Lincoln Rhyme asked, “You have any idea who he’s talking about?”

“I know exactly who he means,” Dance replied.

Chapter 55

“IT’LL BE ALL right, Congressman,” Peter Simesky said.

Davis didn’t need reassurance. He needed his family taken care of. He called Suze again and left another message for her to stay in the house with the kids. There was possibly a little security problem. Stay put, lock the door. Call me. Love you.

“Please have Jessie find my wife, Peter.”

“I’ll do that, sir. But there’s no indication that this Sharp wants to hurt anybody but you. Besides, I don’t think there’s any way he could get to L.A. He was at a mall here in Fresno this morning, according to the police. And everybody’s looking for him.”

“He actually thinks I’m exploiting Kayleigh?”

“Using her—well, and that song, ‘Leaving Home’—just to increase your Latino voter base.”

“That’s bullshit! I’ve been a huge supporter of hers all along. I’ve been posting on her site and the blogs for a couple of years. Before she even wrote the song.”

Simesky reminded, “Oh, he’s a psycho, Bill. Agent Dance said he has no sense of reality.”

“She said he could be like Hinckley?”

“Could be.”

“Jesus. They’ve got to find him. If he can’t kill me maybe he’ll just go on a rampage.”

The men were in the Coronado, one of the nicer hotels in Fresno, and to Davis it seemed plenty secure, if you stayed away from the windows. But Davis’s aides, Simesky and Myra Babbage, and the police thought he should move to a more secure location.

If it wasn’t for his family’s safety Davis would have been amused. He was extremely unpopular in certain circles and had been threatened a number of times for his positions on various issues. Just mention relaxing immigration laws at a cocktail party and see what happens; imagine the consequences when it’s a campaign position of a potential presidential candidate. And yet here he was being threatened not by any rabid right-wingers but by a crazy guy who probably didn’t even know what the word “immigration” meant.

A knock on the door. Davis stepped forward but the aide waved him back and called, “Yes?”

“Kathryn Dance and Deputy Harutyun are here,” the campaign staff security man traveling with them, a massive fellow named Tim Raymond, called from outside.

Simesky opened the door and the two entered. The aide gave Dance a smile.

Davis had been amused at Simesky’s flirting earlier with Dance, at Kayleigh Towne’s house; there was no reason why a single man who was witty and charming shouldn’t turn his attentions toward an attractive single woman about his same age. But at this meeting, they were both pure business.

“Congressman, Peter,” Dance said.

Her green eyes quickly but calmly took in all the rooms, presumably for security threats, lingering briefly on the windows. Davis noted that she was now armed; she hadn’t been before. This made him a bit more uneasy.