Roadside Crosses (Kathryn Dance 2)

The deputy's supervisor from the MCSO was present, along with a dozen other deputies, shaken, furious at the murder.

As for the walking wounded, the Chiltons didn't seem too badly hurt.

Dance was, however, keeping an eye on Rey Carraneo--who'd been the first on the scene, spotted the dead deputy, and raced into the house after calling for backup. He'd seen Schaeffer about to shoot Chilton. Carraneo gave the killer a by-the-book warning, but when the man had tried to negotiate, the agent had simply fired two very efficient rounds into his head. Discussions with gun-toting suspects only occur in movies and TV shows--and bad ones, at that. Police never lower or set down their weapons. And they never hesitate to take out a target if one presents itself.

Rules number one, two and three are: shoot.

And he had. Superficially the young agent seemed fine, his body language unchanged from the professional, upright posture he wore like a rented tux. But his eyes told a different story, revealing the words looping through his mind at the moment: I just killed a man. I just killed a man.

She'd make sure he took some time off with pay.

A car pulled up and Michael O'Neil climbed out. He spotted Dance and joined her. The quiet deputy wasn't smiling.

"I'm sorry, Michael." She gripped his arm. O'Neil had known Miguel Herrera for several years.

"Just shot him down?"

"That's right."

His eyes closed briefly. "Jesus."

"Wife?"

"No. Divorced. But he's got a grown son. He's already been notified." O'Neil, otherwise so calm, with a facade that revealed so little, looked with chilling hatred at the green bag containing Greg Schaeffer's body Another voice intruded, weak, unsteady. "Thank you."

They turned to face the man who'd spoken: James Chilton. Wearing dark slacks, a white T-shirt and a navy blue V-neck sweater, the blogger seemed like a chaplain humbled by battlefront carnage. His wife was at his side.

"Are you all right?" Dance asked them.

"I'm fine, yes. Thank you. Just beat up a bit. Cuts and bruises."

Patrizia Chilton said she too wasn't seriously injured.

O'Neil nodded to them and asked Chilton, "Who was he?"

Dance answered, "Anthony Schaeffer's brother."

Chilton gave a blink of surprise. "You figured it out?"

She explained to O'Neil about Ashton's real name. "That's the interesting thing about the Internet--those role-playing games and sites. Like Second Life. You can create whole new identities for yourself. Schaeffer's been spending the past few months seeding the name 'Greg Ashton' around online as this blogging and RSS maven. He did that to seduce his way into Chilton's life."

"I outed his brother Anthony in a blog several years ago," Chilton explained. "He was the one I told Agent Dance about when I first met her--one of the things I regretted about the blog--that he killed himself."

O'Neil asked Dance, "How did you find out about him?"

"TJ and I were checking out the suspects. It wasn't likely that Arnold Brubaker was the killer. I was still suspicious of Clint Avery--the guy behind the highway project--but we didn't have anything specific yet. So I was working on the list of people who'd sent James threats."

The small list . . .

Chilton said, "Anthony Schaeffer's wife was on the list. Sure. She'd threatened me a few years ago."

Dance continued, "I went online to find out as many details about her as I could. I found her wedding pictures. The best man at their wedding was Greg, Anthony's brother. I recognized him from when I came to your house the other day. I checked him out. He traveled here on an open ticket about two weeks ago." As soon as she'd learned this she'd called Miguel Herrera but couldn't get through, so she sent Rey Carraneo here. The agent, following Clint Avery, was not far from Chilton's house.

O'Neil asked, "Did Schaeffer say anything about Travis?"

Dance showed him the plastic envelope containing the handwritten note, with the references to Travis, making it seem that the boy was the one about to shoot Chilton.

"He's dead, you think?"