Roadside Crosses (Kathryn Dance 2)

Dance placed a call to the local office of the Highway Patrol, the official name for California's state police. After a few minutes of being transferred around she ended up with a Sergeant Brodsky, put the call on speaker and asked about the accident.

Brodsky slipped immediately into the tone you hear when police take the stand at trial. Emotionally flat, precise. "It was just before midnight on Saturday, June nine. Four juveniles, three female, one male, were heading north on Highway One about three miles south of Carmel Highlands, near Garrapata State Beach Reserve. The male was driving. The vehicle was a late-model Nissan Altima. It appears that the car was traveling at about forty-five. He missed a curve, skidded and went over a cliff. The girls in the back weren't wearing their seat belts. They died instantly. The girl in the passenger seat had a concussion. She was in the hospital for a few days. The driver was admitted, examined and released."

"What'd Travis say happened?" Dance asked.

"Just lost control. It'd rained earlier. There was water on the highway. He changed lanes and went into a skid. It was one of the girls' cars and the tires weren't the best. He wasn't speeding, and he tested negative for alcohol and controlled substances. The girl who survived corroborated his story." A defensive echo sounded in his voice. "There was a reason we didn't charge him, you know. Whatever anybody said about the investigation."

So he'd read the blog too, Dance deduced.

"You going to reopen the investigation?" Brodsky asked warily.

"No, this is about that attack Monday night. The girl in the trunk."

"Oh, that. The boy did it, you think?"

"Possibly."

"Wouldn't surprise me. Not one bit."

"Why do you say that?"

"Sometimes you get a feeling. Travis was dangerous. Had eyes just like the kids at Columbine."

How could he possibly know the visage of the killers in that horrific 1999 murder spree?

Then Brodsky added, "He was a fan of theirs, you know, the shooters. Had pictures up in his locker."

Did he know that independently, or from the blog? Dance recalled that someone had mentioned it in the "Roadside Crosses" thread.

"Did you think he was a threat?" O'Neil asked Brodsky. "When you interviewed him?"

"Yes, sir. Kept my cuffs handy the whole time. He's a big kid. And wore this hooded sweatshirt. Just stared at me. Freaky."

At this reference to the garment, Dance recalled what Tammy had given away about the attacker wearing a hoodie.

She thanked the officer and they hung up. After a moment she looked over at Boling. "Jon, any insights you can give us about Travis? From the postings?"

Boling reflected for a moment. "I do have a thought. If he's a gamer, like they're saying, that fact could be significant."

O'Neil asked, "You mean by playing those games he's programmed to be violent? We saw something on Discovery Channel about that the other night."

But Jon Boling shook his head. "That's a popular theme in the media. But if he's gone through relatively normal childhood developmental stages, then I wouldn't worry too much about that. Yes, some children can become numb to the consequences of violence if they're continually exposed in certain ways--generally visual--too early. But at the worst that just desensitizes you; it doesn't make you dangerous. The tendency to violence in young people almost always comes from rage, not watching movies or TV.

"No, I'm speaking of something else when I say that gaming probably affects Travis fundamentally. It's a change we're seeing throughout society now among young people. He could be losing the distinction between the synthetic world and the real world."

"Synthetic world?"

"It's a term I got from Edward Castronova's book on the subject. The synthetic world is the life of online games and alternative reality websites, like Second Life. They're fantasy worlds you enter through your computer--or PDA or some other digital device. People in our generation usually draw a clear distinction between the synthetic world and the real one. The real world is where you have dinner with your family or play softball or go out on a date after you log out of the synthetic world and turn off the computer. But younger people--and nowadays I mean people in their twenties and even early thirties--don't see that distinction. More and more, the synth worlds are becoming real to them. In fact, there was a study recently that showed nearly a fifth of the players in one online game felt that the real world was only a place to eat and sleep, that the synthetic world was their true residence."

This surprised Dance.

Boling smiled at her apparently naive expression. "Oh, an average gamer can easily spend thirty hours a week in the synth world, and it's not unusual for people to spend twice that. There are hundreds of millions of people who have some involvement in the synth world, and tens of millions who spend much of their day there. And we're not talking Pac-Man or Pong. The level of realism in the synthetic world is astonishing. You--through an avatar, a character that represents you--inhabit a world that's as complex as what we're living in right now. Child psychologists have studied how people create avatars; players actually use parenting skills subconsciously to form their characters. Economists have studied games too. You have to learn skills to support yourself or you'll starve to death. In most of the games you earn money, payable in game currency. But that currency actually trades against the dollar or pound or euro on eBay--in their gaming category. You can buy and sell virtual items--like magic wands, weapons, or clothing or houses or even avatars themselves--in real-world money. In Japan, not too long ago, some gamers sued hackers who stole virtual items from their synth world homes. They won the case."

Boling leaned forward, and Dance again noticed the sparkle in his eyes, the enthusiasm in his voice. "One of the best examples of the synth and real worlds coinciding is in a famous online game, World of Warcraft. The designers created a disease as a debuffer--that's a condition that reduces the health or power of characters. It was called Corrupted Blood. It would weaken powerful characters and kill the ones who weren't so strong. But something odd happened. Nobody's quite sure how, but the disease got out of control and spread on its own. It became a virtual black plague. The designers never intended that to happen. It could be stopped only when the infected characters died out or adapted to it. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta heard about it and had a team study the spread of the virus. They used it as a model for real-world epidemiology."

Boling sat back. "I could go on and on about the synth world. It's a fascinating subject, but my point is that whether or not Travis is desensitized to violence, the real question is which world does he inhabit most, the synth or the real? If it's synth, then he runs his life according to a whole different set of rules. And we don't know what those are. Revenge against cyberbullies--or anyone who humiliates him--could be perfectly accepted. It could be encouraged. Maybe even required.

"The comparison is to a paranoid schizophrenic who kills someone because he genuinely believes that the victim is a threat to the world. He isn't doing anything wrong. In fact, to him