Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel

by Jeffery Deaver

  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 shuts 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 ab
out 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 swallowe
d 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.