Roadside Crosses (Kathryn Dance 2)

Louder: "Kathryn?"

The wind rustled brush and trees.

Then: "Michael, here!" A choked sound. From nearby. He raced toward her words. Then he found her ahead of him on a path, on her hands and knees. Her head down. He heard gasping. Was she wounded? Had Travis struck her with a pipe? Stabbed her?

O'Neil had to suppress his overwhelming urge to tend to her, see how badly hurt she was. He knew procedures. He ran closer, stood over her, his eyes scanning, swiveling around, looking for a target.

At last, some distance away, he saw Travis's back vanish.

"He's gone," Dance said, pulling her weapon from a thicket of bushes and rising to her feet. "Headed that way."

"You hurt?"

"Sore, that's all."

She did seem to be unharmed, but she was dusting at her suit in a way that was troubling to him. She was uncharacteristically shaken, disoriented. He could hardly blame her. But Kathryn Dance had always been a bulwark he could count on, a standard he measured his own behavior against. Her gestures reminded him that they were out of their element here, that this case wasn't a typical gangbanger hit or a weapons smuggling ring cruising up and down the 101.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Tripped me, then took off. Michael, it wasn't Travis."

"What?"

"I got a fast look at him. He was blond." Dance grimaced at a tear in her skirt, then gave up on the clothing. She started scanning the ground. "He dropped something. . . . Okay, there." She picked it up. A can of spray paint.

"What's this all about?" he wondered aloud.

She tucked the gun away in her hip holster and turned back toward the house. "Let's go find out."

THEY ARRIVED BACK at the Brigham house simultaneously with the backup--two Pacific Grove town police cars. A longtime resident, Dance knew the officers and waved hello.

They joined her and O'Neil.

"You all right, Kathryn?" one cop asked, noting her disheveled hair and dusty skirt.

"Fine." She filled them in on the attack and pursuit. One officer used his shoulder-mounted Motorola to report the incident.

Dance and O'Neil had no sooner gotten to the house when a woman's voice called out from behind the screen, "Did you get him?" The door opened and the speaker stepped out on the porch. In her forties, Dance guessed, she had a round figure and her face was moonish. She wore painfully taut jeans and a billowy gray blouse with a triangle of stain on the belly. Kathryn Dance noted that the woman's cream pumps were hopelessly limp and scuffed from bearing her weight. From inattention too.

Dance and O'Neil identified themselves. The woman was Sonia Brigham and she was Travis's mother.

"Did you get him?" she persisted.

"Do you know who he was, why he attacked us?"

"He wasn't attacking you," Sonia said. "He probably didn't even see you. He was going for the windows. They've already

got three of 'em."

One of the Pacific Grove officers explained, "The Brighams've been the target of vandalism lately."

"You said 'he,' " Dance said. "Do you know who he was?"

"Not that particular one. There's a bunch of them."

"Bunch?" O'Neil asked.

"They're coming by all the time. Throwing rocks, bricks, painting stuff on the house and garage. That's what we've been living with." A contemptuous wave of the hand, presumably toward where the vandal had disappeared. "After everybody started saying those bad things about Travis. The other day, somebody threw a brick through the living room window, nearly hit my younger son. And look." She pointed to green spray paint graffiti on the side of a large lopsided shed in the side yard, about fifty feet away.