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rich, orchard-filled valley off Highway 68. Much of the area around Salinas was flat, low farmland, but you didn’t have to go far to get into trees. And nearby too was the rugged Castle Rock area, whose cliffs, bluffs and trees would be excellent hiding places.
    Sandoval said, “If Pell’s partner didn’t drive the getaway wheels, where is he ?”
    TJ offered, “Rendezvous point somewhere?”
    “Or staying around,” Dance said, nodding out the window.
    “What?” the prosecutor asked. “Why’d he do that?”
    “To find out how we’re running the case, what we know. What we don’t know.”
    “That sounds a little . . . elaborate, don’t you think?”
    TJ laughed, pointing toward the smoldering cars. “I’d say that’s a pretty good word for this whole shebang.”
    O’Neil suggested, “Or maybe he wants to slow us up.”
    Dance said, “That makes sense too. Pell and his partner don’t know we’re on to the truck. For all they know we still think he’s in the area. The partner could make it look like Pell’s nearby. Maybe take a shot at somebody up the street, maybe even set off another device.”
    “Shit. Another firebomb?” Sandoval grimaced.
    Dance called the security chief and told him there was a possibility the partner was still around and could be a threat.
    But, as it turned out, they had no time to speculate about whether or not the partner was nearby. The plan about the Worldwide Express trucks had paid off. A radio call to O’Neil from MCSO dispatch reported that two local police officers had found Daniel Pell and were presently in pursuit.
    •    •    •
    The dark green delivery truck kicked up a rooster tail of dust on the small road.
    The uniformed officer who was driving the Salinas Police squad car, a former jarhead back from the war, gripped the wheel of the cruiser as if he were holding on to the rudder of a ten-foot skiff in twelve-foot seas.
    His partner—a muscular Latino—gripped the dashboard in one hand and the microphone in the other. “Salinas Police Mobile Seven. We’re still with him. He turned onto a dirt road off Natividad about a mile south of Old Stage.”
    “Roger . . . Central to Seven, be advised, subject is probably armed and dangerous.”
    “If he’s armed, of course he’s dangerous,” the driver said and lost his sunglasses when the car caught air after a run-in with a massive bump. The two officers could hardly see the road ahead; the Worldwide truck was churning up dust like a sandstorm.
    “Central to Seven, we’ve got all available units en route.”
    “Roger that.”
    Backup was a good idea. The rumors were that Daniel Pell, the crazed cult leader, this era’s Charles Manson, had gunned down a dozen people at the courthouse, had set fire to a bus filled with schoolchildren, had slashed his way through a crowd of prospective jurors, killing four. Or two. Or eight. Whatever the truth, the officers wanted as much help as they could get.
    The jarhead muttered, “Where’s he going? There’s nothing up here.”
    The road was used mostly for farm equipment and buses transporting migrant workers to and from the fields. It led to no major highways. There was no picking going on today but the road’s purpose, and the fact it probably led to no major highways, could be deduced from its decrepit condition and from the drinking water tanks and the portable toilets on trailers by the roadside.
    But Daniel Pell might not know that and would assume this was a road like any other. Rather than one that ended, as this did, abruptly in the middle of an artichoke field. Ahead of them, thirty yards or so, Pell braked fast in panic and the truck began to skid. But there was no way to stop in time. The truck’s front wheels dropped hard into a shallow irrigation ditch, and the rear end lifted off the ground, then slammed back with a huge crash.
    The squad car braked to a stop nearby. “This is Seven,” the Latino cop called in. “Pell’s off