Xo

to her vehicle.
    So what do I do? Even if she wanted to take on the case, which would mean working with a wholly uncooperative local team, she didn’t think her boss or Sacramento would go for it. Whatever Madigan felt, the CBI was the least political law enforcement organization she’d ever had contact with. Even if the suspect had been after a much more famous star, a stalking case wasn’t the sort the bureau would take on. Yet, Kayleigh was a good friend, other people were in danger, she was convinced, and Madigan was outgunned by Edwin Sharp.
    That odd smile, the calculation, the calm demeanor, the research. They were armor and they were weapons.
    And what was beneath that smile? What was in his heart and mind? To a degree unlike any other suspect she’d known, Edwin Sharp was a mystery. She simply couldn’t read him.
    She got into the Pathfinder.
    Got out again immediately. It had to be 130 degrees inside. She leaned in, started the engine and rolled down the windows. Then turned the AC on full blast.
    As she waited for the interior to moderate, she walked closer to Bobby Prescott’s trailer, now marked with crime scene tape. She thought again about the astonishing collection of music history inside.
    Brush and grass waved in the breeze and dust ghosts rose and vanished. She realized it was completely deserted here now, aside from the squad car in which a young Asian-American deputy sat in front on the shoulder, with a view of both Bobby’s and Tabatha’s trailers.
    Despite the absorbing heat, Dance felt another chill of unease. She’dthought of another implication of Madigan’s arresting Edwin Sharp. If someone else was the killer, and he was using “Your Shadow” as a template, then he’d have free rein to carry out the next murder without fear the police were searching for him.
    Finally the Pathfinder was cool enough to drive. She put the vehicle in gear and drove away from the scene, the yellow police tape fluttering cheerfully in the breeze behind her.
    Debating.
    I don’t want to do this. It’ll be a nightmare.
    But ten seconds later she made the decision and was on her phone to the CBI office in Monterey, on her boss’s voicemail.
    “Charles. It’s Kathryn. I need to take over an investigation in Fresno. Call me for the details.” She debated about explaining what kind of nuclear detonation this would provoke and the political nightmare that would ensue.
    But she decided that was a conversation best had in real time.

 
     

Chapter 17
    KAYLEIGH TOWNE’S TWO-STORY Victorian squatted on a twenty-acre plot north of Fresno.
    The house wasn’t large—twenty-five hundred square feet or so—but had been constructed by artisan builders, with one instruction: make it comfortable and comforting. She was a nester—tough for a performer who traveled seven months out of the year—and she wanted a home that cried cozy, cried family.
    When she was twelve, Bishop Towne had sold the house she and her sister had grown up in, a ramshackle place north of Fresno, in the mountains. He said it was hard to get to in the winter, though the real reasons were that, one, his father had built it and Bishop would do anything he could to separate himself from his old man. And two, the rustic family manse hadn’t fit the image of the lifestyle he’d wanted to lead: that of the high-powered country superstar. He’d built a ten-million-dollar working ranch on fifty acres in the Valley and populated it with cattle and sheep he had no interest in or knowledge about raising.
    The move had been horrifying enough to Kayleigh but worse was that he’d sold the beloved family house and land to a mining company that owned the adjacent property and they’d bulldozed the structure, planning to expand, though the company’d gone bankrupt; the unnecessary destruction was all the more traumatic to the girl.
    She’d written a song about the place, which became a huge hit.
    I’ve lived in LA, I’ve lived in Maine,
    New York City and the Midwest Plains,
    But there’s only one place I consider home.
    When I was a kid—the house we owned.
    Life was perfect and all was fine,
    In that big old house … near the silver mine.
     
    The silver mine … the silver mine.
    I can’t remember a happier time,
    In that big old house … near the silver mine.
     
    Now, the man responsible for this displacement walked inside Kayleigh’s spacious living room and bent down and hugged her.
    Bishop’s fourth wife, Sheri, accompanied