"Just shot him down?"
"That's right."
His eyes closed briefly. "Jesus."
"Wife?"
"No. Divorced. But he's got a grown son. He's already been notified." O'Neil, otherwise so calm, with a facade that revealed so little, looked with chilling hatred at the green bag containing Greg Schaeffer's body Another voice intruded, weak, unsteady. "Thank you."
They turned to face the man who'd spoken: James Chilton. Wearing dark slacks, a white T-shirt and a navy blue V-neck sweater, the blogger seemed like a chaplain humbled by battlefront carnage. His wife was at his side.
"Are you all right?" Dance asked them.
"I'm fine, yes. Thank you. Just beat up a bit. Cuts and bruises."
Patrizia Chilton said she too wasn't seriously injured.
O'Neil nodded to them and asked Chilton, "Who was he?"
Dance answered, "Anthony Schaeffer's brother."
Chilton gave a blink of surprise. "You figured it out?"
She explained to O'Neil about Ashton's real name. "That's the interesting thing about the Internet--those role-playing games and sites. Like Second Life. You can create whole new identities for yourself. Schaeffer's been spending the past few months seeding the name 'Greg Ashton' around online as this blogging and RSS maven. He did that to seduce his way into Chilton's life."
"I outed his brother Anthony in a blog several years ago," Chilton explained. "He was the one I told Agent Dance about when I first met her--one of the things I regretted about the blog--that he killed himself."
O'Neil asked Dance, "How did you find out about him?"
"TJ and I were checking out the suspects. It wasn't likely that Arnold Brubaker was the killer. I was still suspicious of Clint Avery--the guy behind the highway project--but we didn't have anything specific yet. So I was working on the list of people who'd sent James threats."
The small list . . .
Chilton said, "Anthony Schaeffer's wife was on the list. Sure. She'd threatened me a few years ago."
Dance continued, "I went online to find out as many details about her as I could. I found her wedding pictures. The best man at their wedding was Greg, Anthony's brother. I recognized him from when I came to your house the other day. I checked him out. He traveled here on an open ticket about two weeks ago." As soon as she'd learned this she'd called Miguel Herrera but couldn't get through, so she sent Rey Carraneo here. The agent, following Clint Avery, was not far from Chilton's house.
O'Neil asked, "Did Schaeffer say anything about Travis?"
Dance showed him the plastic envelope containing the handwritten note, with the references to Travis, making it seem that the boy was the one about to shoot Chilton.
"He's dead, you think?"
O'Neil's and Dance's eyes met. She said, "I'm not going on that assumption. Ultimately, sure, Schaeffer'd have to kill the boy. But he might not have done it yet. He might want to make it look like Travis killed himself after he'd finished with Chilton. Make the case tidier. That means he could still be alive."
The senior deputy took a phone call. He stepped away, eyes straying to the MCSO car where Herrera had been so ruthlessly killed. He disconnected after a moment. "Got to head off. Have to interview a witness."
"You? Interviewing?" she chided. Michael O'Neil's technique at interviewing involved gazing unsmilingly at the subject and asking him over and over again to tell O'Neil what he knew. It could be effective, but it wasn't efficient. And O'Neil didn't really enjoy it.
He consulted his watch. "Any chance you could do me a favor?"
"Name it."
"Anne's flight from San Francisco was delayed. I can't miss this interview. Can you pick up the kids at day care?"
"Sure. I'm going to get Wes and Maggie after camp anyway."
"Meet me at Fisherman's Wharf at five?"
"Sure."
O'Neil headed off, with yet another dark glance at Herrera's car.
Chilton gripped his wife's hand. Dance recognized postures that bespoke a graze with mortality. She thought back to the arrogant, self-righteous crusader Chilton had been when she first met him. Very different now. She recalled that something about him seemed to have softened earlier--when he'd learned that his friend Don Hawken and his wife had nearly been killed. Now, there'd been another shift, away from the stony visage of a missionary.
The man gave a bitter smile. "Oh, did he sucker me in. . . . He played right to my fucking ego."
"Jim--"
"No, honey. He did. You know, this's all my fault. Schaeffer picked Travis. He read through the blog, found somebody who'd be a good candidate to be a fall guy and set up a seventeen-year-old boy as my killer. If I hadn't started the 'Roadside Crosses' thread and mentioned the accident, Schaeffer wouldn't have any incentive to go after him."
He was right. But Kathryn Dance tended to avoid the what-if game. The playing field was far too soupy. "He would've picked somebody else," she pointed out. "He was determined to get revenge against you."
But Chilton didn't seem to hear. "I should just shut the fucking blog down altogether."
Dance saw resolve in his eyes, frustration, anger. Fear, too, she believed. Speaking to both of them, he said firmly, "I'm going to."
"To what?" his wife asked.
"Shut it down. The Report's finished. I'm not destroying anybody else's life."
"Jim," Patrizia said softly. She brushed some dirt off her sleeve. "When our son had pneumonia, you sat beside his bed for two days and didn't get a bit of sleep. When Don's wife died, you walked right out of that meeting at Microsoft headquarters to be there for him--you gave up a hundred-thousand-dollar contract. When my dad was dying, you were with him more than the hospice people. You do good things, Jim. That's what you're about. And your blog does good things too."
"I--"
"Shhh. Let me finish. Donald Hawken needed you and you were there. Our children needed you and you were there. Well, the world needs you too, honey. You can't turn your back on that."
"Patty, people died."
"Just promise me you won't make any decisions too fast. This has been a terrible couple of days. Nobody's thinking clearly."
A lengthy pause. "I'll see. I'll see." Then he hugged his wife. "But one thing I do know is that I can go on hiatus for a few days. And we're going to get away from here." Chilton said to his wife, "Let's go up to Hollister tomorrow. We'll spend a long weekend with Donald and Lily. You still haven't met her. We'll bring the boys, cook out . . . do some hiking."
Patrizia's face blossomed into a smile. She rested her head against his shoulders. "I'd like that."
He'd turned his attention to Dance. "There's something I've been thinking about."
She cocked an eyebrow.
"A lot of people would've thrown me to the wolves. And I probably deserved to be thrown. But you didn't. You didn't like me, you didn't approve, but you stood up for me. That's intellectual honesty. You don't see that much. Thank you."
Dance gave a faint, embarrassed laugh, acknowledging the compliment--even as she thought of the times when she had wanted to throw him to the wolves.
The Chiltons returned to the house to finish packing and arrange for a motel that night--Patrizia didn't want to stay in the house until the office had been scrubbed clean of every trace of Schaeffer's blood. Dance could hardly blame her.
The agent now joined the MCSO Crime Scene chief, an easygoing middle-aged officer she'd worked with for several years. She explained that there was a possibility that Travis might still be alive, stashed in a hideout somewhere. Which meant he'd have a dwindling supply of food and water. She had to locate him. And soon.
"You find a room key on the body?"
"Yep. Cyprus Grove Inn."
"I want the room, and Schaeffer's clothes and his car gone over with a microscope. Look for anything that might give us a clue where he might've put the boy."
"You bet, Kathryn."
She returned to her car, phoning TJ. "You got him, boss. I heard.
"
"Yep. But now I want to find the boy. If he's alive, we may only have a day or two until he starves to death or dies of thirst. All-out on this one. MCSO's running the scenes at Chilton's house and at the Cyprus Grove--where Schaeffer was staying. Call Peter Bennington and ride herd on the reports. Call Michael if you need to. Oh, and find me witnesses in nearby rooms at the Cyprus Grove."
"Sure, boss."
"And contact CHP, county and city police. I want to find the last roadside cross--the one Schaeffer left to announce Chilton's death. Peter should go over it with every bit of equipment they've got." Another thought occurred to her. "Did you ever hear back about that state vehicle?"
"Oh, that Pfister saw, right?"
"Yeah."
"Nobody's called. I don't think we're prioritized."
"Try again. And make it a priority."
"You coming in, boss? Overbearing wants to see you."
"TJ."
"Sorry."
"I'll be in later. I've got to follow up on one thing."
"You need help?"
She said she didn't, though the truth was she sure as hell didn't want to do this one solo.
Chapter 37
SITTING IN HER car, parked in the driveway, Dance gazed at the Brighams' small house: the sad lean of the gutters and curl of the shingles, the dismembered toys and tools in the front and side yards. The garage so filled with discards that you couldn't get more than half a car hood under its roof.
Dance was sitting in the driver's seat of her Crown Vic, the door shut. Listening to a CD she and Martine had been sent from a group in Los Angeles. The musicians were Costa Rican. She found the music both cheerful and mysterious, and wanted to know more about them. She'd hoped that when she and Michael were in L.A. on the J. Doe murder case she'd have a chance to meet with them and do some more recordings.
But she couldn't think about that now.
She heard the rumble of rubber on gravel and looked into the rearview mirror to see Sonia Brigham's car pause as it turned past the hedge of boxwood.
The woman was alone in the front seat. Sammy sat in the back.
The car didn't move for a long moment and Dance could see the woman staring desperately at the police cruiser. Finally Sonia teased her battered car forward again and drove past Dance to the front of the house, braked and shut the engine off.
With a fast look Dance's way, the woman climbed out and strode to the back of the car and lifted out the laundry baskets, and a large bottle of Tide.
His families so poor that they can't even afford a washer and drier. . . . Who goes to laundromats? Lusers that's who. . . .
The blog post that told Schaeffer where to find a sweatshirt to steal to help him frame Travis.
Dance climbed out of her own vehicle.
Sammy looked at her with a probing expression. The curiosity of their first meeting was gone; now he was uneasy. His eyes were eerily adult.
"You know something about Travis?" he asked, and didn't sound as odd as he had earlier.
But before Dance could say anything, his mother shooed him off to play in the backyard.
He hesitated, still staring at Dance, then wandered off, uncomfortable, fishing in his pockets.
"Don't go far, Sammy."
Dance took the bottle of detergent from under Sonja's pale arm and followed her toward the house. Sonia's jaw was firm, eyes straight forward.
"Mrs.--"
"I have to put this away," Sonia Brigham said in a clipped tone.
Dance opened the unlocked door for her. She followed Sonia inside. The woman moved straight into the kitchen and separated the baskets. "If you let them sit . . . the wrinkles, you know what it's like." She smoothed a T-shirt.
Woman to woman.
"I washed it thinking I could give it to him."
"Mrs. Brigham, there are some things you should know. Travis wasn't driving the car on June 9. He took the blame."
"What?" She stopped fussing with her laundry.
"He had a crush on the girl who was driving. She'd been drinking. He tried to get her to pull over and let him drive. She crashed before that happened."
"Oh, heavens!" Sonia lifted the shirt to her face, as if it could ward off the impending tears.
"And he wasn't the killer, leaving the crosses. Someone set it up to make it seem like he'd left them and caused those deaths. A man with a grudge against James Chilton. We stopped him."
"And Travis?" Sonia asked desperately, fingers white as they gripped the shirt.
"We don't know where he is. We're looking everywhere, but we haven't found any leads yet." Dance explained briefly about Greg Schaeffer and his plan for revenge.
Sonia wiped her round cheeks. There was prettiness still in her face, though obscured. The remnants of the prettiness evident in the picture of her in the state fair stall taken years earlier. Sonia whispered, "I knew Travis wouldn't hurt those people. I told you that."
Yes, you did, Dance thought. And your body language told me that you were telling the truth. I didn't listen to you. I listened to logic when I should have listened to intuition. Long ago Dance had done a Myers-Briggs analysis of herself. She got into trouble when she strayed too far from her nature.
She replaced the shirt, smoothed the cotton again. "He's dead, isn't he?"
"We have no evidence he is. Absolutely none."
"But you think so."
"It'd be logical for Schaeffer to keep him alive. I'm doing everything we can to save him. That's one of the reasons I'm here." She displayed a picture of Greg Schaeffer, a copy from his DMV picture. "Have you ever seen him? Maybe following you? Talking to neighbors?"
Sonia pulled on battered glasses and looked at the face for a long time. "No. I can't say I have. So he's him. The one done it, took my boy?"
"Yes."
"I told you no good would come of that blog."
Her eyes slipped toward the side yard, where Sammy was disappearing into the ramshackle shed. She sighed. "If Travis is gone, telling Sammy . . . oh, that'll destroy him. I'll be losing two sons at once. Now, I've got to put the laundry away. Please go now."
DANCE AND O'NEIL stood next to each other on the pier, leaning against the railing. The fog was gone, but the wind was steady. Around Monterey Bay you always had one or the other.
"Travis's mother," O'Neil said, speaking loudly. "That was tough, I'll bet."
"Hardest part of it all," she said, her hair flying. Then asked him, "How was the interview?" Thinking of the Indonesian investigation.
The Other Case.
"Good."
She was glad O'Neil was running the case, regretted her jealousy. Terrorism kept all law enforcers up nights. "If you need anything from me let me know."
His eyes on the bay, he said, "I think we'll wrap it in the next twenty-four hours."
Below them were their children, the four of them, on the sand at water's edge. Maggie and Wes led the expedition; being grandchildren of a marine biologist, they had some authority.
Pelicans flew solemnly nearby, gulls were everywhere, and not far offshore, a brown curl of sea otter floated easily on its back, inverted elegance. It happily smashed open mollusks against a rock balanced on its chest. Dinner. O'Neil's daughter, Amanda, and Maggie stared at it gleefully, as if trying to figure out how to get it home as a pet.
Dance touched O'Neil's arm and pointed at ten-year-old Tyler, who was crouching beside a long whip of kelp and poking it cautiously, ready to flee if the alien creature came to life. Wes stood protectively near in case it did.
O'Neil smiled but she sensed from his stance and the tension in his arm that something was bothering him.
Only a moment later he explained, calling over the blast of wind, "I heard from Los Angeles. The defense is trying to move the immunity hearing back again. Two weeks."
"Oh, no," Dance muttered. "Two weeks? The grand jury's scheduled for then."
"Seybold's going all-out to fight it. He didn't sound optimistic."
"He
ll." Dance grimaced. "War of attrition? Keep stalling and hope it all goes away?"
"Probably."
"We won't," she said firmly. "You and me, we won't go away. But will Seybold and the others?"
O'Neil considered this. "If it takes much more time, maybe. It's an important case. But they have a lot of important cases."
Dance sighed. She shivered.
"You cold?"
Her forearm was docked against his.
She shook her head. The involuntary ripple had come from thinking of Travis. As she'd been looking over the water, she'd wondered if she was also gazing at his grave.
A gull hovered directly in front of them. The angle of attack of his wings adjusted perfectly for the velocity of the wind. He was immobile, twenty feet above the beach.
Dance said, "All along, you know, even when we thought he was the killer, I felt sorry for Travis. His home life, the fact he's a misfit. Getting cyberbullied like that. And Jon was telling me the blog was just the tip of the iceberg. People were attacking him in instant messages, emails, on other bulletin boards. It's just so sad it's turned out this way. He was innocent. Completely innocent."
O'Neil said nothing for a moment. Then: "He seems sharp. Boling, I mean."
"He is. Getting the names of the victims. And tracking down Travis's avatar."
O'Neil laughed. "Sorry, but I keep picturing you going to Overby about a warrant for a character in a computer game."
"Oh, he'd do the paperwork in a minute if he thought there was a press conference and a good photo op involved. I could've beaned Jon, though, for going to that arcade alone."
"Playing hero?"
"Yep. Save us from amateurs."
"He married, have a family?"
"Jon? No." She laughed. "He's a bachelor."
Now there's a word you haven't heard for . . . about a century.
They fell silent, watching the children, who were totally lost in their seaside exploration. Maggie was holding her hand out and pointing to something, probably explaining to O'Neil's children the name of a shell she'd found.
Wes, Dance noted, was by himself, standing on a damp flat, the water easing up close to his feet in foamy lines.
And as she often did, Dance wondered if her children would be better off if she had a husband, and they had a home with a father. Well, of course they would.
Depending on the man, of course.
There was always that.
A woman's voice behind them. "Excuse me. Are those your children?"