“You never said anything.”
“That was the plan. I could run it but I couldn’t mention anything to you. I had to be able to testify that you knew nothing about what I was doing. Conflict of interest, otherwise. Even your parents didn’t know. I talked to them about the case, but only informally. They never suspected.”
“Michael.” Dance again felt rare tears sting. She gripped his arm and their eyes met, brown on green.
He said, frowning, “I knew she wasn’t guilty. Edie taking somebody’s life? Crazy.” He grinned. “You notice I’ve been talking to you in text messages a lot lately, emails?”
“Right.”
“Because I couldn’t lie to you in person. I knew you’d spot it in a minute.”
She laughed, recalling how vague he’d been about the Container Case.
“But who killed Juan?”
“Daniel Pell.”
“Pell?” she whispered in astonishment.
O’Neil explained, though, that it wasn’t Pell himself who’d killed Juan Millar, but one of the women connected with him — the partner that Dance had been thinking of yesterday as she’d driven her children to see their grandparents.
“She knew the threat you presented, Kathryn. She wanted desperately to stop you.”
“Why did you think of her?”
“Process of elimination,” O’Neil explained. “I knew your mother couldn’t’ve done it. I knew Julio Millar hadn’t — he was accounted for the whole time. His parents weren’t there, and there were no other fellow officers present. So I asked who’d have a motive to blame your mother for the death? Pell came to mind. You were running the manhunt to find him and getting closer. Your mother’s arrest would distract you, if not force you off the case altogether. He couldn’t do it himself, so he used his partner.”
He explained that the woman had slipped into the hospital by pretending to be applying for a job as a nurse.
“The job applications,” Dance said, nodding, recalling what Connie’s investigation had found. “There wasn’t any connection between them and Millar, though, so we didn’t pay any attention.”
“Witnesses said that she was wearing a nurse’s uniform. As if she’d just gotten off a shift at another hospital and had come over to MBH to apply for a job.” The deputy continued, “I had her computer examined and found that she’d searched for drug interactions on Google.”
“The evidence in the garage?”
“She planted it. I had Pete Bennington take the garage apart. A CS team found some hairs — that Harper’s people had missed, by the way. They were hers. DNA match. I’m sure she’ll take a plea.”
“I feel so bad, Michael. I almost believed she’d…” Dance couldn’t even bring herself to say the words. “I mean, Mom looked so upset when she told me that Juan asked her to kill him. And then she claimed she wasn’t on the ICU floor when Juan was killed, but she let slip that she knew the place was deserted except for some nurses.”
“Oh, she’d talked to one of the ICU doctors and he commented to your mother that all the visitors had left. Edie was never on the wing at all.”
A miscommunication and an assumption. Not much excuse for that in her line of work, she thought wryly. “And Harper? He’s going forward with the case?”
“Nope. He’s packing up and going home to Sacramento. He’s handed off to Sandy.”
“What?” Dance was shocked.
O’Neil laughed, noting her expression. “Yep. Not much interested in justice. Only interested in a high-profile conviction, the mother of a government agent.”
“Oh, Michael.” She squeezed his arm again. And he put his hand on hers, then was looking away. She was struck by his countenance. What was she seeing? A vulnerability, a hollowness?
O’Neil started to say something and then didn’t.
Maybe to apologize for lying to her and withholding the truth about his investigation. He looked at his watch. “Got a few things to take care of.”
“Hey, you okay?”
“Just tired.”
Alarm bells sounded within Dance. Men are never “just tired.” What they mean is, no, they’re not okay at all but they don’t want to talk.
He said, “Oh, almost forgot. I heard from Ernie, the L.A. case? The judge refused to push off the immunity hearing. It’s starting in about a half hour.”
Dance displayed crossed fingers. “Let’s hope.” She then hugged him, hard.
O’Neil fished his car keys out of his pocket and headed up the stairs, apparently in too much of a hurry to wait for the elevator.
Dance glanced into the cafeteria. She noted that her mother was no longer at the table. Her shoulders slumped. Damnit. She’s gone.
But then she heard a woman’s voice behind her. “Katie.”
Edie Dance had come out the side door and presumably waited to join her daughter until O’Neil left.
“Michael told me, Mom.”
“After the charges were dismissed, I came by here to see the people who supported me, to thank them.”
The people who supported me…
There was silence for a moment. The PA system gave an incomprehensible announcement. Somewhere a baby cried. The sounds faded.
And from Edie’s expression and words, Kathryn Dance knew the complete weave of what had happened between mother and daughter in the past few days. The difficulty had nothing to do with her leaving the courthouse early the other day. The issue was more fundamental. She blurted, “I didn’t think you’d done it, Mom. Really.”
Edie Dance smiled. “Ah, and coming from you, from a kinesics expert, Katie? Tell me what to look for to see if you’re telling a fib.”
“Mom—”
“Katie, you thought it was possible I’d killed that young man.”
Dance sighed, wondered how big the vacuum in her soul was at the moment. The denial died in her mouth and she said in a shaky voice, “Maybe, Mom. Okay, maybe. I didn’t think less of you. I still loved you. But, okay, I thought you might have.”