Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel (37 page)

The noise was disorienting: a cacophony of digitally generated sounds—explosions, gunshots, animal cries, eerie shrieks and laughs—and an ocean of indistinguishable human voices speaking into microphones to fellow gamers somewhere in the world. Responses rattled from speakers. Occasionally cries and expletives would issue hoarsely from the throats of desperate players as they died or realized a tactical mistake.

The Lighthouse Arcade, typical of thousands around the globe, represented the last outpost of the real world before you plunged into the synth.

Boling felt a vibration on his hip. He looked down at his mobile. The message from Irv, his grad student, read:
Stryker logged on five minutes ago in DQ!!

As if he’d been slapped, Boling looked around. Was Travis
here
? Because of the enclosures, it was impossible to see more than one or two stations at a time.

At the counter a long-haired clerk sat oblivious to the noise; he was reading a science fiction novel. Boling approached. “I’m looking for a kid, a teenager.”

The clerk lifted an ironic eyebrow.

I’m looking for a tree in a forest.

“Yeah?”

“He’s playing
DimensionQuest.
Did you sign somebody in about five minutes ago?”

“There’s no sign-in. You use with tokens. You can buy ’em here or from a machine.” The clerk was looking Boling over carefully. “You his father?”

“No. Just want to find him.”

“I can look over the servers. Find out if anybody’s logged onto
DQ
now.”

“You could?”

“Yeah.”

“Great.”

But the kid wasn’t making any moves to check the servers; he was just staring at Boling through a frame of unclean hair.

Ah. Got it. We’re negotiating. Sweet. Very private-eye-ish, Boling thought. A moment later two twenties vanished into the pocket of the kid’s unwashed jeans.

“His avatar’s name is Stryker, if that helps,” Boling told him.

A grunt. “Be back in a minute.” He vanished onto the floor. Boling saw him emerge on the far side of the room and walk toward the back office.

Five minutes later he returned.

“Somebody named Stryker, yeah, he’s playing
DQ.
Just logged on. Station forty-three. It’s over there.”

“Thanks.”

“Uh.” The clerk went back to his S-F novel.

Boling, thinking frantically: What should he do? Have the clerk evacuate the arcade? No, then Travis would catch on. He should just call 911. But he better see if the boy was alone. Would he have his gun with him?

He had a fantasy of walking past casually, ripping the gun from the boy’s belt and covering him till the police arrived.

No. Don’t do that. Under any circumstances.

Palms sweating, Boling slowly walked toward station 43. He took a fast look around the corner. The computer had the Aetherian landscape on the screen, but the chair was empty.

Nobody was in the aisles, though. Station 44 was empty but at 42 a girl with short green hair was playing a martial arts game.

Boling walked up to her. “Excuse me.”

The girl was delivering crippling blows to an opponent. Finally the creature fell over dead and her avatar climbed on top of the body and pulled its head off. “Like, yeah?” She didn’t glance up.

“The boy who was just here, playing
DQ.
Where is he?”

“Like, I don’t know. Jimmy walked past and said something and he left. A minute ago.”

“Who’s Jimmy?”

“You know, the clerk.”

Goddamn! I just paid forty dollars to that shit to tip off Travis. Some cop I am.

Boling glared at the clerk, who remained conspicuously lost in his novel.

The professor slammed through the exit door and sprinted outside. His eyes, accustomed to the darkness,
stung. He paused in the alleyway, squinting left and right. Then caught a glimpse of a young man, walking quickly away, head down.

Don’t do anything stupid, he told himself. He pulled his BlackBerry from its holster.

Ahead of him, the boy broke into a run.

After exactly one second of debate, Jon Boling did too.

HAMILTON ROYCE, THE
ombudsman from the attorney general’s office in Sacramento, disconnected the phone. It drooped in his hand as he reflected on the conversation he’d just had—a conversation conducted in the language known as Political and Corporate Euphemism.

He lingered in the halls of the CBI, considering options.

Finally he returned to Charles Overby’s office.

The agent-in-charge was sitting back in his chair watching a press report about the case streaming on his computer. How the police had come close to catching the killer at the house of a friend of the blogger’s but had missed him and he’d escaped possibly to terrorize more people on the Monterey Peninsula.

Royce reflected that simply reporting that the police had saved the friend didn’t have quite the stay-tuned-or-else veneer of the approach the network had chosen to take.

Overby typed and a different station came up. The special report anchor apparently preferred Travis to be the “Video Game Killer,” rather than defining him
by masks or roadside crosses. He went on to describe how the boy tormented his victims before he killed them.

Never mind that only one person had died or that the bastard got shot in the back of the head, fleeing. Which would tend to minimize the torment.

Finally he said, “Well, Charles, they’re getting more concerned. The AG.” He lifted his phone like he was showing a shield during a bust.

“We’re
all
pretty concerned,” Overby echoed. “The whole Peninsula’s concerned. It’s really our priority now. Like I was saying.” His face was cloudy. “But is Sacramento having a problem with how we’re handling the case?”

“Not per se.” Royce let this nonresponse buzz around Overby’s head like a strident hornet.

“We’re doing everything we can.”

“I like that agent of yours. Dance.”

“Oh, she’s top-notch. Nothing gets by her.”

A leisurely nod, a thoughtful nod. “The AG feels bad about those victims. I feel bad about them.” Royce poured sympathy into his voice, and tried to recall the last time he really felt bad. Probably when he missed his daughter’s emergency appendectomy because he was in bed with his mistress.

“A tragedy.”

“I know I’m sounding like a broken record. But I really do feel that that blog is the problem.”

“It is,” Overby agreed. “It’s the eye of the hurricane.”

Which is calm and frames a beautiful blue sky, Royce corrected silently.

The CBI chief offered, “Well, Kathryn
did
get
Chilton to post a plea for the boy to come in. And he gave us some details about the server—a proxy in Scandinavia.”

“I understand. It’s just . . . as long as that blog’s up, it’s a reminder that the job isn’t getting done.” Meaning: By
you.
“I keep coming back to that question about something helpful to us, something about Chilton.”

“Kathryn said she’d keep an eye peeled.”

“She’s busy. I wonder if there’s something in what she’s
already
found. I don’t really want to deflect Agent Dance from the case. I wonder if I should take a gander.”

“You?”

“You wouldn’t mind, would you, Charles? If I just took a peek at the files. I could bring perspective. My impression, actually, is that Kathryn’s maybe too kind.”

“Too kind?”

“You were sharp, Charles, to hire her.” The agent in charge accepted this compliment, though, Royce knew, Kathryn Dance had predated Overby’s presence in the CBI here by four years. He continued, “Clever. You saw she was an antidote to the cynicism of old roosters like you and me. But the price of that is a certain . . . naivete.”

“You think she’s got something on Chilton and doesn’t know it?”

“Could be.”

Overby was looking tense. “Well, I’ll apologize for her. Put it down to distraction, why don’t we? Her mother’s case. Not focusing up to par. She’s doing the best she can.”

Hamilton Royce was known for his ruthlessness. But he would never have sold out a loyal member of his team with a comment like that. He reflected that it was almost impressive to see the top three darker qualities of human nature displayed so boldly: cowardice, pettiness and betrayal. “Is she in?”

“Let me find out.” Overby made a call and spoke to someone who Royce deduced was Dance’s assistant. He hung up.

“She’s still at the crime scene at the Hawken house.”

“So, then, I’ll just have a look-see.” But then Royce seemed to have a thought. “Of course, probably better if I weren’t disturbed.”

“Here’s an idea. I’ll call her assistant back, ask her to do something. Run an errand. There are always reports needing to get copied. Or, I know: get her input about workload and hours. It would make sense for me to take her pulse. I’m that kind of boss. She’d never suspect anything’s out of the ordinary.”

Royce left Overby’s office, walked down corridors whose routes he’d memorized, and paused near Dance’s. He waited in the hallway until he saw that the assistant—an efficient-looking woman named Maryellen—took a call. Then, with a perplexed frown, she stood and headed up the corridor, leaving Hamilton Royce free to plunder.

WHEN HE GOT
to the end of the alley, Jon Boling paused and looked to the right, down a side street, in the direction that Travis had disappeared. From here the ground descended toward Monterey Bay and was filled with small
single-family bungalows, beige and tan apartment buildings and abundant groundcover. Though Lighthouse Avenue, behind him, was ripe with traffic the side road was empty. Thick fog had come up and the scenery was gray.

Well, now that the kid had gotten away, he thought, Kathryn Dance wasn’t likely to be very impressed with his detection work.

He called 911 and reported that he’d seen Travis Brigham and gave his location. The dispatcher reported that a police car would be at the arcade in five minutes.

Okay, that was enough of the adolescent behavior, he told himself. His skill was academia, teaching, intellectual analysis.

The world of ideas, not action.

He turned around to head back to the arcade to meet the police car. But then a thought occurred to him: that this quest of his maybe wasn’t so out of character, after all. Maybe it was less a case of silly masculine preening than an acknowledgment of a legitimate aspect of his nature: answering questions, unraveling mysteries, solving puzzles. Exactly what Jonathan Boling had always done: understanding society, the human heart and mind.

One more block. What could it hurt? The police were on their way. Maybe he’d find somebody on the street who’d noticed the boy get into a car or climb through a window of a nearby house.

The professor turned back and started down the gray, gritty alley toward the water. He wondered when he’d see Kathryn again. Soon, he hoped.

It was in fact the image of her green eyes that was
prominently in his mind when the boy leapt out from behind the Dumpster three feet away and got Boling in a neck lock. Smelling unwashed clothing and adolescent sweat, he choked as the silver blade of the knife began its leisurely transit to his throat.

SPEAKING ON HER
phone, Kathryn Dance sped up to the front of James Chilton’s house in Carmel. Parking, she said, “Thanks again,” to the caller and hung up. She parked and walked up to the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office car, in which a deputy sat on guard detail.

She approached him. “Hey, Miguel.”

“Agent Dance, how you doing? Everything’s quiet here.”

“Good. Mr. Chilton’s back, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Do me a favor?”

“You bet.”

“Get out of the car and just stand here, maybe lean against the door, so people can get a good look at you.”

“Something going down?”

“I’m not sure. Just stay there for a bit. Whatever happens, don’t move.”

He seemed uncertain but climbed out of the car.

Dance now walked up to the front door and pushed the buzzer. The musician within her detected the slightly flat tone of the final chime.

Chilton opened the door and blinked to see Dance. “Is everything okay?”

Then, after a glance over her shoulder, Dance pulled her handcuffs out of their holster.

Chilton glanced down. “What—?” he gasped.

“Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

“What is this?”

“Now! Just do it.”

“This is—”

She took him by the shoulder and turned him around. He started to speak, but she simply said, “Shh.” And ratcheted on the cuffs. “You’re under arrest for criminal trespass on private property.”

“What? Whose?”

“Arnold Brubaker’s land—the site of the desalination plant.”

“Wait, you mean yesterday?”

“Right.”

“You let me go!”

“You weren’t arrested then. Now, you are.” She recited the Miranda warning.

A dark sedan sped up the street, turned and ground along the gravel drive up to the house. Dance recognized it as a unit of the Highway Patrol. The two officers in the front—bulky men—glanced at Dance curiously and climbed out. They looked over at the county sheriff’s office car and Deputy Miguel Herrera, who touched his radio on his hip as if wanting to call somebody to see what this was all about.

Together the new arrivals walked toward Dance and her prisoner. They noted the handcuffs.

In a perplexed voice, Dance said, “Who’re you?”

“Well,” the older of the troopers said, “CHP. Who are you, ma’am?”

She fished for her wallet in her purse and showed her ID to the troopers. “I’m Kathryn Dance, CBI. What do you want here?”

“We’re here to take James Chilton into custody.”

“My prisoner?”

“Yours?”

“That’s right. We just arrested him.” She shot a glance to Herrera.

“Wait a minute here,” Chilton barked.

“Quiet,” Dance ordered.

The senior trooper said, “We have an arrest warrant for James Chilton. And a warrant to take possession of his computers, files, business records. Anything related to
The Chilton Report.
”