Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel (53 page)

It was a text message from her father.

I’m at the hospital with your mother. Get here as soon as you can.

Dance gasped. What was this about? The arraignment was supposed to be starting in fifteen minutes. If Edie Dance was in the hospital it was only for one reason. She was ill or injured.

Dance immediately punched her father’s mobile number, but it went right to voice mail. Of course, he’d shut it off in the hospital.

Had she been attacked?

Or had she tried to kill herself?

Dance shoved the accelerator down and drove faster. Her mind tumbling, out of control now. Thinking that if her mother
had
tried to kill herself, it was because she knew Robert Harper had a solid case against her, and that it would be futile to fight it.

So her mother
had
committed murder. Dance recalled the damning comment, revealing Edie’s knowledge of the ICU corridors at the time Juan Millar died.

There were some nurses down on that wing. But that was all. His family was gone. And there were no visitors. . . .

She sped past Salinas, Laguna Seca and the airport. Twenty minutes later she was pulling into the circular drive of the hospital. The car skidded to a violent stop, breaching the handicapped space. Dance leapt out and sprinted to the main entrance door and wedged through before the automatic panels had fully opened.

At the admissions station, an alarmed receptionist looked up and said, “Kathryn, are you—?”

“Where’s my mother?” the agent gasped.

“She’s downstairs and—”

Dance was already pushing through the doorway and downward. Downstairs meant only one thing: the intensive care unit. Ironically the very place where Juan Millar had died. If Edie was there, at least she was alive.

On the bottom floor she shoved through the door, hurrying toward ICU, when she happened to glance into the cafeteria.

Breathing hard, Dance pulled up fast, a stitch in her side. She looked through the open doorway and saw four people sitting at a table, coffee in front of them. They were the director of the hospital, the security chief Henry Bascomb, Dance’s father and . . . Edie Dance. They were engaged in a discussion and were looking over documents on the table before them.

Stuart glanced up and smiled, gesturing with an index figure, meaning, Dance guessed, they’d only be a moment or two. Her mother glanced her way and
then, expression neutral, returned her attention to the hospital director.

“Hi,” a man’s voice said from behind her.

She turned, blinking in surprise to see Michael O’Neil.

“Michael, what’s going on?” Dance asked breathlessly.

With furrowed brows, he asked, “Didn’t you get the message?”

“Just the text from Dad that they were here.”

“I didn’t want to bother you in the middle of an operation. I spoke to Overby and gave him the details. He was supposed to call when you were finished.”

Oh. Well, this was one glitch she couldn’t lay at the feet of her thoughtless boss; she’d been in such a hurry to get to the arraignment, she’d never told him they’d wrapped the Chilton take-down.

“I heard Hollister went okay.”

“Yeah, everybody’s fine. Chilton’s in custody. Travis’s got a banged head. That’s it.” But the Roadside Cross Case was far from her mind. She stared into the cafeteria. “What’s going on, Michael?”

“The charges against your mother’ve been dropped,” he said.

“What?”

O’Neil hesitated, looking almost sheepish, and then said, “I didn’t tell you, Kathryn. I couldn’t.”

“Tell me what?”

“The case I’ve been working on?”

The Other Case . . .

“It had nothing to do with the container situation. That’s still on hold. I took on your mother’s case as an independent investigation. I told the sheriff I was
going to do it. Pretty much insisted. He agreed. Stopping Harper
now
was our only chance. If he’d gotten a conviction . . . well, you know the odds of getting a verdict overturned on appeal.”

“You never said anything.”

“That was the plan. I could run it but I couldn’t mention anything to you. I had to be able to testify that you knew nothing about what I was doing. Conflict of interest, otherwise. Even your parents didn’t know. I talked to them about the case, but only informally. They never suspected.”

“Michael.” Dance again felt rare tears sting. She gripped his arm and their eyes met, brown on green.

He said, frowning, “I knew she wasn’t guilty. Edie taking somebody’s life? Crazy.” He grinned. “You notice I’ve been talking to you in text messages a lot lately, emails?”

“Right.”

“Because I couldn’t lie to you in person. I knew you’d spot it in a minute.”

She laughed, recalling how vague he’d been about the Container Case.

“But who killed Juan?”

“Daniel Pell.”

“Pell?” she whispered in astonishment.

O’Neil explained, though, that it wasn’t Pell himself who’d killed Juan Millar, but one of the women connected with him—the partner that Dance had been thinking of yesterday as she’d driven her children to see their grandparents.

“She knew the threat you presented, Kathryn. She wanted desperately to stop you.”

“Why did you think of her?”

“Process of elimination,” O’Neil explained. “I knew your mother couldn’t ’ve done it. I knew Julio Millar hadn’t—he was accounted for the whole time. His parents weren’t there, and there were no other fellow officers present. So I asked who’d have a motive to blame your mother for the death? Pell came to mind. You were running the manhunt to find him and getting closer. Your mother’s arrest would distract you, if not force you off the case altogether. He couldn’t do it himself, so he used his partner.”

He explained that the woman had slipped into the hospital by pretending to be applying for a job as a nurse.

“The job applications,” Dance said, nodding, recalling what Connie’s investigation had found. “There wasn’t any connection between them and Millar, though, so we didn’t pay any attention.”

“Witnesses said that she was wearing a nurse’s uniform. As if she’d just gotten off a shift at another hospital and had come over to MBH to apply for a job.” The deputy continued, “I had her computer examined and found that she’d searched for drug interactions on Google.”

“The evidence in the garage?”

“She planted it. I had Pete Bennington take the garage apart. A CS team found some hairs—that Harper’s people had missed, by the way. They were hers. DNA match. I’m sure she’ll take a plea.”

“I feel so bad, Michael. I almost believed she’d . . .” Dance couldn’t even bring herself to say the words. “I mean, Mom looked so upset when she told me that Juan asked her to kill him. And then she claimed she wasn’t on the ICU floor when Juan was killed, but she
let slip that she
knew
the place was deserted except for some nurses.”

“Oh, she’d talked to one of the ICU doctors and
he
commented to your mother that all the visitors had left. Edie was never on the wing at all.”

A miscommunication and an assumption. Not much excuse for
that
in her line of work, she thought wryly. “And Harper? He’s going forward with the case?”

“Nope. He’s packing up and going home to Sacramento. He’s handed off to Sandy.”

“What?” Dance was shocked.

O’Neil laughed, noting her expression. “Yep. Not much interested in justice. Only interested in a high-profile conviction, the mother of a government agent.”

“Oh, Michael.” She squeezed his arm again. And he put his hand on hers, then was looking away. She was struck by his countenance. What was she seeing? A vulnerability, a hollowness?

O’Neil started to say something and then didn’t.

Maybe to apologize for lying to her and withholding the truth about his investigation. He looked at his watch. “Got a few things to take care of.”

“Hey, you okay?”

“Just tired.”

Alarm bells sounded within Dance. Men are never “just tired.” What they mean is, no, they’re not okay at all but they don’t want to talk.

He said, “Oh, almost forgot. I heard from Ernie, the L.A. case? The judge refused to push off the immunity hearing. It’s starting in about a half hour.”

Dance displayed crossed fingers. “Let’s hope.” She then hugged him, hard.

O’Neil fished his car keys out of his pocket and headed up the stairs, apparently in too much of a hurry to wait for the elevator.

Dance glanced into the cafeteria. She noted that her mother was no longer at the table. Her shoulders slumped. Damnit. She’s gone.

But then she heard a woman’s voice behind her. “Katie.”

Edie Dance had come out the side door and presumably waited to join her daughter until O’Neil left.

“Michael told me, Mom.”

“After the charges were dismissed, I came by here to see the people who supported me, to thank them.”

The people who supported me . . .

There was silence for a moment. The PA system gave an incomprehensible announcement. Somewhere a baby cried. The sounds faded.

And from Edie’s expression and words, Kathryn Dance knew the complete weave of what had happened between mother and daughter in the past few days. The difficulty had nothing to do with her leaving the courthouse early the other day. The issue was more fundamental. She blurted, “I didn’t think you’d done it, Mom. Really.”

Edie Dance smiled. “Ah, and coming from you, from a kinesics expert, Katie? Tell me what to look for to see if you’re telling a fib.”

“Mom—”

“Katie, you thought it was
possible
I’d killed that young man.”

Dance sighed, wondered how big the vacuum in her soul was at the moment. The denial died in her mouth and she said in a shaky voice, “Maybe, Mom.
Okay, maybe. I didn’t think less of you. I still loved you. But, okay, I thought you might have.”

“Your face, in the courtroom at the bail hearing. Just looking at your face, I knew you were considering it. I knew you were.”

“I’m so sorry,” Dance whispered.

Then Edie Dance did something completely uncharacteristic. She took her daughter by the shoulders, firmly, more firmly than Dance believed she’d ever been held by the woman, even as a child. “Don’t you dare say that.” Her words were harsh.

Dance blinked and began to speak.

“Shhhhh, Katie. Listen. I was up all night after the bail hearing. Thinking about what I’d seen in your eyes, what you suspected about me, let me finish. I was up all night, hurt, furious. But then, finally I understood something. And I felt so proud.”

A warm smile softened the round contours of the woman’s face. “So proud.”

Dance was confused.

Her mother continued, “You know, Katie, a parent never knows if they get it right. I’m sure you’ve wrestled with that.”

“Oh, only about ten times a day.”

“You always hope, you pray, that you give your children the resources they need, the attitude, the courage. That’s what it’s all about, after all. Not fighting their battles, but getting them prepared to fight on their own. Teaching them to make judgments, to think for themselves.”

The tears were streaming down Dance’s cheeks.

“And when I saw you questioning what I might’ve done, looking at what had happened, I knew that I’d
got it one hundred percent right. I raised you not to be blind. You know, prejudice blinds people, hate blinds people. But loyalty and love blind people too. You looked past everything, for the truth.” Her mother laughed. “Of course, you got it wrong. But I can’t fault you for that.”

The women embraced and Edie Dance said, “Now, you’re still on duty. Go on back to the office. I’m still mad at you. But I’ll get over it in a day or two. We’ll go shopping and then have dinner at Casanova. Oh, and Katie, you’re picking up the check.”

KATHRYN DANCE RETURNED
to her office at CBI and wrote up the final disposition on the case.

She sipped the coffee that Maryellen Kresbach had brought her and looked over the pink phone message slips that the assistant had stacked beside a plate containing a very thick cookie.

She considered the messages at length and returned none of the calls but ate 100 percent of the cookie.

Her phone beeped. A text from Michael O’Neil:

K—judge has ruled in L.A. Will release decision in next few hours. Keep your fingers crossed. Lot going on today, but will talk to you soon.—M.

Please, please, please . . .

A final sip of coffee and Dance printed out the report for Overby and took it down to his office. “Here’s the disposition, Charles.”

“Ah. Good.” The man added, “That was a surprise, the direction the case took.” He read the report fast. She noticed a gym bag, tennis racket and small suitcase behind his desk. It was late afternoon on a sum
mer Friday, and he was probably leaving directly from the office for his weekend place.

She detected a certain chilliness in his posture, attributable undoubtedly to her flying off the handle with Hamilton Royce.

And so she was looking forward to what was coming next. Sitting opposite her boss, she said, “There’s one final thing, Charles. It’s about Royce.”

“What’s that?” He looked up, began smoothing her memo, as if wiping off dust.

She explained what TJ had uncovered about Royce’s mission—to stop the blog not to save victims, but to derail Chilton’s exposé about the state representative’s being wined and dined by the nuclear plant developer. “He used us, Charles.”

“Ah.” Overby continued to fiddle with some papers.

“He bills his time to the Nuclear Facilities Planning Committee—which is headed by the representative Chilton was writing about in the ‘Power to the People’ thread of the blog.”

“I see. Royce, hmm.”

“I want to send a memo to the AG. It’s probably not a crime, what Royce did, but it’s definitely unethical—using me, using us. It’ll cost him his job.”

More fiddling. Overby was considering this.

“Are you okay with my doing that?” She asked this because it was clear he wasn’t.

“I’m not sure.”

She laughed. “Why not? He went through my desk. Maryellen saw him. He used state police for his own agenda.”