Roadside Crosses (Kathryn Dance 2)

The Monterey County Crime Scene people were here, along with a dozen other state and town law enforcement officers.

Reporters too, plenty of them, most asking about the whereabouts of Travis Brigham. Why exactly hadn't the CBI or the MCSO or the Monterey city police or anybody arrested him yet? How hard could it be to find a seventeen-year-old who paraded around dressed like the Columbine and Virginia Tech killers? Who carried knives and machetes, sacrificed animals in bizarre rituals and left roadside crosses on public highways.

He's very active in computer games. Young people who are good at them learn very sophisticated combat and evasion techniques. . . .

Dance ignored them all and pushed on, under the police cordon. She arrived at one of the ambulances, the one nearest the house. A young, intense medic with slicked-back dark hair climbed out of the back door. He closed it and then pounded on the side.

The boxy vehicle, containing Kelley, her mother and brother, raced off to the

emergency room.

Dance joined Michael O'Neil and the tech. "How is she?"

"Still unconscious. We've got her on a portable ventilator." A shrug. "She's unresponsive. We'll just have to wait and see."

It was a near miracle that they'd saved Kelley at all.

And Jonathan Boling was to thank. At the news that a second cross had been located, the professor had gone into a frenzy of work to identify the posters critical of Travis in The Chilton Report, by correlating posting nics--nicknames--and information from social networking sites and other sources. He'd even compared grammar, word choice and spelling styles in the Report posts to those in networking sites and comments in high school yearbooks to identify anonymous posters. He'd enlisted his students too. They'd finally managed to find a dozen names of people in the area who'd posted the blog replies most critical of Travis.

His call a half hour ago was to give Dance their names. She'd immediately ordered TJ, Rey Carraneo and big Al Stemple to start calling and warning them they might be at risk. One of the posters, BellaKelley, the screen name for Kelley Morgan, was unaccounted for. Her mother said she was supposed to be meeting with friends, but hadn't shown up.

Stemple had led a tactical team to her house.

Dance glanced at him now, sitting on the front steps. The huge, shaved-headed man, hovering around forty, was the closest thing that the CBI had to a cowboy. He knew his weaponry, he loved tactical situations and he was pathologically quiet, except when it came to talking about fishing and hunting (accordingly he and Dance had had very few social conversations). Stemple's bulky frame was leaning against the banister of the front porch, as he breathed into an oxygen mask attached to a green tank.

The tech nodded Stemple's way. "He's okay. Did his good deed for the year. Travis had her chained to a water pipe. Al ripped the pipe out with his bare hands. Problem was, it took him ten minutes. He sucked in a lot of fumes."

"You okay, Al?" Dance called.

Stemple said something through the mask. Mostly he looked bored. Dance also read irritation in his eyes--probably that he hadn't gotten to shoot the perp.

The tech then said to O'Neil and Dance, "There's something you oughta know. Kelley was conscious for a minute or two when we got her out. She told me that Travis has a gun."

"Gun? He's armed?" Dance and O'Neil shared a troubled gaze.

"That's what she said. I lost her after that. Didn't say anything else."

Oh, no. An unstable adolescent with a firearm. Nothing was worse, in Dance's opinion.

O'Neil called in the information about the weapon to MCSO, who in turn would relay it to all the officers involved in the search for Travis.

"What was the gas?" Dance asked the tech as they walked to another ambulance.

"We aren't sure. It was definitely toxic."

The Crime Scene Unit was searching carefully for evidence while a team canvassed the neighborhood for witnesses. Everyone on the block was concerned, everyone was sympathetic. But they were also terrified; no accounts were forthcoming.

But perhaps there simply were no witnesses. Bike tread marks in the canyon behind the house suggested how the boy might have snuck up unnoticed to attack Kelley Morgan.

One Crime Scene officer arrived, carrying what turned out to be an eerie mask in a clear evidence bag.

"What the hell's that?" O'Neil asked.

"It was tied to a tree outside her bedroom window, pointing in."

It was hand-made from papier-mache, painted white and gray. Bony spikes, like horns, extended from the skull. The eyes were huge and black. The narrow lips were sewn shut, bloody.

"To freak her out, the poor thing. Imagine looking out your window and seeing that." Dance actually shivered.