Grim justice for a singer; using picks made out of the bone of a man who’d stolen her music.

It’s a wild theory. But …

Close enough for me, Dance decided and called Kayleigh. No answer. She left a message, telling her what she suspected, then called Bishop Towne and told him the same.

“Oh, fuck,” the man growled. “She’s having lunch with him right now! Sheri was at the convention center for the rehearsal. She left an hour ago to meet him.”

“Where?”

“Well, I’m not sure. Hold on.”

After an excruciatingly long time, he came back on. “The San Joaquin Diner, on Third. Do you—”

“If she calls you have her get in touch with me right away.” Dance hung up and debated calling 911 or the sheriff’s office. Which would be the shorter explanation?

She dialed.

“Madigan,” came the voice.

“Chief, it’s Kathryn. No time now but I think Edwin’s our perp after all.”

“What?” She heard a tap, an ice cream cup being set down. “But … Alicia?”

“Later. Listen. He and Kayleigh’re at the San Joaquin Diner. On Third. We need a car there now.”

“Know it, sure. He armed?”

“All the firearms we know about’re accounted for but it’s pretty easy to buy a piece in this state.”

“Gotcha. I’ll get back to you.”

Dance paced along the carpet, then hurried to the room’s desk, where her notes from the case sat. There were dozens and dozens of pages. If she’d been working one of her own cases, especially a task-forced operation, she would have organized and indexed them by now. But since it seemed that the case had been resolved and others would be handling the prosecution, she hadn’t yet bothered. Now, she spread the pages out on the bed—her conversation with the witnesses, the evidence Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs had analyzed, the notes from the interview with Edwin.

But as it turned out, Kathryn Dance didn’t need to parse her handiwork to determine if Edwin was or was not the perp.

P. K. Madigan called back and, in a voice uncharacteristically rattled, blurted, “She and Edwin left the diner a half hour ago. But her SUV’s still in the lot. And her keys were on the ground nearby.”

“She dropped them, to let us know he’d snatched her. Her phone?”

“Battery’s out or it’s been crushed. No signal to trace. I sent Lopez to Edwin’s house and the Buick’s there. But the place is empty, looks like he’s moved out.”

“He’s got new wheels.”

“Yep. But I checked. Either stolen or bought private. Nothing at DMV in his name, no rentals at any of the companies in our database. He could be driving anything. And going anywhere.”

Chapter 71

ALIBI WOMAN HAD lied.

When Dance had spoken with her on the phone, twenty minutes before, seventy-two-year-old Mrs. Rachel Webber had once again—and very quickly—verified Edwin’s story about the time he’d been at her house on Tuesday.

But it took the agent only three minutes of trim questioning to learn what really happened: Edwin had found her in the garden early that morning. He’d forced her inside with a gun and gotten the names of her children and grandchildren and said that when the police came to ask her, she was to say he was there at twelve-thirty.