Even with naked eyes, Marnie saw Dryden lean over in the telltale movement of someone opening a glove compartment. A second later he had a booklet in his hands, flipping through its pages rapidly.
Thirty yards behind him, the driver of the dark Fusion was still leaning into his backseat. The passenger was just standing there on his own side of the car, staring forward in Dryden’s direction.
“I need an answer, Marnie,” Sumner said. “Let’s set up the warrant. Let’s bring him in.”
She opened her mouth to say yes—
Then stopped herself.
Dryden had the booklet braced on his steering wheel, tracing a hand over one of its pages, like someone following a route on a—
“He’s going somewhere,” she said.
“What?”
“He’s got an atlas out. He’s about to go somewhere.”
“He was on the freeway. He was already going somewhere.”
“Something just changed, though,” Marnie said. “He looks amped up for some reason.”
“And?”
“And I want to know why,” Marnie said. “I’m going to see where he’s going. So no warrant, okay? Not yet.”
Over the speakerphone, Sumner exhaled. “Fine.”
Thirty yards behind Dryden, the man leaning into the Fusion drew back and straightened up. He had a toddler in his arms. A baby girl in a pink outfit. He bounced her gently in the crook of his elbow, which made her laugh. He shut the door, and he and the passenger headed toward the Albertson’s.
By then Dryden had set the atlas aside. A second later he started the Explorer. He pulled out of his space and accelerated across the lot to the nearest exit.
Marnie put the Crown Vic back in drive and followed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The atlas had confirmed what Dryden had already guessed: The 101 was the fastest route. Along the coast through Santa Barbara, then inland through the mountains. Total drive time would be just over an hour, at the speed limit. A bit less, if he pushed it.
The lack of a timeline was maddening. For all the details he’d heard in the broadcast, there had been nothing to say when the accident would happen.
Well, there had been a hint.
Has there been any statement from the construction firm managing the site?
There’s been no statement all day …
All day.
Dryden had heard the broadcast around 10:40 in the morning. That put the actual time of the broadcast around 9:04 tonight.
No statement all day, as of 9:04 tonight.
Whatever was going to happen at Mission Tower, whatever was going to kill twelve people and injure nine more, it would happen early in the day. Anytime now.
Could he just call somebody? Walk into a gas station right now and ask to use their phone for an emergency? It would take only a few phone calls, starting with 4-1-1, to track down whoever was building Mission Tower in Santa Maria, but when he got through to someone, what exactly could he tell them?
Something to make them clear the construction site?
Would that fix the problem?
Maybe. If the accident was going to be caused by some one-off human error, like someone dropping an air-nailer and rupturing a fuel line, or pulling the wrong lever of an earth mover, then simply shuffling the deck might change everything. If it were that simple, then the solution might be as easy as calling in a bomb threat. Shake up the whole day, shut down the site for hours while cops scoured the place. By the time the crew got back to work, the fluke accident would probably never happen.
If it was a fluke.
And if it wasn’t? If the danger was some loose bolt in a machine—say, the pulley of a construction elevator? Something sure to go wrong, given a few more hours of use?
Then a bomb threat would only delay the tragedy—and make it that much harder to address the real problem. How would Dryden call in later and urge someone to inspect all the site hardware, if they’d just gotten a crank bomb threat the same day?
How would he even know whether to make that call? How would he know if the bomb scare had solved the problem or not?
He had the Explorer doing 90, the Saturday morning traffic sparse enough to permit it.
Fifty minutes, give or take, and he could be there to look around for himself.
On the passenger seat, the machine was still on. Maybe he would get lucky and catch another update. Twelve people dead was a big story. Lots of coverage.
He passed a semi and veered back into the right lane.
*
Marnie stayed half a mile behind him. No need to get close enough to risk him spotting her. On her phone’s display, the little red thumbtack traveled neatly along the 101.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mangouste had five cell phones on the desk in his den. One was a smartphone he’d had for a year. The other four were burners—throwaway units he replaced daily, whether he ended up using them or not. Every morning at 6:00 he dumped the previous day’s collection into an industrial blender in the basement, grinding them to plastic crumbs, and at 6:15 his courier would arrive with four new ones. Each phone had a white sticker on the back, with a list of names—well, alphanumeric codes that stood for names—of the people who could reach him via that unit.