Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel (28 page)

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.

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 trying 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.”

“
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 linebacker 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 swept-back 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.