“Well,” Madigan said urgently, “I’m pretty worried about something. A half hour ago there were some postings on some of Kayleigh’s fan sites. Anonymous, but they were sites where Edwin has posted in the past. The posts were the same, saying something to the effect of, ‘Watch the news, Kayleigh. Maybe you’ll finally understand how much I love you.’”
“John Hinckley.”
“Yep. I remember what you told us in the first briefing.”
That occasionally a stalker had a total break with reality and when he gave up hope that he’d be with his love, he’d kill someone to cement himself in her thoughts forever.
“Here’s the URLs of those sites.” Madigan handed her a sheet of yellow-lined paper. “Have Computer Crimes track ’em down and see where they were made from.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
“No,” he said, offering a wan smile, “thank
She returned to the office and handed Dennis Harutyun the sheet of paper. “What’s this?” he asked.
Dance explained, without mentioning Madigan’s name, about the threatening posts. “We need to trace them. Edwin’s name doesn’t appear but these’re blogs and sites he posts to regularly.”
“Where’d you get the sites?” Amelia Sachs asked.
“Just some outside research.”
But Harutyun looked at the handwriting and frowned, perhaps recognizing it and deducing the source was his ousted boss. Still, he said nothing and called the office’s computer crimes operation and ordered them to locate the posts and try to trace them.
Crystal Stanning went online and reviewed the posts. O’Neil said, “It may not be him. Kayleigh has to have other obsessive fans. We can’t forget that.”
But a moment later Harutyun’s phone hummed. He looked down. “It’s Computer Crimes.” He took the call and listened for a moment. “Okay. Thanks.” He disconnected and slipped the phone away. “The posting was from Java Hut.”
Harutyun said, “At Fashion Fair. That’s where Edwin is right now.”
“Maybe he’s still there,” Amelia Sachs said and Harutyun called Dispatch to order deputies to the shopping center to find Edwin. He reminded them that he could be armed.
Stanning asked, “He’s thinking of a mass shooting at the mall?”
Sachs said, “That could be it but the typical stalker killing profile is more one-on-one. An assassination.”
“True,” Dance said. “And it’s usually somebody famous. So that he’ll get the attention of his object.”
“But who’s the planned victim?” Harutyun wondered aloud.
O’Neil continued to read the posts. “They don’t mention anybody in particular.”
Dance joined him, arm against arm, and they stared at the posts.
“There, that one,” Dance muttered, pointing. She read it aloud. “‘I’ve seen all your postings, about Kayleigh. You claim you like her, you claim you love her music. But you use her like everybody does, you stole Leaving Home to keep the hispanics happy. Your a fucking hypocrit.’”
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.
Simesky asked, “Where are we with all this? What do we know?”
Dance said, “We’re still trying to find Edwin. Michael O’Neil-a deputy from Monterey-and the others are back at the sheriff’s office working on that. He’s vanished from the mall where he sent the website post. His car’s still there but he could have other wheels. Until we have a better idea where he is, we want to get you to that safe house as soon as possible. Are you ready to leave now?”
“Sure. Where is it?”
Harutyun said, “A place we use about a half hour north of here, in the woods.”
“Yes, all right.” He grimaced. “I just don’t want to be seen as running from this guy.”
Simesky said, “We go through this a lot, Bill. People aren’t going to care. They’d rather have a live candidate than a dead martyr.”
“I suppose.” Davis thought of something. Kathryn Dance was with a statewide agency so he said to her, “Could you get police to my house in L.A.? I’m worried about my family.”
“Of course. I’ll call our office and have a CBI team there, with tactical LAPD. We work with them a lot.”
“Thank you,” he said, feeling some relief, tepid though it was. He gave her the address and Susan’s phone number.
Dance made the call and then disconnected. Officers, she said, were en route. Davis was all the more impressed with her for her cool efficiency and decided that, as Peter had suggested, she’d be perfect in his administration.
Then, thank you, Lord, his wife called. “Honey?” the woman blurted. “Jess came to the school. What’s going on? Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes…” Davis explained the situation, adding that there would be some police or troopers at the house in
