Again Dance couldn't suppress the memories of the months after her own spouse's death--when Martine Christensen, much like Chilton, had been there for her. Dance would never have hurt herself, not with the children, but there were plenty of times when, yes, she thought she might go mad.
She understood Donald Hawken's loyalty.
"I'm not leaving," the man repeated firmly. "There's no point in asking." Then he hugged his wife. "But you go back. I want you to leave."
Without a moment's hesitation, Lily said, "No, I'm staying with you."
Dance noted the look. Adoration, contentment, resolve . . . Her own heart flipped as she thought, He lost his first spouse, recovered and found love again.
It can happen, Dance thought. See?
Then she closed the door on her own life.
"All right," she agreed reluctantly. "But you're leaving here right now. Find a hotel and stay there, stay out of sight. And we're going to put a guard on you."
"That's fine."
It was then that a car screeched to a stop in front of the house, a voice shouting in alarm. She and Carraneo stepped out onto the porch.
"S'okay," Albert Stemple said, his voice a lazy drawl, minus the Southern accent. "Only Chilton."
The blogger had apparently heard the news and hurried over. He raced up the steps. "What happened?" Dance was surprised to hear panic in his voice. She'd detected anger, pettiness, arrogance earlier, but never this sound. "Are they all right?"
"Fine," she said. "Travis was here, but Donald's fine. His wife too."
"What happened?" The collar of the blogger's jacket was askew.
Hawken and Lily stepped outside. "Jim!"
Chilton ran forward and embraced his friend. "Are you all right?"
"Yes, yes. The police got here in time."
"Did you catch him?" Chilton asked.
"No," Dance said, expecting Chilton to launch into criticism for their not capturing the boy. But he took her hand firmly and gripped it. "Thank you, thank you. You saved them. Thank you."
She nodded awkwardly and released his hand. Then Chilton turned to Lily with a smile of curiosity.
Dance deduced that they'd never met before, not in person. Hawken introduced them now and Chilton gave Lily a warm embrace. "I'm so sorry about this. I never, not in a million years, thought it would affect you."
"Who would have?" Hawken asked.
With a rueful smile, Chilton said to his friend, "With an introduction to the Monterey Peninsula like this, she's not going to want to stay. She's going to move back tomorrow."
Lily finally cracked a fragile smile. "I would. Except we've already bought the drapes." A nod at the house.
Chilton laughed. "She's funny, Don. Why doesn't she stay and you go back to San Diego?"
"Afraid you're stuck with both of us."
Chilton then grew serious. "You have to leave until this is over."
Dance said, "I've been trying to talk them into that."
"We're not leaving."
"Don--" Chilton began.
But Hawken laughed, nodding at Dance. "I have police permission. She agreed. We're going to hide out in a hotel. Like Bonnie and Clyde."
"But--"
"No buts, buddy. We're here. You can't get rid of us now."
Chilton opened his mouth to object, but then noted Lily's wry grin. She said, "You don't want to be telling this girl what to do, Jim."
The blogger gave another laugh and said, "Fair enough. Thank you. Get to a hotel. Stay there. In a day or two this'll all be over with. Things'll get back to normal."
Hawken said, "I haven't seen Pat and the boys since I left. Over three years."
Dance eyed the blogger. Something else about him was different. Her impression was that she was seeing for the first time his human side, as if this near-tragedy had pulled him yet further from the synth world into the real.
The crusader was, at least temporarily, absent.
She left them to their reminiscences and walked around back. A voice from the bushes startled her. "Hello."
She looked behind her to see the young deputy who'd been helping them out, David Reinhold.
"Deputy."
He grinned. "Call me David. I heard he was here. You almost nailed him."
"Close. Not close enough."
He was carrying several battered metal suitcases, stenciled with MCSO--CSU on the side. "Sorry I couldn't tell anything for certain about those branches in your backyard--that cross."
"I couldn't tell either. Probably it was just a fluke. If I trimmed the trees like I should, it never would've happened."
His bright eyes glanced her way. "You have a nice house."
"Thanks. Despite the messy backyard."
"No. It's real comfortable-looking."
She asked the deputy, "And how 'bout you, David? You live in Monterey?"
"I did. Had a roommate, but he left, so I had to move to Marina."
"Well, appreciate your efforts. I'll put in a good word with Michael O'Neil."
"Really, Kathryn? That'd be great." He glowed.
Reinhold turned away and began cordoning off the backyard. Dance stared at what was in the center of the yellow tape trapezoid: the cross etched into the dirt and the sprinkling of petals.
From there, her eyes rose and took in the sweeping decline from the heights of Monterey down to the bay, where a sliver of water could be seen.
It was a panoramic view, beautiful.
But today it seemed as disturbing as the terrible mask of Qetzal, the demon in DimensionQuest.
You're out there somewhere, Travis.
Where, where?
Chapter 28
PLAYING COP.
Tracking down Travis the way Jack Bauer chased terrorists.
Jon Boling had a lead: the possible location from which Travis had sent the blog posting of the mask drawing and the horrific stabbing of the woman who looked a bit like Kathryn Dance. The place where the boy would be playing his precious DimensionQuest.
The "hours of operation" he'd found in the ghostly corridors of Travis's computer referred to Lighthouse Arcade, a video and computer gaming center in New Monterey.
The boy would be taking a risk going out in public, of course, considering the manhunt. But if he picked his routes carefully, wore sunglasses and a cap and something other than the hoodie the TV reports were depicting him in, well, he could probably move around with some freedom.
Besides, when it came to online gaming and Morpegs, an addict had no choice but to risk detection.
Boling piloted his Audi off the highway and onto Del Monte then Lighthouse and headed into the neighborhood where the arcade was located.
He was enjoying a certain exhilaration. Here he was, a forty-one-year-old professor, who lived largely by his brain. He'd never thought of himself as suffering from an absence of bravery. He'd done some rock climbing, scuba diving, downhill skiing. Then too, the world of ideas carried risk of harm--to careers and reputations and contentment. He'd battled it out with fellow professors. He also had been a victim of vicious online attacks, much like those against Travis, though with better spelling, grammar and punctuation. Most recently he'd been attacked for taking a stand against file sharing of copyrighted material.
He hadn't expected the viciousness of the attacks. He was trounced . . . called a "fucking capitalist," a "bitch whore of big business." Boling particularly liked "professor of mass destruction."
Some colleagues actually stopped talking to him.
But the harm he'd experienced, of course, was nothing compared with what Kathryn Dance and her fellow officers risked day after day.
And which he himself was now risking, he reflected.
Playing cop . . .
Boling realized that he'd been helpful to Kathryn and the others. He was pleased about that and pleased at their recognition of his contribution. But being so close to the action, hearing the phone calls, watching Kathryn's face as she took down information about the crimes, see
ing her hand absently stroke the black gun on her hip . . . he felt a longing to participate.
And anything else, Jon? he wryly asked himself.
Well, okay, maybe he was trying to impress her.
Absurd, but he'd felt a bit of jealousy seeing her and Michael O'Neil connect.
You're acting like a goddamn teenager.
Still, something about her lit the fuse. Boling had never been able to explain it--who could, really?--when that connection occurred. And it happened fast or never. Dance was single, he was too. He'd gotten over Cassie (okay, pretty much over); was Kathryn getting close to dating again? He believed he'd gotten a few signals from her. But what did he know? He had none of her skill--body language.
More to the point, he was a man, a species genetically fitted with persistent oblivion.
Boling now parked his gray A4 near Lighthouse Arcade, on a side street in that netherworld north of Pacific Grove. He remembered when this strip of small businesses and smaller apartments, dubbed New Monterey, had been a mini-Haight Ashbury, tucked between a brawling army town and a religious retreat. (Pacific Grove's Lovers Point was named for lovers of Jesus, not one another.) Now the area was as bland as a strip mall in Omaha or Seattle.
The Lighthouse Arcade was dim and shabby and smelled, well, gamy--a pun he couldn't wait to share with her.
He surveyed the surreal place. The players--most of them boys--sat at terminals, staring at the screens, teasing joysticks and pounding on keyboards. The playing stations had high, curving walls covered with black sound-dampening material, and the chairs were comfortable, high-backed leather models.
Everything a young man would need for a digital experience was here. In addition to the computers and keyboards there were noise-cancelling headsets, microphones, touch pads, input devices like car steering wheels and airplane yokes, three-D glasses, and banks of sockets for power, USB, Firewire, audiovisual and more obscure connections. Some had Wii devices.
Boling had written about the latest trend in gaming: total immersion pods, which had originated in Japan, where kids would sit for hours and hours in a dark, private space, completely sealed off from the real world, to play computer games. This was a logical development in a country known for hikikomori, or "withdrawal," an increasingly common lifestyle in which young people, boys and men mostly, became recluses, never leaving their rooms for months or years at a time, living exclusively through their computers.
The noise was disorienting: a cacophony of digitally generated sounds--explosions, gunshots, animal cries, eerie shrieks and laughs--and an ocean of indistinguishable human voices speaking into microphones to fellow gamers somewhere in the world. Responses rattled from speakers. Occasionally cries and expletives would issue hoarsely from the throats of desperate players as they died or realized a tactical mistake.
The Lighthouse Arcade, typical of thousands around the globe, represented the last outpost of the real world before you plunged into the synth.
Boling felt a vibration on his hip. He looked down at his mobile. The message from Irv, his grad student, read: Stryker logged on five minutes ago in DQ!!
As if he'd been slapped, Boling looked around. Was Travis here? Because of the enclosures, it was impossible to see more than one or two stations at a time.
At the counter a long-haired clerk sat oblivious to the noise; he was reading a science fiction novel. Boling approached. "I'm looking for a kid, a teenager."
The clerk lifted an ironic eyebrow.
I'm looking for a tree in a forest.
"Yeah?"
"He's playing DimensionQuest. Did you sign somebody in about five minutes ago?"
"There's no sign-in. You use with tokens. You can buy 'em here or from a machine." The clerk was looking Boling over carefully. "You his father?"
"No. Just want to find him."
"I can look over the servers. Find out if anybody's logged onto DQ now."
"You could?"
"Yeah."
"Great."
But the kid wasn't making any moves to check the servers; he was just staring at Boling through a frame of unclean hair.
Ah. Got it. We're negotiating. Sweet. Very private-eye-ish, Boling thought. A moment later two twenties vanished into the pocket of the kid's unwashed jeans.
"His avatar's name is Stryker, if that helps," Boling told him.
A grunt. "Be back in a minute." He vanished onto the floor. Boling saw him emerge on the far side of the room and walk toward the back office.
Five minutes later he returned.
"Somebody named Stryker, yeah, he's playing DQ. Just logged on. Station forty-three. It's over there."
"Thanks."
"Uh." The clerk went back to his S-F novel.
Boling, thinking frantically: What should he do? Have the clerk evacuate the arcade? No, then Travis would catch on. He should just call 911. But he better see if the boy was alone. Would he have his gun with him?
He had a fantasy of walking past casually, ripping the gun from the boy's belt and covering him till the police arrived.
No. Don't do that. Under any circumstances.
Palms sweating, Boling slowly walked toward station 43. He took a fast look around the corner. The computer had the Aetherian landscape on the screen, but the chair was empty.
Nobody was in the aisles, though. Station 44 was empty but at 42 a girl with short green hair was playing a martial arts game.
Boling walked up to her. "Excuse me."
The girl was delivering crippling blows to an opponent. Finally the creature fell over dead and her avatar climbed on top of the body and pulled its head off. "Like, yeah?" She didn't glance up.
"The boy who was just here, playing DQ. Where is he?"
"Like, I don't know. Jimmy walked past and said something and he left. A minute ago."
"Who's Jimmy?"
"You know, the clerk."
Goddamn! I just paid forty dollars to that shit to tip off Travis. Some cop I am.
Boling glared at the clerk, who remained conspicuously lost in his novel.
The professor slammed through the exit door and sprinted outside. His eyes, accustomed to the darkness, stung. He paused in the alleyway, squinting left and right. Then caught a glimpse of a young man, walking quickly away, head down.
Don't do anything stupid, he told himself. He pulled his BlackBerry from its holster.
Ahead of him, the boy broke into a run.
After exactly one second of debate, Jon Boling did too.
Chapter 29
HAMILTON ROYCE, THE ombudsman from the attorney general's office in Sacramento, disconnected the phone. It drooped in his hand as he reflected on the conversation he'd just had--a conversation conducted in the language known as Political and Corporate Euphemism.
He lingered in the halls of the CBI, considering options.
Finally he returned to Charles Overby's office.
The agent-in-charge was sitting back in his chair watching a press report about the case streaming on his computer. How the police had come close to catching the killer at the house of a friend of the blogger's but had missed him and he'd escaped possibly to terrorize more people on the Monterey Peninsula.
Royce reflected that simply reporting that the police had saved the friend didn't have quite the stay-tuned-or-else veneer of the approach the network had chosen to take.
Overby typed and a different station came up. The special report anchor apparently preferred Travis to be the "Video Game Killer," rather than defining him by masks or roadside crosses. He went on to describe how the boy tormented his victims before he killed them.
Never mind that only one person had died or that the bastard got shot in the back of the head, fleeing. Which would tend to minimize the torment.
Finally he said, "Well, Charles, they're getting more concerned. The AG." He lifted his phone like he was showing a shield during a bust.
"We're all pretty concerned," Overby echoed. "The whole Peninsula's concerned. It's really
our priority now. Like I was saying." His face was cloudy. "But is Sacramento having a problem with how we're handling the case?"
"Not per se." Royce let this nonresponse buzz around Overby's head like a strident hornet.
"We're doing everything we can."
"I like that agent of yours. Dance."
"Oh, she's top-notch. Nothing gets by her."
A leisurely nod, a thoughtful nod. "The AG feels bad about those victims. I feel bad about them." Royce poured sympathy into his voice, and tried to recall the last time he really felt bad. Probably when he missed his daughter's emergency appendectomy because he was in bed with his mistress.
"A tragedy."
"I know I'm sounding like a broken record. But I really do feel that that blog is the problem."
"It is," Overby agreed. "It's the eye of the hurricane."
Which is calm and frames a beautiful blue sky, Royce corrected silently.
The CBI chief offered, "Well, Kathryn did get Chilton to post a plea for the boy to come in. And he gave us some details about the server--a proxy in Scandinavia."
"I understand. It's just . . . as long as that blog's up, it's a reminder that the job isn't getting done." Meaning: By you. "I keep coming back to that question about something helpful to us, something about Chilton."
"Kathryn said she'd keep an eye peeled."
"She's busy. I wonder if there's something in what she's already found. I don't really want to deflect Agent Dance from the case. I wonder if I should take a gander."
"You?"
"You wouldn't mind, would you, Charles? If I just took a peek at the files. I could bring perspective. My impression, actually, is that Kathryn's maybe too kind."
"Too kind?"
"You were sharp, Charles, to hire her." The agent in charge accepted this compliment, though, Royce knew, Kathryn Dance had predated Overby's presence in the CBI here by four years. He continued, "Clever. You saw she was an antidote to the cynicism of old roosters like you and me. But the price of that is a certain . . . naivete."
"You think she's got something on Chilton and doesn't know it?"
"Could be."
Overby was looking tense. "Well, I'll apologize for her. Put it down to distraction, why don't we? Her mother's case. Not focusing up to par. She's doing the best she can."