Xo

  Dance could have kicked herself. And earlier she'd been mentally chastising P. K. Madigan for leading Edwin during the interview; here she was doing exactly the same.

  "Tell me what happened."

  "He just said the relationship wasn't working. I was pretty bummed. He wasn't, you know, real ambitious. He never wanted to be more than a security guard or work retail. But he was romantic and he was dependable. He didn't drink and he'd pretty much given up smoking when I was with him."

  "So he used to smoke," Dance said, thinking of her own voyeur in the park near the motel.

  "Yeah, but only when he was stressed. So, he left and I was pretty bummed out for a couple of months."

  "Did he go out with anybody else?"

  "Not really. He dated a few girls. I don't know who. We fell out of touch."

  "One last question. Did you ever see him get violent or lose control?"

  A pause. "Yeah, I did."

  "Tell me."

  Sally explained, "Okay, once me and my girlfriend and Edwin were walking down the street and this drunk guy came up, I mean, way, way drunk. And he called us sluts. And Edwin goes up to him and shouts, 'Apologize right now, you asshole.' And the guy did."

  Dance waited. "That was it? He never hit this man?"

  "Oh, no. Edwin'd never do that. I mean, he's scary-looking, sure. Those eyebrows, you know. And he's big. But he'd never hurt anybody. Look, there's a lot Edwin doesn't get, you know what I mean? He's kind of like a kid. That's part of what makes him so charming, though."

  Hardly a word Dance would use. But she'd given up trying to figure out what made couples click.

  Dance thanked the young woman and disconnected. She jotted a summary of the conversation into her notebook. So, what do I make of this? A relatively normal relationship with one woman didn't mean he couldn't stalk another. But stalking was habitual. For Sally to be involved for a year and to live with him for part of that time yet not see any danger signs was significant.

  On the other hand, he'd exhibited some obsessive interest in music and performers.

  But then, Dance admitted, so did she. Hence, her trip to casa de Villalobos with her tape recorder here in beautiful downtown Fresno during the dog days of September.

  After a furtive examination of the park revealed no cigarette-smoking surveillance, Dance took a shower. She dried off and slipped into the Mountain View bathrobe, which the sign announced ironically she was free to take with her for $89.95.

  Dance curled up in the sumptuous bed. Who needed views of snowy peaks when the furniture was so opulent?

  She now wished Jon Boling were here with her. She was thinking of the recent overnight trip they'd taken to Ventana, the beautiful, surreal resort in the cliffs near Big Sur, south of Carmel. The trip had been a milestone--it was the first time she'd told the children that she and Boling were going away overnight.

  She offered nothing more about the trip and the news was greeted with no interest whatsoever by either Wes or Maggie. At their ages, though, the broader implications had probably been lost on them. But their bored response was a huge victory for Dance, who'd stressed about their reaction to the fact Mom was traveling with another man. (Wes worried her most; Maggie wanted her mother to get married again so she could be "best woman.")

  The weekend away had been wonderful and Dance had been pleased that the last holdout of widowhood--the discomfort with intimacy--was finally vanishing.

  She wanted Boling here now.

  And was thinking it curious that they hadn't spoken for two days. They'd traded messages but voicemail had reared its head at every instance. She was involved in a murder investigation so she had an excuse, she reflected. But Boling was a computer consultant. She wasn't quite sure why he was so inaccessible.

  Dance called her parents, chatted with her father for a few minutes then asked to speak to the children.

  It was a pure comfort, pure joy, hearing their voices. Dance found she was smiling to herself as they rambled on enthusiastically about their days at camp. She laughed when they signed off with a "Loveyoumom" (Maggie) and "Gottagoseeya" (Wes), verbal signals perfectly defining the differing parent-child relationships at the moment.

  Then her mother came on the phone. Edie reported that Dance's father was finishing up some work at her house in Pacific Grove to get it ready for the party she was hosting this weekend; house guests would be staying for a few days, after driving down from San Jose on Saturday.

  And then there was a pause.

  Dance tried not to practice her profession in her personal life. Nothing ruins a date faster than a man saying he's divorced as he leans forward and looks her in the eye--a complete deviation from his earlier baseline behavior. (One of her favorite Kayleigh Towne songs, "The Truth About Men," was a hilarious look at how that gender tends to be, well, less than forthright.)

  But now she noted that something was up.

  "How's it going there?" Edie Dance offered some clumsy verbal padding.

  "Good. Fresno's actually kind of interesting. Parts of it are. There's a real-estate development built around a runway. You get a hangar for your plane, instead of a garage. Well, maybe you get a garage too. I didn't look."

  Throughout Kathryn Dance's life, her mother had been kind and fair but also resolute, opinionated, unyielding and at times exasperating. Get to the point, Dance thought.

  "There's something I found out. I wasn't sure what to do. If it weren't for the kids ..."

  Of course, those words are like gasoline on the candle of motherhood and Dance now said bluntly, "What? Tell me." The tone was unmistakable: Don't screw around. I'm your daughter but I'm an adult. I want to know and I want to know now.

  "Jon brought some computer games over for the kids. And he got a phone call ... Honey, he was talking to a broker about property. I heard him say he'd gotten a job and wanted to take a look at a house."

  This was interesting. But why the concern in her mother's voice? "And?"

  "It's in San Diego. He's moving in a couple of weeks."

  Oh.

  Weeks?

  Dance now understood what Edie meant about the children. They were still vulnerable from the death of their father. For them to lose the new man in their life would be very hurtful, if not devastating.

  And then there's me.

  What the hell was he thinking of, not telling me anything? Here I was just offered a job in D.C. and the first thing I think of is talking to him about it.

  Weeks?

  So that's why he hadn't picked up the phone but used the coward's hideout of voicemail.

  But the first rule of law enforcement was not to make assumptions. "Are you sure? You couldn't have misunderstood?"

  "No, no. He was alone, in the back by the pool. He thought I couldn't hear. And when Wes stepped out, he changed the subject completely. He basically hung up on the broker."

  Dance could say nothing for a moment.

  "I'm sorry, honey."

  "Yeah. Thanks, Mom. Just need to think about this a little."

  "You get some sleep now. The kids are happy. We had a fun dinner. They love camp." She tried to be light. "And more important, can you believe it? They're looking forward to school. We're going book bag shopping tomorrow."

  "Thanks. 'Night."

  "I'm sorry, Katie. 'Night."

  A moment later Dance found she was still holding her phone, disconnected, in front of her face. She lowered it.

  The loss of her husband was like a digital event to Kathryn Dance, as Jon Boling the computer genius would describe it. On or off. Yes or no. Alive or dead.

  But Jon Boling's leaving? It was analog. It was maybe. It was partly. Was he now in her life or not?

  The big problem, though, was that he'd made this decision without her. It didn't matter that the job had probably happened quickly and he'd had to move fast.

  Dammit, she was a part of his life. He should have said something.

  She recalled that Edwin Sharp had referred to a song o
f Kayleigh's at the restaurant yesterday. "Mr. Tomorrow." It was about an abusive, straying man who swears he'll get his act together and mend his ways. He promises he'll change. Of course, the listener knows he never will.

  As Dance lay in bed now, the lights out, she stared at the ceiling and that song looped through her mind until she fell asleep.

  You know me by now, you've got to believe

  You're the number-one girl in the world for me.

  I've sent her the papers and she's promised to sign

  It'll just be a while, these things take some time....

  And his words are so smooth and his eyes look so sad.

  Can't she be patient, it won't be so bad?

  But sometimes she thinks, falling under his sway,

  She got Mr. Tomorrow; she wants Mr. Today.

  Chapter 32

  DANCE WAS IN the sheriff's office with P. K. Madigan and Dennis Harutyun.

  There was another law enforcement jurisdiction present too: Monterey County.

  Via Skype, Michael O'Neil's calm eyes looked back at them from 150 miles away. He was the person she'd tapped to look into the Salinas partner of Frederick Blanton, the murdered file sharer. She might have sent the request to TJ Scanlon in her own office. But on a whim she'd decided to contact O'Neil instead.

  Madigan was briefing the Monterey deputy. "Edwin never went home last night. Kayleigh said that about ten-thirty she heard a car start somewhere in the park out in front of her house. Her bodyguard said he thought he heard it too."

  The invisible snake ...

  "Kathryn and I want to interview him but he's not answering his phone. We don't even know where he is. This morning a deputy spotted his car on Forty-one, a pretty major road here. He tried to follow but Edwin must've seen him and wove around in traffic and got away."

  O'Neil said, "Tough to follow with just one car."

  "And I haven't got a lot of people to spare, what with protecting witnesses and Kayleigh," Madigan muttered. "We cover more than six thousand square miles. Grand total of about four hundred and sixty patrol deputies."

  O'Neil winced. Monterey wasn't small but that county didn't embrace nearly as much territory with such little manpower. He asked, "Kathryn told me he'd picked up Kayleigh's sister and niece at the airport. Any charges possible there?"

  "Kathryn's going to interview them some more," Madigan said, "but doesn't look like it. Edwin was the boy-next-door, didn't do a thing wrong. The little girl loved him and the sister thought he was--get this--the nicest of Kayleigh's boyfriends in recent years."

  Dance regarded the man on the screen--strong and solid but not heavy. O'Neil was wearing his typical outfit. Light blue shirt, no tie and a dark sport coat. Most detectives in the Monterey County Sheriff's Office, like here, wore uniforms but O'Neil didn't. He thought casual clothing got you further in investigations than khaki and pointed metal stars.

  Dance briefed them about the interview with Sally Docking, Edwin's former girlfriend. "I have to tell you that his behavior with her doesn't fall into a stalker's profile." She explained that it had actually been Edwin who broke up with the woman.

  "Still don't trust him," Madigan said.

  "No. It's just odd."

  O'Neil continued, "I paid a visit to Josh Eberhardt."

  The file-sharing partner in Salinas.

  "How polite a visit?" Dance asked.

  "I talked Amy into going with me."

  Amy Grabe, the FBI's special agent in charge in San Francisco.

  "They decided there'd been enough federal copyright violations to justify a raid. Joint task force."

  Which meant it wasn't very polite. "Feet apart, spread 'em" had probably been involved. Dance and O'Neil shared a smile. It was hard to say, given the optical mechanics of Skype, but it seemed to Dance that he winked at her.

  Of course, he hadn't.

  Then she admonished herself again: Concentrate.

  "Good job, sir," Madigan said and enjoyed a bite of what Dance believed to be pistachio ice cream. She'd missed breakfast and was thinking of asking for a cup of her own.

  The Monterey detective continued, "They did find some file sharing going on out of his house but Eberhardt was more of a researcher. He keeps track of hundreds of above-and underground fan sites for musicians. Looks like he'd comb through them and get potential customers for illegal downloads. It really wasn't all file sharing--it was file stealing and selling too. They charged a fee for the songs. They'd ripped off albums of about a thousand artists.

  "There's this really ... dark underground of websites out there. They have to do with cultural things, mostly: books, movies, TV shows, music. A lot of them are about stealing the artists' work--bootlegs, for instance. But most of them are about the celebrities themselves: Stephen King, Lindsey Lohan, George Clooney, Carrie Underwood, Justin Bieber ... and Kayleigh Towne.

  "And it's all off the radar. The people posting use proxies and portals ... and anonymous accounts. None of this shows up on Google. They've worked around that." O'Neil gave them the list of websites whose addresses were only numbers or letters: 299ek333.com was typical. Once inside them, there were various pages that seemed nonsensical--"The Seventh Level," for instance. Or "Lessons Learned."

  But navigating through the links, he explained, you got to the true substance of the sites: the world of celebrities. TJ Scanlon had found none of these.

  O'Neil said, "It looks like that's where Edwin's getting a lot of his information. In fact, he posted plenty about the file sharer who got killed--the vic in Fresno."

  Madigan asked, "Anything that'd implicate Edwin in the killing?"

  "No. He just urged people not to use file sharing."

  Of course, he wouldn't slip up. Not clever Mr. Edwin Sharp.

  O'Neil turned away for a moment and typed. Dance received an email containing several URLs. Harutyun took her phone when she offered it to him and he set to work typing them into a computer nearby.

  O'Neil asked the room, "You're monitoring all her calls?"

  "That's right but we're trying to buy some time, make it harder for him to contact her with another verse," Harutyun said. "We've given her and her family new phones, all unlisted. He'll probably find the numbers eventually but by then we hope we'll nail him on the evidence or witnesses."

  "I'd dig through those sites," O'Neil advised. "You should be able to get some good information about him. Looks like he spends a lot of time online."

  O'Neil took a brief call and turned back to the screen. He said he had to leave, an interrogation was on the schedule. His eyes crinkled with a smile and though Skype didn't allow for a clear image of where he cast his gaze, Dance believed it was to her. "You need anything else, just let me know."

  Madigan thanked him and the screen went dark.

  They turned to the second monitor, on which Miguel Lopez had called up one of the underground sites O'Neil had found.

  "Lookit that," Crystal Stanning said.

  The site, which boasted more than 125,000 fans, was a stalker's paradise. It had pages for several hundred celebrities in all areas of entertainment and politics. Kayleigh's was one of the most popular, it seemed. Within her pages was one headed "Kayleigh Spotting," and was a real-time hotline bulletin board about where she was at the moment. "She Can't Fool Us!" contained pictures of Kayleigh in various outfits--disguises, almost--so fans could recognize her when she was trying to remain anonymous. Other pages contained extensive bios of the crew and band members, fans' stories about concerts they'd attended, discussions of which venues were good and bad acoustically, who'd tried to scalp tickets.

  Other pages gave details of Kayleigh's personal life, down to her preferences about food and clothing.

  The page "WWLK, We Who Love Kayleigh" offered information about famous fans--people who had commented in the press about their affection for her music. As Dance scrolled through she found Congressman Davis's name mentioned. He'd been quoted at a campaign rally about how much he appreciated Kayleigh's
talent, and her stance on immigration in her song "Leaving Home." Dance followed a hyperlink to his own page and noted that he had reproduced the lyrics in full--with Kayleigh's permission. Dance remembered he'd thanked Kayleigh for this earlier at her house.

  "In the Know" offered press information, thousands of photographs, announcements from Kayleigh's record company and Barry Zeigler, her producer. There was also a feed from her official site, giving updates--for instance, about upcoming events, like Friday's concert and the luncheon today at a local country club for the Fan of the Month. Dance read the press release, written by Kayleigh's stepmother, Sheri, noting to her relief that Edwin was not the winner.

  Other links led to even more troubling pages, which offered bootleg albums, recorded illegally at concerts, and links to file sharing services. One page gave gossip about disputes within celebrities' families, Kayleigh's included, though aside from tepid public spats with Bishop, Sheri and a few musicians, like the man who'd interrupted the award ceremony, her gossip page was pretty sparse.

  She's a good girl ...

  Another page offered for sale items of Kayleigh's clothing, including undergarments, undoubtedly not really hers. There were risque pictures of her too, though it was obvious they'd been manipulated with Photoshop.

  This explained Edwin's innocuous and infrequent online activity that TJ Scanlon had found earlier. That was the public side of Edwin Sharp; this was the stalker's real internet life. Though they couldn't tell for certain, a number of the posts with initials ES or ESS in the username were probably his. Dance assessed that the grammar, syntax and construction of many of these posts were reminiscent of the ones they knew he had done.

  Dance hoped they could find even a hint of a threat to Kayleigh Towne, so they could invoke the stalking statute But, no, this trove of Edwin-related activity wasn't much more helpful than the other. As with the more public sites, most of the posts that were or might be his didn't appear threatening in the least; if anything, he staunchly defended Kayleigh. Nor were they able to identify particular potential victims. Other fans were far more insulting than he was, some viciously so. Edwin came across as nothing more than a loyal, if strident, fan. Dance reflected that it was likely Edwin Sharp was not the only obsessed fan Kayleigh Towne had. Indeed, reading the posts suggested that he might be among the more innocuous.