Roadside Crosses

Chapter 17

At 8:00 in the morning, Kathryn Dance walked into her office and smiled to see Jon Boling, in too-large latex gloves, tapping on the keyboard of Travis's computer.

"I know what I'm doing. I watch NCIS." He grinned. "I like it better than CSI."

"Hey, boss, we need a TV show about us," TJ said from a table he'd dragged into the corner, his workstation for his search for the origins of the eerie mask from the Kelley Morgan scene.

"I like that." Boling picked up on the joke. "A show about kinesics, sure. You could call it The Body Reader. Can I be a special guest star?"

Though she was hardly in a humorous mood, Dance laughed.

TJ said, "I get to be the handsome young sidekick who's always flirting with the gorgeous girl agents. Can we hire some gorgeous girl agents, boss? Not that you aren't. But you know what I mean."

"How're we doing?"

Boling explained that the supercomputer linked to Travis's hadn't had any luck cracking the boy's pass code.

One hour, or three hundred years.

"Nothing to do but keep waiting." He pulled off the gloves and returned to tracking down the identities of posters who might be at risk.

"And, Rey?" Dance glanced at quiet Rey Carraneo, who still was going through the many pages of notes and sketches they'd found in Travis's bedroom.

"Lot of gobbledygook, ma'am," Carraneo said, the Anglo word very stiff in a Latino mouth. "Languages I don't recognize, numbers, doodles, spaceships, trees with faces in them, aliens. And pictures of bodies cut open, hearts and organs. Kid's pretty messed up."

"Any places at all he's mentioned?"

"Sure," the agent said. "They just don't seem to be on earth."

"Here are some more names." Boling handed her a sheet of paper with another six names and addresses of posters.

Dance looked up the phone numbers in the state database and called to warn them that Travis presented a threat.

It was then that her computer pinged with an incoming email. She read it, surprised to see the sender. Michael O'Neil. He must've been real busy; he rarely sent her messages, preferring to talk to her in person.

K- Hate to say, but the container situation is heating up big time. TSA and Homeland Sec. are getting worried. I'll still help you out on the Travis Brigham case-ride herd on forensics and drop in when I can-but this one'll take up most of my time. Sorry. -M

The case involving the shipping container from Indonesia. Apparently he couldn't put it on hold any longer. Dance was fiercely disappointed. Why now? She sighed in frustration. A twinge of loneliness too. She realized that between the Los Angeles homicide case against J. Doe and the roadside crosses situation, she and O'Neil had seen each other almost daily for the past week. That was more, on average, than she'd seen her husband.

She really wanted his expertise in the pursuit of Travis Brigham. And she wasn't ashamed to admit that she simply wanted his company too. Funny how just talking, sharing thoughts and speculations was such an elixir. But his case was clearly important and that was enough for her. She typed a fast reply.

Good luck, miss you.

Backspaced, deleting the final two words and the punctuation. She rewrote:

Good luck. Stay in touch.

Then he was gone from her mind.

Dance had a small TV in the office. It was on now and she happened to glance at it. She blinked in shock. On the screen at the moment was a wooden cross.

Did it have to do with the case? Had they found another one?

Then the camera panned on and settled on the Reverend R. Samuel Fisk. It was a report on the euthanasia protest-which now, she realized with a sinking heart, had shifted to focus on her mother. The cross was in the hand of a protester.

She turned up the volume. A reporter was asking Fisk if he'd actually called for the murder of abortion doctors, as The Chilton Report had said. With eyes that struck her as icy and calculating, the man of the cloth gazed back at the camera and said that his words had been twisted by the liberal media.

She recalled the Fisk quotation in The Report. She couldn't think of a clearer call to murder. She'd be curious to see if Chilton posted a follow-up.

She muted the set. She and the CBI had their own problems with the media. Through leaks, scanners and that magical way the press learns details about cases, the story about the crosses as prelude to murder and that a teenage student was the suspect, had gone public. Calls about the "Mask Killer," the "Social Network Killer," the "Roadside Cross Killer" were now flooding the CBI lines (despite the fact that Travis hadn't managed actually to kill the two intended victims-and that no social networking sites were directly involved).

The calls kept coming in. Even the media-hungry head of the CBI was, as TJ cleverly and carelessly put it, "Overbywhelmed."

Kathryn Dance spun around in her chair and gazed out the window at a gnarled trunk that had started as two trees and had grown, through pressure and accommodation, into one, stronger than either alone. An impressive knot was visible just outside the window and she often rested her eyes on it, a form of meditation.

Now she had no time for reflection. She called Peter Bennington, at MCSO forensics, about the scenes at the second cross and Kelley Morgan's house.

The roses left with the second cross were bound with the same type of rubber bands used by the deli near where Travis used to work but they revealed no trace that was helpful. The fiber that Michael O'Neil had gotten from the gray hooded sweatshirt in the Brighams' laundry basket was indeed almost identical to the fiber found near the second cross, and the tiny scrap of brown paper from the woods Ken Pfister had pointed out was most likely from an M &M package-candy that she knew Travis bought. The grain trace from the scene was associated with that used in oat-bran bagels at Bagel Express. At Kelley Morgan's house, the boy had shed no trace or physical evidence except a bit of red rose petal that matched the bouquet with cross number two.

The mask was homemade, but the paste and paper and ink used in its construction were generic and unsourceable.

The gas that had been used in the attempt to murder Kelley Morgan was chlorine-the same that had been used in World War I to such devastating effect. Dance told Bennington, "There's a report he got it from a neo-Nazi site." She explained about what she'd learned from Caitlin's friend.

The crime lab boss chuckled. "Doubt it. It was probably from somebody's kitchen."

"What?"

"He used household cleaners." The deputy explained that a few simple substances could make the gas; they were available in any grocery or convenience store. "But we didn't find any containers or anything that would let us determine the source."

Nothing at the scene or nearby had given them clues as to where the boy might be hiding out.

"And David stopped by your house a little bit ago."

Dance hesitated, not sure whom he was speaking of. "David?"

"Reinhold. He works in the CS Unit."

Oh, the young, eager deputy.

"He collected the branches left in your backyard. But we still can't tell if they were left intentionally or it was a coincidence. No other trace, he said."

"He got up early. I left the house at seven."

Bennington laughed. "Just two months ago he was writing speeding tickets with the Highway Patrol and now I think he's got his eye on my job."

Dance thanked the Crime Scene head and disconnected.

Stung with frustration, Dance found herself looking at the photo of the mask. It was just plain awful-cruel and unsettling. She picked up her phone and called the hospital. Identified herself. She asked about Kelley Morgan's condition. It was unchanged, a nurse told her. Still in a coma. She'd probably live, but none of the staff was willing to speculate about whether she'd return to consciousness-or, if so, whether she'd regain a normal life.

Sighing, Kathryn Dance hung up.

And got angry.

She swept the phone up again, found a number in her notebook and, with a heavy finger, punched the keypad hard.

TJ, nearby, watched the stabbing. He tapped Jon Boling on the arm and whispered, "Uh-oh."

James Chilton answered on the third ring.

"This is Kathryn Dance, the Bureau of Investigation."

A brief pause. Chilton would be recalling meeting her…and wondering why she was contacting him again. "Agent Dance. Yes. I heard there was another incident."

"That's right. Why I'm calling, Mr. Chilton. The only way we were able to save the victim-a high school girl-was by tracing her screen name. It took a long time, and a lot of people, to find out who she was and where she lived. We got to her house about a half hour before she died. We saved her but she's in a coma and might not recover."

"I'm so sorry."

"And it looks like the attacks are going to continue." She explained about the stolen bouquets.

"Twelve of them?" His voice registered dismay.

"He's not going to stop until he's killed everybody who's attacked him in your blog. I'm going to ask you again, will you please give us the Internet addresses of the people who've posted?"

"No."

Goddammit. Dance shivered in rage.

"Because if I did, it would be a breach of trust. I can't betray my readers."

That again. She muttered, "Listen to me-"

"Please, Agent Dance, just hear me out. But what I will do…write this down. My hosting platform is Central California Internet Services. They're in San Jose." He gave her the address and phone number, as well as a personal contact. "I'll call them right now and tell them I won't object to their giving you the addresses of everybody who's posted. If they want a warrant, that's their business, but I won't fight it."

She paused. She wasn't sure of the technical implications but she thought he'd just agreed to what she'd asked for, while saving some journalistic face.

"Well…thank you."

They hung up and Dance called to Boling, "I think we can get the IP addresses."

"What?"

"Chilton's had a change of heart."

"Sweet," he said, smiling, and seemed like a boy who'd just been told his father'd gotten tickets to a play-off game.

Dance gave it a few minutes and called the hosting company. She was skeptical both that Chilton had called and the service itself would give up the information without a court battle. But to her surprise the representative she spoke with said, "Oh, Mr. Chilton just called. I've got the IP addresses of the posters. I've okayed forwarding them to a dot-gov location."

She smiled broadly, and gave the hosting employee her email address.

"They're on their way. I'll go back to the blog every few hours or so and get the addresses of the new posters."

"You're a lifesaver…literally."

The man said grimly, "This is about that boy who's getting even with people, right? The Satanist? Is it true they found biological weapons in his locker?"

Brother, Dance thought. The rumors were spreading faster than the Mission Hills fire a few years ago.

"We're not sure what's happening at this point." Always noncommittal.

They disconnected. And a few minutes later her computer dinged with incoming mail.

"Got it," Dance said to Boling. He rose and walked behind her, put his hand on her chair back, leaning forward. She smelled subtle aftershave. Pleasant.

"Okay. Good. Of course, you know those are the raw computer addresses. We've got to contact all the providers and find out names and physical addresses. I'll get right on it."

She printed out the list-it contained about thirty individuals' names-and handed it to him. He disappeared back into his corner of the lair and hunkered down in front of his computer.

"May have something, boss." TJ had been posting pictures of the mask on the Web and in blogs and asking if anybody knew its source. He ran his hand through his curly red hair. "Pat me on the back."

"What's the story?"

"The mask is of some character in a computer game." A glance at the mask. "Qetzal."

"What?"

"That's his name. Or its name. A demon who kills people with these beams from its eyes. And it can only moan because somebody laced up the lips."

Dance asked, "So it's getting even with people who have the ability to communicate."

"Didn't really run a Dr. Phil on him, boss," TJ said.

"Fair enough." She smiled.

"The game," TJ continued, "is DimensionQuest."

"It's a Morpeg," Boling announced, without looking up from his own computer.

"What's that?"

"DimensionQuest is an M-M-O-R-P-G-massively multiplayer online role-playing game. I call them 'Morpegs.' And DQ is one of the most popular."

"Helpful to us?"

"I don't know yet. We'll see when we get into Travis's computer."

Dance liked the professor's confidence. "When," not "if." She sat back, pulled out her cell phone and called her mother. Still no answer.

Finally she tried her father.

"Hey, Katie."

"Dad. How's Mom? She never called me."

"Oh." A hesitation. "She's upset, of course. I think she's just not in the mood to talk to anybody."

Dance wondered how long her mother's conversation had been with Dance's sister, Betsey, last night.

"Has Sheedy said anything else?"

"No. He's doing some research, he said."

"Dad, Mom didn't say anything, did she? When she was arrested?"

"To the police?"

"Or to Harper, the prosecutor?"

"No."

"Good."

She felt an urge to ask him to put her mother on the phone. But she didn't want the rejection if she said no. Dance said brightly, "You are coming over for dinner tonight? Right?"

He assured her they would, though his tone really meant that they'd try.

"I love you, Dad. Tell Mom too."

"Bye, Katie."

They hung up. Dance stared at the phone for a few minutes. Then she strode up the hall and into her boss's office, entering without knocking.

Overby was just hanging up. He nodded at the phone. "Kathryn, any leads in the Morgan girl's attack? Something about biochemicals? News Nine called."

She closed the door. Overby eyed her uneasily.

"No biological weapons, Charles. It was just rumors."

Dance ran through the leads: the mask, the state vehicle, Caitlin Gardner's report that Travis liked the seashore, the household chemicals. "And Chilton's cooperating. He gave the Internet addresses of the posters."

"That's good." Overby's phone rang. He glanced at it but let his assistant pick up.

"Charles, did you know my mother was going to be arrested?"

He blinked. "I…no, of course not."

"What'd Harper tell you?"

"That he was checking the caseloads." Starch in his words. Defensive. "What I said yesterday."

She couldn't tell if he was lying. And she understood why: Dance was breaking the oldest rule in kinesic interrogation. She was being emotional. When that happened, all her skills fell by the wayside. She had no idea if her boss had betrayed her or not.

"He was looking through our files to see if I'd altered anything about the Millar situation."

"Oh, I doubt that."

The tension in the room hummed.

Then it vanished, as Overby gave a reassuring smile. "Ah, you're worrying too much, Kathryn. There'll be an investigation, and the case will all go away. You don't have a thing to worry about."

Did he know something? Eagerly, she asked, "Why do you say that, Charles?"

He looked surprised. "Because she's innocent, of course. Your mother'd never hurt anyone. You know that."

DANCE RETURNED TO the Gals' Wing, to the office of her fellow agent Connie Ramirez. The short, voluptuous Latina, with black, black hair always sprayed meticulously in place, was the most decorated agent in the regional office and one of the most recognized in the entire CBI. The forty-year-old agent had been offered executive positions with CBI headquarters in Sacramento-the FBI had sought her out too-but her family had come out of the local lettuce and artichoke fields and nothing was going to displace her from blood. The agent's desk was the antithesis of Dance's-organized and tidy. Framed citations hung on the walls but the biggest photos were of her children, three strapping boys, and Ramirez and her husband.

"Hey, Con."

"How's your mom doing?"

"You can imagine."

"This's such nonsense," she said with a faint trace of a melodious accent.

"Actually, why I'm here. Need a favor. A big one."

"Whatever I can do, you know that."

"I've got Sheedy on board."

"Ah, the cop-buster."

"But I don't want to wait for discovery to get some of the details. I asked Henry for the hospital's visitor sheets the day Juan died but he's stonewalling."

"What? Henry? You're his friend."

"Harper's got him scared."

Ramirez nodded knowingly. "You want me to try?"

"If you can."

"You bet, I'll get over there as soon as I finish interviewing this witness." She tapped a folder for a big drug case she was running.

"You're the best."

The Latina agent grew solemn. "I know how I'd feel if it was my mother. I'd go down there and rip Harper's throat out."

Dance gave a wan smile at the petite woman's declaration. As she headed for her office, her phone trilled. She glanced at "Sheriff's Office" on Caller ID, hoping it was O'Neil.

It wasn't.

"Agent Dance." The deputy identified himself. "Have to tell you. CHP called in. I've got some bad news."

Chapter 18

James Chilton was taking a break from ridding the world of corruption and depravity.

He was helping a friend move.

After the call from the MCSO, Kathryn Dance had rung up Chilton at his home and been directed by Patrizia to this modest, beige California ranch house on the outskirts of Monterey. Dance parked near a large U-Haul truck, plucked the iPod ear buds out and climbed from her car.

In jeans and a T-shirt, sweating, Chilton was wrangling a large armchair up the stairs and into the house. A man with corporate-trimmed hair and wearing shorts and a sweat-limp polo shirt was carting a stack of boxes behind the blogger. A Realtor's sign in the front yard diagonally reported, SOLD.

Chilton came out the front door and walked two steps to the gravel path, bordered by small boulders and potted plants. He joined Dance, wiped his forehead and, being so sweaty and streaked with dust and dirt, nodded in lieu of shaking her hand. "Pat called. You wanted to see me, Agent Dance? Is this about the Internet addresses?"

"No. We've got them. Thanks. This is something else."

The other man joined them, fixing Dance with a pleasant, curious gaze.

Chilton introduced them. The man was Donald Hawken.

Familiar. Then Dance recalled: The name appeared in Chilton's blog-in "On the Home Front," the personal section, she believed. Not one of the controversial posts. Hawken was returning to Monterey from San Diego.

"Moving day, it looks like," she said.

Chilton explained, "Agent Dance is investigating that case involving the posts on The Report."

Hawken, tanned and toned, frowned sympathetically. "And I understand there was another girl attacked. We were listening to the news."

Dance remained circumspect as always about giving away information, even to concerned citizens.

The blogger explained that the Chiltons and Hawken and his first wife had been close friends a few years ago. The women had hosted dinner parties, the men had golfed regularly-at the anemic Pacific Grove course and, on flush days, at Pebble Beach. About three years ago the Hawkens had moved to San Diego, but he had recently remarried, was selling his company and coming back here.

"Could I talk to you for a minute?" Dance asked Chilton.

As Hawken returned to the U-Haul, the blogger and Dance walked to her Crown Vic. He cocked his head and waited, breathing hard from lugging the furniture into the house.

"I just got a call from the sheriff's office. The Highway Patrol found another cross. With today's date on it."

His face fell. "Oh, no. And the boy?"

"No idea of his whereabouts. He's disappeared. And it looks like he's armed."

"I heard on the news," Chilton said, grimacing. "How'd he get a gun?"

"Stole it from his father."

Chilton's face tightened angrily. "Those Second Amendment people…I took them on last year. I've never had so many death threats in my life."

Dance got to the crux of her mission. "Mr. Chilton, I want you to suspend your blog."

"What?"

"Until we catch him."

Chilton laughed. "That's absurd."

"Have you read the postings?"

"It's my blog. Of course I read them."

"The posters are getting even more vicious. Don't give Travis any more fodder."

"Absolutely not. I'm not going to be cowed into silence."

"But Travis is getting the names of victims from the blog. He's reading up on them, finding their deepest fears, their vulnerabilities. He's tracking down where they live."

"People shouldn't be writing about themselves on public Internet pages. I did a whole blog about that too."

"Be that as it may, they are posting." Dance tried to control her frustration. "Please, work with us."

"I have been working with you. That's as far as I'm willing to go."

"What can it hurt to take it down for a few days?"

"And if you don't find him by then?"

"Put it up again."

"Or you come to me and say a few more, then a few more."

"At least stop taking posts on that thread. He won't get any more names he can target as victims. It'll make our job easier."

"Repression never leads to anything good," he muttered, staring right into her eyes. The missionary was back.

Kathryn Dance gave up on the Jon Boling strategy to coddle Chilton's ego. She snapped angrily, "You're making these bullshit grand pronouncements. 'Freedom.' 'Truth.' 'Repression.' This boy is trying to kill people. Jesus Christ, look at it for what it is. Take the damn politics out of it."

Chilton calmly replied, "My job is to keep an open forum for public opinion. That's the First Amendment… I know, you're going to remind me that you were a reporter too and you cooperated if the police wanted some help. But, see, that's the difference. You were beholden to big money, to the advertisers, to whoever's pocket your bosses were in. I'm not beholden to anybody."

"I'm not asking you to stop reporting on the crimes. Write away to your heart's content. Just don't accept any more posts. Nobody's adding facts, anyway. These people are just venting. And half of what they say is just plain wrong. It's rumors, speculation. Rants."

"And their thoughts aren't valid?" he asked, but not angrily; in fact he seemed to be enjoying the debate. "Their opinions don't count? Only the articulate and the educated-and the moderate-are allowed to comment? Well, welcome to the new world of journalism, Agent Dance. The free exchange of ideas. See, it's not about your big newspapers anymore, your Bill O'Reillys, your Keith Olbermanns. It's about the people. No, I'm not suspending the blog and I'm not locking any threads." He glanced at Hawken, who was wrestling another armchair out of the back of the U-Haul. Chilton said to her, "Now, if you'll excuse me."

And he strode to the truck, looking, she decided, just like some martyr on his way to the firing squad, having just delivered a rant about a cause he, though nobody else, fervently believed in.

LIKE EVERYONE ELSE on the Peninsula-anybody over age six and with any access to the media, that is-Lyndon Strickland was very aware of the Roadside Cross Case.

And, like a lot of people who read The Chilton Report, he was angry.

The forty-one-year-old lawyer climbed out of his car and locked the door. He was going for his daily lunchtime run along a path near Seventeen Mile Drive, the beautiful road that leads from Pacific Grove to Carmel, winding past movie stars' and business executives' vacation houses and Pebble Beach golf course.

He heard the sounds of construction for that new highway heading east to Salinas and the farmland. It was progressing fast. Strickland represented several small homeowners whose property had been taken by eminent domain to make way for the road. He'd been up against the state and against massive Avery Construction itself-and their armada of big legal guns. Not unexpectedly he'd lost the trial, just last week. But the judge had stayed the destruction of his clients' houses pending appeal. The lead defense counsel, from San Francisco, had been livid.

Lyndon Strickland, on the other hand, had been ecstatic.

The fog was coming up, the weather chill, and he had the jogging path to himself as he started to run.

Angry.

Strickland had read what people were saying in James Chilton's blog. Travis Brigham was a crazy boy who idolized the shooters at Columbine and Virginia Tech, who stalked girls in the night, who'd half asphyxiated his own brother, Sammy, and left him retarded, who'd intentionally driven a car off the cliff a few weeks ago in some weird suicide/murder ritual, killing two girls.

How the hell had everybody missed the danger signs the boy must've displayed? His parents, his teachers…friends.

The image of the mask he'd seen online that morning still gave him the creeps. A chill coursed through his body, only partly from the damp air.

The Mask Killer…

And now the kid was out there, hiding in the hills of Monterey County, picking off one by one the people who'd posted negative things about him.

Strickland read The Chilton Report frequently. It was on his RSS feed, near the top. He disagreed with Chilton on some issues, but the blogger was always reasonable and always made solid, intellectual arguments in support of his positions. For instance, although Chilton was adamantly opposed to abortion, he'd posted a comment against that wacko Reverend Fisk, who'd called for the murder of abortion doctors. Strickland, who'd often represented Planned Parenthood and other pro-choice organizations, had been impressed with Chilton's balanced stance.

The blogger was also opposed to the desalination plant, as was Strickland, who was meeting with a potential new client-an environmental group interested in hiring him to sue to stop the plant from going forward. He'd just posted a reply supporting the blogger.

Strickland now headed up the small hill that was the hardest part of his jog. The route was downhill from there. Sweating, heart pounding…and feeling the exhilaration of the exercise.

As he crested the hill, something caught his eye. A splash of red off the jogging path and a flurry of motion near to the ground. What was it? he wondered. He circled back, paused his stopwatch and walked slowly through the rocks to where he saw a sprinkling of crimson, out of place in the sandy soil, dotted with brown and green plants.

His heart continued to slam in his chest, though now out of fear, not exertion. He thought immediately about Travis Brigham. But the boy was targeting only those who'd attacked him online. Strickland had said nothing about him at all.

Relax.

Still, as he detoured along the trail toward the commotion and spots of red, Strickland pulled his cell phone from his pocket, ready to push 911 if there was any threat.

He squinted, looking down as he approached the clearing. What was he looking at?

"Shit," he muttered, freezing.

On the ground were hunks of flesh sitting amid a scattering of rose petals. Three huge, ugly birds-vultures, he guessed-were ripping the tissue apart, frantic, hungry. A bloody bone sat nearby too. Several crows were hopping close cautiously, grabbing a bit, then retreating.

Strickland squinted, leaning forward, as he noted something else, in the center of the frenzy.

No!…A cross had been scraped into the sandy soil.

He understood that Travis Brigham was around here somewhere. Heart trilling, the lawyer scanned the bushes and trees and dunes. He could be hiding anywhere. And suddenly it didn't make any difference that Lyndon Strickland had never posted anything about the boy.

As an image of that terrifying mask the boy had left as an emblem of his attack lodged in his mind, Strickland turned and started to flee back to the path.

He got a mere ten feet before he heard someone push out of the bushes and begin running fast his way.

Chapter 19

Jon Boling sat in Dance's office, on her sagging couch. The sleeves of his dark blue striped shirt were rolled up and he had two phones going at once, as he stared at printouts of Chilton's blog. He was working to find the physical addresses from the Internet data that the hosting service had provided.

Crooking a Samsung between ear and shoulder, he jotted information and called out, "Got another one. SexyGurl is Kimberly Rankin, one-two-eight Forest, Pacific Grove."

Dance took the details down and phoned to warn the girl-and her parents-of the danger and to insist bluntly that she stop posting to The Report and to tell her friends to stop too.

How's that, Chilton?

Boling was studying the computer screen in front of him. Dance looked over and saw that he was frowning.

"What is it?" she asked.

"The first posts responding in the 'Roadside Crosses' thread were mostly local, classmates and people around the Peninsula. Now people from all over the country-hell, from all over the world-are chiming in. They're really going after him-and the Highway Patrol or the police too-for not following up on the accident. And they're dissing the CBI too."

"Us?"

"Yep. Somebody reported that a CBI agent went to interview Travis at home but didn't detain him."

"How do they even know Michael and I were there?"

He gestured at the computer. "The nature of the beast. Information spreads. People in Warsaw, Buenos Aires, New Zealand."

Dance returned to the crime scene report of the most recent roadside cross on a quiet road in a lightly inhabited part of north Monterey. No witnesses. And little had been found at the scene, aside from the same sort of trace discovered at the earlier scenes, linking Travis to the crime. But there was one discovery that might prove helpful. Soil samples revealed some sand that wasn't generally found in the immediate vicinity of the cross. It couldn't, however, be sourced to a particular location.

And all the while she reviewed these details, she couldn't help but think, who is the next victim?

Is Travis getting close?

And what terrible technique is he going to use this time to frighten and to kill? He seemed to favor lingering deaths, as if in compensation for prolonged suffering he'd been through at the hands of the cyberbullies.

Boling said, "I've got another name." He called it out to Dance, who jotted it down.

"Thanks," she said, smiling.

"You owe me a Junior G-Man badge."

As Boling cocked his head and bent toward his notes once more, he said something else softly. Perhaps it was her imagination but it almost sounded as if he'd started to say, "Or maybe dinner," but swallowed the words before they fully escaped.

Imagination, she decided. And turned back to her phone.

Boling sat back. "That's all of them for now. The other posters aren't in the area or they have untraceable addresses. But if we can't find them, Travis can't either."

He stretched and leaned back.

"Not your typical day in the world of academia, is it?" Dance asked.

"Not exactly." He cast a wry look her way. "Is this a typical day in the world of law enforcement?"

"Uhm, no, it's not."

"I guess that's the good news."

Her phone buzzed. She noted the internal CBI extension.

"TJ."

"Boss…" As had happened on more than one occasion recently, the young agent's typically irreverent attitude was absent. "Have you heard?"

DANCE'S HEART GAVE a bit of a flip when she saw Michael O'Neil at the crime scene.

"Hey," she said. "Thought I'd lost you."

He gave a faint startle reaction to that. Then said, "Juggling both cases. But a crime scene"-he nodded toward a fluttering ribbon of police tape-"has priority."

"Thanks."

Jon Boling joined them. Dance had asked the professor to accompany her. She'd supposed there were several ways in which he could be helpful. Mostly she wanted him here to bounce ideas off of, since Michael O'Neil, she'd believed, wouldn't be present.

"What happened?" she asked the senior deputy.

"Left a little diorama to scare him," a glance up the trail, "and then chased him down here. And shot him." It seemed to Dance that O'Neil was going to give more details but pulled back, probably because of Boling's presence.

"Where?"

The deputy pointed. The body wasn't visible from here.

"I'll show you the initial scene." He led them along the jogging path. About two hundred yards up a shallow hill, they found a short trail that led to a clearing. They ducked under yellow tape and saw rose petals on the ground and a cross carved in the sandy dirt. There were bits of flesh scattered around and bloodstains too. A bone. Claw marks in the dirt, from vultures and crows, it seemed.

O'Neil said, "It's animal, the Crime Scene people say. Probably beef, store-bought. My guess is the vic was jogging up the trail back there, saw the fuss and then took a look. He got spooked and ran. Travis got him halfway down the hill."

"What's his name?"

"Lyndon Strickland. He's a lawyer. Lives nearby."

Dance squinted. "Wait. Strickland? I think he posted something on the blog."

Boling opened his backpack and pulled out a dozen sheets of paper, copies of the blog pages. "Yep. But not in 'Roadside Crosses.' He posted a reply about the desalination plant. He's supporting Chilton."

He handed her the printout:

Reply to Chilton, posted by Lyndon Strickland.

I have to say you've opened my eyes on this issue. Had no idea that somebody's ramrodding this through. I reviewed the filed proposal at the County Planning Office and must say that, though I am an attorney familiar with environmental issues, it was one of the most obfuscatory documents I've ever tried to wade through. I think we need considerably more transparency in order to have meaningful debate on this matter.

Dance asked, "How did Travis know he'd be here? It's so deserted."

Boling said, "These are jogging trails. I'll bet Strickland posted to a bulletin board or blog that he likes running here."

We give away too much information about ourselves online. Way too much.

O'Neil asked, "Why would the boy kill him?"

Boling seemed to be considering something.

"What, Jon?" Dance asked.

"It's just a thought but remember that Travis is into those computer games?"

Dance explained to O'Neil about the massively multiplayer online role-playing games that Travis played.

The professor continued, "One aspect of the game is growth. Your character develops and grows, your conquests expand. You have to do that, otherwise you won't succeed. Following that classic pattern, I think Travis might be expanding his pool of targets. First, it was people who directly attacked him. Now he's included somebody who supports Chilton, even if he has nothing to do with the 'Roadside Crosses' thread."

Boling cocked his head, looking at the bits of meat and the claw marks in the sandy ground. "That's an exponential increase in the number of possible victims. It'll mean dozens more are at risk now. I'll start checking out the Internet addresses of anyone who's posted anything even faintly supportive of Chilton."

More discouraging news.

"We're going to examine the body now, Jon," Dance said. "You should head back to the car."

"Sure." Boling looked relieved that he didn't have to participate in this part of the job.

Dance and O'Neil hiked through the dunes to where the body had been found. "How's the terrorist thing going? The Container Case?"

The senior deputy gave a wan laugh. "Moving along. You get Homeland Security involved, FBI, Customs, it's a quagmire. What's that line, you rise to the level of your own unhappiness? Sometimes I'd like to be back in a Police Interceptor handing out tickets."

"It's 'level of incompetence.' And, no, you'd hate being back in Patrol."

"True." He paused. "How's your mother holding up?"

That question again. Dance was about to put on a sunny face, but then remembered to whom she was speaking. She lowered her voice. "Michael, she hasn't called me. When they found Pfister and the second cross, I just left the courthouse. I didn't even say anything to her. She's hurt. I know she is."

"You found her a lawyer-one of the best on the Peninsula. And he got her released, right?"

"Yes."

"You've done everything you can. Don't worry about it. She's probably distancing herself from you. For the sake of this case."

"Maybe."

Eyeing her, he laughed again. "But you don't believe that. You're convinced she's mad at you. That she thinks you've let her down."

Dance was remembering times in her childhood when, at some affront, real or imagined, the staunch woman would turn cold and distant. It was only in partial humor that Dance's father occasionally referred to his wife as "the staff sergeant."

"Mothers and daughters," O'Neil mused out loud, as if he knew exactly what she'd been thinking.

When they reached the body, Dance nodded at the men from the coroner's office, who were setting a green body bag beside the corpse. The photographer had just finished up. Strickland lay on his belly, in jogging attire, now bloody. He'd been shot from behind. Once in the back, once in the head.

"And then there's this." One of the medics tugged the sweatshirt up, revealing an image carved into the man's back: a crude approximation of a face, which might've been the mask. Qetzal, the demon from DimensionQuest. This is probably what O'Neil was reluctant to mention in front of Boling.

Dance shook her head. "Postmortem?"

"Right."

"Any witnesses?"

"None," an MCSO deputy said. "There's that highway construction site about a half mile from here. They heard the shots and called it in. But nobody saw anything."

One of the Crime Scene officers called, "Didn't find any significant physical evidence, sir."

O'Neil nodded and together he and Dance returned to their cars.

Dance noticed Boling was standing beside his Audi, hands clasped in front of him and his shoulders seemed raised slightly. Sure signs of tension. Murder scenes will do that to you.

She said, "Thanks for coming out here, Jon. This was above and beyond the call of duty. But it was helpful to get your thoughts."

"Sure." He sounded as if he was tyring to be stoic. She wondered if he'd ever been to a crime scene.

Her phone rang. She noticed Charles Overby's name and number on Caller ID. She'd called earlier and told him about this killing. Now she'd have to tell him that the victim hadn't been guilty of cyberbullying, but was a true innocent bystander. This would throw the area into even more panic.

"Charles."

"Kathryn, you're at the latest scene?"

"Right. It looks like-"

"Did you catch the boy?"

"No. But-"

"Well, you can give me the details later. Something's come up. Get here as soon as you can."

Chapter 20

So this is the Kathryn Dance." A big ruddy hand encircled hers, holding it until the bucket of propriety had been filled and then releasing.

Odd, she noted. He hadn't put as much emphasis on the article as you'd expect. Not the Kathryn Dance. More like: So this is the agent.

Or, this is the chair.

But she ignored the curious descriptive since kinesic analysis wasn't a priority at the moment; the man wasn't a suspect, but was, as it turned out, connected to the CBI's boss of bosses. Resembling a college line-backer gone into politics or business, fiftyish Hamilton Royce worked in the attorney general's office in Sacramento. He returned to his chair-they were in Charles Overby's office-and Dance too sat. Royce explained that he was an ombudsman.

Dance glanced at Overby. Itchily squinting toward Royce out of deference or curiosity or probably both, he didn't offer anything else to flesh out the visitor's job description-or mission.

Dance was still angry about her boss's carelessness, if not malfeasance, in suborning Robert Harper's covert operation in the CBI file room.

Because she's innocent, of course. Your mother'd never hurt anyone. You know that…

Dance kept her attention on Royce.

"We hear good things about you in Sacramento. I understand your expertise is body language." The broad-shouldered man, with dark sweptback hair, was wearing a slick suit, its color a blue just the regal side of navy and therefore suggestive of a uniform.

"I'm just an investigator. I tend to use kinesics more than a lot of people."

"Ah, there she goes, Charles, selling herself short. You said she'd do that."

Dance offered a cautious smile and wondered what exactly Overby had said and how cautious he'd been in offering or withholding praise of an employee. Evidence for job and raise reviews, of course. Her boss's face remained neutral. How hard life can be when you're unsure.

Royce continued jovially, "So you could look me over and tell me what I'm thinking. Just because of how I cross my arms, where I look, whether I blush or not. Tip to my secrets."

"It's a little more complicated than that," she said pleasantly.

"Ah."

In fact she'd already come up with a tentative personality typing. He was a thinking, sensing extravert. And probably had a Machiavellian liar's personality. Accordingly Dance was wary.

"Well, we do hear good things about you. That case earlier in the month, that crazy man on the Peninsula here? That was a tough one. You nailed the fellow, though."

"We caught some lucky breaks."

"No, no," Overby interrupted quickly, "no breaks, no lucky. She out-thought him."

And Dance realized by saying "luck," she'd suggested a criticism of herself, the CBI's Monterey office and Overby.

"And what do you do exactly, Hamilton?" She wasn't going for a status-defining "Mr.," not in a situation like this.

"Oh, jack of all trades. A troubleshooter. If there are problems involving state agencies, the governor's office, the assembly, even the courts, I look into it, write a report." A smile. "A lot of reports. I hope they get read. You never know."

This didn't seem to answer her question. She looked at her watch, a gesture that Royce noticed but that Overby did not. As she'd intended.

" Hamilton is here about the Chilton case," Overby said, then looked at the man from Sacramento to make sure that was all right. Back to Dance: "Brief us," he said like a ship captain.

"Sure, Charles," Dance replied wryly, noting both his tone and the fact Overby had said "the Chilton case." She'd been thinking of the attacks as the Roadside Cross Case. Or the Travis Brigham Case. Now she had an inkling as to why Royce was here.

She explained about the murder of Lyndon Strickland-the mechanics of the killing and how he figured in the Chilton blog.

Royce frowned. "So he's expanding his possible targets?"

"We think so, yes."

"Evidence?"

"Sure, there's some. But nothing specific that leads to where Travis is hiding out. We've got a joint CHP and sheriff's office task force running a manhunt." She shook her head. "They're not making much progress. He doesn't drive-he's on a bike-and he's staying underground." She looked at Royce. "Our consultant thinks he's using evasion techniques he learned in online games to stay out of sight."

"Who?"

"Jon Boling, a professor from UC-Santa Cruz. He's very helpful."

"And he's volunteering his time, no charge to us," Overby slipped in smoothly, as if the words were oiled.

"About this blog," Royce said slowly. "How does that figure in, exactly?"

Dance explained, "Some postings have set the boy off. He was cyberbullied."

"So, he snapped."

"We're doing everything we can to find him," Overby said. "He can't be far. It's a small peninsula."

Royce hadn't given much away. But Dance could see from his focused eyes he was not only sizing up the Travis Brigham situation but was neatly folding it into his purpose here.

Which he finally got down to.

"Kathryn, there's a concern in Sacramento about this case, I have to tell you. Everybody's nervous. It's got teenagers, computers, social networking. Now, a weapon's involved. You can't help but think Virginia Tech and Columbine. Apparently those boys from Colorado were his idols."

"Rumor. I don't know if that's true or not. It was posted on the blog by someone who might or might not have known him."

And from the flutter of eyebrow and twitch of lip, she realized she might have just played into his hand. With people like Hamilton Royce, you never could be sure if all was straightforward, or if you were fencing.

"This blog…I was talking to the AG about it. We're worried that as long as people are posting, it's like gasoline on the flames. You know what I mean? Like an avalanche. Well, mixing my metaphors, but you get the idea. What we were thinking: Wouldn't it be better for the blog to shut down?"

"I've actually asked Chilton to do that."

"Oh, you have?" Overby asked the question.

"And what did he say?"

"Emphatically no. Freedom of the press."

Royce scoffed. "It's just a blog. It's not the Chronicle or Wall Street Journal."

"He doesn't feel that way." Dance then asked, "Has anybody from the AG's office contacted him?"

"No. If the request came from Sacramento, we're worried that he'd post something about us bringing the subject up. And that'd spread to the newspapers and TV. Repression. Censorship. And those labels might rub off on the governor and some congressmen. No, we can't do that."

"Well, he refused," Dance repeated.

"I was just wondering," Royce began slowly, his gaze keenly strafing Dance, "if there was anything you've found about him, something to help persuade him?"

"Stick or carrot?" she asked quickly.

Royce couldn't help but laugh. Savvy people apparently impressed him. "He doesn't seem like the carrot sort, from what you've told me."

Meaning a bribe wouldn't work. Which Dance knew was true, having tried one. But neither did Chilton seem susceptible to threats. In fact, he seemed like the sort who'd relish them. And post something in his blog about any that were made.

Besides, though she didn't like Chilton and thought he was arrogant and self-righteous, using something she'd learned in an investigation to intimidate the man into silence didn't sit well. In any case, Dance could honestly answer, "I haven't found a thing. James Chilton himself is a small part of the case. He didn't even post anything about the boy-and he deleted Travis's name. The point of the 'Roadside Crosses' thread was to criticize the police and highway department. It was the readers who started to attack the boy."

"So there's nothing incriminating, nothing we can use."

Use. Odd choice of verb.

"No."

"Ah, too bad." Royce did seem disappointed. Overby noticed too and looked disappointed himself.

Overby said, "Keep on it, Kathryn."

Her voice was a crawl. "We're working full-out to find the perp, Charles."

"Of course. Sure. But in the whole scope of the case…" His sentence dwindled.

"What?" she asked sharply. The anger about Robert Harper was resurfacing.

Watch it, she warned herself.

Overby smiled in a way that bore only a loose resemblance to a smile. "In the whole scope of the case it would be helpful to everybody if Chilton could be persuaded to stop the blog. Helpful to us and to Sacramento. Not to mention saving the lives of people who've posted comments."

"Exactly," Royce said. "We're worried about more victims."

Of course the AG and Royce would worry about that. But they'd also worry about the bad press against the state for not doing everything to stop the killer.

To end the meeting and get back to work, Dance simply agreed. "If I see anything you can use, Charles, I'll let you know."

Royce's eyes flickered. Overby missed the irony completely and smiled. "Good."

It was then that her phone vibrated with a text message. She read the screen, and gave a faint gasp and looked up at Overby.

Royce asked, "What is it?"

Dance said, "James Chilton was just attacked. I have to go."

Chapter 21

Dance hurried into Emergency Admitting at Monterey Bay Hospital.

She found TJ looking troubled in the middle of the lobby. "Boss," he said, exhaling hard, relieved to see her.

"How is he?"

"He'll be okay."

"Did you get Travis?"

"It wasn't the boy who did it," TJ said.

At that moment the double doors to the emergency room swung open and James Chilton, a bandage on his cheek, strode out. "He attacked me!" Chilton was pointing at a ruddy-faced, solidly built man in a suit. He sat beside the window. A large county deputy stood over him. Without a greeting, Chilton pointed to him and snapped to Dance, "Arrest him."

Meanwhile the man leapt to his feet. "Him. I want him in jail!"

The deputy muttered, "Mr. Brubaker, please sit down." He spoke forcefully enough so that the man hesitated, delivered a glare to Chilton then dropped back into the fiberglass seat.

The officer then joined Dance and told her what had happened. A half hour before, Arnold Brubaker had been on the grounds of his proposed desalination plant with a survey crew. He'd found Chilton taking pictures of animal habitats there. He tried to grab the blogger's camera and shoved Chilton to the ground. The surveyors called the police.

The injury, Dance assessed, didn't seem serious.

Still, Chilton seemed possessed. "That man is raping the Peninsula. He's destroying our natural resources. Our flora and fauna. Not to mention destroying an Ohlone burial ground."

The Ohlone Indians were the first inhabitants of this part of California.

"We aren't building anywhere near the tribal land!" Brubaker yelled. "That was a rumor. And completely untrue!"

"But the traffic in and out of the area is going to-"

"And we're spending millions to relocate animal populations and-"

"Both of you," Dance snapped. "Quiet."

Chilton, however, had his momentum going. "He broke my camera too. Just like the Nazis."

Brubaker replied with a cold smile, "James, I believe you broke the law first by trespassing on private property. Didn't the Nazis do that too?"

"I have a right to report on the destruction of our resources."

"And I-"

"Okay," Dance snapped. "No more!"

They fell silent as she got the details of the various offenses from the deputy. Finally she approached Chilton. "You trespassed on private property. That's a crime."

"I-"

"Shhh. And you, Mr. Brubaker, assaulted Mr. Chilton, which is illegal unless you're in imminent danger of physical harm from a trespasser. Your remedy was to call the police."

Brubaker fumed, but he nodded. He seemed upset that all he'd done was bang Chilton's cheek. The bandage was quite small.

"The situation is that you're guilty of minor offenses. And if you want to complain I'll make arrests. But it'll be both of you. One for criminal trespass and one for assault and battery. Well?"

Red-faced, Brubaker began to whine, "But he-"

"Your answers?" Dance asked with an ominous calm that made him shut up immediately.

Chilton nodded, with a grimace. "All right."

Finally, with frustration evident in his face, Brubaker muttered to Dance, "Okay. Fine. But it's not fair! Seven days a week for the past year, working to help eliminate drought. That's been my life. And he sits in that office of his and tears me down, without even looking at the facts. People see what he says in that blog and think it's true. And how can I compete with that? Write a blog of my own? Who has time?" Brubaker delivered a dramatic sigh and headed out the main door.

After he'd gone, Chilton said to Dance, "He's not building the plant out of the goodness of his heart. There's money to be made and that's his only concern. And I have researched the story."

His voice fell silent as she turned to him and he noticed her somber expression. "James, you might not have heard the news. Lyndon Strickland was just murdered by Travis Brigham."

Chilton remained still for a moment. "Lyndon Strickland, the lawyer? Are you sure?"

"I'm afraid so."

The blogger's eyes were sweeping the floor of the emergency room, green-and-white tile, mopped clean but scuffed by years of anxious heels and soles. "But Lyndon posted in the desalination thread, not 'Roadside Crosses.' No, Travis wouldn't have any complaint with him. It's somebody else. Lyndon'd made a lot of people upset. He was a plaintiff's lawyer and was always taking on controversial causes."

"The evidence doesn't leave any doubt. It was Travis."

"But why?"

"We think because his post supported you. Doesn't matter that it was a different blog thread. We think Travis is expanding his pool of targets."

Chilton greeted this with grim silence, then asked, "Just because he posted something agreeing with me?"

She nodded. "And that leads me to something else I've been worried about. That Travis might be after you."

"But what argument does he have with me? I haven't said a word about him."

She continued, "He's targeted somebody who's supporting you. And the extension of that is that he's angry with you too."

"You really think so?"

"I think we can't afford to dismiss it."

"But my family's-"

"I've ordered a car stationed outside your house. A deputy from the sheriff's office."

"Thank you…thank you. I'll tell Pat and the boys to be on the lookout for anything odd."

"You're all right?" She nodded at the bandage.

"It's nothing."

"You need a ride home?"

"Pat's coming to pick me up."

Dance started outside. "Oh, and for God's sake, leave Brubaker alone."

Chilton's eyes narrowed. "But do you know the effects that plant is going to have…" He fell silent and held up two hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. I'll stay off his property."

"Thank you."

Dance walked outside and turned her phone back on. It rang thirty seconds later. Michael O'Neil. She was comforted to see his number pop up.

"Hey."

"I just heard a report. Chilton. He was attacked?"

"He's fine." She explained what had happened.

"Trespassing. Serves him right. I called the office. They're getting the crime scene report back from the Strickland shooting. I pushed 'em to get it done fast. But nothing really helpful jumps out."

"Thanks." Dance then lowered her voice-amusing herself because she did so-and told O'Neil about the curious encounter with Hamilton Royce.

"Great. Too many cooks screwing up the broth."

"I'd like to put them in the broth," Dance muttered. "And turn up the heat."

"And this Royce wants to shut down the blog?"

"Yep. Worried about the public relations is my take."

O'Neil offered, "I almost feel sorry for Chilton."'

"Spend ten minutes with him; you'll feel different."

The deputy chuckled.

"I was going to call you anyway, Michael. I've asked Mom and Dad over tonight for dinner. She needs the support. Love it if you could come." She added, "You and Anne and the kids."

A pause. "I'll try. I'm really swamped on this Container Case. And Anne went up to San Francisco. A gallery's going to be hanging a show of her recent photos."

"Really? That's impressive." Dance recalled the one-sided conversation yesterday about Anne O'Neil's impending trip at their attempted breakfast after meeting with Ernie Seybold. Dance had several opinions about the woman, the most unblemished of which had to do with her talent as a photographer.

They disconnected and Dance continued toward her car, unraveling the iPod ear buds. She needed a hit of music. She was scrolling through tunes, trying to decide on Latino or Celtic, when her phone buzzed. Caller ID announced Jonathan Boling.

"Hi," she said.

"It's all over the CBI here, Chilton was attacked. What happened? Is he all right?"

She gave him the details. He was relieved nobody had been hurt seriously, but she could tell from his voice quality that he had some news for her. She fell silent and he asked, "Kathryn, you near the office?"

"I wasn't planning on heading back. I've got to pick up the kids and work from home for a while." She didn't tell him that she wanted to avoid Hamilton Royce and Overby. "Why?"

"Couple things. I've got names of posters who've supported Chilton. The good news, I suppose, is that there aren't a lot. But that's typical. In blogs more people are contrarians than supporters."

"Email me the list, and I'll start calling them from home. What else?"

"We'll have Travis's computer cracked in the next hour or so."

"Really? Oh, that's great." Tiffany or Bambi was a pretty good hacker, apparently.

"I'm going to mirror his disk on a separate drive. I thought you'd want to see it."

"You bet." Dance had a thought. "You have plans tonight?"

"No, I've put my cat burglary plans on hold while I'm helping you guys."

"Bring the computer over to my house. I'm having my mother and father and a few friends over for dinner."

"Well, sure."

She gave him the address and a time.

They disconnected.

As Dance stood beside her car in the hospital parking lot she noticed several aides and nurses leaving for the day. They were staring at her.

Dance knew several of them and smiled. One or two nodded in greeting but the response was tepid, if not chill. Of course, she realized, they'd be thinking: I'm looking at the daughter of a woman who might have committed murder.

Chapter 22

I'll carry the groceries," Maggie announced as Dance's Pathfinder squealed to a stop in front of their house.

The girl had been feeling independent lately. She grabbed the largest bag. There were four of them; after picking up the children at Martine's, they'd stopped at Safeway for a shopping frenzy. If everyone she'd invited showed up, the dinner party would include nearly a dozen people, among them youngsters with serious appetites.

Listing under the weight of two bags gripped in one hand-an older-brother thing-Wes asked his mother, "When's Grandma coming over?"

"In a little while, I hope… There's a chance she might not come."

"No, she said she's coming."

Dance gave a confused smile. "You talked to her?"

"Yeah, she called me at camp."

"Me too," Maggie offered.

So she'd called to reassure the children she was all right. But Dance's face flushed. Why hadn't she called her?

"Well, it's great she'll be able to make it."

They carried the bags inside.

Dance went into her bedroom, accompanied by Patsy.

She glanced at the gun lockbox. Travis was expanding his targets, and he knew she was one of the officers pursuing him. And she couldn't forget the possible threat-the cross-in her backyard last night. Dance decided to keep the weapon with her. Ever-fastidious about weapons in a household with children, though, she locked the black gun away for a few minutes to take a shower. She stripped off her clothes energetically and stepped into the stream of hot water-trying unsuccessfully to flush away the residue of the day.

She dressed in jeans and an oversize blouse, not tucked in, to obscure the weapon, which sat against the small of her back. Uncomfortable, yet a comfort. Then she hurried into the kitchen.

She fed the dogs and put out a small brushfire between the children, who were sniping over their predinner tasks. Dance stayed patient-she knew they were upset about the incident at the hospital yesterday. Maggie's job was to unpack the groceries, while Wes straightened up for guests. Dance continued to be amazed at how cluttered a house could become, even though only three people lived there.

She thought now, as she often did, about the time when the population was four. And glanced at her wedding picture. Bill Swenson, prematurely gray, lean and with an easy smile, looked out at the camera with his arm around her.

Then she went into the den, booted up her computer and emailed Overby about the assault on Chilton and the confrontation with Brubaker.

She wasn't in the mood to talk to him.

Then Dance retrieved Jon Boling's email with the names of people who'd posted comments favorable to Chilton over the past months. Seventeen.

Could be worse, she supposed.

She spent the next hour finding the numbers of those within a hundred miles and calling to warn them they might be in danger. She weathered their criticism, some of it searing, about the CBI and the police not being able to stop Travis Brigham.

Dance logged on to that day's Chilton Report.

http://www.thechiltonreport.com

She scrolled through all the threads, noting that new posts had appeared in nearly all of them. The latest contributors to the Reverend Fisk and the desalination threads were taking their respective causes seriously-and with intensifying anger. But none of their posts compared to the vicious comments in the "Roadside Crosses" thread, most of them unleashing undiluted fury at each other, as much as at Travis.

Some of them were curiously worded, some seemed to be probing for information, some seemed to be outright threats. She got the feeling that there were clues as to where Travis was hiding-possibly even tidbits of facts that might suggest whom he was going to attack next. Was Travis actually one of the posters, hiding behind a fake identity or the common pseudonym, "Anonymous"? She read the exchanges carefully and decided that perhaps there were clues, but the answer eluded her. Kathryn Dance, comfortable with analyzing the spoken word, could come to no solid conclusions as she read the frustratingly silent shouts and mutters.

Finally she logged off.

An email from Michael O'Neil arrived. He gave her the discouraging news that the immunity hearing in the J. Doe case had been pushed back to Friday. The prosecutor, Ernie Seybold, felt that the judge's willingness to go along with the defense's request for the extension was a bad sign. She grimaced at the news and was disappointed that he hadn't called to give her the news over the phone. Neither had he mentioned anything about whether he and the children would come over tonight.

Dance began to organize the meal. She didn't have much skill in the kitchen, as she was the first to admit. But she knew which stores had the most talented prepared-food departments; the meal would be fine.

Listening to the soft braying of a video game from Wes's room, Maggie's keyboard scales, Dance found herself staring into the backyard, recalling the image of her mother's face yesterday afternoon, as her daughter deserted her to see about the second roadside cross.

Your mother will understand.

No, she won't…

Hovering over the containers of brisket, green beans, Caesar salad, salmon and twice-baked potatoes, Dance remembered that time three weeks ago-her mother standing in this very kitchen and reporting about Juan Millar in the ICU. With Edie's face feeling his pain, she'd told her daughter what he'd whispered to her.

Kill me…

The doorbell now drew her from that disquieting thought.

She deduced who had arrived-most friends and family just climbed the back deck stairs and entered the kitchen without ringing or knocking. She opened the front door to see Jon Boling standing on the porch. He wore that now-familiar, comfortable smile and was juggling a small shopping bag and a large laptop case. He'd changed into black jeans and a dark striped collared shirt.

"Hi."

He nodded and followed her into the kitchen.

The dogs bounded up. Boling crouched and hugged them as they double-teamed him.

"Okay, guys, outside!" Dance commanded. She flung Milk Bones out the back door and the dogs charged down the steps and into the backyard.

Boling stood, wiped his face from the licks and laughed. He reached into the shopping bag. "I decided to bring sugar for a hostess gift."

"Sugar?"

"Two versions: fermented." He extracted a bottle of Caymus Conundrum white wine.

"Nice."

"And baked." A bag of cookies emerged. "I remembered the way you looked at them in the office when your assistant was trying to fatten me up."

"Caught that did you?" Dance laughed. "You'd be a good kinesic interviewer. We have to be observant."

His eyes were excited, she could see. "Got something to show you. Can we sit down somewhere?"

She directed him into the living room, where Boling unpacked yet another laptop, a big one, a brand she didn't recognize. "Irv did it," he announced.

"Irv?"

"Irving Wepler, the associate I was telling you about. One of my grad students."

So, not Bambi or Tiff.

"Everything on Travis's laptop is in here now."

He began typing. In an instant the screen came to life. Dance didn't know computers could respond so quickly.

From the other room, Maggie hit a sour note on the keyboard.

"Sorry." Dance winced.

"C sharp," Boling said without looking up from the screen.

Dance was surprised. "You a musician?"

"No, no. But I have perfect pitch. Just a fluke. And I don't know what to do with it. No musical talent whatsoever. Not like you."

"Me?" She hadn't told him her avocation.

A shrug. "Thought it might not be a bad idea to check you out. I didn't expect you to have more Google hits as a songcatcher than a cop… Oh, can I say cop?"

"So far it's not a politically incorrect term." Dance went on to explain that she was a failed folksinger but had found musical redemption in the project that she and Martine Christensen operated-a website called American Tunes, the name echoing Paul Simon's evocative anthem to the country from the 1970s. The site was a lifesaver for Dance, who often had to dwell in some very dark places because of her work. There was nothing like music to pull her safely out of the minds of the criminals she pursued.

Although the common term was "songcatcher," Dance told him, the job description was technically "folklorist." Alan Lomax was the most famous-he'd roam the hinterland of America, collecting traditional music for the Library of Congress in the midtwentieth century. Dance too traveled around the country, when she could, to collect music, though not Lomax's mountain, blues and bluegrass. Today's homegrown American songs were African, Afro-pop, Cajun, Latino, Caribbean, Nova Scotian, East Indian and Asian.

American Tunes helped the musicians copyright their original material, offered the music for sale via download and distributed to them the money listeners paid.

Boling seemed interested. He too, it seemed, trekked into the wilderness once or twice a month. He'd been a serious rock climber at one time, he explained, but had given that up.

"Gravity," he said, "is nonnegotiable."

Then he nodded toward the bedroom that was the source of the music. "Son or daughter?"

"Daughter. The only strings my son's familiar with come on a tennis racket."

"She's good."

"Thank you," Dance said with some pride; she had worked hard to encourage Maggie. She practiced with the girl and, more time-consuming, chauffeured her to and from piano lessons and recitals.

Boling typed and a colorful page popped up on the laptop's screen. But then his body language changed suddenly. She noticed he was looking over her shoulder, toward the doorway.

Dance should have guessed. She'd heard the keyboard fall silent thirty seconds before.

Then Boling was smiling. "Hi, I'm Jon. I work with your mom."

Wearing a backward baseball cap, Maggie was standing in the doorway. "Hello."

"Hats in the house," Dance reminded.

Off it came. Maggie walked right up to Boling. "I'm Maggie." Nothing shy about my girl, Dance reflected, as the ten-year-old pumped his hand.

"Good grip," the professor told her. "And good touch on the keyboard."

The girl beamed. "You play anything?"

"CDs and downloads. That's it."

Dance looked up and wasn't surprised to see twelve-year-old Wes appear too, looking their way. He was hanging back, in the doorway. And he wasn't smiling.

Her stomach did a flip. After his father's death, Wes could be counted on to take a dislike to the men that his mom saw socially-sensing them, her therapist said, as a threat to their family and to his father's memory. The only man he really liked was Michael O'Neil-in part because, the doctor theorized, the deputy was married and thus no risk.

The boy's attitude was hard for Dance, who'd been a widow for two years, and at times felt a terrible longing for a romantic companion. She wanted to date, she wanted to meet somebody and knew it would be good for the children. But whenever she went out, Wes became sullen and moody. She'd spent hours reassuring him that he and his sister came first. She planned out tactics to ease the boy comfortably into meeting her dates. And sometimes simply laid down the law and told him she wouldn't tolerate any attitude. Nothing had worked very well; and it didn't help that his hostility toward her most recent potential partner had turned out to be far more insightful than her own judgment. She resolved after that to listen to what her children had to say and watch how they reacted.

She motioned him over. He joined them. "This is Mr. Boling."

"Hi, Wes."

"Hi." They shook hands, Wes a bit shy, as always.

Dance was about to add quickly that she knew Boling through work, to reassure Wes and defuse any potential awkwardness. But before she could say anything, Wes's eyes flashed as he gazed at the computer screen. "Sweet. DQ!"

She regarded the splashy graphics of the DimensionQuest computer game homepage, which Boling had apparently extracted from Travis's computer.

"Are you guys playing?" The boy seemed astonished.

"No, no. I just wanted to show your mother something. You know Morpegs, Wes?"

"Like, definitely."

"Wes," Dance murmured.

"I mean, sure. She doesn't like me to say 'like.' "

Smiling, Boling asked, "You play DQ? I don't know it so well."

"Naw, it's kind of wizardy, you know. I'm more into Trinity."

"Oh, man," Boling said with some boyish, and genuine, reverence in his voice. "The graphics kick butt." He turned to Dance and said, "It's S-F."

But that wasn't much of an explanation. "What?"

"Mom, science fiction."

"Sci-fi."

"No, no, you can't say that. It's S-F." Eyes rolling broadly ceilingward.

"I stand corrected."

Wes's face scrunched up. "But with Trinity, you definitely need two gig of RAM and at least two on your video card. Otherwise it's, like…" He winced. "Otherwise it's so slow. I mean, you've got your beams ready to shoot…and the screen hangs. It's the worst."

"RAM on the desktop I hacked together at work?" Boling asked coyly.

"Three?" Wes asked.

"Five. And four on the video card."

Wes mimicked a brief faint. "Nooooo! That is sooo sweet. How much storage?"

"Two T."

"No way! Two tera bytes?"

Dance laughed, feeling huge relief that there wasn't any tension between them. But she said, "Wes, I've never seen you play Trinity. We don't have it loaded on our computer here, do we?" She was very restrictive about what the children played on their computers and the websites they visited. But she couldn't oversee them 100 percent of the time.

"No, you don't let me," he said without any added meaning or resentment. "I play at Martine's."

"With the twins?" Dance was shocked. The children of Martine Christensen and Steven Cahill were younger than Wes and Maggie.

Wes laughed. "Mom!" Exasperated. "No, with Steve. He's got all the patches and codes."

That made sense; Steve, who described himself as a green geek, ran the technical side of American Tunes.

"Is it violent?" Dance asked Boling, not Wes.

The professor and the boy shared a conspiratorial look.

"Well?" she persisted.

"Not really," Wes said.

"What does that mean exactly?" asked the law enforcement agent.

"Okay, you can sort of blow up spaceships and planets," Boling said.

Wes added, "But not like violent-violent, you know."

"Right," the professor assured her. "Nothing like Resident Evil or Manhunt."

"Or Gears of War," Wes added. "I mean, there you can chainsaw people."

"What?" Dance was appalled. "Have you ever played it?"

"No!" he protested, right on the edge of credibility. "Billy Sojack at school has it. He told us about it."

"Make sure you don't."

"All right. I won't. Anyway," the boy added, with another glance at Boling, "you don't have to use a chain saw."

"I never want you to play that game. Or the others that Mr. Boling mentioned." She said this in her best mother voice.

"Okay. Geez, Mom."

"Promise?"

"Yeah." The look at Boling said, She just gets this way sometimes.

The two males then launched into a discussion of other games and technical issues whose meaning Dance couldn't even guess at. But she was happy to see this. Boling, of course, was no romantic interest, but it was such a relief that she didn't have to worry about conflicts, especially tonight-the evening would be stressful enough. Boling didn't talk down to the boy, nor did he try to impress him. They seemed like peers of different ages, having fun talking.

Feeling neglected, Maggie barged in with, "Mr. Boling, do you have kids?"

"Mags," Dance interjected, "don't ask personal questions when you've just met somebody."

"That's all right. No, I don't, Maggie."

She nodded, taking in the information. The issue, Dance understood, wasn't about possible playmates. She was really inquiring about his marital status. The girl was ready to marry off her mother faster than Maryellen Kresbach from the office (provided Maggie was "best woman"-no retro "maid of honor" for Dance's independent daughter).

It was then that voices sounded from the kitchen. Edie and Stuart had arrived. They walked inside and joined Dance and the children.

"Grams!" Maggie called and charged toward her. "How are you?"

Edie's face blossomed into a genuine smile-or nearly so, Dance assessed. Wes, his face glowing with relief too, ran to her as well. Though stingy with hugs for Mom lately, the boy wrapped his arms around his grandmother and squeezed tight. Of the two children, he'd taken the arrest incident at the hospital closer to heart.

"Katie," Stuart said, "chasing down crazed felons and you still had time to cook."

"Well, somebody had time to cook," she replied with a smile and a glance at the Safeway shopping bags, hiding near the trash can.

Ecstatic to see her mother, Dance embraced her. "How are you?"

"Fine, dear."

Dear… Not a good sign. But she was here, at least. That's what counted.

Edie turned back to the children and was enthusiastically telling them about a TV show she'd just seen on extreme home makeovers. Dance's mother was brilliant at dispensing comfort and rather than talk directly about what happened at the hospital-which would only trouble them more-she reassured the kids by saying nothing about the incident and chatting away about inconsequential things.

Dance introduced her parents to Jon Boling.

"I'm a hired gun," he said. "Kathryn made the mistake of asking my advice, and she's stuck with me now."

They talked about where in Santa Cruz he lived, how long he'd been in the area and the colleges he'd taught at. Boling was interested to learn that Stuart still worked part-time at the famous Monterey Bay aquarium; the professor went often and had just taken his niece and nephew there.

"I did some teaching too," Stuart Dance offered, when he learned Boling's career. "I was pretty comfortable in academia; I'd done a lot of research into sharks."

Boling laughed hard.

Wine was dispensed-Boling's Conundrum white blend first.

But then Boling must've sensed a wind shift and he excused himself to head back to the computer. "I don't get to eat unless I finish my homework. I'll see you in a bit."

"Why don't you go out back," Dance told him, pointing to the deck. "I'll join you in a minute."

After he'd collected the computer and wandered outside, Edie said, "Nice young man."

"Very helpful. Thanks to him we saved one of the victims." Dance stepped to the refrigerator to put the wine away. As she did, emotion took the reins and she blurted softly to her mother, "I'm sorry I had to leave the courtroom so fast, Mom. They found another roadside cross. There was a witness I had to interview."

Her mother's voice revealed no trace of sarcasm when she said, "That's all right, Katie. I'm sure it was important. And that poor man today. Lyndon Strickland, the lawyer. He was well known."

"Yes, he was." Dance noted the shift of subject.

"Sued the state, I think. Consumer advocate."

"Mom, what've you heard from Sheedy?"

Edie Dance blinked. "Not tonight, Katie. We won't talk about it tonight."

"Sure." Dance felt like a chastised child. "Whatever you want."

"Will Michael be here?"

"He's going to try. Anne's in San Francisco, so he's juggling kids. And working on another big case."

"Oh. Well, hope he can make it. And how is Anne?" Edie asked coolly. She believed that O'Neil's wife's mothering skills left a lot to be desired. And any failures there were a class-A misdemeanor to Edie Dance, bordering on felony.

"Fine, I imagine. Haven't seen her for a while."

Dance wondered again if in fact Michael would show up.

"You talked to Betsey?" she asked her mother.

"Yes, she's coming up this weekend."

"She can stay with me."

"If it's not inconvenient," Edie offered.

"Why would it be inconvenient?"

Her mother replied, "You might be busy. With this case of yours. That's your priority. Now, Katie, you go visit with your friend. Maggie and I'll get things started. Mags, come on and help me in the kitchen."

"Yea, Grandma!"

"And Stu brought a DVD he thinks Wes would like. Sports bloopers. You boys go put that on."

Her husband took the cue and wandered to the flat-screen TV, calling Wes over.

Dance stood helplessly for a moment, hands at her sides, watching her mother retreat as she chatted happily with her granddaughter. Then Dance stepped outside.

She found Boling at an unsteady table on the deck, near the back door, under an amber light. He was looking around. "This is pretty nice."

"I call it the Deck," she laughed. "Capital D."

It was here that Kathryn Dance spent much of her time-by herself and with the children, dogs and those connected to her through blood or through friendship.

The gray, pressure-treated structure, twenty by thirty feet, and eight feet above the backyard, extended along the back of the house. It was filled with unsteady lawn chairs, loungers and tables. Illumination came from tiny Christmas lights, wall lamps, some amber globes. A sink, tables and a large refrigerator sat on the uneven planks. Anemic plants in chipped pots, bird feeders and weathered metal and ceramic hangings from the garden departments of chain stores made up the eclectic decorations.

Dance would often come home to find colleagues from the CBI or MCSO or Highway Patrol sitting on the Deck, enjoying beverages from the battered fridge. It didn't matter if she was home or not, provided the rules were observed: Never disrupt the kids' studying or the family's sleep, keep the crudeness down and stay out of the house itself, unless invited.

Dance loved the Deck, which was a site for breakfasts, dinner parties and more formal occasions. She'd been married here.

And she'd hosted the memorial service for her husband on the gray, warped timbers.

Dance now sat on the wicker love seat beside Boling, who was hunched forward over the large laptop. He looked around and said, "I've got a deck too. But if we were talking constellations, yours'd be Deck Major. Mine'd be Deck Minor."

She laughed.

Boling nodded at the computer. "There was very little I found about the local area or Travis's friends. Much less than you'd normally see in a teen's computer. The real world doesn't figure much in Travis's life. He spends most of his time in the synth, on websites and blogs and bulletin boards and, of course, playing his Morpegs."

Dance was disappointed. All the effort to hack into the computer and it wasn't going to be as helpful as she'd hoped.

"And as for his time in the synth world, most of that is in DimensionQuest." He nodded at the screen. "I did some research. It's the biggest online role-playing game in the world. There are about twelve million subscribers to that one."

"Bigger than the population of New York City."

Boling described it as a combination of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Second Life-the social interaction site where you create imaginary lives for yourself. "As near as I can tell he was on DQ between four and ten hours a day."

"A day?"

"Oh, that's typical for a Morpeg player." He chuckled. "Some are even worse. There's a DimensionQuest twelve-step program in the real world to help people get over their addiction to the game."

"Seriously?"

"Oh, yes." He sat forward. "Now, there's nothing in his computer about places he'd go or his friends, but I've found something that might be helpful."

"What's that?"

"Him."

"Who?"

"Well, Travis himself."

Chapter 23

Dance blinked, waiting for a punch line.

But Jon Boling was serious.

"You found him? Where?"

"In Aetheria, the fictional land in DimensionQuest."

"He's online?"

"Not now, but he has been. Recently."

"Can you find out where he is in real life from that?"

"There's no way of knowing. We can't trace him. I called the gaming company-they're in England-and talked to some executives. DimensionQuest's servers are in India and at any given moment there are a million people online."

"And since we have his computer, that means he's using a friend's," Dance said.

"Or he's at a public terminal or he's borrowed or stolen a computer and is logging on through a Wi-Fi spot."

"But whenever he's online we know he's standing still and we have a chance to find him."

"In theory, yes," Boling agreed.

"Why is he still playing? He must know we're looking for him."

"Like I was saying, he's addicted."

A nod at the computer: "Are you sure it's Travis?"

"Has to be. I got into his folders in the game and found a list of avatars he's created to represent himself. Then I had a few of my students go online and look for those names. He's been logging on and off today. The character's name is Stryker-with a y. He's in the category of Thunderer, which makes him a warrior. A killer, basically. One of my students-a girl who's played DimensionQuest for a few years-found him about an hour ago. He was roaming around the countryside just killing people. She watched him slaughter a whole family. Men, women and children. And then he corpse camped."

"What's that?"

"In these games, when you kill another character they lose power, points and whatever they're carrying with them. But they're not permanently dead. Avatars come to life again after a few minutes. But they're in a weakened state until they can start to regain power. Corpse camping is when you kill a victim and just wait nearby for them to come back to life. Then you kill them again, when they have no defenses. It's very bad form, and most players don't do it. It's like killing a wounded soldier on the battlefield. But Travis apparently does it regularly."

Dance stared at the homepage of DimensionQuest, an elaborate graphic of foggy glens, towering mountains, fantastical cities, turbulent oceans. And mythical creatures, warriors, heroes, wizards. Villains too, including Qetzal, the spiky demon with the sewn-shut mouth, wide eyes chillingly staring at her.

A bit of that nightmare world had coalesced here on earth, smack within her jurisdiction.

Boling tapped his cell phone, on his belt. "Irv's monitoring the game. He wrote a bot-an automated computer program-that'll tell him when Stryker's online. He'll call or IM me the instant Travis logs on."

Dance glanced into the kitchen and saw her mother staring out the window. Her palms were clenched.

"Now, what I was thinking," Boling continued, "tracing is out, but if we can find him online and watch him, maybe we can learn something about him. Where he is, who he knows."

"How?"

"Watching his instant messages. That's how players communicate in DQ. But there's nothing we can do until he logs on again."

He sat back. They sipped wine in silence.

Which was suddenly broken as Wes called, "Mom!" from the doorway.

Dance jumped and found herself easing away from Boling as she turned toward her son.

"When do we eat?"

"As soon as Martine and Steve get here."

The boy retreated to the TV. And Dance and Boling walked inside, carting wine and the computer. The professor replaced the unit in his bag and then snagged a bowl of pretzels from the island in the kitchen.

He headed into the living room and offered the bowl to Wes and Stu. "Emergency rations to keep our strength up."

"Yea!" the boy cried, grabbing a handful. Then said, "Grandpa, go back to that fumble so Mr. Boling can see it."

DANCE HELPED HER mother and daughter finish setting out the food, buffet style, on the island in the kitchen.

She and Edie talked about the weather, about the dogs, about the children, about Stuart. Which led to the aquarium, which led to a water referendum, which led to a half dozen other trivial subjects, all of which had one thing in common: They were as far away from the subject of the arrest of Edie Dance as could be.

She watched Wes, Jon Boling and her father sitting together in the living room, with the sports show on the screen. They all laughed hard when a receiver crashed into a Gatorade tank and drenched a cameraman, and were digging into the pretzels and dip as if dinner were an empty promise. Dance had to smile at the homey, comforting scene.

Then she glanced down at her cell phone, disappointed that Michael O'Neil hadn't called.

As she was setting the table on the Deck, the other guests arrived: Martine Christensen and her husband, Steven Cahill, climbed the stairs, their nine-year-old twin boys in tow. Delighting Wes and Maggie, they also brought with them a long-haired tawny puppy, a briard named Raye.

The couple greeted Edie Dance warmly, avoiding any mention of the cases; either the Roadside Cross attacks or the one involving Edie.

"Hey, girlfriend," long-haired Martine said to Dance, winking, and passed her a dangerous-looking homemade chocolate cake.

Dance and Martine had been best friends ever since the woman had decided to single-handedly wrest Dance from the addictive lethargy of widowhood and force her back into life.

As if moving from the synth world back to the real, Dance now reflected.

She hugged Steven, who promptly vanished into the den to join the menfolk, his Birkenstocks flapping in time to his long ponytail.

The adults had wine while the children held an impromptu dog show in the backyard. Raye had apparently been doing his homework and was, literally, running circles around Patsy and Dylan, doing tricks and leaping over benches. Martine said he was a star in his obedience and agility classes.

Maggie appeared and said she wanted to take their dogs to school too.

"We'll see," Dance told her.

Soon candles were lit, sweaters distributed and everybody was sitting around the table, food steaming in the false autumn of a Monterey evening. Conversation was whirling as fast as the wine flowed. Wes was whispering jokes to the twins, who giggled not because of the punch lines but because an older boy was spending time whispering jokes to them.

Edie was laughing at something Martine said.

And for the first time in two days, Kathryn Dance felt the gloom fade.

Travis Brigham, Hamilton Royce, James Chilton…and the Dark Knight-Robert Harper-slipped from the forefront of her thoughts and she began to think that life might eventually right itself.

Jon Boling turned out to be quite social and fit right in, though he hadn't known a single soul there before today. He and Steven, the computer programmer, had much to talk about, though Wes kept injecting himself into the conversation.

Everyone studiously avoided talking about Edie's problem, which meant that current affairs and politics took center stage. Dance was amused to note that the first subjects to come up were ones Chilton had written about: the desalination plant and the new highway to Salinas.

Steve, Martine and Edie were adamantly opposed to the plant.

"I suppose," Dance said. "But we've all lived here for a long time." A glance at her parents. "Aren't you tired of the droughts?"

Martine said she doubted the water produced by the desalination plant would benefit them. "It'll be sold to rich cities in Arizona and Nevada. Somebody'll make billions and we won't see a drop."

After that they debated the highway. The group was divided on this, as well. Dance said, "It'd come in handy for the CBI and sheriff's office if we're running cases in the fields north of Salinas. But that cost-overrun issue is a problem."

"What overrun?" Stuart asked.

Dance was surprised to see everyone looking at her blankly. She explained what she'd learned by reading The Chilton Report: that the blogger had uncovered some possible malfeasance.

"I hadn't heard about that," Martine said. "I was so busy reading about the roadside crosses that I didn't pay much attention… But I'm sure going to look into it now, I'll tell you." She was the most political of Dance's friends. "I'll check out the blog."

After dinner Dance asked Maggie to bring out her keyboard for a brief concert.

The group retired to the living room, more wine was passed around. Boling lounged back in a deep armchair, joined by Raye the briard. Martine laughed-Raye was a bit bigger than a lapdog-but the professor insisted the puppy stay.

Maggie plugged in and, with the gravity of a recital pianist, sat down and played four songs from her Suzuki Book Three, simple arrangements of pieces by Mozart, Beethoven and Clementi. She hardly missed a note.

Everyone applauded and then went for cake, coffee and more wine.

Finally around 9:30, Steve and Martine said they wanted to get the twins to bed, and they headed out the door with the children. Maggie was already making plans to enter Dylan and Patsy in Raye's dog classes.

Edie gave a distant smile. "We should go too. It's been a long day."

"Mom, stay for a while. Have another glass of wine."

"No, no, I'm exhausted, Katie. Come on, Stu. I want to go home."

Dance received a distracted embrace from her mother, and her comfort from earlier diminished. "Call me later." Disappointed at their quick retreat, she watched the taillights disappear up the road. Then she told the children to say good night to Boling. The professor smiled and shook their hands, and Dance sent them off to wash up.

Wes appeared a few minutes later with a DVD. Ghost in the Shell, a Japanese anime science fiction tale involving computers.

"Here, Mr. Boling. This is pretty sweet. You can borrow it if you want."

Dance was astonished that her son was behaving so well with a man. Probably he recognized Boling as a business associate of his mother's, not a love interest; still, he'd been known to grow defensive even around her coworkers.

"Well, thanks, Wes. I've written about anime. But I've never seen this one."

"Really?"

"Nope. I'll bring it back in good shape."

"Whenever. 'Night."

The boy hurried back to his room, leaving the two of them together.

But only for a moment. A second later Maggie appeared with a gift of her own. "This is my recital." She handed him a CD in a jewel box.

"The one you were talking about at dinner?" Boling asked. "Where Mr. Stone burped during the Mozart?"

"Yeah!"

"Can I borrow it?"

"You can have it. I have about a million of them. Mom made them."

"Well, thanks, Maggie. I'll burn it on my iPod."

The girl actually blushed. Unusual for her. She charged off.

"You don't have to," Dance whispered.

"Oh, no. I will. She's a great girl."

He slipped the disk into his computer bag and looked over the anime that Wes had lent him.

Dance lowered her voice again, "How many times have you seen it?"

He chuckled. "Ghost in the Shell? Twenty, thirty times…along with the two sequels. Damn, you can even spot the white lies."

"Appreciate your doing that. It means a lot to him."

"I could tell he was excited."

"I'm surprised you don't have children. You seem to understand them."

"No, that never worked out. But if you want children, it definitely helps to have a woman in your life. I'm one of those men you have to be careful of. Don't you say that, all you girls?

"Careful of? Why's that?"

"Never date a man over forty who's never been married."

"I think nowadays whatever works, works."

"I just never met anybody I wanted to settle down with."

Dance noted the flicker of an eyebrow and a faint fluctuation of pitch. She let those observations float away.

Boling began, "You're…?" His eyes dipped to her left hand, where a gray pearl ring encircled the heart finger.

"I'm a widow," Dance said.

"Oh, gosh. I'm sorry."

"Car crash," she said, feeling only a hint of the familiar sorrow.

"Terrible."

And Kathryn Dance said nothing more about her husband and the accident for no reason other than she preferred not to talk about them any longer. "So, you're a real bachelor, hmm?"

"I guess I am. Now there's a word you haven't heard for…about a century."

She went to the kitchen to retrieve more wine, instinctively grabbing a red-since that was Michael O'Neil's favorite-then remembered that Boling liked white. She filled their glasses halfway up.

They chatted about life on the Peninsula-his mountain-biking trips and hikes. His professional life was far too sedentary for him so Boling would often jump into his old pickup truck and head out to the mountains or a state park.

"I'll do some biking this weekend. It'll be some sanity in an island of madness." He then told her more about the family get-together he'd mentioned earlier.

"Napa?"

"Right." His brow wrinkled in a cute and charming way. "My family is…how do I put this?"

"A family."

"Hit the nail on the head," he said, laughing. "Two parents healthy. Two siblings I get along with a majority of the time, though I like their children better. Assorted uncles and aunts. It'll be fine. Lot of wine, lot of food. Sunsets-but not a lot of those, thank goodness. Two, tops. That's sort of the way weekends work."

Again, a silence fell between them. Comfortable. Dance felt no rush to fill it.

But the peace was broken just then as Boling's cell phone hiccuped. He looked at the screen. Immediately his body language had shifted to high alert.

"Travis is online. Let's go."

Chapter 24

Under Boling's keystrokes, the DimensionQuest homepage loaded almost instantly.

The screen dissolved and a welcome box appeared. Below it was apparently the rating of the game by an organization referred to as ERSB.

Teen Blood Suggestive Themes Alcohol Violence

Then, with his self-assured typing, Jon Boling took them to Aetheria.

It was an odd experience. Avatars-some fantastical creatures, some human-wandered around a clearing in a forest of massive trees. Their names were in balloons above the characters. Most of them were fighting, but some just walked, ran or rode horses or other creatures. Some flew on their own. Dance was surprised to see that everyone moved nimbly and that the facial expressions were true to life. The graphics were astonishing, nearly movie quality.

Which made the combat and its vicious, excessive bloodletting all the more harrowing.

Dance found herself sitting forward, knee bobbing-a classic indication of stress. She gasped when one warrior beheaded another right in front of them.

"There are real people guiding them?"

"One or two are NPC-those're 'nonplayer characters' that the game itself creates. But nearly all of the others are avatars of people who could be anywhere. Cape Town, Mexico, New York, Russia. The majority of the players are men, but there're a lot of women too. And the average age isn't as young as you'd think. Teenage to late twenties mostly but plenty of older players. They could be boys or girls or middle-aged men, black, white, disabled, athletes, lawyers, dishwashers… In the synth world, you can be whoever you want to be."

In front of them another warrior easily killed his opponent. Blood spurted in a geyser. Boling grunted. "They're not all equal, though. Survival depends on who practices the most and who has the most power-power you earn by fighting and killing. It's a vicious cycle, literally."

Dance tapped the screen and pointed to the back of a woman avatar in the foreground. "That's you?"

"One of my student's avatars. I'm logging in through her account."

The name above her was "Greenleaf."

"There he is!" Boling said, his shoulder brushing hers as he leaned forward. He was pointing at Travis's avatar, Stryker, who was about a hundred feet away from Greenleaf.

Stryker was a tough, muscular man. Dance couldn't help but notice that while many other characters had beards or ruddy, leathery skin, Travis's avatar was unblemished and his skin as smooth as a baby's. She thought of the boy's concerns about acne.

You can be whoever you want to be…

Stryker-a "Thunderer," she recalled-was clearly the dominant warrior here. People would look his way and turn and leave. Several people engaged him-once two at the same time. He easily killed them both. One time he stunned a huge avatar, a troll or similar beast, with a ray. Then, as it lay shaking on the ground, Travis directed his avatar to plunge a knife into its chest.

Dance gasped.

Stryker bent down and seemed to reach inside the body.

"What's he doing?"

"Looting the corpse." Boling noted Dance's furrowed brow and added, "Everyone does it. You have to. The bodies might have something valuable. And if you've defeated them, you've earned the right."

If these were the values that Travis had learned in the synth world, it was a wonder he hadn't snapped sooner.

She couldn't help but wonder: And where was the boy now in the real world? At a Starbucks Wi-Fi location, with the hood over his head and sunglasses on, so he wouldn't be recognized? Ten miles from here? One mile?

He wasn't at the Game Shed. She knew that. After learning that he spent time there, Dance had ordered surveillance on the place.

As she watched Travis's avatar engage and easily kill dozens of creatures-women and men and animals-she found herself instinctively drawing on her skills as a kinesics expert.

She knew, of course, that computer software was controlling the boy's movement and posture. Yet she was already seeing that his avatar moved with more grace and fluidity than most. In combat he didn't flail away randomly, as some of the characters did. He took his time, he withdrew a bit and then struck when his opponents were disoriented. Several fast blows or stabs later-and the character was dead. He stayed alert, always looking around him.

This was a clue, perhaps, to the boy's strategy of life. Planning the attacks out carefully, learning all he could about his victims, attacking fast.

Analyzing the body language of a computer avatar, she reflected. What an odd case this was.

"I want to talk to him."

"To Travis? I mean, to Stryker?"

"Right. Get closer."

Boling hesitated. "I don't know the navigation commands very well. But I think I can walk all right."

"Go ahead."

Using the keypad, Boling maneuvered Greenleaf closer to where Stryker was hunched over the body of the creature he'd just killed, looting it.

As soon as she was within attack distance Stryker sensed Dance's avatar's approach and leapt up, his sword in one hand, an elaborate shield in the other. Stryker's eyes gazed out of the screen.

Eyes dark as the demon Qetzal's.

"How do I send a message?"

Boling clicked on a button at the bottom of the screen and a box opened. "Just like any instant message now. Type your message and hit 'Return.' Remember, use abbreviations and leetspeak if you can. The easiest thing to do is just substitute the number three for e and four for a."

Dance took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking as she stared at the animated face of the killer.

"Stryker, U R g00d." The words appeared in a balloon over Greenleaf's head as the avatar approached.

"who r u?" Stryker stood back, gripping a sword.

"I'm just some lus3r."

Boling told her, "Not bad, but forget grammar and punctuation. No caps, no periods. Question marks are okay."

Dance continued, "saw u fight u r el33t." Her breath was coming fast; tension rose within her.

"Excellent," Boling whispered.

"what is your realm?"

"What's he mean?" Dance asked, feeling a sprinkle of panic.

"I think he's asking for your country or the guild you're in. There'd be hundreds of them. I don't know any in this game. Tell him you're a newbie." He spelled it. "That's somebody new to a game, but who wants to learn."

"just newbie, play for fun, thought u could t33ch"

There was a pause.

"u mean u r sum n00b"

"What's that?" Dance asked.

"Newbie's just a beginner. A n00b is a loser, somebody who's egotistical and incompetent. It's an insult. Travis has been called a n00b a lot online. LOL him but say you're not. Your really want to learn from him."

"lol, but no d00d, i w4nt to learn"

"R U hot?"

Dance asked Boling, "Is he coming on to me?"

"I don't know. It's an odd question under the circumstances."

"sorta people tell me"

"u board funny"

"Shit, he's catching on that there's a delay in your keyboarding. He's suspicious. Change the subject back to him."

"like really w4nt to learn, what can u t33ch me?"

A pause. Then: "1 thing"

Dance typed, "whats that?"

Another hesitation.

Then words appeared in the balloon Travis's avatar. "2 die"

And though Dance felt an instinct to slam an arrow key or slide the touchpad to lift an arm and protect herself, there was no time.

Travis's avatar moved in fast. He swung his sword again and again, striking her. In the upper left-hand corner of the screen a box popped up showing two figures, solid white: the headings "Stryker" was above the one on the left, and "Greenleaf" on the right.

"No!" she whispered, as Travis slashed away.

The white filling the Greenleaf outline began to empty. Boling said, "That's your life force bleeding out. Fight back. You have a sword. There!" He tapped the screen. "Put the cursor on it and left click with the mouse."

Filled with unreasonable but feverish panic, she began clicking.

Stryker easily deflected her avatar's wild blows.

As Greenleaf's power slipped away on the gauge, the avatar dropped to her knees. Soon the sword fell to the ground. She was on her back, arms and legs splayed. Helpless.

Dance felt as vulnerable as she ever had in real life.

"You don't have much power left," Boling said. "There's nothing you can do." The gauge was nearly drained.

Stryker stopped hacking at Greenleaf's body. He moved closer and looked into the computer monitor.

"who r u?" came the words popping up in the instant message.

"i am greenleaf. Y did U kill me?"

"WHO R U?"

Boling said, "All caps. He's shouting. He's mad."

"pleez?" Dance's hands were shaking and her chest was constricted. It was as if these weren't bits of electronic data but real people; she'd plunged wholly into the synth world.

Travis then directed Stryker to step forward and drive his sword into Greenleaf's abdomen. Blood spurted, and the gauge in the upper left-hand corner was replaced with a message: "YOU ARE DEAD."

"Oh," Dance cried. Her sweaty hands quivered and her breath stuttered in and out, over her dry lips. Travis's avatar stared at the screen chillingly, then turned and began to run into the forest. Without a pause, he swiped his sword across the neck of an avatar whose back was turned and lopped off the creature's head.

He then vanished.

"He didn't wait to loot the corpse. He's escaping. He wants to get away fast. He thinks something's up." Boling moved closer to Dance-now it was their legs that brushed. "I want to see something." He began to type. Another box appeared. It said, "Stryker is not online."

Dance felt a painful chill rattling through her, ice along her spine.

Sitting back, her shoulder against Jon Boling's, she was thinking: if Travis had logged off, maybe he'd left the location where he'd been online.

And where was he going?

Into hiding?

Or was he intent on continuing his hunt in the real world?

LYING IN BED, the hour closing in on midnight.

Two sounds confused: the wind stroking the trees outside her bedroom window and surf on rocks a mile away at Asilomar and along the road to Lovers Point.

Beside her, she felt warmth against her leg, and exhaled breath, soft in sleep, tickled her neck.

She was unable to join in the bliss of unconsciousness, however. Kathryn Dance was as awake as if it were noon.

In her mind a series of thoughts spun past. One would rise to the top for a time, then roll on, like on Wheel of Fortune. The subject the clicker settled on most frequently was Travis Brigham of course. In her years of being a crime reporter and a jury consultant and a law enforcement agent, Dance had come to believe that the tendency toward evil could be found in the genes-like Daniel Pell, the cult leader and killer she'd pursued recently-or could be acquired: J. Doe in Los Angeles, for instance, whose murderous inclinations had come later in life.

Dance wondered where Travis fell on the spectrum.

He was a troubled, dangerous young man, but he was also someone else, a teenager yearning to be normal-to have clear skin, to have a popular girl like him. Was it inevitable from birth that he'd slip into this life of rage? Or had he begun like any other boy yet been so battered by circumstance-his abusive father, troubled brother, gawky physique, solitary nature, bad complexion-that his anger couldn't burn away as it did in most of us, like midmorning fog?

For a long, thick moment, pity and loathing were balanced within her.

Then she saw Travis's avatar staring her down and lifting his sword. like really w4nt to learn, what can u t33ch me?

2 die…

Next to her the warm body shifted slightly, and she wondered if she was giving off minuscule tensions that disturbed sleep. She was trying to remain motionless, but that, as a kinesics expert, she knew was impossible. Asleep or waking, if our brain functioned, our bodies moved.

The wheel spun on.

Her mother, and the euthanasia case, now paused at the top. Though she'd asked Edie to call when they got back to the inn, she hadn't. This hurt, but didn't surprise, Dance.

Then the wheel spun again and the J. Doe case in Los Angeles paused at the apogee. What would come of the immunity hearing? Would it be delayed again? And the ultimate outcome? Ernie Seybold was good. But was he good enough?

Dance honestly didn't know.

This musing in turn led to thoughts of Michael O'Neil. She understood there were reasons that he hadn't been able to be here tonight. But his not calling? That was unusual.

The Other Case…

Dance laughed at the jealousy.

She occasionally tried to picture herself and O'Neil together, had he not been married to svelte and exotic Anne. On the one hand, it was too easy. They'd spent days together on cases, and the hours moved by seamlessly. The conversation flowed, the humor. Yet they also disagreed, sometimes to the point of anger. But she believed their passionate disagreements only added to what they had together.

Whatever that was.

Her thoughts wheeled on, unstoppable.

Click, click, click…

At least until they stopped at Professor Jonathan Boling.

And beside her the soft breathing became a soft rattle.

"Okay, that's it," Dance said, rolling onto her other side. "Patsy!"

The flat-coat retriever stopped snoring as she awoke and lifted her head off the pillow.

"On the floor," Dance commanded.

The dog stood, assessed that no food or ball playing figured in the deal and leapt off the bed to join her companion, Dylan, on the shabby rug they used as a futon, leaving Dance once more alone in bed.

Jon Boling, she reflected. Then decided perhaps it was better not to spend much time on him.

Not just yet.

In any case, at that moment, her musings vanished as the mobile phone by the bed, sitting next to her weapon, trilled.

Instantly, she flipped the light on, shoved her glasses on her nose and laughed, seeing the Caller ID.

"Jon," she said.

"Kathryn," Boling said. "I'm sorry to call so late."

"It's okay. I wasn't asleep. What's up? Stryker?"

"No. But there's something you have to see. The blog-The Chilton Report. You better go online now."

IN HER SWEATS, the dogs nearby, Dance was sitting in the living room, all the lights off, though moonlight and a shaft of streetlight painted iridescent swatches of blue-white on the pine floor. Her Glock pressed against her spine, the heavy gun tugging down the limp elastic waistband of her sweats.

The computer finished its interminable loading of the software.

"Okay."

He said, "Look over the latest posting of the blog." He gave her the URL.

http://www.thechiltonreport.com/html/june27update.html

She blinked in surprise. "What…?"

Bolling told her, "Travis hacked The Report."

"How?"

The professor gave a cold laugh. "He's a teenager, that's how."

Dance shivered as she read. Travis had posted a message over the beginning of the June 27 blog. To the left was a crude drawing of the creature Qetzal from DimensionQuest. Around the eerie face, its lips sewn shut and bloody, were cryptic numbers and words. Beside it was a text posting in large, bold letters. It was even more troubling than the picture. Half English, half leetspeak.

I will OWN u all! i = win, u = fail!! u r d3ad 3v3ry 1 of u -post3d by TravisDQ

She didn't need a translator for this one.

Below this was another picture. The awkward color rendering showed a teenage girl or woman lying on her back, mouth open in a scream, as a hand plunged a sword into her chest. Blood spurted skyward.

"That picture…it's disgusting, Jon."

After a pause: "Kathryn," he said in a soft voice. "Do you notice anything about it?"

As she studied the awkward drawing, Dance gave a gasp. The victim had brownish hair, pulled back in a ponytail, and was wearing a white blouse and black skirt. On her belt was a darkened area on the hip, which could have been a weapon holster. The outfit was similar to what Dance had been wearing when she'd met Travis yesterday.

"It's me?" she whispered to Boling.

The professor said nothing.

Was the picture old, maybe a fantasy about the death of a girl or woman who'd slighted Travis somehow in the past?

Or had he drawn it today, despite the fact he was on the run from the police?

Dance had a chilling image of the boy, hovering over the paper with pencil and crayon, creating this crude depiction of a synth world death he hoped to make real.

THE WIND IS a persistent aspect of the Monterey Peninsula. Usually bracing, sometimes weak or tentative but never absent. Day and night, it churns the blue-gray ocean, which false to its name is never calm.

One of the windiest places for miles around is China Cove, at the south end of Point Lobos State Park. The chill, steady breath from the ocean numbs the skin of hikers, and picnics are a dicey proposition if paper plates and cups figure as the dishware. Seabirds here labor even to stay in place if they aim into the breeze.

Now, nearly midnight, the wind is fickle, surging and vanishing, and at its strongest, it kicks up towering gray spumes of seawater.

It rustles the scrub oak.

It bends the pine.

It flattens the grasses.

But one thing that's immune to the wind tonight is a small artifact on the seaside shoulder of Highway 1.

It's a cross, about two feet high and made of black branches. In the middle is a torn cardboard disk with tomorrow's date penned in blue. Sitting at the base, weighted down by stones, is a bouquet of red roses. At times petals fly off and skitter across the highway. But the cross itself doesn't flutter or bend. Clearly it was driven deep into the sandy dirt by the roadside with powerful blows, its creator adamant that it remain upright and visible for all to see.