-teen children, and a mother-in-law: a bundled-up matriarch. Armed with a point-and-shoot, the husband was directing the kids as they posed on dark brown, red and dun rocks.

  Spanish Bay, a tourist ‘twofer’, with beach and rugged shoreline, is a beautiful coastal preserve featuring everything one would want in scenic California. A mile of sand, surfers immune to the icy water, dolphins, pelicans, dunes, deer, rocks on which seals perch, busy tidal pools.

  And sea otters, of course. Cute little fuzzy-faced critters that float easily on the turbulent surface, smashing shellfish open on rocks perched on their chests.

  The area was idyllic.

  And deadly.

  In researching his plans for the Monterey Bay area, March had learned that every few months tourists wandered too far out onto these craggy rocks and, crash, a muscular arm of the Pacific Ocean lapped them indifferently out to sea. Those who didn’t break their heads open on the rocks and drown died of hypothermia before the Coast Guard found them or breathed their last while tangled in the pernicious kelp. It was near here that the singer John Denver had died, his experimental plane falling from the sky.

  The Asian family was now prowling the rocks, getting closer and closer to the end of the bulwark that stretched forty feet into the ocean, two yards above the agitated water. The rosy light from the low sun hit them full on.

  Beautiful.

  He slipped the Galaxy S5 mobile phone from his pocket and began shooting video of the scene around him. Just another tourist. Nothing odd about him, catching the beautiful, rugged scenery in high-def pixels.

  A huge crash of water, and the spray must have tickled the children. They seemed to giggle. The father gestured them to go some feet closer to the end. He aimed his Nikon and shot.

  Grandmother remained on the trail, some distance. Mother was about twenty feet behind her husband and children. March noticed she was calling. But the roar of the ocean on this windy evening was loud. The man probably couldn’t hear.

  Another huge wave, exploding on the gray-and-brown rocks. For a moment the children weren’t visible. He glanced at the screen and saw a rainbow in the angled sunlight.

  Then there were the children once more, oblivious, looking down at the water, as their father directed them closer yet to the terminus point of the rocks.

  March now noted that out to sea a large wave was gaining strength.

  The lens of his camera app was pointed their way but his concentration wasn’t on the video he was taking. He was looking at the swelling wave.

  Fifty yards, forty.

  Water travels fast even though it is, of course, the largest moving thing on earth. And this behemoth began to race.

  Closer, closer, come on …

  March’s palms sweated. His gut thudded, as he thought: Please, I want this …

  Thirty yards.

  The wave beginning to sharpen into a peak at the crest, God’s palm to slap the family to their deaths.

  Twenty-five yards.

  Twenty …

  It was then that the mother had had enough. She charged forward, unsteady on the slippery rocks, and stepped in front of her husband, who gestured angrily with his hands.

  Would he ignore her? Stand up to the bitch, March thought. Please.

  Fifteen yards away, that huge swell of water.

  His breathing was coming fast. Just thirty more seconds. That’s all I need.

  But the woman stepped stridently past her husband, her face dark, and strode up to her children.

  Ten …

  She took them by the hands and, raging at them too, dragged the bewildered youngsters back toward the trail. The husband followed, his face blank.

  The wave struck the rocks and inundated the spot where the children had been standing seconds before. It had had plenty of energy to sweep father and children into the water. Even more frustrating, March judged from the angle, they would have been slammed into the rocks just in front of him, then sucked into a churning mass of ocean nearby.

  He lowered the phone.

  The parents and children, their backs turned to the rocks, hadn’t seen the dramatic detonation of fiery water. Only the grandmother had. She said nothing but swiveled arthritically and followed her brood along the path.

  March sighed. He was angry. One last glance at the foolish, oblivious family. He found his teeth jammed together.

  The hollowness within him spread, like water melting salt.

  Somebody’s not happy …

  He climbed into the car and started the engine. He’d return to the Cedar Hills Inn and continue his plans for the next event in the Monterey area. It would be even better than Solitude Creek. He had another task, too, of course. In this business you had to be beyond cautious. Part of that was learning who was hunting for you.

  And figuring out how best to avoid them.

  Or, even better, stop them before they grew into a full-blown threat. Whatever it took.

  CHAPTER 17

  None of those on Kathryn Dance’s Deck had heard of the disaster in Sheffield, England.

  Stuart Dance was now explaining: ‘I was in London as a research fellow.’

  Dance said, ‘I remember. Mom and I came over to see you. I was seven or eight.’

  ‘That’s right. But this was before you got there. I was in Nottingham, lecturing, and the post-doc I was working with suggested we go to Sheffield to see a game at Hillsborough Stadium. You know football – soccer – fans can be pretty intense in Europe so they would host the association semi-finals in neutral venues to avoid fights. It was Nottingham – my associate’s team, of course – versus Liverpool. We took the train up. My friend had some money – I think his father was a Sir Somebody or Another – and got good seats. What happened wasn’t near us. But we cou
ld see it. Oh, my, we could see.’

  Dance became alarmed as her father’s face grew pale and his eyes darted toward the children, to confirm they weren’t close. He seemed edgy, reflecting the horror he was experiencing at the memories.

  ‘It seems that just as the game was about to start, Liverpool fans were clustering at the turnstiles and were agitated, afraid they wouldn’t get in. Pushing forward. Someone opened an exit gate to relieve the pressure and fans surged inside and made their way to a standing-room pen. The crush was terrible. Ninety-five, ninety-six people died there.’

  ‘God,’ Steve muttered.

  ‘Worst sports disaster in UK history.’ Nearly whispering now. ‘Horrible. Fans trying to climb on top of everyone else, people jumping over the wall. One minute alive, then snuffed out. I don’t know how they died. I guess suffocation.’

  ‘Compressive asphyxia, they call it,’ Dance said.

  Stuart nodded. ‘It all happened so fast. Ridiculously fast. Kick-off was at three. At three-oh-six they stopped the game but almost everybody who died was dead at that point.’

  Dance recalled that the deaths at the Solitude Creek roadhouse, though fewer, had taken about the same amount of time.

  Stuart added, ‘And you know what was the scariest? Together, all those people became something else. Not human.’

  It was like they weren’t people at all – it was just one big creature, staggering around, squeezing toward the doors …

  Stuart continued, ‘It reminded me of something else I saw. When I was on a job in Australia. I—’

  ‘We’re hungry!’ Wes called, and he and Donnie charged to the table. Several of the adults jumped at the sudden intrusion, coming in the midst of the terrible story.

  ‘Then let’s eat,’ Dance said, secretly relieved to change the subject. ‘Get your sister and the twins.’

  ‘Maggie!’ Wes shouted.

  ‘Wes. Go get your sister.’

  ‘She heard. She’s coming.’

  A moment later the other youngsters arrived, accompanied by the dogs, ever optimistic at the possibility a klutzy human would drop a bit of dinner.