Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel (14 page)

“What happened?” he asked.

“Tripped me, then took off. Michael, it wasn’t Travis.”

“What?”

“I got a fast look at him. He was blond.” Dance grimaced at a tear in her skirt, then gave up on the clothing. She started scanning the ground. “He dropped something. . . . Okay, there.” She picked it up. A can of spray paint.

“What’s this all about?” he wondered aloud.

She tucked the gun away in her hip holster and turned back toward the house. “Let’s go find out.”

THEY ARRIVED BACK
at the Brigham house simultaneously with the backup—two Pacific Grove town
police cars. A longtime resident, Dance knew the officers and waved hello.

They joined her and O’Neil.

“You all right, Kathryn?” one cop asked, noting her disheveled hair and dusty skirt.

“Fine.” She filled them in on the attack and pursuit. One officer used his shoulder-mounted Motorola to report the incident.

Dance and O’Neil had no sooner gotten to the house when a woman’s voice called out from behind the screen, “Did you get him?” The door opened and the speaker stepped out on the porch. In her forties, Dance guessed, she had a round figure and her face was moonish. She wore painfully taut jeans and a billowy gray blouse with a triangle of stain on the belly. Kathryn Dance noted that the woman’s cream pumps were hopelessly limp and scuffed from bearing her weight. From inattention too.

Dance and O’Neil identified themselves. The woman was Sonia Brigham and she was Travis’s mother.

“Did you get him?” she persisted.

“Do you know who he was, why he attacked us?”

“He wasn’t attacking
you,
” Sonia said. “He probably didn’t even see you. He was going for the windows. They’ve already got three of ’em.”

One of the Pacific Grove officers explained, “The Brighams’ve been the target of vandalism lately.”

“You said ‘he,’ ” Dance said. “Do you know who he was?”

“Not that particular one. There’s a bunch of them.”

“Bunch?” O’Neil asked.

“They’re coming by all the time. Throwing rocks,
bricks, painting stuff on the house and garage. That’s what we’ve been living with.” A contemptuous wave of the hand, presumably toward where the vandal had disappeared. “After everybody started saying those bad things about Travis. The other day, somebody threw a brick through the living room window, nearly hit my younger son. And look.” She pointed to green spray paint graffiti on the side of a large lopsided shed in the side yard, about fifty feet away.

KILL3R!!

Leetspeak, Dance noted.

Dance handed the spray paint to one of the Pacific Grove officers, who said they’d follow up on it. She described the boy—who looked like one of five hundred high school students in the area. They took a brief statement from both Dance and O’Neil, as well as Travis’s mother, then climbed back into their cars and left.

“They’re after my boy. And he didn’t do anything! It’s like the goddamn Ku Klux Klan! That brick nearly hit Sammy. He’s a little troubled. He went crazy. Had an episode.”

Vengeful Angels, Dance reflected. Though the bullying was no longer cyber; it had moved from the synth world into the real.

A round-faced teenager appeared on the porch. His wary smile made him look slow, but his eyes seemed fully comprehending as he took them in. “What is it, what is it?” His voice was urgent.

“It’s okay, Sammy. Go back inside. You go to your room.”

“Who’re they?”

“You go on back to your room. You stay inside. Don’t go to the pond.”

“I want to go to the pond.”

“Not now. Somebody was out there.”

He ambled off into the house.

Michael O’Neil said, “Mrs. Brigham, there was a crime last night, an attempted murder. The victim was someone who’d posted a comment against Travis on a blog.”

“Oh, that Chilton crap!” Sonia spat out between yellow teeth that had aged even faster than the woman’s face. “That’s what started it all. Somebody should throw a brick through
his
window. Now everybody’s ganging up on our boy. And he didn’t
do
anything. Why does everybody think he did? They said he stole my mother’s car and was driving it on Lighthouse, you know, exposing himself. Well, my mother sold her car four years ago. That’s how much they know.” Then Sonia had a thought and the seesaw returned to the side of wariness. “Oh, wait, that girl in the trunk, going to be drowned?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I’ll tell you right now, my boy wouldn’t a done anything like that. I swear to God! You’re not going to arrest him, are you?” She looked panicked.

Dance wondered: too panicked?
Did
she in fact suspect her son?

“We’d just like to talk to him.”

The woman was suddenly uneasy. “My husband isn’t home.”

“You alone is fine. Both parents aren’t necessary.” But Dance could see that the problem was that she didn’t want the responsibility.

“Well, Trav isn’t here either.”

“Will he be back soon?”

“He works part-time, at Bagel Express, for pocket money. His shift’s in a little while. He’ll have to come back here to pick up his uniform.”

“Where is he now?”

A shrug. “Sometimes he goes to this video game place.” She fell silent, probably thinking she shouldn’t be saying anything. “My husband will be back soon.”

Dance noted again the tone with which Sonia delivered those words.
My husband.

“Was Travis out last night? Around midnight?”

“No.” Offered fast.

“Are you sure?” Dance asked with a crisp tone. Sonia had just exhibited aversion—looking away—and blocking, touching her nose, a gesture Dance had not observed earlier.

Sonia swallowed. “Probably he was here. I’m not exactly sure. I went to bed early. Travis stays up till all hours. He might’ve gone out. But I didn’t hear anything.”

“And your husband?” She’d noted the singular pronoun regarding her bedtime. “Was he here around that time?”

“He plays poker some. I think he was at a game.”

O’Neil was saying, “We really need to—”

His words braked to a halt as a tall, lanky teenager, shoulders and stance wide, appeared from the side yard. His black jeans were faded, patches of gray showing, and an olive-drab combat jacket covered a black sweatshirt. It didn’t have a hood, Dance noted. He stopped suddenly, blinking in surprise at the visitors. A glance at the unmarked CBI car, which any viewer of a cop show on TV in the last ten years would instantly recognize for what it was.

Dance noted in the boy’s posture and expression the typical reaction of someone spotting law enforcers, whether they were guilty or innocent: caution . . . and thinking quickly.

“Travis, honey, come over here.”

He remained where he was, and Dance sensed O’Neil tensing.

But a second foot pursuit wasn’t needed. Expressionless, the boy slouched forward to join them.

“These’re police officers,” his mother said. “They want to talk to you.”

“I guess. What about?” His voice was casual, agreeable. He stood with his long arms dangling at his sides. His hands were dirty and there was grit under his nails. His hair seemed washed, though; she supposed he did this regularly to combat the sprinkling of acne on his face.

She and O’Neil said hello to the boy and offered their IDs. He studied them for a long moment.

Buying time? Dance wondered.

“Somebody else was here,” Sonia said to her son. She nodded at the graffiti. “Broke a couple more windows.”

Travis took this news from his mother without emotion. He asked, “Sammy?”

“He didn’t see.”

O’Neil asked, “You mind if we go inside?”

He shrugged and they walked into the house, which smelled of mold and cigarette smoke. The place was ordered but grimy. The mismatched furniture seemed secondhand, slipcovers worn and pine legs sloughing off varnish. Dim pictures covered the walls, mostly decorative. Dance could see part of a
National Geographic
magazine logo just below the frame of a picture of Venice. A few were of the family. The two boys, and one or two of Sonia when she was younger.

Sammy appeared, as before, big, moving quickly, grinning again.

“Travis!” He charged toward his sibling. “Did you bring me M’s?”

“Here you go.” Travis dug into his pocket and handed the boy a packet of M&M’s.

“Yea!” Sammy opened the package carefully, looked inside. Then gazed at his brother. “The pond was nice today.”

“Was it?”

“Yeah.” Sammy returned to his room, clutching the candy in his hand.

Travis said, “He doesn’t look good. Did he take his pills?”

His mother looked away. “They . . .”

“Dad wouldn’t get the prescription refilled because the price went up. Right?”

“He doesn’t think they do that much good.”

“They do a lot of good, Mom. You know how he gets when he doesn’t take them.”

Dance glanced into Sammy’s room and saw that the boy’s desk was covered with complicated electronic components, parts of computers and tools—along with toys for children much younger. He was reading a Japanese graphic novel as he slouched in a chair. The boy glanced up and stared at Dance intently, studying her. He gave a faint smile and nodded toward the book. Dance smiled back at the cryptic gesture. He returned to reading. His lips moved.

She noticed on a hall table a laundry basket filled
with clothes. She tapped O’Neil’s arm and glanced at a gray sweatshirt sitting on the top. It was a hoodie.

O’Neil nodded.

“How are you feeling?” Dance asked Travis. “After the accident?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“It must’ve been terrible.”

“Yeah.”

“But you weren’t hurt bad?”

“Not really. The airbag, you know. And I wasn’t going that fast. . . . Trish and Van.” A grimace. “If they’d had their seat belts on they would’ve been fine.”

Sonia repeated, “His father should be home anytime now.”

O’Neil continued evenly, “Just have a few questions.” Then he stepped back to the corner of the living room, leaving the questioning to Dance.

She asked, “What grade are you in?”

“Just finished junior year.”

“Robert Louis Stevenson, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What’re you studying?”

“I don’t know, stuff. I like computer science and math. Spanish. Just, you know, what everybody’s taking.”

“How’s Stevenson?”

“It’s okay. Better than Monterey Public or Junipero.” He was answering agreeably, looking directly into her eyes.

At Junipero Serra School, uniforms were required. Dance supposed that more than stern Jesuits and long homework assignments, the dress code was the most hated aspect of the place.

“How’re the gangs?”

“He’s not in a gang,” his mother said. Almost as if she wished he were.

They all ignored her.

“Not bad,” Travis responded. “They leave us alone. Not like Salinas.”

The point of these questions wasn’t social. Dance was asking them to determine the boy’s baseline behavior. After a few minutes of these harmless inquiries, Dance had a good feel for the boy’s nondeceptive mode. Now she was ready to ask about the assault.

“Travis, you know Tammy Foster, don’t you?”

“The girl in the trunk. It was on the news. She goes to Stevenson. She and me don’t talk or anything. Maybe we had a class together freshman year.” He then looked Dance straight in the eye. His hand occasionally strayed across his face but she wasn’t sure whether it was a blocking gesture, signifying deception, or because he was ashamed of the acne. “She posted some stuff about me in
The Chilton Report.
It wasn’t true.”

“What did she say?” Dance asked, though she recalled the post, about his trying to take pictures of the girls’ locker room after cheerleading practice.

The boy hesitated, as if wondering if she was trying to trap him. “She said I was taking pictures. You know, of the girls.” His face grew dark. “But I was just on the phone, you know, talking.”

“Really,” his mother interjected. “Bob’ll be home any minute now. I might rather wait.”

But Dance felt a certain urgency to keep going. She knew without doubt that if Sonia wanted to wait
for her husband, the man would put a fast end to the interview.

Travis asked, “Is she going to be okay? Tammy?”

“Looks like it.”

He glanced at the scarred coffee table, where an empty but smudged ashtray rested. Dance didn’t think she’d seen an ashtray in a living room for years. “You think I did it? Tried to hurt her?” How easily his dark eyes, set deep beneath those brows, held hers.

“No. We’re just talking to everybody who might have information about the situation.”

“Situation?” he asked.

“Where were you last night? Between eleven and one?”

Another sweep of the hair. “I went to the Game Shed about ten-thirty.”

“What’s that?”

“This place where you can play video games. Like an arcade. I kind of hang there some. You know where it is? It’s by Kinko’s. It used to be that old movie theater but that got torn down and they put it in. It’s not the best, the connections aren’t so good, but it’s the only one that’s open late.”

Dance noted the rambling. She asked, “You were alone?”

“There were, like, other kids there. But I was playing alone.”

“I thought you were here,” Sonia said.

A shrug. “I
was
here. I went out. I couldn’t sleep.”

“At the Game Shed were you online?” Dance asked.

“Like, no. I was playing pinball, not RPG.”

“Not what?”

“Role-playing games. For shooter and pinball and driving games you don’t go online.”

He said this patiently, though he seemed surprised she didn’t know the distinction.

“So you weren’t logged on?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“How long were you there?” His mother had taken on the interrogation.

“I don’t know, an hour, two.”

“What do those games cost? Fifty cents, a dollar every few minutes?”

So that was Sonia’s agenda. Money.

“If you play good, it lets you keep on going. Cost me three dollars for the whole night. I used money I made. And I got some food too and a couple of Red Bulls.”