Jesus …
Performing could be a dangerous business. His father had been a recording engineer in London in the sixties and seventies. Back then, the serious-minded professionals Robert Senior worked with—the Beatles and Stones, for instance—were outnumbered by crazy, self-destructive musicians who managed to kill themselves pretty frequently with drugs, liquor, cars and aggressively poor judgment. But even taking bad behavior out of the picture, performing could be dangerous. Electricity was the biggest risk—he’d known of three performers electrocuted onstage and two singers and a guitarist hit by lightning. One roadie had fallen from a high stage and broken his neck. A half dozen had died in traffic accidents, often because they fell asleep, and several had been crushed to death when gear trucks’ brakes failed and the vehicles jumped the chocks.
But a light coming unfixed? That was weird and had never happened in his years as a roadie.
And endangering Kayleigh?
He actually shivered, thinking about that.
Tonight the cavernous hall was filled with shadows cast by the exit lights. But rather than the ill ease Kayleigh had described that morning, Bobby felt a low twist of pleasure being here. He and Kayleigh had always been in near-total harmony, except for one thing. To her music was a business, a task, a profession. And concert halls were about acoustics only. For Bobby, the romantic, these places were special, almost sacred. He believed that halls like this continued to echo with the sounds of all the musicians who’d performed there. And this ugly, concrete venue in Fresno had one hell of a history. A local boy himself, Bobby had seen Dylan here and Paul Simon and U2 and Vince Gill and Union Station and Arlo Guthrie and Richard Thompson and Rosanne Cash and Sting and Garth Brooks and James Taylor and Shania and, well, the list was endless…. And their voices and the ringing sound of their guitars and horn sections and reeds and drums changed the very fiber of the place, he believed.
As he approached the strip light that had fallen he noticed that someone had moved it. He had left instructions that the heavy black light fixture shouldn’t be touched, after he’d lowered it to the stage. But now it sat on the very edge, above the orchestra pit, a good thirty feet from where it had stopped swinging after it fell.
He’d ream somebody for that. He’d wanted to see exactly what had happened. Crouching down, Bobby examined the unit. What the hell had gone wrong?
Could it be that asshole, Edwin Sharp?
Maybe—
Bobby Prescott never heard the footsteps of whoever came up behind him. He simply felt the hands slam into his back and he went forward, barking a brief scream as the concrete floor of the orchestra pit, twenty feet below, raced up to break his jaw and arm.
Oh, Jesus, Jesus …
He lay on his belly, staring at the bone, starkly white and flecked with blood, that poked through his forearm skin.
Bobby moaned and screamed and cried out for help.
Who? Who did it?
Edwin? … He might’ve heard me tell Kayleigh in the café that I was going to be here late.
“Help me!”
Silence.
Bobby tried to reach into his pocket for his mobile. The pain was too great. He nearly fainted. Well, try again! You’re going to bleed to death!
Then, over his gasping breath, he heard a faint sound above him, a scraping. He twisted his head and looked up.
No … God no!
He watched the strip light, directly above him, easing toward the edge of the stage.
“No! Who is that? No!”
Bobby struggled to crawl away, clawing at the concrete floor with the fingers of his unbroken arm. But his legs weren’t working either.
One inch, two …
Move, roll aside!
But too late.
The light slammed into his back, going a hundred miles an hour. He felt another snap high in his body and all the pain went away.
My back … my back …
His vision crinkled.
Bobby Prescott came to sometime later—seconds, minutes, hours … he didn’t know. All he knew was that the room was bathed in astonishing light; the spotlight sitting on his back had been turned on.
All thousand watts, pouring from the massive lamps.
He then saw on the wall the flicker of shadows, cast by flames. At first he didn’t know what was on fire—he felt no heat whatsoever. But then the repulsive scent of burning hair, burning flesh filled the small space.
And he understood.
Chapter 8
AT THE BRAYING of the phone Kathryn Dance awoke, her first thought: the children.
Then her parents.
Then Michael O’Neil, maybe on assignment, one of the gang-or terrorist-related cases he’d been working on lately.
As she fumbled for her mobile, dropped it, then fumbled some more, she ran through a number of scenarios as to why anyone would call at the crack of dawn when she was on vacation.
And Jon Boling … was he all right?
She righted the phone but without her glasses she couldn’t see the number. She hit the green button. “Yes?”
“Woke you up, Boss.”
“What?”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry what do you mean sorry is everyone all right there?” One sentence made of many. Dance was remembering, as she did all too often, the call from the state trooper about Bill—a brief, sympathetic but emotionless call explaining to her that the life she’d planned on with her husband, the life she’d believed would forever be her rock, would not happen.
“Not here, there.”
Was it just that she was exhausted? She blinked. What time was it? Five A.M.? Four?
TJ Scanlon said, “I didn’t know if you needed me.”
Struggling upright, tugging down the T-shirt that had become a noose during an apparently restless night. “Start at the beginning.”
“Oh, you didn’t hear?”
“No, I didn’t hear.”
Sorry what do you mean …
“Okay. Got a notice on the wire about a homicide in Fresno. Happened late last night, early this morning.”
More awake now. Or less unawake.
“Tell me.”