Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel (30 page)

A pause. “I’ll try. I’m really swamped on this Container Case. And Anne went up to San Francisco. A gallery’s going to be hanging a show of her recent photos.”

“Really? That’s impressive.” Dance recalled the one-sided conversation yesterday about Anne O’Neil’s impending trip at their attempted breakfast after meeting with Ernie Seybold. Dance had several opinions about the woman, the most unblemished of which had to do with her talent as a photographer.

They disconnected and Dance continued toward her car, unraveling the iPod ear buds. She needed a hit of music. She was scrolling through tunes, trying to decide on Latino or Celtic, when her phone buzzed. Caller ID announced Jonathan Boling.

“Hi,” she said.

“It’s all over the CBI here, Chilton was attacked. What happened? Is he all right?”

She gave him the details. He was relieved nobody had been hurt seriously, but she could tell from his voice quality that he had some news for her. She fell silent and he asked, “Kathryn, you near the office?”

“I wasn’t planning on heading back. I’ve got to pick up the kids and work from home for a while.” She didn’t tell him that she wanted to avoid Hamilton Royce and Overby. “Why?”

“Couple things. I’ve got names of posters who’ve
supported Chilton. The good news, I suppose, is that there aren’t a lot. But that’s typical. In blogs more people are contrarians than supporters.”

“Email me the list, and I’ll start calling them from home. What else?”

“We’ll have Travis’s computer cracked in the next hour or so.”

“Really? Oh, that’s great.” Tiffany or Bambi was a pretty good hacker, apparently.

“I’m going to mirror his disk on a separate drive. I thought you’d want to see it.”

“You bet.” Dance had a thought. “You have plans tonight?”

“No, I’ve put my cat burglary plans on hold while I’m helping you guys.”

“Bring the computer over to my house. I’m having my mother and father and a few friends over for dinner.”

“Well, sure.”

She gave him the address and a time.

They disconnected.

As Dance stood beside her car in the hospital parking lot she noticed several aides and nurses leaving for the day. They were staring at her.

Dance knew several of them and smiled. One or two nodded in greeting but the response was tepid, if not chilly. Of course, she realized, they’d be thinking: I’m looking at the daughter of a woman who might have committed murder.

“I’LL CARRY THE
groceries,” Maggie announced as Dance’s Pathfinder squealed to a stop in front of their house.

The girl had been feeling independent lately. She grabbed the largest bag. There were four of them; after picking up the children at Martine’s, they’d stopped at Safeway for a shopping frenzy. If everyone she’d invited showed up, the dinner party would include nearly a dozen people, among them youngsters with serious appetites.

Listing under the weight of two bags gripped in one hand—an older-brother thing—Wes asked his mother, “When’s Grandma coming over?”

“In a little while, I hope. . . . There’s a chance she might not come.”

“No, she said she’s coming.”

Dance gave a confused smile. “You talked to her?”

“Yeah, she called me at camp.”

“Me too,” Maggie offered.

So she’d called to reassure the children she was all right. But Dance’s face flushed. Why hadn’t she called
her
?

“Well, it’s great she’ll be able to make it.”

They carried the bags inside.

Dance went into her bedroom, accompanied by Patsy.

She glanced at the gun lockbox. Travis was expanding his targets, and he knew she was one of the officers pursuing him. And she couldn’t forget the possible threat—the cross—in her backyard last night. Dance decided to keep the weapon with her. Ever-fastidious about weapons in a household with children, though, she locked the black gun away for a few minutes to take a shower. She stripped off her clothes energetically and stepped into the stream of hot water—trying unsuccessfully to flush away the residue of the day.

She dressed in jeans and an oversize blouse, not tucked in, to obscure the weapon, which sat against the small of her back. Uncomfortable, yet a comfort. Then she hurried into the kitchen.

She fed the dogs and put out a small brushfire between the children, who were sniping over their predinner tasks. Dance stayed patient—she knew they were upset about the incident at the hospital yesterday. Maggie’s job was to unpack the groceries, while Wes straightened up for guests. Dance continued to be amazed at how cluttered a house could become, even though only three people lived there.

She thought now, as she often did, about the time when the population was four. And glanced at her wedding picture. Bill Swenson, prematurely gray, lean and with an easy smile, looked out at the camera with his arm around her.

Then she went into the den, booted up her computer and emailed Overby about the assault on Chilton and the confrontation with Brubaker.

She wasn’t in the mood to talk to him.

Then Dance retrieved Jon Boling’s email with the names of people who’d posted comments favorable to Chilton over the past months. Seventeen.

Could be worse, she supposed.

She spent the next hour finding the numbers of those within a hundred miles and calling to warn them they might be in danger. She weathered their criticism, some of it searing, about the CBI and the police not being able to stop Travis Brigham.

Dance logged on to that day’s
Chilton Report.

Http://www.thechiltonreport.com/html/june27.html

She scrolled through all the threads, noting that new posts had appeared in nearly all of them. The latest contributors to the Reverend Fisk and the desalination threads were taking their respective causes seriously—and with intensifying anger. But none of their posts compared to the vicious comments in the “Roadside Crosses” thread, most of them unleashing undiluted fury at each other, as much as at Travis.

Some of them were curiously worded, some seemed to be probing for information, some seemed to be outright threats. She got the feeling that there were clues as to where Travis was hiding—possibly even tidbits of facts that might suggest whom he was going to attack next. Was Travis actually one of the posters, hiding behind a fake identity or the common pseudonym, “Anonymous”? She read the exchanges carefully and decided that perhaps there were clues, but the answer eluded her. Kathryn Dance, comfortable
with analyzing the spoken word, could come to no solid conclusions as she read the frustratingly silent shouts and mutters.

Finally she logged off.

An email from Michael O’Neil arrived. He gave her the discouraging news that the immunity hearing in the J. Doe case had been pushed back to Friday. The prosecutor, Ernie Seybold, felt that the judge’s willingness to go along with the defense’s request for the extension was a bad sign. She grimaced at the news and was disappointed that he hadn’t called to give her the news over the phone. Neither had he mentioned anything about whether he and the children would come over tonight.

Dance began to organize the meal. She didn’t have much skill in the kitchen, as she was the first to admit. But she knew which stores had the most talented prepared-food departments; the meal would be fine.

Listening to the soft braying of a video game from Wes’s room, Maggie’s keyboard scales, Dance found herself staring into the backyard, recalling the image of her mother’s face yesterday afternoon, as her daughter deserted her to see about the second roadside cross.

Your mother will understand.

No, she won’t. . . .

Hovering over the containers of brisket, green beans, Caesar salad, salmon and twice-baked potatoes, Dance remembered that time three weeks ago—her mother standing in this very kitchen and reporting about Juan Millar in the ICU. With Edie’s face feeling his pain, she’d told her daughter what he’d whispered to her.

Kill me . . .

The doorbell now drew her from that disquieting thought.

She deduced who had arrived—most friends and family just climbed the back deck stairs and entered the kitchen without ringing or knocking. She opened the front door to see Jon Boling standing on the porch. He wore that now-familiar, comfortable smile and was juggling a small shopping bag and a large laptop case. He’d changed into black jeans and a dark striped collared shirt.

“Hi.”

He nodded and followed her into the kitchen.

The dogs bounded up. Boling crouched and hugged them as they double-teamed him.

“Okay, guys, outside!” Dance commanded. She flung Milk Bones out the back door and the dogs charged down the steps and into the backyard.

Boling stood, wiped his face from the licks and laughed. He reached into the shopping bag. “I decided to bring sugar for a hostess gift.”

“Sugar?”

“Two versions: fermented.” He extracted a bottle of Caymus Conundrum white wine.

“Nice.”

“And baked.” A bag of cookies emerged. “I remembered the way you looked at them in the office when your assistant was trying to fatten me up.”

“Caught that did you?” Dance laughed. “You’d be a good kinesic interviewer. We have to be observant.”

His eyes were excited, she could see. “Got something to show you. Can we sit down somewhere?”

She directed him into the living room, where
Boling unpacked yet another laptop, a big one, a brand she didn’t recognize. “Irv did it,” he announced.

“Irv?”

“Irving Wepler, the associate I was telling you about. One of my grad students.”

So, not Bambi or Tiff.

“Everything on Travis’s laptop is in here now.”

He began typing. In an instant the screen came to life. Dance didn’t know computers could respond so quickly.

From the other room, Maggie hit a sour note on the keyboard.

“Sorry.” Dance winced.

“C sharp,” Boling said without looking up from the screen.

Dance was surprised. “You a musician?”

“No, no. But I have perfect pitch. Just a fluke. And I don’t know what to do with it. No musical talent whatsoever. Not like you.”

“Me?” She hadn’t told him her avocation.

A shrug. “Thought it might not be a bad idea to check you out. I didn’t expect you to have more Google hits as a songcatcher than a cop. . . . Oh, can I say cop?”

“So far it’s not a politically incorrect term.” Dance went on to explain that she was a failed folksinger but had found musical redemption in the project that she and Martine Christensen operated—a website called
American Tunes,
the name echoing Paul Simon’s evocative anthem to the country from the 1970s. The site was a lifesaver for Dance, who often had to dwell in some very dark places because of her work. There
was nothing like music to pull her safely out of the minds of the criminals she pursued.

Although the common term was “songcatcher,” Dance told him, the job description was technically “folklorist.” Alan Lomax was the most famous—he’d roam the hinterland of America, collecting traditional music for the Library of Congress in the midtwentieth century. Dance too traveled around the country, when she could, to collect music, though not Lomax’s mountain, blues and bluegrass. Today’s homegrown American songs were African, Afro-pop, Cajun, Latino, Caribbean, Nova Scotian, East Indian and Asian.

American Tunes
helped the musicians copyright their original material, offered the music for sale via download and distributed to them the money listeners paid.

Boling seemed interested. He too, it seemed, trekked into the wilderness once or twice a month. He’d been a serious rock climber at one time, he explained, but had given that up.

“Gravity,” he said, “is nonnegotiable.”

Then he nodded toward the bedroom that was the source of the music. “Son or daughter?”

“Daughter. The only strings my son’s familiar with come on a tennis racket.”

“She’s good.”

“Thank you,” Dance said with some pride; she had worked hard to encourage Maggie. She practiced with the girl and, more time-consuming, chauffeured her to and from piano lessons and recitals.

Boling typed and a colorful page popped up on the laptop’s screen. But then his body language changed
suddenly. She noticed he was looking over her shoulder, toward the doorway.

Dance should have guessed. She’d heard the keyboard fall silent thirty seconds before.

Then Boling was smiling. “Hi, I’m Jon. I work with your mom.”

Wearing a backward baseball cap, Maggie was standing in the doorway. “Hello.”

“Hats in the house,” Dance reminded.

Off it came. Maggie walked right up to Boling. “I’m Maggie.” Nothing shy about my girl, Dance reflected, as the ten-year-old pumped his hand.

“Good grip,” the professor told her. “And good touch on the keyboard.”

The girl beamed. “You play anything?”

“CDs and downloads. That’s it.”

Dance looked up and wasn’t surprised to see twelve-year-old Wes appear too, looking their way. He was hanging back, in the doorway. And he wasn’t smiling.

Her stomach did a flip. After his father’s death, Wes could be counted on to take a dislike to the men that his mom saw socially—sensing them, her therapist said, as a threat to their family and to his father’s memory. The only man he really liked was Michael O’Neil—in part because, the doctor theorized, the deputy was married and thus no risk.

The boy’s attitude was hard for Dance, who’d been a widow for two years, and at times felt a terrible longing for a romantic companion. She wanted to date, she wanted to meet somebody and knew it would be good for the children. But whenever she went out, Wes became sullen and moody. She’d spent hours reassuring
him that he and his sister came first. She planned out tactics to ease the boy comfortably into meeting her dates. And sometimes simply laid down the law and told him she wouldn’t tolerate any attitude. Nothing had worked very well; and it didn’t help that his hostility toward her most recent potential partner had turned out to be far more insightful than her own judgment. She resolved after that to listen to what her children had to say and watch how they reacted.