Well, nothing to do.
She set the folder she’d just received on his desk. ‘Actually, Charles, I did wonder if Brad might be a suspect. So I had Rey Carreneo check him out.’ She tapped the file. ‘He correlated his whereabouts and checked phone records. After Bay View, we’ve got the unsub’s prepaid number. There was no connection. He’s innocent. His boss at MCFD says he’s usually on the scene in the first ten minutes of a call. He cruises around the county with a scanner, even when he’s off duty. Oh, and he’s known for being a real pain in the ass.’
A pause.
‘Oh. Good. Great minds think alike.’ And the look on his face wasn’t sheepishness for having been out-thought, Dance believed: it was pure relief that he hadn’t offered up the theory at a press conference only to recant a few hours later based on the findings of his suspended underling.
Dance’s mobile hummed. It was TJ Scanlon.
‘Hey.’
‘Boss, I’ve been plundering various and sundry records. Real estate, deeds, construction permits. Per your request.’
She knew he had. ‘Yes?’
‘Dusty. You’d think everything would be online but, un-uh. I’ve been prowling through shelves, back rooms. Caverns. Where are you?’
‘Charles’s office.’
‘I’ll be there in one. You’re going to want to see this.’
He arrived in less time than that. And his flecked Jefferson Airplane T-shirt and, yes, dusty jeans attested to his old-fashioned detective work.
Caverns …
He held a folder similar to the one she’d just passed to Overby.
‘Michael, Charles. Hey, boss. Okay. Check this out. Nobody got back to me from that Nevada company, the one planning the construction near Solitude Creek? So I thought I’d do some digging. Try to find shareholders, whatever. Well, the company’s owned by an anonymous trust. I tried to get a look at the trust but it’s not public. I could, though, find out who represents it. Barrett Stone, a lawyer in San Francisco. How’s that for a lawyer’s name? I’d want him representing me, I’ll tell you. Okay, I’ll get to the point. The phone company coughed up his call log for me, and I looked them over. Guess who the lawyer’s been calling? Three calls in the past two days.’
Overby lifted his palms.
‘Sam Cohen. So I called him. And found out that Stone, on behalf of the trust, made a cash offer to buy the roadhouse and the property it sits on.’
‘So, there’s a motive,’ Dance said. ‘Ruin the business, then buy up the land cheap. Build a new development on it. Maybe buy Henderson Jobbing too, now that they’re going out of business.’
O’Neil asked, ‘How do we find out who’s behind the trust? … I don’t know if we’ve got enough for a warrant.’
‘I did the next best thing. I pulled together some of Stone’s more prominent clients. Recognize anyone?’ He set a sheet of paper in front of them.
One name was highlighted in yellow. He’d also drawn an exclamation point next to it.
Neither was necessary.
Dance blinked. ‘Hm.’
‘Well,’ Overby said. ‘This’s going to be … I don’t know what this is going to be.’
‘Awkward’ came first to Dance’s mind. Then: ‘explosive’.
Overby looked from her to O’Neil. ‘You’d better get on it right now. Good luck.’
Meaning he was already thinking about how to extricate himself from the train wreck about to occur.
CHAPTER 74
En route to Salinas.
Kathryn Dance was piecing together a portrait of the man now suspected of hiring the Solitude Creek Unsub. She was online. Michael O’Neil, driving.
Forty-one-year-old Congressman Daniel Nashima had represented what was now the Twentieth Congressional District of California for eight terms. He was a Democrat but a moderate one, advocating socially liberal positions, like gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose, but pushing for lower taxes on the wealthy (‘Most of the one percent got that way by working hard, not by inheriting their money’).
Nashima himself was a living example of that philosophy. He’d made a lot of money through Internet start-ups and real-estate deals. His goal of financial success, however, didn’t vitiate his do-good attitude, of course. If anything, the altruism deflected attention from his capitalistic side. You tend not to think of a man’s net worth when he’s hauling forty-pound blocks of concrete off victims trapped in earthquake rubble.
Nashima’s performance in Congress was stellar. He showed up for the majority of votes, he reached across the aisle, he served on the hardworking committees, Ethics and Homeland Security, without complaint. His term in office had never been tainted with the least scandal: he’d gotten divorced before commencing a romantic liaison with a lobbyist (who had no connection with him professionally), and in his closest brush with crime, it had been discovered that his housekeeper had herself forged visas – he had been duped like everyone else. Dance and O’Neil were accompanied by Albert Stemple and a Monterey County Sheriff’s Office deputy. Dance had learned that Nashima was a hunter and had a conceal-carry permit.
They now arrived at his office in Santa Cruz. In a strip mall, next to a surfboard rental and sales shop, whose posters suggested you could walk to Maverick, site of the most righteous surfing on the west coast (it was fifty miles north).
With Stemple remaining outside, lookout, the other three stepped inside. The Congressman’s assistant, a pretty, diminutive Japanese-American woman, looked them over, hostile, then walked to the back of the suite. She returned a moment later and ushered them inside.
After introductions, Nashima calmly surveyed them all. ‘And what can I do for you?’
Shields were displayed, identifications offered.
Nashima was still examining hers when Dance took the lead. ‘Congressman, we’d like to ask about your connection with Solitude Creek.’