Never Flinch (Holly Gibney #4)

Chapter 10

1

The Sista Bessie crew’s move from the old Sam’s Club to the Mingo Auditorium is a work in progress. Jerome gets in by mentioning his sister’s name to Tones Kelly, the tour boss. He wasn’t sure it would work, but it does. Tones has been sitting in the lobby, idly plunking away on a Fender bass guitar, but he jumps to his feet as if Jerome had said open sesame instead of Barbara Robinson .

“Barb is Betty’s new best friend,” Tones says, “and a bear for work, which makes her a friend to everyone on the crew. Who knew a poet could move a Marshall stack all by herself?”

“We were taught hard work is the way you get on in the world,” Jerome says.

“I hear that. Until the lights go down and the music starts, it’s all grunt work. Movie crews, carny crews, the rock and roll army… all basically the same. Sweat equity.”

The auditorium is half-lit. Jerome spots a stout lady sitting at a piano stage left, playing what has to be “Bring It On Home to Me.” Barbara is halfway up the main seating area (with recently added balconies, the Mingo seats 7,500), carrying a boxy Yamaha gadget to the sound engineer, whose mixing board looks like it’s only partially assembled. Barb’s wearing high-waisted jeans held up with suspenders, a Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tee (which Jerome is pretty sure was filched from their parents’ attic), and a red bandanna around her smooth brown forehead. Jerome thinks she looks like a roadie if ever a roadie there was, which isn’t surprising. Barbara has a chameleon-like quality. At a country club party, she could wear an evening dress and a sparkly faux-diamond headband with similar ease.

“Barb!” he says. “I brought your car back.” He hands her the keys.

“No dents or dings?”

“Not a single one.”

“Ross, this is my brother Jerome. Jerome, this is Ross MacFarland, our FOH.”

“Don’t know what that is, but pleased to meet you,” Jerome says, shaking MacFarland’s hand.

“Front of the house,” MacFarland says. “Although for our show, I’ll be mixing right here. The Program Director doesn’t like it because those are prime seats he can’t sell—”

“Program directors never like anything we do,” Tones says. “It’s part of their dubious charm. Gibson ain’t as bad as some I’ve worked with.”

Someone yells, “ Three o’clocks, everybody! Threes! ”

Barbara shouts, “I’ll be right there, Acey!”

A woman says, “Who might this handsome young man be?”

Jerome turns and sees the stout piano lady making her way up the aisle. He realizes belatedly that this woman, dressed in a frumpy jumper and bulging moccasins, is Rock after Reno and Des Moines, Kate is hot news. In what Holly considers to be the unpleasant parlance of the Social Media Age, Kate is “trending,” if not yet “viral.” There are cams and reporters from KWWL and KCRG. A grizzled old guy from the Press-Citizen . Stringers from various internet sites, most leaning left on the political spectrum. Kate is looking good in a plain white tee that emphasizes her full breasts, and tight jeans that speak to her slim hips. Tilted back on her head is a blue Iowa Cubs cap.

Kate gives a brief statement, not mentioning the fact that her luggage was drenched in blood and guts. She does, however, share that her room was childishly vandalized and brings up those verses from Exodus, saying that pro-life religious zealots have twisted them out of context— tortured them out of context—to give them a meaning they don’t have. Holly is pretty sure the stalker will get the message and be pissed.

One of the reporters asks, “Isn’t there a big difference between God ending fetal life and doctors destroying it?”

“Depends on whether or not you believe in God, or which God you believe in. Either way, this country is a democracy, not a theocracy. Read the Constitution, son.”

Holly is barely listening. She’s scanning the attendees for anyone who doesn’t have a press credential. A few lookie-loos wander in, but no one makes a move Holly considers suspicious. She wishes she’d gotten a better look at that woman in the housekeeperly brown dress on the third floor, but most of her attention was fixed on Kate and Corrie. Was the woman blond? She thinks so but isn’t sure.

Kate buttons up the presser by saying she’s happy to be in Iowa City, she’ll be speaking at Macbride Hall at seven PM, and some seats are still available. The woman with the credential saying she’s from Raw Story patters a little applause, but no one else joins in; they just file out. Kate goes to a new suite. Hers has been taped off by the police, and after the gig tonight, the three of them will be going to a different hotel.

“That went pretty well, didn’t it?” Kate asks Corrie. Always the same question.

“Dynamite,” Corrie says. Always the same (correct) answer.

3

At roughly the same time, another press conference is going on in another city. Alice Patmore, the Buckeye City Chief of Police, is standing at the microphones with Darby Dingley, the city’s Fire Commissioner. Behind them are two designated members of the opposing teams in the upcoming Guns and Hoses tilt. One is a tall young man named George Pill, looking overdressed in his ceremonial FD whites and hat. The other is Isabelle Jaynes, looking more comfortable in her summerweight blues.

Lew Warwick told Izzy before meeting the press that a little trash talk wouldn’t be out of place. “All in good fun, you know.”

Izzy doesn’t know. She feels like a horse’s ass in her short-sleeved uni. She has a serial murderer to catch, and instead she’s up here playing fiddly-fuck at what is essentially a photo op. She looks at Pill to see if he feels the same, but he’s staring out at the assembled reporters with a severe and heroic can-do look on his face. If the brain under that stupid white shovel hat is uncomfortable, he’s not showing it.

Meanwhile, the big dogs drone on about the wonderful charities this year’s competition will benefit. Chief Patmore speaks first, then Commissioner Dingley gets his turn. Izzy hopes that’s enough from them and she can get back into her street clothes (and back to work), but no joy; each takes another turn. The assembled press looks as bored as Izzy feels, until Chief Patmore announces that Sista Bessie has agreed to sing the National Anthem; wishful thinking has become a firm commitment. This causes a murmur of interest in the reporters, and brief applause.

“Before we send you to the refreshment table,” Commissioner Dingley says, “I’d like to introduce two of this year’s star players. For the Hoses team, Fireman First Class George Pill, who will be playing center field.”

Patmore takes her turn. “And for the Guns team, Detective Sergeant Isabelle Jaynes, our starting pitcher.”

The big dogs step back. Izzy doesn’t know what to do at first, but Pill does. He flashes a movie star grin, grabs her by the arm, and pulls her forward. She stumbles a little. Cameras flash. Some of the reporters chuckle.

“Looking forward to the game, and looking forward to lighting this little lady up,” Pill says, still grinning and holding her arm, as if she were a child who might run away.

Genuinely nettled, Izzy looks up at him—Pill has at least six inches on her—and says, “The little lady might have something to say about that.”

Pill’s grin widens. “Ooh, this one’s feisty .”

Laughter from the reporters.

Izzy says, “What’s that on your head? Will you be wearing it in the game, when I strike you out?”

Pill’s grin freezes in place. Maybe too much , Izzy thinks. Or maybe fuck it. She doesn’t like being dragged.

Before Pill can reply, a woman in the front row stands up. Izzy recognizes her as Carrie Winton, who covers the crime beat for the local paper. She’s out of place covering fluff like this. Izzy already knows what’s coming.

“Detective Jaynes, can you update us concerning the so-called Surrogate Juror Murders? Is the murder of Fred Sinclair related?”

Chief Patmore steps between Izzy and George Pill. “That investigation is ongoing,” she says smoothly, “and you’ll be updated at the proper time. Just for one afternoon, let’s concentrate on something positive, shall we? Police and firemen, taking the field for charity! And let me tell you, these guys are ready to rumble.”

Winton is still on her feet, ignoring Patmore. “Do you have any leads, Detective Jaynes?”

She’s about to say she can’t comment, but then Buckeye Brandon sticks his oar in. “Should you be concentrating on a charity softball game while a killer is on the loose?”

Pill inserts himself. “I believe it’s time I led Officer Jaynes away. It’s her naptime.”

Lots of chuckles, and that ends it. The press corps head for the back table, where rookie cops and firemen are waiting to dispense rubbery supermarket shrimp and wine coolers (a two-drink limit). Izzy shakes off Pill’s grip and leaves by the door at the back of the podium, wanting to get back to 19 Court and change before her blue uniform shirt gets sweaty. Pill follows her, his movie-star grin gone.

“Hey. You. Girlfriend. I didn’t appreciate that crack about my hat. I was told to wear it.”

As I was told to wear my uniform , Izzy thinks. We all serve the big dogs . “I didn’t appreciate your last crack, either. About naptime.”

“Put it on your T.S. list and give it to the chaplain.” He takes the hat off and stares at it as if something important is written inside. “This hat was my father’s.”

“Good for him. As for you, put it on your T.S. list.”

“I heard your starting pitcher broke his hand in a stupid bar fight. You’re the sub.”

“So what? It’s a game . Don’t be a bonehead.”

He bends down to her, once again making her feel like a child. “We’re going to beat you like a drum. Little lady .”

She can’t believe this. “We were supposed to put on a show, and the show is over. It’s a charity game, not the World Fucking Series.”

“We’ll see.” With that, Pill walks away. Except it’s more like a strut.

Unbelievable , Izzy thinks, but by the time she’s changing in the locker room, she’s forgotten all about it.

Pill, it turns out, has not.

4

Holly and Corrie take a Lyft to Macbride Hall. Corrie chats with the book people from Prairie Lights and with the stage manager, specifying a handheld mic for Kate instead of a lav. She’s testing the sound—“ Check one, check two ”—while Holly examines the stage door, where they will enter and leave, and notes the other entry points.

She identifies herself to the Macbride’s Program Director, Liz Horgan, and asks if the audience will have to pass through security detectors. Horgan says no, but if people carrying bags refuse inspection, they will be denied entry. Holly isn’t delighted with that, but recognizes the limits of what she—and the venue—can do. She reminds herself again that if someone really wants to attack a visiting celebrity, nothing but luck, a hair-trigger response, or a combination of the two will keep it from happening.

Corrie remains at the venue. Holly takes another Lyft back to the hotel. Kate’s new suite is on the third floor. “It’s a comp,” she tells Holly. “What they call a holding room. At least it’s not a holding cell . Where are we going after the show? Corrie must have that arranged. She’s terrific.”

“A Holiday Inn,” Holly says.

Kate wrinkles her nose. “Needs must when the devil drives, I suppose. Shakespeare.”

“All’s Well That Ends Well.”

Kate laughs. “Not just a bodyguard, an English major.”

“No, I just read a lot of Shakespeare as a teenager.” Romeo and Juliet , for instance. Over and over.

“Let’s get some dinner,” Kate says. “That’s also on the house, so order something expensive. I’ll have fish. Anything else, I’m apt to burp and fart onstage.”

“Do you get nervous before your… before you go on?”

“It’s a show , Holly. You don’t have to be afraid to say it. No. Excited. Call me a partisan, I don’t mind. I try to hide zeal with humor. It’s stand-up, funny as I can make it, but deadly serious underneath. This isn’t the country I grew up in, it’s Funhouse America now. Don’t get me started on that shit. What about you? Are you nervous?”

“A little,” Holly admits. “Bodyguard work is new to me.”

“Well, you were fine when that alarm went off. I was something of a pisshead about it, wasn’t I?”

Holly doesn’t want to say yes or no, so she just seesaws her hand in the air.

Kate smiles. “Good in a crisis situation, knows Shakespeare, also diplomatic. A triple threat.” She hands over the room service menu. “Now what do you want?”

Holly orders a chicken club, knowing she won’t eat much of it. It’s almost time to start earning her keep.

5

By the time Trig gets back to work, the numbing agent Rothman used—Novocain or whatever has replaced it these days—is wearing off, and the socket where his molar used to be is throbbing. Rothman gave him a scrip for painkillers, and he stopped on the way back to pick them up. Only six tablets; they’ve gotten so stingy about that stuff.

Maisie asks how he feels. Trig tells her not so hot and she says, “Poor you .” Trig asks if there’s any biz he should attend to or calls he should return. She tells him there’s nothing she can’t deal with, just the current agenda he already knows about. She suggests he go home. Lie down. Maybe put an icepack on his cheek.

“I think I will,” he says. “Have a good night, Maisie.”

He doesn’t go home; he goes to Dingley Park.

There’s a small lot for park personnel near the rickety silo shape of the old Holman Hockey Rink. He parks there, starts to get out of his car, then rethinks and takes the .22 from the center console. He puts it in the pocket of his sportcoat.

I’m not going to do anything with it , he thinks. Which reminds him, perhaps inevitably, of his drinking days. Going into the Three-Ring on the way home from the office and telling himself he’ll only have a Coke. But this time I mean it .

Which makes the ghost of his father laugh.

The old rink is surrounded by pines and spruces. There are picnic benches and food wagons off to the right—Frankie’s Fabulous Fish, Taco Joe’s, Chicago Dogs they have all sorts of uses. Don’t stick your finger where you wouldn’t stick your dick. As a boy, Trig had encouraged these sermons, partly because they were interesting and mostly because when Daddy was talking, Daddy was happy. Hockey made him happy, especially when the players would drop their gloves on the ice and go at it— whap-whap-whap . Sometimes he would even put his arm around Trig and give him a careless hug. Trig , he’d say. My good old Trigger .

Sermons and instructional talks at the Holman Rink usually lasted eighteen minutes, no more, no less. That was the length of the breaks between periods.

Trig looks around, sees no one, and plants his fingernails beneath the keypad’s cover. He levers it up, pulls it off, and looks inside. Printed there is PC 9721. The PC stands for Plumber’s Code, but his father told him that was just a holdover from the old days. All kinds of service people—rink maintenance guys, electricians, the Zamboni operator—used the PC.

Trig puts the cover back on the keypad and pushes 9721. The yellow light turns green. He hears the locking bar clunk as it withdraws, and then he’s inside. Easy as pie. He crosses the lobby, where an abandoned popcorn machine stands guard over an empty snackbar. Yellowing paper posters of long-gone Buckeye Bullets hockey players hang on the walls.

He walks into the rink itself. The slowly disintegrating roof is split with blinding lines of light. Pigeons (Trig guesses they’re pigeons) flutter and swoop. Unlike the sturdy metal bleachers at the soccer and softball fields, the ones in here are wooden, sagging, splintery. Fit for ghosts like Trig’s daddy instead of people. The ice is long gone, of course. Creosoted boards, twenty-footers, crisscross cracked concrete, making tic-tac-toe patterns. Hardy weeds sprout from between many of them. There’s surprisingly little trash—no snack bags or busted crack vials, no discarded rubbers. The druggies have been kept out in the surrounding trees, at least so far.

Trig walks to what was once center ice. He drops to one knee and runs his hand over one of the boards—lightly, so he won’t pick up a splinter and add a throbbing palm to his throbbing mouth. He has no idea what these boards are doing in here. Maybe they’re supposed to discourage skateboarders, or somebody just wanted to get them out of the sun and rain, but he knows one thing: they’d burn fast and hot. The whole place would go up like a torch. And if certain innocent people were in here—some perhaps famous—they would also go up like torches.

I wouldn’t be able to put the names of the guilty ones in their hands , he thinks, because they’d be burned to cinders .

But then an idea strikes him, one so brilliant that he actually rocks back a little on his knee, as if from a sudden blow. Putting the names of the guilty in the hands of the innocent might not be necessary. There could be a better way. He could put their names in a place where everyone in the city would see them. All over the world , once the TV news crews descended.

I won’t be able to get all of them, anyway , he thinks, rising to his feet. That was too ambitious. A foolish dream. I can’t keep getting lucky. But I might be able to get most of them, including the guilty party. The one who most deserves to die.

“I have to make a plan,” Trig murmurs as he walks back along the crisscrossing boards. “Have to find a way to get them here. As many as possible.”

Why does it have to be here?

It just does, that’s all. He thinks about the eighteen-minute sermons, and the occasional rough hug from his dad. Beyond that

( Trig, my good old Trigger )

he won’t let himself go. Certainly not to his mother, who was gone .

“Shut up,” he says, loud enough to startle some of the pigeons into flight. “Just shut up.”

He crosses the abandoned snackbar and passes the ticket booth. Cracks the door and sees no one. A breeze rattles the posters in the lobby. Steps out and taps the Plumber’s Code, relocking the door. He starts down the weedy cement walk to his car, then changes his mind and decides to take a look at the practice happening at the softball field.

He’s halfway through the trees when a girl—dirty hair, hollow eyes, scrawny body, maybe twenty—approaches him.

“Hey, guy.”

“Hey.”

“You wouldn’t be holding, would you?”

Although he’s attended NA meetings as well as the AA ones—they all treat the same disease, that of addiction—the tidal pull of the jonesing addict never ceases to amaze him. This girl sees a man who, in his sportcoat and Farah slacks, looks more like a business guy (or a narc) than a user/pusher, but her need is so great that she still comes on to him. He thinks she’d probably ask an old geezer pushing a walker if he was holding.

Trig is about to say no, then changes his mind. She’s serving herself up on a platter, and if she dies, the only loser will be the rehab she’s undoubtedly heading for. He touches the gun in his pocket and says, “What are you looking for, sweetheart?”

Her previously dead eyes take on a spark. “What have you got? I got these.” She cups her breasts.

He thinks of the Baggies he’s seen in various gutters and alleyways just lately. “Would you possibly be interested in Queen’s Best?”

The spark kindles into a flame. “Good. Great. Yes. What do you want? Handjob? Blowjob? Maybe a little of both?”

“For the Queen,” Trig says, “I want to get with you. All the way.”

“Oh, man, I don’t know. How much do you have?”

“A cueball.” He knows the lingo; a cue is an eightball times two.

“Where?” She looks around dubiously. “Here?”

“In there.” He gestures at the Holman. “Privacy.”

“It’s locked, man.”

He lowers his voice, hoping he doesn’t look like a man contemplating a chick who is probably incubating half a dozen different diseases. “I have a secret code.”

After another look around to make sure they’re alone, he takes her by the hand and leads her back to the abandoned rink.

No flinching. Never flinch.

Later, the name he puts in her hand is Corinna Ashford.

6

When Kate walks onstage—no, struts —most of the audience rises to its feet, cheering and applauding. Standing in the shadows at stage left with Corrie, Holly gets goosebumps. She has learned courage and bravery because those things were required. They made her a better person, too, but at heart she’ll always be a fundamentally shy woman who often feels inadequate, unable to put any foot forward that isn’t the wrong foot, and she can’t comprehend how anyone can stride so confidently into the view of all those people. And not all of them are applauding. A contingent toward the back, wearing blue shirts that say LIFE AT CONCEPTION, are booing heartily.

Kate stands at center stage, sweeps off her ball cap, and makes a deep bow. Then she grabs the mic and gives it a baton-twirl.

“Woman Power!”

“Woman Power!”

“Woman Power, let me hear you, Iowa City!”

They shout it back at her, ecstatic. The Life at Conception folks are sitting with their arms crossed like sulky children.

A hand grasps Holly’s elbow.

“She’s something, isn’t she?” Corrie asks quietly.

“Yes,” Holly says. “She is.”

Especially because the woman who threw bleach at Corrie and dumped blood and guts all over her luggage could be in that audience right now. Armed. Not one of those in the blue shirts, either. Nor in a brown housekeeper’s dress. Someone who probably looks mild-mannered and interested. Applauding and cheering.

A woman, in other words, who might look like Holly herself.

Most of the crowd quiets. Not the Life at Conception cadre, however. As soon as the rest of the audience sits down, they leap to their feet and begin chanting, “ Abortion is murder! Abortion is murder! Abortion is murder! ”

Holly tenses and slides her hand into her purse. The majority of the crowd boos. There are cries of “Sit down and shut up!” A ragged chant of “Our bodies, our choice” gets going. Ushers are moving toward the blue shirts.

Kate raises her hands. She’s smiling. “Quiet, you libtards, you snowflakes. Rest easy. Ushers, stand down. Let them get it out of their systems.”

The Life at Conception people at first continue to chant, then realize they are being watched by the majority of the crowd the way monkeys in a zoo are watched when exhibiting some peculiar kind of activity—throwing feces at each other, perhaps. The chanting loses force, becomes ragged, fades… stops.

“There,” Kate says kindly. It’s the voice a parent uses when speaking to a child exhausted by their own tantrum. “You’ve said what you wanted to say. Stood up for what you believe in. That’s how we do it in this country. Now it’s my turn, all right? The turn of a woman who believes a raped child who turns up pregnant should have an option !”

A roar of applause. Corrie turns to Holly, and if Holly never saw a person with actual stars in her eyes, she’s seeing one now.

“It always gets me,” Corrie says. “ She always gets me. Sometimes she’s a pain in the ass, but when she gets onstage… you feel it, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“She means it. Every word. Top to heels. She means it.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ve got my fix.” Corrie laughs and wipes away a few tears. “I’ll be in the greenroom, making calls and getting ready for Davenport. You can find your way back to the green, can’t you?”

“Yes. Remember we’re not going out the stage door.”

Corrie flashes a thumbs-up. “From the South Hall, right. Luggage and vehicles stay at the Radisson. We’ll get them tomorrow.”

Another wave of applause from the auditorium as Kate makes her patented c’mon c’mon c’mon gesture, wiggling the fingers of both hands.

7

Chris is sitting in the third row, short blond hair neatly combed, dressed in a blue Oxford shirt and new bluejeans. He has no weapon. He thought there might be metal detectors, but that’s only one reason. He will die if necessary, but is hoping he and his sister can end the bitch and get away clean. There are plenty of stops left on McKay’s Tour of Death. Martyrdom is a last resort.

She’s magnetic, he has to admit that. No wonder the women around him are enthralled. No wonder that Pastor Jim of the Real Christ Holy Church calls her “the handmaiden of the antichrist.” But it was Andy Fallowes, Pastor Jim’s First Deacon and the church’s finance officer, who set Chris on his current course. Because, he said, Pastor Jim could only be seen talking the talk.

“It’s up to Christian patriots like us, Christopher, to walk the walk. Do you agree?”

He did, most heartily. So did Chrissy.

Onstage, Kate is telling them to pretend they’re in school. “Can you do that? Good! I want all the men in the audience to raise a hand. Come on, guys, pretend I’m the teacher you crushed on in the sixth grade.”

There’s a murmur of laughter. Men raise their hands, Chris among them.

“Now those men who’ve had an abortion, keep your hands up. Those who haven’t, put your hands down.”

Chris can hardly believe what he’s hearing. It’s as if she’s speaking directly to him.

“Do I see one amazing man out there?” Kate asks, shading her eyes. “The XY chromosome version of the Virgin Mary?”

Chris realizes his hand is still up. He lowers it to good-natured laughter, which sounds to him like jeers. He joins in because it’s protective coloration, but his mind is yammering and hammering, as he sometimes hammers his fists against the walls of the cheap motel rooms where he stays, which are all he deserves, hammering until someone shouts, “Shut up, goddammit, we’re trying to sleep here!”

Go ahead , he thinks now. Laugh at me. Laugh your fool heads off. Let’s see how much you laugh when I send your queen bitch to hell .

“Enough kidding around,” Kate’s saying. “Men don’t have abortions, we all know that, but who makes the laws in Iowa?”

And with that, she’s off.

8

Izzy works late that night, catching up on her other cases. At times like this, when most of the other carrels are empty and even Lew Warwick’s office is dark, she thinks that maybe she should take Holly up on her offer to join Finders Keepers. There would still be paperwork, but she might not have to endure dog-and-pony shows like this afternoon’s press conference and the odious George Pill.

Her cell phone rings. The screen says 911 .

“Jaynes.”

“Izzy, this is Patti downstairs. I just got a call from someone who says he’s your serial. He wanted your extension if you were here. I gave—”

Izzy’s desk phone lights up.

“Trace it, trace it,” she tells Patti, and ends the call. She picks up her landline. “Hello, this is Detective Jaynes. To whom am I speaking?”

When Izzy was in her first year as a detective, Bill Hodges told her she’d be amazed how often that question can surprise a name out of someone.

Not this time.

“Bill Wilson.” The name has been withheld from the press. “Give me your cell number, Detective Jaynes. I want to send you a picture.”

“What kind of a—”

“I know how you people play for time. If you want the picture, give me your number. If you don’t, I’ll hang up and send it to Buckeye Brandon.”

Her caller is an adult male with no accent, at least that she can pick up. A linguistic expert who listens to the tape may be able to hear one. Izzy gives him her number. Next time he calls—if there is a next time—she’ll record it.

“Thank you. I’m sending the picture because I want you to see the name of another person who aided and abetted in the killing of Alan Duffrey. Goodbye.”

And just like that, he’s gone, but seconds later her phone bings with a text. She opens it and sees a woman’s hand in extreme close-up. Everything in the background is gray. Possibly concrete. A sidewalk, maybe?

In the woman’s hand, printed in block letters, is the name Corinna Ashford. In the Alan Duffrey trial, she was Juror 7.

9

Trig ends the call on the burner he’s used (there are three more in the tool-and-spare compartment of his Toyota). He doesn’t bother to pull the SIM card. Let them trace the location if they can. He’s in the parking lot of the Mingo Auditorium, where this Friday night’s event is a custom car show with a country group called the Ruff Ryders as an added attraction. The main lot is full of cars, many bearing stickers like THINK TWICE BECAUSE I WON’T and GIRLS LIKE GUNS TOO.

Trig takes the phone to a nearby trash barrel, wipes it down, drops it in, goes back to his car, drives away. They might or might not find the phone (the Saturday morning trash haulers may take it away). Even if they don’t, they can use the International Mobile Equipment Identity—the phone’s fingerprint—to trace the text he sent Jaynes to the phone’s point of purchase, which happened to be a convenience store in Wheeling, West Virginia. Bought for cash over two months ago. If security footage from that long ago still exists—doubtful—it will show a Caucasian male of medium height wearing a Denver Broncos gimme cap and Foster Grant sunglasses.

Trig thinks he’s got the situation covered but knows he may have forgotten something. The way he forgot the hitchhiker’s sign, for instance. Which is still in the trunk. He may be a serial killer (he has come a long way toward accepting the appellation, if not welcoming it), but he does not have a God complex. If he keeps going—and he intends to—they will catch him eventually.

Talking to the 911 operator, then to Jaynes, was risky. Sending the picture to Jaynes was even riskier, but he can’t bear to let the druggie girl go to waste. That would be murder for the sake of murder, and he hopes he hasn’t sunk to that level. They must know she was murdered in the name of Corinna Ashford. Ashford must know.

He could have told Jaynes the location, but then the Holman would become a crime scene, and he wants to save it for what he’s now thinking of as the grand finale. Of course the druggie girl’s body may be found anyway, he knows that. It depends partly on whether any maintenance people have reason to visit the Holman Rink over the next week or so. He doesn’t think they will. The building is condemned, after all. But city workers aren’t the only reason the body might be found. Just because few if any drug users have gained access to the building so far doesn’t mean they won’t get in at some future point. Surely Trig isn’t the only person who’s wise to the Plumber’s Code trick. For all he knows, users have already been in the rink, and just picked up after themselves—who says all druggies are slobs? It’s possible a fiend might not report the body, but it’s more likely he or she would make an anonymous call (probably after searching the corpse for drugs or money).

Another possibility: Depending on how hot the following week is, someone may smell decomp and send one of the park workers to investigate. That would be a shame because he wants to use the rink again. If the body is discovered, he’ll have to revise his thinking. As the wise men of the ages have all agreed, shit happens.

10

Holly gets them out the South Hall of the Macbride as soon as Kate’s gig ends, leaving the autograph seekers empty-handed at the stage door. (She discovers later it won’t always be that easy.) The bookstore has provided a sedan. Kate, floating on a post-performance high, doesn’t even complain about going to a Holiday Inn.

“It was good tonight, wasn’t it?” she asks.

Corrie says it was very good and Holly says the same, but once Kate really got rolling, Holly didn’t have a chance to appreciate the woman’s wit and outrage. Her clarity. She would have relished those things as a member of the audience. But she’s not here to relish and appreciate.

She gives Corrie several photographs, screengrabs she asked the stage manager to provide her. They are from the audience cams and show the first three rows of the center section. Due to the stage lights, the faces are quite clear and turned up to look at Kate. “Do you see anyone who looks like the woman who attacked you in Reno?”

Corrie goes through them and shakes her head. “It all happened so fast. And it was raining. I can’t say she’s not in one of these and can’t say she is.”

Holly takes the pictures back. “It was a long shot.”

Kate is paying no attention. “You thought it was good, right? Tell the truth.”

Corrie assures her again that it was good. Holly checks behind them—it’s the fourth or fifth time—for follow cars, but now that it’s dark, who can tell? They’re just shapes behind headlights. She’s got a headache, small but nagging, and needs to pee. She reminds herself—also for the fourth or fifth time—that if another potential bodyguarding job comes along, to think twice.

Her dead mother sometimes speaks up in Holly’s head, usually at the most inopportune times. Like now.

If Kate McKay is killed on your watch, you won’t have to worry about any of that, will you? And then, with her old longsuffering sigh: Oh, Holly.