Solitude Creek

A massive spray of pungent salt water flared over Ardel and those around her, sprawled and sitting and crawling on the stone, cold as ice.

Screams from the victims, roaring from the water.

She rose, unsteadily, looking around, clutching her shoulder.

By now the police would be swarming the hall, and the gunman shot or arrested. She’d just stay here and—

‘Ah!’ Ardel barked a scream as one of the falling patrons landed directly behind her, propelling her off the rock. She stumbled forward and fell into the raging water.

A wave was now receding, pulling her in the undertow, fast, away from the shore.

She inhaled at the pain and got only water. Retching, coughing, looking back for help, looking back to see how far she was from shore. Fifteen feet, then twenty, more. The chill stole her breath and her body began to shut down.

She glanced at her useless right arm, floating limp in the water.

Not that it mattered: even if it had worked perfectly fine, there was nothing she could do. Ardel Hopkins couldn’t swim a stroke.

CHAPTER 32

Antioch March had returned from the Bay View Center and was sitting in his Honda parked about five blocks away from the venue, near the Sardine Factory, the wonderful restaurant featured in Play Misty For Me, the harrowing movie by Clint Eastwood. It was one of March’s favorite flicks, about a beautiful woman obsessed with a radio disk jockey. Psychotically obsessed.

It was really about the Get, of course.

Anything to seize what she desired.

He stretched and reflected on the plan he’d just put into place. It’d gone quite well.

Forty minutes earlier he’d carted a Monterey Bay Aquarium shopping bag along Cannery Row, then slipped behind a restaurant near the Bay View Center. He’d changed into his ‘uniform’, militia chic, he joked to himself — camo, bandana, gloves, mask, boots. Then, ten minutes after the self-help author had started his reading, time for rampage.

He’d slipped out from the hiding spot and, firing his Glock, walked closer to the Bay View Center, aiming in the direction of people but not actually at them. Everyone scattered. Everyone screamed.

He made his way toward the center’s fire-exit doors, shooting away. He figured he had about four minutes until police showed up.

Then, when people began leaping out of the windows, falling on the rocks and into the ocean, he’d turned and slipped back to his staging area. He stripped the camo off and was once again in T-shirt, windbreaker, shorts and flip-flops, pistol against his spine. The costume went into a mesh dive bag weighted with rocks and he’d tossed it into the bay, sinking thirty feet into the kelp.

Then, newly touristed, March made his way along the shore to where the Honda was parked. On a prepaid he called 911 and reported the gunman had moved off — toward Fisherman’s Wharf, the opposite direction from where March now was. He then called a local TV station and said the same thing. Another call — to a Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant, not the one he’d eaten at last night, to report that the crazed gunman was approaching. ‘Run, run, get out!’

A lot of police — not everywhere, since this was a small community, but plenty of them. Not a single one paid any attention to him. Their focus was elsewhere. He’d wondered if they had any idea he’d masqueraded as the fire inspector, Dunn, to conveniently make sure that the exit doors were taped open. Probably not. The ‘precautions’ the venue used had assured the success of the attack.

He’d waited for a while but then decided he could return to, yes, the scene of the crime.

The streets were congested, of course, as he made his way toward the venue where the tragedy continued to unfold. In the water, he could see, a dozen police and Coast Guard boats cruised and floated, blue lights, searchlights. Some people bobbing, mostly divers. People on the rocks too, beneath the shattered windows of the venue. Some sat, seemingly numb. Some lay on their backs or sides. Rescue workers had carefully descended along a steep line of rock, slick with vegetation, like green hair, and salt water, to get to the injured. Several had lost their footing and gone into the ocean. A fireman was one of these, flailing in the water as it lifted and dropped him against the shore. Two fellow workers pulled him to safety.

He wasn’t, March noted, the Hero Firefighter. But March was sure Brad Dannon would be there somewhere.

Through an alley and onto Cannery Row itself. Across the street and up the hill overlooking the Bay View Center.

What delicious chaos …

March eased close. He saw three body bags resting respectfully in the side driveway of the Bay View, near the emergency-exit doors, which were all wide open. Not a bad plan, this one, sending the self-helping book buyers out of the windows and onto the craggy rocks or into the breathlessly cold water.

March glanced down and noted another vehicle honking its way close to the Bay View.

Ah, what have we here?

My friend …