Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel (49 page)

Then the prosecutor slid toward him the document he’d been reviewing when she arrived, turned it over and began reading once again.

IN HER OFFICE
Kathryn Dance was staring at the entwined tree trunks outside her window, still angry with Harper. She was thinking again about what would happen if she was forced to testify against her mother. If she didn’t, she’d be held in contempt. A crime. It could mean jail and the end of her career as a law enforcer.

She was drawn from this thought by TJ’s appearance

He looked exhausted. He explained he’d spent much of the night working with Crime Scene to examine Greg Schaeffer’s room at the Cyprus Grove Inn, his car and Chilton’s house. He had the MCSO report.

“Excellent, TJ.” She regarded his bleary, red eyes. “You get any sleep?”

“What’s that again, boss? ‘Sleep’?”

“Ha.”

He handed her the crime scene report. “And I finally got more four-one-one on our friend.”

“Which one?”

“Hamilton Royce.”

Didn’t matter now, she supposed, with the case closed, and apologies—such as they were—delivered. But she was curious. “Go on.”

“His latest assignment was for the Nuclear Facilities Planning Committee. Until he got here he’d been billing the nukers sixty hours a week. And by the way, he’s expensive. I think I need a raise, boss. Am I a six-figure kind of agent?”

Dance smiled. She was glad that his humor seemed to be returning. “You’re worth seven figures in my book, TJ.”

“I love you too, boss.”

The implication of the information then struck her. She riffled through copies of
The Chilton Report.

“That son of a bitch.”

“What’s that?”

“Royce was trying to get the blog shut down—for his
client’s
sake. Look.” She tapped the printout.

Posted by Chilton.

Rep. Brandon Klevinger . . . Ever heard of his name? Probably not.

And the state representative looking after some fine folks in Northern California would rather keep a low profile.

No such luck.

Representative Klevinger is the head of the state’s Nuclear Facilities Planning Committee, which means the bomb—oops, excuse me, the buck—stops with him on the issue of those little gadgets called reactors.

And you want to know something interesting about them?

No—go away, Greenies. Go whine elsewhere! I have no problem with nuclear energy; we need it to achieve energy independence (from certain
interests
overseas whom I’ve written about at great length). But what I do object to is this: Nuclear power loses its advantage if the price for the plants and the energy expended in the construction outweigh the advantages.

I’ve learned that Rep. Klevinger just happens to have been on a couple of posh golfing trips to Hawaii and Mexico with his newfound “friend,” Stephen Ralston. Well, guess
what, boys and girls? Ralston happens to have put in bids for a proposed nuclear facility north of Mendocino.

Mendocino . . . Lovely place. And very pricey to build in. Not to mention that it seems the cost of delivering the power to where it’s needed will be huge. (Another developer has proposed a far cheaper and more efficient location about fifty miles south of Sacramento.) But a source has snuck me the Nuclear Committee’s preliminary report and it reveals that Ralston’s probably going to get the go-ahead to build in Mendocino.

Has Klevinger done anything illegal or wrong?

I’m not saying yes or no. I just ask the question.

“He was lying all along,” TJ said.

“Sure was.”

Still, she couldn’t concentrate on Royce’s duplicity just now. There was, after all, no need to blackmail him at this point, considering he was headed home in a day or two.

“Good work.”

“Just dotting my
j
’s.”

As he left she hunched over the MCSO report. She was a little surprised that David Reinhold, the eager kid—the one she’d played cat-and-mouse with last night—hadn’t brought it in person.

From: Dep. Peter Bennington, MCSO Crime Scene Unit.

To: Kathryn Dance, Special Agent, California Bureau of Investigation—Western Division.

Re: June 28 homicide at house of James Chilton, 2939 Pacific Heights Court, Carmel, California.

Kathryn, here’s the inventory.

Greg Schaeffer’s body

One Cross brand wallet, containing Calif. driver’s license, credit cards, AAA membership card, all in name of Gregory Samuel Schaeffer

$329.52 cash

Two keys to Ford Taurus, California registration ZHG128

One motel key to Room 146, Cyprus Grove Inn

One key to BMW 530, California registration DHY783, registered to Gregory S. Schaeffer, 20943 Hopkins Drive, Glendale, CA

One claim ticket for car at LAX long-term parking, dated June 10

Miscellaneous restaurant and store receipts

One cell phone. Only calls to local phone numbers: James Chilton, restaurants

Trace on shoes, consistent with sandy dirt found at prior scenes of roadside crosses

Fingernail trace inconclusive

Room 146, Cypress Grove Inn, registered in name of Greg Schaeffer

Miscellaneous clothing and toiletries

One 1-liter bottle, Diet Coke

Two bottles Robert Mondavi Central Coast Chardonnay wine

Leftover Chinese food, three orders

Miscellaneous groceries

One Toshiba laptop computer and power pack (transferred to California Bureau of Investigation; see chain-of-custody record)

One Hewlett-Packard DeskJet printer

One box of 25-count Winchester .38 Special ammunition, containing 13 rounds

Miscellaneous office supplies

Printouts of
The Chilton Report
from March of this year to present

Approximately 500 pages of documents relating to the Internet, blogs, RSS feeds

Items in Gregory Schaeffer’s possession found at James Chilton’s house

One Sony digital camcorder

One SteadyShot camera tripod

Three USB cables

One roll, Home Depot brand duct tape

One Smith & Wesson revolver, loaded with 6 rounds of .38 Special ammunition

One Baggie containing 6 extra rounds of ammunition

Hertz Ford Taurus, California registration ZHG128, parked 1/2 block away from James Chilton’s house

One bottle orange-flavored Vitamin Water, half full

One rental agreement, Hertz, naming Gregory Schaeffer as lessee

One McDonald’s Big Mac wrapper

One map of Monterey County, provided by Hertz, no marked locations (infrared analysis negative)

Five empty coffee cups, 7-Eleven. Only Schaeffer’s fingerprints

Dance read the list twice. She couldn’t be upset at the job Crime Scene had done. It was perfectly acceptable. Yet it offered no clues whatsoever as to where Travis Brigham was being held. Or where his body was buried.

Her eyes slipped out the window, and settled on the thick, barky knot, the point where two independent trees became one, then continued their separate journey toward the sky.

Oh, Travis, Kathryn Dance thought.

Unable to resist the thought that she’d let him down.

Unable, finally, to resist the tears.

TRAVIS BRIGHAM WOKE
up, peed in the bucket beside the bed and washed his hands with bottled water. He adjusted the chain connecting the shackle around his ankle to a heavy bolt in the wall.

Thought once again of that stupid movie,
Saw,
where two men had been chained to a wall, just like this, and could escape only by sawing their legs off.

He drank some Vitamin Water, ate some granola bars and returned to his mental investigation. Trying to piece together what had happened to him, why he’d ended up here.

And who was the man who’d done this terrible thing?

He recalled the other day, those police or agents at the house. His father being a dick, his mother being all weepy-eyed and weak. Travis had grabbed his uniform and his bike and headed for his sucky job. He’d wheeled the bike a short way into the woods behind his house and then just lost it. He’d dropped his bike and sat down beside the huge oak tree and started crying his head off.

Hopeless! Everybody hated him.

Then, wiping his nose as he sat beneath the oak, a
favorite spot—it reminded him of a place in Aetheria—he’d heard footsteps behind him, moving fast.

Before he could turn toward the sound, his vision went all yellow and every muscle in his body contracted at once, from neck to toe. His breath went away and he passed out. And then he woke up here in the basement, with a headache that wouldn’t stop. Somebody’d hit him with a Taser, he knew. He’d seen how they work on YouTube.

The Big Fear turned out to be a false alarm. Feeling carefully—down his pants, behind—he realized nobody’d done anything to him—not
that
way. Though it made him all the more uneasy. Rape would’ve made some sense. But this . . . just being kidnapped, held here like in some kind of Stephen King story? What the hell was going on?

Travis now sat up on the cheap folding bed that shook every time he moved. He looked around his prison once more, the filthy basement. The place stank of mold and oil. He surveyed the food and drink left for him: mostly chips and packaged crackers and Oscar Mayer snack boxes—ham or turkey. Red Bull and Vitamin Water and Coke to drink.

A nightmare. Everything about his life this month was an unbearable nightmare.

Starting with the graduation party at that house in the hills off Highway 1. He’d only gone because some of the girls said Caitlin was hoping he’d be there. No, she really, really is! So he’d hitched all the way down the highway, past Garrapata State Park.

Then he walked inside, and to his horror he’d seen only the kewl people, none of the slackers or gamers. The Miley Cyrus crowd.

And worse, Caitlin looked at him like she didn’t even recognize him. The girls who’d told him to come were giggling, along with their jock boyfriends. And everybody else was staring at him, wondering what the hell a geek like Travis Brigham was doing there.

It was all a setup, just to make fun of him.

Pure fucking hell.

But he wouldn’t turn around and run. No way. He’d hung around, looked over the million CDs the family had, flipped through some channels, ate kick-ass food. Finally, sad and embarrassed, he’d decided, it was time to head back, wondering if he’d get a ride that time of night, near midnight. He’d seen Caitlin, wasted on tequila, pissed about Mike D’Angelo and Bri leaving together. She was fumbling for her keys and muttering about following the two of them and . . . well, she didn’t know what.

Travis had thought: Be a hero. Take the keys, get her home safe. She won’t care you’re not a jock. She won’t care if your face is all red and bumpy.

She’ll know who you are on the inside . . . she’ll love you.

But Caitlin had jumped into the driver’s seat, her friends in the back. Being all, “Girlfriend, girlfriend . . .” Travis hadn’t let it go. He’d climbed right into the car beside her and tried to talk her out of driving.

Hero . . .

But Caitlin had sped off, plummeting down the driveway and onto Highway 1, ignoring his pleas to let him drive.

“Like, please, Caitlin, pull over!”

But she hadn’t even heard him.

“Caitlin, come on! Please!”

And then . . .

The car flying off the road. The sound of metal on stone, the screams—Sounds louder than anything Travis had ever heard.

And still I had to be the goddamn hero.

“Caitlin, listen to me. Can you hear me? Tell them I was driving the car. I haven’t had anything to drink. I’ll tell them I lost control. It won’t be a big deal. If they think you were driving, you’ll go to jail.”

“Trish, Van? . . . Why aren’t they saying anything?”

“Do you hear me, Cait? Get into the passenger seat. Now! The cops’ll be here any minute. I was driving! You hear me?”

“Oh, shit, shit, shit.”

“Caitlin!”

“Yes, yes. You were driving. . . . Oh, Travis. Thank you!”

As she threw her arms around him, he felt a sensation like none other he’d ever experienced.

She loves me, we’ll be together!

But it didn’t last.

Afterward, they’d talked some, they’d gone for coffee at Starbucks, lunch at Subway. But soon the times together grew awkward. Caitlin would fall silent and start looking away from him.

Eventually she stopped returning his calls.

Caitlin became even more distant than she’d been before his good deed.

And then look what happened. Everybody on the Peninsula—no, everybody in the
world
—started hating him.

H8 to break it to you but [the driver] is a total fr33k and a luser . . .

But even then Travis couldn’t give up hope. The night Tammy Foster got attacked, Monday, he’d been thinking about Caitlin and couldn’t sleep, so he went to her house. To see if she was all right, though mostly thinking, in his fantasy, maybe she’d be hanging out in the backyard or on her front porch. She’d see him and say, “Oh, Travis, I’m sorry I’ve been so distant. I’m just getting over Trish and Van. But I do love you!”

But the house had been dark. He’d bicycled back home at 2:00 a.m.

The next day the police had shown up and asked him where he’d been that night. He’d instinctively lied and said he was at the Game Shed. Which of course they’d found out he hadn’t been. And now they’d definitely think he was the one behind the attack on Tammy.