They leapt in. He slammed the car into reverse, then shifted gears and gunned the engine, heading for Highway 1, over the narrow bridge. Jennie nearly slipped out of her seat as they hit the uneven pavement on the other side of the structure. On the highway Pell turned north, got about a hundred yards then skidded to a stop. Coming the other way was another police car.
Pell glanced to his right and floored the accelerator, heading directly for the front gate of the power plant, a massive, ugly structure, something that belonged not here on this picture-postcard seashore but in the refineries of Gary, Indiana.
Dance and O’Neil were no more than five minutes from Moss Landing.
Her fingers tapped the grip of the Glock high on her right hip. She’d never fired her gun in the line of duty and wasn’t much of a shot—weaponry didn’t come naturally to her. Also, with children in the house she was uneasy carrying the weapon (at home she kept it in a solid lockbox beside her bed, and only she knew the combination).
Michael O’Neil, on the other hand, was a fine marksman, as was TJ. She was glad she was with them.
But would it come to a fight? she wondered. Dance couldn’t say, of course. But she knew she’d do whatever was necessary to stop the killer.
The Ford now squealed around the corner and then up a hill.
As they crested it O’Neil muttered, “Oh, hell…”
He jammed the brake pedal. “Hold on!”
Dance gasped, and grabbed the dashboard as they went into a fierce skid. The car came to a stop, halfway on the shoulder, only five feet from a semi stopped in the middle of the road. The highway was completely blocked all the way to Moss Landing. The opposite lanes were moving, but slowly. Several miles ahead Dance could see flashing lights and realized officers were turning back the traffic.
A roadblock?
O’Neil called Monterey County central dispatch on his Motorola. “It’s O’Neil.”
“Go ahead, sir. Over.”
“We’re on One, northbound, just short of Moss Landing. Traffic’s stopped. What’s the story?”
“Be advised. There’s…they’re evacuating Duke Power. Fire or something. It’s pretty bad. They’ve got multiple injuries. Two fatalities.”
Oh, no, Dance thought, exhaling a sigh. Not more deaths.
“Fire?” O’Neil asked.
“Just what Pell did at the courthouse.” Dance squinted. She could see a column of black smoke.
Emergency planners took seriously any risk of a conflagration around here. Several years ago a huge fire had raged through an abandoned oil tank at the power facility. The plant was now gas—not oil—operated and the odds of a serious fire were much lower. Still, security would have frozen Highway 1 in both directions and started to evacuate anyone nearby.
O’Neil snapped, “Tell CHP or Monterey Fire or whoever’s running the scene to clear a path. We’ve got to get through. We’re in pursuit of that escapee. Over.”
“Roger, Detective…Hold on….” Silence for a minute. Then: “Be advised…. Just heard from
Watsonville Fire. I don’t know…. Okay, the plant’snot burning. The fire’s just a car in front of the main gate. I don’t know who called in the eleven-forty-one. No injuries that anybody can tell. That was a false report…. And we’ve got some calls from Jack’s. The suspect pulled a gun and fled.”
“Hell, he made us,” O’Neil muttered.
Dance took the microphone. “Roger. Are any police on the scene?”
“Stand by…. Affirmative. One Watsonville officer. The rest are fire and rescue.”
“Oneofficer,” Dance said, scowling, shaking her head.
“Tell him that Daniel Pell’s there somewhere. And hewill target innocents and officers.”
“Roger. I’ll relay that.”
Dance wondered how the sole officer would fare; Moss Landing’s worst crimes were DUIs and the thefts of cars and boats.
“You get all that, TJ?”
“Fuck” was the reply from the speaker. TJ didn’t bother much with radio codes.
O’Neil slammed the microphone into the cradle in frustration.
Their plea to move the traffic along wasn’t having any effect.
Dance told him, “Let’s try to get up there anyway. I don’t care if we need bodywork.”
O’Neil nodded. He hit the siren and started along the shoulder, which was sandy in parts, rocky in others, and in several places barely passable.
But slowly the motorcade made its way forward.
Chapter 16
When they arrived at Moss Landing, Pell and his girlfriend were nowhere to be seen.
Dance and O’Neil parked. A moment later TJ too pulled up, beside the burned Thunderbird, still smoldering.
“Pell’s car,” she pointed out. “The one stolen from L.A. on Friday.” Dance told TJ to find the manager of Jack’s.
The Watsonville cop, O’Neil, and the other officers spread out to search for witnesses. Many of them had left, probably scared off by the flames from the T-bird and the piercing siren from the power plant—maybe even thinking it was a nuclear reactor that was melting down.
Dance interviewed several people near the power plant. They reported that a wiry man and a blonde, driving the Thunderbird—it had been turquoise before the fire—had sped over the bridge from Jack’s Seafood, then stopped abruptly in front of the power plant. They’d gotten out and a moment later the car
had erupted in flames.
The couple had run across the road to the shore side, one person reported, but nobody saw what became of them after that. Apparently Pell had called 911 himself to report that the plant was burning and there were injuries and two deaths.
Dance looked around her. They’d need another car; you couldn’t escape from here on foot. But then her eyes focused on the bay. With the traffic jam, it would make more sense to steal a boat. She corralled several local officers, trotted across the highway, and they spent fifteen frantic minutes talking to the people on the shoreline, to see if Pell had stolen a vessel. Nobody reported seeing the couple, nor were any boats missing.
A waste of time.
Returning to the highway, Dance noticed a store across from the power plant, a shack selling souvenirs and candy. There was aCLOSED sign on the door but inside Dance believed she could see a woman’s face, looking out.