Triple Threat

warehouse area three or four hundred yards away, just as backup arrived. There was a brief exchange of gunfire and the second perp, wounded, was collared, too. Several CHP officers and a colleague of Dance’s at the CBI, TJ Scanlon, were at that scene.
    Now, at the outlet mall, the perp who’d been tackled, one Wayne Keplar, regarded Dance, Stemple and O’Neil and the growing entourage of law enforcers.
    “Nice day for an event,” Keplar said. He was a lean man, skinny, you could say. Parentheses of creases surrounded his mouth and his dark, narrow-set eyes hid beneath a severely straight fringe of black hair. A hook nose. Long arms, big hands, but he didn’t appear particularly strong.
    Albert Stemple, whose every muscle seemed to be massive, stood nearby and eyed the perp carefully, ready to step on the bug if need be. O’Neil took a radio call. He stepped away.
    Keplar repeated, “Event. Event… Could describe a game, you know.” He spoke in an oddly high voice, which Dance found irritating. Probably not the tone, more the smirk with which the words were delivered. “Or could be a tragedy. Like they’d call an earthquake or a nuclear meltdown an ‘event.’ The press, I mean. They love words like that.”
    O’Neil motioned Dance aside. “That was Oakland PD. The CI’s reporting that Keplar’s pretty senior in the Brothers of Liberty. The other guy—the wounded one…” He nodded toward the warehouses. “Gabe Paulson, he’s technical. At least has some schooling in engineering. If it’s a bomb, he’s probably the one set it up.”
    “They think that’s what it is?”
    “No intelligence about the means,” O’Neil explained. “On their website they’ve talked about doing anything and everything to make their point. Bio, chemical, snipers, even hooking up with some Islamic extremist group and doing a quote ‘joint venture.’ ”
    Dance’s mouth tightened. “We supply the explosives, you supply the suicide bomber?”
    “That pretty much describes it.”
    Her eyes took in Keplar, sitting on the curb, and she noted that he was relaxed, even jovial. Dance, whose position with the CBI trumped the other law enforcers, approached him and regarded the lean man calmly. “We understand you’re planning an attack of some sort—”
    “Event,” he reminded.
    “--event, then, in two and a half hours. Is that true?”
    “ ’Deed it is.”
    “Well, right now, the only crimes you’ll be charged with are traffic. At the worst, we could get you for conspiracy and attempt, several different counts. If that event occurs and people lose their lives—”
    “The charges’ll be a
lot
more serious,” he said jovially. “Let me ask you—what’s your name?”
    “Agent Dance. CBI.” She proffered her ID.
    He smacked his lips. As irritating as his weasely voice. “Agent Dance, of the CBI, let me ask you, don’t you think we have a few too many laws in this country? My goodness, Moses gave us
ten
. Things seemed to work pretty well back then and now we’ve got Washington and Sacramento telling us what to do, what not to do. Every little detail. Honestly! They don’t have faith in our good, smart selves.”
    “Mr. Keplar—”
    “Call me ‘Wayne,’ please.” He looked her over appraisingly. Which cut of meat looks good today. “I’ll call you Kathryn.”
    She noted that he’d memorized her name from the perusal of the ID. While Dance, as an attractive woman, was frequently undressed in the imaginations of the suspects she interviewed, Keplar’s gaze suggested he was pitying her, as if she were afflicted with a disease. In her case, she guessed, the disease was the tumor of government and racial tolerance.
    Dance noted the impervious smile on his face, his air of…. what? Yes, almost triumph. He didn’t appear at all concerned he’d been arrested.
    Glancing at her watch: 1:37.
    Dance stepped away to take a call from TJ Scanlon, updating her on the status of Gabe Paulson, the other perp. She was talking to him when O’Neil tapped her shoulder. She followed his gaze.
    Three black SUVs, dusty and dinged but imposing, sped into the parking lot and squealed to a halt, red and blue lights flashing. A half dozen men in suits climbed out, two others in tactical gear.
    The largest of the men who were Brooks Brothers-clad—six two and two hundred pounds—brushed his thick graying hair back and strode forward.
    “Michael, Kathryn.”
    “Hi, Steve.”
    Stephen Nichols was the head of the