His name was Frederick Martin and he explained that, yes, his ex-wife, Michelle, had brought their daughter here last night.

She’d been right. Their child, probably a teen. How sad.

Dance’s worst horror. Every mother’s.

That had been the tension in the car. Ex-spouses, forced together at a time like this. Probably on the way to a funeral home to make arrangements. Dance’s heart went out to them both.

“We’re investigating the incident,” she said, a version of the truth. “I have a few questions.”

“Well, I don’t know anything. I wasn’t here.” Martin was edgy. He wanted to leave.

“No, no. I understand. But if I could have a few words with your ex-wife.”

“What?” he said, frowning broadly.

Then a voice behind them, a girl’s voice. Nearly a whisper. “She’s gone.”

Dance turned to see a teenager. Pretty but with a face puffy from crying. Her hair had been carelessly herded into place with fingers, not brush.

“Mommy’s gone.”

Oh. The ex was the fatality.

“Trish, go back to the car.”

Staring at the club. “She was trapped. Against the door. I saw her. I can’t—we looked at each other and then I fell. This big man, he was crying like a baby, he climbed on my back and I went down. I thought I was going to die but I got picked up by somebody. Then the people I was with went through another door, not the fire exits. The crowd she was in—”

“Trish, honey, no. I told you this was a bad idea. Let’s go. We’ve got your grandparents to meet at the airport. We’ve got plans to make.”

Martin took his daughter’s arm. She pulled away. He grimaced.

To the girl: “Trish, I’m Kathryn Dance, California Bureau of Investigation. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“We do,” Martin said. “We do mind.”

Crying now, softly, the girl stared at the roadhouse. “It was hell in there. They talk about hell, in movies and things. But, no, that was hell.”

“Here’s my card.” Dance offered it to Frederick Martin.

He shook his head. “We don’t want it. There’s nothing she can tell you. Leave us alone.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

He got a firmer grip on his daughter and, though she stiffened, maneuvered her back to the Lexus. When they were seated inside, he reached over and clicked on her belt. Then they sped from the lot before Dance could note the license plate.

Not that it mattered, she supposed. If the girl and her mother had been inside during the panic, they wouldn’t have seen what really interested Dance: the person who’d parked the truck in front of the doors and lit the fire.

Besides, she could hardly blame the man for being protective. Dance supposed that the father had now been catapulted into a tough, alien role; she imagined that the mother had had a higher percentage of custody, maybe full.

The Solitude Creek incident had changed many lives in many different ways.