Solitude Creek

The gray Nissan Pathfinder featured an impromptu blue flasher on the dash. The vehicle parked near him — because of the congestion of the crowds and emergency vehicles it couldn’t get close to the center itself.

Kathryn Dance climbed out, frowning. Looking around.

March had been to her house, of course, but hadn’t been able to see much. There’d been dogs, people coming and going. He’d gotten some details about her life, her family, her friends, though he hadn’t managed to get a good close look at her. Now he did. Quite attractive. A bit like that actress, Cate Blanchett. She wore a dark jacket and mid-calf skirt. Stylish boots. Her hair was back in a taut ponytail, secured by a bright red band.

Ah, interesting: in this outfit, with this hair, she looked a bit like Jessica, from the holy trinity of Antioch March’s life, along with Serena and Todd.

She walked quickly up to several uniformed police and flashed her badge, though the officers seemed to know her. Others approached and gave her information, the way they’d greet a queen. His impression from the other day, at the theater, had been right: she’s the one pursuing me. The lead detective, or whatever they called it. He supposed she was smart. She had a piercing, studious frown, an unyielding jaw.

In five minutes or so, she’d dealt with all the requests and had issued orders. She walked up to the bodies, looked down, grim-faced. Then into the hall itself.

When she was out of sight, Antioch March eased down the hill. Because of the congestion Dance had parked outside the police line perimeter and he was easily able to walk up to her car without being stopped.

Equally convenient, she’d been so focused on the Bay View Center disaster scene that she’d neglected to lock the SUV.

He looked around, saw nobody was paying him the least attention and popped open the driver’s-side door.

CHAPTER 33

‘About fifty people jumped. Most hit the rocks.’ Dance was explaining this now to Charles Overby in her office at CBI headquarters. O’Neil and TJ were present too. ‘Half ended up in the water. The temperature was forty-five degrees. You can stay alive for a little while in water like that, some people can, but the ones who died couldn’t swim or were stunned or injured by the fall. Then some were just picked up by the waves and slammed into the rocks. Knocked unconscious and drowned. Two got tangled in the kelp.’

‘The count?’

O’Neil: ‘Four dead, thirty-two injured. Twelve critical. Two are in comas from the fall and hypothermia. Three’ll probably lose limbs from the fall to the rocks. No one missing. All accounted for.’

‘No security?’

‘No,’ Dance said. ‘The manager was in the front line, trying to help. The author? He hid in the bathroom. Women’s room, actually. Then the shooter vanished — about three minutes before the police showed up. No sign whatsoever.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘We think he was wearing throwaways,’ O’Neil said.

‘The camo?’

Dance told her boss, ‘There were plenty of places along the shore where he could have gotten out of sight, stripped, thrown everything into a shopping bag and strolled into the crowd, vanished.’

‘There were reports he was headed toward Fisherman’s Wharf.’

‘We think he was behind that,’ Dance explained. ‘Called Dispatch, a TV station and another restaurant. Prepaid mobile. Bought in Chicago with cash about a month ago. And when I heard that I ran the call records the night of the Solitude Creek incident. Somebody called Sam Cohen from the parking lot and told him the fire was in the kitchen and backstage areas of the club. That sent more people into the crush.’

‘The number the same?’

‘No. But it was from Chicago too. Bought at the same time. I’ve sent a request to Chicago PD to see what they can find. I’m not holding my breath. Now, at the Bay View the manager said there was no security video. I saw cameras, in the hall and outside, but apparently they weren’t hooked up.’

‘And the unsub,’ Overby said slowly, ‘never went inside. Never actually hit anybody. Why?’