Roadside Crosses (Kathryn Dance 2)

"Seems that way."

After they disconnected, Dance turned up the volume on her iPod Touch--she was listening to Badi Assad, the beautiful Brazilian guitarist and singer. It was illegal to listen through the ear buds while driving, but running the music through the speakers in a cop car didn't produce the most faithful sound quality.

And she needed a serious dose of soul-comforting music.

Dance felt the urgency to pursue the case, but she was a mother too and she'd always balanced her two worlds. She'd now pick up her children from her mother's care at the hospital, spend a little time with them and drop them off at her parents' house, where Stuart Dance would resume baby-sitting, after he returned from his meeting at the aquarium. And she would head back to the CBI to continue the hunt for Travis Brigham.

She continued the drive in the big, unmarked CVPI--her Police Interceptor Ford. It handled like a combination race car and tank. Not that Dance had ever pushed the vehicle to its limits. She wasn't a natural driver and, though she'd taken the required high-speed-pursuit course in Sacramento, couldn't picture herself actually chasing another driver along the winding roads of central California. With this thought, an image from the blog came to mind--the photo of the roadside crosses at the site of the terrible accident on Highway 1 on June 9, the tragedy that had set all of this subsequent horror in motion.

She now pulled up in the hospital lot and noticed several California Highway Patrol cars, and two unmarkeds, parked in front of the hospital. She couldn't remember a report about any police action involving injuries. Climbing from the car, she observed a change in the protesters. For one thing, there were more of them. Three dozen or so. And they'd been joined by two more news crews.

Also, she noticed, they were boisterous, waving their placards and crosses like sports fans. Smiling, chanting. Dance noticed that the Reverend Fisk was being approached by several men, shaking his hands in sequence. His red-haired minder was carefully scanning the parking lot.

And then Dance froze, gasping.

Walking out the front door of the hospital were Wes and Maggie--faces grim--accompanied by an African-American woman in a navy blue suit. She was directing them to one of the unmarked sedans.

Robert Harper, the special prosecutor she'd met outside Charles Overby's office, emerged.

And behind him walked Dance's mother. Edie Dance was flanked by two large uniformed CHP troopers, and she was in handcuffs.

DANCE JOGGED FORWARD.

"Mom!" twelve-year-old Wes shouted and ran across the parking lot, pulling his sister after him.

"Wait, you can't do that!" shouted the woman who'd been accompanying them. She started forward, fast.

Dance knelt, embracing her son and daughter.

The woman's stern voice resounded across the parking lot. "We're taking the children--"

"You're not taking anybody," Dance growled, then turned again to her children: "Are you all right?"

"They arrested Grandma!" Maggie said, tears welling. Her chestnut braid hung limply over her shoulder, where it had jumped in the run.

"I'll talk to them in a minute." Dance rose. "You're not hurt, are you?"

"No." Lean Wes, nearly as tall as his mother, said in a shaky voice, "They just, that woman and the police, they just came and got us and said they're taking us someplace, I don't know where."

"I don't want to leave you, Mommy!" Maggie clung to her tightly.

Dance reassured her daughter, "Nobody's taking you anywhere. Okay, go get in the car."

The woman in the blue suit approached and said in a low tone, "Ma'am, I'm afraid--" And found herself talking to Dance's CBI identification card and shield, thrust close to her face. "The children are going with me," Dance said.

The woman read the ID, unimpressed. "It's procedure. You understand. It's for their own good. We'll get it all sorted out and if everything checks out--"

"The children are going with me."

"I'm a social worker with Monterey County Child Services." Her own ID appeared.

Dance was thinking that there were probably negotiations that should be going on at the moment but still she pulled her handcuffs out of her back holster in a smooth motion and swung them open like a large crab claw. "Listen to me. I'm their mother. You know my identity. You know theirs. Now back off, or I'm arresting you under California Penal Code section two-oh-seven."

Observing this, the TV reporters seemed to stiffen as one, like a lizard sensing the approach of an oblivious beetle. Cameras swung their way.

The woman turned toward Robert Harper, who seemed to debate. He glanced at the reporters and apparently decided that, in this situation, bad publicity was worse than no publicity. He nodded.

Dance smiled