Dance had gone back through the list of suspects. She'd thought of the minister, Reverend Fisk, and his bodyguard, possibly CrimsoninChrist. They were certainly fanatics and had threatened Chilton directly in their postings on the blog. But TJ had gone to see Fisk, the minder and several other key members of the group. They all had alibis for the times of the attacks.
She'd also considered Hamilton Royce--the troubleshooter from Sacramento, being paid to shut down the blog because of what Chilton was posting about the Nuclear Facilities Planning Committee. It was a good theory, but the more she'd thought about it, the less likely it seemed. Royce was too obvious a suspect, since he'd already tried to get the blog closed down--and very publicly--by using the state police.
Clint Avery, the construction boss, was a possibility too. But she'd learned that Avery's mysterious meetings after Dance had left his company were with a lawyer specializing in equal employment law and two men who ran a day-labor service. In an area where most employers worried about hiring too many undocumented aliens, Avery was worried about getting sued for hiring too few minorities. He was uneasy with Dance, it seemed, because he was afraid she was really there investigating a civil rights complaint that he was discriminating against Latinos.
Dance had also fleetingly considered Travis's father as the perp, actually wondering if there was some psychological connection between the branches and roses and Bob Brigham's job as a landscaper. She'd even considered that the perp might be Sammy--troubled, but maybe a savant, cunning, and possibly filled with resentment against his older brother.
But even though the family had its problems, those were pretty much the same problems all families had. And both father and son were accounted for during some of the attacks.
With a shrug Dance said to the Hawkens, "Finally I ran out of suspects. And came to James Chilton himself."
"Why?" he asked.
A to B to X . . .
"I was thinking about something a consultant of ours told me about blogs--about how dangerous they were. And I asked myself: What if Chilton wanted to kill someone? What a great weapon The Report was. Start a rumor, then let the cybermob take over. Nobody would be surprised when the bullied victim snapped. There's your perpetrator."
Hawken pointed out, "But Jim didn't say anything about Travis in the blog."
"And that's what was so brilliant; it made Chilton seem completely innocent. But he didn't need to mention Travis. He knew how the Internet works. The merest hint he'd done something wrong and the Vengeful Angels would take over.
"If Chilton was the perp, I wondered then who was the intended victim. There was nothing about the two girls, Tammy or Kelley, to suggest he wanted to kill them. Or Lyndon Strickland or Mark Watson. You were the other potential victims, of course. I thought back to everything I'd learned about the case. I remembered something odd. You told me that Chilton had hurried to your house in San Diego to be with you and the children the day your wife died. He was there within the hour."
"Right. He'd been in L.A. at a meeting. He got the next commuter flight down."
Dance said, "But he'd told his wife he was in Seattle when he heard that Sarah had died."
"Seattle?" Hawken appeared confused.
"In a meeting at Microsoft headquarters. But, no, he was actually in San Diego. He'd been there all along. He never left town after drowning Sarah. He was waiting to hear from you and to get to your house. He needed to."
"Needed to? Why?"
"You said he stayed with you, even helped you with the cleaning?"
"That's right."
"I think he wanted to go through the house and destroy anything among Sarah's possessions that suggested they were having an affair."
"Jesus," Hawken muttered.
She explained a few of the other connections between Chilton and the crimes: He was a triathlon competitor, which meant he biked. Dance recalled seeing all the sports equipment in Chilton's garage, among them several bicycles.
"Then, the soil." She explained about finding the mismatched dirt near one of the roadside crosses. "Crime Scene found identical trace on Greg Schaeffer's shoes. But the ultimate source was the gardens in Chilton's front yard. That's where Schaeffer picked it up."
Dance reflected that she'd actually gazed right at the source of the dirt when she'd first been to the blogger's house, as she examined the landscaping.
"And then there was his van, the Nissan Quest." She told them about the witness Ken Pfister seeing the state vehicle near one of the crosses. Then she gave a wry smile. "But it was actually Chilton himself who was driving--after planting the second cross."
She pointed to the blogger's van, parked nearby. It bore the bumper sticker she remembered from the first day she'd been to his house: If you DESALINATE, you DEVASTATE.
It was the last syllable on that sticker that Ken Pfister had seen as the van drove past: STATE.
"I went to the magistrate with what I'd found and got a warrant. I sent officers to search Chilton's house in Carmel. He'd discarded most of the evidence, but they found a few red rose petals and a bit of cardboard similar to what was used on the crosses. I remembered that he said he was coming here with you. So I called San Benito County and told them to send a tactical team here. The only thing I didn't guess was that Chilton was going to force Travis himself to shoot you."
She interrupted the man's effusive thanks--he seemed about to cry--with a glance at her watch. "I have to leave now. You go home, get some rest."
Lily hugged Dance. Hawken shook her hand in both of his. "I don't know what to say."
Disengaging, she walked to the Monterey County Sheriff's Office squad car, where James Chilton sat. His thinning hair was plastered to the side of his head. He watched her approach with a hurt gaze on his face. Almost a pout.
She opened the back door, leaned down.
He hissed, "I don't need shackles on my feet. Look at this. It's degrading."
Dance noted the chains. Noted them with satisfaction.
He continued, "They put them on, some deputies did, and they were smiling! Because they claimed I kept the boy shackled. This's all bullshit. This is all a mistake. I've been framed."
Dance nearly laughed. Apart from all the other evidence, there were three eyewitnesses--Hawken, his wife and Travis--to his crimes.
She recited his Miranda rights.
"Somebody did that already."
"Just making sure you really understand them. Do you?"
"My rights? Yes. Listen, back there, yes, I had a gun. But people had been out to kill me. Of course I'm going to protect myself. Somebody's setting me up. Like you said, somebody I'd posted about in my blog. I saw Travis come into the living room and I pulled out my gun--I started carrying one when you said I was in danger."
Ignoring the rambling, she said, "We're going to take you to Monterey County and book you, James. You can call your wife or your attorney then."
"Do you hear what I'm saying? I've been framed. Whatever that boy's claiming, he's unstable. I was playing along with him, with his delusions. I was going to shoot him if he'd tried to hurt Don and Lily. Of course I was."
She leaned forward, controlling her emotions as best she could. Which wasn't easy. "Why'd you target Tammy and Kelley, James? Two teenage girls who never did anything to you."
"I'm innocent," he muttered.
She continued, as if he hadn't spoken. "Why them? Because you didn't like adolescent attitude? You didn't like them tainting your precious blog with their obscenities? You didn't like bad grammar?"
He said nothing, but Dance believed there was a flicker of acknowledgment in his eyes. She pushed ahead. "And why Lyndon Strickland? And Mark Watson? You killed them just because they posted under their real names and they were easy to find, right?"
Chilton was looking away now, as if he knew he was telegraphing the truth with his eyes.
"James, those pictures you uploaded to the blog, pretending to be Travis? You drew them yourself, didn't you? I remembered f
rom your bio in The Report that you were a graphic designer and art director in college."
He said nothing.
The anger flared hotter. "Did you enjoy drawing the one of me getting stabbed?"
Again, silence.
She stood. "I'll be by at some point to interview you. You can have your attorney present if you like."
Then he turned to her, his face imploring. "One thing, Agent Dance? Please?"
She lifted an eyebrow.
"There's something I need. It's important."
"What's that, James?"
"A computer."
"What?"
"I need access to a computer. Soon. Today."
"You get phone calls from the lockup. No computer."
"But The Report . . . I've got to upload my stories."
Now she couldn't contain the laugh. He was not at all concerned about his wife or children, only about the precious blog. "No, James, that's not going to happen."
"But I have to. I have to!"
Hearing those words and seeing his frantic gaze, Kathryn Dance finally understood James Chilton. The readers were nothing to him. He'd easily murdered two of them and was fully prepared to kill more.
The truth was nothing to him. He'd lied over and over again.
No, the answer was simple: Like the players in DimensionQuest, like so many people lost in the synth world, James Chilton was an addict. Addicted to his messianic mission. Addicted to the seductive power of spreading the word--his word--to the minds and hearts of people throughout the world. The more who read his musings, his rants, his praise, the more exquisite the high.
She leaned down, close to his face. "James. I will do everything possible to make sure that whatever prison you go to, you will never be able to get online ever again. Never in your life."
His face turned livid and he began screaming, "You can't do that! You can't take my blog away. My readers need me. The country needs me! You can't!"
Dance closed the door and nodded to the deputy behind the wheel.
Chapter 45
THE FLASHING LIGHTS-- on personal business--were against regulations, but Dance didn't care. The emergency accessories were a wise idea, given that she was speeding at twice the limit down Highway 68 back to Salinas from Hollister. Edie Dance was being arraigned in twenty minutes, and she was going to be there, front and center.
She was wondering when her mother's trial would happen. Who would testify? What exactly would the evidence show?
Again she thought, dismayed: Will I be called to the stand?
And what would happen if Edie was convicted? Dance knew California prisons. The population was largely illiterate, violent, their minds ruined by drugs or alcohol or simply damaged from birth. Her mother's heart would wither in a place like that. The punishment would be the death penalty, after all--capital punishment for the soul.
And she was furious with herself for writing that email to Bill, the one commenting on her mother's decision to put down one of her ailing pets. Years ago, an offhand comment. Out of proportion to the devastating effect it could have on her mother's fate.
Which put her in mind of The Chilton Report. All of those postings about Travis Brigham. All wrong, completely wrong . . . yet they would be in existence, on servers and in the hearts of individual computers, forever. People might see them five or ten or twenty years from now. Or a hundred. And never know the truth.
Dance was shaken out of her troubling meditation by the buzz of her phone.
It was a text message from her father.
I'm at the hospital with your mother. Get here as soon as you can.
Dance gasped. What was this about? The arraignment was supposed to be starting in fifteen minutes. If Edie Dance was in the hospital it was only for one reason. She was ill or injured.
Dance immediately punched her father's mobile number, but it went right to voice mail. Of course, he'd shut it off in the hospital.
Had she been attacked?
Or had she tried to kill herself?
Dance shoved the accelerator down and drove faster. Her mind tumbling, out of control now. Thinking that if her mother had tried to kill herself, it was because she knew Robert Harper had a solid case against her, and that it would be futile to fight it.
So her mother had committed murder. Dance recalled the damning comment, revealing Edie's knowledge of the ICU corridors at the time Juan Millar died.
There were some nurses down on that wing. But that was all. His family was gone. And there were no visitors. . . .
She sped past Salinas, Laguna Seca and the airport. Twenty minutes later she was pulling into the circular drive of the hospital. The car skidded to a violent stop, breaching the handicapped space. Dance leapt out and sprinted to the main entrance door and wedged through before the automatic panels had fully opened.
At the admissions station, an alarmed receptionist looked up and said, "Kathryn, are you--?"
"Where's my mother?" the agent gasped.
"She's downstairs and--"
Dance was already pushing through the doorway and downward. Downstairs meant only one thing: the intensive care unit. Ironically the very place where Juan Millar had died. If Edie was there, at least she was alive.
On the bottom floor she shoved through the door, hurrying toward ICU, when she happened to glance into the cafeteria.
Breathing hard, Dance pulled up fast, a stitch in her side. She looked through the open doorway and saw four people sitting at a table, coffee in front of them. They were the director of the hospital, the security chief Henry Bascomb, Dance's father and . . . Edie Dance. They were engaged in a discussion and were looking over documents on the table before them.
Stuart glanced up and smiled, gesturing with an index figure, meaning, Dance guessed, they'd only be a moment or two. Her mother glanced her way and then, expression neutral, returned her attention to the hospital director.
"Hi," a man's voice said from behind her.
She turned, blinking in surprise to see Michael O'Neil.
"Michael, what's going on?" Dance asked breathlessly.
With furrowed brows, he asked, "Didn't you get the message?"
"Just the text from Dad that they were here."
"I didn't want to bother you in the middle of an operation. I spoke to Overby and gave him the details. He was supposed to call when you were finished."
Oh. Well, this was one glitch she couldn't lay at the feet of her thoughtless boss; she'd been in such a hurry to get to the arraignment, she'd never told him they'd wrapped the Chilton take-down.
"I heard Hollister went okay."
"Yeah, everybody's fine. Chilton's in custody. Travis's got a banged head. That's it." But the Roadside Cross Case was far from her mind. She stared into the cafeteria. "What's going on, Michael?"
"The charges against your mother've been dropped," he said.
"What?"
O'Neil hesitated, looking almost sheepish, and then said, "I didn't tell you, Kathryn. I couldn't."
"Tell me what?"
"The case I've been working on?"
The Other Case . . .
"It had nothing to do with the container situation. That's still on hold. I took on your mother's case as an independent investigation. I told the sheriff I was going to do it. Pretty much insisted. He agreed. Stopping Harper now was our only chance. If he'd gotten a conviction . . . well, you know the odds of getting a verdict overturned on appeal."
"You never said anything."
"That was the plan. I could run it but I couldn't mention anything to you. I had to be able to testify that you knew nothing about what I was doing. Conflict of interest, otherwise. Even your parents didn't know. I talked to them about the case, but only informally. They never suspected."
"Michael." Dance again felt rare tears sting. She gripped his arm and their eyes met, brown on green.
He said, frowning, "I knew she wasn't guilty. Edie taking somebody's life? Crazy." He grinned. "You notice I've been talking to y
ou in text messages a lot lately, emails?"
"Right."
"Because I couldn't lie to you in person. I knew you'd spot it in a minute."
She laughed, recalling how vague he'd been about the Container Case.
"But who killed Juan?"
"Daniel Pell."
"Pell?" she whispered in astonishment.
O'Neil explained, though, that it wasn't Pell himself who'd killed Juan Millar, but one of the women connected with him--the partner that Dance had been thinking of yesterday as she'd driven her children to see their grandparents.
"She knew the threat you presented, Kathryn. She wanted desperately to stop you."
"Why did you think of her?"
"Process of elimination," O'Neil explained. "I knew your mother couldn't 've done it. I knew Julio Millar hadn't--he was accounted for the whole time. His parents weren't there, and there were no other fellow officers present. So I asked who'd have a motive to blame your mother for the death? Pell came to mind. You were running the manhunt to find him and getting closer. Your mother's arrest would distract you, if not force you off the case altogether. He couldn't do it himself, so he used his partner."
He explained that the woman had slipped into the hospital by pretending to be applying for a job as a nurse.
"The job applications," Dance said, nodding, recalling what Connie's investigation had found. "There wasn't any connection between them and Millar, though, so we didn't pay any attention."
"Witnesses said that she was wearing a nurse's uniform. As if she'd just gotten off a shift at another hospital and had come over to MBH to apply for a job." The deputy continued, "I had her computer examined and found that she'd searched for drug interactions on Google."
"The evidence in the garage?"
"She planted it. I had Pete Bennington take the garage apart. A CS team found some hairs--that Harper's people had missed, by the way. They were hers. DNA match. I'm sure she'll take a plea."
"I feel so bad, Michael. I almost believed she'd . . ." Dance couldn't even bring herself to say the words. "I mean, Mom looked so upset when she told me that Juan asked her to kill him. And then she claimed she wasn't on the ICU floor when Juan was killed, but she let slip that she knew the place was deserted except for some nurses."
"Oh, she'd talked to one of the ICU doctors and he commented to your mother that all the visitors had left. Edie was never on the wing at all."