"Michael's people are running the scene. If there's evidence they'll let us know."
"If there's evidence."
"He's a teenager, Charles, not a pro. He's going to leave some clues that'll lead us to where he's hiding. Sooner or later."
"But if he left a cross that means he's also going to try to kill somebody today."
"We're contacting as many people as we can find who might be at risk."
"And the computer tracing? What's going on there?"
TJ said, "The company's not calling us back. We've got Legal putting together a foreign warrant request."
The head of the office grimaced. "That's just great. Where's the proxy?"
"Sweden."
"They're better than the Bulgarians," Overby said, "but it'll be a month before they even get around to responding. Send the request, to cover our asses, but don't waste time on it."
"Yes, sir."
Overby stormed off, fishing his mobile out of his pocket.
Dance snagged her own phone and called Rey Carraneo and Albert Stemple into her office. When they arrived she announced, "I'm tired of being on the defensive here. I want to pick the top five or six potential victims--the ones who've posted the most vicious attacks on Travis, and the posters who're the most supportive of Chilton. We're going to get them out of the area and then set up surveillance at their houses or apartments. He's got a new victim in mind and when he shows up, I want him to get one big goddamn surprise. Let's get on it."
Chapter 26
"HOW'S HE HOLDING up?" Lily Hawken asked her husband, Donald.
"James? He's not saying much but it's got to be tough on him. Patrizia too, I'm sure."
They were in the den of their new house in Monterey.
Unpacking, unpacking, unpacking . . .
The petite blonde stood in the middle of the room, feet apart slightly, looking down at two plastic bags of drapes. "What do you think?"
Hawken was a bit overwhelmed at the moment and couldn't care less about window treatments, but his wife of nine months and three days had taken on much of the burden of the move from San Diego and so he set down the tools he was using to assemble the coffee table and looked from the red to the rust and back again.
"The ones on the left." Remaining ready to retreat at a moment's notice if that was the wrong answer.
But it was apparently correct. "That's where I was leaning," she said. "And the police have a guard at his house? They think the boy is going to attack him?"
Hawken resumed assembling the table. Ikea. Damn, they have some pretty clever designers. "He doesn't think so. But you know Jim. Even if he did, he's not the sort to head for the hills."
Then he reflected that Lily didn't really know James Chilton at all; she hadn't even met him yet. It was only through what he'd told her that she had an understanding of his friend.
Just as he knew about many aspects of her life from conversation and hint and deduction. Such was life under these circumstances--second marriages for both of them; he, coming out of mourning, Lily, recovering from a tough divorce. They'd met through friends and had started dating. Wary at first, they'd realized almost simultaneously how starved for intimacy and affection they were. Hawken, a man who hadn't believed that he would ever get married again, proposed after six months--on the gritty rooftop beach bar of the W hotel in downtown San Diego, because he couldn't wait to plot out a more suitable setting.
Lily, though, had described the event as the most romantic thing she could think of. The large diamond ring on a white ribbon slipped over the neck of her Anchor Steam bottle helped.
And here they were starting a new life back in Monterey.
Donald Hawken assessed his situation and decided that he was happy. Boyishly happy. Friends had told him that a second marriage after losing a spouse was different. As a widower he would have changed fundamentally. He wouldn't be capable of that adolescent feeling permeating every cell of his being. There'd be companionship, there'd be moments of passion. But the relationship would essentially be a friendship.
Wrong.
It was adolescent and more.