CHAPTER 36
The alarm went off at seven thirty.
A classical tune – Dance, a musician, never did well with dissonance. It was the ‘Toccata and Fugue’, Phantom of the Opera – no, not that one. An earlier version.
She opened her eyes and fumbled for the stop button.
Yes, it was Saturday. But the unsub was still out there. Time to get up.
She turned to see Jon Boling brush back his thinning hair. He wasn’t self-conscious: it was only that strands were sticking out sideways. He wore only a T-shirt, gray, which she vaguely remembered him pulling on somewhere north of midnight. She was in a Victoria’s Secret thing, silk and pink and just a little outrageous. Because, how often?
He kissed her forehead.
She kissed his mouth.
No regrets about his staying. None at all.
She’d wondered what her reaction would be. Even now, hearing the creak of a door downstairs, a latch, muted voices, the tink-tink of cereal bowls, she knew it was the right decision. Time to step forward. They’d been dating a year, a little more. She now marshaled arguments and prepared a public-relations campaign for the children, thought about what they would and wouldn’t think, say, do when they saw a man come down the stairs. They’d have a clue about what had been going on: Dance had had The Talk with them, several years ago. (The reactions: Maggie had nodded matter-of-factly, as if confirming what she’d known for years; Wes had blushed furiously and finally, encouraged to ask a question, any question, about the process, wondered, ‘Aren’t there, like, any other ways?’ Dance, struggling to keep a straight face.) So. They were about to confront the fact that Mom had had a man stay over, albeit a man they knew well, liked and who was more relative to them than her own sister was an aunt (flighty, charming and occasionally exasperating, New Age Betsey lived in the hills of Santa Barbara).
Let’s see what the next half-hour holds.
Dance considered just throwing on a robe but opted for a shower. She slipped into the bathroom and, when out, dressed in jeans and a pink work shirt while Boling, looking a bit uneasy, brushed his teeth. He, too, dressed.
‘Okay,’ he said slowly.
‘No.’
‘No?’ he asked.
‘You were looking at the window. You can’t jump out of it. You’re going to come downstairs with me and we’ll have my famous French toast. I only make it on special occasions.’
‘Is this special?’
She didn’t answer. She kissed him fast.
He said, ‘All right. Let’s go see the kids.’
As it turned out, however, it wasn’t just the kids that Dance and Boling saw.
As they stepped to the bottom of the stairs and into the kitchen, Dance nearly ran into Michael O’Neil, who was holding a glass of orange juice and walking to the table.
‘Oh,’ she whispered.
‘Morning. Hi, Jon.’
‘Michael.’
O’Neil, his face completely neutral, said, ‘Wes let me in. I tried to call but your phone was off.’
She’d shut it off intentionally before easing into bed, not wanting to risk a call – that is, risk hearing O’Neil’s ringtone, an Irish ballad, courtesy of the kids – at a moment like that. She’d fallen asleep before turning it back on. Careless. Unprofessional.
‘I …’ she began, but could think of not a single syllable to utter past that. She glanced toward the busy bees hard at work on breakfast.
‘Hi, Mom!’ Maggie said. ‘There was this show on TV about badgers and there’s this one kind, a honey badger, and this bird called a honeyguide leads it to a beehive and a badger rips it open and eats honey and its coat is so thick it doesn’t get stung. Hi, Jon.’
As if he’d lived there for years.
Wes, on his phone, nodded a cheerful greeting with a smile to both mother and boyfriend.
Mother and daughter went to work, wrangling breakfast – including honey for the French toast, of course. Dance glanced toward Wes. ‘Who?’ she whispered, nodding at his phone.
‘Donnie.’
‘Say hi for me and then hang up.’
Wes said hi, kept talking and, under her gaze, clicked off.
O’Neil, who might very well have spent the night with Ms Ex-O’Neil, kept his eyes on the juice. From his solid frame, a dozen kinesic messages were firing, like cylinders in a sports car. Or a white SUV, made by the Lexus division of Toyota Motors.
Enough, she told herself.
Let it go …
Boling made coffee. ‘Michael?’ Lifting a cup.
‘Sure.’ Then O’Neil added to Dance, ‘Something’s come up. That’s what I was trying to get in touch with you about.’
‘Solitude Creek?’
‘Right.’
Dance didn’t need to glance at the children, from whom she kept most aspects of her job. It was O’Neil who nodded toward the front hall. She told Maggie to set the table. Boling grilled the toast and made bacon. Wes had taken to texting again but Dance said nothing about it.
As she followed O’Neil, she realized that her top button was undone; she’d been distracted earlier. She fixed it with a gesture she tried to make casual but that she was sure drew attention to the V of flesh, dotted with faint freckles. And silently gave a word of thanks to whatever impulse had told her not to go with the robe and lacy Victoria’s Secret gown before heading downstairs.
‘There’s a lead we ought to follow up on. Out of town.’
‘The unsub’s Honda?’
‘No. The alert we’ve got for online activity.’
She and O’Neil had spoken to Amy Grabe, San Francisco, and she’d had the FBI’s powerful online monitoring network search for any references to either of the two attacks. It was not unheard of for witnesses to unintentionally post helpful information about crimes; there had even been instances when the perp had bragged about his cleverness. ‘Last night somebody posted a clip on Vidster.’
Dance knew it. A YouTube competitor.
‘What was it?’
‘Some of the press footage – shot of a TV screen – of the roadhouse. And stills of other incidents.’