He tried them on.

“They’re you,” Jenkins whispered, squeezing March’s biceps.

March put the glasses away and picked up the remote.

Click. The hypnotic ballet of sea creatures resumed on the TV. “Extraordinary. Four-K,” he said reverently. “Who shot this?”

“Teenager, believe it or not.”

“Four-K. Hmm. Wave of the future.”

Jenkins asked, “What’s the plan?”

“We need to stop her.”

“That investigator? Dance?”

“That’s right.” He explained that the attempt to injure her boyfriend, somebody named Boling, hadn’t worked out. Now they needed to do something more efficient.

“We’re leaving tomorrow. Why do anything? We’ll be a thousand miles away by noon.”

“No. We have to stop her. She won’t rest until she gets us.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” March said, staring at the sharks.

“What do you have in mind?”

Dance, he’d seen when he’d slipped into her Pathfinder at the Bay View crime scene, was presently attending a concert at the Performing Arts Center in Monterey. The tickets were in her glove compartment. He’d thought momentarily about staging a final attack there, with the chance that she’d be severely injured or killed. But coming after Grant’s suicide, that would be suspicious.

Besides, there was another reason he didn’t want her dead.

He looked over the notes he’d jotted after getting the information on the man’s license plate. “There’s a close associate. Named TJ Scanlon. Lives in Carmel Valley. We’ll kill him, make it look gang related. It’ll deflect her. She’ll drop everything and go after them.”

“Why not just kill her?”

March could think of no answer. Just: “It’s better this way.”

Another reason…

He jabbed a finger at the TV screen. “Ah, watch. This is it.”

On the screen a hammerhead shark, awkward yet elegant, swam toward the camera then veered upward and, as casually as a human swatting a mosquito, opened its mouth and neatly removed the leg of a surfer treading water overhead. The shark and limb vanished as the massive cloud of red streamed like smoke into the scene, eventually obscuring the mutilated young man, writhing as he died.

“Well,” Jenkins said. “Here’s to Four-K.” He lifted a glass of wine.

March nodded. He stared at the imagery for a moment longer and shut the set off. He picked up the Louis Vuitton bag, checked that the hunting knife and gun were still inside, and gestured his boss toward the door. “After you.”

Chapter 81

This was an era he knew nothing about, didn’t care for, didn’t appreciate.

The sixties in the U.S.

Antioch March believed it was called the counterculture, and, for some reason, CBI agent TJ Scanlon loved it.

As they stood in the living room of the three-bedroom ranch-style house in Carmel Valley, March and Jenkins surveyed the place. Orange and brown dominated. Carpet, furniture, tablecloths. On the wall were posters—nice ones, framed—of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, the Mamas and the Papas, Jefferson Airplane. The doors were strings of colorful beads that clicked when you pushed them. And, yes, a lava lamp.