Record companies used to sue file shares—winning judgments of hundreds of thousands of dollars against broke college kids and housewives, and earning a public relations black eye in the process. Now, they’ve largely given up their police work.

And presently many artists were giving up too—or, more cleverly, were recognizing the value of offering some content at no charge to the public under the open source model. The theory is that free music downloads can generate new fans who will buy future albums and attend concerts, where all the money is being made.

All of which renders the traditional record stores and labels relics of the past.

People like Barry Zeigler are still needed as producers but as for-fee technicians only. With revenues from downloads tumbling, it’s hard for some of them even to make a living at their craft.

Dance had heard of JBT Global Entertainment—it was a competitor of Live Nation, which owned entertainment arenas and concert halls and Ticketmaster and had contracts with many rock, pop, rap and country superstars. These companies were typical of the 360 model, as in degrees. Global covered all aspects of a musician’s professional life—producing the albums, pressing the few CDs that were still sold, cutting deals with download services and big corporations for exclusive promotions and—most important—booking musicians into live performances and arranging lucrative deals for movie sound tracks and advertising, known as synchronization.

Ironically, the music world has come full circle in a mere two hundred years: from live performances prior to the nineteenth century to live performances in the twenty-first.

Barry Zeigler’s world was vanishing fast and Dance understood his desperate concern that Kayleigh might leave him.

The drama of the music Industry was, of course, important to Zeigler and the singer. But the subject had virtually vanished from Dance’s mind now that she knew the private conversation had nothing to do with the Edwin Sharp case. Dance gave up her eavesdropping and collected her purse from inside, deciding she wanted to get back to the motel. As she waited on the porch for Kayleigh to return, she looked out over the darkening pine grove surrounding Bishop’s house.

She was concentrating once more on how best to find a killer as invisible as a snake, who could be stalking them anywhere—even from the thousands of shadows surrounding the house at that very moment.

Chapter 44

AN HOUR LATER Kathryn Dance was doing some stalking herself.

She’d returned to the Mountain View, where she’d called her mother—the kids had gone to bed. Dance had dialed the number with some uneasiness, afraid she’d learn something more about Jon Boling’s impending departure. But Edie Dance said nothing further on the subject, explaining that the children were doing well and Stuart, Dance’s father, had her house ready for the guests and the party planned for this weekend.

After disconnecting, she debated calling Boling. Then decided not to.

Partly because she was a coward, she chided herself. But she also had work to do.