He made his way toward the center’s fire-exit doors, shooting away. He figured he had about four minutes until police showed up.
Then, when people began leaping out of the windows, falling on the rocks and into the ocean, he’d turned and slipped back to his staging area. He stripped the camo off and was once again in T-shirt, windbreaker, shorts and flip-flops, pistol against his spine. The costume went into a mesh dive bag weighted with rocks and he’d tossed it into the bay, sinking thirty feet into the kelp.
Then, newly touristed, March made his way along the shore to where the Honda was parked. On a prepaid he called 911 and reported the gunman had moved off – toward Fisherman’s Wharf, the opposite direction from where March now was. He then called a local TV station and said the same thing. Another call – to a Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant, not the one he’d eaten at last night, to report that the crazed gunman was approaching. ‘Run, run, get out!’
A lot of police – not everywhere, since this was a small community, but plenty of them. Not a single one paid any attention to him. Their focus was elsewhere. He’d wondered if they had any idea he’d masqueraded as the fire inspector, Dunn, to conveniently make sure that the exit doors were taped open. Probably not. The ‘precautions’ the venue used had assured the success of the attack.
He’d waited for a while but then decided he could return to, yes, the scene of the crime.
The streets were congested, of course, as he made his way toward the venue where the tragedy continued to unfold. In the water, he could see, a dozen police and Coast Guard boats cruised and floated, blue lights, searchlights. Some people bobbing, mostly divers. People on the rocks too, beneath the shattered windows of the venue. Some sat, seemingly numb. Some lay on their backs or sides. Rescue workers had carefully descended along a steep line of rock, slick with vegetation, like green hair, and salt water, to get to the injured. Several had lost their footing and gone into the ocean. A fireman was one of these, flailing in the water as it lifted and dropped him against the shore. Two fellow workers pulled him to safety.
He wasn’t, March noted, the Hero Firefighter. But March was sure Brad Dannon would be there somewhere.
Through an alley and onto Cannery Row itself. Across the street and up the hill overlooking the Bay View Center.
What delicious chaos …
March eased close. He saw three body bags resting respectfully in the side driveway of the Bay View, near the emergency-exit doors, which were all wide open. Not a bad plan, this one, sending the self-helping book buyers out of the windows and onto the craggy rocks or into the breathlessly cold water.
March glanced down and noted another vehicle honking its way close to the Bay View.
Ah, what have we here?
My friend …
The gray Nissan Pathfinder featured an impromptu blue flasher on the dash. The vehicle parked near him – because of the congestion of the crowds and emergency vehicles it couldn’t get close to the center itself.
Kathryn Dance climbed out, frowning. Looking around.
March had been to her house, of course, but hadn’t been able to see much. There’d been dogs, people coming and going. He’d gotten some details about her life, her family, her friends, though he hadn’t managed to get a good close look at her. Now he did. Quite attractive. A bit like that actress, Cate Blanchett. She wore a dark jacket and mid-calf skirt. Stylish boots. Her hair was back in a taut ponytail, secured by a bright red band.
Ah, interesting: in this outfit, with this hair, she looked a bit like Jessica, from the holy trinity of Antioch March’s life, along with Serena and Todd.
She walked quickly up to several uniformed police and flashed her badge, though the officers seemed to know her. Others approached and gave her information, the way they’d greet a queen. His impression from the other day, at the theater, had been right: she’s the one pursuing me. The lead detective, or whatever they called it. He supposed she was smart. She had a piercing, studious frown, an unyielding jaw.
In five minutes or so, she’d dealt with all the requests and had issued orders. She walked up to the bodies, looked down, grim-faced. Then into the hall itself.
When she was out of sight, Antioch March eased down the hill. Because of the congestion Dance had parked outside the police line perimeter and he was easily able to walk up to her car without being stopped.
Equally convenient, she’d been so focused on the Bay View Center disaster scene that she’d neglected to lock the SUV.
He looked around, saw nobody was paying him the least attention and popped open the driver’s-side door.
CHAPTER 33
‘About fifty people jumped. Most hit the rocks.’ Dance was explaining this now to Charles Overby in her office at CBI headquarters. O’Neil and TJ were present too. ‘Half ended up in the water. The temperature was forty-five degrees. You can stay alive for a little while in water like that, some people can, but the ones who died couldn’t swim or were stunned or injured by the fall. Then some were just picked up by the waves and slammed into the rocks. Knocked unconscious and drowned. Two got tangled in the kelp.’
‘The count?’
O’Neil: ‘Four dead, thirty-two injured. Twelve critical. Two are in comas from the fall and hypothermia. Three’ll probably lose limbs from the fall to the rocks. No one missing. All accounted for.’
‘No security?’
‘No,’ Dance said. ‘The manager was in the front line, trying to help. The author? He hid in the bathroom. Women’s room, actually. Then the shooter vanished – about three minutes before the police showed up. No sign whatsoever.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘We think he was wearing throwaways,’ O’Neil said.
‘The camo?’
Dance told her boss, ‘There were plenty of places along the shore where he could have gotten out of sight, stripped, thrown everything into a shopping bag and strolled into the crowd, vanished.’