Xo

outside. It seemed like a matter of seconds before the door flew open in the observation room and he was storming up to Dance.
    “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    “You’ve got to let him go. If you don’t have probable cause—”
    “This’s my case, not yours.”
    She knew she’d embarrassed him in front of his people. But she couldn’t help herself. “You have to let him go.”
    “Just ’cause you figured out somebody dropped that light on Bobby Prescott doesn’t mean I want or need any more of your opinions.”
    So, she reflected. Dennis Harutyun had given her credit for that deduction, back at the convention center.
    “He has to be released.”
    A jagged edge in his voice, Madigan said, “So you’re on his side now?”
    Dance found she was quite angry. “It’s not a question of sides. It’s a question of proving a case. Edwin may very well’ve killed Bobby. But if he goes to trial and gets off, that’s double jeopardy. He’s gotten away with murder.”
    “I answer to Sheriff Gonzalez, not you.”
    “Let him go and monitor him. It’s the only way to make a case.”
    “And what if he gives the deputy the slip and decides it’s time to kill Kayleigh. Like Rebecca Schaeffer.”
    The actress who was murdered in Los Angeles some years ago. Her tragic death at the hands of a stalker had led to California’s enacting the first anti-stalking law in the nation.
    “Well, you saw his—what do you call it, kinesics? That’s your expertise, you were pretty quick to tell me. Was he lying when he said he was being set up? You’d trespassed into the observation room by then, hadn’tcha?”
    “I couldn’t tell under those circumstances. I didn’t have time.”
    “Ah.”
    “He’s asked to leave and you haven’t let him. That’s a problem.”
    Madigan looked at Edwin in the room. The young man had pulled out a pen and pad of paper and was jotting notes. A lot of them.
    Madigan called to Harutyun, “Book him. Cuff him and get him to detention. Breaking and entering at Bobby’s only at this point. I know there’s evidence for that.” He turned to Dance. “Crystal’ll take you to your car and you better go now. You being in here’s trespass and, as you can probably tell, I’m in an arresting mood at the moment.”

 
     

Chapter 16
    AFTER FIFTEEN MINUTES of silent driving, Crystal Stanning said to Kathryn Dance, “I didn’t block you in on purpose. I just parked there.”
    “I know that.”
    In Stanning’s personal car, a sun-faded Toyota, they were just pulling into the drive of Bobby’s trailer. The young detective stopped, brakes squealing. A belt needed replacing pretty soon too. The grass here, pale and thin, looked dustier and more spiky than before. Heat ripples undulated like sheets of flowing water above the Pathfinder.
    Stanning fished another set of keys from her purse and said, “Yours’ll be hot. You’ll be wanting to mind the wheel. People’ve gotten burns.” They climbed out.
    “I’ll take care.”
    “And here it is September. I don’t know ’bout glaciers melting but I’ll tell you it’s hotter now than when I was a girl.”
    “I hear you.”
    “You can buy those windshield shades at Rite Aid. They work pretty good. Though I imagine you won’t be staying around.”
    Dance wondered if Madigan had asked his deputy to drop that into the conversation to see where it went.
    She said only, “Thanks.”
    “Just ’tween us?”
    “Sure.”
    “Kayleigh Towne’s a big deal here. Fresno’s not the glitziest place on earth. We come in real low on nice-places-to-live surveys and Kayleigh’s made us famous. I don’t know, maybe the Chief thinks you’re here to boost yourself up, you and the CBI, I mean. Take her away from us, you might say, with this investigation. And if that happens, the sheriff’s office’ll lose out on the money. Maybe a lot of it.”
    “Money?”
    “Yeah, if we can’t handle the case, he’s thinking that’ll go into the hopper when it’s budget time. See, he fights hard for us in the department, the Chief. One time, he was convinced we couldn’t find this girl got herself kidnapped and killed because CSU couldn’t analyze some dirt trace at the scene. He still feels bad about that. So he’s always fighting for more pennies.”
    “I see.”
    “He got his dirt machine, whatever it is. Don’t know that it gets used much but that’s the way he is.”
    Without another word, the deputy drove off.
    Dance walked