Solitude Creek

Guard dog. Because I don’t have a weapon. Though the odds on their unsub charging out of the woods with blazing guns seemed rather narrow.

He turned back to the scene. They moved closer and Dance looked down, circling the area where the car had been, carefully so as not to disturb any evidence.

‘Michael. Look. He wasn’t alone.’

The solid detective crouched down and pulled out a small flashlight. He aimed it at what she’d seen. There were two sets of shoeprints, very different. One appeared to be running shoes, or boots, with complex treads. The other, longer, was smooth-soled.

O’Neil rose and, picking his steps carefully, walked around to the other side of where the car had been parked. Examined that area.

‘No. Just one. Nobody got out on the passenger side.’

‘Ah. Got it. He changed shoes. No, changed clothes altogether.’

‘Had to be. Just in case somebody saw him.’

‘We should get your CSU team here, search for trace, run the prints.’

The MCSO and the FBI had tread-mark databases for both tires and shoes. They might find the brand of shoe and narrow down the type of car, with some luck.

Though luck was not a commodity much in evidence in the Solitude Creek investigation.

CHAPTER 31

‘Tomorrow Is the New Today … You have to think not about the present but about the future. You see, you blink and what was the future a moment ago is the present now. Are we good with that? Does that speak to you?’

The author looked like an author. No, not in a tweedy sport jacket with patches, a pipe, wrinkled pants. Which was, maybe, the way authors used to look, Ardel believed. This writer was in a black shirt, black pants and wore stylish glasses. Boots. Hm.

‘So while you’re focusing on the moment, you’ll miss the most important part of your life: the rest of it.’

Fifty-nine-year-old Ardel Hopkins and her friend Sally Gelbert, sitting beside her, had come to the Bay View Center, off Cannery Row, right on the shoreline, because they were on diets.

The other option, as they’d debated what to do on this girls’ night out, was to hit Carambas full-on, two hours. But that would mean six-hundred-calorie margaritas and those chips, then the enchiladas. Danger. So when Sally had seen that a famous author was appearing up the street, at the Bay View, they’d decided: perfect. One drink, a few chips, salsa, then culture.

Didn’t preclude an ice-cream cone on the drive home.

Also, good news: like everyone else, Ardel had been worried about a crowded venue — after that terrible incident at Solitude Creek, intentionally caused by some madman. But she and Sally had checked out the Bay View hall and noted that the exit doors had been fixed so they couldn’t be locked — the latches were taped down. And a thick chain prevented anyone from parking in front of the doors and blocking them.

All good. Mostly good — problem was, this guy Richard Stanton Keller, supposedly a self-help genius, was a bit boring.

Ardel whispered, ‘Three names. That’s a tip-off. Lot of words in his name. Lots of words in his book.’

Lots of words coming out of his mouth.

Sally nodded.

Keller was leaning forward to the microphone, before the audience of a good four hundred or so fans. He read and read and read.

Tomorrow Is the New Today.

Catchy. But it didn’t make a lot of sense. Because when you hit tomorrow, it becomes today but then it’s the old today and you have to look at tomorrow, which is the new today.

Like time-travel movies, which she also didn’t enjoy.

She’d’ve preferred somebody who wrote fun and talked fun, like Janet Evanovich or John Gilstrap, but there were worse ways to spend an hour after digesting a very small — too small — portion of chips and one marg. Still, it was a pleasant venue for a book reading. The building was up on stilts and you could peer down and see, thirty or forty feet below, craggy rocks on which energetic waves were presently committing explosive suicide.

She tried to concentrate.

‘I’ll tell you a story. About my oldest son going away to college.’

Don’t believe a word of it, Ardel thought.

‘This is true, it really happened.’

Not a single word.

He started telling the story of his son doing something bad or the author doing something bad or the author’s wife, the boy’s mother, doing something bad because they’d been living for today and not tomorrow, which really was today. Hm. Did that mean—

Suddenly a loud bang, from somewhere outside the hall. Nearby.

Everyone looked toward the lobby. The author fell silent.

Now screams from outside too. Then another bang louder, closer.

That wasn’t a backfire. Cars didn’t backfire any more. Definitely a shot. Ardel knew it was a gunshot. She’d been to a range a couple of times when her husband was alive. She hadn’t wanted to fire a gun, so she’d just sat back and watched the fanatics shiver with excitement over the weapons and talk shop.

Another shot — closer yet.

The manager hurried to a fire door, which he pushed open. A fast look out. He stepped back in fast.