Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel (44 page)

Schaeffer kept the gun steadily on the blogger’s chest and snapped to the cop, “
You
drop it!”

“Lower the weapon,” was the officer’s measured reply. “This is your only warning.”

Schaeffer growled, “If you shoot me, I’ll—”

He saw a yellow flash, sensed a tap to his head and then the universe went black.

THE DEAD ROLLED
, the living walked.

The body of Greg Ashton—it was really Greg
Schaeffer,
Dance had learned—was wheeled down the stairs and over the lawn on the rickety gurney to the coroner’s bus, while James and Patrizia Chilton walked slowly to an ambulance.

Another casualty, everyone was horrified to learn, was the MCSO deputy who’d been guarding the Chiltons, Miguel Herrera.

Schaeffer, as Ashton, had stopped at Herrera’s car. The guard had called Patrizia and been told that the man was expected. Then Schaeffer had apparently shoved the gun against Herrera’s jacket and fired twice, the proximity to the body muting the sound.

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?”

O’Neil’s and Dance’s eyes met. She said, “I’m not going on that assumption. Ultimately, sure, Schaeffer’d have to kill the boy. But he might not have done it yet. He might want to make it look like Travis killed himself after he’d finished with Chilton. Make the case tidier. That means he could still be alive.”

The senior deputy took a phone call. He stepped away, eyes straying to the MCSO car where Herrera had been so ruthlessly killed. He disconnected after a moment. “Got to head off. Have to interview a witness.”

“You? Interviewing?” she chided. Michael O’Neil’s technique at interviewing involved gazing
unsmilingly at the subject and asking him over and over again to tell O’Neil what he knew. It could be effective, but it wasn’t efficient. And O’Neil didn’t really enjoy it.

He consulted his watch. “Any chance you could do me a favor?”

“Name it.”

“Anne’s flight from San Francisco was delayed. I can’t miss this interview. Can you pick up the kids at day care?”

“Sure. I’m going to get Wes and Maggie after camp anyway.”

“Meet me at Fisherman’s Wharf at five?”

“Sure.”

O’Neil headed off, with yet another dark glance at Herrera’s car.

Chilton gripped his wife’s hand. Dance recognized postures that bespoke a graze with mortality. She thought back to the arrogant, self-righteous crusader Chilton had been when she first met him. Very different now. She recalled that something about him seemed to have softened earlier—when he’d learned that his friend Don Hawken and his wife had nearly been killed. Now, there’d been another shift, away from the stony visage of a missionary.

The man gave a bitter smile. “Oh, did he sucker me in. . . . He played right to my fucking ego.”

“Jim—”

“No, honey. He did. You know, this’s all my fault. Schaeffer picked Travis. He read through the blog, found somebody who’d be a good candidate to be a fall guy and set up a seventeen-year-old boy as my
killer. If I hadn’t started the ‘Roadside Crosses’ thread and mentioned the accident, Schaeffer wouldn’t have any incentive to go after him.”

He was right. But Kathryn Dance tended to avoid the what-if game. The playing field was far too soupy. “He would’ve picked somebody else,” she pointed out. “He was determined to get revenge against you.”

But Chilton didn’t seem to hear. “I should just shut the fucking blog down altogether.”

Dance saw resolve in his eyes, frustration, anger. Fear, too, she believed. Speaking to both of them, he said firmly, “I’m going to.”

“To what?” his wife asked.

“Shut it down. The
Report
’s finished. I’m not destroying anybody else’s life.”

“Jim,” Patrizia said softly. She brushed some dirt off her sleeve. “When our son had pneumonia, you sat beside his bed for two days and didn’t get a bit of sleep. When Don’s wife died, you walked right out of that meeting at Microsoft headquarters to be there for him—you gave up a hundred-thousand-dollar contract. When my dad was dying, you were with him more than the hospice people. You do good things, Jim. That’s what you’re about. And your blog does good things too.”

“I—”

“Shhh. Let me finish. Donald Hawken needed you and you were there. Our children needed you and you were there. Well, the world needs you too, honey. You can’t turn your back on that.”

“Patty, people died.”

“Just promise me you won’t make any decisions too
fast. This has been a terrible couple of days. Nobody’s thinking clearly.”

A lengthy pause. “I’ll see. I’ll see.” Then he hugged his wife. “But one thing I
do
know is that I can go on hiatus for a few days. And we’re going to get away from here.” Chilton said to his wife, “Let’s go up to Hollister tomorrow. We’ll spend a long weekend with Donald and Lily. You still haven’t met her. We’ll bring the boys, cook out . . . do some hiking.”

Patrizia’s face blossomed into a smile. She rested her head against his shoulders. “I’d like that.”

He’d turned his attention to Dance. “There’s something I’ve been thinking about.”

She cocked an eyebrow.

“A lot of people would’ve thrown me to the wolves. And I probably deserved to be thrown. But you didn’t. You didn’t like me, you didn’t approve, but you stood up for me. That’s intellectual honesty. You don’t see that much. Thank you.”

Dance gave a faint, embarrassed laugh, acknowledging the compliment—even as she thought of the times when she
had
wanted to throw him to the wolves.

The Chiltons returned to the house to finish packing and arrange for a motel that night—Patrizia didn’t want to stay in the house until the office had been scrubbed clean of every trace of Schaeffer’s blood. Dance could hardly blame her.

The agent now joined the MCSO Crime Scene chief, an easygoing middle-aged officer she’d worked with for several years. She explained that there was a possibility that Travis might still be alive, stashed in a hideout somewhere. Which meant he’d have a dwindling
supply of food and water. She had to locate him. And soon.

“You find a room key on the body?”

“Yep. Cyprus Grove Inn.”

“I want the room, and Schaeffer’s clothes and his car gone over with a microscope. Look for anything that might give us a clue where he might’ve put the boy.”

“You bet, Kathryn.”

She returned to her car, phoning TJ. “You got him, boss. I heard.”

“Yep. But now I want to find the boy. If he’s alive, we may only have a day or two until he starves to death or dies of thirst. All-out on this one. MCSO’s running the scenes at Chilton’s house and at the Cyprus Grove—where Schaeffer was staying. Call Peter Bennington and ride herd on the reports. Call Michael if you need to. Oh, and find me witnesses in nearby rooms at the Cyprus Grove.”

“Sure, boss.”

“And contact CHP, county and city police. I want to find the last roadside cross—the one Schaeffer left to announce Chilton’s death. Peter should go over it with every bit of equipment they’ve got.” Another thought occurred to her. “Did you ever hear back about that state vehicle?”

“Oh, that Pfister saw, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody’s called. I don’t think we’re prioritized.”

“Try again. And make it a priority.”

“You coming in, boss? Overbearing wants to see you.”

“TJ.”

“Sorry.”

“I’ll be in later. I’ve got to follow up on one thing.”

“You need help?”

She said she didn’t, though the truth was she sure as hell didn’t want to do this one solo.

SITTING IN HER
car, parked in the driveway, Dance gazed at the Brighams’ small house: the sad lean of the gutters and curl of the shingles, the dismembered toys and tools in the front and side yards. The garage so filled with discards that you couldn’t get more than half a car hood under its roof.

Dance was sitting in the driver’s seat of her Crown Vic, the door shut. Listening to a CD she and Martine had been sent from a group in Los Angeles. The musicians were Costa Rican. She found the music both cheerful and mysterious, and wanted to know more about them. She’d hoped that when she and Michael were in L.A. on the J. Doe murder case she’d have a chance to meet with them and do some more recordings.

But she couldn’t think about that now.

She heard the rumble of rubber on gravel and looked into the rearview mirror to see Sonia Brigham’s car pause as it turned past the hedge of boxwood.

The woman was alone in the front seat. Sammy sat in the back.

The car didn’t move for a long moment and Dance could see the woman staring desperately at the police
cruiser. Finally Sonia teased her battered car forward again and drove past Dance to the front of the house, braked and shut the engine off.

With a fast look Dance’s way, the woman climbed out and strode to the back of the car and lifted out the laundry baskets, and a large bottle of Tide.

His families so poor that they can’t even afford a washer and drier. . . . Who goes to laundromats? Lusers that’s who. . . .

The blog post that told Schaeffer where to find a sweatshirt to steal to help him frame Travis.

Dance climbed out of her own vehicle.

Sammy looked at her with a probing expression. The curiosity of their first meeting was gone; now he was uneasy. His eyes were eerily adult.

“You know something about Travis?” he asked, and didn’t sound as odd as he had earlier.

But before Dance could say anything, his mother shooed him off to play in the backyard.

He hesitated, still staring at Dance, then wandered off, uncomfortable, fishing in his pockets.

“Don’t go far, Sammy.”

Dance took the bottle of detergent from under Sonja’s pale arm and followed her toward the house. Sonia’s jaw was firm, eyes straight forward.

“Mrs.—”

“I have to put this away,” Sonia Brigham said in a clipped tone.

Dance opened the unlocked door for her. She followed Sonia inside. The woman moved straight into the kitchen and separated the baskets. “If you let them sit . . . the wrinkles, you know what it’s like.” She smoothed a T-shirt.