Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel (24 page)

“Not just a little?”

“Maybe he did. But a lot of boys . . . You know what it’s like.” Her eyes did a sweep of Dance—meaning: boys might’ve had a crush on you too. Even if it was a long, long time ago.

“Did you two talk?”

“Sometimes about assignments. That’s all.”

“Did he ever mention anyplace he liked to hang out at?”

“Not really. Nothing, like, specific. He said there were some neat places he liked to go. Near the water, mostly. The shore reminded him of some places in this game he played.”

This was something, that he liked the ocean. He could be hiding out in one of the shorefront parks. Maybe Point Lobos. In this land of temperate climate he could easily survive with a waterproof sleeping bag.

“Does he have any friends he might be staying with?”

“Really, I don’t know him real well. But he didn’t have any friends I ever saw, not like my girlfriends and me. He was, like, online all the time. He was smart and everything. But he wasn’t into school. Even at
lunch or study period, he’d just sit outside with his computer and if he could hack into a signal he’d go online.”

“Are you scared of him, Caitlin?”

“Well, yeah.” As if it was obvious.

“But you haven’t said anything bad about him on
The Chilton Report
or social networking sites, have you?”

“No.”

What was the girl so upset about? Dance couldn’t read her emotions, which were extreme. More than just fear. “Why haven’t you posted anything about him?”

“Like, I don’t go there. It’s bullshit.”

“Because you feel sorry for him.”

“Yeah.” Caitlin frantically played with one of the four studs in her left ear. “Because . . .”

“What?”

The girl was very upset now. Tension bursting. Tears dotted her eyes. She whispered, “Because it’s my fault what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“The accident. It’s my fault.”

“Go on, Caitlin.”

“See, there was this guy at the party? A guy I kind of like. Mike D’Angelo.”

“At the party?”

“Right. And he was totally ignoring me. Hanging out with this other girl, Brianna, rubbing her back, you know. Right in front of me. I wanted to make him jealous, so I walked up to Travis and was hanging out with him. I gave him my car keys right in front of Mike and asked him to take me home. I was, like, oh,
let’s drop Trish and Vanessa off and then you and me can hang out.”

“And you thought it would make Mike feel bad?”

She nodded tearfully. “It was so stupid! But he was acting like such a shit, flirting with Brianna.” Her shoulders were arched in tension. “I shouldn’t ’ve. But I was so hurt. If I hadn’t done that, nothing would’ve happened.”

This explained why Travis had been driving that night.

All to make another boy jealous.

The girl’s explanation also suggested a whole new scenario. Maybe on the drive back Travis had realized that he was being used by Caitlin, or maybe he was angry at her for having a crush on Mike. Had he intentionally crashed the car? Murder/suicide—an impulsive gesture, not unheard of when it came to young love.

“So he’s got to be mad at me.”

“What I’m going to do is put an officer outside your house.”

“Really?”

“Sure. It’s still early at summer school, right? You don’t have any tests coming up, do you?”

“No. We just started.”

“Well, why don’t you head home now?”

“You think?”

“Yeah. And stay there until we find him.” Dance took down the girl’s address. “If you can think of anything more—about where he might be—please let me know.”

“Sure.” The girl took Dance’s card. Together they walked back to her crew.

FLOATING THROUGH HER
ears was the haunting quena flute of Jorge Cumbo, with the South American group Urubamba. The music calmed her, and it was with some regret that Dance pulled into the Monterey Bay Hospital parking lot, parked and paused the music.

Of the protesters, only about half remained. The Reverend Fisk and his redheaded bodyguard were absent.

Probably trying to track down her mother.

Dance walked inside.

Several nurses and doctors came up to express their sympathy—two nurses wept openly when they saw their coworker’s daughter.

She walked downstairs to the office of the head of security. The room was empty. She glanced up the hall toward the intensive care unit. She headed in that direction and pushed through the door.

Dance blinked as she turned to the room where Juan Millar had died. It was cordoned off with yellow police tape. Signs read
Do Not Enter. Crime Scene.
It was Harper’s doing, she reflected angrily. This was idiocy. There were only five intensive care rooms down here—three were occupied—and the prosecutor had sealed one of them? What if two more patients were admitted? And what’s more, she thought, the crime had taken place nearly a month ago, the room occupied by presumably a dozen patients since then, not to mention cleaned by fastidious crews. There couldn’t possibly be more evidence to collect.

Grandstanding and public relations.

She started away.

And nearly ran right into Juan Millar’s brother, Julio, the man who had attacked her earlier in the month.

The dark, compact man, in a dark suit, pulled up short, eyes fixed on her. He was carrying a folder of papers, which sagged in his hand, as he stared at Dance, only four or five feet away.

Dance tensed and stepped back slightly, to give her time to get to her pepper spray or cuffs. If he came at her again she was prepared to defend herself, though she could imagine what the media would do with the story of the daughter of a suspected mercy killer Macing the brother of the euthanized victim.

But Julio simply stared at her with a curious look—not of anger or hate, but almost amusement at the coincidence of running into her. He whispered, “Your mother . . . how could she?”

The words sounded rehearsed, as if he’d been waiting for the chance to recite them.

Dance began to speak, but Julio clearly expected no response. He walked slowly out of the door that led to the back exit.

And that was it.

No harsh words, no threats, no violence.

How could she?

Her heart pounding furiously from the bewildering confrontation, she recalled that her mother had said Julio had been here earlier. Dance wondered why he was back now.

With a last glance at the police tape, Dance left the ICU and walked to the office of the head of security.

“Oh, Agent Dance,” Henry Bascomb said, blinking.

She smiled a greeting. “They’ve got the room taped off?”

“You were back there?” he asked.

Dance immediately noted the stress in the man’s posture and voice. He was thinking quickly and he was uneasy. What was that about? Dance wondered.

“Sealed off?” she repeated.

“Yeah, that’s right, ma’am.”

Ma’am? Dance nearly laughed at the formal word. She, O’Neil, Bascomb and some of his former deputy buddies had shared beer and quesadillas down on Fisherman’s Wharf a few months ago. She decided to get to the nut of it: “I’ve only got a minute or two, Henry. It’s about my mother’s case.”

“How’s she doing?”

Dance was thinking: I don’t know any better than you do, Henry. She said, “Not great.”

“Give her my best.”

“I’ll do that. Now, I’d like to see the employee and front desk logs of who was at the hospital when Juan died.”

“Sure.” Only he didn’t mean sure at all. He meant what he said next: “But the thing is, I can’t.”

“Why’s that, Henry?”

“I’ve been told I can’t let you see anything. No paperwork. We’re not even supposed to be talking to you.”

“Whose orders?”

“The board,” Bascomb said tentatively.

“And?” Dance continued, prodding.

“Well, it was Mr. Harper, that prosecutor. He talked to the board. And the chief of staff.”

“But that’s discoverable information. The defense attorney has a right to it.”

“Oh, I know that. But he said that’s how you’ll have to get it.”

“I don’t want to take it. Just look through it, Henry.”

There was absolutely nothing illegal about her looking through the material, and it wouldn’t ultimately affect the case because what was contained in the logs and sign-in sheets would come out eventually.

Bascomb’s face revealed how torn he was. “I understand. But I can’t. Not unless there’s a subpoena.”

Harper had spoken to the security chief for one purpose only: to bully Dance and her family.

“I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly.

“No, that’s okay, Henry. Did he give you a reason?”

“No.” He said this too quickly, and Dance could easily see eye aversion that differed from what she knew of the man’s baseline behavior.

“What did he say, Henry?”

A pause.

She leaned toward him.

The guard looked down. “He said . . . he said he didn’t trust you. And he didn’t like you.”

Dance stoked her smile as best she could. “Well, that’s the good news, I suppose. He’s the last person in the world I’d want a thumbs-up from.”

THE TIME WAS
now 5:00 p.m.

From the hospital lot, Dance called the office and learned there’d been no significant developments in the hunt for Travis Brigham. The Highway Patrol and sheriff’s office were running a manhunt, focusing on the traditional locales and sources for information about runaways and juvenile fugitives: his school and classmates and the shopping malls. That his transportation
was limited to a bike was helpful, in theory, but hadn’t led to any sightings.

Rey Carraneo had learned little from Travis’s rambling notes and drawings, but was still sifting through them for leads to the boy’s whereabouts. TJ was trying to track down the source of the mask, and calling the potential victims from the blog. Since Dance had learned from Caitlin that Travis liked the shore, she gave him the added task of contacting the parks department and alerting them that the boy might be hiding out somewhere in the thousands of square acres of state land in the area.

“Okay, boss,” he said wearily, revealing not fatigue but the same hopelessness that she felt.

She then spoke to Jon Boling.

“I got the boy’s computer. That deputy dropped it off, Reinhold. He sure knows his stuff when it comes to computers.”

“He shows initiative. He’ll go places. You having any luck?”

“No. Travis is smart. He’s not relying on your basic password protection alone. He’s got some proprietary encryption programs that have locked his drive. We may not be able to crack it, but I’ve called an associate at school. If anybody can get inside, they can.”

Hmm, Dance thought, how gender-neutral: “associate” and “they.” Dance translated the words as “young, gorgeous female grad student, probably blond and voluptuous.”

Boling added in techspeak that a brute force attack was under way via an uplink to a supercomputer at UC–Santa Cruz. “The system might crack the code within the next hour—”

“Really?” she asked brightly.

“Or, I was going to say, within the next two or three hundred years. It depends.”

Dance thanked him and told him to head home for the evening. He sounded disappointed and, after explaining that he had no plans for that night, said he’d continue to search for the names of posters who might be at risk.

She then collected the children from Martine’s and they all drove to the inn where her parents were hiding out.

As she drove, she was recalling the incidents surrounding young Juan Millar’s death, but in truth she hadn’t focused on them much at the time. The manhunt had demanded all her attention: Daniel Pell—the cult leader, killer and vicious manipulator—and his partner, a woman equally dangerous, had remained on the Peninsula after his escape, to stalk and murder new victims. Dance and O’Neil had worked nonstop pursuing them, and Juan Millar’s death had not occupied her thoughts, other than to engender a piercing remorse for the part, though small, she’d played in it.

If she’d guessed that her mother might have become entwined in the case, she would have been much more attentive.

Ten minutes later Dance parked the car in the gravel lot of the inn. Maggie offered, “Wow,” bouncing on the seat as she examined the place.

“Yeah, neat.” Though Wes was more subdued.

The quaint cottage—part of the luxurious Carmel Inn—was one of a dozen stand-alone cabins separate from the main building.

“There’s a pool!” Maggie cried. “I want to go swimming.”

“Sorry, I forgot your suits.” Dance nearly suggested Edie and Stuart could take them shopping for swimwear, but then recalled that her mother shouldn’t be out in public—not with Reverend Fisk and his birds of prey on the loose. “I’ll bring them by tomorrow. And, hey, Wes, there’s a tennis court. You can practice with Grandpa.”

“Okay.”

They climbed out, Dance collecting their suitcases, which she’d packed earlier. The children would be staying here tonight with their grandparents.

They walked along the path bordered with vines and low, green chick-and-hen succulents.

“Which one’s theirs?” Maggie asked, bouncing along the trail.

Dance pointed it out and the girl launched herself forward fast. She hit the buzzer and a moment later, just as Dance and Wes arrived, the door opened and Edie smiled at her grandchildren and let them inside.

“Grandma,” Maggie called. “This is cool!”

“It’s very nice. Come on in.”

Edie gave a smile to Dance, who tried to read it. But the expression was as informative as a blank page.

Stuart hugged the children.

Wes asked, “You okay, Grandma?”

“I’m absolutely fine. How’re Martine and Steve?”

“Okay,” the boy said.

“The twins and I built a mountain out of pillows,” Maggie said. “With caves.”

“You’ll have to tell me all about it.”

Dance saw they had a visitor. Distinguished
defense attorney George Sheedy rose and stepped forward, shaking Dance’s hand and saying hello in his basso profundo voice. A briefcase was open on the coffee table in the sitting area of the suite, and yellow pads and printouts sat in cluttered stacks. The lawyer said hello to the children. He was courteous, but from his posture and expression Dance could tell immediately that the conversation she’d interrupted was a hard one. Wes regarded Sheedy suspiciously.