Jon Boling liked Michael O’Neil a great deal. He was a solid, decent man. A good father, who’d kept his path during a divorce from a faithless and frivolous wife. And to hear Kathryn tell it, he was one hell of a law enforcer. But there was another factor in the code Boling was now writing.
<p>Michael O’Neil loves Kathryn.</p>
A stretch of flat surface, and Boling pulled off to the sidewalk. He texted the college’s computer-science department, where Lily was hard at work on cracking Stan Prescott’s computer and the unsub’s phone.
Lily, quite a beauty she was. Smart as could be.
There was no progress. But Boling had confidence she’d find the passwords.
Back to the Situation. And the big question: did Kathryn love Michael?
He’d lain awake a number of nights wondering, tagging her words and looks and gestures with meaning, wondering, wondering … and replaying certain images and words over the past year. The radiance of her eyes, the lift of her lips when she smiled, characterized by faint, charming wrinkles.
<p>What are Kathryn’s true feelings?</p>
Boling recalled overhearing the fight she and O’Neil had had last night. Raw. Sharp words, back and forth. Then he pictured her returning to the house and her face changing, melting, relaxing, growing comfortable once more. Boling and Dance had laughed, had some turkey reinvented into something innovative, salad, wine. And the hard day in Orange County, the hard words fired by Michael O’Neil fell away.
<p>Do Kathryn and Jon have a future?</p>
He now eased to a stop outside the store he’d bicycled ten miles to come to. It was, like most stores and houses in Carmel, on the borderline between quaint and precious. The décor was Bavarian ski resort, not uncommon here, though Boling suspected the downtown saw snow once a decade at most.
He unstrapped his almond-shaped helmet and slung it over the handlebars. He leaned the bike up against a nearby fence. Didn’t bother with the lock. Nobody was going to steal a bike in daylight in downtown Carmel. That would be like trying to run a gun show in Berkeley.
Jon Boling had done some research on By the Sea Jewelry, the store he was walking toward now. It was just what he needed. Glancing at the beautiful antique engagement and wedding rings in the window, he pushed inside. The door opened with a jingle from a cowbell, both incongruous and perfectly apt.
Five minutes later he was outside once again.
<p>Do Kathryn and Jon have a future?</p>
Boling opened the By the Sea Jewelry bag and peered into the box inside. Good. He slipped it into his jacket pocket. He found himself smiling.
Helmet on. Time to head back to her house.
There were several ways to get there. The shorter was to go back up Ocean Avenue. But that was a steep hill, made for the thighs of a twenty-year-old. The other option, longer, was to bike downhill toward the beach, then meander along Seventeen Mile Drive back to Pacific Grove.
Pretty and, yes, far easier.
A glance at his watch. He’d be back to Dance’s in thirty minutes this way. He turned the bike down the steep hill and caught a glimpse of the ocean, beach, rocks, shrouded in mist.
What a view.
He pushed off, keeping tension on the rear brake mostly – the incline was so severe that hitting the front one alone would catapult him head over heels if he had to stop fast. It seemed to him that the rear responded slowly, wobbling with some vibration. It felt different from when he’d biked there, just minutes ago. But the sensation was simply a rough patch of asphalt, he guessed. Or maybe even his imagination. Now, no traffic in front, he let up on the brake handles. The speed increased and Boling enjoyed the wind streaming against his face, enjoyed the hum it made in his helmet. Thinking of the bag inside his pocket.
<p>The Kathryn Dance Situation has been resolved. </p>
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CHAPTER 58
Dance and her father were on the Deck that warm Sunday afternoon, pleasant, though under gray skies – overcast for a change, no fog. Natives knew the difference. As often on the Peninsula, the sky promised rain but deceived. The drought grew worse every year. Solitude Creek, for instance, had at one point been eight, nine feet deep, she’d learned. Now it was a quarter that. Less in some places.
She thought again about the reeds and grass, the decaying buildings behind the parking lot on the shores of the creek.
Annette, the sobbing witness.
Trish, the motherless child.
The bodies in the roadhouse, the blood. The stain in the shape of a heart.
She was talented …
Picturing Solitude Creek itself, the gray expanse of water, bordered by reeds and grasses.
It was then that she had a thought. ‘Excuse me a sec,’ she said to Stuart.
‘Sure, honey.’
She pulled out her phone and texted Rey Carreneo with yet another assignment.
He responded as crisply as his shirts were starched.
K, Kathryn. On it right now.
She put her phone away.
‘When’s brunch?’ Maggie asked, poking her head out of the door.
‘Jon’ll be home anytime.’ She looked at her Timex. He was ten minutes late. It wasn’t like him not to call.
‘K.’ The girl vanished.
Her phone hummed.
Maybe that’s him. But no.
‘TJ.’
He and several MCSO deputies had been systematically contacting venues with public performances or large social events and asking them to cancel.
‘I think we’ve got most of the big ones. Concerts, church services, plays, sports events – praise the Lord it’s not March Madness or we’d have riots on our hands. By the way, boss, I am not the most popular man on the Peninsula – in the eyes of the Chamber of Commerce and assorted wedding parties, persona non grata. The Robertsons are not inviting me to the rescheduled reception.’
Dance thanked him and they disconnected.
Stuart asked, ‘How’s it going?’