‘It was the lights, Antioch.’
‘Andy, please. Lights?’
‘The lights in the security cameras of the venues where you staged the attacks.’
Dance scooted her chair closer, here in the larger of the interview rooms, the one, in fact, where the Serrano incident had begun. She was already wearing her dark-framed predator specs. Examining March carefully. A trim-fitting light blue dress shirt, dark slacks. Both seemed expensive. She couldn’t see his shoes from where she sat: were they the five-grand pair?
He still seemed a bit mystified at the officers’ sudden appearance at TJ’s, though the explanation was rather simple.
Just after the Neil Hartman concert had started Dance had found herself thinking once more of her observation a few moments earlier: about the security lights at the hospital, and at the venues the unsub had attacked. They’d all been been equipped with lights, while most security cameras – like the ones she’d just noted at the Performing Arts Center – were not. She recalled the witnesses telling her that bright lights had come on around the time of the panic at the roadhouse and the author’s signing; she herself had seen them blazing from the camera in the elevator.
She’d ducked into the lobby of the concert hall and, from her phone, checked the photos of the three crime scenes. The cameras were all the same.
She told March this and added, ‘All the venues had just been inspected by an insurance or fire inspector, I remembered. Except it wasn’t an official. It was you, mounting the cameras when the manager wasn’t looking. Fire Inspector Dunn.’
Dance continued, ‘You moved lamps over two of your other victims: Calista Sommers and Stan Prescott. Oh, I see your expression. Yes, we know about Calista. She’s not Jane Doe any more. We finally got her ID. Missing-person memo from Washington State.
‘Calista … Stan Prescott. And Otto Grant. He was hanged in front of an open window. Lots of light there, as well. Every time somebody died because of you, you wanted lights. Why? For Calista and Prescott, we thought it was to take pictures of the bodies. Were you filming at the venues too?’
Just after she’d had this thought, at the concert hall earlier, she’d called O’Neil and had a crime-scene team seize and dismantle the security camera in the elevator. They found a cellular module in it.
She had remembered that at Solitude Creek she’d wondered why the security video that Sam Cohen had shown them seemed to come from a different angle than that of the camera she’d seen in the club. That was, she realized, because there were two cameras – with March’s pointed, as Trish Martin had said, at the blocked exit doors. To see the tragedy most clearly.
‘The cameras were streaming the stampedes, full high-def, brightly lit. But why? So Grant could gloat over his revenge? Maybe. But if he planned to kill himself he wouldn’t be around very long to enjoy the show.’ Through the lenses of the steely glances Dance probed his face. ‘And then I remembered the bucket.’
‘Bucket?’
‘Why did Grant have a bucket for a toilet? If he’d vanished on his own, well, wouldn’t he just go outside for the bathroom? Kidnappers have buckets for the victims to use because they’re handcuffed or taped.’
He squinted slightly. A kinesic tell that meant she’d struck a nerve. He’d made a mistake there.
‘And the venues that were attacked, Solitude Creek and the Bay View Center? Grant’s complaint was with the government. He would’ve hired somebody to attack state buildings, not private ones, if he’d really wanted revenge.
‘Which meant maybe Otto Grant had been set up as a fall
guy. You went online and found somebody who’d been posting anti-government statements. A perfect choice. You made contact, pretended you were sympathetic, then kidnapped him and stuck him in that cabin until it was time to finish up here. Made his death look like a suicide. All the texts and the call-log records we found? About payments and what a good job his supposed hitman had done? They were both your phones; you just called and texted yourself, then planted one on Grant.’
She now placed her hands flat on the table. ‘So. Grant was a set-up. But then who was the real client who’d hired you?’
She’d eliminated Michelle Cooper’s husband – Frederick Martin. Brad, the fireman. And Daniel Nashima.
Another suspect had arisen briefly. Upon learning that it was Mexican Commissioner Ramón Santos’s mercenaries who’d orchestrated the arson of the warehouse in Oakland, Dance had wondered if he’d been behind the entire plot, suspecting Henderson Jobbing and Warehouse, at Solitude Creek, to be one of the hubs for illegal-weapons traffic in Central California, and Santos of taking his own measures to shut them down and cover up the crime as the work of a psycho.
She remembered the sign she’d seen the day after the attack at Solitude Creek:
Remember your Passports for International trips!
She’d assigned Rey Carreneo to look into the matter. But he’d learned that Henderson did serve international routes, yes – but only to Canada. The owner didn’t want to risk hijacking or robberies south of the border. No reason for Commissioner Santos to send a mercenary to destroy the company.
So who, she’d struggled to understand, was the unsub working for? Why was he killing people and filming it?
And then, finally.
A to B to Z …
Now another sweep of the so-very-handsome face.
‘The violent websites on Stan Prescott’s computer. That’s your job, Andy. Yours and Chris Jenkins’s. This wasn’t about revenge or insurance or a psychotic serial killer. It was about you and your partner selling ultra-violent images of death to clients around the world. Custom ordered.’