Outside the CBI office, one of the administrative clerks was on his way to deliver documents to the Monterey County Sheriff's Office in Salinas.
He noticed a dark car pulling into the lot. The driver, a young woman wearing sunglasses despite the fog, scanned the parking lot. She's uneasy about something, the clerk thought. But, of c
ourse, you got that a lot here: people who'd come in voluntarily as suspects or reluctant complaining witnesses. The woman looked at herself in the mirror, pulled on a cap and climbed out. She didn't go to the front door. Instead she approached him.
"Excuse me?"
"Yes, ma'am?"
"This is the California Bureau of Investigation?"
If she'd looked at the building she would've seen the large sign that repeated four of the words in her question. But, being a good public servant, he said, "That's right. Can I help you?"
"Is this the office where Agent Dance works?"
"Kathryn Dance. Yes."
"Is she in now?"
"I don't--" The clerk looked across the lot and barked a laugh. "Well, guess what, miss? That's her, right over there, the younger woman."
He saw Dance with her mother and the two kids, whom the clerk had met on a couple of occasions.
"Okay. Thank you, Officer."
The clerk didn't correct her. He liked being misidentified as a real law enforcer. He got into his car and pulled out of the driveway. He happened to glance in the rearview mirror and saw the woman standing just where he'd left her. She seemed troubled.
He could've told her she didn't need to be. Kathryn Dance, in his opinion, was one of the nicest people in the whole of the CBI.
*
Dance closed the door of her mother's Prius hybrid. It hummed out of the lot and the agent waved good-bye.
She watched the silver car negotiate the winding road toward Highway 68. She was troubled. She kept imagining Juan Millar's voice in her head.
Kill me. . . .
The poor man.
Although his brother's lashing out had nothing to do with it, Kathryn Dance did feel guilty that she'd picked him to go check on what was happening in the lockup. He was the most logical one, but she wondered if, being younger, he'd been more careless than a more experienced officer might've been. It was impossible to think that Michael O'Neil, or big Albert Stemple, or Dance herself would have let Pell get the upper hand.
Turning back toward the building, she was thinking of the first few moments of the fire and the escape. They'd had to move so quickly. But should she have waited, thought out her strategy better?
Second-guessing. It went with the territory of being a cop.
Returning to the building, humming Julieta Venegas's music. The notes were swirling through her thoughts, intoxicating--and taking her away from Juan Millar's terrible wounds and terrible words and Susan Pemberton's death . . . and her son's eyes, flipping from cheerful to stony the moment the boy had seen Dance with Winston Kellogg.
What to do about that?
Dance continued through the deserted parking lot toward the front door of CBI, glad that the rain had stopped.
She was nearing the stairs when she heard a scrape of footstep on the asphalt and turned quickly to see that a woman had come up behind her, silently until now. She was a mere six or so feet away, walking directly toward her.
Dance stopped fast.
The woman did too. She shifted her weight.
"Agent Dance . . . I . . ."