Grabe put the coffee down. She turned her placid face to Overby and leveled hard eyes at him.
“Charles, they’ve asked that you don’t pursue it.”
Dance wasn’t going to let them dump the case. And, all right, some of her goddamn motivewas because the man who’d asked her out, who’d won a bit of her heart, had betrayed her.
…afterward. How does that sound?
Overby’s eyes took in more pictures and mementos on his desk. “It’s a tough situation…. You know
what Oliver Wendell Holmes said? He said that tough cases make bad law. Or maybehard cases make bad law. I don’t remember.”
What does that mean? she wondered.
Grabe said in a soft tone, “Kathryn, Daniel Pell was a dangerous man. He killed law enforcers, he killed people you know and he killed innocents. You’ve done a great job in an impossible situation. You stopped a really bad doer. And Kellogg contributed to that. It’s a gold star for everybody.”
“Absolutely,” Overby said. He set down the bouncing writing implement. “You know what this reminds me of, Amy? Jack Ruby killing Kennedy’s assassin. Remember? I don’t think anybody had a problem with what Ruby did, gunning Oswald down.”
Dance’s jaw closed, her teeth pressing together firmly. She flicked her thumb against her forefinger. Just as he’d “reassured” Grabe of Dance’s innocence in contributing to Pell’s escape, her boss was going to sell her out again. By declining to submit the case to Sandy Sandoval, Overby wasn’t just covering his ass; he was as guilty of murder as Kellogg himself. Dance sat back, her shoulders slumping slightly. She saw TJ’s grimace from the corner of her eye.
“Exactly,” Grabe said. “So—”
Then Overby held up a hand. “But a funny thing about that case.”
“What case?” the FBI agent asked.
“The Ruby case. Texasarrested him for murder. And guess what? Jack Ruby got convicted and sent to jail.” A shrug. “I’ll have to say no, Amy. I’m submitting the Kellogg case to the Monterey County Prosecutor. I’m going to recommend indictment for murder. Lesser included offense’ll be manslaughter.
Oh, and aggravated assault on a CBI agent. Kelloggdid take a shot at Kathryn, after all.”
Dance felt her heart thud. Had she heard this right? TJ glanced at her with a raised eyebrow.
Overby was looking at Dance. He said, “And I think we should go for misuse of legal process too, and lying to an investigative agent. What do you think, Kathryn?”
Those hadn’t occurred to her. “Excellent.” She noticed TJ’s thumb subtly point upward.
Grabe rubbed her cheek with a short, pink-polished nail. “Do you really think this is a good idea, Charles?”
“Oh, I do. Absolutely.”
SATURDAY
Chapter 61
Tears pooling in her eyes, a woman lay on the bed of the cheap transient hotel off Del Monte, near Highway 1. Listening to the hiss of traffic, she was staring at the ceiling.
She wished she could stop crying.
But she couldn’t.
Because he was dead.
Her Daniel was gone.
Jennie Marston touched her head, under the bandage, which stung furiously. She kept replaying the last few hours of their time together, Thursday. Standing on the beach south of Carmel, as he held the rock in the shape of Jasmine, her mother’s cat, the one thing her mother would never hurt.
Recalling how Daniel held the rock, turning it over and over.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking, lovely. It looks just like a cat.” Then he’d held her tighter and whispered, “I was watching the news.”
“Oh, back at the motel?”
“That’s right. Lovely, the police found out about you.”
“About—”
“Your name. They know who you are.”
“They do?” she whispered in horror.
“Yes.”
“Oh, no…Daniel, sweetheart, I’m sorry…” She’d started shaking.
“You left something in the room, right?”
Then she remembered. The email. It was in her jeans. In a weak voice she said, “It was the first one where you said you loved me. I couldn’t throw it out. You told me to, but I just couldn’t. I’m so sorry.
I—”
“It’s okay, lovely. But now we have to talk.”
“Sure, sweetheart,” she’d said, resigned to the worst. She caressed her bumpy nose and no silent recitations ofangel songs, angel songs were going to help.
He was going to leave her. Make her go away.
But things were more complicated than that. It seemed that one of the women in the Family was working with him. Rebecca. They were going to get another Family together and go to his mountaintop, live by themselves.
“You weren’t supposed to be part of it, lovely, but when I got to know you I changed my mind. I knew I couldn’t live without you. I’ll talk to Rebecca. It’ll take a little while. She’s…difficult. But eventually she’ll do what I say. You’ll become friends.”
“I don’t know.”
“You and me, lovely, we’ll be the team. She and I never had that connection. It was about something else.”
If he meant they just had sex, that was okay. Jennie wasn’t jealous about that, nottoo much. She was jealous about him loving someone else, sharing laughs and stories, someone else being his lovely.
He’d continued, “But now we have to be careful. The police know you and they’ll be able to find you easily. So you’ve got to disappear.”
“Disappear?”
“For a while. A month or two. Oh, I don’t like it either. I’ll miss you.”
And she could see that he would.
“Don’t worry. Everything’ll work out. I won’t let you go.”
“Really?”
“We’re going to pretend that I killed you. The police will stop looking for you. I’m going to have to cut you a little. We’ll put some blood on that rock and purse. They’ll think I hit you with the rock and threw you into the ocean. It’ll hurt.”
“If it means we can be together.” (Though thinking: Not my hair, not again! What would she look like now?) “I’d rather cut myself, lovely. But there’s no way around it.”