"How about his friends?"

Brigham snapped, "Doesn't have any. He's always online. With that computer of his . . ."

"All the time," echoed his wife softly. "All the time."

"Call us if he contacts you. Don't try to get him to surrender, don't take the gun away. Just call us. It's for his own good."

"Sure," she said. "We will."

"He'll do what I say. Exactly what I say."

"Bob . . ."

"Shhhh."

"We're going through his room now," Dance said.

"Is that all right?" Sonia was nodding at the warrant.

"They can take whatever the fuck they want. Anything that'll help find him before he gets us into more trouble." Brigham lit a cigarette and dropped the match into the ashtray, a smoking arc. Sonia's face sank as she realized she'd become her son's sole advocate.

Dance pulled her radio off her hip, called the deputies outside. One of them radioed back that he'd found something. The young officer arrived. He held up a lockbox in a latex-gloved hand. It had been smashed open. "Was in some bushes behind the house. And this too." An empty box of Remington .38 Special rounds.

"That's it," the father muttered. "Mine."

The house was eerily quiet.

The agents walked into Travis's room. Pulling on her gloves, Dance said to Carraneo, "I want to see if we can find anything about friends, addresses, places he might like to hang out."

They searched through the effluence of a teenager's room--clothes, comics, DVDs, manga, anime, games, computer parts, notebooks, sketchpads. She noticed there was little music and nothing at all about sports.

Dance blinked as she looked through a notebook. The boy had done a drawing of a mask identical to the one outside Kelley Morgan's window.

Even the small sketch chilled her.

Hidden away in a drawer were tubes of Clearasil and books about remedies for acne, diet and medication and even dermabrasion to remove scarring. Though Travis's problem was less serious than with many teens, it was probably what he saw as a major reason he was an outcast.

Dance continued to search. Under the bed she found a strongbox. It was locked but she had seen a key in the top desk drawer. It worked in the box. Expecting drugs or porn, she was surprised at the contents: stacks of cash.

Carraneo was looking over her shoulder. "Hmm."

About four thousand dollars. The bills were crisp and ordered, as if he'd gotten them from a bank or an ATM, not from buyers in drug deals. Dance added the box to the evidence they'd take back. Not only did she not want to fund Travis's escape, if he came back for it, but she didn't doubt that his father would pilfer the money in an instant, if he found the stash.

"There's this," Carraneo said. He was holding up printouts of pictures, mostly candids, of pretty girls about high school age, taken around Robert Louis Stevenson High School. None obscene or taken up the girls' skirts, though, or of locker rooms or bathrooms.

Stepping outside the room, Dance asked Sonia, "Do you know who they are?"

Neither parent did.

She turned back to the pictures. She realized that she'd seen one of the girls before--in a news story about the June 9 crash. Caitlin Gardner, the girl who'd survived. The photo was more formal than the others--the pretty girl looking off to the side, smiling blandly. Dance turned the thin, glossy rectangle of paper over and noted a portion of a picture of a sports team on the other side. Travis had cut the picture out of a yearbook.

Had he asked Caitlin for a picture and been refused? Or had he been too shy even to ask?

The agents searched for a half hour but found no clues as to where Travis might be, no phone numbers, email addresses or friends' names. He kept no address book or calendar.

Dance wanted to see what was on his laptop. She opened the lid. It was in hibernate mode and booted up immediately. She wasn't surprised when it asked for a password. Dance asked the boy's father, "Do you have any idea what the code is?"

"Like he'd tell us." He gestured at the computer. "Now, that's the problem right there, you know. That's what went wrong, playing all those games. All the violence. They shoot people and cut them up, do all kinds of shit."

Tags: Jeffery Deaver Kathryn Dance Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net