Dance wasn’t going to put on a false facade for the children; she’d learned as a parent that in the end it was better to confront pain and fear, rather than to deny or defer them. But she had to struggle to keep panic from her voice. “Your grandmother’s going to see a judge and I hope she’ll be home soon. Then we’re going to find out what’s happened. We just don’t know yet.”
She’d take the children to the home of her best friend, Martine Christensen, with whom she operated her music website.
“I don’t like that man,” Wes said.
“Who?”
“Mr. Harper.”
“I don’t like him either,” Dance said.
“I want to go to the courthouse with you,” Maggie said.
“No, Mags. I don’t know how long I’m going to be there.”
Dance glanced back and gave a reassuring smile to the children.
Seeing their wan, forlorn faces, she grew all the angrier at Robert Harper.
Dance plugged in her phone’s hands-free mike, thought for a moment and called the best defense lawyer she could think of. George Sheedy had once spent four hours trying to discredit Dance on the witness stand. He’d come close to winning a verdict of not guilty for a Salinas gang leader who clearly was. But the good guys had won and the punk got life. After the trial, Sheedy had come up to Dance and shaken her hand, complimenting her on the solid job she’d done testifying. She’d told him too that she’d been impressed by his skill.
As her call was being transferred to Sheedy, she noticed that the cameramen continued to record the excitement, every one of them focused on the car in which her mother sat, handcuffed. They looked like insurgents firing rocket launchers at shell-shocked troops.
CALM NOW, AFTER the intruder in the backyard turned out not to be the Abominable Snowman, Kelley Morgan was concentrating on her hair.
The teenager was never far from her curlers.
Her hair was the most frustrating thing in the world. A little humidity and it went all frizzy. Pissed her off sooo much.
She had to meet Juanita and Trey and Toni on Alvarado in forty minutes, and they were such great friends that if she was more than ten minutes late they’d ditch her. She lost track of time writing a post on Bri’s Town Hall board on OurWorld, about Tammy Foster.
Then Kelley’d looked up, into the mirror, and realized that the damp air had turned the strands into this total creature. So she logged off and attacked the brunette tangles.
Somebody had once posted on a local blog — anonymously, of course:
Kelley Morgan… whats with her hair?????? its like shes a mushroom. I dont like girls with shaved heads but she should go for THAT look. LOL. yikes why dosnt she get a clue.
Kelley had sobbed, paralyzed at the terrible words, which cut her like a razor.
That post was the reason she’d defended Tammy on OurWorld and flamed AnonGurl (who she did end up owning, big-time).
Even now, thinking of the cruel post about her hair, she shivered with shame. And anger. Never mind that Jamie said he loved everything about her. The posting had devastated her and made her hypersensitive about the subject. And had cost her countless hours. Since that April 4 post, she hadn’t once gone outside without battling the do into shape.
Okay, get to work, girl.
She rose from her desk and went to her dressing table and plugged in the heated rollers. They gave her split ends but at least the heat tamed the worst of the renegade tresses.
She flicked the dressing table light on and sat down, stripped off her blouse and tossed it onto the floor, then pulled two tank tops over her bra, liking the look of the three straps: red, pink and black. Tested the curlers. A few more minutes. Almost right. She started to brush. It was soooo unfair. Pretty face, nice boobs, great ass. And this effing hair.
She happened to glance at her computer and saw an instant message from a friend.
Check out TCR, I mean NOW!!!!!!!!
Kelley laughed. Trish was so exclamation point.
Usually she didn’t read The Chilton Report — it was more politics than she cared about — but she’d put it on her RSS feed after Chilton had begun posting about the accident on June 9 under the “Roadside Crosses” thread. Kelley had been at the party that night and, just before Caitlin and the other girls left, had seen Travis Brigham arguing with Caitlin.
She swung to the keyboard and typed, Don’t Xplode. Y?
Trish responded, Chilton took out names but people are saying Travis attacked Tammy!!
Kelley typed, Is this win or r u guessing?
The response: WIN, WIN!!!! Travis is pissed b/c she flamed him in the blog, READ IT!!!! THE DRIVER = TRAVIS and THE VICTIM = TAMMY.
Sick to her stomach, Kelley began pounding the keys, calling up The Chilton Report and plowing through the “Roadside Crosses” thread. Toward the end, she read:
Reply to Chilton, posted by BrittanyM.
Is anybody watching the news???? Somebody left a cross and then went out and attacked that girl. What’s that all about? OMG, I’ll bet it’s [the driver]!
Reply to Chilton, posted by CT093.
Where the [deleted] are the police? I heard that that girl in the trunk was raped and had crosses carved on her, then he LEFT her in the trunk to drown. Just because she dissed him — [the driver], I mean I just looked at the news and he hasn’t been arrested yet. WHY NOT?????
Reply to Chilton, posted by Anonymous.
Me and my friends were near the beach where [the victim] was found and they heard the police talking about this cross. They were like he left it as a warning for people to shut up. [The victim] was attacked and raped because she dissed [the driver] HERE, i mean what she wrote in the blog!!! Listen if you flamed him here and you’re not using proxies or posting anon, you’re totally [deleted], he’s going to get you!!
Reply to Chilton, posted by Anonymous.
I know a d00d where [the driver] goes to game and he was saying that [the driver] was saying he was going to get everybody who was posting stuff about him, he planned to cut their throats like terrorists do on arab TV, hey, cops, the driver] is the Roadside Cross killer!!! And that’s WORD!!!
No… God, no! Kelley thought back to what she’d posted about Travis. What’d she said? Would the boy be mad at her? She frantically scrolled up and found her post.