Solitude Creek by Jeffery Deaver Read Free Book Online Page A

shockingly fast a group of relaxed folks in a concert snapped and turned into wild animals, their minds possessed by panic.
    She examined the oil drum where the fire had started. It was about twenty feet from the back of the roadhouse, near the air-conditioning unit. Inside, as Holly had described, were ash and bits of half-burned trash.
    Dance then turned to what would be the crux of the county’s investigation: the truck blocking the doors. The cab was a red Peterbilt, an older model, battered and decorated with bug dots, white and yellow and green. The trailer it hauled was about thirty feet long and, with the tractor, it effectively blocked all three emergency-exit doors. The right front fender rested an inch from the wall of the Solitude Creek club; the rear right end of the trailer was about ten inches away. The angle allowed two exit doors to open a bit but not enough for anyone to get out. On the ground beside one door Dance could see smears of blood. Perhaps that was where the pretty girl’s arm had been sheared off.
    She tried to get an idea of how the truck had ended up there. The club and the warehouse shared a parking lot, though signs clearly marked which areas were for patrons of Solitude Creek and which for the trucks and employees of Henderson Jobbing. Red signs warned about ‘towing at owner’s expense’ but seemed a lethargic threat, so faded and rusty were they.
    No, it didn’t make any sense for the driver to leave the truck there. The portion of the parking space where the tractors and trailers rested was half full; there was plenty of room for the driver to park the rig anywhere in that area. Why here?
    More likely the vehicle had rolled and come to rest where it had; the warehouse, to the south of the club, was a higher elevation and the lot sloped downward to here, where it leveled out. The heavy truck had got as far as the side wall and slowed to a stop.
    Dance walked to the warehouse now, a hundred feet away, where the office door was marked with a handmade sign: ‘Closed’. The people she’d seen moments ago were now gone.
    She gripped the knob and pulled. Locked – though lights were visible inside through a tear in a window shade, and she could see movement.
    A loud rap on the glass. ‘Bureau of Investigation. Please open the door.’
    Nothing.
    Another rap, harder.
    The shade moved aside; a middle-aged man, unruly brown hair, glared at her. His eyes scanned her ID and he let her in.
    The lobby was what one would expect of a mid-size transport company squatting off a secondary highway. Scuffed, functional, filled with Sears and Office Depot furniture, black and chrome and gray. Scheduling boards, posted government regulations. Lots of paper. The smell of diesel fumes or grease was prominent.
    Dance introduced herself. The man, Henderson, was the owner. A woman, who appeared to be an assistant or secretary, and two other men, in work clothing, gazed at her uneasily. Bob Holly had said the truck’s driver was coming in: was he one of these men?
    She asked but was told, no, Billy hadn’t arrived yet. She then asked if the warehouse had been open at the time of the incident.
    The owner said quickly, ‘We have rules. You can see them there.’
    A sign on the wall nearby reminded, with the inexplicable capitalization of corporate culture:
     
    Remember your Passports for International trips!
     
    The sign he was referring to was beneath it:
     
    Set your Brake and leave your Rig in gear!
     
    Interrogators are always alert to subjects answering questions they haven’t been asked. Nothing illustrates what’s been going on in their minds better than that.
    She’d get to the matter of brakes and gears in a moment. ‘Yessir, but about the hours?’
    ‘We close at five. We’re open seven to five.’
    ‘But trucks arrive later, right? Sometimes?’
    ‘That rig came in at seven.’ He looked at a sheet of paper – which of course he’d found and memorized the minute he’d heard about